American Forum

01/15/2025

Happy Birthday, Dr. !

Today, we honor the life and legacy of Dr. King—a global leader who dedicated his life to justice, freedom, and equality. His vision for the continues to inspire us to create a more just, humane, and peaceful world.

We invite you to join us as we continue our 2025 Observance (KHO): https://thekingcenter.org/king-holiday-2025/

Let’s work together to make our 2025 theme, ‘Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence365,’ a reality.

11/28/2024

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: "Erica Phillips: Why family child care educators deserve higher ed debt forgiveness" | The Reporter-OPINION | 10/31/2024

INSIGHT: For more than a decade, Laverne Cheeseboro has been caring for children at her family child care (FCC), Heavenly Made Creations. From the first floor of her home in a middle class Philadelphia neighborhood, Laverne’s days start at 7 a.m. and resemble those of many home-based early educators. The six preschoolers currently enrolled receive daily meals, engage in play-based education, and learn through a curriculum built around developing social-emotional skills.

But hovering over Laverne’s daily reality is an albatross that holds her — and many potential educators — back from helping more children: $80,000 worth of student debt.

According to a recent survey, home-based educators carry an average of more than $30,000 in student debt, with 60 percent saying that repayment will cause their household financial hardship.

Under our current Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) policies, countless dedicated, passionate educators like Laverne are ineligible to have their student loans forgiven. FCC home programs are small, sole proprietor businesses, distinguishable from non-profits in name only. In reality, these educators are providing essential community benefits under challenging economic circumstances.

Editor’s Note: The author is the executive director of The National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), a nationwide non-profit organization dedicated to promoting high-quality child care by strengthening the profession of family child care for nearly one million paid home-based early learning programs. She is al2023 Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow.

Distributor's Note: Credit to National Women's Editorial Forum for distributing this op-ed on behalf of Ascend at The Aspen Institute.

Children's Defense Fund Save the Children US Business Insider Clinton Foundation Obama Foundation New Georgia Project Old North State Medical Foundation Child Welfare Information Gateway The National Urban League National Council of Women's Organizations Black News HuffPost HuffPost Women HuffPost Politics HuffPost Black Voices NowThis NowThis Her NowThis Impact Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival Black News Black Press USA - NNPA Black Enterprise

As President Biden’s Care Agenda shows, our country’s child care crisis runs deeper than any one policy can address.

10/16/2024

🗣... Good Afternoon ! We kicked off Early Voting yesterday with a Bang here in Augusta-Richmond County! We had 4,646 people vote in person, and 80 Absentee Ballots were returned, totaling 4,726 ballots cast. That's roughly 3 times the number of day-one votes in 2020! NGP Action Fund New Georgia Project Roslyn Satchel Joy Johnson Kiki Smith Katrina Denmark

06/20/2024

Guest Commentary | "Why stakes couldn’t be higher on Global Plastics Treaty" | Santa Cruz Sentinel | 04/28/2024

EXCERPT: "This year Earth Day marked the start of the fourth round of negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty. Without much public fanfare, delegates from 175 countries together with hundreds of observers representing industry, academia, health organizations and environmental groups have gathered in Ottawa to chart the course for the future of plastics and plastic pollution.

The stakes could not be higher.

Plastics have been linked to serious health problems, including cancer, lung disease and birth defects. Recently researchers found that individuals with heart disease that had microplastics, those tiny particles that pervade our environment, in their tissue had twice the risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke or death within three years. Babies, because of their increased exposure to plastics and vulnerability are especially at risk."


NOTE: Credit to American Forum for distributing this op-ed.

“Plastics have been linked to serious health problems, including cancer, lung disease and birth defects,” writes Susan Bass in a Guest Commentary. “Recently researchers found that…

06/13/2024

"Supreme Court unanimously rejects challenge to FDA approval of abortion drug mifepristone" | MSN News - UPI News | 06/13/2024

EXCERPT: The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday unanimously rejected a challenge to the abortion drug mifepristone. The court ruled the anti-abortion doctors challenging FDA approval of the drug had no legal standing to sue because they suffered no injury from availability of the drug by Ken Cedeno/UPI

The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday unanimously rejected an effort to make it harder to access the abortion drug mifepristone, ruling the plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the FDA's approval of the drug.

06/13/2024

OPINION: "How French Gates’s $12.5 Billion Could Move the Needle for Women" | The Chronicle of Philanthropy | 06/12/2024
"To change the economic and social structures that harm women, she should invest in caregiving, reproductive rights, and cultural change."

EXCERPT: Feminist activist Marie Shear famously wrote that “feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” This axiom also summarizes Melinda French Gates’s commitment to women, as evidenced by her recent pledge of $1 billion over the next two years to organizations advancing women’s rights and gender equity and the $12.5 billion now at her discretion following her official separation last week from the Gates Foundation.

In her 2019 book, “The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World,” French Gates wrote, “Women and men should all work together to take down the barriers … that hold women back.” The intractable challenge of feminism is that the barriers in question are incentives in our society and economy that extract much unpaid and underpaid labor from women. The brass tacks of women’s autonomy — our full personhood — are economic: We need new structures for providing and compensating work shunted off onto women.

To change the economic and social structures that harm women, she should invest in caregiving, reproductive rights, and cultural change.

04/18/2024

"If SCOTUS Restricts Emergency Abortion Care, Poor and At-Risk Populations Will Suffer Most" | Ms. Magazine - HEALTH JUSTICE & LAW | 04/18/2024

HIGHLIGHT: EMTALA embodies the fundamental principle that medical care should be accessible to all, especially in moments of crisis.

INSIGHT: The emergency room entrance at Gritman Medical Center in Moscow, Idaho. The Biden administration has sued Idaho, saying that state’s abortion ban violates EMTALA because its exceptions are too narrow to allow doctors to perform abortions if needed to stabilize a patient. (Don & Melinda Crawford / Education Images / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

In 1986, Congress enacted the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) to ensure that individuals, regardless of their ability to pay, receive necessary medical treatment in emergency situations.

This landmark legislation was designed to safeguard the lives of at-risk people, including those with disabilities, by requiring hospitals to stabilize patients before transferring or discharging them.

On April 24, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments and, by the summer, issue a critical decision regarding EMTALA and abortion rights. SCOTUS will ultimately decide whether EMTALA preempts state laws like Idaho’s anti-abortion trigger law, the Defense of Life Act. Ms. Magazine Black Women Matter the Official Group Harambee Community Services National Organization for Women (NOW) BBC NPR All Things Considered Oprah Daily Equal Justice Initiative National Council of Women's Organizations Financial Times Southern Poverty Law Center Black Lives Matter Michelle Obama NowThis NowThis Her NPR MSNBC HuffPost Black Voices HuffPost Women HuffPost HuffPost Politics HuffPost Parents HuffPost Latino Voices Black Press USA - NNPA

Ahead of Supreme Court oral arguments in Idaho/Moyle v. U.S., the implications for at-risk women protected by EMTALA cannot be ignored.

02/08/2024

"The Electoral College Landscape" | Weekend Reading - Michael Podhorzer | 02/08/2024

THE MAP: Only Two Paths to 270: Pennsylvania or Georgia + Michigan
To win the Electoral College, Biden must win either Pennsylvania, or both Georgia and Michigan; there is no realistic path to 270 without at least one of these combinations.

INSIGHT: One of the many reasons I urge people to stop caring about horse race polls is that we already know all we need to know ahead of Election Day: The outcome will be determined, as it was in 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022, by narrow margins in six battleground states – the three northern states that once constituted the “Blue Wall” (Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), and three more diverse states (Arizona, Georgia and Nevada). The margins in these states are usually much too small for any poll to reasonably predict. And we know that Democrats have won in those states only when voters were fully aware that the alternative was MAGA.

In this post, I’ll talk more about those six states and their Electoral College math (including an interactive tool). As always, remember that the outcome in those states will depend not on the margin of error in polls, but on the margin of effort by campaigns, activists, media, and concerned citizens to mobilize America’s anti-MAGA majority.

To reach 270, Biden needs to win either Pennsylvania, or Georgia + Michigan.

02/08/2024

02/08/2024

🖤 Today, we stand in solidarity on National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.

Let’s honor the lives lost, support those living with HIV/AIDS, and recommit to ending the stigma and disparities in healthcare access. Together, we can create a world where everyone has equitable access to prevention, treatment, and care.

❤️ 🙌🏾✊🏾

www.iamhivpossible.org