Why I am a Catholic. “As a young Catholic woman, I’ve kind of gotten used to the Catholic Church not reflecting me,” writes Heidi Schlumpf (U.S. Catholic, July). “Its language doesn’t include me, its homilies hardly ever pertain to my life, and many of its jobs are not open to me. My disconnection seems to increase as I look higher up the hierarchical ladder. To them, my opinions don’t matter, my concerns are not priorities, and my requests for change are a nuisance. In a word, I feel powerless.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Oak Park and Cicero–a marriage made in heaven. In a recent paper published by the Brookings Institution (“Valuing America’s First Suburbs,” April), Robert Puentes and Myron Orfield outline a strategy for older suburbs in the midwest, which they describe as “not poor enough to qualify for many federal and state reinvestment programs and not large enough to receive federal and state funds directly.” They conclude that these inner-ring suburbs “can change this by building coalitions that reach across geographic, partisan and ideological lines. These coalitions should be nimble and entrepreneurial–aligning on some issues with the central city, on other issues with rapidly growing suburbs and rural areas.”
Race to the top. If globalization were hurting the poorest and most vulnerable workers, you’d expect child labor to be on the rise in the developing world. It’s not, according to the Progressive Policy Institute’s review of World Bank data (“PPI Trade Fact of the Week,” May 8). Not only did the percentage of children working fall from 20 percent in 1980 to 11 percent in 1999, but the drop was most dramatic in East Asia, from 26 percent to 8 percent. “Much of this drop seems due to development. While public debate on child labor focuses on export-oriented manufacturing, the Department of Labor believes that only about 5 percent of child labor is in this sector. Most is in subsistence agriculture, with basic services second. Thus, economies based on subsistence agriculture have the highest child labor rates, and rates fall as they move into urban industry.”
