About Mary Turck
News Day, written by Mary Turck, analyzes, summarizes, links to, and comments on reports from news media around the world, with particular attention to immigration, education, and journalism. Fragments, also written by Mary Turck, has fiction, poetry and some creative non-fiction.
Mary Turck edited TC Daily Planet, www.tcdailyplanet.net, from 2007-2014, and edited the award-winning Connection to the Americas and AMERICAS.ORG, in its pre-2008 version. She is also a recovering attorney and the author of many books for young people (and a few for adults), mostly focusing on historical and social issues.
July 26, 2016 · 3:08 pm
from Smithsonian NMAAHC Twitter feed @NMAAHC
The Freedom Summer before the 1964 Democratic convention saw courageous efforts to register black voters in Mississippi, as well as continuing civil rights organizing across the south. In June, Freedom Summer workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner were murdered in Mississippi. In July, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, passed with strong Republican support and despite opposition by Southern Democrats. With racism and tension running high, the national parties held their conventions in August. Continue reading →
July 25, 2016 · 4:35 pm
Collection: International Ladies Garment Workers Union Photographs (1885-1985) Repository: The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives in the ILR School at Cornell University is the Catherwood Library unit that collects, preserves, and makes accessible special collections documenting the history of the workplace and labor relations. http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/kheel
In 1948, after 16 years of Democratic presidency, the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, and the prospects for a Democrat to win the presidential election did not look good. The Democratic convention divided over civil rights: a minority report urged the Democrats to adopt a pro-civil rights platform, but neither President Harry Truman nor the strong white southern wing of the party wanted anything more than the vague generalities of previous platforms. President Harry Truman had already sent a strong civil rights message to Congress in February 1948, but with Republicans controlling Congress, civil rights legislation had no chance of passage. Continue reading →
July 24, 2016 · 4:45 pm
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When two elephants fight, the grass gets trampled, says a Swahili proverb, which puts me in mind of the RNC and DNC domination of July news. Despite the elephants, other news is happening to people who, like grass under elephants’ feet, seem barely noticed. If you, like me, feel closer to the grass underfoot than to the elephants in Cleveland and Philadelphia, here’s a quick round-up of some important news items you may have missed. Continue reading →
Filed under children, environment, immigration, news, police and crime, race
Tagged as childcare workers, immigration, Minnesota Lynx, Minnesota waters, news, police shootings, refugees, water pollution
July 24, 2016 · 3:34 pm
Photo by L.C. Notaasen, published under Creative Commons license
Yesterday, an eighteen-year-old with a Glock pistol shot and killed nine people in a mall in Germany. Yesterday, a suicide bomber targeted a protest in Kabul and killed at least 80 people. The ISIS bomber targeted Shia Muslims, members of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority. Last Tuesday, an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Syria killed families who were fleeing ISIS. The exact number of dead is disputed – 56? 85? 160? 212? The families, who included many young children, were fleeing ISIS when the coalition bombers mistakenly targeted them. Guess which of these three stories got the bigger headlines? Continue reading →
July 19, 2016 · 8:08 pm
This morning’s coffee with friends focused on the convention. The hate and the speeches and the hate and the plagiarism and the hate and the stupidity and the hate and the platform and … all the reasons that I am avoiding television and news this week. So today I’m focusing on poetry. Writing some. And re-reading some. Mostly from Minnesota poets, like Joyce Sutphen, whose words caught in my heart the first time I read “In Winter:” Continue reading →
Filed under Uncategorized
Tagged as poetry
July 18, 2016 · 5:35 pm
With all the Trumped-up falsehoods and foolishness going down in Cleveland, and with 90-degree summer rolling into Minnesota, one good option for sanity is to tune out the madness and dive in to some non-traditional summer reading. According to MPR, some books are “flying off the shelves” as Minnesotans are “searching for ways to make sense of the violence and unrest.” In one of these flying books, A Good Time for the Truth, David Lawrence Grant writes:
“When we hear a white person say, ‘Oh, but I don’t even see color,’ the subtext we really hear tells us, loud and clear, that what they don’t see is us: that our identity, our perspective, our whole history is insignificant, not worthy of attention.” Continue reading →
July 14, 2016 · 8:17 am
I’m white. You’re white, too, and you tell me, “They’re always playing the race card.” You don’t believe that race is as important as “they” say it is. You believe that discrimination might happen somewhere, some time, but not that often. Please – listen to these voices. Hear what they say. Continue reading →
July 11, 2016 · 4:25 pm
Police reform is simultaneously vitally important and relatively useless. Vitally significant: as Ijeoma Oluo demands, we need to work for police reform “every day like your life depends on it – ours actually does.” And relatively useless, because policing in America is embedded in and represents a culture and society that remain deeply racist and that culture and society must change or no police reform will succeed. Continue reading →
July 11, 2016 · 4:25 pm
We need police reform, but, bottom line: police reform is not enough. Just like passing the 1964 Civil Rights Act or the 1965 Voting Rights Act was not enough. Not enough — because reforming police practices, policies, training will not end racism. But saying police reform is not enough does not mean that such reform is not needed, not essential, not potentially life-saving. Police reform is not THE solution, but reforms are some of the necessary steps along the road to solutions. Continue reading →
July 8, 2016 · 7:01 pm
Never thought I’d agree with Newt Gingrich, but … today he said that “normal white Americans” don’t understand “being black in America” and that they “under-estimate the level of discrimination and the level of additional risk.”
“Normal white Americans” can and must try to understand more. Trying to understand is not about trying to help black people. Trying to understand is about recognizing that we are all in this together — together in this community, in this city, state, country, world. Continue reading →
Mary Turck