Women in the 20th Century (Part II)

I posted earlier about the changing role of women in the workforce and Eleanor Roosevelt. I’m really enjoying writing about influential women, so I’m going to keep going in this post with Jeanette Rankin and Rosalind Franklin.

Jeanette Rankin

We talked about Jeanette Rankin in class briefly- for those of you who don’t remember she was the first woman elected to Congress, which is a pretty impressive achievement. It seems kind of weird that most of us wouldn’t have heard of her until USHAP, but she was actually pretty cool.

What’s interesting is that she actually started serving her first term in Congress three years before the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), in 1917. She had already helped women in her home state of Montana to gain the vote in 1914, and so funnily enough women could be elected to Congress before most could even vote. I’m guessing it goes without saying that she was actively involved in the suffrage movement and probably the Congress member most eager to see the Nineteenth Amendment passed.

Rankin was a Progressive, which made sense, as it was the Progressives who pushed for women’s suffrage. She was concerned with social issues, and very much a pacifist. She’s famous for being the only Congress member to vote against entering both World Wars. Her aversion to war led to a lot of talk about her being a tool of the Germans and not understanding the importance of war and that sort of thing. So I guess another claim to fame might be that she was responsible for the first female politician bashing on a national level. She probably didn’t realize it, but she was starting a tradition.

Instead of the wars, Rankin focused on social issues at home. She supported protest strikes by miners and worked towards passage of legislation banning child labor, as well as a variety of other peace initiatives and social reform movements.

At the age of 88 her pacifistic sentiments were still strong, and she led a peace protest against the Vietnam War consisting of 5000 people. She was still involved in protesting the war when she died five years later in 1973.

Barbara McClintock

So far I’ve focused on women in politics, but I’d like to focus on a woman who made some impressive advancements in science. Most of us can at least vaguely trace the increase of female involvement in politics, but at least for me there is a giant gap between the times when educated women were restricted to fields in the humanities (not that the humanities aren’t cool) to more modern times when there are women in just about every scientific profession, even if they still are a bit underrepresented.

So, Barbara McClintock. She was responsible for finding the first proof of the existence of crossover genes. There had been some speculation on their existence before, but it wasn’t until Mc Clintock’s work that it was clear that they really existed.

In addition she discovered transposable elements through her extensive experimentation with maize. She was made fun of at the time, but approximately thirty years later she won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine. She remains the only woman to have won this award to this day, so it’s a pretty impressive accomplishment.

You can probably tell I don’t have much of an idea of the science I’m talking about here since it’s been a couple of years since I took bio and I only remember that I used to know what these terms meant, not what they actually mean. If you want to understand more of what McClintock did you can check out this link: http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/barbara-mcclintock-and-the-discovery-of-jumping-34083

And this for more on Rankin: http://history.house.gov/People/Listing/R/RANKIN,-Jeannette-(R000055)/

Ellen to Ellen: 17 years and the road ahead

Hi USHAP friends!

We have touched very briefly on LGBT issues throughout the year, so I thought I would write a post about how the social role of the LGBT community in the US have changed over the past 17 years, give or take. As many of you know, this is a topic that I am very passionate about. About 17 years ago, Ellen DeGeneres came out. It was a quite a big deal: before Ellen, there was an unspoken don't-ask-don't-tell rule in the the entertainment industry, especially for women. Ellen broke a boundary, and she did so fabulously. She used her sitcom at the time as a venue to further discuss LGBT issues, and she went on to become a much-loved talk show host, proving that an out gay person can make it on TV. Ellen coming out is often seen by the LGBT community as a major turning point. A landmark in time, if you will. In fact, the LGBT website afterellen.com is titled after this idea that Ellen changed the game.

A few months ago, another Ellen came out -- Ellen Page. Thanks to the road paved by Ellen (DeGeneres), Ellen (Page)'s coming out was well received and felt more "normal" to many Americans. So what changed in those 17 years between the Ellen's public coming outs?

The country began to have a conversation that it was put off for much too long.

In 1998, in Laramie, Wyoming, a gay college student named Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered by two men for being gay. The tragedy sparked a nationwide conversation about hate crimes and gay rights. We owe a lot to Matthew Shepard. In the wake of the tragedy, his parents became strong advocates for the LGBT community, and progress ensued.

President Bill Clinton is an interesting example of how times have changed in the last 17 years. In 1996, he signed the Defense of Marriage Act, but in 2013, he wrote a Washington Post op-ed saying that he believed DOMA should be overturned. In this article, he said that he decided to sign DOMA in 1996 because if he didn't, conservatives might have been able to push through a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. That a president would so publicly go back on a decision he made 17 years prior shows that a lot has changed, and for the better.

This isn't a full account of what has happened in the past 17 years for the LGBT community. Prop 8 was passed. Prop 8 was struck down. More on more states have been legalizing same-sex marriage. We're moving towards equality in terms of same-sex couples, and we are beginning to have more much needed conversations about trans* rights (pro-tip: check out next week's Talon for an article about Laverne Cox and trans* activism).

Of course we haven't achieved equality, but looking back, I would have to say the last 17 years have life better for Ellens (and other LGBT people) of the world. We seem to be on an upward slope in terms of reaching equality. Let's keep going, friends.

To read President Clinton's op-ed: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/bill-clinton-its-time-to-overturn-doma/2013/03/07/fc184408-8747-11e2-98a3-b3db6b9ac586_story.html

Malaysia Plane

                     All of these posts concerning different eras of history made me want to bring up an interesting topic that has been extremely controversial and talked about over the past couple of months. As of March 8th, 2014, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that held 239 people on board (Flight 370- heading from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing), has been missing and is believed to be at the bottom of the south Indian Ocean. Like the JFK assassination, there are conspiracies made about what happened onboard that caused this dramatic incident. Now I am not going to go into detail about every conspiracy, I thought I would just make a historical connection there. This has become quite a mystery, as planes virtually never vanish off radar and simply just disappear without a digital fingerprint.
                     An update from nytimes.com as of today, May 22:
"SYDNEY, Australia — The deep-sea underwater search for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 resumed overnight on Thursday with a remote-controlled submersible scouring the seabed in an area where searchers still believe they detected acoustic signals from the jet’s flight data recorders."
                    I have a couple of theories however, that point toward the idea that the plane has been landed on perhaps a remote island or an area where it could not have been picked up by radar. One main point that suggests the aircraft did not encounter a water landing is that there is a lack of a large debris field. A Boeing 777 is a massive aircraft, and considering the momentum of hitting the water at an expected speed would have left the plane in disaster, scattering a very large debris field that would have been picked up within days of disappearance. Another theory complimenting the previous, and one that really makes the situation more confusing, is that a Boeing 777 contains several emergency water beacons, that are activated by water. The signals form these beacons would have been detected rather quickly. The fact that these are activated by water suggests that the aircraft could be on land somewhere, and another theory comes into place. The plane could have been hijacked similar to that of the 9/11 attack, and is on an island awaiting a time to strike. Obviously these are just ideas stemming from outside information I received. This is definitely something to think about as the search continues.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/world/asia/search-for-missing-malaysia-airlines-plane-resumes.html?_r=0

Another Xinjiang Attack

I'd like to deviate from US history for a second.  Recently, there was another terrorist attack in the Xinjiang region of China.  This time bombs were hurled into the busy streets and resulting explosions killed 31 citizens and wounded 90.  Now, the last attack was at the airport where several perpetrators knifed 15 or so civilians to death.  This news, however, was overshadowed by the Russian-Ukraine situation.  The Chinese government blame the radical Muslim faction within the region for the attacks, but that's not what I wanted to talk about.  What really struck me was that last time, everyone knew about Ukraine, but no one was interested in Muslim radicals terrorizing China.  So my question is: What news do persons and publishers deem worthy enough to be trending or popular?  Why does Russia seem to get more attention than China, even though at the time we weren't involved with either?

Current Events: Ukraine and Crimea

Looking at current events, I realized I knew pretty much nothing about the situation in Ukraine and Crimea, so I did a little research and created this short breakdown of events.

Crimea is an autonomous republic within the Ukraine. They elect their own parliament and have their own prime minister, which has to be approved by the Ukrainian government. Crimea is a peninsula that juts out from the southern part of the Ukraine into the Black Sea, and the majority of people there speak Russian and identify themselves as Russians. In the 2010 presidential election, the vast majority of voters from Crimea voted to elect the pro-Russian candidate, who was far less favored among the Ukrainians.

Though Russia signed a memorandum in 1994 upholding the territorial integrity of the Ukraine, the Russians have gotten increasingly more involved there. Russian forces have begun to take control of the peninsula, calling themselves Crimean self-defense forces (sounds a bit like the "advisers" in Vietnam). The Crimean parliament voted to dismiss the Crimean government and call a referendum. In this referendum, over 96% of voters wanted to join Russia. Russian forces have started distributing fake Russian passports to citizens Crimea, for Russia's defense system allows forces to go overseas in order to protect Russian citizens.

On March 17th the Crimeans declared their independence from Ukraine, and on March 18th they signed a treaty with Russia signifying that Crimea had now joined the Russian Federation. On March 27th, the UN General Assembly stated that Crimea’s referendum with Russia was invalid, and, in a similar manner, the Ukrainian government declared that Crimea was a region only temporarily occupied by Russia. As a result, Crimea’s vote to join Russia by popular sovereignty was illegitimized, and yet, the Ukrainian government has imposed travel restrictions between Ukraine and Crimea because of Russian “occupation.”

Crimean rebellion was spurred on by the Euromaidan, a series of protests that occurred in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, starting in November of 2013. Though the general public wanted to join the European Union, the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych had only been offered 610 million euros in loans from the EU while Russia had offered 15 billion euros in addition to reduced gas prices to the Ukraine. As a result, though Crimea remained ethnically and culturally Russian, much of the Ukrainian public engaged in pro-European Union demonstrations and deeply resented Russia. This increased Crimean feelings of detachment from the rest of Ukraine and thus increased desire for independence.

Also, here’s a pretty cool map I found that shows you sort of where Crimea is in relation to Ukraine and where all the important cities in Crimea are:

http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/2014/crimea/

Women in the 20th Century (Part I)

Because we’ve had so much to cover this year we haven’t had a chance to look in-depth at the changing role of women in the twentieth century, after the Nineteenth Amendment was passed. However, women’s role in the workforce changed a lot, especially since the fifties when it was more common for women to work, and there have been some influential women we haven’t had the time to cover.  I’m going to cover these topics in a couple of blog posts.

Women in the Workforce

In the 1950s approximately ⅓ of women were in the workforce, mainly in secretarial jobs or jobs specified for women. Women were permitted to work, but as you might remember this was the time of the cult of domesticity and many women chose to work when they were younger and then give up their jobs when they got married and had kids. This had changed by 2000, when approximately ⅔ of women were in the workforce. Significantly, the change was not as big for women from 16 to 24, as the percentage of these women in the workforce only rose 20% in 50 years. However, for women ages 25 to 54, the percentage rose by approximately 40%, as it was much more common for women to retain jobs after marriage.

Eleanor Roosevelt

With everything going on during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, we didn’t have much time to look at Eleanor Roosevelt, but she was one of the first First Ladies who was actively involved in social issues which had to do with the government. Before her marriage she worked as a secretary and teacher, and joined the Junior League for the Promotion of Settlement Movements. She was actively involved in helping the poor in New York City, and even taught dance and aerobics classes to promote health.

So when Eleanor married, she already had a lot of prior experience with Progressive work. When Franklin Roosevelt became the Assistant Navy Secretary, she worked to get then-First Lady Ellen Wilson to visit the dwellings of DC’s impoverished African Americans. During World War I she helped in private aid societies which gained a high standing with the government, such as the Navy Relief Society.

At this time she was also actively involved in the media as an investigative journalist. Informing the public was a priority for Eleanor, one that continued to be a priority when she became First Lady.

After women gained the right to vote Eleanor Roosevelt became actively involved in politics.  Before and during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, Eleanor was a member of the Women’s Division of the New York State Democratic Committee, including a term of Vice President. She also joined the League of Women Voters and promoted female involvement in politics.

When her husband became president he was already severely limited by his paralyzation from polio. Eleanor would serve as an unofficial representative of his administration at times, which caused some controversy. While previous First Ladies had stuck to influencing things such as the Girl Scouts and animal rights, Eleanor did not have a niche.

She was involved in the larger government and pushed an overall Progressive agenda. She protested the internment of Japanese in World War II and supported African American rights, going even further than many Progressives, including her husband. All in all, she was a profoundly influential woman, one of the most influential of her time.

Statistics on women in the workforce: http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2000/feb/wk3/art03.htm

Eleanor Roosevelt: http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=33

The US Prison System

Is the US Prison system failing?

To begin with, America's prision system, including people on parole and probation, includes 6.9 million Americans.  That is 1 in every 108 people that are behind bars, and 1 in 35 that are under some sort of correctional supervision.  Based on race, 1 in every 25 white males, 1 in every 6 Hispanic males, and a horrifying 1 in every 3 African Americans.

What's worse than the numbers that are in prison, is that once they are released and are allegedly corrected, within 3 years of being free "nearly half of prisoners are convicted of another crime with one out of every four ending up back in prison." This shows that the correctional institute is not doing it's job of actually helping the inmates get onto a better life track.  It is wasting money, time, and lives because the current system is broken beyond repair.

Some states are trying to teach their inmates about programming and helping them attain their GED.  However, with tight budgets, prisons are cutting back on the rehabilitaion programs that help the inmates the most when they are released back into society.

The correctional facilities and system is taking taxpayer money out of higher education, it has become a billion dollar industry.  Because the number of people in prison has grown so dramatically without actually helping crime, it is a lose lose situation for society in terms of the economy and society.

Instead of using taxpayer dollars to just keep low-level prisoners in prison to become hardened criminals, the money should be used to set them up with useful tools that can help them later like apprenticeships, community service, and literacy camps.

"The criminal justice system in America was created to keep communities safe, to respect and restore victims, and to return offenders who leave prision to be self-sufficient and law-abiding."  When these goals are no longer achieved, the system has failed the nation and its people.

So how should we fix this?  Well, there could be a radical replacement of the whole broken system, but an easier more temporary solution would be to further technologize the prisons.  Online schooling is available for K-12 from the Khan Academy and Udacity for inmates to get their GED.  Technology could also revolutionize probation and community supervision by having automatic court date reminders and creating appropriate levels of restriction on nonviolent offenders so that they can return to society and their families and live productive lives.