It’s often said that kids need to spend more time outside — but where are they going to go? If they live in the US, chances are that public spaces of interest are few and far between — separated by single-family homes, high-speed roads, and depressing seas of asphalt. For every car in the United States, there are 8 parking spots. That’s a lot of land not being used. More importantly, it indicates a social ill which is all too common across North America — the social ill of car dependency. Over time, this dependency has a devastating effect on the economy, the environment, and public health.

Suppose that an eighth lane was added to Shelbyville Road. What would the effect be? You might think that traffic congestion would decrease, and you would be correct — at first. Despite what intuition may suggest, experts argue that congestion would increase over time at a faster rate, as more people realize that motor traffic capacity has increased. 

Having more lanes and parking lots means it’s more convenient to drive, and less convenient to do anything else. When driving is the most convenient option, the only people who don’t drive are the poor and the desperate. More cars on the roads means more congestion. More congestion means more pollution, higher maintenance costs, and a lesser quality of life. The bottom line is that increasing capacity for motor vehicles never fixes traffic — rather, the only solution to traffic congestion is viable alternatives to driving — i.e. greater levels of walkability, safe bicycle infrastructure, and public transit that is both reliable and convenient.

If you’re a Louisville citizen, you might’ve noticed an increase in the number of bike lanes in recent years. On its own, this is a good thing — but it’s not enough. Many of these lanes are what Canadian engineer Jason Slaughter would describe as “painted bicycle gutters,” because they lack any of the road separation which makes protected bike lanes safe. Painted bicycle gutters are sometimes treated by drivers as extra driving or parking space, and drivers in parking lanes will often open vehicle doors into bike lanes without looking. This results in a high risk of collisions and subsequent low usage. 

There are a whole library’s worth of reasons why car dependency is bad for our cities — from both obvious and unseen environmental harm, to the destruction of low-income neighborhoods, to the widespread economic instability studied by the U.S. non-profit called Strong Towns. All of these reasons are valid, but few can be covered in the length of an article. The bottom line is this: if Louisville wishes to become a greener city, address its housing crisis, support its local businesses, fix traffic congestion, and increase tax revenue while it’s at it — it has to become more walkable and start prioritizing other modes of transportation.

In the 1970s, singer and activist Anita Bryant launched a campaign to repeal the addition of sexuality to the Anti-Discrimination Act in her home state of Florida. Her campaign was brutal and eventually succeeded in getting the law changed- an “achievement” for the burgeoning anti-gay movement. 

However, her threat created a tangible enemy for queer activists to rally against, which sparked widespread protests and unity in the community. To say that her attack on our community was “good” would be an overstatement. However, it led to a continuation of the legacy of queer people coming together in the face of homophobia and hate.

 The LGBTQIA community is currently facing a similar threat. In 2023, anti-trans legislation is on the rise, in tandem with transphobic rhetoric spreading on both sides of our political spectrum. Since the beginning of 2020, 921 anti-trans or anti-queer bills have been introduced, and many have been passed into law. Another aspect of this recent rise in discrimination is the use of the word “groomer” to refer to gay people, especially those in education. This terminology was introduced by- you guessed it- Anita Bryant. From alt-right pundits to nominally liberal TERFs, anti-trans rhetoric is spreading, and they are using many of the same talking points as Bryant did in the 70s. 

In her 1975 book The Anita Bryant Story, Bryant writes “Homosexuals cannot reproduce- so they must recruit. And to freshen their ranks, they must recruit the youth of America. I shall continue to fight against that recruitment.” If that sounds familiar, it's because it is the same argument that many queerphobic pundits and politicians use today. Arthur Abigail Shriar of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” is an example, saying “activist teachers are looking to recruit other people’s children in their revolution” in an interview with Fox News.

After Bryant's “Save Our Children” campaign, later renamed “Protect America’s Children,” the Queer community came together in protest. These activists came together and formed the Coalition for Human Rights and the Miami Victory Campaign. As Bryant led campaigns against the rights of queer people, these organizations pioneered the fight that led to every one of her “successes” being reversed. From the reinstatement of sexual orientation in a 1998 clause to the Anti-Discrimination Act to gay adoption being legalized in 2008, almost nothing remains of Bryant’s impacts. 

When your rights are under attack, and your humanity is threatened, it is easy to lie down and take it. It feels like fighting is useless, but it's important to remember our history. As queer people, we have never gotten anything for free. Anytime we make progress toward equality, there is someone else trying to reverse it. They try to push us back into the closet, fight against our rights, degrade our humanity and there is only one response.  If a hundred people show up to an anti-trans rally, we bring a thousand. If they scream about our depravity, we scream louder about our humanity and pride. If they try to isolate us and make us feel alone, we come together and support each other. This is a critical moment in history, and we need to make sure future textbooks read about our love, our fight, our passion, and most of all, our humanity.

As of 2022, banks are increasingly losing money on mortgages, and not a few dollars shaved off, but it actually was a net loss for local banks to give out home loans. This is due to the fact that the amount of people who are already paying off the interest in mortgage agreements exceeds the amount of new homeowners. Since the main profit of mortgages is the interest, the lack of people paying banks the interest means they need more money than they are actually collecting. 

Comparing this with rapidly rising home prices, someone earning an average income wont be able to afford a home without a decent amount of struggle. With houses in urban areas being upwards of 300k, combined with next to no home loans available, our housing economy faces an uncertain fate.

The average combined household income in the US is roughly 70k. So as to not break the bank, the average home buying range should center around 275k, but considering interest rates may rise exponentially,you will likely be paying over 350k for your home. Now, the median home price in the US is $428,700. Visibly we have a problem.

Many researchers have gathered why banks cannot afford these mortgages. According to Marine Walsh of the MBA(Mortgage Bankers Association), “The rapid rise in mortgage rates over a relatively short period of time, combined with extremely low housing inventory and affordability challenges, meant that both purchase and refinance volume plummeted…The stellar profits of the previous two years dissipated because of the confluence of declining volume, lower revenues and higher costs per loan."

This encapsulates the idea of how serious this is. It’s not a large mistake or fault in the system, but a progressive deterioration of banks. Seeing the source as a growing problem makes its solution much more harder to find, since it can’t be solved by just waiting it out

Looking at statistics, mortgage issues have never been this worrying since 2008, one of our biggest economic crises of all time. Being born in 2008, I remember very early as a toddler seeing things like “Businesses not even close to recovering from the recession”, or “Millions without work still”, plastered on the sliding bar under weathermen.

In 2008, the increased presence of predatory mortgages and insanely high mortgage rates, combined with next to no market regulation caused many to be left at a standstill regarding housing. Once the banks needed more money than people could actually afford to spend on homes, it fell apart quickly. Now we see history repeating itself, except now the issue does not stem from a isolated issue

Overall, this issue is not limited to just housing. With a worsened housing market, the banks lose money, when the banks lose money, the treasury and IRS lose money. It’s essentially an unavoidable slippery slope. Unfortunately, I find this unlike other recessions, as we have extenuating outside factors that make a depleted economy much worse

With serious tensions in the east, a war will be scraping the barrel of an already depleted reserve of money .If say, a country were to attack a US ally, we would be contractually obligated to provide funds and manpower. Even worse, if we were to be attacked on the homefront, we face a chaotic time.

If we do not want a strenuous period of peril, then we need to quickly find a way to at least find some way to slow down a seemingly inevitable time for our nation. Our best bet is to establish a revamping initiative, where private lenders and landlords may be limited on how much they can actually profit off of housing. 

The first of April is not only a day full of tricks and pranks, it also marks the beginning of Autism Acceptance Month. It was not always called that; an organization named Autism Speaks pioneered the month as “Autism Awareness Month” instead of the name today. Autism Speaks is a non-profit organization whose mission statement is “Autism Speaks is dedicated to creating an inclusive world for all individuals with autism throughout their lifespan.” But most among the autistic community know this completely contradicts their actions. 

When Autism Speaks was founded in 2005, they chose a puzzle piece as their logo, which inspired a wave of merchandise attempting to promote autism awareness using this symbol. But sellers fail to realize that this attributes a negative stigma to the autistic community.  If we look deeper into the symbolization and coloration and the puzzle piece, we find that this logo insinuates that autistic people are inferior to neurotypical people and that autism is only in boys. The puzzle piece symbolizes a part of the human brain and the brain is supposedly one big puzzle. But in autistic people one of these pieces is missing, which conveys they are incomplete. 

How does it communicate that autism can only be in boys and not girls? Well, analyzing the coloration of the puzzle piece, it is specifically a blue color. Blue is often connected to the male gender, which gives us the conclusion that the implications of this symbol is very harmful.

Now this also leads us into the perception Autism Speaks has about autism itself, which is equally as harmful as its logo. Autism Speaks makes autism out to be a disease that needs to be cured rather than what it actually is: a genetic disability. The original naming of Autism Acceptance Month reflects this as well. Autism Awareness Month is named similarly to October’s own Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which gives off a message that autism is once again, treatable, similar to cancer or any other disease. 

The media that Autism Speaks posted pushes the message they started with even more. Autism Speaks’ portrayal of autism within videos and other media is atrocious to say the very least. A massive example of their views can be found within the now deletable (but still accessible if you look for it) video “I am Autism”. To describe it, the main speaker introduces himself as Autism, then goes on to share negative stereotypes that have been associated with Autism, what I found most notable was the line “I will make it virtually impossible for your family to easily attend a temple, birthday party, or public park without a struggle, without embarrassment, without pain.” Once again, this paints autism as a horrible thing for a child to have, a harmful message to any parents of an autistic child

Now what could be possibly done? Well, the autistic community are already taking action, spreading awareness behind the evils of Autism Speaks so that others do not fall in the same trap countless of their supporters already have. Autism Speaks however, can still improve, even with their misdeeds. I believe if Autism Speaks changes their logo to account for the new symbol for the autistic community, take full accountability of their past actions, and fully change their perception of autism, I find that the reputation of Autism Speaks would change for the better.

If you haven’t heard, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, also known as “TMNT,” are back with their upcoming movie titled “Mutant Mayhem,” which will be released later this Fall. The teaser was recently released and was given a lot of praise- but it also received a lot of hate for one particular character design. In the teaser, April O’ Neil, one of the popular characters of the franchise, is revealed to be black. This caused a lot of hate towards the character. The decision to change April O’ Neil’s race is fine, and the fact that people are being so negative about it is racist.

After the release of the teaser, many white supremacists have taken to the internet to complain about the change. They claim that the decision is encouraging the “white erasure” ideology, claiming that white characters are being “erased” in both fiction and reality- which is an interesting take coming from people who’ve never had to experience people of color erasure, which is an actual phenomenon. 

This phenomenon not only happens in real life but it was also found in animation. According to a study conducted in 1972 by the group called Action for Children’s Television, black characters accounted for 5.6% out of a selected sample of over 1,500 characters. It was also found that 11.6% characters were coded as Asian or Asian American and 1.4% were coded as Latino. This is very small compared to the actual proportion of the same minority groups in the United States. Not only is this concerning, but it’s also sad knowing that children who are part of these minority groups had so little representation of themselves on TV.

  “White erasure” can’t happen because, first of all, there has never been an occurrence where white lives were at greater risk than POCs. Secondly, it can’t happen because a kid’s movie decided to have a dark skin woman as a character. There is no fact nor history of this ever happening, as it is very unlikely for one movie to cause the end of a privileged race; this cannot happen. 

This is not the first time April O’ Neil was depicted as black. The 2018 series Rise of the Teenage Mutant Turtles depicted her the same way and was met with hate for the decision so this anger is not new. 

It’s such a weird reason to hate on this new characterization of her solely because she’s black, since April O’ Neil has looked different in each adaptation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Historically, every comic issue, TV show, and movie redesigned April O’ Neil in their unique way, so why are people getting upset about her being black? 

In the first series, made in 1987, April is a Channel 6 news reporter and wears a yellow jumpsuit and has red hair. Besides her physical appearance, she alerted the turtles if there was trouble in New York City but also acted as a damsel in distress as she was constantly being saved. In the 2003 series, however, April got a huge glow up, as both her appearance and overall character was changed. This portrayal of April had a more magnetic red hair color, and she wore a crop top with baggy jeans. She still helped the turtles using her technical skills, but she was less of a damsel in distress as she learned how to defend herself by receiving training from the turtles. Both of these depictions didn’t receive any harsh criticism, and were actually praised by the fandom for being the best versions of the character. 

I like the change. As a fellow black girl, it’s good seeing dark skin represented in animation. I dare to even say that this version of April was the best, because she was an amazing character and was a breath of fresh air from the old character adaptations. 

Seeing April O’ Neil as a black woman is  important, because it paves a way for a more diverse environment in animation. 30 years ago, it would’ve been rare to see a black main character in a cartoon series, but now it’s easy to find cartoons with a black main character like The Proud Family and Craig of the Creek. 

Seeing more and more diversity in animation is amazing and it will keep increasing it if we continue to create inclusive stories and characters. The people who are against this should open their eyes, because they are living in the dark and are missing out on such an amazing opportunity to learn about someone’s diverse background.