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 4, 2016 · 7:46 pm
Fireworks go off randomly throughout the night. Facebook fills up with photos and with complaints from people whose dogs cower under the bed, whining. Once in a while, a mild reminder that not only dogs suffer from sudden, loud noises — veterans, too, may brace themselves for the 10 p.m. barrage or wake in terror at the 2 a.m. explosions.
Post traumatic stress: a reaction to trauma, to being shot at, to being hit by shrapnel, to witnessing a bombing, to seeing people killed in front of you. Continue reading →
June 28, 2016 · 8:58 pm
You might think that kindness and care for people who are elderly or disabled should be rewarded. Not in this state. Not in this country. Instead, the low-paid personal care attendants who serve on the front lines of home health care face the awful choice of neglecting the people they care for or working without pay. Continue reading →
June 28, 2016 · 7:54 am
Photo courtesy of Eureka Recycling
Eureka Recycling will continue as St. Paul’s recycling provider, the city announced June 24. That’s a big win for all of us in the city, as well as for the non-profit Eureka Recycling. After a lengthy contract process, the city rejected bids by the nation’s two biggest trash-and-recycling companies. So what comes next? Continue reading →
June 27, 2016 · 3:10 pm
Journalist Shane Bauer worked undercover as a prison guard at a private CCA prison for four months.
Privatization means profits over people, every single time. Shane Bauer worked four months in a private prison, going undercover as a prison guard to report on what actually happens there. “Don’t ever say thank you” was one of the early lessons he learned, and perhaps one of the least damaging. Continue reading →
June 23, 2016 · 2:00 pm
Noemi Romero from The Excluded website
Hours after today’s disastrous Supreme Court immigration decision, a website called The Excluded popped up in my Facebook feed. The Excluded faces and stories of longtime U.S. residents who live every day at risk of deportation.
“Noemi Romero, 24, has lived in Arizona practically her whole life. At the age of 21 while she was raided by Sheriff Arpaio’s deputies while working to save money to pay for her DACA application. She can no longer able to apply due to her felony for working.”
Continue reading →
June 22, 2016 · 5:40 am
Fatuma Ali told about her old job, running a ride at the Mall of America. “I know what it’s like not to be able to leave the job,” she said. One day she was sick. “I had to stay at my ride for five hours, while being sick in the garbage can every 30 minutes,” she recalled. She had no sick time. If she had left her job, she said, she would have been fired. Continue reading →
June 21, 2016 · 2:21 pm
[CORRECTED 6/21/2016] Sick pay for sick days, a nurse’s strike, and the desperate situation of home health care aides and the people they care for: three stories about workers in Minnesota highlight both the positive power of organizing and the need for more support for workers. Continue reading →
June 21, 2016 · 12:31 pm
Sarah Deer’s powerful new book, The Beginning and End of Rape focuses on sexual violence in Native America. The beginning goes back to the European invasion, with rape used as a tool of genocide and conquest. Now, as then, when European American men rape Native women, U.S. legal systems help them escape punishment. In an eminently readable book, law professor and MacArthur genius grant winner Sarah Deer describes the historical trajectory of rape and rape laws, beginning with the historical connection between rape and conquest / genocide / white patriarchy and legal systems. Continue reading →
June 20, 2016 · 9:43 pm
A new UN refugee agency report shows 65.3 million people forcibly displaced from their homes around the world. Of that number, 21.3 million are refugees and 3.2 million are aseeking asylum. Another 40.8 million internally displaced persons live inside their home coujntries, but have been forced out of their homes.
Numbers can only hint at human suffering. Continue reading →
June 17, 2016 · 4:41 pm
After the tragedy of Orlando, followed by outrageous and hateful political reactions, we need some good news. And we have it. One of the good news stories is related to Orlando, and the others come from Minnesota. Continue reading →
Filed under environment, gender, housing
Tagged as #Orlando, Brooklyn Center, bwca, JetBlue, Lowry Grove, mobile homes, rental housing, sulfide mining, Twin Metals
Mary Turck