Jill Richardson

Jill Richardson is the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore and a member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board. She is the author of "Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It" (2009).
Articles by this author
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Views Wednesday, December 23, 2020 The Coming Battle Over Vaccines With the new COVID-19 vaccine available, Dr. Anthony Fauci says Americans can begin to achieve herd immunity by next summer. Herd immunity occurs when so many people are immune to the virus that it can’t spread, because an infected person won’t have anyone left to spread it to. Yet as of November,... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, December 16, 2020 Trump’s Lies About Immigrants Should End With His Presidency As Donald Trump finally prepares to be evicted from the White House, it’s worth remembering how he first launched his campaign: by calling immigrants “murderers” and “rapists.” This was outrageous then. And there’s more evidence now that it was, of course, patently false. A new study finds that “... Read more |
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Views Sunday, December 13, 2020 Failing Students Need Support, Not Blame As the semester ends, I fear many of my students will fail my class. Most will pass, thanks to their hard work and a generous grade curve, but I've never had this many students failing or dropping the course before. In my experience, low grades mean something is wrong. Often the problem is mental... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, October 14, 2020 Voter Suppression in a Pandemic Election Although the United States hails itself as a bastion of representative democracy, voting regulations suppress the vote even in a normal year—and even more so during the pandemic. Texas , for example, only allows absentee voting if voters are 65 or older, disabled, or incarcerated but eligible to... Read more |
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Views Sunday, August 23, 2020 Colleges are Still in Uncharted Territority In a few weeks, I begin my semester as a teaching assistant in an undergraduate sociology class. I am not sure what to expect. Last March, when our school sent the students home, everything happened suddenly. We weren’t sure what time zones our students would be in. We didn’t know if each student... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, July 29, 2020 Happy 30th Birthday, ADA. What’s Next? The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) celebrated its 30th birthday this July. Three decades ago, the ADA represented a huge step forward for the rights of people with disabilities. In 2020, I think it’s time to advance even further. The ADA offers people with disabilities the right to "... Read more |
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Views Thursday, July 23, 2020 Trump's Authoritarianism Is Ill-Suited to a Pandemic The Trump administration is apparently undertaking its latest effort to make 2020 more of a Kafkaesque nightmare than it already is. Yes, we’ve got murder hornets and a swarm of flying ants that can be seen from space over in Ireland , but maybe the scariest plague of the year is the president... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, April 29, 2020 A Death Sentence for Meatpackers Meat processing plants are high risk for spreading COVID-19 , and many are shutting down. Animals due for processing have nowhere to go, and they are being culled. Workers there aren’t treated a great deal better. I’ve interviewed one meatpacker who worked at a pork plant, years ago. He told me he... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, April 08, 2020 Wisconsin's Unconscionable Sham Wisconsin might have just decided the November election for Trump at the expense of its own citizens’ lives. As of April 7, the state’s primary election day, there were 2,511 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the state, with the disease continuing to spread. Thanks to Wisconsin Republicans and the... Read more |
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Views Sunday, April 05, 2020 Efficiency vs. Resilience Many years ago, bestselling author Michael Pollan explained there’s a trade-off between efficiency and resilience. For example, your grocery store probably did not have a warehouse full of toilet paper backstock sitting around somewhere when their customers bought out their entire supply. It would... Read more |