When Adam Lanza murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary school, as well as killing his mother and himself, he brought the issue of school security into the national spotlight. Perhaps the most visible immediate response to the Newtown killings centered on the issue of gun control.

The cover page of The New York Times 2011 end-of-the-year feature, “The Year in Pictures,” is Moises Sama’s photograph of a young clean-up volunteer, standing amid the rubble in Tahrir Square after Mubarak’s resignation last February. The photo is taken at night, and the man is luminously backlit by what looks like fires and lights in the background, as he stands slightly apart from a blurred crowd of people. Inside are four more pages of photos of protests around the world, (half focused on the U.S.).

... lobbying and other forms of advocacy work are vital to our organization. If we do not give voice to or address the needs of groups that are most vulnerable, or if we fail to provide them with resources they do not have, including the ability to generate, analyze, and present data in a compelling way in the public arena, then we fall short of being the type of organization that we purport to be and that many of our members believed they joined or want it to be. 

You’ve probably heard something of the situation by now – Glenn Beck, a Fox news ‘commentator’ is trashing Frances Fox Piven, using the kind of hateful language and accusations that have come to mark American political discourse, taking all the ‘civil’ out of it.

Last fall, several teens were tragically lost to suicide and their untimely deaths spurred an unprecedented debate.