Is There Radiation in Your Seafood?

— By Kiera Butler

| Mon Apr. 11, 2011 2:30 AM PDT

seiho/Flickr

The oceans around Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant are beginning to show troubling signs of radioactivity. Recent testsby TEPCO found levels far surpassing legal limits, iodine by 7.5 million times and cesium by 1.1 million times. As MoJo environmental correspondent Julia Whitty has reported inseveral recent posts, radioactive material is now entering the marine food web, and will likely only continue to work its way up. And ocean currents are carrying the contaminants far and wide. As a result of the increased radiation levels, several countries, including Hong Kong, Russia, and India, have enacted temporary bans on Japanese seafood imports. But so far, there is no such ban in the US.

See more at: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/04/radiation-seafood-japan

The Battle Over Charter Schools

McKinley Elementary School parent, Oralia Velasquez. Photos: Kristina Rizga

Is the group behind the nation's first "parent-trigger" school experiment grassroots? Or astroturf? I went to Compton to find out.

— By Kristina Rizga

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Thu Apr. 7, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

Like all the houses on this block of southern Los Angeles, education reformer Oralia Velasquez's bungalow has bars on the windows and doors. I ring her doorbell one night as her neighbors—men in blue uniform shirts, kids carrying soccer balls—enter a few of the pastel houses that line the street, greeted by barking dogs and the wafting smell of dinner. We sit near family photos and statues of the Virgin de Guadalupe and discuss the complex national education debate playing out now at her daughter's elementary school.

California's parent trigger law: Say an elementary school like McKinley fails to make "adequate yearly progress" for four consecutive years, according to state markers measured using standardized test scores. If 51% of the school's parents sign a petition, they can request significant changes: closing the school, bringing in a charter school operator to run their school, or replacing the principal, teachers, or other administrative changes. The current version of the law doesn't require that public forums discuss all of the rights and options before or during the petition process, either. This is the first of 75 "parent triggers" allowed to take place in California's schools, and Compton is the first district in the country where this law is going through a test run.

Until the nation's first "parent trigger" law passed in California, news coverage of Compton was often reduced to gang violence and drive-by shootings. But the flatlands are also dotted with graceful, dilapidated homes: reminders of a golden era when Compton held middle-class union jobs in the auto, steel, and rubber industries. Like Detroit, the death of industry left blight in its wake, and today there are more liquor, party-supply, and 99-cent stores here than parks, playgrounds, or libraries. Fewer than 1 in 10 residents have college degrees. School dropout rates are high. School test scores are among the lowest in California.

So when someone from a nonprofit calledParent Revolution knocked on Velasquez's door last fall to talk about "the possibility of change" and how California's newly-passed "Parent Empowerment" law could help Amie, her fifth-grade daughter, learn to read better at McKinley Elementary School, she was sold. She's been hearing about "change" from the school district since she was a teenager; why not try a charter school run by the Celerity Group, the operator Parent Revolution suggested, instead? "Whenever I tried talking to previous [McKinley] teachers about Amie's struggles, they'd say, 'She is fine. She is well behaved.' But I'm not worried about her behavior. I want her to get high grades and go to college," she tells me. Aware that only one in five charters succeed, she visited one in person. "The atmosphere at Celerity is totally different. Everyone said good morning to me.

See more at: http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/parent-trigger-compton-NCLB

The Leave No Trace ethos to your bodily functions

Before you go forth and drop trou in the great outdoors, you may want to consult Kathleen Meyer's How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art.

See more at: http://motherjones.com/environment/2011/04/is-it-okay-to-poop-outside

Should Foodies Be Fasting?

— By Kiera Butler

| Fri Apr. 1, 2011 1:40 PM PDT

When fasting is in the news these days, it's usually accompanied by words like "cleanse" and "detox." You give up microwave burritos for a while, maybe hit a few yoga classes, and emerge on the other side simultaneously skinnier and more grounded. Or something.

But this week, some people are practicing a different kind of fast: They're hungerstriking to protest the cuts proposed in the house budget bill H.R.1, a brutal piece of legislation that would take food, medicine, and services away from the people who need it most—in order to provide tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations. For a side-by-side comparison of cuts to aid programs and tax breaks for rich people, check out this cool chart over at the Center for American Progress.

The growing list of fasters includes leaders of religious organizations, NGOS, activists groups, and others. On Tuesday, Mark Bittman devoted his column to the topic. The whole thing is worth reading, but his basic point is this:

...we need to gather and insist that our collective resources be used for our collective welfare, not for the wealthiest thousand or even million Americans but for a vast majority of us in the United States and, indeed, for citizens of the world who have difficulty making ends meet. Or feeding their kids.

See more at: http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2011/04/should-foodies-fast-hr1