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.
March 8, 2016 · 1:08 pm
[UPDATED 3/11/2016 – see below] Berta Cáceres. indigenous and environmental activist, was murdered in her home on March 3. She knew she was in danger. She had received death threat after death threat. Because she was in danger, Gustavo Castro Soto of Otros Mundos, a Mexican organization, was accompanying Cáceres. He was shot, too, but now the danger to Gustavo comes from the Honduran government, which has insisted on removing him from the safety of the Mexican embassy and returning him to La Esperanza. Here’s how Otros Mundos and the Alliance for Global Justice describe his current danger: Continue reading →
March 6, 2016 · 5:09 pm
Image via Fotolia: #80127845 | Author: vostal
Walking around my neighborhood, I counted the different names on garbage cans in a couple of alleys. One block had garbage cans belonging to seven different trash haulers. Another block had eleven. That’s eleven different trucks coming down the alley on different days of the week, every week, and that’s a feature of the current “open” system for trash pick-up. Rational? Efficient? Environmentally friendly? Not in my book. Continue reading →
March 5, 2016 · 5:59 pm
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar joined Republicans on the Senate Agriculture Committee last week to vote for the DARK Act — the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act. That’s the bill that would forbid state and local governments from requiring labeling foods containing GMOs. The bill, which still has to pass the full Senate, was described in a March 2 Star Tribune news article:
“The vote gave the food industry, including Minnesota-based companies such as Cargill, General Mills and Land O’Lakes, everything it wanted to derail state GMO labeling laws, especially a law set to take effect in Vermont in July.”
The bill adds insult to injury, by requiring “a taxpayer-funded public education campaign that explains scientific evidence of the benefits of ‘agricultural biotechnology.’” Continue reading →
Filed under agriculture, environment, food and farming
Tagged as agriculture, Amy Klobuchar, biotechnology, DARK Act, environment, farming, food, GMO, GMO labeling, right to know, Senate Agriculture Committee, Senator Klobuchar
March 3, 2016 · 9:53 am
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[UPDATED 3/4/3016] Berta Caceres was assassinated today, murdered in her sleep, in her home in Honduras at about 1 a.m. Berta was coordinator and co-founder of the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (COPIHN) and the 2015 recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize. Her death is not the first: in 2015, Global Witness reported that “at least two people are being killed for taking a stand against environmental destruction” every single week: Continue reading →
Filed under environment, human rights
Tagged as Agua Zarca, Berta Caceres, COPINH, Goldman Environmental Prize, Honduras, human rights, indigenous activist, Latin America, Lenca, martyrs, Presente
March 1, 2016 · 1:07 pm
Want to carry a resolution to your precinct caucus? Or a whole bunch of resolutions? Here’s a list, and some links to more. If you have resolutions to add, put them in the comments. Take one, take a dozen – put them on this form for the DFL (or REALLY get crazy and put them on this form, if you’re a Republican.) Continue reading →
February 28, 2016 · 10:57 pm
Steven Suffridge worked nights at a fast food restaurant. Sometimes his supervisors said he had to work straight through the mandatory 30-minute break, but the restaurant still deducted the time from his paycheck. That’s one of the examples of wage theft cited in an investigative series from Workday Minnesota. Other examples come from janitors, health care workers, construction, on-line jobs, and more. Continue reading →
February 28, 2016 · 9:07 pm
Fotolia File: #21203029 | Author: soleilc1
Is Brooklyn Park the new face of suburbia or the new face of segregation — or maybe both? Twin Cities suburbs Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center have changed from mostly-white to majority-minority cities over the past 30 years. As new immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos have moved to the suburbs, racial segregation has followed. Even within Brooklyn Park, there’s a north-south racial divide at 85th Avenue. Given the economic realities of race in Minnesota, racial segregation also equates with economic segregation, and with other forms of discrimination. For example, Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center officials say that newly-released sex offenders are being steered to their cities (along with Minneapolis and St. Paul), rather than to wealthier, whiter suburbs. Continue reading →
February 22, 2016 · 10:44 pm
[UPDATED 2/24/2016] Precinct caucuses are next week – TUESDAY, MARCH 1. That’s Super Tuesday, because of caucuses and primaries happening across the country. In Minnesota, if you want to a party’s presidential nominee, you go to the caucus. This article is a quick guide to DFL precinct caucuses. For others, check websites for the Republican Party, the Independence Party, the Green Party and the Libertarian Party. Continue reading →
February 18, 2016 · 7:25 pm
Telling lies about immigrants, and especially about Muslim refugees, fosters racism, xenophobia and persecution. With social media, lies spread rapidly and their sources quickly become diffused and anonymized, avoiding all responsibility. A new German website offers a counter to the nasty-rumor problem, but a lasting solution requires each of us to respond, exercising personal integrity and responsibility on social media. Continue reading →
February 16, 2016 · 10:26 pm
Instead of protecting citizens, the grand jury system now shields abuse of police power.
On Jan. 6, a Texas grand jury indicted the state trooper who arrested Sandra Bland last July for perjury in filing his arrest report but not for his treatment of Bland. The Chicago-area woman was pulled over for not signaling a lane change and later found dead in her jail cell. In December, the grand jury declined to hold anyone responsible for Bland’s death. Continue reading →
Mary Turck