Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, a freelance writer, lives and works at the SS. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker in Worcester, MA. Her articles and reviews have appeared in America, Commonweal, US Catholic, the collection Nonviolence as a Way of Life: History, Theory, and Practice, and the soon-to-be-published 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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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.
Amid poverty and uncertainty, migrant couples are tying the knot
Crowded living conditions, poverty and months of waiting in uncertainty are the lot of caravan migrants who are stuck in Tijuana, Mexico, and seeking asylum in the U.S. Despite the hardships, a number of couples are celebrating love at the border.