As part of a collaboration with the National Writing Project, this is the first in a series of teacher-created educator guides on key topical issues. Written by two NWP-affiliated high school English and media arts teachers – Kirsten Spall of Natomas Charter High School (Sacramento) and Chris Sloan of Judge Memorial Catholic School (Salt Lake City) – the guide helps teachers explore and navigate the highly-charged political and emotional issues behind the topic of gun control. Based on content featured on The Lowdown, the guide provides ideas for integrating the issues into English language arts and social studies curriculum. It includes Common Core Standards Alignment, a synopsis of key background information, integration tips, and lists of issue pros and cons, creative writing prompts and best classroom practices.

Download the entire guide here (PDF)

georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov

One of the final requirements in the long road to becoming an American citizen (in addition to an application, an FBI background check, and a three-part English language exam) is passing a short civics test. Applicants are given 10 questions about American history and government (randomly selected from a batch of 100 questions that they are allowed to preview beforehand). The test is given orally, so unlike the quiz below, there is no multiple choice. To pass, applicants must answer at least six questions correctly. The questions in this quiz are adapted from the list of 100 possible questions that could be asked.

So … how would you do? Give it a shot!

As Congress haggles over comprehensive immigration reform, it’s worth taking a look who America’s immigrant population actually is. The following infographics, compiled and designed by the Pew Research Hispanic Center, illustrate findings from its analysis of the nation’s foreign-born population. The information is based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 American Community Survey, which counts both legal and undocumented immigrants.

The estimated 11.1 million undocumented immigrants make up less than a third of all foreign-born residents in America. Among them, roughly 40% to 50% entered the country legally and overstayed their visas, according to 2006 Pew estimates. The majority of undocumented immigrants have lived in the country for 10 years or longer. 

The Haymarket affair, as depicted in a Harper’s Magazine engraving (Wikimedia Commons)

For some, May Day means prancing awkwardly around a feather-wreathed pole.

But that ancient Druid rite of Spring is likely not what today’s immigrant rights protestors have in mind.

In about 80 countries throughout the world, May Day is actually an official labor holiday, often commemorated with large strikes, rallies, and demonstrations in support of workers rights. The day’s roots date back to a heated struggle for something that most of us now take for granted: the eight-hour work day.

Also known as International Workers Day, May Day has become largely overlooked in the U.S.; we celebrate our own federal labor holiday four months later, which is pretty ironic, considering that it commemorates an event that happened on American streets.

A long tradition of income inequality and labor struggle

Income inequality in America (and most other places in the world, for that matter) is certainly nothing new. Dating back to colonial times, there has consistently been a fairly large chasm separating society’s small number of rich and powerful – those who control the means of production (who Karl Marx famously referred to as “capitalists”) – and the laboring masses who keep the machines humming (Marx called them the “proletariat”).

The actual size of the gulf between the two groups, however, has vacillated significantly over the course of America’s history. Today, that gap is pretty huge, a disparity that spurred the Occupy Movement protests two years ago, and heightened public demand for a more level playing field.

In the late 19^th Century, the income divide was similar in scope to what it is now, and the effort to mobilize working classes often resulted in explosive clashes with authorities, many of which  make most of today’s protests look more like, well, dances around the may pole.

A 1911 Industrial Worker publication illustraiton critiquing the capitalist system. (Wikimedia Commons)

In the period known as The Gilded Age, which stretched from the end of the Civil War to the turn of the century, America went through a period of dramatic economic growth and industrialization. This resulted in huge concentrations of wealth. The growth also demanded a larger workforce, which in turn fueled a sudden population boom in cities around the country, where millions of poor European immigrants  flocked in search of opportunity.

Chicago: A hub of industry and worker discontent

Chicago’s population, in particular, grew exponentially: in 1870, a mere 300,000 people lived in the city, but by 1900, it was home to roughly 1.7 million. German immigrants composed the largest ethnic group. The city became a major industrial hub and focus of labor organizing efforts. In the near complete absence of binding labor laws, newly arrived workers often toiled in wretched and dangerous conditions, working long hours for paupers wages. The eight-hour work day was still a distant goal, and challenges to the existing order were often met with repressive and violent retaliation from employers and authorities.

A brief period of economic slowdown in the early 1880s gave rise to successful organizing campaigns by militant socialist and anarchist labor leaders, who picked May 1, 1886 as the target date by which the eight-hour day would be established.

The convention resolved that:

“Eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labour from and after May 1, 1886, and that we recommend to labour organizations throughout this jurisdiction that they so direct their laws as to conform to this resolution by the time named.”

Labor unions in cities across the country prepared for a general strike in support of the demand, and on May 1, large rallies were held throughout the nation.

A flier promoting the the Chicago labor rally (Wikimedia Commons)

Two days later, strikers gathered outside Chicago’s McCormick Harvesting Machine Company Plant (known as “The Reaper Works”), which for months had locked out workers. A clash erupted between police and protesters, and two workers were killed.

The Haymarket Affair

In response, anarchist labor leaders quickly organized another rally the following evening in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. That night, a large crowd amassed to hear speeches from several prominent labor leaders. The event proceeded peacefully until large numbers of police arrived and ordered the remaining workers to disburse. As the police advanced on the crowd, a homemade bomb was thrown. In the melee that ensued, seven policeman were killed, mostly by friendly fire. Police then proceeded to fire on the crowd, killing at least four demonstrators and injuring scores of others.

The seven anarchists initially sentenced to death for the murder of a police officer during the Haymarket incident (Wikimedia Commons)

In the event’s aftermath, labor activists, particularly anarchist agitators, were viewed by authorities with heightened suspicion, as were many immigrant workers, and a number of subsequent organizing efforts were violently suppressed by police. In a desperate effort to identify the perpetrators of the Haymarket incident, Chicago authorities captured and convicted eight local labor leaders, despite any concrete evidence of their involvement in the incidents. Four were hanged, one committed suicide, and three were pardoned six years later by the governor of Illinois. The bomber was never found.

The Haymarket Affair, as the incident became known, spurred a fresh wave of labor activism around the world, particularly among younger generations of workers. Membership in labor organizations spiked.

The first May Day

Responding to ongoing pressure for an eight-hour day, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) resumed the fight and set May 1, 1890 as the date for a general strike. AFL president Samuel Gompers enlisted the support of European socialist labor leaders, proposing an international day of action to demand a universal eight-hour day.

Workers in countries throughout Europe and America rallied in the streets. The following day, the New York World’s front page was devoted entirely to the event, according to Philip Sheldon Foner, author of May Day: A Short History of the International Workers’ Holiday.

The headlines proclaimed:

“Parade of Jubilant Workingmen in All the Trade Centers of the Civilized World”

and

“Everywhere the Workmen Join in Demands for a Normal Day”

The Times of London listed 24 European cities where demonstrations had occurred. It also noted events in Cuba, Peru and Chile.

Commemoration of May Day became an annual event, as workers in a growing number of nations each year participated. Today it still retains strong international political significance in a number of countries throughout the world – especially those with socialist or former-socialist governments.

Interestingly, though, America’s observance of May Day became increasingly obsolete in the 20th Century.  In 1894, riots erupted during the longstanding Pullman Strike near Chicago. The incident, in which several workers were killed by federal authorities, drew national attention. Under pressure to appease labor, Congress unanimously voted to approve rush legislation to make Labor Day a national holiday. President Grover Cleveland signed it into law six days after the end of the strike. Eager to distinguish Labor Day from the more radical activities associated with May Day, Cleveland agreed on a September date for the holiday — one that  trade unions had identified a decade earlier as a worker celebration day (separate from May Day).

So what ever became of the eight-hour day?

The American labor effort for the eight-hour day persisted through the turn of the century, with ongoing, and sometimes violent, strikes and demonstrations. Incrementally, though, a number of key industries agreed to adhere to shortened. And in 1916, Congress enacted the Adamson Act, officially establishing the eight-hour work day — the first federal law to regulate the hours of workers in private companies.

Two decades labor, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which set the maximum workweek at 40 hours for a wide range of industries, it also required employers to pay overtime bonuses.

Check out the following PBS video (in three parts) on the history of the incidents that you can partially thank for your 9 to 5 work schedule:

Haymarket Martyrs–Origin of International Workers Day

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The last time the Supreme Court took up a case on marriage equality was 46 years ago when about one-third of all states in the country still had laws that banned people of different races from marrying each other. This week all eyes are on the High Court as it prepares to hear oral arguments on two cases related to same-sex marriage. At issue is whether gay marriage bans violate the rights those couples have to equal treatment under the law, as guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The Court’s rulings on both cases – expected by June – will likely be considered landmark decisions, ones that could potentially result in a dramatic widening of marriage rights for same-sex couples throughout the country … or a preservation of the status quo. The issue, though, harkens back to another, often forgotten, landmark civil rights decision from 1967 that similarly addressed marriage equality and the concept of equal protection of the law,  long before the notion of legalized same-sex marriage was considered even a remote possibility. Appropriately titled Loving v. Virginia, the case before the Court concerned the fate of its two plaintiffs: a black woman and a white man who had married each other in Washington D.C., but lived in Virginia, one of almost 20 mostly southern states in the late 1950s that still enforced anti-miscegenation laws prohibiting whites from marrying people of color. (Virginia, it turns out, hasn’t always been for all lovers.) In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that such bans were in violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, ending the last piece of explicitly legalized segregation in America.

The plaintiffs

In 1958 Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in Washington D.C. Upon retuning shortly thereafter to Virginia, police raided their home in the middle of the night, arresting the couple on felony charges for breaking the state’s anti-miscegenation law, known as the Racial Integrity Act, which made it a criminal act for any white person to marry any person of color. In January 1959, the two –- a bricklayer and a homemaker — pled guilty in state court. A trial judge sentenced them both to one year in prison, suspending the sentence on condition that they leave the state and not return for 25 years. In considering his verdict, the judge wrote:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The Lovings moved to Washington D.C., where their union was legally recognized. They had no intention of becoming activists, but longed to return to Virginia. In 1964, as Congress debated passage of the Civil Rights Act, Mildred Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, asking if the new law could help them. They were referred to the American Civil Liberties Union, who took up the case, filing suit in federal court against the State of Virginia. Three years later, after several appeals, the case reached the Supreme Court.

Anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Almost every state in the country has had some form of anti-miscegenation law in its history. By the end of World War II, about 40 states still had active anti-miscegenation laws on the books, including California. In 1948, the California Supreme Court ruled In Perez v. Sharp that the state’s anti-miscegenation statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It became the first state since Ohio in 1887 to repeal its anti-miscegenation law. Throughout the 1950s, numerous other states followed California’s lead, and by the start of the Loving’s Supreme Court case, the remaining 16 holdouts were almost all in the South.

The Court’s Ruling

The Court unanimously overturned Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, rejecting the state’s defense that the statute applied equally to both blacks and whites. It held that drawing distinctions based on race were generally “odious to a free people,” and should therefore be subject to “the most rigid scrutiny” under the Equal Protection Clause. The Virginia law, the Court stated, had no legitimate purpose except blatant racial discrimination as “measures designed to maintain white supremacy.” Delivering the opinion of the Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. … To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

The decision effectively overturned all state laws that prohibited any kind of interracial marriage. In several states, though, some of the statutes remained on the books, even though they were no longer legally enforceable. Alabama in 2000 was the last state to officially remove an anti-miscegenation provision from its state constitution. The ballot measure passed by a 60 percent margin. But nearly 526,000 people voted to keep the provision in place. In 2007, on the 40^th anniversary of her Supreme Court case, Mildred Loving – who died the following year at age 68 – mentioned same-sex marriage in reference to the ongoing struggle for imarriage equality:

I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry… I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Photo by: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk

In our hyper-connected world, where success is often measured by the number of “followers” and “friends” we have, becoming pope is pretty much the holy grail.

I mean, think about it: you become pope, and just like that, you’ve got 1.2 billion followers. Take that Twitter!

That’s about how many Roman Catholics there are in the world today, according to Vatican figures. That’s more than 1 in 7 people on the planet who subscribe to the belief that the pope is one of the closest mortals to God. And it makes the papacy an incredibly powerful global force.

Among those ranks, a steadily growing majority live in the global south, more than 40 percent of whom hail from Latin America. Brazil has the largest Catholic population in the world, and three other Latin American countries are in the top 10, according to the the World Christian Database (as reported by the BBC). Roughly three-quarters of Latin America’s entire population — about 483 million — is now Catholic.

Click through the map below – produced by The Globe and Mail, using 2010 data from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life – to find the size of each country’s Catholic population as a percentage of its overall population.

So it wasn’t mere coincidence that the College of Cardinals on Wednesday chose Jose Mario Bergoglio of Argentina to be the church’s first Latin American leader and its only non-European pope in more than 1,200 years. In electing Pope Francis – as he’s now known – the cardinals made a statement that the future of the Catholic Church is based in the global south.

“As you know, the duty of the conclave was to appoint a bishop of Rome,” the newly anointed pope said from the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica as throngs of ecstatic followers cheered below. “And it seems to me that my brother cardinals have gone to the ends of the earth to find one. But here I am.”

Born to Italian immigrant parents and raised in Buenos Aires, Pope Francis – a Jesuit – is not likely to lead the church in any radically different philosophical direction from his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. The two leaders are both conservative and fairly consistent in their opposition to divisive social issues like birth control and homosexuality.

Nevertheless, Pope Francis’ ascendancy marks a major turning point in the trajectory of the church, an acknowledgement that the demographics of its congregants have changed dramatically over the last century, and even in the past several decades.

In 1910, 65 percent of Catholics were European, 24 percent were from Latin America and the Caribbean, and less than 1 percent were from Africa, according to the Pew Forum. A century later, in 2010, only about 24 percent of Catholics were Europeans, while roughly 40 percent were Latin American. Africa, meanwhile, now has the fastest growing Catholic population in the world – rising from 45 million in 1970 to 176 million in 2012 – with Asia a close second.

Source: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Gun control advocates say yes. Gun rights folks beg to differ.

Big surprise on that one, huh?

Source: Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence

The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, an advocacy group pushing for tougher regulations, assigned every state a grade based on 29 different policy approaches to regulating firearms and ammunition. California topped the list with an  A-. (New York – which now requires background checks for ammunition sales – has since surpassed California in the toughness of it’s gun laws. It’s the first state to enact such legislation following the Newtown shooting. And debates have begun in a handful of other states – including California and Colorado – to strengthen gun laws there.)

The Center points to 2010 statistics showing that seven out of 10 states with the strictest regulations also had that lowest gun homicide rates.

Click on image to explore interactively. Source: Guardian

But gun rights advocates opposed to tighter regulations argue that this correlation is inconclusive and misleading. A common counter argument is that stricter regulations don’t do anything to prevent  criminals from getting a hold of guns -  they just prevent law abiding citizens from being able to protect themselves. Many also point to states like Maine, which has some of the loosest regulations in the country (it received an F grade by gun control groups,  but also has among the lowest gun homicide rates in the country). On the contrary, they argue, the strict gun laws in cities like Chicago and Washington D.C. have  failed to prevent those rising homicide rates in those places.

“The gun laws in Chicago only restrict the law-abiding citizens and they’ve essentially made the citizens prey,” Richard A. Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association told the NY Times.

California vs. South Dakota: the toughest and loosest gun laws

Despite its  relatively low rate of gun homicides, South Dakota got smacked with an F grade by the Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which identified it as the state with the nation’s weakest gun laws. Here’s how the two states compare:.

99 ways states have loosened gun laws

Mother Jones magazine tracked 99 state laws passed since 2009 that have made guns easier to own and carry in public, and harder for the government to track. According to the report, these laws were pushed through by the National Rifle Association and allies in state capitols. More than two-thirds of them were passed by Republican-controlled legislatures, though often with bipartisan support.

Mother Jones highlighted some of the more striking laws it came across:

• Bullets and booze: In Missouri, law-abiding citizens can carry a gun while intoxicated and even fire it if “acting in self-defense.”
• Child-safety lock off: In Kansas, permit holders can carry concealed weapons inside K-12 schools and at school-sponsored activities.
• Short arm of the law: In Utah, a person under felony indictment can buy a gun, and a person charged with a violent crime may be able to retain a concealed weapon permit. Nebraskans who’ve pled guilty to a violent crime can get a permit to carry a gun.
• Sweet Jesus! In Louisiana, permit holders can carry concealed weapons inside houses of worship.
• Without a trace: Virginia not only repealed a law requiring handgun vendors to submit sales records, but the state also ordered the destruction of all such previous records.

The big players in the debate

President Barack Obama, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner, gives his 2013 State of the Union address. (Charles Dharapak-Pool/Getty Images)

So, what did the big guy actually say? These four multimedia resources help sort through the nitty gritty of the president’s speech.

A breakdown of the 12 big policy goals

The highlights: an annotated multimedia presentation

As they did with Obama’s inauguration address, the New York Times has created a great annotated version of the speech, allowing reader to click on the various speech highlights, watch corresponding clips from the address, and read further commentary.

Fact-checking the president

So, was everything he said true? Politico offers an interesting multimedia analysis, with specific clips from the speech and commentary as to the accuracy of the president’s statements.

The words, visualized

How do the president’s words look as a visualization? This interactive, created by Dmitry Paranyushkin from Nodus Labs, uses text network analysis tool Textexture to show us the the most prominent concepts inside the text and the relationship between the words used. Words are represented as nodes and the closer they occur next to each other within the text of the speech, the more interconnected they are in the network. Clusters, created by certain words appearing more often next to each other than in the rest of the vocabulary used, indicate distinct topics in Obama’s speech. Kind of weird – but definitely worth a look.

For the better part of the past decade, California has been engaged in an epic battle over, well, getting engaged. The multiple court cases, votes, legal victories, reversals, protests, celebration and more protests have kept same-sex couples in an ongoing state of marital limbo and made it downright confusing to keep track of where things stand.

The latest

On December 7, after months of anticipation, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would tackle the issue of same-sex marriage by examining two different cases. The first case involves deciding on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and will examine whether the government can deny federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples.

In a more surprising move, the court also decided to review a lower court’s decision in February that ruled California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Following that earlier ruling, opponents of gay marriage appealed to the Supreme Court, who will now likely hear arguments next spring. Its decision on the issue could have national ramifications in determining whether or not gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

How we got here

It’s been a long, strange trip to say the least.  For the sake of brevity, let’s start in 2008 (although the battle got heated years before that – just scroll through this interactive timeline for all the gritty details). In June of that year, counties began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This started a month after the California state Supreme Court  (not federal) overturned the existing ban, The court ruled that marriage was a fundamental right that could not be denied based on sexual orientation. And over the next six months, thousands of same-sex couples in California got married.

A short-lived celebration

But the honeymoon was cut short during the 2008 presidential election that November, when just over half of California voters approved a ballot measure known as Proposition 8 (which supporters labeled the “California Marriage Protection Act”). The measure trumped the court’s earlier decision and amended the state’s Constitution by adding the provision that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Interestingly, the same court also later rejected efforts by gay marriage advocates to strike down the ban.

Bringing it to the feds

Less than two years after Proposition 8 passed and was upheld by the California Supreme Court, the tables shifted yet again. The case was brought to a federal court in San Francisco, and in 2010 presiding Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the ban – although popularly approved by voters – was unconstitutional. In the decision, he wrote that the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution (in the Fourteenth Amendment) guaranteed equal rights to same-sex couples, including the right to marry.

In an interesting twist, Judge Walker (who has since retired from the bench) later announced that he was gay with a longtime partner. Backers of the ban argued that the judge was biased in his ruling and should have recused himself from the case. This development, however, did not override the judge’s decision. The case was then appealed to the higher Ninth Circuit Court who uphold the lower court’s ruling.

What made the Ninth Circuit’s ruling different from the others?

In their 2-1 decision this month, the Ninth Circuit judges upheld Judge Walker’s decision: they determined that the ban deprived gay and lesbian couples of their guaranteed civil rights, and was therefore a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. But the two courts used different reasoning in deciding the case. In the lower court’s decision, Judge Walker examined whether same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry, and ruled that they did. The Ninth Circuit judges, on the other hand, avoided this question, instead focusing explicitly on how Proposition 8 singled out same-sex couples and deprived them of a right that they had previously won. On this issue, the court determined that there was a lack of equal treatment.

The judges on the Ninth Circuit essentially said that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional not because it prevents gay couples from getting married, but because it creates different tiers of privilege for different types of people. And that, they ruled, goes against the constitutional mandate that citizens receive equal protection of the laws.

In the ruling, Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt wrote:

 ”All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation ‘marriage.’ Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California.”

Now what?

On February 22, two weeks after the Ninth Circuit’s decision, ProtectMarriage.com, a coalition of conservative and religious groups that have long backed the ban, asked the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case with a larger panel of judges (eleven of them, instead of three). In early December, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to take on the issue – probably this spring – and its nine justices will now get the final word.

What are common arguments for and against same-sex marriage?

Proponents of same-sex marriage argue that the freedom to marry is a fundamental right in American society that should extend to all couples regardless of gender. Denying gay and lesbian couples this right, they argue, is discriminatory, illegal, and based only on prejudice.

Opponents argue that marriage is a cherished institution historically defined as a union between a man and a woman. Allowing same-sex couples to marry, they insist, will fundamentally weaken and undercut the conventional purpose of marriage (namely procreation and child rearing). Factions within a number of religious groups have also been vocal and politically active in opposing gay marriage, arguing that, among other things, it is contrary to God’s will and normalizes homosexual behavior (that they consider a sin).