News Above and Below the Fold

Dear Leading Ladies,

There is no dearth of headlines to capture our attention this week. We’ve got the horrific murder of Renee Goode at the hands of an ICE officer as she was on her way home from dropping her son at school. Then there’s the disinformation campaign by the administration, hellbent on painting Ms. Goode as a domestic terrorist plotting the downfall of the country.

There’s the president’s remark that we really don’t need to have midterm elections, a statement others in the White House quickly claimed was a joke, though they said no such thing about Trump’s talk of using the 1807 Insurrection Act against protesters in Minnesota.

And let’s not forget the president’s vow to run Venezuela for the foreseeable future, with a hint that Cuba will be next, and that Greenland is a sure thing. The potential global repercussions of the president’s aggressive behavior are so stunning that they hardly seem real.

In fact, while watching one of the last episodes of the fictional series, The Diplomat, a description of the United States’ foreign policy offered by a British double agent, bested those of most pundits. “How come the only way to save us is for members of my country to die and for members of your country to say you’re welcome?" he asked. “Americans blowing shit up and calling it democracy sounds like Afghanistan.”

So, while we try to — but can’t — avoid chewing on the big news, there are at least a couple of other stories that appeared below the fold in the past several days that we think merit attention.

First, the annual Social Progress Index was released. The index ranks 171 countries in a variety of areas such as quality of life, health, education, and safety. The US has fallen consistently since 2011, notably under both Republican and Democratic administrations. As Michael Green, head of the group that publishes the index, told Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, “We’ve slipped behind former Communist countries like Slovenia, Lithuania and Estonia and behind other relatively new democracies like South Korea.” As Kristof points out, the US ranks behind Pakistan and Nicaragua in safety; behind Vietnam and Kazakhstan in K–12 education; and behind Argentina and Panama in health. To be fair, there is a “global slowdown” that is “broad based,” according to the index. “Rights are down… health, safety and environmental quality are all down…water and sanitation, housing and access to information all slowed significantly” in the past several years. But shouldn’t our bar be a little higher?

Caption from Social Progress Imperative: Social progress is the capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential. More at socialprogress.org

The index concludes that “Without real visibility into the social foundations of American life, decision-makers risk building strategies that fail to deliver lasting impact.” In other words, from the local to the national level, attention needs to be paid to the “societal polarization, inequality, erosion of civic freedoms, decline of wellbeing, lack of economic opportunity, unemployment, misinformation, and disinformation” that is damaging the quality of life for too many in our country.

Clearly, we’re in trouble. And it’s about more than Trump, though he is making things worse. The most obvious lesson from the Progress Index is that the US is not paying enough attention to what makes life satisfactory and fulfilling for the majority, not just a privileged minority. Everyone needs to be safe, fed, educated, and cared for medically. If countries far poorer than ours can do it, surely we can.

The next story to share has to do with our kitchens. Yup, you read that right. It turns out, according to reporting by NPR, that everyone who has done a renovation of their kitchen in the last few years and chosen quartz over granite may have been an unknowing perpetrator of a dangerous act. Quartz is made by binding together tiny bits of silica. When cutting or polishing quartz, workers inhale bits of silica that can cause permanent damage. In California alone, there have been 500 cases of lung disease and 53 deaths. Almost all the workers are Hispanic men in their 30s and 40s, often immigrants with no health insurance. There are lawsuits on behalf of the workers but some Republicans are backing a bill to prevent workers from being allowed to sue. Distributors think they shouldn’t be responsible but sweat shops should. Yet, there is no reasonable way to oversee all the shops. Sound familiar? Low-paid workers, often immigrants, often Latino, working in unsafe environments with little recourse to protect themselves. Let’s spread the word about this and make a different choice for our own renovations. There’s a “think locally” action for us.

Our takeaway from the news above and below the fold? These issues should be nonpartisan. Aren’t they all about American ideals? Quality of life in a land of plenty? What’s it going to take to not just reach across the proverbial aisle but to get rid of the damn aisle when it comes to the health and well-being of our people?

We bet you agree.

Therese (she/her/hers)
Judy (she/her/hers)
Didi (she/her/hers)
Leading Ladies Executive Team
Leadingladiesvote.org
ladies@leadingladiesvote.org