Statistics out last week about childhood poverty are staggering. The child poverty rate, calculated to include the impact of government tax and spending programs, was 9.7 percent in 2020, 5.2 percent in 2021, and 12.4 percent in 2022. To put that in numbers, according to John Cassidy in The New Yorker, “the number of children living in households under the poverty line went from 7.2 million in 2020 to 3.8 million in 2021 to nine million in 2022.”

We are no longer surprised when we hear that poor people and people of color have a harder time accessing good health care because they don’t have adequate insurance or don’t get sick days at work. We get that co-pays can make it difficult for many to purchase needed medications or go to doctors’ appointments.

Many of us are watching our children and grandchildren head off to school this week, some for the first time. Those of us in the Northeast can be pretty sure (and yes, we've know about the problem in Ludlow, MA, but it's an outlier) that the shelves in school libraries will not be emptied of books that depict characters with two mothers or fathers, or boys or girls questioning their sexual…

We thought it might be interesting to ask some friends, relatives, or colleagues – or reflect on our own experiences as immigrants – what voting was like in their countries of origin. Did every adult get to vote? Was it mandatory? Were there fines or punishments for not voting?

The son of a friend of ours lives in a western mountain state where he hunts for elk and deer. He then butchers the felled animals and feeds his family with the meat. His wife only eats the meat he has provided – other meat only if she knows how it was sourced. The deer and elk are hunted during…

I’ve reached the age when young people sometimes offer me their seats on the subway in New York City. I take it, knowing I could stand, if necessary. Is that cheating?

Some people think affirmative action is cheating. They say it’s giving seats to people who don’t deserve it.

The shock waves are still reverberating a year after the Supreme Court, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, overturned 50 years of precedent – 50 years of protecting a woman’s right to choose whether or not to proceed with a pregnancy. In some states, women no longer have any choice and may even face imprisonment if they terminate their pregnancies. In other states, they must meet stringent standards, such as terminating before they may even know they are pregnant or a heartbeat can be detected. Doctors, too, face punishment for aiding women who seek abortions, sometimes even when the pregnant woman’s life is in danger. Too many women find themselves scraping together the money to travel out of their home states to places such as Massachusetts to seek surgical or medication abortions where they are still protected and legal.

In lieu of our normal newsletter, we have chosen to mark Independence Day, the Fourth of July, by reprinting abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s famous anti-slavery speech, delivered on July 5, 1852, to the citizens of his hometown of Rochester, NY. Many of us have read excerpts of this great speech, but not the entirety. We think it is worth considering without editing, as we face so much discrimination, hate, and bigotry in our country today. 

Is anyone else gobsmacked to learn that our Supreme Court Justices are not required to abide by any written ethics rules, not even those imposed on all other federal judges? 

We write about human rights every week and suggest actions we can all take, so we didn’t expect to be surprised by what might be said at last week’s Community Conversation at The Cabot about “Making Our Community Safe for Transgender Youth.”

Owning one’s own home has always been part of the American Dream. Finding a place in your price range can often require some compromise. Then making an offer and having your credit rating checked. Next is hunting for the best deal on a mortgage and coming up with the down payment. For those of us who are lucky, that down payment often includes loans or gifts from parents and grandparents.

Visiting a friend in a rehabilitation hospital last week, shortly after reading Matthew Desmond’s Poverty by America, it was impossible to ignore the varying levels of health care available to people in our country. 

I’m following two four-year-old little girls down the street in Brooklyn one afternoon as they walk home from preschool. One of them is my granddaughter. The walk is about three-quarters of a mile but can take up to a half-hour because the girls dawdle, stopping at every tree on the way to contemplate its climbability, the leaves beginning to sprout, the flowers at the base, or to challenge each other to a swing on a limb. 

As I was sitting in my doctor’s office at Lahey in Danvers two days ago, finishing up a discussion about the state of my thyroid gland, she and I paused to listen to an announcement on the PA system. “There is an external situation. Everyone is advised to shelter in place. No one should leave the building until clearance is given.”

Recent conversations with friends have made it clear that many of us don’t fully understand the difference between Plan B and Plan C in pregnancy management. With the overturning of Roe v Wade and the more recent ban on medication abortion pills…

Here’s a frightening statistic to try to swallow with your evening vitamins. Boston’s Back Bay residents have a life expectancy of 92 years while residents of Roxbury, just four miles away, can expect to live only 59 years. What we know is that factors such as access to health care, affordable housing, and clean air have a lot to do with the difference in these two outcomes.

Recently, we’ve been grappling with some of the finer points of being an ally to the marginalized among us. The new book, “Say the Right Thing,” by Kenzie Yoshino and David Glasgow, NYU law professors and founders of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging, offers us reminders about the importance of standing up when we hear and see things; of what not to say because it may sound hollow, patronizing, or have the exact opposite of the intended effect; how to engage in respectful disagreement; and more.

The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the GI Bill, was a bi-partisan effort to help returning servicemen adjust to civilian life by providing funds for education, government backed loans, unemployment, and job-finding assistance.

We are all well aware of the mental health issues plaguing teens, especially youth in the LGBTQ+ community. Transgender youth particularly struggle as they are bullied and ostracized by peers, often rejected by their families, and desperate for a sense of belonging.

When our kids were in grade school, some of their schoolmates wrote to a crayon manufacturer to protest the name of their “Flesh” crayon. They insisted it surely wasn’t the color of the skin of the Black children in their classroom, nor of any but the blondest and fairest of them all. The company responded and changed the name. Truth be told, the children’s letters were probably joined by hundreds, if not thousands, of others from around the country.