Democracy Now 10

Tabitha Arambula

April 27, 2014

Soc 122

Democracy Now 10

Toms River: How a Small Town Fought Back Against Corporate Giants for Toxic Dumping Linked to Cancer Wednesday April 23^rd

            This story was about a town, Toms River in New Jersey, who fought against childhood cancer that was linked to air and water pollution. There was a book about this and it won the Pulitzer prize for general non-fiction. There were two residents who shared their stories about how their child was diagnosed with cancer, and how their whole lives changed. The first story about michael was really sad. He had cancer and his tumor was pushing his spine out. When the mother said she would mix the baby formula with the tap water I was shocked because I don't think that tap water is good for babies, and so she believes that the reason why her son, michael got cancer was because of the Toms River tap water. Dan Fagin is the author of the book, Toms River, and he decided to do the book because he was an environmental reporter, which is a newspaper. And he was very interested in the cancer patterns in long island, and trying to interpret those patterns. And in Toms River, had really good science being done, so he went and did a story.  He talked about the chemical plant in Toms River in 1953. They started with dyes, and it turned out that making dyes made more hazardous waste material and the company would either bury it underground or put it in the water. Linda, The mother of Michael, made a map of the kids in Toms River and she kept track of the cases and she wanted to know what was going on, but they had told her that there was nothing wrong.

 

Jim Crow in the Classroom: New Report Finds Segregation Lives on in U.S. Schools Wednesday April 23^rd

This story was about how US schools are still segregated. Black and Latino students are being removed or separated from everyone else. One in three black students goes to a scholl that looks like Brown V. Board of Education never happened, says, Nikole Hannah Jones. She is the author of Segregation Now. The Supreme Court has backed a ban on race as a factor in college admissions. Race should not matter when you look at US schools. We still have a racialized K-12 system and that black and brown students are in schools that are getting inferior education. They have a less rigorous curriculum, and are less likely to have access to advanced courses that will help them in the future. And when they get to college, race doesn't matter. The 1954 ruling of Brown v Board of education said separate but equal. But either way white students have more access to better resources like textbooks, classes, etc. in Tuscaloosa, they wanted to further segregate black students and they did, but Ernestine Tucker as a member of the board thought this was criminal and that they would see the damage they have done in the next 50 years. She also talked about how there are all black schools and hoe they don't experience race diversity but economic diversity. The poorest are with the poor and they don't have the same resources as other students in the same neighborhood. Governor George Wallace wanted segregation forever, and that isn't what happened. There are no more white school but the apartheid schools are 99% black or brown and although we have tried to do the separate but equal on schools, we have not yet been successful on that either.