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Natalie San Luis

As Americans, we have inherited some pretty huge problems with our criminal justice system.

People of color face incarceration at disproportionate rates compared to white people, and many people go to jail or prison when they should be getting mental health treatment instead.

A lot of these problems remain under the radar because for many Americans, prisons are out of sight and out of mind. Lately, thanks to the hard work of activists, filmmakers like Ava Duvernay, and other advocates, criminal justice reform has been in the spotlight.

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10 sci-fi books written by women of color to add to your reading list.

Female science fiction writers just swept the Hugo Awards.

Obviously, science fiction books by and about women of color exist.

But all too often, we don't get to see them. Awards for literature overwhelmingly go to male authors who write about men or boys. Female writers of color face additional barriers in the literary world, especially in sci-fi, which tends to be dominated by male authors.

But at a ceremony earlier this week, something cool happened: The winners of the Hugo Awards, some of the most prestigious awards in science fiction, were announced, and the top four fiction awards were awarded to four women. Three of those winners were female writers of color.

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In 2012, Jen Horn watched as local residents in Baguio City, Philippines, protested over pine trees.

It might not seem like a particularly obvious political reason, but when people tried to expand a mall and eliminate a large area of pine trees in the process, the residents were so concerned about the environmental impact that they organized.

Jen, who owned a successful design company in the Philippines, was inspired by their collective action. It raised questions she had about the ethical responsibility of a business to treat the world well.

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5 myths about putting people in prison and what actually works.

Why putting people in prison might not be the best way to keep us safe.

I used to think the prison system was just a fact of life.

One of my relatives spent 10 years in prison when I was a kid, and I would visit him with my mom several times a year.

So as I grew up, I understood prison as just another place: You go to the grocery store when you need food, you go to church on Sundays, and you go to prison if you do something bad.

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