pennsylvania
From Philly D.A.
PENNSYLVANIA CAPTURED THE attention of many of us this year via the superb crime drama Mare of Easttown on HBO, but there’s another incredible television show set in the state that we should be watching. I’m talking about Philly D.A., on PBS. An eight-episode documentary series focused on activist-attorney Larry Krasner’s unusual election to the role of Philadelphia’s district attorney and his desire to drastically reform the office, Philly D.A. is gripping and revelatory in how it explores the intricacies of his efforts. In the social justice sphere, we have big ideas of how government systems and traditions can be altered and abandoned, but most of us never get the chance to implement them. Philly D.A. depicts a staff doing just that and shows how difficult it is.
We see assistant DAs and staff members who have worked in the office for years, for several administrations, and have households and families—we see them be fired because they’re believed to be too entrenched in how things were done in the past. We see surviving loved ones of murdered citizens wonder why, after many years of the DA’s office recommending the death penalty, Krasner does not see it as a good solution. We see judges and other officials express their fear that, in the pursuit of innovation, all aspects of a functioning system are being tampered with, negatively affecting the city’s safety.
An election worker places mail-in ballots into a voting box at a drive-through drop off location at the Registrar of Voters for San Diego County in San Diego, Calif., Oct. 19, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
The Supreme Court on Wednesday dealt setbacks to Republicans by allowing extended deadlines for receiving mail-in ballots in next Tuesday's election in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, states pivotal to President Donald Trump's re-election chances.
Philadelphia City Hall is pictured as early voting for the 2020 election begins at a satellite voting location at City Hall in Philadelphia, Sept. 29, 2020. REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski/FILE PHOTO
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed an extension of the deadline for mail-in absentee ballots in Pennsylvania for the Nov. 3 election, declining a Republican request to block a lower court's ruling that gave voters more time.
Parishioners arrive for Mass at Saint Patrick Catholic Church in York, Penn. Aug. 18, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Many churchgoers said they were sickened and saddened by a grand jury report detailing widespread sexual abuse by hundreds of priests in Pennsylvania but they would not let the Roman Catholic Church's cover-up dissuade them from their faith.
FILE PHOTO: Cardinal Donald William Wuerl from U.S. waves as he arrives for a meeting at the Synod Hall in the Vatican March 7, 2013. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi
The Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, withdrew on Saturday from next week's World Meeting of Families in Dublin, the second senior cleric to pull out of the Roman Catholic event amid clerical sexual abuse scandals in the United States.
1. What Can Change in the Wake of the Pennsylvania Sex Abuse Report?
“I don’t know that [the Catholic Church can] come back from this, and I don’t know if they should.”
2. Do Religious People Know More About Politics?
This quick study ranks political knowledge by religious affiliation. Lookin’ at you, Episcopalians.
St. Joseph Catholic Church is seen in Hanover, Penn., Aug. 16, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Outraged Pennsylvania child welfare experts, parents, and advocates say that if the Catholic Church doesn’t change its self-protective stance and behaviors, the church remains guilty of privileging predators over victims, and imperils its own credibility as a religious institution.
Image via REUTERS/Max Rossi
The report cited 301 priests who are accused of abuse. As a consequence of the cover up, only two priests are subject to prosecution — some abusers died and other cases are too old to prosecute. There were more than 1,000 victims identified in the report, mostly boys, but more victims are believed to exist.
Pennsylvania was the first state to institute the practice of confining prisoners alone in single cells. It started when a jail in Philadelphia became Eastern State Penitentiary, the country’s first state prison, in 1790. That was one year before the Eighth Amendment prohibited cruel and unusual punishment, and 223 years before the DOJ found the state’s use of solitary violated that amendment.
IN THE FIGHT against gerrymandered electoral districts in Pennsylvania, Carol Kuniholm is a rock star.
A former English professor and youth pastor, Kuniholm now spends much of her time traveling the Keystone State, explaining to hundreds of listeners how politicians have deliberately redrawn Pennsylvania’s voting districts to favor their own party. Using charts and graphs, Kuniholm shows, in lucid detail, how the disfigured districts chill democracy. “Democracy means voters choose their politicians,” explains the website of Fair Districts PA, an anti-gerrymandering organization Kuniholm co-founded in 2016. “Current Pennsylvania law lets politicians choose their voters.”
Plain-spoken and precise, Kuniholm hasn’t changed her demeanor since taking charge of the state movement, though she did make one concession to her newfound fame: “I bought a suit,” she confesses.
Image via RNS/Larry McCormack/The Tennessean
The church’s predominately black congregation once mirrored the neighborhood’s demographics. But today hip and eclectic East Nashville, with its rising property values and trendy restaurants, draws white millennials, said the Rev. Morris Tipton Jr., the church’s pastor.
Given the neighborhood’s shift, is Tipton worried about the church’s future?
Image via RNS/Reuters/Max Rossi
During our nearly 40 years of friendship, I led several interreligious missions with Keeler, including meetings with then-Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. We co-led trips to Israel, including a visit to a civilian bomb shelter, and a poignant painful pilgrimage to the infamous death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Sometimes public figures can seem distant and impersonal, but that was never the case with the always gracious and welcoming Keeler.
Image via RNS/Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
On a cold rainy morning, members of the American Indian tribes shouted “Water is sacred” and “Keep it in the soil; can’t drink oil” as they marched toward the White House.
The March 10 protest against the Dakota Access pipeline included hundreds of Native Americans, some dressed in traditional feather headbands and ponchos.
They beat drums and danced as they made their way through the streets.
In a time of anti-immigrant fervor, religious distrust, and high political polarization, the peace-building Mennonites in Harrisonburg provide one robust model of how to transcend nationalism and bridge divides. Though relatively modest in size, they are showing how even a small group can affect major, positive change, shaping the hearts and minds of the local ecosystem.
Image via RNS/Wikimedia Commons/Christoffer Lukas Müller
Exit polls suggest 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for President-elect Donald Trump.
But support for Trump may have been less decisive on Christian college campuses, where most students are also white evangelicals.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll, before the election, found the views of younger adults do not align with some older ones, when it comes to their beliefs about Trump supporters.
Image via "The Messy Truth."
We’re part of a community of people who are using cameras and pens and microphones to explore our differences — and I think that’s what keeps our differences from being explored by knives and bombs and all these other forms of destruction. What you’re doing with a publication, what we're doing with film, it’s all part of the same effort.
That’s where you see democracy at work, and that’s really what we’re rededicating ourselves to.
Image via Joseph Gruber/Shutterstock.com
Stop telling me to fight. Stop saying on your social media platforms, and in your blogs and your op-eds, that everyone should dust themselves off and get up and fix this. Stop saying that addressing this issue is everyone’s duty, because I can’t even begin to explain to you how far from the truth such a statement is.
But I’ll try. I will overcome my exhaustion and explain this to you as clearly as I can, and you can thank me later, if you’re so inclined. Let it be known that I like Edible Arrangements.
Image via RNS/Reuters/Tim Shaffer
The West Nickel Mines School is long gone. Two of the survivors are now married. Several of the couples who lost their daughters have had more children.
The shooting 10 years ago in [Bart Township, Pa.] made headlines across the world as the Amish rushed to forgive the shooter. But the grief and pain live on.
On Oct. 2, 2006, a heavily armed milk truck driver, Charles Carl Roberts IV, burst into the West Nickel Mines School shortly after recess. By the time Roberts had committed suicide, less than an hour later, five girls aged 6-13 were dead, and five others severely wounded.
Image via TFoxFoto/Shutterstock.com
In the end, we didn’t choose a house in the sprawling metropolis that is Waterloo. We took a home in a small rural town just outside the city. It reminds me of rural Pennsylvania: quaint, quiet, with lots of room for the kids to run and play. We can walk to school, the library, and the downtown shops. Kids run our streets playing ball hockey, riding bikes — all unattended by adults.
My friends in this town groan about the fact that due to the new practice of locking school doors, they can’t walk their kids all the way into the building anymore.
“I miss being able to help Olivia take off her coat, hang up her bag, and get her ready for class,” Kirsten tells me.
I nod respectfully, but I’ve never gotten to know what they’re now missing.
I want to be smart about my relief. I know there are certainly many ways my children can get hurt, even here. Still, I’m so grateful that my friends don’t know what I’m missing from life down in the States. I’m so glad that when I drop Noelle and Nathan off at the school doors each morning, I leave un-haunted.
The American Prospect reports:
"Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett's first stab at a budget for this year left the education community shaking. The Republican had balanced the budget in part through deep cuts not only to the state's colleges and universities but also to school districts. That's terrifying news for a state where some districts are already considering ending kindergarten to balance budgets.