Prose Before Hos

When Neighborhoods Make It Easier To Get Pregnant Than Go To College

Posted on March 19, 2014 in Articles

Pregnant Teens

The Article: My Neighborhood Makes It Easier to Get Pregnant Than To Go To College by Shanice Joseph in Time.

The Text: ‘You should get pregnant,’ a friend told me. ‘Girl, the government will take care of you, trust me.’

If I were to get pregnant, I would know just where to go for help: the local offices of Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the federally funded food and nutrition program; Planned Parenthood; and the Family Resource Center. All three are places where I stood in line for hours with my siblings as a child growing up in Watts. But finding local resources to pursue higher education is harder. As one of the few community college students living in Watts, I can’t find a place to print out an essay or get college-related advice.

When I ran into a friend who grew up in the same low-income housing development as I did, she said there was an easier way than to struggle through college. “You should get pregnant,” she told me. “Girl, the government will take care of you, trust me.”

I didn’t think much of her idea. But she was right about one thing: In my community, there are many resources for young parents, and barely any for college students. Just on my own block, I recently counted a total of five programs for mothers my age or younger.

The GOP’s New Ads Attempt To Woo Hipsters, Women And Minorities

Posted on March 18, 2014 in Videos

Lindsey Graham Has Solved The Ukraine Crisis

Posted on March 18, 2014 in Political Cartoons

Obama Benghazi Ukraine

Only quintessentially American arrogance would lead one to assume that Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and annex Crimea to maintain Russia’s sphere of influence over its former Soviet member states would have anything to do with a US president’s response to a diplomatic disaster in Libya. Here and we were thinking it was “The Hunger Games” being snubbed for a Best Picture nomination.

How White Millennials Can Save The GOP

Posted on March 18, 2014 in Articles

White Millennials

The Article: How white millennials will (temporarily) rescue the GOP by Alex Pareene in Salon.

The Text: The Pew Research Institute last week released a report on the views and lives of American millennials — defined by Pew as adults born after 1980 — based on a new poll, and polling of all American generational groups dating back decades. Basically, here is your emerging Democratic majority, mostly emerged. The youth are to the left of older generations on almost every major issue. They are more likely than older voters to identify as liberals. Many still identify as independents, but the Republican Party has almost no appeal to them.

America, in other words, is getting more diverse, and more liberal. That’s not great news for the Republicans, who these days win elections mainly in places and times when older, whiter people aren’t outnumbered by younger, more racially diverse people. Liberals, meanwhile, are getting almost gleeful about the near future, as these liberal younger voters are a rapidly growing portion of the electorate.

As Jonathan Chait argues, “The overall picture is an electorate that is growing steadily more liberal on both social and economic policy, and whose views Republicans will eventually have to accommodate.” By accommodate, he means “be less conservative.” The Republican Party will need to do that to survive. Most of the serious members of the party know that. But they are also asking themselves exactly how long they can hold out. It might be a bit longer than this report suggests.