Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

This spring, Tate Britain will host the first exhibition dedicated to queer British art. Unveiling material that relates to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBTQ) identities, the show will mark the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England and Wales. It will present work from the abolition of the death penalty for sodomy in 1861 to the passing of the Sexual Offences Act in 1967 a time of seismic shifts in gender and sexuality that found expression in the arts as artists and viewers explored their desires, experiences and sense of self.

ANGUS MCBEAN QUENTIN CRISP 1941 Bromide print National Portrait Gallery (London, UK) Estate of Angus McBean / National Portrait Gallery, London

Spanning the playful to the political, the explicit to the domestic, Queer British Art 1861-1967 will showcase the rich diversity of queer visual art and its role in society. Themes explored in the exhibition will include coded desires amongst the Pre-Raphaelites, representations of and by women who defied convention (including Virginia Woolf), and love and lust in sixties Soho. It will feature works by major artists such as Francis Bacon, Keith Vaughan, Evelyn de Morgan, Gluck, Glyn Philpot, Claude Cahun and Cecil Beaton alongside queer ephemera, personal photographs, film and magazines.

DAVID HOCKNEY LIFE PAINTING FOR A DIPLOMA 1962 Yageo Foundation Yageo Foundation

Work from 1861 to 1967 by artists with diverse sexualities and gender identities will be showcased, and will range from covert images of same-sex desire such as Simeon Solomons Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene 1864 through to the open appreciation of queer culture in David Hockneys Going to be a Queen for Tonight 1960. A highlight of the exhibition will be a section focusing on the Bloomsbury set and their contemporaries an artistic group famous for their bohemian attitude towards sexuality. The room will include intimate paintings of lovers, scenes of the homes artists shared with their partners and large commissions by artists such as Duncan Grant and Ethel Walker.

Many of the works that will be displayed were produced in a time when the terms gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans had little public recognition. The exhibition will illustrate the ways in which sexuality became publically defined through the work of sexologists such as Henry Havelock Ellis, campaigners such as Edward Carpenter and will also look at the high profile trials of Oscar Wilde and Radclyffe Hall. Objects on display will include the door from Wildes prison cell, Charles Buchels portrait of Radclyffe Hall and erotic drawings by Aubrey Beardsley.

In contrast to the bleak outlook from the courtroom prior to 1967, queer culture was embraced by the British public in the form of theatre. From music hall acts to costume design, British theatre provided a forum in which sexuality and gender expression could be openly explored. Striking examples on display will include photographs of performers such as Beatrix Lehmann, Berto Parsuka and Robert Helpmann by Angus McBean, who was jailed for his sexuality in 1942, alongside stage designs by Oliver Messel and Edward Burra. Theatrical cards of music hall performers such as Vesta Tilley (whose act as Burlington Bertie had a large lesbian following) will also be featured, as well as a pink wig worn in Jimmy Slaters act A Perfect Lady from the 1920s.

Queer British Art 1861-1967 will show how artists and audiences challenged the established views of sexuality and gender identity between two legal landmarks. Some of the works in the show are intensely personal while others spoke to a wider public, helping to forge a sense of community. Queer British Art 1861-1967 is curated by Clare Barlow, Assistant Curator, Tate Britain with Amy Concannon, Assistant Curator, Tate Britain.

QUEER BRITISH ART 1861-1967 5th April 1st October 2017 Open daily 10.00 18.00

Mark Westall is the founder and editor of FAD magazine, a curation of the worlds most interesting culture, and Creative Director of FAD Agency, a strategy & creative agency working with brands to solve business problems using cultural tools. In 2008 following his passion for art he founded what has grown to become FAD magazine. FAD magazine is internationally recognized as a key figure within the emerging and contemporary art world, and has been selected as official partner by organizations as diverse as Moniker Art Fair, START, Volta and Christies. In addition Mark is a columnist for City Magazine.

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Tate announce QUEER BRITISH ART 1861-1967 - FAD magazine

CAMPAIGNERS are delighted with their tribute to a social crusader.

The Thomas Fowell Buxton monument can now be seen on Bincleaves Green at the end of Bincleaves Road in Weymouth.

It follows seven years of fundraising by the Thomas Fowell Buxton Society whose members felt his legacy should be marked with a permanent memorial.

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton was an MP for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis between 1818 and 1837 and led the campaign to abolish slavery as an economic system. Sir Thomas was a Christian social reformer, chosen as a champion by William Wilberforce to carry on the work towards the eventual abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire.

Sir Thomas, who had an interest in education of the poor and prison reform, lived at Belfield House in Weymouth and Buxton Road is named after him.

The society, now a charity with TV chef Ainsley Harriott as its patron, was set up in 2010 to celebrate his achievements. As well as educational work, the vision was to erect a monument costing around 20,000. A competition to design it was won by former Weymouth College stonemasonry student Peter Loizou and other students were involved in carving it.

It was originally planned to site it in the middle of Manor roundabout on Dorchester Road.

The monument was built at the end of last year and a dedication ceremony is planned in June.

Details of the ceremony will be discussed at the societys AGM at Weymouth Community Fire Station tomorrow (Thursday) at 2pm.

Chairman of trustees James Buxton said: The society, once it has paid off its debts, will have achieved its prime objective in erecting a monument in Weymouth to celebrate the life and achievements of Thomas Fowell Buxton.

Treasurer Dr John Fannon said: The society is planning a dedication ceremony in early June 2017 and will announce details at the AGM.

Dr Fannon added that the Bishop of Sherborne had kindly agreed to lead the dedication service and the new Mayor of Weymouth and Portland Cllr Kevin Brookes, and a number of honoured guests would be invited. Preparations were being made to produce a commemorative booklet to be published for the ceremony.

For more information about Thomas Fowell Buxton visit the societys website

http://www.thomasfowellbuxton.org.uk

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Monument to Thomas Fowell Buxton on Bincleaves Green in Weymouth - Dorset Echo

It used to be workers expected to retire from their jobs at 65, whether they wanted to or not.

Prior to the late 1990s, mandatory retirement was the norm in Canada, says Kenneth Thornicroft, a lawyer, author and professor of law and employment relations at the University of Victorias Gustavson School of Business.

These days thats no longer the case. Over the past two decades due to a series of landmark court cases challenging what many saw as age discrimination under human rights legislation, and a large, active and politically powerful population of baby boomers bent on determining their own career fate mandatory retirement has been abolished in all 13 Canadian provinces and territories.

Or has it?

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Dr. Thornicroft says that perception is not quite accurate.

His newest paper, The Uncertain State of Mandatory Retirement in Canada, published in Labor Law Journal, finds that there are still many legal exceptions providing for mandatory retirement across a wide variety of professions, from commercial pilots to police officers and firefighters.

Dr. Thornicroft goes a step farther in his latest academic submission. He suggests that mandatory retirement may be making a comeback.

Notably, he says young workers are at the heart of the resurgence of the discussion.

Currently, one-third of Canadas nearly 36 million people is between age 50 and 74 with those born between 1945 and 1960 making up the largest part of this group.

Given the greying of the work force, he notes, it is hardly surprising that the general abolition of mandatory retirement was spearheaded by the baby boom generation, particularly as the early boomers edged ever closer to the age of 65.

But the force of millennials is also hard to ignore, especially as they continue to make their way into the work force. Dr. Thornicroft foresees the possibility of intergenerational resentment building up among younger workers as their own ascension in the professional ranks is stymied by a lack of movement by senior colleagues, often in better paid and higher-level positions.

Younger workers may support mandatory retirement so that they are not foreclosed from future occupational opportunities, he concludes.

So-called double dipping by older workers who continue to work while also collecting a pension will serve only to ratchet up tensions between the generations (though Dr. Thornicroft believes thats unlikely to play a significant role in the debate. More likely, he says, as long as generous pensions are there, most people are prepared to leave the work force and take their pension, even if they like their job, and then maybe look for part-time employment.)

In safety-sensitive positions, both employers and employees concerned about working with older people who may not be up to the demands of the job may also press for mandatory retirement provisions.

Already several professions are required to adhere to mandatory retirement ages and, says Dr. Thornicroft, I dont see any move afoot to take those away.

Supporters of mandatory retirement hold that the practice is not discriminatory because everyone is subject to the same law. Employers, meanwhile, tend to like it because it allows for more effective workplace planning and eliminates the need to continually test older workers to ensure their competence.

Opponents, however, argue that such a provision unfairly robs society of valuable human capital.

Moreover, many say laws mandating retirement are unnecessary since most employees retire at a conventional age anyway.

Dr. Thornicroft himself believes there is merit to the latter argument, referencing 2015 Statistics Canada data that puts the average age of retirement in Canada at 63.5 years. In the same year, public sector workers (and those most likely to have a retirement plan) retired, on average, at 61.4, while those employed in private business left the workplace, on average, at 64.1. Self-employed workers remained in the work force the longest, retiring, on average at 66.7.

Currently, there is no real need to push for mandatory retirement, he says. But that could change, depending on what happens.

It will depend on how the second and third wave of baby boomers react to the labour market, and whether they are going to hang in and clog up middle- and higher-level positions so that younger employees are denied access, he says.

Dr. Thornicroft adds, regardless of whether provinces decide to return to mandatory retirement, millennials can likely bank on remaining in the workplace longer than their parents and grandparents.

If the move goes ahead, Dr. Thornicroft says its possible that 70 will become the new 65.

The courts, to date, have held that there is no Charter violation if mandatory retirement is in place and while legislatures have removed the age 65 limit in their human rights laws, there is nothing in law preventing legislatures from re-enacting, in effect, a mandatory retirement age at, say, age 70, he says.

On the other hand, with several polls showing young adults are failing to adequately save for retirement, and with fewer opportunities than previous generations to rely on a good pension plan from work, he says, a lot of younger employees now are not going to be able to afford to retire.

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Might mandatory retirement come back with 70 as the new 65? - The Globe and Mail

More than 40 percent ofTanzanias teens encounter barriers to secondary education, according to a new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report.

The report, issued Tuesday, was based on interviews held with more than 220 students, other adolescents no longer in classes, parents, government officials and organizational leaders across the country during Tanzanias rollout of a free education program for Form I to Form IV students.

Despite Tanzanias admirable efforts, many barriers remain. They include access to schools in rural areas where a trip to school means a 25 kilometer journey, or the impact to students who cannot afford transportation as well as books, uniforms and other expenses.

One troubling barrier is the national exam system that requires students to pass a primary school exit test before they are accepted into the next secondary tier. Tanzanian students have only one chance to pass that test, the HRW report found, and their failure often means the end of their formal education.

Other problems persist as well.

Tanzanias abolition of secondary school fees and contributions has been a huge step toward improving access to secondary education, saidElin Martnez, childrens rights researcher at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. But the government should do more to address the crowded classrooms, discrimination and abuse that undermine many adolescents education.

According toWorld Bank data, fewer than one-third of girls who enter lower secondary school graduate. Schools routinely expel female students who are pregnant on grounds of offenses against morality, accounting for 8,000 girls each year, and girls who marry before age 18 are required to leave as well.

School officials who insist on pregnancy tests or deny these students return to school are violating their rights, HRW said. There are also access issues for people with disabilities, widespread sexual abuse and harassment, and the continued use of corporal punishment which remains legal under Tanzanian law.

The government has repeatedly committed to ensuring secondary education for all, Martnez said. Now the government needs to open the way for secondary education by ending discriminatory and abusive policies and removing the remaining barriers between many students and a quality education.

The complete report is linked here.

Image: Soko Tanzania

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Report: Improved school access in Tanzania still leaves work to be done - Africa Times

FILE PHOTO: LAUREN SEIBEL/THE HOYA The Georgetown University Student Association has sought to introduce a series of reforms this year, including the proposed abolition of the GUSA senate to be replaced by a new, elected assembly.

Two years ago, former Georgetown University Student Association President Joe Luther (COL 16) and Vice President Connor Rohan (COL 16) ran a satirical campaign with only two serious platforms on mental health and sexual assault reform. Last year, Enushe Khan (MSB 17) and Chris Fisk (COL 17) entered the race with a platform consisting of over 44 policies.

The two campaigns reveal two disparate visions of GUSAs role in serving the student body. As this seasons GUSA executive election heads into full swing, The Hoya looks back at how student government has changed on campus in recent years.

Stemming from the Senate What began for Luther as a satirical campaign to make fun of GUSA soon turned into a real campaign to change GUSA. While parts of GUSA may seem pointless, Luther said he believes in GUSAs ability to spearhead change.

We fought for and achieved a campus plan that stopped encroaching on students right to be equal members of the community. We gave students New York Times subscriptions. We tried to make GUSA a little less buttoned up with videos, ad campaigns and an Aw shucks attitude, Luther wrote in an email to The Hoya. But also, the senate is a pretty silly idea.

Abbey McNaughton (COL 16), who served as GUSA chief of staff under Luther and Rohan following her own campaign for president the same year, said that working in the senate was much more individualistic than she originally anticipated.

Initially I probably thought there were more senate projects, but that depends on whos involved, McNaughton said. The senate does not make you contribute to Georgetown or make something better it comes on you to take it on yourself.

According to Khan, the senate under previous administrations was structured in a way that made it largely redundant. Khan served as senate speaker before she came president and advocated for the replacement of the senate with a proposed assembly during a referendum in December.

My experience with the senate is you get what you put in, Khan said. In an institution like the senate, pre-restructuring, I did recognize our work was redundant to what the executive was already working on. Where I was helpful were areas that executives at the time were not putting enough attention into.

Luther said that GUSA is at its most effective when it engages with the student body.

GUSA should understand and reflect the priorities, concerns and zeitgeist of the student body and effectively communicate and advocate these positions to the administration, Luther wrote in an email to The Hoya. Keep fightin for students! Keep engagin! Thats what GUSAs gotta keep doin!

Insular Yet Representative Alex Bobroske (COL 17), who was chief of staff under the Khan-Fisk administration before resigning his post in August, said his first interaction with GUSA as a member of the campaign for Thomas Lloyd (SFS 15) and Jimmy Ramirez (COL 15) illustrated the gaps between the student body and the student government.

Thomas was the president of [G.U.] Pride and Jimmy was in GSP and they had a very different perspective than most of the campaigns that were just white guys in GUSA, Bobroske said. That campaign really opened my eyes to how there were two Georgetowns, if not more, that just never interacted with each other.

Khan said she thinks GUSA has struggled to accurately represent the student population in the past.

In past years, GUSA was not successful in connecting with different communities on campus, Khan said. We are supposed to be the voice of the student body. I dont think GUSA cared enough to represent those voices. Thats why Chris and I ran, because we recognized that representation matters.

Matt Gregory (SFS 17), who ran the Wisemillers Hot Chick and Chicken Madness campaign against Khan and Fisk in 2016, said he ran the campaign to underscore the difference in perspectives between the student body and GUSA. The write-in ticket came second in the election, with 725 total votes in the first round and 878 votes in the final round.

Its very evident that GUSA does not represent the viewpoints of the vast majority of the Georgetown population, Gregory said. GUSA is something that the vast majority of students do not care about at all.

Gregory said he is not optimistic that the insular nature of GUSA will change any time soon.

GUSA has made attempts to reach out to a broader base, but I dont think it has necessarily succeeded, Gregory said. Because GUSA keeps hearing the same voices and same ideas, they advance what they believe to be best, but not what the actual student body believes to be best.

According to Khan, this representation gap is due in part to a lack of opportunities beyond key elected positions.

When you have elected positions, the issue is certain communities dont run or they may run and not necessarily win. For example, that happens with women, Khan said. If you didnt win, I think clearly your viewpoint isnt being represented in GUSA.

Moving Toward Diversity Looking back on their team so far, Khan said she and Fisk have tried to create a more diverse GUSA by increasing the ways to get involved.

We really pushed to our cabinet members to bear in mind intersectionality, Khan said. In terms of the executive and policy teams, its definitely the most representative that Ive seen. We tried to recruit people from outside communities and build coalitions.

According to Khan, a representative student government is vital to address the needs of Georgetowns diverse student population.

When you have vulnerable populations on campus, the nature of the work we should be focusing on is different, Khan said. I hope the student body elects moving-forward people who care about more than just one demographic on campus.

Luther said that while efforts made to create a more representative GUSA are commendable, it is not a change that can happen overnight and is instead dependent on the people who choose to get involved.

No organization will ever exactly reflect the student in its make up or opinion, but, in my time at GUSA, one of our top priorities was engaging with students and especially with groups that had been traditionally turned off by GUSA, Luther wrote in an email to The Hoya. Some administrators are more keen to work with students and have students help guide policy. Others are not.

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Executives Reflect on Evolving GUSA - Georgetown University The Hoya

In 2011, when Wisconsin passed Act 10, 100,000 left-wing activists descended upon Madison. When the bill passed and the reforms saved local governments billions of dollars, all the rancor looked pretty silly in hindsight.

The opposition to Iowa's version of Act 10 is not proving to be nearly as bitter or numerically overwhelming, but the teachers' unions sense the danger.

Hundreds of Iowa teachers, school children and other activists rallied outside the statehouse Sunday, voicing opposition to legislation filed last week that would overhaul the state's collective bargaining law ... The legislation would gut Chapter 20 which sets the parameters for contract negotiations with public employee unions Iowa Democrats have said, while Republicans have argued the changes would provide more local control and modernize the 1974 law.

Under the proposed legislation, public employees except for police and firefighters would only be able to bargain for base wages.

Another difference: Although the Iowa law is trying to do what Walker did in Wisconsin treating public safety workers differently from other state and government workers public safety unions are visibly protesting as well, arguing that this distinction between the two classes is artificial and could be undone in the future.

In Wisconsin, Act 10 limited collective bargaining to wages only (though wage bargaining was also sharply limited). The abolition of collective bargaining over work rules and benefits returned decision-making to elected officials at all levels. This created all kinds of new budgetary flexibility for school districts that they had never enjoyed before.

Previously, they had been bound to spend much of their budgets according to negotiation or arbitration procedures with the public-sector unions rather than decision-making by elected officials. But under Act 10, instead of massively overpaying on (for example) negotiated sweetheart deals to buy insurance plans from the union itself, they could bid competitively, save a fortune and spend the money on actually hiring teachers and educating students. What's more, they could create their own work rules merit pay, rewarding excellence instead of seniority and innovate without being hauled into court.

This is why Act 10 was so revolutionary. Because of the windfall it brought to local governments and school districts, the state contribution to these local government units could be scaled back without their having to raise property taxes. This, in the end, was the only realistic solution to the state's massive recession-era budget crisis, and it's the reason Act 10 has become so popular in the state today.

Like Wisconsin's bill, Iowa's would require public-sector unions to be recertified in regular elections. As noted in this explainer, union representation in many of the collective bargaining units in state and municipal government was voted on 40 years ago and hasn't been revisited since. In those cases, no one working today had any part in the decision. Workers who want a different union or no union are bound by decisions made in some cases before they were born.

Like Wisconsin's, this bill would also end the state's practice of automatically deducting union dues from paychecks. In cases where wage disputes go to arbitration, arbitrators would actually be bound (it's amazing this wasn't the case already) by the government employer's budget limitations.

Also from the Washington Examiner

The senator argued that Flynn's resignation is a sign of how chaotic the National Security Council has become.

02/14/17 10:48 AM

Republicans in the state legislature in Des Moines may find there is less resistance there, in part because Iowa is already a right-to-work state Wisconsin was not when Act 10 passed in 2011 and in part because Madison isn't its capital. But at a moment when the Left is especially restive and seems to be protesting everything, this reform isn't gaining the same kind of national attention Wisconsin's did.

Top Story

Flynn resigned after admitting he hadn't been truthful to Vice President Mike Pence.

02/14/17 9:46 AM

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Protests as Iowa considers its own 'Scott Walker bill' - Washington Examiner

The use of capital punishment, is one of the most controversial issue in the criminal justice system all over the world. On December 1, 2016, the United Nations released a report on use of capital punishment among the 195 members of the UN.

The UN report states the following:

54 countries retain the death penalty in law and practice;

32 countries have abolished the death penalty de facto, namely according to Amnesty International, they have not executed anyone during the last 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions;

6 countries have abolished the death penalty but retain it for exceptional or special circumstances such as crimes committed during wartime;

103 countries have abolished it for all crimes.

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Among the developed countries of the world, four countries continue to have capital punishment United States, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan. China is the worlds most active death penalty country. The UN report states that there were more than 1,000 executions in China in 2014. Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran have also very high numbers of executions.

Europe has the strongest position against the death penalty. The abolition of the death penalty is a pre condition to joining the European Union. The number of countries abolishing the death penalty have increased in the last decade. The latest countries to abolish the death penalty were Latvia (2012), Madagascar (2012), Fiji (2015), Suriname ( 2015), Republic of the Congo (2015), Nauru (2016) Guinea (2016) and Mongolia (2016). South Korea has declared a moratorium on the death penalty.

The Philippines abolished the death penalty in 2006. However, the government has now introduced a bill in Congress that will restore the death penalty.

Pope Francis has been calling for a worldwide abolition of the death penalty. He said: I appeal to the consciences of those who govern to reach an international consensus to abolish the death penalty.. The commandment Thou shalt not kill has absolute value and applies to both the innocent and the guilty.

In an address a year ago, Pope Francis said that there was now a growing opposition to the death penalty even for the legitimate defense of society because there now exists other ways to efficiently repress crimes without definitively denying the person who committed it the possibility of rehabilitating themselves.

In a visit to a prison in Mexico, Pope Francis also called for better prison conditions saying: All Christians and men of good will are called on to work not only for the abolition of the death penalty, but also to improve prison conditions so that they respect the human dignity of people who have been deprived of their freedom.

In another address to the world conference against the death penalty in Oslo, Norway, Pope Francis again said: Indeed, nowadays the death penalty is unacceptable however, grave the crime of the convicted person. It is an offense to the inviolability of life and to the dignity of the human person; it likewise contradicts Gods plan for individuals and society, and is merciful justice...It does not render justice to victims, but instead fosters vengeance.

It is clear that Pope Francis believes there is no moral justification in Catholic teaching that would justify capital punishment. This active opposition to the death penalty is actually a recent development in Church teaching that seems to have begun only half a century ago from the time of Pope John XXIII.

The growing movement in the Catholic world to abolish the death penalty took a major step in January 1999, when St. John Paul II publicly appealed for a global consensus to end the death penalty because he believed it was both cruel and unnecessary. His successor, Pope Benedict XVI made a similar appeal in November 2011. However, Pope Francis has made the strongest argument for abolishing capital punishment based on convictions of faith.

In his address to the US Congress on September 14, 2014 he quoted the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you..this rule points us in a clear direction...[it] reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development.

He also told the members of the US Congress that ...this conviction has led me from the beginning of my ministry to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty. I am convinced that this way is the best, since every life is sacred, every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes.

The International Commission Against Death Penalty believe that the risk of executing innocent people will always exist no matter how developed a justice system is. It then states that unlike prison sentences, the death penalty is irreversible and irreparable. The Commission also argues that the arbitrary application of the death penalty cannot be ruled and will be used in a disproportionate manner against the poor and favour the rich who can afford to hire the best and most expensive lawyers. There is the argument that the death penalty does not deter crime effectively. According to a recent United Nations report ...there is no conclusive evidence of the deterrent value of the death penalty.

Pope Francis clearly believes that that punishment should never rule out any hope for rehabilitation. He said: ...I also offer encouragement to all those who are convinced that a just and necessary punishment must never exclude the dimension of hope and the goal of rehabilitation.

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Pope Francis on death penalty - Philippine Star

Last months Womens March in Washington D.C. continues to highlight causes and concerns that are important to women in this country. While looking to the future and ways to continue to make improvements is vital, there should also be time for reflection and appreciation of how far our country has already come. Massachusetts native Susan B. Anthony was born on February 15, 1820. As we celebrate her birthday this week, reflect on the causes she championed as a beacon for womens rights, and the lasting impact she has had on women here in the United States.

Suffrage

Known primarily as a suffragist, Anthony knew that the most significant way to influence public affairs for the betterment of all women was to give women a say at the ballot box. Her long-standing partnership with Elizabeth Cady Stanton led to almost 50 years of dedicated work for womens rights. She published the newspaper The Revolution, with the masthead Men their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. Unfortunately, her death in 1906 preceded the final passing of the 19th Amendment in 1920 that granted women the vote, but it is that amendment that bears her name.

Abolitionist

Anthonys life long fight for equal rights extended beyond women to include people of all races. She long championed for the abolition of slavery, and while the 14th and 15th Amendments granted slaves citizenship, the right to vote, and equal protection under the law, she was disappointed that it still excluded women.

Education

Her struggle for womens rights extended into all areas of a womans life. This included the right to an education. Her case was that there is no difference between the minds of men and women and because of that, all boys and girls should be educated together. She believed that all people, regardless of race or gender, should have equal opportunities for education. Ultimately, she was instrumental in getting women and former slaves admitted for the first time into colleges and universities.

Labor

When it came to the workplace, Anthony advocated for and formed the Workingwomens Central Association, a labor union that strove to advance the rights and protections of women in the work force. When men went on strike, she encouraged employers to hire women, thus proving that they were able and capable of doing the same jobs that men could do.

Equal Rights

All of these various endeavors on behalf of women resulted in greater equality in many other areas as well. Anthonys work resulted in women being granted property rights, the ability to keep their wages, and to retain custody of their children. She also fought for equal protection under the law, and for women and men to be held to the same moral standards when facing prosecution.

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Take Five: Susan B. Anthony - The Sun Chronicle

A rescue operation by the crew of the Topaz Responder, a rescue ship run by Maltese NGO "Moas" and the Italian Red Cross, in November 2016 off the Libyan coast. File photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP

The Italian government on Friday created 14 fast-track asylum appeal courts in a bid to speed up decisions on deporting migrants with no right to stay in the country.

This latest sign of Italy moving to a tougher approach to deter further migrant arrivals, was approved by decree at a cabinet meeting on Friday.

It comes into force immediately but has to be approved by parliament inside two months.

Around half a million migrants have arrived in Italy in the last three years, most of them Africans who were rescued from overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean after setting off from Libya on vessels operated by people smugglers.

Registered asylum requests rose from 23,620 in 2013 to 123,482 last year and the average time taken to study them has risen from 167 to 268 days.

"The complexity of the migratory phenomenon is also increasing with people arriving from very different countries," Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said after the cabinet meeting.

"We are talking about life-defining decisions, we don't want to leave people in limbo," he added.

The government is also recruiting 250 additional specialists to speed up the work of the commissions which carry out the first assessment of asylum requests.

Around 60 percent of those end with a decision to deny the applicant the right to remain in Italy.

The new courts will be designed to ensure people in this case have their appeals heard much quicker and that a binding decision is made at that stage.

As things stand, rejected asylum seekers can generally mount two appeals in a lengthy process that overturns the original denial in an estimated 70 percent of cases.

"These will be specialised judges with detailed knowledge of migration issues," Orlando said, denying the abolition of a second appeal involved lowering standards of legal protection.

The UN refugee agency welcomed the strengthening of the asylum commissions but voiced reservations about the new courts.

"There will have to be a very thorough examination of individual cases. If it is impossible to appeal, the first hearing has to be as good as possible with the emphasis on quality rather than speed," a spokeswoman said.

Orlando vowed the commissions would become more reliable and consistent in their decisions thanks to the new recruits and the recording of all discussions becoming compulsory.

Friday's initiative follows recent moves by the government to make it easier for migrants awaiting decisions on their fate to do voluntary work that will help them integrate into Italian society.

Italy has also recently agreed to help train Libya's coastguard to better police its coastal waters to reduce the number of boats leaving the country, and to help its former colony with the running of centres to house migrants pending their repatriation to their home countries.

On Friday, the government announced the creation of around 20 permanent repatriation centres capable of housing a total of 1,600 people pending deportation.

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Italy sets up fast-track asylum courts for migrants - The Local Italy

By Jerry A. Coyne By Jerry A. Coyne February 9 at 2:26 PM

Jerry A. Coyneis professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Why Evolution Is True and Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible.

On New Years Day, 1860, four men sat around a dinner table in Concord, Mass., contemplating a hefty green book that had just arrived in America. Published in England barely a month before, Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species was sent by the author himself to Asa Gray, a Harvard botanist who would become one of Darwins staunchest defenders. Gray gave his heavily annotated copy to his wifes cousin, child-welfare activist Charles Loring Brace, who, lecturing in Concord, brought it to the home of politician Franklin Sanborn. Besides Sanborn and Brace, the distinguished company included the philosopher Bronson Alcott and the author/naturalist Henry David Thoreau.

According to Randall Fuller, this meeting changed America by catalyzing the movement to rid the nation of slavery. Although Gray and the Concord Four were ardent abolitionists, only Gray was interested in the recondite biological details of Darwins theory. The rest of them focused on the books implicit message about human races.

[The Metaphysical Club, the Boston philosophers who changed the way American thought]

This is curious because On the Origin of Species carefully sidesteps the topic of human evolution and says nothing at all on the subject of race. Darwin was so concerned about the heretical nature of his message that he decided to avoid mentioning the most incendiary of all his conclusions: that humans, supposedly created in the image of God, were in fact nothing more than modified great apes. He therefore devoted just 12 timid words to human evolution in the entire 500-page work: Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

But that was enough. Reading between the lines, everyone, including the Concord Four, saw what Darwin had kept to himself: that humans had, like all other species, evolved via natural selection from ancient ancestors.

[Darwin the liberator: how evolutionary thought undermined the rationale for slavery]

What is the relevance of all this to abolitionism? At the time, it was debated whether humans had a single origin or several, with each race being separately created. The multiple-creation school, polygenism, was popular with apologists for slavery. If, as they supposed, the Adam-and-Eve creation produced whites, but other races derived from earlier and inferior acts of creation, then whites were justified in applying a different moral standard to people of nonwhite race, who were not created in Gods image. Polygenists sometimes saw blacks as subhuman intermediates or even as members of a different species, justifying their subjugation and enslavement.

But if humans had a single origin (monogenism), as Darwin proposed for other species, then all human races were genealogically connected: Blacks were every bit as human as whites equivalent to distant cousins and slavery became morally untenable. This is perhaps one of the very few times in the history of evolutionary biology that Darwins ideas aligned with a literal interpretation of the Bible. Like Darwin, the Genesis account suggests a single origin for all humans courtesy of Adam and Eve with no mention of multiple creations. This detail was overlooked by advocates of slavery, who proved to be creative and slippery theologians. According to Fuller, the excitement Darwin brought to Gray and the Concord Four came from providing a scientific justification for overturning the multiple-origins argument.

The Book That Changed America gives a vivid picture of the intellectual life of Concord, infused not just with abolitionism but with the Transcendentalist philosophy that saw a divine spark within each human, prizing subjective experience over hard facts. Fullers story ranges widely and sometimes discursively, including colorful characters such as Louisa May Alcott (daughter of Bronson), who, before gaining fame with Little Women, wrote unpublishable books about interracial love; Louis Agassiz, another Harvard professor, a racist and polygenist implacably opposed to Darwins theories; John Brown, whose disastrous attempt to start a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry was secretly financed by Sanborn; Frederick Douglass, a former slave turned orator and writer; and even P.T. Barnum, whose interest in science was driven by his desire to turn everything into a pay-per-view spectacle.

Unfortunately, Fullers engrossing account of the literary and intellectual hub of New England does little to support his thesis that Darwins book gave powerful ammunition to abolitionists, ultimately contributing to the Civil War. That is dubious for two reasons.

First, although the Concord abolitionists found a modicum of support in Darwins ideas, they already had strong moral arguments against slavery, and at any rate had almost no influence on the conflagration that began in 1861 but had been smoldering for decades. Second, Darwins ideas gave ammunition to the pro-slavery movement as well, for social Darwinists simply co-opted Darwins idea of competition among groups in nature to argue that whites had outstripped blacks in the struggle for existence. Like the Bible itself, Origin has been cited in support of diverse and often conflicting ideologies.

Its worth noting that the real revolution wrought by Origin the replacement of a divine creationism with a purely naturalistic explanation of lifes history had nothing to do with slavery. Within a decade of the books publication, virtually all American scientists and intellectuals were on board with Darwins ideas, which changed not only the whole of biology but also our self-image. Gone was the idea of humans as Gods special creation, replaced by the view that we are a product of a shuffling by natural selection of randomly arising variation a process involving huge amounts of suffering and death. In a letter to Gray, Darwin admitted that the facts of evolution didnt comport with the Abrahamic God: But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I should wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonid [parasitic wasps] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.

It was this issue of God and spirituality that led four of the five main characters in Fullers book to ultimately reject Darwins scientific message. The exception was Thoreau, who spent his last years obsessively cataloguing data on the Concord woodlands in a nebulous project cut short by his death from tuberculosis. But even Thoreau couldnt fully embrace Darwins message of naturalism, seeing science as powerless to explain things like emotions and behavior. Transcendentalists such as Alcott and Ralph Waldo Emerson, with their emphasis on the spiritual over the material, read into Darwin a misguided teleology of increasing perfection of the human soul. Brace became a theistic evolutionist, seeing God as masterminding the whole process. In the end, even the stalwart Gray was driven by his faith to see evolution as partly divine, proposing that God himself created the variation now known to be mutations in the DNA that fueled evolution.

Things havent changed much since 1860. A 2014 Gallup poll showed that 42 percent of Americans are young-Earth creationists, while another 31 percent are theistic evolutionists like Gray, accepting some form of human evolution but insisting it was directed by God. And only 19 percent of us 1 in 5 adhere to Darwins view that humans evolved in a purely naturalistic way with no supernatural help. Slavery, thankfully, is no longer with us, but, like the Transcendentalists, most of us still insist that a divine hand guided the origin of our species.

The Book That Changed America

How Darwins Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation

By Randall Fuller.

Viking. 304 pp. $27.

Read more:

Did Darwin's theory of evolution encourage abolition of slavery ... - Washington Post