Salon.com > class

Cleveland’s lost girls

Wed, 08 May 2013 21:05:00 +0000

“Put yourself in her shoes,” Cleveland hero Charles Ramsey told a not-terribly-helpful 911 operator, who was trying to get more information about Amanda Berry, after Ramsey helped her escape from her 10-year imprisonment, rather than just sending police immediately.

Ramsey did what Cleveland authorities over a decade could not: He not only helped Berry get free, but he put himself in her shoes; he empathized enough to intervene in what he first assumed was a domestic violence dispute. (Breaking news from the Smoking Gun that Ramsey himself served prison time for domestic violence charges doesn't negate Ramsey's role in freeing Berry.)

We still don’t know how much police are culpable for failing to find Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight. Multiple neighbors say they called 911 to report seeing women in distress; the police deny getting their calls. Confronted with those police claims, neighbor Israel Lugo told MSNBC: “It’s a bunch of BS.”

American inequality: Worse than Europe

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 20:51:00 +0000

President Obama still fervently believes in the ideal of equality of opportunity, as his State of the Union speech showed. But the nation he’s leading has left that ideal far behind.

Nobel laureate and economist Joseph Stiglitz laid out why that ideal has been left behind and what the U.S. can do about it in an opinion piece for the New York Times that ran over the weekend. Stiglitz writes that today, the U.S. has less “equality of opportunity” than other advanced industrial nations. This means that poor children have less of an opportunity to be successful than middle and upper-class children. “The life prospects of an American are more dependent on the income and education of his parents than in almost any other advanced country for which there is data,” says Stiglitz.

Social mobility is limited in the U.S. 58 percent of Americans born into the bottom fifth of income earners in the country move out of that economic strata--a rate lower than most of Europe.

Bring back shushing librarians

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Librarians hate to be depicted as bun- and glasses-wearing shushers, hellbent on silencing any and all noisy activities within their sacred domain. Fair enough: Librarians are highly skilled, well-educated and socially aware as a rule, and should not be reduced to a cultural stereotype ranking only a notch or two above a church lady on the hipness scale.

Nevertheless, there's a lot to be said for that shushing. I've long believed that one of the most precious resources libraries offer their patrons is simple quiet. Alas, for too long I've been forced to confine this sentiment to bar-stool rants because for all I knew I was being hopelessly retrograde. Libraries are constantly talking up the new — and often clamorous — services and activities they have added or plan to add in order to "better serve a diverse community" (and by extension, justify their continued funding in the eyes of public officials who like to appear forward-thinking). But take heart, seekers of serenity, for now we have data!