The Great Resignation, online learning, Ben and Jerry and Kyle Rittenhouse: Top columns
Here are some of our top opinion reads you may have missed.
In today's fast-paced news environment, it can be hard to keep up. For your weekend reading, we offer you in-case-you-missed-it compilations of some of the week's top USA TODAY Opinion pieces. As always, thanks for reading, and for your feedback.
— USA TODAY Opinion editors
1. Kyle Rittenhouse deserves an award for his melodramatic performance on the witness stand.
By Carli Pierson
"On Aug. 25, 2020, Rittenhouse drove from his home state of Illinois to a Black Lives Matter protest in Wisconsin. Hundreds of people had taken to the streets to protest the police shooting of a 29-year old Black man, Jacob Blake, who was paralyzed from the waist down. Rittenhouse, then 17, fatally shot Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, and wounded Gaige Grosskreutz, 27."
2. Jobs, jabs, infrastructure, prosperity, peace: Why isn't Biden doing more to tout his wins?
By Paul Brandus
"COVID-19 vaccinations of America’s children are underway; about 28 million kids ages 5 to 11 are eligible to be protected. Meanwhile, the 90-day average of both cases and deaths among the overall U.S. population is trending steadily lower, as vaccinations increase. A $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill has been approved by Congress. Money, gobs of it, will soon start flowing to all 50 states for badly needed road and bridge repairs. Rural communities with poor internet service will soon have high-speed broadband. Lead pipes, which deliver tainted water to countless communities, will be replaced. The nation’s rickety power grid will get an upgrade. And more. "
3. Ben & Jerry: We white people need to use our power to fight police abuse
By Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield
"As uncomfortable as it makes us feel, our inaction feeds and perpetuates injustice. Some of us claim to be neutral, but the reality is that neutrality preserves the status quo. If we’re not actively fighting against it, we are allowing the horrors to continue. White people need to act. We need to use our power to end injustice. Following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year, politicians and business leaders made bold statements like Black Lives Matter. Protests erupted in the streets. Despite spending more than $1.5 billion per year to influence Congress, Big Business didn't make passing police reform a priority."
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4. Aaron Rodgers is guilty of a lot more than breaking NFL rules
By The Editorial Board
"It's bad enough that the unvaccinated Rodgers openly flouted NFL rules on mask wearing and distancing – and his team enabled him. Or that he lied about being "immunized." But when Rodgers elected to defend himself spouting junk science, conspiracies and snake-oil remedies, he recklessly ignored his power as a football superstar to misinform millions of Americans hesitant about vaccination."
5. No collusion: How Americans were fed a false tale about Donald Trump's 2016 campaign
By James S. Robbins
"The indictment exposes former Hillary Clinton aide Charles Dolan, identified only as “PR Executive-1,” as an important Danchenko source. Dolan allegedly fed Danchenko information he claimed he had obtained when he “had a drink with a GOP friend,” but later admitted he had fabricated the story. The indictment also shows that PR Executive-1 was an important source for reporting by The Washington Post and the Times of London when the Steele dossier scandal broke in January 2017."
6. The nightmare of online learning: Here's what I've learned as a teacher. It's not pretty.
By Larry Strauss
"During distance learning, students were constantly telling me they were overburdened and overwhelmed. Many were suddenly in charge of younger siblings and cousins all day or inheriting other family responsibilities that left them little or no time for school work. Many of my colleagues were unsympathetic to any of it."
7. The mentor women need today should do more than smile. Go ahead and speak up, too.
By Connie Schultz
"Early in her new memoir, “Going There,” Katie Couric mentions "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and how the character Mary Richards had inspired her.
“I’d spent many a Saturday night for seven years watching [the show],” she writes, “transfixed by the ambitious, independent heroine setting out for a career in TV news.
“Gee, I thought, I want to turn the world on with my smile too!”
8. When I committed to Georgetown, I made a bigger commitment to enslaved sold on its behalf
By Melisande Short-Colomb
"In 2016, when Georgetown President John DeGioia cleared the way for admissions consideration for descendants of those who were enslaved, I was living in Louisiana, where my family had been shipped more than 150 years ago during that sale. From my home in New Orleans, my first thought was that I needed to find out whether the university was ready to live up to that promise."
9. ‘Still fighting that same fight’
By Mike Thompson
10. It's hard to make a living in America. The Great Resignation is a good thing for everyone.
By Carli Pierson
"I've lived in six countries among the USA, Europe and Latin America. In France, I saw people take to the streets to demand a 35-hour work week. In Mexico, I've seen teachers, students and oil and gas industry workers blockade highways and commandeer buses. In Italy, I watched trade unions shut down transport, schools and hospitals to demand job security in the face of government reforms. In other countries, striking and demonstrating are a regular part of life, and a key strategy to leverage collective bargaining power. But in the United States, strikes and labor movements are much less common, and much weaker, than in other developed countries.
