The Blog

David Protess: Wrongful Conviction Hearing a Revelation

2013-05-20T22:11:45Z

Besides the drama that unfolds within its majestic walls, a courtroom can illuminate the justice system -- sometimes by a revealing slip of the tongue.

That is what happened on Wednesday in room 307 of the George N. Leighton Criminal Court Building, where Cook County Judge Maura Slattery Boyle was presiding over a hearing that involved two Humboldt Park men who have professed their innocence for 20 years.

As I recently reported, Armando Serrano and Jose Montanez were convicted of a 1993 murder based primarily on the testimony of a jailhouse snitch who claimed the men confessed to him. The snitch has repudiated his testimony, as has the murder victim's widow, who at one point provided a possible motive for the slaying. Both insist that Det. Reynaldo Guevara pressured them into fabricating statements. Compelling evidence shows that the now-retired cop was responsible for similar practices in dozens of cases, many of which were brought to the attention of Judge Boyle prior to the hearing.

Boyle's courtroom was packed with spectators, the prisoners' families comprising the largest contingent. Serrano's and Montanez's parents and siblings joined fellow churchgoers and others. They hoped the judge would free their loved ones, who sat with their lawyers in the front of the courtroom, separated from the gallery by Plexiglas.

The hearing began ominously when the judge, visibly annoyed that no one rose when she took the bench, sternly warned the families: "This is not a visiting area [of a prison], it is a courtroom. There will be no waving, no communicating."

The revelation came minutes later, during Assistant State's Attorney Celeste Stack's opening statement. Reviewing the events leading up the crime, Stack referred to the defendants' purported run-in the previous day with Rodrigo and Wilda Vargas, the murder victim and his widow.

"The widow saw them," Stack said, pointing to Serrano and Montanez. "These mutts."

Mutts? Spectators gasped. "That's flat-out racist," shouted Maria Serrano, Armando's sister. Others voiced agreement, while the prisoners' mothers began weeping.

"Objection!" exclaimed Jennifer Bonjean, Serrano's pro bono lawyer. Stack apologized before the judge could rule, but the din in the courtroom continued.

"It was cruel," Maria Serrano told me later. "It's not enough they wrongfully take my brother away for 20 years. They want to slap us in the face by calling us trash."

While Judge Boyle did not sanction Stack for her epithet, a different standard apparently applied to Bonjean. The judge repeatedly threatened the defense lawyer with contempt and ordered sanctions (punishment to be determined later) for three incidents: folding her arms, muttering under her breath and replying to the judge's exasperated comment that she'd "had it" by saying, "Me, too."

Judge Boyle also denied the motion by Bonjean and Russell Ainsworth, Montanez's pro bono lawyer, to allow the widow to testify at the hearing -- after prosecutor Stack argued against it. The judge also ruled Stack's way in barring Serrano and Montanez from taking the stand to profess their innocence and answer prosecutors' questions. The rulings were made on procedural grounds.

Has Boyle's career as a lawyer for the City of Chicago and an assistant state's attorney influenced her view of cases like this one? How about her close relationship with the family of Richard M. Daley, the former state's attorney and mayor? It is hard to say since many fine judges have similar connections. It is also difficult to know what prompted the offensive comment by Stack, viewed widely as one of the most honorable prosecutors in the state's attorney's office.

But the bottom line is the same. At the Leighton building, prosecutors have home court advantage, and virtually anything they say, goes. It is remarkable that 78 prisoners from Cook County have been exonerated, though that number spans the last 24 years and more than half were DNA cases.

As for the "mutts" outburst, the fact that prosecutor Stack is well-regarded shows how ingrained comments like hers are to the culture of the state's attorney's office. Truth be told, worse slurs are common around the water cooler, reflecting a dehumanizing view of criminal defendants that comes from years of locking them up, one person of color at a time.

Back to the hearing. Two witnesses, including a former Chicago cop, testified that Det. Guevara coerced suspects and rigged line-ups. Another witness took the stand to say that the jailhouse snitch recruited by Guevara had admitted lying on the stand in implicating Serrano and Montanez. The snitch, dubbed "The Pope of Humboldt Park" because suspects routinely confessed their "sins" to him, has signed an affidavit recanting his trial testimony.

But the snitch failed to appear at the hearing and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He has vanished, according to the defense lawyers, likely because he fears recrimination by prosecutors if he contradicts his trial testimony. His concerns seem reasonable given that State's Attorney Anita Alvarez has charged at least one recanting witness with perjury.

At the end of court on Thursday, Judge Boyle continued the case until June 17, when the defense has subpoenaed Det. Guevara to testify. Guevara will likely plead the fifth on the advice of his attorney, James Sotos - once counsel to Comdr. Jon Burge, the infamous cop convicted of perjury for denying the widespread torture of suspects on the South Side.

The lawyers will be back for the next round, assuming Ms. Bonjean is not in custody for muttering. Of course, the families of the prisoners will return, as they have for every court appearance, praying that Judge Boyle will rule justly. But will journalists cover the proceedings, or will they be missing in action as they were for many years while the Burge torture scandal unfolded? Only Telemundo weighed in on last week's events.

And will reporters cover today's hearing in the case of Gabriel Solace, another alleged Guevara victim who contends he was beaten for 40 hours before he falsely confessed to murder?

Does anyone care -- or is this just about a bunch of mutts?

Caryn Brooks: From a High School Gym to Grand Central Station: The Olympic Spirit Is Alive

2013-05-19T23:37:32Z

Because it is World Wrestling Month, Iranian, Russian and American wrestlers battled in an event in Grand Central Station in New York on Wednesday, with the athletes weighing in at the United Nations. At least one movie star was in attendance; Mark Ruffalo sat matside. NBC Sports Network broadcast the matches and streamed them live.

For wrestling it doesn't get more high-profile than that.

Yet, there was another gathering for World Wrestling Month here in the U.S., one that got much less attention, but one that brought the Olympic spirit to a small suburban Chicago high school gym.

It was the 2013 Jacob Curby Cup - a wrestling contest that's been held for the last four years in honor of Jacob Curby, a Greco-Roman wrestler on the Olympic track who died at age 25 in 2010 of epilepsy.

Jacob Curby's father, Dr. David Curby said the first Curby Cup came about almost on a whim. Two high school wrestling coaches wanted a way to honor Jacob's memory. "We wanted to get the top international guy at every weight class," said Dr. Curby. But international politics got in the way of international sport and good intentions. Two World Champions were from Iran, they didn't come and Cuba's athlete backed out too.

The Curby Cup has come a long way since then. This year World Champions and Olympians from four countries, Hungary, Lithuania, Serbia and the U.S. came to compete. Olympic gold medalist, 2-time NCAA champion and the coach of 16 NCAA championship teams, Dan Gable, was also there.

Gable called it "a celebration more than a competition." The celebration was of Jacob Curby's life and everything he stood for -- as a teenager he battled leukemia, even though it was epilepsy that took his life. He then brought that same fight to his wrestling. But Gable said this year the Curby Cup had added meaning. He said the push to keep wrestling in the Olympics beyond 2016 gave it even more sentimentality.

The International Olympic Committee voted to drop wrestling from the games starting in 2020. The reasons vary depending on whom you talk to, but everyone in the wrestling community agrees that for some time wrestling's governing body, FILA, snubbed its nose at the IOC. As Gable puts it, "A few people took advantage of the system and jeopardized a lot of things." He didn't mince words when he called those in charge, "selfish".

There's still a chance for wrestling to get back in. Just as American Idol judges have a save, so does the IOC. It can bring back one sport from banishment. Wrestling is competing against karate, squash, baseball and softball and other sports for the spot. And it's no gimmie. Gable pointed out that the other sports have been working for years to stave off losing the Olympics. Wrestling was taken by surprise and is now playing catch-up. He calls the sport's chances, "good, but not automatic." The final decision comes in September.

However, if it wasn't for the dire state of Olympic wrestling the Curby Cup might not have happened this year. Dr. Curby said he had to take out a loan on his house to pay the bills. "We're in the red big time right now... We're a mom and pop operator and we run an international premiere event," said Dr. Curby. He added that they "may be a little crazy" to continue to do it.

But then came the IOC decision. Dr. Curby channeled his inner wrestler. He said, "The fight emerges and just like any wrestler -- you fight off your back, you just don't quit. In addition to celebrating the memory of Jake we are also celebrating and fighting for wrestling."

The fight for wrestling includes the fight to keep the Olympic spirit alive in the unlikeliest of places, such as the gym where Jacob Curby practiced and competed as a teen at Lyons Township High School in LaGrange, Illinois. That's where a first-year wrestler can shake hands with an Olympian. Where politicians came to announce that Illinois had joined 37 other states in passing a resolution calling on the IOC to bring wrestling back to the Olympics. And where the results of the matches take a back seat to the inspiration instilled and the dreams that are born.

Of course Dr. Curby and Gable aren't the only ones fighting to bring wrestling back where it belongs. With the click of a mouse each day thousands of people are doing their part. The website insidethegames.biz is taking a poll that closes on May 27. Gable says it will make a difference with the IOC.

What should make a difference as well is the Olympic spirit. It can be seen on the big stage with grand gestures such as the detente and cooperation between three nations that don't see eye-to-eye on much else besides wrestling. But it can also be seen on a small-scale in a high school gym where Olympians and Olympic dreamers rub elbows.

James Peron: Drug Warriors and Gun Violence: The War on Drugs Fuels Violence

2013-05-19T20:16:15Z

Drugs can kill users. Drug warriors can kill anybody.

A CBS report on street violence in Chicago makes clear that a major cause -- if not the major cause -- of these deaths is because drug gangs are fighting over turf. Jack Riley, the DEA chief for Chicago, says that he is absolutely sure that most the gun deaths are part of the fight for drug turf.

This is absolutely true and drug warriors like Jack Riley are responsible for the fight.

Consider what Riley considers a success for drug warriors: the arrest of drug dealers and the confiscation of their product.

What exactly does this success do? If they are successful enough to reduce the street supply of drugs they increase the price of drugs. The first thing that happens is that they give windfall profits to all the dealers who they didn't arrest. They didn't hurt those dealers, they rewarded them.

Second, the increased profits make drug dealing more attractive.

Riley and his crew strap on their SWAT outfits, prepared for battled. They're armed, dangerous and prepared to kill. The DEA is willing to use war-like violence.

This will drive out peaceful dealers and the more placid distributors. But with massive profits created by the DEA all they do is attract more and more violent dealers to the market.

The more violent the DEA is willing to be, the more violent the dealers will be. We don't see beer distributors killing for "turf," at least not anymore. But, when we allowed the Jack Rileys of the country to set liquor laws from 1920 to 1933 we had violence, gang warfare and murder. When Prohibition was repealed and liquor legalized the violence stopped.

We still have alcoholics, but their addiction isn't a crime. They aren't forced to deal with criminal gangs to get what they want.

Drug users risk their lives, but even a good deal of that is due to impure drugs with varying qualities -- directly attributable to the illegality of the drugs themselves. If you take heroin, however, that in itself does not risk the lives of others.

Drug warriors regularly raid the wrong homes and sometimes shoot innocent people. At least the drug dealers don't pretend they are a force for good. You can't say that for drug warriors.

They are sanctimonious and self-righteous. They are convinced that their tanks, SWAT raids, concussion grenades and assault rifles, which they regularly point at their fellow citizens, are signs of their righteousness. They are really signs of everything that is wrong with the war on drugs.

The DEA is acting like just another rival drug gang. They propel their competitors, the other drug gangs, to match them in violence. They raise the stakes -- and the dealers see them and raise them again.

The way to destroy the drug gang violence is to take the profit out of it. The Drug Warriors know that, they just don't understand the most basic principles of economics. They think that they take the profit out by reducing the supply. That is entirely foolish. Reducing the supply, without touching the demand, only raises the profits.

End the war on drugs and legalize the product and profits plummet, the cost of drugs decline. Users would no longer have to deal with street gangs. Of course, the DEA thugs will be out of a job. The war on drugs also profits the DEA and the local drug warriors. They get billions in funding, decent salaries, and the adrenaline rushes they are addicted to. They, and the bureaucrats who profit from the war on drugs, will fight attempts to treat drug use as a medical problem, instead of a criminal one.

Portugaldecriminalized drugs and treats users as individuals who need help, not as criminals. Drug related deaths dropped as a result.

As bad as drugs can be, Drug Warriors are worse. They raise the stakes of the drug fight, incentivize the drug gangs and push them to greater heights of violence. Then these pious frauds storm in, guns blazing, Constitutional rights being shredded, and high on the rush they get from their violence. They pat themselves on the backs and pretend they are making America a better place.

When a solution becomes worse than the problem it is time to abolish the solution. The gun violence in Chicago is directly linked to the incentives created by the war on drugs. Ending the war on drugs will do more to end gun violence in America than any other policy change we can implement. But it is the only solution that the Drug Warriors, on both side of the aisle, won't contemplate.

Randi Weingarten: Common Core: Do What It Takes Before High Stakes

2013-05-19T06:22:13Z

America's public education system could be on the brink of a once-in-a-generation revolution. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for math and English language arts. The CCSS are a sharp departure from the too-common superficial sprint through huge volumes of material, asking students and teachers instead to focus on in-depth explorations of essential skills and knowledge. If implemented properly -- namely, by ensuring that front line educators are prepared to teach these rigorous new standards -- we can provide all children with the problem-solving, critical-thinking and teamwork skills they need to compete in today's changing world.

But that's a big "if." As I recently told the Association for a Better New York, the Common Core standards will either transform the very DNA of teaching and learning, or they will end up in the dustbin of abandoned reforms. Unfortunately, many policymakers are proceeding recklessly, in ways that make the second outcome more likely.

In New York, assessments have been fast-tracked before other vital pieces are in place. Last month, students in grades 3 through 8 took math and English tests on material they may have never even seen. New curricula tied to the standards were announced just one month before the tests were administered. The failure to provide students and educators with the necessary time and support to adapt to these ambitious new requirements has caused heart-wrenching, destructive anxiety.

Even though many students were assessed on skills and content they hadn't been taught, test results in New York can be used to determine if students advance or are held back, to designate school performance, and to target schools for closure. They will constitute 20 percent of teachers' evaluations. Moving in this manner is an abdication of our moral responsibility to kids, particularly poor kids.

Developments like these, which certainly are not limited to New York, are why I am calling for a moratorium -- not on the standards, or even on the testing, but on the high stakes attached to all of this -- until the standards have been properly implemented and field-tested. Students still will be assessed. Teachers still will be evaluated. A moratorium on consequences in these transitional years will allow for midcourse corrections, as needed, in aligning the standards, curriculum, teacher training, instruction and assessments.

AFT members overwhelmingly support the Common Core standards -- 75 percent said so in a recent poll we conducted -- but they also say they haven't had enough time to put them into practice or share strategies with colleagues. Educators have joined parents, community members and opinion leaders to send more than 36,000 letters supporting the moratorium to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and to their state commissioners of education.

The AFT is working to help the Common Core succeed in classrooms across the country. ShareMyLesson.com is our online platform where educators can access and share their best teaching resources, with thousands of resources aligned to the Common Core standards. The AFT has trained hundreds of teacher-trainers in Common Core-aligned courses, and the AFT Innovation Fund provides grants to AFT affiliates trying to realize the promise of these standards.

The Common Core sets rigorous standards for all children, whether from Bed-Stuy or Beverly Hills, but high expectations must be matched with high levels of support, particularly for high-needs students. Poverty or near-poverty plagues nearly 1 in 2 children in America, and this week leading groups of pediatricians called for concerted efforts to aggressively combat this scourge. Wraparound services, early childhood programs and community schools -- all of which help disadvantaged students reach their potential -- are central to this mission.

We are engaged in a fight for the heart and soul of public education. As Jeff Bryant wrote this week on the Campaign for America's Future blog, "Fights to preserve and strengthen public schools... are connected to much larger struggles over what kind of nation America is becoming." Proper implementation of the CCSS -- and equal opportunities for all children to succeed -- can help reverse the troubling trend toward low skills and high inequality that for too long has done a disservice to our students and our country.

Paul Klein: Chicago Art; Migration, Transformation, Absence, Presence & a Damn Good List

2013-05-19T01:43:12Z

There are perks to having a press pass; like getting to preview exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art with a small group, several curators, and the artist. Theaster Gates is a wonderfully intelligent artist, sensitive and fully capable of pushing paradigms across international borders. Homegrown Chicago, Gates is not the first Black artist to address core racial issues, but he brings new relevance to Migration;what goes, what stays behind, the passion of the heart, and the spirit of the artifacts that remain. Gates' work has grown to encompass the Migrations of multiple cultures as people move/flee in pursuit of a better life.

Swapping/juxtaposing remnants from one culture and inserting them into another, like abandoned abodes in Chicago and Germany touches so many. Here, we are a nation of immigrants and how we treat those who follow the paths of our ancestors says a lot. Gates' art is compassionate, heartfelt and universal. With passionate, referential objects, a full performance schedule and multiple videos, it's a victory lap for an artist whose trajectory is rapidly ascending - appropriately.

And this isn't the only show which just opened at the MCA. Think First, Shoot Later is a survey looking at mostly big, beautiful, photographs whose content is often not readily discernible. I'm pleased that there are 3 Chicago artists in the show.

In the ongoing MCA/DNA series, the museum looks at conceptual abstraction created in Chicago from 1986 to 1995. Key works by Tony Tasset, Gregory Green, Julia Fish, Buzz Spector and many more. Two decades after many of these artists dispersed and/or their art changed direction we see the best show of their work. I remember many of these pieces, their beautiful materials, typically simple straightforward compositions and complex ideas. This is a wonderful overview. I loved seeing it in the process of being installed, but it's obvious I need to go back.

The Presence of Absence, curated by Debra and Dave Tolchinsky, in a project sponsored by the Contemporary Arts Council, presents provocative works by 7 Chicago artists who delve into what should be there and isn't, or what isn't there, but whose presence is felt. I've never been to the Hairpin Arts Center, in a part of town I don't often get to. The space is gorgeous, the art solid, challenging, yet accessible. This is a wonderfully odd, powerful, thoughtful show with some weird hours, because much of the art looks better at night.

I knew Stan Rosenstock for decades. He was the man who sold high end light bulbs to art galleries. I was surprised to find out that he was a sensitive insightful photographer who documented much of the turmoil and angst that embroiled Chicago in 1968, from the Democratic Convention, to the protests that ensued after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. His impressive show at Eyeporium is either a poignant trip down memory lane or an education.

ExpoChicago was big news in its first iteration last September. The fair was a success because of the exhibitors love of Chicago and Director Tony Karman's charisma. The question for many was what would the second year look like. Did gallerists and dealers sell enough to want to come back? And now we have the answer. ExpoChicago has just released its exhibitor list for September 2013. There's a substantial return rate, with enough attrition to invite new and desirable exhibitors to participate. It's great news that the show is here to stay, with galleries and art worth travelling to see. I'm excited. Now I want to see some satellite fairs.

Lots of superb art to see,
Paul Klein

Michelle Brané: Women Are a Critical Part of Immigration Reform: Let's Include Them This Time

2013-05-17T22:25:59Z

By Michelle Brané and Emily Butera

On April 17, we at the Women's Refugee Commission (WRC) welcomed the introduction of S. 744, the "Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013." For those of us who are veterans of the immigration reform efforts of 2006 and 2007, this day marked a long-awaited return to a serious national conversation about our immigration system. But April 17 also represented a major step forward for the protection of immigrant women's rights -- something we at the WRC have been working towards for more than 15 years.

As we began to analyze the contents of the bill, it became clear that our efforts to bring policymakers the message that immigration reform is not comprehensive unless it includes women had begun to sink in. For the first time in the modern history of immigration reform efforts, the "Gang of Eight" senators who drafted the legislation took seriously the need to think about the lives and experiences of immigrant women and their families, and to make sure that the contributions that immigrant women have made to this country were acknowledged and honored with an equitable and inclusive path to citizenship.

S. 744 marked a turning point in the fight for immigrant women's rights. But the bill is not perfect. And amendments introduced by several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to drastically narrow eligibility for legalization -- and ultimately citizenship -- would have a disproportionately detrimental effect on women. As the bill moves through committee and onto the Senate floor, the rights and well-being of immigrant women will depend on Senators keeping women -- and women's realities -- in mind.

The face of today's immigrant is increasingly female: Immigrant women comprise 51 percent of all immigrants in the United States and 100 immigrant women now arrive in the United States for every 96 men. More than five million women in the United States are undocumented. Legalization programs that discourage or prevent women from participating have not been -- and never will be -- effective.

Immigrant women's contributions are different than but equal to men's: Forty percent of undocumented women work in the home, caring for their children and families. Sixty percent of immigrant women work in the informal economy, where work is often temporary or unverifiable. Any legalization program that requires continuous employment or limits the documents that suffice as proof of employment will leave women out. In a survey of over 4,000 low-wage workers in the three largest cities in the U.S. -- New York, Chicago and Los Angeles -- 98 percent of undocumented nannies, 92 percent of maids and house cleaners, and 77 percent of garment workers did not receive any pay stubs. In isolated and informal workplaces it is unrealistic to expect workers to ask their employers for documentation, especially immigrant workers with such little control over the terms and conditions of their work in the first place.

To be able to legalize and get on a pathway to citizenship, women must have a fair and appropriate way to prove their physical presence, employment history and contributions: Historically, women have been disadvantaged by legalization programs in immigration reform. A comprehensive study of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) by the Urban Institute and Rand Corporation found that women faced significant difficulty proving physical presence and meeting requirements for legalization because 1) important documents such as leases, utility bills and bank accounts were in their husbands' names and 2) many women who worked in the informal economy struggled to prove employment. Adding to these challenges, the historical devaluing of women's work as homemakers meant that IRCA left many women behind.

S. 744 provides more opportunities for women to legalize and get on a pathway to citizenship than any prior effort at reform. But these provisions must be protected and improved: Exemptions and waivers to employment requirements for those who can demonstrate sufficient income or resources, are pregnant, on maternity leave or are primary caregivers for children will help ensure that women can renew their Registered Provisional Immigrant (RPI) status (the first step in the legalization process) and eventually earn green cards and full citizenship. Similarly, provisions that allow workers to use day labor center records and sworn affidavits to prove employment help ensure that women who work in the informal economy will not be excluded from legalization and citizenship simply because they cannot provide proof of work. Lastly, in awarding caregivers the same number of points as master's degree holders, the new merit-based visa provisions will help ensure that work as a homemaker is not an impediment to permanency.

Legalization and the pathway to citizenship will still be harder for women than men: High fees and penalties will disproportionately disadvantage women and limit their ability to apply to achieve full citizenship because when difficult financial choices have to be made, families are more likely to preference the male members of a household. Similarly, it will be difficult for many families to overcome the public charge or income and resources requirements to earn status -- even when both men and women in the household are working. In households where a woman stays home to care for children, it will be all but impossible. The 2011 deadline by which an individual must be physically present to apply for RPI status is already likely to exclude more women than men, since the number of women coming to the U.S. only recently equaled the number of men. Any further rollbacks of this date will make even more women ineligible. Lastly, the imbalance between points for care-giving and points for employment and education in the merit-based visa system risks leaving many women behind.

Amendments that limit eligibility for legalization and increase costs will undermine women's ability to get on a pathway to citizenship and will increase the likelihood that immigration reform will exclude many women. As advocates for women's rights, the Women's Refugee Commission is particularly concerned about amendments that would:

Bar anyone who was not in the U.S. before Dec. 31, 2009 from applying for RPI status, and bar spouses and children who entered the U.S. after 2011 from being included in the principal applicant's petition (Lee 7)
Increase the penalty that must be paid to apply for RPI status to $5,000 (Grassley 7)
Require individuals to maintain an income that is four times the federal poverty line (over $90,000 for a family of four) for all 10 years they are in RPI status in order to apply for permanent residence (Sessions 29)
Raise the income requirement for RPI status renewal for those who cannot meet the employment eligibility requirement to 125 percent of the federal poverty line, and require that those whose eligibility depends on their income and resources maintain that income level throughout their 10 years in RPI status (Hatch 5)
Eliminate a provision that allows workers to provide sworn affidavits instead of pay stubs to prove their work history (Grassley 13 and Lee 12)
Make women ineligible for RPI status and permanent residence if they could become a public charge in the future (Sessions 17-19)
Make women ineligible for RPI status or permanent residence if they are likely to need means-tested public benefits -- including Medicaid, Affordable Care Act tax credits, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or Supplemental Security Income -- in the future (Sessions 25-28)
Eliminate a provision that would allow removed parents, spouses or children of U.S. citizens or permanent residents to apply for RPI status (Sessions 24)

Fortunately, in addition to the considerable work done by the Senate Gang of 8 to make the pathway to citizenship accessible to women, there other champions for immigrant women's rights among the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They should be applauded for their efforts to preserve the bill's existing legalization provisions and to build upon them in the amendment process, including by:

Changing the date on which an individual has to be present in the U.S. to apply for RPI status from Dec. 31, 2011 to April 17, 2013 (Blumenthal 15) or to the date of enactment of the immigration law (Feinstein 14)
Permitting individuals who apply for RPI status to petition for spouses and children who are outside the U.S., if they meet eligibility requirements (Hirono 14)
Modifying the penalty paid in connection with an application for RPI status (Leahy 8) and permitting the penalty to be paid in installments (Hirono 12)

These amendments are only a sampling of the more than 50 amendments that would affect women's access to legalization. WRC's full vote guide on women and legalization is available on our website. If your senator is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, we urge you to call or email them and ask them to vote yes on amendments that strengthen protections for women and vote no on amendments that would leave women behind.

While we are only at the beginning of our fight for full inclusion of women in immigration reform, this is a fight we can win. We've come a long way already. As advocates for women's rights, we must continue to stand together and keep the pressure on Congress to recognize that reform will not be comprehensive -- or successful -- unless it includes women.

Michelle Brané is director, Migrant Rights & Justice Program at the Women's Refugee Commission. Emily Butera is senior program officer, Migrant Rights & Justice Program.

David Ernesto Munar: State-Run Health Insurance Marketplace: Why AFC Opposes HB 3227

2013-05-17T14:13:51Z

Written by John Peller and David Ernesto Munar

The AIDS Foundation of Chicago (AFC) recently made the difficult decision to oppose legislation that creates a state-federal partnership for operating Illinois' health insurance marketplace. We base this decision on the poor consumer protections in the bill.

House Bill 3227 (Senate Amendment 2) is backed by our partners, including Campaign for Better Health Care (CBHC), and is sponsored by Sen. Dave Koehler (D-Peoria), a long-time friend of AFC and champion for helping people without insurance access health care. Still, we cannot support it.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), the new national health care reform program established by President Obama and Congress in 2010, creates online health insurance marketplaces that will allow individuals, families, and small business employees to shop for health coverage. Such marketplaces - which will be like Travelocity for health insurance - are a central component to the success of ACA state implementation. Plans sold on the marketplace will be available to anyone, including people with HIV, regardless of their diagnosis or condition, ending decades of legal discrimination by insurance companies against people with HIV. People earning between about $16,000 and $46,000 will be able to receive subsidies to make premiums and out-of-pocket costs more affordable.

States have the option to operate the marketplace themselves, use a marketplace run by the federal government, or operate a state-federal partnership. In 2014, Illinois will employ the state-federal partnership option and use the federal marketplace as the backbone of its system; however, Illinois will directly operate outreach, enrollment, and other programs. Eighteen states are running their own marketplace; seven, including Illinois, will use a state-federal partnership model; and 27 will exclusively use the federal marketplace. (See the Kaiser Family Foundation's "State Decisions on Health Insurance Exchanges and the Medicaid Expansion" for more information.)

AFC and many other advocates, health care providers, insurance industry officials, brokers, and others believe a state-operated marketplace is best for Illinois. This would allow the state to have the most control over the program and facilitate better coordination with Medicaid, which will cover people earning roughly $16,000 or less.

The ACA will give considerable flexibility to states that operate their own marketplace, allowing them to determine governance and organizational structure, financing, and the ability to establish operational requirements to meet federal standards. These decisions will greatly determine if the marketplace is successful at providing affordable health plans for individuals and small businesses.

HB 3227 would create an Illinois-run marketplace beginning in 2015. The bill created a quasi-government entity to operate the exchange, which would be funded through a tax on the insurance industry.

It's no secret that the insurance industry has tremendous influence in Springfield. Advocates often joke that consumer-friendly insurance reform bills go to the House and Senate Insurance Committees to die. Moreover, the insurance industry makes significant campaign donations to sitting members of the General Assembly, as detailed in this 2011 State Journal Register article.

The primary reason AFC opposes HB 3227 is that the Illinois General Assembly and its insurance-industry allies would have heavy control over the marketplace. Here are three examples of why this creates an unhealthy system of oversight: 1) the General Assembly would annually approve the budget for the exchange, even though its operating funds are held outside the state treasury; 2) the General Assembly would control even small details, such as the executive director's salary; and 3) language in the bill limits the exchange's ability to impose future standards that are more rigorous than the minimums established by the federal government.

Giving significant control of the exchange to the General Assembly is akin to letting the fox design, build, stock, and guard the henhouse. If us chickens are to have a meaningful choice of affordable insurance plans that provide high-quality health care, the exchange needs more independence from the General Assembly and by extension, the insurance industry.

We favor an independent marketplace board of directors that includes strong consumer and small business members, not insurance industry representatives. A board with these standards and statewide representation will be vested in making the best decisions for Illinois health insurance consumers.

In addition, AFC is concerned that the marketplace bill has the potential to leave people with HIV vulnerable to health insurance companies. For example, federal law requires insurance plans to contract with "essential community providers," which include medical clinics funded by the Ryan White Program. This requirement makes sure people with HIV don't have to switch health care providers and can obtain high-quality HIV care; however, AFC is concerned that health plans might exclude Ryan White Program providers in order to drive away people with HIV--a potentially discriminatory practice.

Moreover, the Illinois bill simply references the federal standards for navigators, which are weak and contain no numerical standards:

§ 156.235 Essential community providers. (a) General requirement. (1) A QHP issuer must have a sufficient number and geographic distribution of essential community providers, where available, to ensure reasonable and timely access to a broad range of such providers for low-income, medically underserved individuals in the QHP's service area, in accordance with the Exchange's network adequacy standards. (45 CFR 156.235)

Under the federal-state partnership marketplace that will roll out in 2014, a different set of federal rules requires that plans contract with at least 20 percent of essential community providers in their service area. If they cannot meet that standard, they must submit a written statement, explaining their shortcoming and how they will make sure the network is adequate (see page 7 of this letter to issuers on federally-facilitated and state partnership exchanges). Although we earlier argued that this provision is also weak, we think the specific 20 percent requirement is better than the federal requirement Illinois would follow under HB 3227.

HB 3227 passed the Senate Insurance Committee on May 9 by a vote of eight to five. Tellingly, the Illinois Governor's Office position was "neutral," meaning they neither supported nor opposed the bill. The bill awaits a vote in the full Senate, and then must proceed to the House. It's too soon to predict if the measure will advance in the House by the end of the session on May 31.

Meanwhile, the marketplace, run by the state-federal government, will begin enrolling Illinoisans beginning on October 1, 2013, for coverage starting January 1, 2014.

If HB 3227 does become law, AFC will work to influence regulations to favor consumers, and of course, we will advocate in future General Assembly sessions to improve the law for people with HIV, as well as other vulnerable populations.

Michael Hoevel: Sustainable Intensification: Making Science the Solution for African Agriculture

2013-05-17T14:12:27Z

As the expiration date of the Millennium Development Goals draws closer, our promise to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty remains largely unfulfilled. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 200 million people (nearly 23% of the population) are chronically hungry and 40% of children under the age of five are stunted due to malnutrition. As a global community, we urgently need to establish new models for addressing these challenges.

Science-based agriculture offers such a solution - not only tackling food insecurity but also overlapping with multiple, interacting global threats, from managing scarce supplies of land and water to minimizing carbon emissions and post-harvest losses. Whilst no silver bullet exists to eliminate these threats, scientific approaches can go a long way to manage them. Across the agricultural value chain from agricultural research laboratories to agronomists and extension workers in the field and processors and exporters, scientific interventions can help people at each step to make African agriculture a great deal more productive and resilient, as well as more viable as a livelihood and business for the continent's farmers.

The Chicago Council's Global Food Security Symposium and its upcoming report, Advancing Global Food Security: The Power of Science, Trade, and Business, will discuss this very question of how to capitalize on the power of science to end hunger. Similarly, a recent report from the Montpellier Panel outlines a new paradigm for African smallholders focusing on 'sustainable intensification.' The term refers to equipping farmers with the innovations required to navigate the joint goals of producing more nutritious food and boosting incomes whilst preserving the environment, adapting to climate change and reducing food waste.

This concept is by no means new but has typically been associated with larger commercial farms and with other regions of the world. Conversely, crop yields in Africa have remained largely stagnant, only 4% of cultivated land in Africa is irrigated, and 75% of soils on the continent are classified as degraded. If African agriculture does not adapt, under current climate predictions, even current yield levels will decrease by 1.5% by 2050.

Happily, we need not accept these bleak projections as inevitable. Science-based solutions can give African smallholders access to the context-specific innovations they need to reverse this reality. They will allow African farmers to boost their productivity sustainably - balancing higher production and productivity with socio-economic realities (especially amongst smallholders) as well as sound environmental management.

The Montpellier Panel report divides the sustainable intensification process into three categories. The first is ecological intensification, in which natural ecosystems are managed more effectively. Practices include the planting of faidherbia trees, a leguminous tree species which sheds its nitrogen-rich leaves during the wet season, thereby providing nutrients to crops planted below, allowing sunlight in as well as fixing two tons or more per hectare of carbon to the soil.

The second category is genetic intensification, that develops crops and livestock better suited to various challenges, for instance, achieving higher yields, withstanding extreme temperatures, and also being more nutritious, such as in the case of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes in Mozambique that have doubled citizens' daily intake of essential mineral Vitamin A.

The final facet is socio-economic intensification, which looks to create more of an enabling environment for farmers and others to learn, share, collaborate and support. This encompasses efficient farmer organizations and cooperatives and robust land rights as well as improved infrastructure for storing and transporting crops, and high quality extension services to provide farmers with the training they need.

In order to realize this vision of sustainable intensification in a way that will work for African smallholders, several concrete actions can be taken. First, the policy environment for the food and agriculture sector must become more socially inclusive and business-friendly in order to promote participation and cooperation. Local enterprises in Africa should be encouraged, by both streamlining yet pressure-testing current legal requirements and regional trading regulations.

Investment can also be facilitated by encouraging the private sector, public sector, civil society and knowledge institutes to collaboratively determine the outcomes they all desire, which should also enable strategic partnerships to grow. Providing fundamental inputs such as good quality seeds and the right amount of fertilizers must be prioritized, especially oriented to reach smallholder farmers. Public services such as healthcare, education, water and sanitation are also crucial for a healthy and empowered agricultural workforce.

The challenges are great, but the window of opportunity is greater. Science-based solutions for African agriculture have the potential to achieve synergistic outcomes for a more prosperous and resilient Africa.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @globalagdev and #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21st.

Mark E. Robson, M.D.: The Choice

2013-05-17T13:41:30Z

I must confess that I am very conflicted about adding to the river of words that have been written about Angelina Jolie's decision to undergo a risk-reducing (preventive) mastectomy. She made a difficult choice, and has discussed that choice with power and grace, in the hope of helping other women. Both the choice and the disclosure took a lot of courage. Full stop. But the power of her celebrity, and the extensive media coverage of her decision, may wind up making things more difficult for some women with BRCA1 or 2 mutations.

I have been involved in research in this area for 17 years, since shortly after BRCA1 and BRCA2 were discovered, and I honestly have no idea what I would do if I were a woman faced with this decision. Imagine the situation. You go to talk to a health care provider because you have a family history of breast cancer or ovarian cancer. Hopefully, you have genetic counseling (which not everyone gets, although they should), and learn about genetics for an hour or so. If it looks like there's a meaningful chance that genetic testing could be informative, you then give a blood sample or spit in a tube. After a couple of weeks, you come back and are told that you carry a mutation. You don't feel any different physically, and you do not, in fact, have any medical problem, but now you are told that you have "up to an 87% chance" of developing breast cancer before your reach your 70's, as well as an substantial risk of developing ovarian cancer. There's a fair amount of uncertainty regarding the exact risks, but they are clearly increased, and you are told that the most effective way of avoiding being diagnosed with breast cancer is to remove your breasts. But you do not know that you definitely will develop breast cancer if you don't. So the decision to have that surgery is an act of faith justified by a belief in science, a powerful sacrifice to try to seize control of one's destiny and avoid one particular fate.

In the case of BRCA mutations, this faith in science is not ill-founded. On the same day that the news about Ms. Jolie broke, I saw a young woman who was found to have a BRCA1 mutation after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and is now fighting recurrent disease. I also saw a woman who I have been following closely since her BRCA1 mutation was found, and who now has to receive chemotherapy for a cancer that we have just diagnosed. The best technology in the world and my best efforts could not keep that away from her. The diagnosis of a mutation is just words on paper, but the risks that those words foreshadow are very, very real.

But there are reasons why a decision to have surgery is not clear-cut. The exact risks are unclear, and probably vary depending on factors that have not yet been pinned down. And the diagnosis, if it occurs at all, is in the future, and surgery is painful, and hard to fit into a busy life. And screening, if done right, will most likely diagnose the cancer at a curable stage, even if it does mean surgery then, and possibly chemotherapy and radiation. Is it any wonder that many women with mutations are ambivalent about surgery? Not everyone summons the faith.

Which brings me back to Ms. Jolie. For all of her fame and wealth, she had to wrestle with the same uncertainties and ambiguities as any other woman with a BRCA1 or 2 mutation. She, too, had to decide whether she believed that the words and numbers on her test report committed her to a fate that could only be avoided if she surrendered to the surgeon's knife. She did, indeed, make the leap, and her honesty and dignity in the aftermath of her surgery will provide comfort and encouragement to other women who follow the same path. But we should not lose sight of the fact that her choice reflects a deeply personal balancing of the risks and benefits of the different courses of action available to her. Other women, faced with the same basic facts, the same test report, may instead decide to pursue careful surveillance with breast MRIs and mammograms. These women are not being reckless. Although preventive salpingo-oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries and fallopian tubes) has been shown to improve survival in mutation carriers, there are as yet no medical studies with survival as an endpoint that establish the superiority of breast surgery over surveillance.

These medical facts were not changed by Ms. Jolie's choice. But the saturation coverage of her surgery may foster the impression that preventive mastectomy is the standard way to manage the risk from mutations in BRCA1 or 2, and women who already know that they are carriers but do not wish to undergo surgery may feel that they are flying in the face of established medical standards. The impression that preventive mastectomy is inevitable may also discourage women from undergoing testing if they fear that a positive result would "force" them to do something that they refuse to contemplate. I hope that we are able to continue to inform women in a balanced way about what we do and do not know with respect to the options available to them, helping them make the decision that is right for them, without imposing upon them our own beliefs and values in the absence of concrete medical evidence.

One final point. Some have suggested, either overtly or implicitly, that this was all somehow easier for Ms. Jolie because her fame and wealth gave her access to BRCA testing and surgery that is not available to women without the same means. Those people are being foolish and mean-spirited. First, fame and wealth don't insulate you from fear and anxiety. Second, BRCA testing has been endorsed by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, and is covered by most insurance policies if a woman is an appropriate candidate for testing. Lack of access to BRCA testing is a reflection of disparate coverage for preventive services and the larger problem of inadequate health care coverage in our country, not the result of monopolistic practices by a diagnostics company. In my experience, preventive surgery is also considered medically indicated for mutation carriers who choose it, and covered by most insurers (albeit sometimes with significant co-pays).

So, when I reflect on Ms Jolie's story, I don't see a woman who was able to avoid her fate by virtue of her privileged position. I see a beautiful young woman who gracefully made an awful choice under conditions of extreme uncertainty. My clinic is full of women just like her, every one of them beautiful, struggling with the same decision.

Note: Opinions are mine alone, not my employer’s.

Ronald L. Wasserstein: A Statistician's View: What Are Your Chances of Winning the Powerball Lottery?

2013-05-16T21:02:33Z

In November 2012, a Missouri couple and an Arizona man shared the largest Powerball jackpot ever -- $587 million. An article about the Missouri couple -- Mark and Cindy Hill -- appeared in The Huffington Post on February 25 telling a wonderful story about how the couple is using their winnings to benefit their community. Such stories lead us to daydream about what we might do if we won all that money.

What are your chances of winning? A quick look at the Powerball website tells you the probability of winning the jackpot is 1 in 175,223,510. To see where that number comes from, imagine purchasing every number combination. In Powerball, a player first picks five different whole numbers between 1 and 59. One could make a list of all the possibilities, starting with (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), (1, 2, 3, 4, 6), and so on all the way through (55, 56, 57, 58, 59). But it would take a long time to make that list, because it has more than five million entries! Indeed, mathematics tells us the number of ways to choose five distinct numbers from 1 to 59 is 5,006,386.

After choosing the five numbers between 1 and 59, the player then picks another number between 1 and 35 that is called the Powerball. So, we multiply the 5,006,386 by 35 and see that there are 175,223,510 possible Powerball combinations. For simplicity, let's be generous and round off to an even 175,000,000.

Your chance of winning the lottery on a single ticket is one in 175 million. That seems tiny, and it is. In fact, it is so small that it is difficult for us to grasp. Understanding how small this number is provides the key to understanding how likely -- or unlikely -- it is you will become the next big winner of the Powerball jackpot.

For some reason, we tend to associate unlikely events with a specific physical phenomenon. "I have a better chance of being struck by lightning," we often say. But that does not provide much of a basis for comparison. We realize being struck by lightning is unlikely, but we have no sense of how unlikely, and of course the chance of being struck by lightning is much different for a farmer than a coal miner.

The problem with grasping the smallness of "1 in 175 million" is that we never see 175 million distinct objects. It is easy to grasp 1 in 50, for example, because we can imagine ourselves with 49 other people in a room. We can get our minds around 1 in 75,000 (roughly) by visualizing the crowd of people at the Super Bowl and imagining ourselves being the one person selected from that crowd to win a prize. But one in 175 million cannot be readily visualized.

Here is an example I have used in classrooms all over the country, and it is way more fun than thinking about being struck by lightning! Imagine 175 million freshly minted one-dollar bills are being delivered to my house near Washington, D.C. One of those dollar bills is specially marked as the "lucky dollar bill." You get to pick a dollar bill, and if you happen to pick the lucky dollar bill, you win all the dollar bills.

A straightforward mathematical calculation using the dimensions of a dollar bill reveals it will take two semi-trailers to deliver the 175,000,000 dollar bills to my house. Once these arrive, they will have to be unloaded, of course, so you will have a fair chance to pick the lucky dollar bill. So, we will lay them out end to end. How long will that line of dollar bills go?

If we start from my house, we'll have enough dollar bills to go all the way south to Disney World in Orlando. Then we'll still have enough to go clear across the country to Disneyland! But, even then, we are not out of dollar bills, so we can go north and make it all the way to Portland, Oregon. Still, we have dollar bills, enough to make it all the way east to Portland, Maine. And, fortunately, we'll have enough to make it back to my house near DC, completing the loop.

Do we have any dollars bills left? Yes! We would still have enough dollar bills to go all the way around the loop a second time!

Now imagine that you walk, bike or drive for as long as you want around the double loop, and when you decide to stop, you stoop over and pick up one dollar bill. Your chance of selecting the lucky dollar bill is one in 175 million, the same as your chance of winning the Powerball jackpot!

Your chance of ever winning this big jackpot is impossibly small. It isn't going to happen. But you might say, "If the chances of winning are so small, how did Mark and Cindy Hill win?" Or said another way, "If they can do it, why can't I?" I'll explain that in a future post.

It is not my purpose or place to discourage people from buying lottery tickets. I just want everyone to understand their chances as fully and accurately as possible.

Wasserstein is executive director of the American Statistical Association, a former statistics professor at Washburn University and an expert on state lotteries.

Paul Fehribach: Can Trash Fish Make It in the Midwest?

2013-05-16T20:26:06Z

Chicago has had a long love affair with fresh fish and seafood. When this land was last wild, hundreds of species of fish and shellfish inhabited the Great Lakes and the watershed's rivers, streams and estuaries. Railroads and refrigerated rail cars supplied the oyster craze of the late 19th century, and 20th century transportation made available literally anything money could buy. In recent decades, seafood farming, or aquaculture, has brought down costs for a handful of commoditized species such as salmon and tiger shrimp, and our appetite for seafood continues to grow.

The oceans and fish are paying a price, not because the oceans can't provide the abundance the earth's hungry population requires, but because consumer trends and conservation knowledge and action are often not in sync. We've seen in recent decades as some fish such as redfish and monkfish, once tossed aside as garbage by fishermen, came into favor and saw their populations plummet before conservation experts could get definitive data on what was happening. Some long-popular fish such as grouper and red snapper are just now clawing back from the brink since fishing communities and environmental organizations stepped in to save them.

The good news is there's still plenty of delicious fish in the ocean, and some of Chicago's top chefs are about to show you the tasty possibilities of some fish you may never have heard of. We're calling it a "trash fish" dinner because for generations these fish were often caught in nets or hooks along with others, only to be tossed back overboard, dead in the water as garbage because the fishermen either believed they couldn't sell it or get a price high enough to justify taking up precious space in the cargo hold.

You may have never seen kingfish, triggerfish, Spanish mackerel, bluefish or Asian carp on a menu, much less conger eel or speckled sea trout. Chefs Bruce Sherman, Paul Kahan, Paul Virant, Erling Wu-Bower, Sarah Stegner, George Bumbaris, Patrick Sheerin, Michael Sheerin, Laura Piper and myself are ready to show off these precious gems of the ocean. Each time we choose to eat an underutilized species instead of an Atlantic salmon or an over-fished cod, swordfish, or bluefin tuna, we give these stressed populations a break and discover anew the possibilities in our oceans and lakes.

Historically, the species we are serving at this dinner have been called trash fish by fishermen and the seafood industry. As chefs, we feel passionately about anything wholesome and nutritious that can feed people -- it's our business. We hate the term "trash fish." This dinner is the first step in banishing that term from the seafood industry for good, and making these misunderstood species a staple in our diets. When we diversify and balance what we take from the ocean, we can enjoy new delights while preserving old ones. Personally, we've eaten all the tuna we need for a lifetime. We're going with the sand dabs.

Paul Fehribach is the chef and owner of Big Jones in Chicago and on the national board of Chefs Collaborative; Michelle Parker is Vice President of Great Lakes and Sustainability at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.

Dr. Jason Clay: Freezing the Footprint of Food

2013-05-16T19:39:28Z

By the year 2050, our planet will be home to another two billion people. How and where we will we feed everyone has become one of the most pressing conservation issues of the 21st century.

Farmers will need to produce twice as much food as they do now to meet population demands. Where will this food come from? Today, we use over a third of the planet's surface to grow food. When you subtract deserts, mountains, likes, rivers, cities and highways, food production is spread over 58 percent of the land. Take out national parks and other protected areas and this figure rises to 70 percent of the planet's available surface.

We need to freeze the footprint of food -- find ways to double the productivity of farming, so that we can produce twice as much food and fiber on the same amount of land. This will require many actors working on several strategies simultaneously.

At WWF, we have identified eight steps, when taken together, could produce enough food for all and still maintain a living planet.

1. Eliminate Waste in the Food Chain
Today, we waste one out of every three calories produced. In developing countries, waste is a result of post-harvest loss, lack of infrastructure and lack of storage. In countries like the United States and in the European Union, waste usually occurs in the home or in restaurants as unused food is thrown away.

If we eliminated waste in the food chain today -- by recycling post-harvest loss, improving infrastructure and eliminating post-consumer waste -- we could halve the amount of new food needed by 2050.

2. Harness Technology to Advance Plant Breeding
The study of genetics, combined with 21st century technology, can help us scale up the amount of nutrients in different foods. At the same time, it will improve productivity, drought tolerance and disease resistance in an era of climate change.

WWF works with the African Orphan Crops consortium, including partners like the Beijing Genomics Institute, Mars, Incorporated and the African Union's New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), to map the genomes of two dozen of the most important food crops in Africa. Once sequenced, this information will be put into the public domain so plant breeders can provide better planting materials for farmers.

3. Share Better Practices More Quickly
We must address the poorest-performing producers to improve food production, increase incomes and reduce environmental impacts. Today it takes about 10 years to spread and implement better practices around the globe. We can do better in our digital age and spread this information faster and more efficiently.

We also need governments to deal with the bottom 25 percent of producers that are responsible for the majority of environmental impacts on the habitats and species we care about. The world's governments must adopt policies that help shift the whole performance curve.

4. Use Less to Produce More: Efficiency Through Technology
We need to double the efficiency of every agricultural input -- including water, fertilizer, pesticides, energy and infrastructure. Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of global water use. Right now, on average globally, it takes one liter of water to produce one calorie of food. We must do better. If we halved the water used and doubled production, we would quadruple efficiency. The technology exists to do this, and the best producers can already achieve these results.

5. Rehabilitate Degraded Land
Instead of farming new land, we need to rehabilitate degraded, abandoned or underperforming lands. Restoring and cultivating these lands would significantly reduce pressure on critical ecosystems such as rainforests, peat swamps and high-biodiversity savannas. Studies show that rehabilitating degraded land for agriculture can actually be more profitable than converting forest land. In Brazil, at least 10 million hectares of degraded land have been rehabilitated and planted with crops. The Brazilian government aims to do the same on 25 million additional hectares by 2020. What if more countries followed this model?

6. Establish Greater Property Rights
How many farmers will plant a tree or invest in sustainability if they don't own the land, not just for themselves but to pass on to their children? The lack of clear property rights is a significant barrier to food security in many places in the world. For instance, in Africa, women grow most of the food but rarely have property rights to the land in their name. Foreign assistance for economic development could be linked to the establishment of property rights for individuals. The African Union, NEPAD or the World Bank could take the lead in encouraging nations to ensure property rights.

7. Balance the Disparity Between Under and Over Consumption
One billion people in the world don't have enough food, while one billion people eat too much. About half of the people without enough to eat do not own land or produce their own food. Today they are split between rural and urban areas -- but by 2050 most will live in cities.

The rural poor in Africa have always had access to "famine foods" -- nutrient-dense leaves of common plants such as cassava and sweet potatoes. But for the urban poor there is no such buffer. About 40 percent of children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from malnutrition. These leaves of common plants, now often discarded, could be used to enrich flour in school lunch programs and in home cooking.

8. Restore Soil Carbon
Soil carbon -- or organic matter -- is key to conserving farmland for future generations. Indeed, the single best measure of rehabilitated soil is increasing organic matter. However, half of the world's top soil in the tropics, in which most soil carbon resides, has been lost in the past 150 years. Increasing soil carbon raises productivity, reduces input use, and increases farmer income.

Two approaches could help farmers conserve their soils. The first is a greater emphasis on tree crops and deep-rooted grasses, which build soil carbon and reduce erosion. The second is creating a carbon market for agriculture. Retailers or leading brands that purchase commodities like sugar, milk, coffee, cocoa, or palm oil could also buy the carbon that the farmer sequestered or avoided releasing during production. WWF, with support from the Dutch government, and food-linked companies including Unilever, Nutreco and Rabobank, are exploring the amount of carbon that could be bundled with commodities and sold in global markets.

This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, marking the occasion of its annual Global Food Security Symposium in Washington, D.C., which will be held on May 21st. For more information on the symposium, click here. Follow @globalagdev and #globalag on twitter to join the conversation on May 21st.

Robert Koehler: Know-Nothing Security

2013-05-16T17:24:32Z

Let's all work together to stop terrorism!

The Palm Beach County, Fla. Sheriff's Office has a new video out urging local citizens to call them if something smells bad or seems a little weird, like, oh, a tourist is taking a picture of a bridge but there's no one in the foreground -- no spouse, no grinning kids, just . . . a bridge.

If it seems suspicious, call -- because, I guess, if everyone is vigilant ("Hello, I want to report two young men carrying backpacks") and we work with the authorities, America will be safe as pie in no time.

This program is called Community Partners Against Terrorism, though I'm tempted to call it know-nothing security -- the kind based on zero knowledge of the inner motivations of people. It's security based on stereotypes, unexamined fears, self-righteousness, external projections and an us-vs.-them social organization. Terrorists are bad people with inscrutable motives. All we need to know is that they're out to get us. This is the message of the terrorism "experts," who leverage their authority from their ability to keep us scared and vigilant.

Security is a real need, of course, but know-nothing security flouts that need, often enough both ignoring and aggravating the real dangers we face while, at the same time, inflicting massive inconvenience on people innocently caught in its web, i.e., those on the wrong side of our society's color and ethnicity divide.

For instance, when I read about the CPAT initiative, I thought about an incident 11 years ago that garnered its 15 minutes of national attention and neatly encapsulated all the problems with know-nothing security.

On Sept. 12, 2002 -- a day after the one-year anniversary of 9/11 -- three young med students were on their way to Miami, where they were going to begin an internship at a local hospital. They stopped at a Shoney's restaurant in Calhoun, Ga. A local woman sitting nearby thought she heard them plot a terrorist attack. "We'll bring it down," one of them apparently said. He was referring to his car, but no matter.

The young med students were American citizens, but they were also Muslims. She called the police.

The three were detained, their car and motel room searched; a 20-mile stretch of local highway was shut down for an entire day -- and, well, nothing incriminating was found. They were medical students, after all. They were released, they did some interviews, life went back to normal. Except it didn't.

What happened next was no more than an ironic footnote to the initial news spasm. As CNN reported at the time: "Since Friday, the hospital has asked the students to transfer somewhere else after receiving numerous threats. Hospital president Dr. Jack Michel said Saturday his hospital has received an overwhelming number of e-mails and phone calls that he described as 'threatening, ethnic, racial e-mails directed at Muslim-Americans.'"

Can somebody please tell me where the terrorist threat is in this story?

America's know-nothing security team -- community and police in partnership against terrorism -- succeeded in thwarting the non-threat of three Muslim students driving through Georgia, but completely failed to notice or be concerned about, and perhaps even participated in, actual threats of violence against, good God, a hospital. This part wasn't even a news story in itself, just a "bigots will be bigots" addendum, quickly forgotten, as America went back to scanning the horizon for enemies plotting mayhem against its way of life.

The essence of know-nothing security is absolute indifference to, and ignorance of, the inner life of "them" -- the terrorists, criminals and bad people we fear and watch out for. The entirety of the strategy is to spot and interrupt unlawful activity in progress, hopefully before the bomb goes off. To get there ahead of the blast, it's necessary to engage in widespread racial profiling and harassment: to stalk "them" on a routine basis, no matter the mayhem it inflicts on their lives.

A young, African-American friend who lives in my Chicago neighborhood described something that happened to him the other day: He had just left his mother's restaurant, realized it was colder outside than he had thought and turned around to go back and get his jacket. A police officer had been watching him the whole time. When the young man changed directions, that was "suspicious." He was stopped, frisked, spread-eagled against the police car, etc. Eventually the officer let him go. This was routine.

We invest multi-billions of dollars in know-nothing security and, in the process, foment anger, hatred and, occasionally, counter-violence. If true security were the point, we'd invest far more effort and money in real violence-prevention programs, such as CeaseFire and the growing restorative justice movement, not to mention job-creation.

Instead, we create enemies and wage perpetual war against them. This is an absolute mindset, exemplified by the U.S. military's standard operating procedure for dealing with the hunger strike at Guantanamo, as recently revealed by Al Jazeera. Common Dreams reports that "the military's guidelines were especially troubling because doctors and nurses are reminded that they are 'adjuncts of the security apparatus' and not authorized to 'act independently' in their duties as health professionals."

Security rules, and no one is safe.

- - -
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His new book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press) is now available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com, visit his website at commonwonders.com or listen to him at Voices of Peace radio.

John Paul Rollert: Empathy, Gatsby, and the Great American Tragedy

2013-05-16T15:54:26Z

Hollywood adaptations of great novels tend to unnerve devoted readers. The effort seems hubristic and slightly profane, akin to painting a second Sistine Chapel or adding a chorus to King Lear. Perfection, by definition, can't be improved upon, and it seems suspect even to try.

So it is that a sense of foreboding preceded the release of The Great Gatsby. After months of delay, Baz Luhrmann's $100 million re-imagining finally opened, last weekend, and while the faithful of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel nervously waited to see if the star-studded, 3-D spectacle vandalized the story they love, we can be sure how Fitzgerald would have felt. By god, he'd be thrilled.

The failure of Gatsby -- and when it was first released in 1925, there is no other word to describe its reception -- sent Fitzgerald into a personal and profession tailspin for which his alcoholism and turbulent marriage had well prepared him. Fitzgerald had established himself as the enfant terrible of the literary world and the voice of a lost generation with the publication of This Side of Paradise when he was only 23. But five years, two short story collections, one play, and another novel later, the prolific Princeton dropout had yet to write a work that lived up to his ability and promise.

Until Gatsby, that is. "I feel I have enormous power in me now," Fitzgerald wrote his editor, Max Perkins. "This book will be a consciously artistic achievement + must depend on that as the 1st books did not."

He didn't disappoint himself. "[M]y novel is about the best American novel ever written," Fitzgerald announced when he had finished the first draft, an opinion that would be shared by almost no one until years after his death. In between, The Great Gatsby was published to lackluster reviews ("The story is obviously unimportant," H. L. Mencken wrote) and disappointing sales. Fitzgerald was heartbroken. An adaptation of the novel for Broadway and a silent movie, both in 1926, did little to redeem its fate. It would take ten years for Fitzgerald to write another novel, Tender is the Night, the last one he would complete. When he died of a massive heart attack in 1940 -- as a struggling screenwriter in Hollywood, no less -- the warehouse still held copies of Gatsby's second printing.

That the forgotten novel now ranks among the essential works of American literature is a precarious inspiration to struggling authors but a lovely reply to Fitzgerald's remark, "There are no second acts in American lives." More telling than true, the observation comes in The Last Tycoon, Fitzgerald's unfinished novel, which was posthumously published together with Gatsby and sparked renewed interest in the work. At roughly the same time, another American classic, Moby Dick, was also being rediscovered. But while the salvaging of that novel was overseen by academics, Gatsby was raised from the sea floor of obscurity by readers who were astonished by the story they somehow had missed. Between the 1941 and 1949, there were 17 new editions or reprints. The rest, of course, is history.

If Fitzgerald's novel continues to add to its admirers, it is due in no small part to the quintessential American experience that foregrounds it: the anxious struggle for distinction in a land of shifting hierarchies. "Civilization's going to pieces," Tom Buchanan declares early on. Buchanan is Fitzgerald's brutal portrait of American aristocracy, the preemptory, polo-playing blue-blood whose voice carried "a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked." He's prompted to the remark by The Rise of the Colored Empires, a pseudoscientific tome that has convinced him "[i]t's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things."

The declaration comes two chapters before Gatsby has a chance to deliver his first line, and it provides the novel a deeper and more comprehensive sense of existential dread than that provoked by the predictable tension between Old Money and New. Surely, that tension was on Fitzgerald's mind when he set out to write the novel -- it haunted him at Princeton and helped inspire his earlier work -- but by keeping it from being the essential drama of the novel, he saved it from a conventional storyline with a stock character as its Jazz Age arriviste.

For the mysterious Jay Gatsby is not only, or even essentially, a social climber who lies about his past. This is how Tom sees him -- "Mr. Nobody from Nowhere" he dismisses him -- but to say no more than this is to make his deception seem trivial and to overlook the fact that his own undoing is not that he stumbles on his way to a private club but that he sets out alone toward some alien summit.

That summit is "the sustained imagination of a sincere and yet radiant world," Fitzgerald's description of the creative aim of the novel and the dazzling world that Gatsby establishes for himself. The outward flourishes of that world are the unforgettable parties, the "many-colored, many-keyed commotion" for which Gatsby plays composer and conductor, host and honoree. Perhaps we have become too accustomed to exercises in over-the-top hospitality to fully appreciate how unbecoming they appear to the likes of Tom, but Tom's mistake is regarding them as a funhouse reflection of his own world and a feeble attempt to invade it.

They are neither. The novel's narrator, Nick Carraway, describes the world of Gatsby's parties as "complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so." The line seems a nod by Fitzgerald not to the absence of social hierarchy in American life, but to its tendency to splinter and proliferate. That tendency is underwritten by a belief in the limitless potential of every individual to be the center of his own world. The echoes of that faith, egalitarian and egomaniacal, may be heard in Huey Long's vision of a nation with "every man a king" or in the prayer Carl Sandburg ascribes a pauper, "Let every man be his own Jesus -- that's enough."

As for Fitzgerald's creation, Nick says, "The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself." He was a creature of "creative passion" in whose brain a "universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out," an empire of the imagination waiting for him to realize.

Of course, such ambitions signal someone whose relationship to the human world is tenuous at best, a person little bothered by the settled limits and social expectations that shape, constrain, and inspire our behavior. And, indeed, it is only when Gatsby is forced to engage this world that he hazards his "incorruptible dream."

The gamble comes after Daisy has failed to visit him at home. "I think he half expected for her to wander into one of his parties," Jordan Baker says of Gatsby's self-appointed queen, who has inconveniently become Tom's wife since she and Gatsby first met. Both disappointments precede the action of the novel, which commences once Gatsby is compelled to pursue Daisy beyond the gilded gates of his confectionary kingdom.

Thus, Gatsby spends most of the novel far outside his comfort zone, attempting to pass himself off as a member of Tom and Daisy's social set. The circumstances provide a special challenge for the performer who would inhabit him, for as the novel demonstrates time and time again, Gatsby is a terrible actor. His proffered past is a crazy quilt of incredible triumphs. His "elaborate formality of speech" -- must everyone be old sport? -- "just missed being absurd." Nick says his mansion, "a factual imitation of some Hotel de Ville in Normandy," is a "huge incoherent failure." And Tom rejects the idea the Gatsby is an "Oxford man" by noting he wears a pink suit.

In short, Gatsby never fools anyone. He is not to the manor born.

Fitzgerald was circumspect in how he portrayed Gatsby's awareness of this failure. In a passage he removed from an early draft, Gatsby confesses "the truth" to Nick. "I'm empty," he says, "and I guess people feel it. That must be why they keep on making up things about me, so I won't be so empty. I even make up things myself."

Fitzgerald was wise to remove this passage. It changes his protagonist, giving him an appreciation of others that would lead us to expect more of him as an actor and as a man.

The Gatsby we know doesn't understand other people, not in a way that lends itself to assimilation and sympathy. He has spent his life fixated on his destiny, and the attention he pays to others (which, as a celebrated host, can be substantial if decidedly superficial) has always been in service of that aim. They are extras to be arranged according to the Lindy Hop of his imagination, not men and women to be engaged and understood. The lives of others have never meaningfully shaped his inner world, and their lived experience never permeates his. He looks on them at a strict psychic distance, if he bothers to look at all.

This condition, an almost complete lack of empathy, is Gatsby's tragic flaw. It insulates his "incorruptible dream" from the contaminants of contrary opinion even while it rushes him headlong toward romantic overreach.

That moment comes in the climactic scene of the novel, when Tom and Gatsby face off. "Just tell him the truth," Gatsby orders Daisy, "you never loved him -- and it's all wiped out forever." The declaration, not that Daisy no longer loves Tom but that she never did, is required of Gatsby's reverie. It is not enough for him to have won her back, he must never have lost her in the first place.

It is a terrible request, so gratuitous and cruel that, for a moment, we pity Tom, one of the great villains in all of American literature. Daisy likewise recoils. "Oh, you want too much!" she cries, a fitting rebuke to Gatsby and those like him who selfishly pursue their dreams without any regard for others, even the ones they love. They fail to recognize that the integrity of our most intimate relationships requires, at last, a brittle quality. If you pull too hard, they break.

This is Gatsby's great mistake and the one that costs him Daisy. We all make such mistakes, especially in the sweet narcissism of youth. They force us to make peace with the idea that our ambitions must be pursued alongside others in a community no one alone creates.

The lesson is indispensable, for it helps to ensure the human world is humane and habitable, but Gatsby never learns it -- not, at least, until it's too late. He is blinded by his "extraordinary gift for hope," the quality that endears him to Nick and to so many readers who recognize, beyond the glamour and gaucherie, the spirit of self-creation and a belief in boundless opportunity.

We seek these traits in ourselves. They see us stare down the Tom Buchanans of the world, often in the aim of displacing them. And yet, no matter how far they take us, if they lead us to believe that our ambitions are the only ones, they can ultimately be our undoing.

This is a paradox at the heart of the American Dream, a contradiction that Jay Gatsby so achingly embodies. Fitzgerald understood this, for the first image of Gatsby in the novel -- gazing at the green light, arms outstretched and empty -- is finally a warning. Better the solicitude that sustains a commonwealth than a land of lonely kings.

John Paul Rollert teaches business ethics at the Harvard Extension School and leadership at the University of Chicago Law School. He is currently writing a book on empathy.

Jeanne Bishop: Fixing Illinois' Unconstitutional Mandatory Life Without Parole Sentencing for Juveniles

2013-05-16T15:06:58Z

Last year, federal courts ruled two of Illinois' laws unconstitutional. The Illinois legislature is acting on one, involving gun rights; it is time for lawmakers to act on the other, which provides that juveniles who commit murder can, as a mandatory sentence, be locked up for life without any possibility of parole.

In June 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court in a case called Miller v. Alabama struck down mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles. Illinois has such a law on the books and scores of inmates serving that sentence.

Six months later, a 7th Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled that Illinois' ban on carrying concealed weapons violated the U.S. Constitution. It ordered the Illinois General Assembly to change the law by June 2013.

It's May now, and the Illinois legislature has already taken up measures to try to fix the concealed carry law. The fix on juvenile life sentences? Still waiting.

This matters to me because in 1990, three of my family members were murdered by a juvenile in Winnetka: my sister Nancy, her husband Richard and their unborn baby. Nancy was three months pregnant with her first child when an intruder shot them to death with a stolen handgun. Before Nancy died, she wrote a message in her own blood beside her husband: a heart shape and the letter "u." Love you. It was an act of strength and courage.

The intruder was one month short of his 17th birthday. He is serving three life without parole sentences for the killings.

I believed in that sentence when he got it. I don't anymore.

The sentence is merciless. It says to people whom we have barely allowed to learn to drive: no matter how sorry you are for your crime, how rehabilitated you are, how amply you demonstrate your ability to safely rejoin society, we will never let you out. We will never even allow you to have a single parole hearing in which you can make the case for your release.

The sentence, when it is mandatory, excludes the voices of victims' families, many of whom were not permitted to make victim impact statements or express their wishes when their loved ones' killers were sentenced. Murder victims' family members are not a monolith: Many support life sentences for juveniles, but others do not. None has moral superiority over the others; all have suffered grievously. No one speaks for all.

The sentence is wasteful, of human lives and scarce public resources. It says to taxpayers, no matter how harmless an individual may be rendered by age 60, 70, 80, he still must be housed in prison till he dies, even if he entered that prison as a teenager.

Perhaps most importantly, though, mandatory juvenile life sentences violate the document which enshrines our most precious rights: the Constitution. That matters to me because I am a lawyer, the daughter and granddaughter and niece of lawyers. I practice law. I teach it, as an adjunct professor at Northwestern.

Our government is one of separation of powers. The job of courts is to declare what is constitutional. The job of the legislature is to write constitutional laws.

Lawmakers can't wait around for courts to fix unconstitutional laws; that violates our deepest principles of federalism. On mandatory juvenile life without parole in Illinois, our legislature must change the law for people who might be subjected to the sentence in the future, but it should also change the law for people who have been subjected to it in the past.

I understand the role of fear in politics. Some lawmakers know the responsible thing to do but shrink from doing it, out of fear. If I vote for this, the argument goes, someone will run against me in the next election and send out a mailer claiming I voted to let murderers out of prison (though this would be untrue; even the most progressive reform proposal made in the General Assembly this session leaves intact the possibility that juveniles could be turned down for release and still serve life sentences).

I've learned from my sister Nancy that life is short, that we cannot waste a minute on something as small as fear. Her bravery at the last teaches me to try to live as courageously as she did.

My hope is that lawmakers will summon that same courage: on juvenile life sentences, take up a reform bill, debate it and enact it now.