Credit: Grown in Detroit

Principal G. Asenath Andrews at Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit asked her students to raise their hands if they had ever witnessed a drive-by shooting. Several hands went in the air.

She asked how many had seen a murder; how many had a loved one who had been incarcerated. More hands.

Then she asked how many knew a street farmer.

Crickets.

But for those students–all teenage mothers–agriculture is part of the curriculum at Catherine Ferguson. A red barn the students built houses sheep, horses and chickens, and the girls milk goats and collect honey from a beehive on site. Then they harvest and sell produce from the school’s farm at a makeshift market in the parking lot—a welcome food stand in a city where liquor stores outnumber groceries. Read the rest of this entry >>

USA Today published an article earlier this month about the reported rape rate reaching a 20-year low, with partial credit to the masses—they’re no longer blaming victims for being raped.

“You don’t see the nightmarish trials of the 1960s where a woman’s reputation would be brought into question and people would conclude she deserved it,” said Michael Males, a senior researcher at the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice in San Francisco.

But if courtrooms are immune—and they’re not—the Internet is teeming with mudslingers. Like most things in the 21st century, victim blaming has gone digital. Read the rest of this entry >>

Jean Fritz, then 51 and a Republican, ran an auto supply store with her husband when she served jury duty on the Chicago Conspiracy Trial in 1968. The defendants’ antics, long hair and irreverence in the courtroom shocked her. But when the judge ordered Black Panthers activist Bobby Seale bound and gagged for refusing to sit down, she started distrusting her country.

“It was absolutely sickening,” she says in William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe. “You just felt that the world was coming to an end that you were actually seeing this in the United States of America. Somebody tied up like he was.”

Kunstler, the late radical civil rights lawyer, was famous for representing the “Chicago 8” activists who protested the Vietnam War, the inmates who took over Attica Prison and the American Indian Movement that demanded land rights at Wounded Knee.

He also represented alleged rapists, terrorists and El-Sayyid Nosair, who assassinated Jewish leader Rabbi Meir Kahane.  Read the rest of this entry >>

Yes, I’m talking about Precious. And, let’s be honest, you didn’t hear it here first. Every critic, newspaper and glossy has been touting the movie as an underdog contender at next year’s Oscars. And the buzz isn’t misplaced. But pity the presenter that has to announce the film’s full title—Precious: Based On The Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire.

“Nobody loves me,” sobs sixteen-year-old Precious, morbidly obese, illiterate and pregnant for the second time after being raped by her father. Threatened with expulsion, Precious transfers to an alternative school where she finds a warm, do-good teacher, friends and, well, herself.

And so the stage is set for a slow clap, but for every obstacle Precious overcomes, the reality of her life on welfare in Harlem hangs heavy—her toxic, violent mother (Mo’Nique); her first child, Mongoloid, named because she has Down syndrome; AIDS in the 80s.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Vodka gimlet or old fashioned? Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner answered questions over cocktails after last night’s screening of an episode from the AMC drama and offered his own musings to the audience about the civil rights movement.

“In hindsight, did you know how important that was?” he said. “Probably not.”

The characters in Mad Men sure don’t. Copywriter Paul Kinsey rides a bus to Mississippi with his black girlfriend, and Betty, the wife of protagonist Don Draper, suggests to her black maid that maybe “now” isn’t the right time for desegregation. But save those few moments, the characters don’t know anything is amiss while Marilyn Monroe’s death turns an entire episode on its head.

“What’s been fascinating for me is to look at history and how we interact with it,” Weiner said. “How big does something have to be to penetrate our lives?” Read the rest of this entry >>

With a slogan like “Keep Austin Weird,” it’s no surprise that the city’s annual film fete was founded to celebrate cinema’s underdog: the screenwriter.

The Austin Film Festival has dedicated its 16-year existence to storytelling—its craft, its impact and its champions. Past attendees include Wes Anderson, the Coen Brothers and Sydney Pollack.

This year Ron Howard (Apollo 13), Steve Zaillian (Shindler’s List) and Mitch Hurwitz (Arrested Development) are driving a series of panels like “Should Movies Reflect the Real World?” and—what else—“The Art of Storytelling.”

And so the capitol kicks off the party tonight, with drinks, an encore Mad Men episode presented by writer Matthew Weiner, and “The Falcon and the Snowman,” one of the Zallian’s earliest and the writer’s only screening as this year’s Distinguished Screenwriter recipient. Read the rest of this entry >>

Tired of the same old shipping lanes? Route your ware through the Arctic Ocean in as little as 10 years! Faster, easier access to oil and gas reserves guaranteed.

The Arctic Ocean—the new open sea.

Just ask Peter Wadhams, a professor at the University of Cambridge and a top polar specialist who has been studying the Arctic ice since the 1960s.

“The Catlin Arctic Survey data supports the new consensus view—based on seasonal variation of ice extent and thickness, changes in temperatures, winds and especially ice composition—that the Arctic will be ice-free in summer within about 20 years, and that much of the decrease will be happening within 10 years.” Read the rest of this entry >>

Editor’s Note: You may have read this post back in August.  In light of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we are re-posting a condensed version today to raise awareness about the second leading cause of cancer death among women. Read the original post here.

A breast cancer diagnosis is devastating, and for some, it’s a financial nightmare.

More than one million cancer survivors are skipping treatment because they can’t afford it, according to the American Association for Cancer Research, and more than 680,000 new cases were diagnosed last year.

But the Pretty in Pink Foundation in Raleigh is helping women receive quality cancer care through a network of 50-some specialists-whether they can afford it or not.

Dr. Lisa Tolnitch founded the nonprofit in 2004 to help patients manage an already-daunting disease without worrying about insurance coverage. Because nearly 20 percent of women in North Carolina don’t have it. Read the rest of this entry >>

After several weeks of stories about crying rape, incestuous rape, and “rape-rape,” USA Today opted for a pick-me-up: reported rapes have dropped to an all-time low for the first time in 20 years.

“The FBI estimates 89,000 women reported being raped in 2008—29 women for every 100,000 people. That’s down from a high of 109,062 reported rapes in 1992—43 women for every 100,000 people.”

I’m hesitant to cheer, not least of all because rape is one of the most under reported crimes in the United States. Sixty percent of all rapes aren’t reported to the police, and when they are, odds are the rapist will avoid going to jail without so much as fleeing the country. Only 50 percent of reported rapes result in an arrest.

From there the numbers get better. An 80 percent chance of prosecution, and if the rapist is convicted, a 69 percent chance that person will spend some time in jail. But in 2007 there were 248,300 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. That’s hardly a statistic to tout, and its omission from the USA Today’s article begs the question: Have reported rapes reached an all-time low because there are fewer to report, or because fewer people who are willing to? Read the rest of this entry >>

Ralph Lauren has owned up to a Photoshop faux pas that whittled its model down to impossible proportions, but not before throwing its, er, weight around.

Blogger Xeni Jardin first brought attention to the retouched photo when he reposted it on Boing Boing with a new caption: Dude, her head’s bigger than her body. A simple “oops” might have done, but Lauren opted to slap the Web site with a cease-and-desist for copyright infringement instead. Boing Boing was indignant, and with good reason—fair use protects the reproduction of an image for comment or criticism.

So the blog called B.S. and Lauren changed tack, releasing the following statement yesterday: “For over 42 years we have built a brand based on quality and integrity. After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body. We have addressed the problem and going forward will take every precaution to ensure that the caliber of our artwork represents our brand appropriately.”

Humiliated prep realizes his shortcomings and apologizes in front of the whole school? It’s almost cinematic. Except Lauren listened to his PR team, not his conscience. Read the rest of this entry >>