Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, a freelance writer, lives and works at the Sts. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her articles and reviews have appeared in America, Commonweal, US Catholic, the collection Nonviolence as a Way of Life: History, Theory, and Practice and Opposition to War: An Encyclopedia for US Peace and Anti-war Movements. Her profiles and investigative reporting have merited Catholic Press Awards. Claire and husband Scott have four children and three grandchildren. He runs marathons, and she, too, is still logging the miles.
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Peace scholar says finding disappeared victims of Mexico's drug war 'a moral issue'
Pietro Ameglio Patella thinks the phrase "drug war" does not accurately describe the conflict in Mexico. "What really is happening in Mexico is a trans-national, inter-capitalist war for the monopoly over an illegal commodity and other crimes," he said.
Can we arm the nation without harming our own?
Enemy Within: For many in Kansas City, the acquisition of the Bannister Federal Complex by a private developer represented an innovative effort to redeem a dangerous brownfield. But sick workers wondered if the site could ever really be cleaned as more revelations surfaced about the plant's toxic legacy.
Federal workers struggle for years to prove they got sick on the job
Enemy Within: If the Kansas City Plant was not a "dirty" site, then why were its workers getting sick and dying prematurely? Government summaries of the manufacturing history reveal the Kansas City Plant worked with an array of radioactive materials over several decades. "The problem is the [plant] workers were not told, and they were not adequately protected," said David M. Manuta, a consultant with expertise in chemical industrial processes and radioactive material. "Kansas City was considered non-nuclear. And yet we know otherwise."
Government workers were kept in the dark about their toxic workplace
Enemy Within: During the decades of the Cold War, the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies employed hundreds of thousands of Americans in more than 350 secretive, hazardous worksites across the country. Employees were not always safe or cared for.