old man jenkins

She didn’t run for election; she was appointed, without her knowledge, while she was living and working in a completely different part of the country. She just received a call one day telling her to come back to her childhood home, because she was in charge now.

So she did; and when she arrived, she discovered widespread sexual abuse of children. She browbeat 50 uncooperative local leaders into accepting her decision to annul all the marriages. She then fired four of them when they continued to allow children to be married off in their areas. She still faces widespread opposition from parents who consider it their right to sexually abuse their daughters if they want to; but Kachindamoto very evidently does not give a fuck, and is continuing to use political and legal means to protect children in the region.

Bushwick 6th grader Ciro Ortiz has been spending the last few Sundays with a stand at the Bedford Avenue L stop, giving straight talk advice to straphangers the way only an 11-year-old can.

Like any superhero, Ortiz has a tragic backstory, which in this case is that he’s bullied by asshole kids at his middle school. Even in the face of that though, Ortiz’s mother says that he takes his profits and buys food and snacks for kids who can’t afford them. Truly, this is a child too good for both middle school and this Earth

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Be the change, Ciro. From one bullied kid to another, you are doing the exact right thing. I love seeing young POC doing things like this. Proud of you! 

Why we need GMOs to survive climate change

Genetically modified organisms get a bad rap for many reasons, but we’ve actually been genetically altering what we eat since the dawn of human history.

“For 10,000 years, we have altered the genetic makeup of our crops,”explains UC Davis plant pathology professor Pamela Ronald.

“Today virtually everything we eat is produced from seeds that we have genetically altered in one way or another.” (You can read more about Ronald’s thoughts on genetically engineered food here.)

Right now her focus is on rice. It’s one of our basic crops and without it, we would struggle to feed much of the world.

With climate change, we’re seeing an increase in flooding in places like India and Bangladesh, which makes it harder to grow this important food staple.

So Ronald and her lab have developed a flood-tolerant strain of rice. It’s known as Sub1a or “scuba rice” and millions of farmers in South Asia are now growing it in their fields. 

Today is National Food Day, a day dedicated to hunger awareness. But as we focus on food insecurity, we need to talk more about how global warming will make the problem worse.

As our climate continues to heat up, it has huge impacts on what foods we are able to grow. Will our crops be able to survive droughts and floods? The University of California leads six labs that are working to develop other climate-resilient crops including chickpea, cowpea and millet.

Motel manager, James “Jimmy” Brock, pouring acid into a swimming pool to drive black people away from a “Swim In” protest, in St. Augustine, Florida on June 18, 1964.