equality, 89 years later

Photo from the Records of the National Woman's Party, Library of Congress

The United States recognized gender equality this day, August 18, 1920, in passage of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, in which women won the right to vote in all elections, state and federal.

From the August issue of the ABA Journal, this great note:

In the decades that followed the first women’s rights convention in the U.S., held in July 1848 at Seneca Falls, N.Y., two divergent strategies were pursued to secure women’s suffrage.

One group, led by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, brought test cases arguing that the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, conferred upon women the right to vote. When that failed, they proposed their own constitutional amendment. A rival group, led by Lucy Stone and Julia Ward Howe, focused on amending state constitutions.

In 1890, the two joined forces and formed the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Spurred in part by the National Woman’s Party, a more militant group headed by Alice Paul (shown above), the campaign gained momentum and, eventually, President Woodrow Wilson’s support.

In January 1918, Rep. Jeannette Rankin, R-Mont., the first woman elected to Congress, reintroduced the amendment—four decades after it had first been proposed—that would specifically enfranchise women. The 19th Amendment was ratified when Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it.

r.i.p. judge robert takasugi

Judge Robert Mitsuhiro Takasugi, of the federal Central District of California, passed away earlier this week, at the age of 79, survived by his wife and two children. He was the first Japanese American appointed to the federal bench, and a lifelong advocate for justice, especially for those who face the greatest barriers to a fair day in court.

I saw the judge speak once. It must have been 2005, at the annual APA Law & Policy Conference at Harvard, co-hosted by APIA groups from HLS and the Kennedy School. There are, it seems, some people that were built to be judges. They simply have a demeanor about them that says, "that woman/man is someone who will dispense justice fairly." It might be called 'regal,' but it is more connected with a sense of goodness for all people. Judge Takasugi was such a person, striking as a brilliant mind coupled with an unfaltering dedication to the core values of America.

His history reflects as much. He was always focused on what the law meant in the context of not only individuals, but American values, as reflected in many of his most courageous (and thus controversial) rulings (h/t angry):

Judge Takasugi was a truly extraordinary person who was, as the Los Angeles Times described him, a jurist who "swims against the national tide."

In 2002, he gained national media attention for his dismissal of several indictments against Iranian and Iranian American defendants, alleged to be members of a terrorist cell attempting to overthrow the Iranian government. The defendants challenged the government’s unilateral characterization of the group as a terrorist organization.

In the face of post-9/11 public sentiment, Judge Takasugi ruled that the government’s procedure for classifying the group as a terrorist organization was unconstitutional because the classification was made without due process of law. Judge Takasugi opined, "When weighed against a fundamental constitutional right which defines our very existence, the argument for national security should not serve as an excuse for obliterating the Constitution."

Takasugi lived government discrimination early on when he and his family were incarcerated in an internment camp during World War II, a result of popular and government paranoia and an abandonment of core values in the face of fear.

A twelve-year old Robert M. Takasugi and his family were uprooted from their home in Tacoma, Washington, relocated, and interned along with 130,000 other Japanese Americans pursuant to President Order 9066. Describing the ordeal as "an education to be fair" and one of many challenges he faced, Takasugi went on to receive degrees from UCLA and USC Law School. Thereafter, his commitment to equal justice took him to the streets of East Los Angeles, where he represented many indigent arrestees of the Watts Riots, East Los Angeles Riots, and other civil rights protestors in the 1960s before being appointed to the bench.

Judge Takasugi's dedication to fairness and justice included teaching students, but also supporting students who work to continue his legacy. The Robert M. Takasugi Fellowship annually supports law students practicing public interest law during the summer. More information on the Fellowship is here.

pictures from hiroshima

August 1928: Hiroshima celebrates the triumphant return of its high school baseball team, which has just won its second national championship. - photographed by Wakaji Matsumoto

The U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an 8,900 pound uranium bomb on the city of Hiroshima this day, August 6, 1945. The bomb killed 70,000 human beings instantly, and up to another 70,000 died of injuries and radiation poisoning over the next five years.

But Hiroshima did not begin and end on that day and in that moment. The city lived long before, and lives again today.

There are many pictures of the devastation after that first atomic bomb attack in human history, including these at the Boston Globe's The Big Picture blog, but until recently not many of the city before the bomb, as most of the pictures of the city had been destroyed in the blast, and as few as 200 photographs of the city were thought to exist. This past year, however, over 2,000 images from Hiroshima-area photographer Wakaji Matsumoto, taken between 1927 and March 1945, were donated to the city's municipal archives. Some of the images are available online at the Hiroshima Peace Media Center.

The pictures are particularly powerful because they tell the story of a vibrant city that shared very much in common with the cities in the United States. From the large parade for the victorious hometown high school baseball team to the streetcars outside of the city center, this was a place where people lived and thrived, suffered setback and won triumphs. It was, in short, a city.

How such great photos were taken in the first place is also particularly powerful, because it speaks to the connection between the city which was eventually targeted by the U.S. military as a way to quickly end the war and the United States itself. From the Hiroshima Peace Media Center:

According to The History of Japanese Photography by Kotaro Iizawa, the first commercial photography studio in Japan opened in Tokyo in 1926. Why was Mr. Matsumoto, who worked in an outlying area, able to take not only panoramic photos, which required advanced technology, but also photos that incorporated the geometrical composition and style of close-ups that were popular in the West? The answer is tied to the history of Hiroshima.

Prior to World War II more people emigrated from Hiroshima than from any other prefecture in Japan. In fact, Mr. Matsumoto’s birthplace in Jigozen, a part of Hatsukaichi, was known as “Amerikamura” (“America Village”). In 1906, Mr. Matsumoto moved to the U.S. where his father had immigrated. In a register of Japanese living in the U.S. published in 1922, Wakaji is listed as a farmer living in Los Angeles and the owner of an automobile.

Mr. Matsumoto’s second daughter, Shizue Kawamoto, 83, a resident of Hatsukaichi, said, “I was told he learned about photography in the U.S.” His panoramic photos include shots of immigrant families working in the fields. In 1927 he returned to Japan with his wife and seven children, including the 2-year-old Shizue. He brought with him a high-priced camera, a model that was almost impossible to buy in Japan at the time and which he had purchased with his earnings.

The bomb that destroyed the city was not the only thing that tied Hiroshima and its people to the United States. As is usually the case, there are many things that tie us all together, though these connections are often easy to miss when we allow hatred and fear to focus us only on divisions and differences.

Thanks to Dawn and Karl for telling me about these photos, and the extraordinary stories surrounding them.

apias now 14.2% of ca's pop; 8.2% of voters

Well, Asian Americans and "Others." Why the generally laudable Field Poll can't bring itself to create a separate category for APIAs when there are twice as many of them in California than African Americans, who do have their own category, I can't understand.

Anyway, the point is that the Californian Asian American population has increased by over 8% in the last three decades, and increased its voting power by over 5%. Take heed, Californian politicians!

Latinos are the fastest growing population in the state, increasing by almost 19% in the last thirty years, and increasing their share of voters by over 13%. The future Democratic leaders of the state are going to be the ones who recognize the growing Latino/APIA populations and can bridge the two communities, people like Congresswoman Judy Chu (D-32).

Republicans, on the other hand, with their immigrant-bashing and generally poor long-term planning, will continue to find themselves further and further marginalized in the state.

h/t Calitics.

happy birthday mr. president

Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States of America, was born this day, August 4, 1961, at the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children in Honolulu, Hawai'i, United States of America.

He is 48-years-old today.

Happy birthday!

follow-up on "eating better": cooking and time

Amanda Marcotte at pandagon has a critique of Michael Pollan's latest NYT Magazine article, which is in turn a reflection on the new Julie & Julia movie, based on a book. Marcotte's critique is from a feminist perspective (namely, that Pollan seems to be guilt-tripping women who don't cook more, while letting men off the hook for it. But in follow-up to my weekend post on how Americans simply have less time to cook, here's a double quote from Pollan and Marcotte, respectively:

If cooking really offers all these satisfactions, then why don’t we do more of it? Well, ask Julie Powell: for most of us it doesn’t pay the rent, and very often our work doesn’t leave us the time; during the year of Julia, dinner at the Powell apartment seldom arrived at the table before 10 p.m. For many years now, Americans have been putting in longer hours at work and enjoying less time at home. Since 1967, we’ve added 167 hours — the equivalent of a month’s full-time labor — to the total amount of time we spend at work each year, and in households where both parents work, the figure is more like 400 hours. Americans today spend more time working than people in any other industrialized nation — an extra two weeks or more a year. Not surprisingly, in those countries where people still take cooking seriously, they also have more time to devote to it.

And that doesn’t take the daily commute into the equation. I blame the daily commute more than any other factor for why Americans will watch cooking shows, but won’t actually get up and cook very much. Americans spend an hour and a half a day driving. They drive 16 miles on average to and from work. Those are miles driven, for most commuters, in thick, snarled, energy-draining traffic. The last thing Americans want to do when they get home, after that, is cook. Most of them think of cooking as something you do starting with a recipe, which inevitably means that you don’t have all the ingredients, and that means adding more driving time going to the grocery store even more, and who wants that? Pollan wants to put about 90% of the blame on the nationwide embrace of food in freezers and cans and boxes or out of drive-thrus---which is why he’s interested in the fact that even housewives eat about the same as everyone else---but I’m not so sure. I think a culture of processed food took advantage of people’s limited mental space for cooking, and became the norm.

Very good points, all. Pollan's seem to reflect my earlier notes regarding the need to reform how we think about work in order to improve our eating habits, but I will amend my list and add Marcotte's comments regarding our need to reform how we get to and from work. While we might not being to change travel time or distance for everyone, certainly public transportation can be much less stressful than commuting by car, trading traffic for the ability to catch up on your reading.

go soccer!

The LA Times has a piece on Major League Soccer, the hook being FC Barcelona's 2-1 victory over the LA Galaxy on Saturday. On the mostly pro-Barca crowd's booing of international soccer star and Galaxy captain David Beckham:

But soon enough the crowd reverted to booing him, a sound that was sweet music to the ears of MLS Commissioner Don Garber.

"The opposite of love isn't hate. It's indifference," Garber said. "We have people now that care about what goes on on our field. I'd rather deal with people having challenges and issues with some of the things that take place on the field than not care at all.

"The amount of awareness for this story has been one of the biggest stories in professional sports anywhere around the world, and that's a good thing for Major League Soccer."

I've been a fan of MLS from near the beginning. It was founded in 1993, right before the U.S. hosted the World Cup the following year, and in response to criticism of the lack of a professional U.S. league when the World Cup was awarded to us as the host country in 1989. I remember being in summer camp that year and the excitement of professional and international soccer really coming to the U.S. (I seem to remember "pogs" being big around the same time, and some fast food franchise giving out country team pogs as part of the promotion of the World Cup). It turned out that it was a momentum changing year for the sport here in America, with the U.S. Men's National Team making it to the knockout round (round of 16) for the first time since World War II. The U.S. Men's National Team has qualified for the World Cup in every tournament since, with disappointing finishes in 1998 and 2006, but a quarterfinalist performance in 2002. Team USA has also placed in the top three in the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) Gold Cup 8 of the 9 tournaments since 1993, including three champioinships. Most recently, Team USA made a lot of noise with a huge 2-0 win over Spain, ranked overall number 2 in FIFA, in the Confederations Cup.

The U.S. Men's National Team is currently ranked overall 12 in the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), among 208 teams.

MLS has been a boon for soccer fans in the United States; as the LA Times article notes, large international games have drawn capacity crows of 90,000 to 100,000 throughout the history of American soccer. The article, however, makes an unfair comparison to the average MLS game audience:

There is an audience for soccer, for the big occasions when remarkable club teams such as Barcelona visit. Yet, Saturday's crowd was about six times bigger than the average MLS crowd, which was about 15,515 through mid-July.

The disconnect remains between fans who will come out in happy droves to see Barcelona or AC Milan play the Galaxy and the smaller crowds that file into MLS stadiums.

But as the article notes not two paragraphs later, "MLS has smartly avoided that with a business plan that makes it more sensible for teams to invest in soccer-specific stadiums that seat 20,000 to 25,000." It should be no surprise that a game featuring former Real Madrid teammate Beckham against FC Barcelona--currently the best Spanish and European Team (2008-09 La Liga, Copa del Rey, and UEFA Champions League champions, as well as Madrid's La Liga rival--would draw fans of all stripes to such a momentous occasion. But 15,515 on average per match is nothing to scoff at, especially considering there are 6 or 7 matches a week, with teams across the country, from L.A. to Boston to New York to Columbus, Ohio to Dallas and Houston and Seattle, etc, etc, etc. There are currently 15 MLS clubs, with expansions planned in Philly for the 2010 season, and Portland, Oregon and Vancouver in 2011. The concern for MLS right now is smart growth, building the infrastructure for a sustainable league with soccer-specific stadiums, and a loyal fanbase around clubs. Commissioner Don Garber, who has led the league's resurgence since 1998, has a clear, and so far successful plan for expanding the league, both in terms of number of teams but also in terms of the fans. I look forward to much more great U.S. soccer in years to come.

helping people eat better food

Americans need better food. For a country of vast wealth and natural resources, including some of the largest expanses of the most fertile farmland on Earth, it is surprising how difficult it can be to get food that is healthy, nutritious, and safe.

Especially during the summer months, BBQ Season, we here the sad tales again and again of fatal E.coli O157 infections, the result of raising cattle and other animals in unsustainable ways, and of the industrialization of food. For although the development of cities and the specialization of labor long ago disconnected humans from direct contact with the growing and raising of much of their food, there was a point not too long ago where you knew that the meat and dairy that you bought wasn't far removed from the farm. But I'm not one to wax nostalgic, and I think returning to our hunter-gather days would be a mistake; the advances that we have made in science, arts, literature, and bettering of the world and our lives would be impossible if our days were filled with the desperate search for food. Nonetheless, we should be concerned that fewer and fewer Americans have time to even shop and cook, much less grow and raise, the food that they eat.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, as many high school history students have learned over the years, was supposed to demonstrate the terrible working conditions that those working in the food industry faced, but instead galvanized the American public to demand better food safety laws. In a turn of events, it is perhaps poetic that it should be a growing public demand for more accountability with regard to how our food is raised and cooked might be a catalyst for better working conditions. If we're serious about tackling the public health crisis wherein 2/3 of American adults suffer from obesity, and the food safety crisis where most Americans are buying beef, spinach, asparagus, even peanut butter that is mass-produced in a manner so that the question isn't whether there will be another salmonella or E.coli outbreak, but when, then we need to look at why Americans are eating this way now.

It's not just the Farm Bill, though that is part of the problem. The five-to-seven year Farm Bill, also known within food activist circles as the Food Bill, creates massive subsidies and prioritizes who will be able to produce what foods for how much, and through what markets. Consider that $9.4 billion went to corn farmers, while less than $1 million went to promote farmers markets, which are undoubtedly some of the freshest sources of fruit, vegetables, eggs, dairy, poultry, and other staples that you'll find anywhere. This isn't anything against corn; full disclaimer: I love corn. My dad has a great recipe for marinating corn-on-the-cob and it ends up being one my favorite grilled foods. But the reality is that much of the corn that is grown isn't even grown for human consumption, at least not directly. That corn is usually sweet corn, and in the heart of corn country, Iowans grow only 4,876 acres of sweet corn, compared to 11,900,000 acres of "field corn," corn that is too coarse for human consumption but used as animal feed, ethanol, or to create starches, oils, or sweeteners, like the infamous high fructose corn syrup. Farm Bill subsidies are thus concentrated in producing inedible corn that creates artificial food additives or grows animals rapidly and unsustainably. It is no wonder, then, that the bill's provisions dealing with free and subsidized primary and secondary school meals are less than nutritious, focusing on the number of calories delivered to each child rather than the actual nutrients the student is receiving.

Again, this is all tied in to how Americans work. Because if the question is, who do you trust more to make a lunch, parents or for-profit food services outfits like Aramark, who also operates food services for prisons, then the answer should be obvious (Aramark serves 420 K-12 school districts, 400 colleges and universities, and 600 prisons). Likewise, we shouldn't even need to ask if you'd trust the Golden Arches more with your dinner than your own self. But this is easier said than done, largely due to cost and time.

A study by University of Washington professor Adam Drewnowski found that those with the highest income ate the most nutritious food. We need to make healthy foods more available. We also have to recognize that making healthier foods more accessible will happen largely through conventional grocery stores. There are only 3,700 farmers markets in the country, but beyond that, anyone who's been to both a farmers market and a grocery store know that farmers markets are quite a bit more expensive. So while it would be great if we could get everyone to eat local, biosustainable, organic food, the first step should be to help people think about how to eat healthier within the confines of current food pricing. Prof. Drewnowski has taken a first stab at this with his research, looking at national food prices compared to portion sizes and calories, pushing "healthy cheap eats." He also considered how long food keeps. His list includes:

• Milk


• Potatoes


• Carrots


• Apples


• Canned tomatoes


• Canned/frozen corn kernels


• Lean hamburger


• Chicken (but don't fry it)


• Green beans

Not exactly a groundbreaking list, but the point is that in promoting healthier eating and better food practices, it's going to take small revolutions of habit in a country where Americans spend almost half of their food spending on meals prepared away from home, and 44% of Americans eat fast food for dinner at least once a week.

Which gets us to the issue of time. Prof. Drewnowski also found that the wealthiest Seattle-ites who at the most nutritiously spent from 9 to 16 hours a week buying, preparing, and cooking the food. By comparison, Americans spend an average of 5 hours total for those activities each week. Americans work 50% more than our French, German, and Italian counterparts. But increases in American productivity have not equally benefited American workers. Consider this chart, comparing increases in major economic sector productivity with wages of Americans working in those sectors:



Real wages, that is, what we're earning given inflation, have stagnated over the last 30 years, and actually declined slightly during the 1980s. And as the saying goes, time is money. Finding an additional 4 to 11 hours a week to shop and cook is not easy when taking second jobs or working longer hours. About 7.8 million people, or 1 in 20 of all American workers, work two or more jobs. So while it is crucial that we work to ensure that the Farm Bill and other policies promote sustainable and healthy food, we also need to find ways to promote sustainable and healthy lifestyles.