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While some radioactive elements in nuclear fuel decay quickly, cesium’s half-life is 30 years and strontium’s is 29 years. Scientists estimate that it takes 10 to 13 half-lives before life and economic activity can return to an area. That means that the contaminated area — designated by Ukraine’s Parliament as 15,000 square miles, around the size of Switzerland — will be affected for more than 300 years.

Since the early 1990s, Ukrainian officials have been working on a plan to replace it, finally launching a project called the New Safe Confinement, a 300-foot steel arch that will enclose and seal off the reactor for the next 100 years. Its cost is estimated at $1.4 billion, to be paid largely by donor nations. The project, originally scheduled to be finished in 2005, has been beset by delays and financing shortfalls.

infant mortality, where the United States ranks worse than 48 other countries and territories,

America is indeed No. 1, he might declare — in locking its citizens up, with an incarceration rate far higher than that of the likes of Russia, Cuba, Iran or China

the self-censorship it produces in politicians is bipartisan, even if it is more pronounced on the left for some issues and the right for others.

An American politician who speaks too candidly about the country’s faults, she went on to say, risks being labeled with that most devastating of epithets: un-American.

After the Revolution some 3,000 former slaves had been transported from New York to Nova Scotia, where they became known as Black Loyalists

Equiano was appointed to an expedition to resettle London's Black Poor in Freetown, a new British colony founded on the west coast of Africa, at present-day Sierra Leone. The blacks from London were joined by more than 1,200 Black Loyalists who chose to leave Nova Scotia.

He was one of the leading members of the Sons of Africa, a small abolitionist group composed of free Africans in London

Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745 – 31 March 1797),[3] known in his lifetime as Gustavus Vassa (/ˈvæsə/),[4] was a prominent African in London, a freed slave who supported the British movement to end the slave trade.

His last master was Robert King, an American Quaker merchant who allowed Equiano to trade on his own account and purchase his freedom in 1766.

Equiano settled in England in 1767 and worked and traveled for another 20 years as a seafarer, merchant, and explorer in the Caribbean, the Arctic, the American colonies, South and Central America, and the United Kingdom.

in 1792 Equiano married an English woman named Susannah Cullen and they had two daughters.

In Virginia, Equiano was bought in 1754 by Michael Pascal,

He was transported with 244 other enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to Barbados in the West Indies.

He and a few other slaves were sent on to the British colony of Virginia.

Pascal took Equiano with him when he returned to England, and had him accompany him as a valet during the Seven Years' War with France. Also trained in seamanship, Equiano was expected to assist the ship's crew in times of battle; his duty was to haul gunpowder to the gun decks. Pascal favoured Equiano and sent him to his sister-in-law in Great Britain, so that the youth could attend school and learn to read and write.

At this time, Equiano converted to Christianity

Pascal sold Equiano to Captain James Doran of the Charming Sally at Gravesend, from where he was transported back to the Caribbean, to Montserrat, in the Leeward Islands. There he was sold to Robert King, an American Quaker merchant from Philadelphia who traded in the Caribbean.[1

King set Equiano to work on his shipping routes and in his stores. In 1765, when Equiano was about 20 years old, King promised that for his purchase price of 40 pounds, the slave could buy his freedom.[14] King taught him to read and write more fluently, guided him along the path of religion, and allowed Equiano to engage in profitable trading for his own account, as well as on his master's behalf

The merchant urged Equiano to stay on as a business partner, but the African found it dangerous and limiting to remain in the British colonies as a freedman. While loading a ship in Georgia, he was almost kidnapped back into slavery.

By about 1767, Equiano had gained his freedom and went to England. He continued to work at sea, travelling sometimes as a deckhand based in England. In 1773 on the British Royal Navy ship Racehorse, he travelled to the Arctic in an expedition to find a northern route to India.[15] On that voyage he worked with Dr. Charles Irving, who had developed a process to distill seawater and later made a fortune from it. Two years later, Irving recruited Vassa for a project on the Mosquito Coast in South America, where he was to use his African background and Igbo language to help select slaves and manage them as labourers on sugar cane plantations. I

Equiano expanded his activities in London, learning the French horn and joining debating societies, including the London Corresponding Society. He continued his travels, visiting Philadelphia and New York in 1785 and 1786, respectively.

n the 1780s he became involved in the abolitionist movement.

Equiano was befriended and supported by abolitionists, many of whom encouraged him to write and publish his life story. He was supported financially in this effort by philanthropic abolitionists and religious benefactors.

As part of settling in Britain, Equiano/Vassa decided to marry and have a family. On 7 April 1792, he married Susannah Cullen, a local girl

The couple settled in the area and had two mixed-race daughters, Anna Maria (1793–1797) and Joanna (1795–1857).

divergent narratives in Washington and Tokyo, with Japanese officials emphasizing the efforts they were making to tame the damaged plant and American officials highlighting the challenges.

minimize soldiers’ exposure to radiation.

showed harmful radiation in the immediate vicinity of the plant — a much heavier dose than the trace levels of radioactive particles that make up the atmospheric plume covering a much wider area.

American officials did not release specific radiation readings.

He sought and achieved Congressional authority to create the First Bank of the United States in 1791; the charter lasted until 1811.[17]

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed a strong central government (and, consequently, most of Hamilton's economic policies), but they could not stop Hamilton,

As president in 1811 Madison let the bank charter expire, but the War of 1812 proved the need for a national bank and Madison reversed positions. The Second Bank of the United States was established in 1816, with a 20 year charter.[18]

Cotton, at first a small-scale crop in the South, boomed following Eli Whitney's invention in 1793 of the cotton gin,

Millions moved to the more fertile farmland of the Midwest. States built roads and waterways, such as the Cumberland Pike (1818) and the Erie Canal (1825), opening up markets for western farm products.

The Whig Party supported Clay's American System, which proposed to build internal improvements (e.g. roads, canals and harbors), protect industry, and create a strong national bank

President Andrew Jackson (1829–1837), leader of the new Democratic Party, opposed the Second Bank of the United States, which he believed favored the entrenched interests of rich. When he was elected for a second term, Jackson blocked the renewal of the bank's charter. Jackson opposed paper money and demanded the government be paid in gold and silver coins. The Panic of 1837 stopped business growth for three years

Railroads made a decisive impact on the U.S. economy especially in the 1850-1873 era, making possible the transition to an urban industrial nation with high finance and advanced managerial skills. Railroads opened up remote areas, drastically cut the cost of moving freight as well as passenger travel, and stimulated new industries such as steel and telegraphy, as well as the profession of civil engineering.

Atlanta, Billings, Chicago, and Dallas

the railroad became the first large-scale business enterprise and the model for most large corporations.[24]

Panics did not curtail rapid U.S. economic growth during the 19th century. Long term demographic growth, expansion into new farmlands, and creation of new factories continued. New inventions and capital investment led to the creation of new industries and economic growth. As transportation improved, new markets continuously opened.

By 1860, on the eve of Civil War, 16% of the people lived in cities with 2500 or more people; a third of the nation's income came from manufacturing. Urbanized industry was limited primarily to the Northeast; cotton cloth production was the leading industry, with the manufacture of shoes, woolen clothing, and machinery also expanding. Most of the workers in the new factories were immigrants or their children. Between 1845 and 1855, some 300,000 European immigrants arrived annually. Many remained in eastern cities, especially mill towns and mining camps, while those with farm experience and some savings bought farms in the West.[26]

The industrial advantages of the North over the South helped secure a Northern victory in the American Civil War

Industrialists came to dominate many aspects of the nation's life, including social and political affairs.[26]

the region maintained its dependence on cotton

An explosion of new discoveries and inventions took place, a process called the "Second Industrial Revolution."

By 1890, the USA leaped ahead of Britain for first place in manufacturing output.[2

The rapid economic development following the Civil War laid the groundwork for the modern U.S. industrial economy.

Parallel to these achievements was the development of the nation's industrial infrastructure

Stuart Hall,

Prudence Crandall

Anne Braden

For many contemporary African-American activists, race has been a blind spot for white feminists and for the feminist movement at large.

But the numerous issues of inequality facing working-class and poor Black women

had never been very vital to the mainstream feminist agenda

So how is it possible to develop the kinds of arguments that will allow people to recognize that one cannot effectively struggle for gender equality without racial equality?

“Intersectionality” is a neologism introduced in 1989 by the Black law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who teaches at U.C.L.A.

and Columbia University.

that Black women are subject to discrimination based not just on race, class or sex but the interaction of all of them

Davis sees a chance for us to re-examine capitalism, which she views as irredeemably flawed

Along with coalition building, Davis has long been passionate about radically changing the criminal justice system

)

It allows us to imagine other ways of addressing issues of safety and security. Most of us have assumed in the past that when it comes to public safety, the police are the ones who are in charge. When it comes to issues of harm in the community, prisons are the answer. But what if we imagined different modes of addressing harm, different modes of addressing security and safety?

I have thought often of Davis’s ideas on law enforcement, especially around issues involving the mentally il

but also their leadership models — and in particular, how they have avoided the pitfalls of their predecessors: primarily, a cultish fixation on a charismatic male leader

Fannie Lou Hamer

Huey P. Newton w

Mark Rudd

[Younger activists] know so much more than we did at their age,” she says. “They don’t take male supremacy for granted.

One aspect of this shift in leadership models has to do with a critique of patriarchy and a critique of male supremacy.

Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi

E.D. Nixon,

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Crucial to her intellectual development was her mother’s participation with the Southern Negro Youth Congress;

several of the organization’s leaders were members of the Communist Party.

Davis spent two of her high school years attending an integrated school in New York thanks to a Quaker-run program that placed promising Black Southerners in Northern schools

she studied under the philosopher Herbert Marcuse,

From 1965 to 1967, she studied in Europe, learning several languages, deepening her understanding of German philosophy and participating in rallies for the Socialist German Student Union.

After returning to the United States in 1967, Davis affirmed her commitment to Communism

a key reason that she became associated with the Marxist-influenced Black Panthers

NO MOVEMENT IS static. Contemporary Black activism has also largely been informed by the concurrent agitation surrounding trans and queer rights,

Though briefly married to a man in the early ’80s, Davis came out as a lesbian in 1997 and now openly lives with her partner, the academic Gina Dent.

There would have been no way to imagine that trans movements would effectively demonstrate to people that it is possible to effectively challenge what counts as normal in so many different areas of our lives.

There’s a tendency to define racial progress in America by the upward mobility of various “minority groups” — to count and celebrate how many members have entered the middle class, have graduated from college or have multimillion-dollar deals with streaming services.

We do need free education. Why is it that people pay fifty, sixty, seventy thousand dollars a year to study in a university? Housing: That’s something sort of just basic. At a time when we need access to these services more than ever before, the wealth of the world has shifted into the hands of a very small number of people.”

It may be easy to be cynical about Communism and claim that America won the Cold War, but it’s also impossible to deny that this country’s financial system breeds income inequality, homelessness and divides us into warring camps separated by class, sex and race.

Does she think the Democratic Party could be a vehicle for transforming America? “To be frank, no,” she says, but then adds, “I think it’s important to push the Democrats further to the left,” expressing great enthusiasm for the four progressive female congresswomen — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib — elected in 2018.

Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011

Black Lives Matter movement.

this is a moment many years in the making, based in grass-roots organizing that’s been happening outside the world of party politics and thus underrecognized by the mainstream media.

there are no guarantees, to use Stuart Hall’s phrase, that our work will have an immediate effect,” she says. “But we have to do it as if it were possible.”

She’s heartened, too, by the diversity of participants in Black Lives Matter marches and the willingness of white protesters to embrace the battle against white supremacy

As we looked at the damage that the pandemic was doing, people began to realize the extent to which Black communities, brown communities and Indigenous communities were sustaining the effect of a pandemic in ways that pointed to the existence of structural racism.

We buy all too easily into the jingoism of Hollywood movies and our politicians’ pious platitudes. We possess an unjustified sense of self-regard. The effects of an inflated ego are pernicious; they stifle our ability to clearly see the world outside of ourselves, or our own role in it.

Garza: In 2018 and 2019, my organization, Black Futures Lab, did what we believe is the largest survey of black communities in America. It’s called the Black Census Project. We asked more than 30,000 black people across America what we experience, what we want to see happen instead and what we long for, for our futures.

There are a host of things that the police are currently responding to that they have no business responding to.

A tiny percentage of people are the ones destabilizing communities

In many cities, the police spend a lot of time “on traffic and motor-vehicle issues, on false burglar alarms, on noise complaints and on problems with animals,”

There has been such a massive disinvestment in the social safety net that should exist to give black communities an opportunity to thrive, whether it’s access to health care or housing or education or jobs.

Similarly, if you have a homeless man panhandling at a red light and you say to a cop, “Go fix it,” he’ll arrest the man. And now he has a $250 ticket. And how does he pay that? And what does any of this accomplish?

domestic disputes. They’re the subject of 15 to more than 50 percent of calls to the police

The women were deeply wary of the police in general, but 33 of them had called them at least once, often for help with a teenager. “Calling the police on family members deepens the reach of penal control,” Bell wrote. But the mothers in her study have scant options.