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I published this news article about a hunger strike against Formosa Plastics that occurred in Texas this fall. Despite the extremity of a 30-day hunger strike, the protesting tactic has not gained attention from national media outlets. At the time I published this article, two small environmental organizations had announced the beginning of the strike, but none continued to cover the event in the unfolding weeks. While activists are driven to take on dangerous protest tactics, little communication of these tactics has carried across mass media.

The article itself introduces Formosa Plastics through its reputation as a "serial offender" of environmental and workplace safety regulations. I list several statistics on legal fines that Formosa Plastics has accumulated overtime, using these quantities to demonstrate the scale of their harm to environmental and human health. An important limitation of this storytelling strategy, however, is that many of Formosa Plastics' actions go undocumented, and even when documented, do not lead to legal consequences. Furthermore, we should still strive to acknowledge the harms committed by Formosa Plastics that are technically within legal limits.

Our Purpose

One of our greatest responsibilities is to prepare the next generation to meet the challenges they will face in the 21st Century, with a deep commitment to the rights and responsibilities of U.S. citizenship. We have a unique opportunity for a community dialogue about the civic values, knowledge, and skills that K-12 students should learn and practice in our public school system. We will create strong community support for our schools to provide effective civic education for students to be successful in college, career and citizenship.

OUR MISSION

The mission of the Civic Education Center is to restore civility in America by creating opportunities for youth to learn and practice civic values and democratic skills.

About Us – Civic Ed Center

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Goals

• Teach the vision of the Founders and the triumphs and tragedies of our history.
• Teach civil dialogue on controversial issues and democratic deliberation.
• Integrate science, technology, literature, media, arts and math with civic projects.
• To promote teacher understanding of connections with the State Seal of Civic Engagement, Social Emotional Learning, and Ethnic Studies.

Summer Institute – Civic Ed Center

This article goes in depth with how the children are being exposed to lead in their water and how that actually leads to them doing worse on exams or standardized tests. This was supported through tests and research.

This study determines if childhood blood lead levels correlate with educational achievement.  They studied this through standardized test scores.

This study is published the Environmental Health Perspectives.  The journal helps explain the continuity between human health and the environment.  They publish topics like toxicology, epidemiology, exposure science, and risk assessment.  The publication is ranked highly among professionals and has a rating of 8.44. 

This study was conducted by using testing data from 4th-grade students from North Carolina, and comparing if they matched high blood lead levels.  This method was conducted in seven counties through normal statistical methods.

This study addresses vulnerable populations because it explains that high blood levels, which is a sign of poverty, can have an impact on performance in testing.  Even though information was not given pertaining to poverty in each subject, these conclusions can be drawn from other studies.

Professionals can use this data to place an emphasis on the need to solve blood lead issues in children.  This study concluded that a higher proportion of black students had higher blood lead levels; professionals can use this information to decrease the experience gap by working on solving blood lead issues.