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A case for restorative justice

Ava DuVernay’s dramatic Netflix miniseries “When They See Us” chronicles the infamous wrongful conviction of five black and Latino teenagers in New York City for the brutal 1989 rape and assault of a young white woman who was attacked while jogging in Central Park. In its depiction of Manhattan prosecutor Linda Fairstein, who oversaw the investigation and prosecution of the teens, the series has sparked a long-overdue conversation about the role of prosecutors in perpetrating false convictions. Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana, both 14; Yusef Salaam and Antron McCray, both ...

Mexico was easy target for threats

Mexico is breathing a collective sigh of relief following President Trump’s decision to temporarily suspend his threat to impose draconian tariffs on Mexican goods. But don’t kid yourself: The truce is not likely to last long. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s self-imposed international isolation has left this country in a weak diplomatic position to defend itself from Trump’s tantrums. That is likely to embolden the U.S. president to further step up his attacks on Mexico as he begins his 2020 re-election campaign. Granted, Trump’s threat to impose tariffs ...

Finding people to fill small town’s empty spaces

A tiny French mountain village with a long name, L’Hospitalet-pres-l’Andorre, has lost half its population over three decades, according to the French newspaper Le Monde. Its name in English would be “The Hospital Near Andorra.” (Andorra is a small principality shoehorned between France and Spain.) The village can tick off the losses. First the customs office closed, causing the five families whom it supported to leave. (The village’s economy mainly depended on the town’s location on the road to Andorra and some tourism in the Pyrenees mountains.) Other jobs were erased ...

A harsher but more meaningful life

“When you are told all your life you’re dumb, unworthy, you start believing it. God changed that for me.” Jerry, from Youngstown, Tenn., hesitated to be interviewed by Chris Arnade, because “I don’t know my ABCs, so I can’t really talk right.” He told Arnade, the author of the new book “Dignity: Seeing Respect in Back Row America”: “I got nothing of worth to say, not anything anybody would want to read about.” Arnade talks him into it, suggesting his views might be of worth to others. Jerry was raised “dirt poor” in a military family, “the son of ...

Why do selfies of women look like Rockettes?

It must have been the nth time in one day I’d seen a Facebook photo of a group of women I know standing in what I think of as that pose. If you are female and between, say, 15 and 55, and if you spend any time on social media, you have no doubt seen something similar: Bodies turned slightly, shoulders toward the camera, front legs bent at the knee, front feet balanced on pointed toes. Sometimes, the women are all turned in the same direction, akin to a chorus line. Sometimes an imaginary line divides the group, with each half turned toward the middle, mirroring one another. I ...

But speaking is to act, as well

Last week President Trump flew to Britain, our closest ally. But before Air Force One’s wheels touched the tarmac, Trump had called the mayor of London a “stone cold loser.” And he called a royal in-law and fellow American, Meghan Markle, “nasty.” Name-calling is rude and generally counterproductive. What could Trump gain by insulting his hosts? Wouldn’t millions, on both sides of the Atlantic, have cheered if the Queen had scolded Trump like a schoolboy and sent him home until he could behave? But my always-Trump friends are not put off by his name-calling and ...