Americans Aren’t Traumatized Enough By Gun Violence
Sonali Kolhatkar
12-24-2025 ~ The December 14 mass shooting in Sydney, Australia, aimed at the Jewish community during Hanukkah celebrations on Bondi Beach, stunned the world. Fifteen people were killed, including a 10-year-old child. Instead of tackling antisemitism and more strictly regulating guns, right-wing and liberal pundits immediately politicized the incident by blaming pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide activism for fueling the shooting, ignoring the problem of guns altogether.
A similar script unfurled when an Afghan asylee was arrested for the November 26 shooting of National Guard members in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration extrapolated the actions of one suspect to an entire group of people, while ignoring the easy availability of guns.
But for white men, who, relative to their population, commit disproportionately more mass shootings in the United States, there is neither extrapolation to their entire demographic (nor, of course, policy prescriptions to reduce the availability of guns)—only “thoughts and prayers.”
So untouchable is gun control in the United States that some even double down, saying restricting firearms would lead to more violence because victims wouldn’t be able to defend themselves against perpetrators, never mind that in the case of the Bondi Beach massacre, an unarmed man tackled the gunman with his bare hands, ensuring more lives would not be endangered. If guns truly made people safer, the U.S., which has more guns than people, would have among the lowest rates of gun violence in the world.
But the opposite is true. In 2023, the latest year for which statistics are available, more than 45,000 people in the U.S. lost their lives as a result of gun violence, which is also the leading cause of death for children and teenagers. Every day, an average of 125 people are killed in the U.S. because of the easy availability of guns, their blood and bodies swept under the rug, hidden from view.
But perhaps we need to see the bodies in order to end our love affair with guns.
Gun violence is so appallingly prevalent in the U.S. that it is akin to a nation “experiencing active conflict.” There were 392 mass shootings in 2025 alone, one of the most recent taking place on the campus of Brown University on December 13, where two people who escaped death survived previous shootings. Gun regulations barely featured in media coverage of the Brown University shooting. Instead, most coverage focused on the perpetrator being on the loose for days before being found. Such perverted attentions are symbolic of the pro-gun adage that “guns don’t kill people, people do.”
As horrific as the Bondi Beach massacre was, in Australia, a nation with strict gun laws, it was an outlier. It took a single mass shooting in 1996 for Australia to pass strict gun controls. Known as the Port Arthur massacre, a shooter killed 35 people, after which the nation’s politicians united to pass wide-ranging bans on assault rifles, shotguns, and other types of firearms. Authorities bought guns back en masse from the public and melted down as many as 1 million guns. Read more
The Hidden Crisis: How America Fails To Protect Its Children
Young boys playing in a New York City street, 1909 – Picture: en.wikipedia.org
12-24-2025 ~ From child labor to trafficking—and even foster care, sports, and detention—institutions meant to protect children often cause the greatest harm.
[Editor’s Note: This article is the first installment of “Does Your Community Care About Children?”, a four-part series by Colin Greer and Reynard Loki. The series examines overlapping crises facing vulnerable youth in America—and the opportunities to create systems of care, safety, and empowerment. At its heart lies a moral and civic question: Does your community care about children? Subsequent articles will explore the juvenile justice system, health, and poverty, as well as solutions through coordinated public-private investment in education, employment, and care. Together, these pieces connect structural failures with practical, value-driven strategies, offering a call to responsibility, compassion, and collective action for a more just future.]
There’s an invisible emergency in America: children toil in slaughterhouses, factories, and fields—night and day, unseen, unprotected, and endangered. A century ago, reforms such as compulsory schooling and restrictions on child labor marked a historic advance, shielding children from exploitation—a model still emulated worldwide. Yet today, austerity budgets, systemic neglect, and the ideology of “rugged individualism” are eroding those protections.
Child labor violations surged 31 percent between 2019 and 2024, according to the Department of Labor. Millions of children rely on federal programs for basic sustenance. In 2023, around 15.6 million children participated in SNAP, which provides monthly food benefits to low-income households. It is a paltry sum: In 2025, SNAP participants got an estimated $187 per month (approximately $6.16 per day) in benefits. Additionally, 41 percent of the recipients of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children were infants in 2024. This program protects the health of pregnant and postpartum women, infants, and children under 5 years of age who are at nutritional risk. Some children are literally without homes, sleeping in shelters, cars, or on the streets, making the invisible emergency painfully visible.
Politicians and the media routinely proclaim their devotion to “saving children,” yet much of this is merely moral theater. Underfunded government agencies, weak oversight, and patchwork enforcement mean institutions designed to protect youth often enable their greatest suffering. Across these systems, a typical pattern emerges: children are valued less than institutions, profits, or political convenience.
We therefore ask a simple yet urgent question: Does your community care about children? In this context, “community” is not an abstraction—it is the network of towns, cities, neighborhoods, and local organizations whose daily decisions determine whether children are protected or placed at risk. Communities can influence, and sometimes counteract, national and state policies through local action, oversight, and innovation. Their choices can shape the conditions of childhood as much as any federal law.
Institutional Abuse and Neglect
From foster care to immigration detention, systems meant to protect children often do the opposite. Foster care, religious institutions, immigration, the justice system, and other establishments commodify and criminalize childhood, showing patterns of systemic harm rather than isolated failures.
Foster care: Nearly 350,000 children were in state custody in 2024, according to the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, yet many face instability instead of safety. Thousands experience repeated moves, with more than a third undergoing three or more placements annually. High foster family turnover, caregiver burnout, and resource gaps force many into specialized group homes. Read more
How Unions Provide A Counterweight To The Epstein Class
12-26-2025 ~ Gary Cunningham remembers sitting at the dining room table as a boy, listening to his father relate stories about his work as a union grievance chairman.
One especially resonates with him today.
A woman, sexually harassed by a manager, appealed to the union for help. Cunningham’s dad took careful note of her pain and distress. And then he unleashed the fury of the union on management, securing his coworker the safe, dignified work environment she deserved.
It’s that deep concern for others, forged elbow-to-elbow on the shop floor and often handed down from generation to generation, that most distinguishes union members from the Jeffrey Epstein class of billionaires and other bullies who prey on the vulnerable.
Cunningham, who followed his father into the labor movement and blazed a decades-long career as a United Steelworkers (USW) activist, knows that unions remain the staunchest bulwark against the 1 percenters who are dividing America into a land of haves and have-nots.
“They just don’t care,” Cunningham, now vice president of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees (SOAR) chapter in Albany, New York, said of Epstein and others of his ilk.
Epstein, a one-time money manager who committed suicide in 2019, spent decades trafficking women and teenage girls to the nation’s wealthy and powerful.
As revelations of his crimes stirred revulsion among ordinary Americans, Epstein also came to symbolize something more—a broader system that’s rigged for the rich and engineered to exploit everyone else.
The betrayal starts at the very top, observed Cunningham, noting that Donald Trump, a billionaire, is building a $350 million ballroom with the help of rich friends while Americans stagger every day under the affordability crisis he fueled.
“He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth,” Cunningham observed of Trump. “He had everything handed to him. His priorities are with the rich. He doesn’t care about the middle class or even the poor.”
Millions of Americans work two or more jobs yet still struggle to make ends meet because employers like Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, and Brian Niccol, the multimillionaire CEO of Starbucks, refuse to pay fair wages.
But the exploitation of working people goes far beyond the workplace.
Parents strain to feed their families amid price gouging by food manufacturers and grocery chains. Because there’s no sating their craving for more of everything, the wealthy also snap up houses as investment properties, driving up prices and denying working people the satisfaction of homeownership. Read more
Trump EPA Plan Would Restrict Public’s Right To Know About Climate Pollution
Michael Ash – Photo: PERI -University of Massachusetts Amherst
12-22-2025 ~ “The problems don’t go away when the reporting goes away,” says the Corporate Toxics Information Project’s co-director.
Since 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has required large industrial facilities to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The data, which the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program has been collecting since 2011, is essential in efforts to reduce emissions and provides vital information to the public about climate pollution from the largest U.S. polluters. However, the Trump EPA has proposed to put an end to greenhouse gas reporting by major polluters. This move is consistent with the Trump administration’s intent to make climate denial an official U.S. policy and restricts the public from the right to know. Subsequently, it will deprive communities from having access to a critical tool for holding pollutants accountable.
Researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have been using EPA data for many years now to rank the top U.S. polluters and disseminate vital information to the public. They publish their findings annually and have just released the 2025 edition of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Index. In the interview that follows, Michael Ash, professor of economics and public policy and co-director of PERI’s Corporate Toxics Information Project, shares the latest data on the top U.S. climate pollutants and discusses the consequences of the potential end of EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program in the fight against climate change and climate justice.
C.J. Polychroniou: For many years now, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been providing a valuable service to public interest in general and to activists in particular by collecting and releasing information and analysis on corporate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions through its Corporate Toxics Information Project. Last month, the 2025 edition of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Index was published, using the latest data available from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program. The index takes on new significance since the EPA has announced plans to end the program, which amounts to an erosion of the people’s right to know. But before we get to that, what does the new edition of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Index look like? Which corporations are the top climate polluters in the country, and have there been any significant changes in total emissions and rankings from last year?
Michael Ash: The top of the list remains similar; the biggest point emitters of greenhouse gases are the electrical power companies that burn fossil fuels to generate electricity. Topping the list are Vistra Energy, Southern Company, and Duke Energy. Their combined 235 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions made up just under 4 percent of all U.S. contributions to climate change that year (including all sources, such as automobiles, airplanes, and home heating, not just industrial emitters). Again, the top of the list are the fossil electricity generators. Next come the major oil refiners and petrochemical processors, such as Exxon Mobil (at the number 7 spot); and that is only accounting for the direct releases from their facilities, not the releases from the fuels that they bring into the economy. (For that, see our companion list of Toxic 100 Suppliers.) Read more
Humans Face Pareidolic Experiences To Our Advantage
Irina Matuzava – Photo: The Observatory
12-20-2025 ~ We are wired to find faces everywhere, and this instinct reveals how our perception and our environment can influence each other.
Imagine that you notice an unfamiliar male face out of the corner of your eye. You turn to look at it, but it turns out that you perceived a face-like visual cue—a tree adorned with several hollows that appear like “eyeholes.”
This kind of accidental perception of a meaningful image, such as a human face, in an otherwise random or unintended pattern—shapely clouds, pitted rock surfaces, or recessed wall sockets—is known as pareidolia. The phenomenon is not a disorder, but a normal feature of human vision and brain function. Some disorders do exacerbate the occurrence of pareidolic experiences, but in both normal and disordered visual perceptions, pareidolia offers a window into our brain’s operation when it needs to make quick, survival-oriented decisions.
It not only shapes our perception but also influences how we design objects, architecture, and navigate our environments. Facial pareidolia falls under the broader category of apophenia, the tendency to perceive patterns or connections in unrelated visual cues, noises, or concepts.
First described in relation to psychosis, apophenia is now recognized to occur in healthy people as well. The Rorschach test, for instance, used by psychologists as a metric for thought disorders, relies on the phenomenon that our brain searches for “known patterns” in otherwise ambiguous information. Apophenia takes many forms, with facial pareidolia being the most well-known and studied. Other types of pareidolia often involve auditory cues, music, objects, and architecture.
Auditory pareidolia occurs when people perceive or “hear” meaningful sounds in “seemingly static background noise,” according to Live Science. This includes hearing your name in a cacophonous venue when no one is calling or perceiving somewhat intelligible voices in the ambient hum of a refrigerator. Musical pareidolia, sometimes referred to as Musical Ear Syndrome, is a similar phenomenon. One might perceive music or singing in noises that are not musical. For instance, the noise being made by a fan might sound like musical notes or a string of notes to some people.
Object pareidolia and pareidolia in the built environment are sometimes different from one another based on the source of a given visual cue, but both often involve the perception of nonexistent faces. Everyday household objects, such as appliances and plugs, can appear as faces. Car “faces” can also be perceived to convey emotion, especially as some headlights are slanted and “angry,” or rounded and “friendly,” and so on.
Pareidolia in the built environment has been studied by researchers Chen Wang, Liangchen Yu, Yiyi Mo, and others, who published their research in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health in 2022. This study stems from the idea that building facades can suggest expressive “faces” based on the style and placement of windows, doors, balconies, ledges, and other architectural elements. “The facial expressions perceived in house design through pareidolia can evoke the emotion of the observers,” the study stated. Read more
Declining Reading Habits Threaten U.S. Democracy And Social Connection
12-19-2025 ~ Americans are reading less than ever—a cultural shift that affects how we learn, think, and connect.
The United States is in the grip of a reading recession—nearly half of Americans didn’t read a single book in 2023, and fewer than half read even one, according to data from YouGov and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Since the early 2000s, leisure reading has plunged by nearly 40 percent, a decline mirrored in falling reading scores and broader academic performance. What is at stake is not merely how people spend their free time, but a deeper erosion of the habits that sustain knowledge, empathy, and democratic life.
Decades of research show that the advantages of reading are both wide-ranging and profound. Regular engagement with books strengthens cognition, vocabulary, emotional intelligence, and empathy. These cognitive and social gains are closely linked to higher academic achievement, improved career prospects, greater economic stability, and increased civic engagement. Reading is one of the few activities that consistently bridges social divides—strengthening communities, encouraging civic participation, and sustaining democracy.
“The most important contribution of the invention of written language to the species is a democratic foundation for critical, inferential reasoning and reflective capacities,” writes cognitive neuroscientist and reading researcher Maryanne Wolf in her 2018 book Reader, Come Home. “If we in the 21st century are to preserve a vital collective conscience, we must ensure that all members of our society are able to read and think both deeply and well. … And we will fail as a society if we do not recognize and acknowledge the capacity for reflective reasoning in those who disagree with us.”
Literacy at Its Peak
Understanding the stakes of deep literacy today invites a look back at a time when reading was more than a pastime. More than a century ago, American writer and minister Gerald Stanley Lee captured reading’s transformative power in The Lost Art of Reading (1904): “The novel which gives itself to one to be breathed and lived… is the one which ‘gets a man somewhere’ most of all.”
Often described as America’s “golden age of reading,” the mid-20th century was a period when print media dominated daily life and literacy was widely cultivated across generations, supported by robust libraries, vibrant print journalism, and school curricula that treated reading as a central pillar of cultural participation.
According to NEA surveys, in the late 1940s, roughly 56–57 percent of adults read novels, short stories, poetry, or plays for pleasure. Daily newspaper readership was high, with about 65 percent of adults subscribing to or regularly reading newspapers, according to historical data from the Pew Research Center, while magazines such as Life, Time, and Reader’s Digest reached tens of millions of households.
Children and adolescents also read frequently outside of school, with 60–70 percent engaging in daily or near-daily reading, sustained by libraries, schools, and family practices, according to the National Literacy Trust. The period also saw the rise of shared reading experiences—fueled by organizations like the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Literary Guild—which broadened access to new titles, shaped national reading tastes, and helped make communal reading a mainstream cultural pastime.
The Data of Decline
By the early 2000s, national surveys were already signaling a decline in leisure reading in the United States. The NEA’s 2007 report “Reading at Risk: To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence” found that only 46.7 percent of adults read literature for pleasure, down from 54 percent a decade earlier.
Subsequent NEA surveys confirmed that the proportion of adults reading 12 or more books per year continued to fall. Gallup polls also reported a decline in the number of books read per year, from an average of 15.6 in 2016 to 12.6 in 2021. Time-use data from the American Academy of Arts & Sciences also shows that the share of Americans reading more than 20 minutes a day for personal interest dropped from 22.3 percent in 2003 to 14.6 percent in 2023.
Reading habits in the U.S. vary sharply by community type, income, and education. According to Pew (2021) and Library Research Service (2022), adults with higher education and income levels are far more likely to read regularly, while a 2011 Pew survey shows that rural residents lag behind urban and suburban peers, with fewer adults reporting reading for pleasure in the past year. Pew’s 2011 research found that 80 percent of urban and suburban adults read at least one book in the prior year, compared with 71 percent of rural adults, with significantly higher reading rates among college-educated and higher-income Americans than among less-educated and lower-income groups, revealing unequal cultural divides.
A landmark 2025 study published in iScience underscores the cultural shift reflected in declining reading habits. Tracking 236,270 individuals over two decades (2003–2023), the study examined both personal reading and reading with children and found that the share of U.S. adults reading for personal interest on an average day fell from roughly 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023—a drop of about 12 percentage points.
“This is not just a small dip—it’s a sustained, steady decline of about 3 percent per year. It’s significant and it’s deeply concerning,” Jill Sonke, PhD, study co-author and director of research initiatives at the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine, said in a release about the study.
The research reveals a measurable, persistent, and accelerating trend in specific communities. In many of these households, children also have limited exposure to shared reading at home, further compounding early literacy gaps.
“Reading has always been one of the more accessible ways to support well-being,” said Daisy Fancourt, Ph.D., study co-author and professor of psychology and epidemiology at University College London. “To see this kind of decline is concerning because the research is clear: Reading is a vital health-enhancing behavior for every group within society, with benefits across the life-course.” Read more