Author: Henry Taylor

Selected Media

Shrinking Jails, Rising Costs: Erie County’s Wasteful Jail Budget

By Colleen Kristich

Read the full brief here.

“This policy brief presents data on the makeup of the Erie County jail population, which has reduced by 48% since 2017. It examines the capacity of both jails and determines that one jail could be closed, with savings redirected to other community-based harm reduction services. The brief compares Erie County spending on jails with spending on mental and public health, and makes recommendations for County leaders to further reduce the jail population and solicit public input into the jail closure process.”

Selected Media

Juan González: The Media Has It Wrong. Record Latinx Turnout Helped Biden. White Voters Failed Dems

By Juan Gonzalez

Watch the video and read the full article from Democracy Now here.

“‘The main story is that people of color, especially Latinos, flocked to the polls in numbers that far exceeded what the experts had expected, while the total number of votes cast by white Americans barely increased from the last presidential election,’ says González. ‘How come none of the experts are asking why white voters underperformed the Democratic Party?'”

Selected Media

Trump’s Pathology Is Now Clear

By James Hamblin

Read the full article from The Atlantic, here.

“To look on, inert, as Americans suffer and die is one thing; to deny that it is happening is another. This is a clear and ominous glimpse of how the pandemic will continue to play out if Trump remains in power. During America’s final lurch into the election, the president has become an even darker caricature of himself, laying bare his willingness to abandon Americans’ health and well-being for his own self-preservation. He is now even more dangerous as a vector of disease than when he was actively shedding the virus.”

Selected Media

BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Inzajeano Latif

Essay by Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr.

Published by AOP

“In honour of Black History Month, member Inzajeano Latif shares his project, The Boisterousness of Silence: The Marginalised of Tottenham. An autobiography told through considered street portraits of the marginalised of Tottenham. ‘In telling their story, Inz tells his own story.'”

Selected Media

David Harvey: Socialists Must Be the Champions of Freedom

By David Harvey

Read the full article from Jacobin, here.

“Right-wing propaganda claims that socialism is the enemy of individual freedom. The exact opposite is true: socialists work to create the material conditions under which people can truly be free, without the rigid constraints capitalism imposes on their lives.

The topic of freedom was raised when I was giving some talks in Peru. The students there were very interested in the question: ‘Does socialism require a surrender of individual freedom?'”

Selected Media

It’s Time for Italian Americans to Give Up on Columbus

By Chris Gelardi

Read the full article from The Nation, here.

“What these Columbus defenders are saying, in essence, is that the idolization of a genocidaire is excusable because Italian Americans over a century ago decided to build a mythology around him. They take a play from the Confederate apologists’ book in arguing that a historical figure like Columbus shouldn’t be judged by contemporary standards—as if mass killing, slavery, pillaging, and human trafficking were acceptable during certain time periods.”

Selected Media

Racial Capitalism: A Fundamental Cause of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic Inequities in the United States

By Whitney N. Laster Pirtle

Read the full article from Health Education & Behavior, here.

“Racial capitalism is a fundamental cause of the racial and socioeconomic inequities within the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) in the United States. The overrepresentation of Black death reported in Detroit, Michigan is a case study for this argument. Racism and capitalism mutually construct harmful social conditions that fundamentally shape COVID-19 disease inequities. . .Interventions should address social inequality to achieve health equity across pandemics.”

Selected Media

A city in Brazil where covid-19 ran amok may be a ‘sentinel’ for the rest of the world

By Antonio Regalado

Read the full article from MIT Technology Review, here.

“What happens when a major city allows the coronavirus to rage unchecked?

If the Brazilian city of Manaus is any answer, it means about two-thirds of the population could get infected and one person in 500 could die before the epidemic winds down. During May, as the virus spread rapidly in Manaus, the equatorial capital of the state of Amazonas, dire reports described overwhelmed hospitals and freshly dug graves. Demand for coffins ran at four to five times figures for the previous year. But since hitting a peak four months ago, new coronavirus cases and deaths in the city of 1.8 million have undergone a rapid and unexplained decline.”

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