John-Michael Cotignola-Pickens Archive

Safer communities for all

The tragic list keeps growing: David McAtee, George Floyd, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor and more. All of them are African-Americans who were killed by police officers. The current nationwide protests have brought to the forefront pre-existing tensions between police departments and the communities they patrol, rooted in the long U.S. history of racism. Major cities spend more on their police departments than they do on public health or economic development. The city of Los Angeles’ 2020-21 budget grants the police department $3.14 billion out of a $10.5 billion budget, much more than they invest in economic […]

A year of silence

Even as news of the coronavirus is rightfully on everyone’s mind, advocacy on long-standing concerns such as gun violence continues. February 27, 2020 marked the one-year anniversary of the passage of H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act. It continues to sit untouched in the Senate, even as 39,740 people were killed by firearms in 2018. Passing H.R. 8 into law would make it more difficult for individuals such as the shooter in the West Texas shooting to acquire a gun. A survey conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health showed that universal background checks received strong support […]

A public health approach to gun violence

  More people in the United States die from gun violence than HIV, Parkinson’s disease, malnutrition, hypertension and other medical conditions, but gun violence receives less funding for research. Medical professionals have been advocating for funding that would empower the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health to research gun violence as a public health crisis. Treating gun violence like a public health crisis would involve a multi-pronged approach that advocates for policy changes, such as background checks for all gun sales. It would also focus on working with gun owners on how to make gun […]

An education for all

Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, is quoted as saying, “Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.” Congress continues to discuss the possibility of passing the Restoring Education and Learning (REAL) Act, which would provide access to Pell Grants for incarcerated students, as a part of the Higher Education Act. Education improves the lives of people who are incarcerated by reducing the recidivism rate among returning citizens, providing them with social capital and increasing employment opportunities when they return to their communities. Some lawmakers […]

Gun violence: Loving our neighbors so they may flourish

So far this year the House of Representatives has made various efforts and held numerous hearings to address the United States’ unique gun violence problem. The House Judiciary Committee recently advanced three gun violence prevention bills that would outlaw large capacity ammunition magazines, provide funding to states to enact Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO) and bar individuals convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime from owning a weapon. These bills will now be voted on by the entire House of Representatives, which approved a bill in February that would expand background checks. Conversations in the Senate are ongoing. Often lost in […]

The power of an education

  In 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, also known as the crime bill, in an attempt to be tough on crime. The bill included an amendment to ban Pell Grants for incarcerated students. As a result the number of education programs within prisons fell from over 350 in 1990 to only 12 in 2005 . The lack of educational opportunities within prisons adds to the obstacles for returning citizens as they are released, including difficulty in finding a job. This can feed into the cycle of poverty and homelessness and increases recidivism rates […]