Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/mary-turck/page/6/)
Mary Turck (maryturck@gmail.com) is a freelance writer, editor, teacher, and lifelong activist. She is the former editor of the TC Daily Planet, the Connection to the Americas and AMERICAS.ORG. She is also a recovering attorney and the author of many books for young people (and a few for adults), mostly focusing on historical and social issues. She lives in St. Paul with her husband, two daughters, and two cats.
Tens of thousands of children from Honduras and El Salvador and Guatemala are fleeing violence in their home countries. Some have sought safe haven in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. More than 57,000 have entered the United States since October. Kevin, one of the 57,000, describes why he left his home in Honduras: Continue Reading
During the first weekend in August, about 400,000 people in and around Toledo couldn’t drink the water — or even wash in it. They normally get water from Lake Erie. This summer, Lake Erie was so polluted that the water was unfit for human use. Continue Reading
“We, as Americans, are better than this,” Imam Asad Zaman told the crowd standing under the blazing August sun. “We cannot kick people away from the doorstep.”
Adel Daoud was the teenage son of immigrants, attending a neighborhood Islamic high school when the FBI started talking to him online. According to his mother,
“Daoud required extra assistance in school, and was heavily dependent on her: ‘He’s not the person with a complete mind. He didn’t talk until five. He was the last one of my kids to talk. He doesn’t even talk Arabic….like the rest of our family, because he’s slow.’” Illusion of Justice, p. 28 Continue Reading
With six “very old” chairs, the elderly woman knew she needed some repairs. Trying out her new computer skills, she put “chair repair” into Google, and saw several repair shops within easy driving distance — and a website called “how to repair chairs.” And, she proudly told her Computer Club friends, she followed the directions and fixed all the chairs herself!The Computer Club for Seniors at Episcopal Homes in St. Paul was just one of the projects that this year’s CTEP members dreamed, planned and implemented. CTEP stands for the AmeriCorps Community Technology Empowerment Program of SPNN. Continue Reading
UPDATED 7/30/2014: Republicans care about poor people! Yes, they do, and to prove it, Paul Ryan (R-WI) is proposing a poverty plan. His plan comes just in time for the 2014 election campaign, and maybe also in time to feature in a 2016 presidential bid. Unlike FDR’s New Deal or LBJ’s War on Poverty, however, this is a plan that will make more people poorer. Paul Ryan loves poor people so much that he wants more of them! Continue Reading
Some 25 years ago, the Annie E. Casey Foundation began an annual, in-depth report on the well-being of children in the United States. The 2014 report shows our accomplishments — and our shameful failures. The area of education shows both. Continue Reading
How many journalists does it take to change a light bulb?
“We just report the facts, we don’t change them.”
I don’t believe that for a minute. Continue Reading
The Minneapolis city council’s new regulations for Lyft, Uber, and the city’s cab companies offer legalization for the transnational, multimillion-dollar Uber and Lyft “Transportation Network Companies,” some breaks to the city’s taxi companies, and next to nothing for hard-working taxi drivers. Continue Reading
During the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Central American refugees arrived in the United States. Like the child refugees fleeing Central America in 2014, they were met with hostility, rejection and deportation. Though entitled to protection under international law, the Central American refugees of the 1980s and the child refugees today do not receive that protection in fact. Continue Reading