The nation’s unemployment topped 10 percent in last month, but for young people, that number is much higher. The unemployment rate for 16-to-24-year-olds is almost double the national average, according to The Nation, up near 18.1 percent for September. Since December of 2007, those young people have lost some 2.5 million jobs, the most of any age group. And even though the stock market seems to be looking up, the employment picture for young people still looks bleak.

“I hope people are really clear that this is not an equal-opportunity recession, that it's hurting the weakest," Dedrick Muhammad of the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality and the Common Good told The Nation. Low-income and people of color have been the hardest hit, according to Muhammad’s research. For unemployment white people in their early 20s is less than half (13.1 percent) of African Americans (27.1 percent). At the same time, college tuition and health care costs have been steadily rising.

The bright spot midst the crisis is the political engagement that young people continually display. According to The Nation, “many young people have already begun coming together, in protest and coalition-style advocacy.” They’re fighting for better health care, education, jobs, and to make sure this kind of recession doesn’t happen again.

Source: The Nation 

Update: For more on the charge to keep young people politically engaged and create more opportunities for the millennial generation, read about Maya Enista, one of Utne Reader’s visionaries who are changing your world.

Since film director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland last weekend, well-respected celebrities have come out in droves—et tu, Whoopi Goldberg?—to defend him or suggest that it's time to move on. So it’s an overwhelming relief to read Katha Pollitt’s searing piece for The Nation, in which she calls out Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Tilda Swinton, and the other “international culture stars” who have stepped forward to support a man who drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl. Pollitt writes:

The widespread support for Polanski shows the liberal cultural elite at its preening, fatuous worst. They may make great movies, write great books, and design beautiful things, they may have lots of noble humanitarian ideas and care, in the abstract, about all the right principles: equality under the law, for example. But in this case, they're just the white culture-class counterpart of hip-hop fans who stood by R. Kelly and Chris Brown and of sports fans who automatically support their favorite athletes when they're accused of beating their wives and raping hotel workers. No wonder Middle America hates them.

Chris Rock is one “culture star” who isn’t falling in line; he was on The Jay Leno Show Thursday night expressing his own disbelief over the controversy in appropriately simple terms: “Rape! It’s rape!”

He went on: “People are defending Roman Polanski because he made some good movies? Are you kidding me? He made good movies 30 years ago, Jay! Even Johnnie Cochran don’t have the nerve to go, 'Well, did you see O.J. play against New England?'”

Watch Chris Rock's entire one-minute Polanski rant at Jezebel.

Source: The Nation, Jezebel 

The pedestrian reclamation of Times Square in New York City is a good start for the sake of public art, according to Benjamin R. Barber in the Nation. But it’s not enough. To transform the once traffic clogged area into something that can truly be considered “public,” the city must enlist artists, and secure adequate funding. He writes:

Public space is not merely the passive residue of a decision to ban cars or a tacit invitation to the public to step into the street. It must be actively created and self-consciously sustained against the grain of an architecture built as much for machines as people, more for commercial than common use.

Barber points to Chicago’s Millennium Park and Barcelona’s Las Ramblas (with all of its grit) as places that got public art right. New York has the same potential with Times Square, but it’s not there yet.

Source:  The Nation  

Image by  Falling Heavens , licensed under  Creative Commons .

For millions of Americans, the housing crisis began well before last year’s front-page collapse. Bigotry and criminalization by an unjust system of policing and incarceration, combined with economic privation, have kept even the meager privilege of a subprime mortgage or slumlord lease out of reach for many. As the crisis unfolds, the number of homeless will grow.

That stark bit of analysis is courtesy of The Nation, whose recent monthly dispatch of “Ten Things” features crucial tips and guidelines from Picture the Homeless, a grassroots social justice organization in New York that was founded by two homeless men in 1999. Should crisis hit your own backyard, the group has assembled “Ten Things You Need to Know to Live on the Streets,” which covers everything from negotiating public bathrooms to learning police patterns to adopting successful panhandling techniques. Here’s hoping you never need to use it.

Source: The Nation

Beautiful young women with fashionable clothing and loose headscarves dominated much of the imagery that emerged from the recent Iranian protests. Writing for Women News Network, Latoya Peterson writes that the focus on fashion and beauty may distract people from the real issues at play in Iran.

“Often times, Western feminists become infatuated with the symbolic nature of veiling,” according to Peterson, “and fail to listen to women discussing what they are actually fighting for.” The photographs of women in modern, Western-style clothing with hair cascading out of their veils fit nicely into people’s preconceived notions of modern pro-democracy forces rebelling against the oppressive regime.

In fact, the disastrous economic conditions in Iran are likely what motivated the protests, rather than the politics of beauty and clothing. Emphasizing beautiful protesters could distract people and oversimplify the message of the protests.

The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, on the other hand, may have appreciated some of the problematic attention, Alexander Cockburn wrote for the Nation. According to Cockburn, “Unlike those attractive Iranians, Tamils tend to be small and dark and not beautiful in the contour of poor Neda, who got out of her car at the wrong time in the wrong place, died in view of a cellphone and is now reborn on CNN as the Angel of Iran.” Peterson admits, “Sex sells but so does Iranian beauty, compelling even those who are disinterested in politics and current events to pay attention.”

Sources:  Women News Network ,  The Nation  

Image by Hamed Saber, licensed under Creative Commons.

Millions of tweets sounded off in support of Iranian protesters in Tehran last month, but nary a Washington-borne tweet has sung out from the recent healthcare hearings in Congress, or in political protest of Obama’s actions in Afghanistan, writes Alexander Cockburn for The Nation. Nor did the Twitter phenomenon (aka: “Twittergasms”) come to the aid of the estimated 20,000 killed and hundreds of thousands of displaced Tamil people of Sri Lanka earlier this year.

Could it be because Iranians are better looking, asks Cockburn? He writes:

I don't recall too many tweets in Washington or across this nation about a methodical exercise in carnage. But then, unlike those attractive Iranians, Tamils tend to be small and dark and not beautiful in the contour of poor Neda, who got out of her car at the wrong time in the wrong place, died in view of a cellphone and is now reborn on CNN as the Angel of Iran.

Source: The Nation 

Immigration hearings in the United States are federally mandated to be open to the public, with very few exceptions. When the Nation’s Jacqueline Stevens tried to attend two hearings, however, she was repeatedly denied entry, and not because of the exceptions. Stevens, an associate professor in the Law and Society Program at the University of California, reports “The immigration courts at Florence [Arizona] are either closed to the entire public or are screening for ICE critics. Both actions are illegal.” 

Experts interviewed by Stevens agree that barring observers from the courts increases the chance of exploitation and could prevent people from getting a fair hearing. Mary Naftzger, a member of the Chicago New Sanctuary Coalition who frequently attends immigration hearings, told Stevens, “We have feedback from lawyers who say the judges are more respectful when court watchers are there.”

Source: The Nation 

“Can we please stop talking about feminism as if it is mothers and daughters fighting about clothes?” Katha Pollitt writes in The Nation. “Second wave: you’re going out in that? Third wave: just drink your herbal tea and leave me alone!”

The wave structure tossed around in the media “looks historical,” Pollitt writes, when in reality it’s anything but. Second wavers (like Adrienne Rich and Gloria Steinem) are in their golden years; third wavers (known for staking a renewed claim on “girl culture” and their passion for the intersection of race, class, and gender) are approaching 40.

Yet third wave “continues to be used to describe each latest crop of feminists—loosely defined as any female with more political awareness than a Bratz doll—and to portray them in terms of their rejection of second wavers, who are supposedly starchy and censorious. Like moms. Somebody’s mom, anyway,” Pollitt writes.

Aside from being inaccurate, this wave narrative reduces feminism into a tired battle between sexual freedom and repression. “Why not acknowledge that there will never be a bright line between pleasure and danger, personal choice and social responsibility, open-minded and judgment?” Pollitt writes. “The fine points of sexual freedom will all be there waiting for us—after we get childcare, equal pay, retirement security, universal access to birth control and abortion, healthcare for all and men who do their share at home, after we achieve equal representation in government, are safe from sexual violence, and raise a generation of girls who don’t hate their bodies.”

Source: The Nation

A grassroots uprising against the environmentally-disastrous Hawaii Superferry has triumphed—for now. In March, The Nation reported that a coalition of Native Hawaiians, locals of Japanese and Filipino descent, and white settlers joined forces to protest the Superferry’s maiden voyage from Honolulu to Kaui, culminating in a standoff between the mammoth vessel and dozens of surfers and swimmers reminiscent of Tiananmen Square.

The inter-island ferry had plummeted in popularity when locals realized its full toll: it used 12,000 gallons of fuel per round trip; it raced through the habitats of humpback whales, dolphins, and sea turtles; it had the potential to transport invasive species; and, it brought cars to islands already crowded with motorists. Republican Governor Linda Lingle ignored demands for an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) from environmentalists as well as the state Supreme Court, resulting in the dramatic protest.

Now the Hawaiian State Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that the Superferry has no legal authority to continue its operations in the state. But, don’t count Lingle out. She continues to battle on behalf of the project as well as her own political ambitions. Like the dark lord Sauron in Lord of the Rings, she’s not fading away any time soon.

Image by Ed Yourdon, licensed under Creative Commons

Source: The Nation

The Nation worked with ACORN to develop a handy list of ten things you can do to avoid foreclosure. The list, which is this month's installment of The Nation's cool new "Ten Things" feature, includes advice for those who may think it's too late—#3: "If you are being foreclosed, call the ACORN foreclosure hot line immediately, at (347) 410-5894"—as well as general, longer-term tips, such as information about renters' rights, organizations that can assist families with foreclosures, and a link to a list of foreclosure scams.

Source: The Nation 

Image by respres, licensed under Creative Commons.

Utne Reader librarian Danielle Maestretti shares the highlights (and occasional lowlights) of what’s landing in our library each week in 'Shelf Life.'

Utne’s library is abuzz with a steady flow of 1,300 magazines, newsletters, journals, weeklies, zines, and other lively dispatches from the cultural front that are rarely found at big-box bookstores, or newsstands.

Featured in this week's episode:

- The "Jobless in America" feature in the February 23 issue of The Nation

- Dollars &Sense on "The New Political Economy of Immigration"

- The Texas Observer on Janet Napolitano and the border fence

- "Entertaining in the Recession" from Houston's My Table (not available online)

-Alpacas. That's right, Alpacas. From Radish

Sources: The Nation, Dollars & Sense, The Texas Observer, My Table, Radish

After lavishing praise on John McCain for his military service, Republicans took the opportunity to ridicule Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer on day three of the GOP convention.

Rudy Giuliani, George Pataki, and Sarah Palin all took turns kicking dirt on Obama’s early days on Chicago’s South Side. Pataki said, “What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.” Giuliani chimed in, “He worked as a community organizer. What? Maybe this is the first problem on the resume.” And Palin drove home the point, “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, expect that you have actual responsibilities.”

These were sharp jabs at Obama meant to stoke doubt about his readiness to be president. But the comments left any details about what Obama actually did as an organizer to the imagination. So what in God’s name did Obama do on the South Side and does it matter?

Writing for the New Republic, John B. Judis argues that the important thing to understand about Obama’s time as an organizer is not what he did, but why he quit. Judis describes Obama as “a disillusioned activist who fashioned his political identity not as an extension of community organizing but as a wholesale rejection of it.” His essay details how Obama’s organizing work led him to believe politics, not organizing, was his best opportunity to produce broad-based change. An article published last year by the Nation and another at the New Republic also take stabs at fleshing out Obama’s organizing days.

In response to the convention speeches, the Nation quotes Obama as saying, “I would argue that doing work in the community to try and create jobs, to bring people together, to rejuvenate communities that have fallen on hard times, to set up job-training programs in areas that have been hard hit when the steel plants closed, that that's relevant only in understanding where I'm coming from, who I believe in, who I'm fighting for and why I'm in this race.”

Weigh in: How is Obama's community organizing experience relevant in this election?

Image by Ari Levinson, licensed under GNU Free Documentation License.

With the tired call for “compassionate conservatism” still leaking out of the right, perhaps some liberals are attempting to separate themselves from the progressive ethos they once espoused. Perhaps empathy and compassion no longer hold the value they once did on the left. This seems to be the case with a Nation cover story earlier this year, in which Sarah Blustain examined Post-Abortion Syndrome (PAS)—the mental anguish and suffering that can follow an abortion—in men. Not only does Blustain point out that the antichoice movement has begun using these men as poster boys for its agenda—which should come as no surprise, given the nature of politics—she questions the validity of the condition itself, while implicitly accusing the men of wanting to be used.  

The conclusion drawn is that “PAS is a political strategy masquerading as a psychological crisis.” PAS is not a valid condition, Blustain argues, because a) there is little clinical evidence it exists, and b) it is being used as a political tool by the prolife movement. This sounds frighteningly similar to the reasoning behind the dismissal of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in soldiers coming back from the Vietnam War. The government perceived that acknowledging the disorder would be politically damaging, and it mysteriously went undiagnosed. This famous case of political-medical denial, of course, does not prove the existence of PAS. Yet it does show that just because science hasn’t rubber-stamped a condition, doesn’t mean people aren’t truly suffering. Nor does the political perversion of an issue invalidate the issue itself. All claims, whether they suit one’s political inclinations or not, should be taken with a healthy helping of skepticism.  

Which leaves the men themselves. The thought, unspoken but still present, in Blustain’s article is that their suffering and its use by the prolife movement is deserved, or at least self-inflicted. It’s ironic that Blustain holds these men responsible for their predicament and its usurpation by the right, when the other half of the prolife movement—the non-God half—bases their anti-abortion stance on a similar call for personal responsibility: Those attempting to overturn standing abortion laws often proclaim that adult women who willingly engage in sex that results in an unwanted pregnancy should be held accountable for their actions. Blustain applies a similar brand of reasoning in a novel way: She points out that many of these men wanted their partners to have abortions, and all of them willingly engaged in the sex that resulted in the pregnancy. Hence, it’s their fault and they should learn to deal with the emotional fallout.

Sometimes it is easy to forget that, under all the political garbage piled on by interested parties, there is a human element to every issue. And it is possible to acknowledge this element while dismissing its manipulation by those with a vested interest in its political interpretation. The heart of liberalism is empathy, and the core of empathy is a sensitivity for feelings one has never felt. It would be a shame if those of us who call ourselves liberals began dictating who may and may not suffer, thereby allowing our most noble trait to be appropriated for political gain.

—Morgan Winters