Source: http://www.cougarprideavl.com/state--national/previous/2
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 08:21:09+00:00

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At age 85, Ruth Bader Ginsberg recently had an accident that left her with three broken ribs. She was briefly hospitalized. During her brief stay at the hospital Ginsberg did not take the days she was there off. She was keen that her doctors would leave as soon as they finished their work on her so she could get her own work done. Ginsberg is an associate justice of the supreme court of the United States of America, and the oldest of them, too. Many people learned about this amazing judge by watching the 2018 documentary, RGB. Ginsberg has survived not only broken a total of 5 ribs, but also beaten cancer not once, but two times.
Ginsberg, born Joan Ruth Bader, was born in Brooklyn, New York on March 15, 1933. Ginsberg was appointed by the 42nd president, Bill Clinton, on August 10th, 1993. Ginsberg's parents were both Russian immigrants, causing Ginsberg to be questioned as a child about where she was from. Ginsberg has said that her mom was one of her biggest encouragers growing up, sadly shortly after Ginsberg graduated from high school her mother died. Ginsberg told CNN that her mother was, "unusual for her time because she stressed the great importance of independence." Ginsberg also said that in her mother's short life she taught her the importance of persisting and to keep trying even if not at first successful. Ginsberg said that how her mother raised her had a great impact on how she works and even how she raised her children and grandchildren.
In Ginsberg's 13 years as an associate justice of the supreme court, she has managed to do many amazing things for women's rights. Right from the start, she was making history, having gone to Harvard, Columbia, and Cornell University. When Ginsberg was appointed, she was the second female to ever be a part of the supreme court, after Sandra Day O'Connor. One out of many amazing feats Ginsberg has accomplished was being a volunteer lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union and also was a member of its board of directors and one of its general counsels. Ginsberg has been in these following six cases as well as many others. She was in Duren v. Missouri (1978), Califano v. Goldfarb (1976), Edwards v. Healy (1974), Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1974), Kahn v. Shevin (1973), and Frontiero v. Richardson (1972). Ginsberg says that she will continue her work until she is not able.
On October 29th a student was shot and killed by a classmate around 9:00 am. Authorities say it was a fight and then the student was shot at 10:30, police said the student died. Around 9:15 the lockdown was lifted and student’s parents were allowed to pick up their kids. Authorities say the shooting was an isolated incident since there was only 1 death. The school is 12 miles southeast of Charlotte, according to WLOS. The Charlotte Observer says it started with just a school fight and students just thought it as a normal fight and people were crowding around, when the kid who was being bullied pulled out a pistol and people turned and ran the other way as teachers pulled students into classrooms. The suspect, Jatwan Cuffie, turned himself into the school's resource office without a fight. Since this is very recent there is not much information.
30 people have died during school shootings this year; there have been 58 school shootings (a school shooting is defined as whenever a firearm is fired on the school campus). This just proves the amounts of school violence that is in our country. Who knows how many full lockdowns and fights there has been this year. It's just sad how much violence happens in our schools. A school is a safe place for me, but every time I hear that a school shooting has happened or I see or hear about a fight, it just feels less safe at that moment. When I see kids bullying other kids or picking on other kids it makes me worry about both of those kids, it pains me to see kids cussing each other out or fighting because I know that people in society do not act like that so kids should not either. There is a statistic that half of the world's teenagers (13-15-year-olds) report that there is a peer to peer violence, like bullying and fighting. This is a real problem. But it seems not many people are trying to stop it even though it is a really bad problem.
I think gun control would be a good thing to stop school shootings. When I say gun control I do not mean like no guns for civilians I mean make it harder to buy a gun with more background checks and better age limits and besides, you can not take legal guns from someone because the second amendment says we have the right to bear arms. Except, in my opinion, some guns that are legal should not be legal. Such as the AR-15 that was used in the Stoneman Douglas shooting in February 2018. The Stoneman Douglas high school students should be role models for us because after that they spoke up so much to prevent school violence. In the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, it was a slaughter, the FBI says he planned it for months and had been obsessed with murders and mass shootings. In Sandy Hook's case, it was due to poor background checks of who was buying the guns, even though the shooters mom bought the guns (AR-15, 2 other pistols). He used an assault weapon to massacre the 1st-grade classroom. If the AR-15 was illegal it would not have been nearly as bad in both shootings.
My second idea to stop school violence is that we need to change as students. We need to stop getting into fights and arguments and start realizing that although we may have a difference we are all humans and we all want to live a good life. If we all think of how we can make another's personal life just a little bit happier. Because let's think about this get you an argument with someone or your bullying some or being bullied would it be better to make the person angrier or happier. The Charlotte shooting was because of bullying. The bully was the one who was shot at the end of the day. It's just terrible that the bully gets to the person's head so much that the person shot him, it is just terrible. Think if the bully had just stopped the day before he might not be dead. This leaves me to another point, the person who shot the bully should have had thicker skin and just stepped away and told the bully I do not care what you say to me it does not hurt. See if we all changed or we did not let people bother us we would be happier and better people. Nate Durham from 6th grade thinks that there needs to better disciplinary systems in schools. Joe Hooten, a 6th-grade student, thinks we should have more drills. I especially agree with Joe's idea because we have had 3 full lockdowns and no drills. I know AMS has a lot of cameras, so this is not much of an issue for us but some schools might need more cameras like in their parking lots or other common places like cafeterias, sports fields like our track and hallways. These ideas fit under the topic of better security.
During the recent lockdown on November 6, 2018, a 7th grade parent called the school and they did not pick up. this, of course, worries many parents that the school is not giving information to the public, which is reasonable. Do you think that during a lockdown a school administrator is going to tell every parent that calls a reason why we are in lockdown? No. Their job is to keep us safe. All the situations of our 3 lockdowns to prove the threat is not true. I understand that we do not know that much about the recent lockdowns. I would like the schools to tell the public. I also understand that if the threat is made by someone under 18 they can not release their name, so due to that the school is not allowed to tell us that much. During the lockdown I saw from Mr. Hickman's room, I saw police letting cars out of the car line and then they blocked the car line. Later more police arrived. I saw one with a huge assault rifle. Many people saw an officer with one. We have to remember we are safe at school. we have devoted teachers here to keep us safe.
Overall school violence is a huge problem. I hope at AMS we stop the little that there is in our school. There is way too much school violence in our world today, I think we can stop it if try. My goal to be nicer to people who are mean or rude to me I challenge all of you to do the same.
A tragedy occurred in Pittsburg on Saturday, October 27th, and killed 11 people attending the Tree Of Life synagogue and injured several police officers. Shots started firing at around 10 a.m during a baby naming ceremony. The suspect is now in custody. Those killed were Irving Younger, Melvin Wax, Rose Mallinger, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Jerry Rabinowite, Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Daniel Stein, Cecil Rosenthal, and David Rosenthal. Officials are now investigating the deadly attack on the Jewish community, according to CNN.
The alleged shooter is 46 year old Robert Bowers. Police are saying that Bowers acted alone, with a total of 3 handguns and 1 rifle recovered from the crime scene. He faces 44 federal charges for the murder of 11 worshippers in Squirrel Hill, some of which are punishable by the death penalty. Bowers has a history of making Anti-Semitic posts on social media platform, Gab. His last post was made minutes before the first reports of the shooting. "I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered," Bowers posted. "Screw your optics, I'm going in."
Many across the nation are sharing their empathy for the tragic incident. "The museum reminds all Americans of the dangers of unchecked hatred and anti-Semitism which must be confronted wherever they appear and calls on all Americans to actively work to promote social solidarity and respect the dignity of all individuals," the US Holocaust Memorial Museum said in a statement. In the wake of the shooting, many have started raising money and materials for the victims of the shooting. The NHL team, Pittsburgh Penguins, started a donation page and a blood drive to support the community. If you would like to donate to a verified GoFundMe that has been created to help the victims, click here.
The disagreement over education funding is definitely not a new idea. Teachers and supporting staff in Arizona are now fighting back with a walkout on Thursday, April 26th. This walkout is something never seen before in Arizona and has the potential to be the largest walkout protest in the national teacher revolt movement that began with the strikes in West Virginia. Arizona Educators United and the Arizona Education Association created a walkout vote including 57,000 teachers and other employees which resulted in 78% of them supporting the effort. Educators in Arizona are fighting for what they believe has been an insignificant state response about the nearly $1 billion in education funding cuts.
After the occurence of the West Virginia strikes, about a dozen Arizona educators created the #RedForEd movement on social media. The first demonstration of the movement was something everyone could get involved in by simply wearing red to work. The educators expressed their threat to strike at a rally on March 28th unless the state fulfilled their five demands; 20% teacher pay rises, competitive pay for support staff, restoring education funding to the 2008 levels, permanent salary structures including annual raises, and no new tax cuts until the per-pupil funding reaches the national average. However, these demands would cost the state billion of dollars to fulfill. To acquire that amount of money, it would most likely require raising taxes, which could put educators at odds with their governor and lawmakers as they have already stated they are not willing to raise those tax prices.
The governor, Doug Ducey has not said much publicly about his standpoint. On the week of April 12th, he announced his proposal to give the state’s teachers the 20% pay raises they wanted by 2020; no formal budget introduction has taken place yet though. The outcome of the walkout is uncertain with the only reference being the strikes in West Virginia and Oklahoma that both lasted nine days but had very different end results. The only thing that can currently be done is to wait for everything to unfold and then decide on further action.
On November 7, 1918, a hero was born. On February 21, 2018, Billy Graham sadly passed away at the age of 99 due to natural causes.
According to Slate.com, he was nicknamed “America’s Pastor,” Billy Graham was known for his preaching. His preaching attracted thousands of people and he gained popularity quickly. He had a “Crusade” in New York in 1957, and that attracted an estimated 18,000 people each day over the course of a 90 day period. By 2018, he had done 400 crusades in over 185 countries. Graham is also the founder of Christianity Today, the most respected evangelical magazine in the US today. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including the best seller How to Be Born Again. He also launched many organizations such as Youth for Christ, and Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. Graham identified an issue early in his career: racism. In 1954, he vowed to never hold a segregated get-together again. He was also known to meet with every single president starting from the Harry Truman days.
Billy Graham will forever be remembered as America’s Pastor. May he rest in peace, knowing that he made a huge impact on millions.

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