Perspectives on Social Issues
(May 2007)

Capital Punishment Slowly Decreasing in U.S.
"The nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, DC, noted in its year-end report that the use of capital punishment continued to decline in 2006, with executions dropping to their lowest levels in a decade. The number of death sentences and the size of the nation’s death rows are also decreasing. And, the report notes, the Gallup polls found that more people now support a sentence of life in prison without parole rather than execution....

Before his retirement in 1994, the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who had been a supporter of capital punishment, concluded that the death penalty could not be fixed and declared, 'I will no longer tinker with the machinery of death.' Since then, 'tinkering' on a wide level has led to significant results in lessening the use of and support for the death penalty. In New York and New Jersey, for example, hearings held over many days led state residents to testify overwhelmingly that capital punishment should be abandoned. Meanwhile, four countries account for almost all executions in the world: China, Iran and Saudi Arabia are three. The United States is number four -- hardly appropriate company for a nation that wants to be proud of its human rights record."

“Editorial: The Death Penalty: 'Tinkering' to Good Effect," America, Feb 19, 2007.

Wealth Divide Growing around the World and in U.S.
"A new global study of personal wealth shows that the richest 2 percent of adults now own more than half of global household wealth. The study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University, Helsinki was based on data from the year 2000. It showed that the richest 1 percent of adults (those worth at least $500,000) controlled 40 percent of global assets, and that the richest 10 percent of adults (those worth at least $61,000) owned 85 percent of the world total. Meanwhile the bottom half (those worth less than $2,200) together owned barely 1 percent of global wealth.

The United States is one of the world’s wealthiest countries, but the wealth divide here is just as deep. The richest 10 percent of Americans controls 70 percent of the wealth."

"Global Wealth: The Great Divide Gets Larger" by Michelle Wallar, Sign of Life, Yes! Magazine, Spring 2007.

Urban Agriculture Provides Sustainable Food and Jobs in Cuba
"Residents of Cuban cities grew more than 1 million tons of vegetables and spices between January and March of 2006, according to a report in Latin America Press. Peppered throughout Havana and Cuba’s other urban areas are more than 35,500 hectares of small plots, high-production gardens, and container gardens that grow a variety of vegetables, spices, bananas, rice, and other crops. This small-scale, mostly organic farming has produced food for the nation and created 350,000 jobs, 20 percent of which are filled by women.

During Cuba’s economic crisis in the 1990s, the state-sponsored National Urban Agriculture Program launched civilian cultivation projects across the country. The Cuban government monitors more than 4,000 urban organic plots nationwide to gauge production, soil use, and other agricultural parameters. Since the program’s inception more than a decade ago, three strong hurricanes have hit Cuba, but the small size of the plots helped minimize damage to the food supply, says Adolfo Rodríguez Nodals, head of the National Urban Agriculture Group. Rodríguez Nodals notes that another advantage to urban farming is the reduced use of fossil fuels, since the crops do not need to be transported long distances to reach the 76 percent of Cuba’s population that lives in cities."

"Urban Agriculture Provides Cubans with Food, Jobs," Eye on Earth by Alana Herro, WorldWatch, Mar/Ap 2007.

People-centered Microcredit Achieving Powerful Results across Africa
"Shared Interest, which became an independent entity in 1995, made its mission to step in and guarantee bank loans for low-income communities in South Africa. In other words, while a bank might not be willing to lend money to a poor person wanting to start his/her own business or buy a home, it will happily do so if someone can give it a guarantee that the money will be paid back. Shared Interest provides that guarantee, in the form of a fund that acts as collateral against loans for South Africa’s poor....

Since its founding, Shared Interest has helped more than 600,000 of South Africa’s poor access the capital they need to create jobs, affordable housing, and vital small businesses. More significantly, it is helping to build strong microcredit institutions across the country: It has worked with 28 South African lending organizations since 1994, many of which are now able to borrow from local banks and increase their own loans to struggling communities without Shared Interest’s backing."

“Economic Action for Africa" by Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, Co-op America Quarterly, Spring 2007.

Racial Disparity in Juvenile "Justice"
"A report released [February 2, 2007] by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency challenges the assumption that black and brown children are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system simply because they commit more crime. 'And Justice for Some: Differential Treatment of Youth of Color in the Justice System' describes in painstaking detail how youths of color enter the criminal justice system in far greater proportion than whites. Council researchers found differential treatment at every step of the criminal justice process. For instance, youths of color are more likely to be picked up and detained by police. Among the finding from the council’s report:

• African-American youths are 4.5 times more likely, and Latinos 2.3 times more likely, than white youths to be detained for identical offenses.
• About half of white teenagers arrested on a drug charge go home without being formally charged and drawn into the system. Only a quarter of black teens arrested on drug charges catch a similar break.
• When charges are filed, white youths are more likely to be placed on probation while black youth are more likely to get locked up."

“Racial Disparity in Juvenile Justice" by Nell Bernstein, National Catholic Reporter (NCR), Feb 2, 2007.