Good Thursday morning.
We are almost halfway through National Bullying Prevention Month. (Not to be confused with Anti-Bullying Week, which will be from November 13–17). October was first designated as such in 2006 to bring attention to a long-standing, and sadly, growing, phenomenon of kids picking on, tyrannizing, targeting, mistreating, and otherwise torturing – both mentally and physically, sometimes with dire and irreversible consequences – their peers.
Nationally 1 out of 5 students between the ages of 12 and 18 (just over 20 percent) report being bullied every year.
A higher percentage of male students than females (6 versus 4 percent) report being physically bullied. But a higher percentage overall of girls report being bullied at school (24 versus 17) percent, with the type of behavior they face ranging from being the subject of rumors to being ostracized and left out of activities.
The federal government started collecting data on school bullying in 2005, when the reported rate was even higher – around 28 percent. (I’m assuming a lot goes unreported). But things have changed a lot since then. The increasingly preferred method of bullying these days is virtual – via text or online, sometimes on text, but usually through some type social media platform.
Cyberbullying, which is very difficult to combat, is definitely on the rise.
(You want to really read something harrowing, BTW, check out the recent TikTok investigation results and then tell me you don’t have the urge to throw your phone off a cliff, or better yet, into the deepest body of water you can find).
Bullying, by definition, is “to seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce someone perceived as vulnerable.” Hence the phrase “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” This kind of behavior is generally targeted at those who are deemed “other”, unconforming, weak, unique, not mainstream…you get the picture.
Sadly, LGBTQ kids are nearly twice as likely to be the target of mistreatment – name calling, verbal or cyber harassment, physical intimidation or violence etc. – than their cisgender/straight identifying peers. In fact, a majority of LGBTQ middle or high school students – 52 -percent – reported being bullied either in person or online in the past year.
LGBTQ kids also report higher rates of poor mental health and suicidal thoughts – not because of their identity, per se, but rather as a result of their stigmatization and mistreatment. And this kind of targeting is not, mind you, restricted to the school setting, but also occurring in the halls of power at the hands of elected officials at the local, state, and national levels.
But we’ll leave that particular aspect of this topic for another day.
According to the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey, more than three in five LGBTQ+ high school students said they experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, and more than half reported having poor mental health in 2023.
Even more upsetting is the fact that 41 percent of these kids said they had seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, and one in five actually did attempt to take their own life.
Says a white paper highlighted by the NIH: Researchers, clinicians, and those working with and on behalf of LGBTQ youth must measure and acknowledge the multiple reasons for which LGBTQ youth are the targets of bullying. Intervention and prevention efforts should focus on improving the supportiveness of the climates within which LGBTQ youth live.
To wit: Today is Spirit Day, which is observed annually on the third Thursday in October as part of National Bullying Prevention Month. The day is billed by GLAAD as “the world’s most visible anti-bullying movement inspiring LGBTQ youth, especially transgender and nonbinary youth to live their lives in their truth and authenticity.”
Spirit Day was initially created in response to a series of widely publicized bullying-related suicides of gay students who took their own lives after experiencing bullying. Observers are encouraged to wear purple to show solidarity with LGBTQ young people. The purple stripe on the rainbow flag, according to its creator, Gilbert Baker, represented spirit.
I might have to dig waaaaaay into the back of my closet in search of something purple, which isn’t generally a regular color for me. But I will look for some.
Another nice fall day is on tap, with sunny skies and temperatures just below 60 degrees.
In the headlines…
Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris each sought to peel away support from the other’s political base yesterday, with Harris surrounding herself with Republican allies and Trump attempting to win over Latinos.
Harris pleaded with Republicans to join her team, telling them at a rally in Pennsylvania that there’s a place for them in her quest to defeat Trump.
Harris ‘ interview with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier is the latest indication that Democrats during this campaign are increasingly willing to engage with a network well-stocked with Trump supporters.
For his first question, Baier asked Harris how many “illegal immigrants” she estimates have entered the US during her tenure as vice president. The two then entered a back-and-forth, talking over one another.
Pressed and often interrupted by Baier, the vice president opened up a little more distance from President Joe Biden and defended her position on immigration and border security.
Harris said her presidency “would not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency” in a testy interview with the rightwing Fox News channel on Wednesday night as she criticized Trump over his continuing threats against “the enemy within”.
“This is a democracy, and in a democracy the president of the United States in the United States of America, should be willing to be able to handle criticism without saying he’d lock people up for doing it,” Harris said.
In a town hall that Univision broadcast last night, Trump faced tough and frank questions from Hispanic voters, but did not directly answer many of those posed on climate change, immigration, abortion rights and other topics.
Trump has made courting younger voters — and younger men in particular — a public pillar of his 2024 campaign. But he is conspicuously absent from one platform where they gather in large numbers: Snapchat.
Trump is feeling aggrieved, unappreciated by donors and fenced in by security concerns in the final stretch of the race.
Sen. JD Vance of Ohio has been dogged by questions over whether he accepts that his running mate lost the 2020 election. But yesterday at a rally in Pennsylvania, he gave a crowd of supporters a clear answer: “No.”
The prosecutor overseeing the Georgia election interference case against Trump has asked an appeals court to restore six charges that a judge had dismissed in the case, including one related to a 2021 call that Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state.
A county Democratic chair in North Carolina resigned after he was arrested and charged with stealing road signs supporting Trump.
Former President Jimmy Carter fulfilled his second October milestone, weeks after becoming the first American president to reach 100 years old by voting by mail in the upcoming general election.
The Supreme Court allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to move ahead it with its plans to limit carbon emissions by power plants, handing a victory to the Biden administration.
The justices denied the emergency request from more than 20 Republican state attorneys general and industry groups that asked for the new Biden power plant rules to be temporarily halted while a lower court challenge plays out.
Republican-appointed Justice Clarence Thomas said he would grant the application for stay, and Justice Samuel Alito took no part in consideration of the decision.
The Archdiocese of Los Angeles, the nation’s largest, has agreed to pay $880 million to 1,353 people who say they were sexually abused as children by Catholic clergy.
The settlement, which experts said was the highest single payout by a diocese, brings Los Angeles’s cumulative total in sex abuse lawsuits to more than $1.5 billion.
A recall of nearly 10 million pounds of “Ready-To-Eat Meat and Poultry,” issued last week, has expanded to include an additional 1.7 million pounds of products potentially “adulterated with Listeria monocytogenes,” according to the US Department of Agriculture.
With less than three weeks until Election Day, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries will rally with Democratic candidate Laura Gillen today in New York’s 4th Congressional District.
Democrats in New York’s competitive U.S. House races built on their cash advantage in the third quarter of this year. They out-raised their GOP rivals in all of the key contests.
First-term Republican Rep. Mike Lawler and ex-Congressman Mondaire Jones slammed each other as extremists in a fiery debate yesterday for the House seat in the lower Hudson Valley. They repeatedly accused each other of lying about his record.
The creator of “America’s Most Wanted” TV show is urging voters in the Syracuse region to back the re-election of first-term Republican Rep. Brandon Williams in a new TV ad.
The Empire State ranks 11th in the nation for dilapidated bridges, as nearly every single span in the state — 99.46% — is in need of repair, a report said. Nearly 10 percent of New York State’s 17,642 bridges were so bad they classified as “structurally deficient.”
Karen Persichilli Keogh, the powerful secretary to the governor, made a rare public appearance yesterday at a CBC breakfast, where she answered questions about the administration alongside Director of State Operations Kathryn Garcia.
Gov. Kathy Hochul penned a Daily News op-ed urging a “yes” vote on Prop. 1, calling that ” a vote to protect access to reproductive health care — from abortion to IVF to birth control.”
Hochul said New York City will get about 71,000 new homes, including 21,000 affordable units, thanks to the extension of the deadline for New York’s controversial 421-a affordable housing tax break.
Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams’s newly elevated First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer announced new housing development figures yesterday — cheering it as progress made on the state and city’s housing crisis. (The mayor was not in attendance).
New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams is opening a new front in the battle between an increasingly diminished mayor and an emboldened city legislature — setting up the potential to change the balance of power in City Hall.
Mayor Adams’ legal defense trust received less than $100,000 in donations over the past three months, a sharp downturn in fundraising that raises questions about how he’ll afford his high-priced team of lawyers as he faces a federal corruption indictment.
Adams has spent nearly all of the $1.8 million in donations to his legal defense fund, and the pace of contributions has nearly stopped.
A Trump win in the 2024 presidential election is viewed by some in Adams’ camp as potential path to legal victory for the mayor against an unprecedented federal indictment, sources close to the case told The NY Post.
Melissa Aviles-Ramos yesterday took the reins from David Banks, who served as chancellor of the New York City Public Schools since the start of Mayor Adams’ administration.
Susan Zhuang, the Brooklyn Council member charged with biting a cop during a demonstration against a homeless shelter, has received no donations to the defense fund created to pay her legal fees for the case, her lawyer confirmed.
There are currently 60,000 migrants in the city’s care, according to city officials, down from a peak of 69,000 in January. Although Adams noted that the city is “not out of the woods yet,” he said smart management and advocacy by his team has worked.
Stretches of the Cross Bronx Expressway could be capped for $2 billion per location, transportation officials announced, giving early support to what would be an ambitious, transformative project.
The sobbing mother of a 1-year-old who died from fentanyl poisoning at a Bronx day care that doubled as a drug den called the tragedy “every parent’s nightmare” as the narcotics mill’s leader was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
A 69-year-old Brooklyn man died when he was trapped in his apartment early yesterday by a fire sparked by an exploding e-bike battery, FDNY officials said.
Smaller, mostly non-union hotels with 100 or fewer rooms will be exempt from a key provision of a proposed law that imposes stricter licensing requirements on the New York City hotel industry.
For more than two decades, a group of cyclists has taken part in an unofficial, early morning joyride along the closed-off route of the New York Marathon. Now, the New York Road Runners, the organizers of the marathon, is trying to end this practice.
There is a plan to restore the luster of the famed thoroughfare of Fifth Avenue by revamping a central portion of it into a showcase boulevard for strolling and shopping like the Champs-Élysées in Paris, Calle Serrano in Madrid, or Bond Street in London.
Four people, including a police officer and a high school teacher, have been charged with running a prostitution ring that operated two brothels on Long Island over nearly five years.
Central Hudson knew about an active gas line that a contractor struck in Wappingers Falls last year, causing a massive explosion, but failed to include information about the service line to the contractor, leaving it potentially liable for civil penalties.
The leader of Saratoga Black Lives Matter said he and his allies will stop trying to reason with officials and begin to raise funds to elect engaged leaders and establish its own restorative justice programs.
With hundreds of potential members signed up, the union representing backstretch workers for the Saratoga and Belmont horse racing tracks are about to start bargaining for what will be their long-sought first labor contracts.
The fate of a popular YouTuber on trial for trespassing for allegedly violating Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy’s executive order banning recording inside City Hall now rests with City Court Judge Teneka Frost.
Some home and auto owners who have insurance policies with Adirondack Insurance Exchange will find themselves without coverage this month unless they have found a new carrier.
The government of Norway is making a big bet on Plug Power and its green hydrogen strategy.
Former One Direction singer Liam Payne, 31, was found dead after falling from a hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, local officials said.
His death was confirmed by Alberto Crescenti, the director of emergency services in Buenos Aires. The circumstances of the fall were unclear.
The cost of the perfect Halloween season pumpkin is – like everything else – going up.
Photo credit: George Fazio
