By Mondaire Jones, Marcela Mulholland, and Julian Brave NoiseCat* Climate change is coming for all of us. But its destruction will disproportionately affect low-income communities and communities of color, and coronavirus has offered us a preview of how that might look. People who live in low-income communities and communities of color have been far more likely to contract coronavirus. Residents of Peekskill, New York, which at $54,839 has the second-lowest median household income of any …
Drug Regulation for the COVID-19 Mental Health Crisis
By Mason Marks* The COVID-19 pandemic is triggering a national mental health crisis. Millions may experience prolonged grief due to the loss of friends or family, depression from unemployment and social isolation, and post-traumatic stress disorder from working on the frontlines as healthcare providers or undergoing treatment as patients. Our healthcare system is unprepared. It lacks the funding to provide prolonged psychotherapy at scale, and traditional psychiatric drugs, such as …
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Online Censorship Is Unavoidable—So How Can We Improve It?
By Ben Horton* A few weeks ago, Professors Jack Goldsmith and Andrew Keane Woods ignited controversy by suggesting in the Atlantic that China was right and America was wrong about internet censorship and surveillance. This seemingly contrarian stance rubbed people the wrong way, especially given reports that China’s online censorship delayed their response to COVID-19 and that Chinese agents have actively disseminated disinformation about the virus—and then attempted to suppress reports …
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Payment Systems and Inequality: Balancing Consumer Interests with Convenience
By Matthew J. Razzano* When you hear the phrase “structural inequality” you might not immediately think of payments systems. The choice of whether to purchase a television or a meal with cash or a credit card might not feel like a monumental decision, but it has significant economic consequences because balancing the interests of credit card companies, merchants, and customers proves challenging. Much has been written about underbanked communities and predatory lending, especially in the wake …
Reproductive Rights in the Time of COVID-19: State Directives Exploiting a Public Health Crisis
By Swapna Reddy, Shetal Vohra-Gupta, April Shaw, Nina Patel, Liana Petruzzi* As U.S. states elevate restrictions to contain the spread of coronavirus, many have enacted measures to restrict “nonessential” surgeries and procedures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following Texas and Ohio’s leads, several states (Alabama, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Mississippi) have used these directives to stop surgical and even medical abortions under the pretense that abortion constitutes a nonessential procedure. …
The Right to Vote in Every Corner of the Country
By Emma Greenman* With a week until the 2018 elections, campaigns are shifting into high gear and so are voter suppression efforts in many parts of the country. America’s history with disenfranchisement is older than the Constitution itself and this year we have seen a disturbing acceleration of the decade-old resurgence of restrictive voting laws, voter suppression tactics and nefarious operations to depress voter turnout. Since 2010, 24 states (almost all under Republican control) have put …
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