‘Dark Waters’ exposes hidden chemical hazards, but do others lurk?

 This article first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on Feb.6, 2020

I woke late to the hazards of Teflon after watching “Dark Waters.” The film recounts DuPont’s dumping of Teflon waste into the waters and farmlands of West Virginia. Thousands of people working at the DuPont plant or living nearby developed ailments, such as kidney cancer, colitis, thyroid disease and more. Farm animals died hideous deaths. It was an egregious case of corporate wrongdoing.

One synthetic chemical in Teflon’s toxic brew was PFOA (a long-chain perfluorooctanoic acid). It took a courageous farmer and a dedicated lawyer to reveal its dangers by waging a 20-year legal battle against DuPont.

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Struggle for Americans to get health care is a national disgrace

This article first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 26, 2019

The terrain darkened as I drove the rural back roads of Georgia, red clay lining the sandy soil, deep-green kudzu choking trees and climbing telephone poles; the highway transformed into bumpy roads wearing worn-out street signs. It was summer 1985, and I was driving to see Mamie, a part-time nanny who’d helped raise me as a child. I barely knew about her own life back then, only that she lived across town, a single mom with a teenage son. I hadn’t seen her for decades.

I was now a 30-something TV reporter in Atlanta. I’d just finished a report about the “sandwich generation” — adults squeezed between caring for their children and their elderly parents — when my mom called. Mamie, she said, had moved to Georgia to care for her ailing mother.

Little did I know then that Mamie’s mother was one of 37 million Americans without health care. The idea of universal coverage wouldn’t surface until a decade later — a Clinton effort that tanked. It took another two decades before Obama signed his signature Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — into law.

Mamie was family. So, on a hot, humid Sunday, I drove west, vintage jazz on the radio. I turned off the interstate and stopped at a dilapidated roadside store. The torn screen door banged shut behind me, as ceiling fans blew a wisp of warm, muggy, air. I grabbed a bottle of cold water and asked folks standing online for directions.

After an awkward silence, a middle-aged white woman in a baggy T-shirt and faded jeans spoke up: “Y’all must be going to the black side of town.” She waved in the general direction.

As I walked out, my naiveté hit me hard. I’d grown accustomed to Atlanta politics, where most power brokers were African American: the police chief; City Council members, including civil rights legend and future Congressman John Lewis; and Mayor Andrew Young. But in the outskirts, the racial split of old emerged.

I started the car’s tired engine and drove down a dusty road flanked by sagging homes, overgrown weeds, and a spray of pines.

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US Immigrants: Living in the Shadows

A longer version of this article first appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on July 12, 2018, entitled: Despite what you might think, there is no ‘good-guy’ visa.

Meet Antonio, a loving husband and father of three. A skilled furniture-maker and the sole provider for his family. In his 19 years in California, he’s put down roots, worked hard, and paid his taxes like any U.S. resident. But Antonio is undocumented.

Antonio (who doesn’t want to use his last name) came here to raise a family without fear of extortion or violence in his home town near Coyoacán, Mexico. He says it’s worse there now, rife with gangs, corruption and crime. No one is safe, he says; people feel threatened — even by the authorities.

But now Antonio lives in fear here in the U.S. One night in 2013, driving home late from work, Antonio was charged with reckless driving. It was his first and only offense. It was a minor infraction but has changed his life.

The U.S. government has been trying to deport him ever since. He just lost his asylum case before an immigration judge in San Francisco. He’s appealing the ruling, but his chances are slim to none.

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Living on the nuclear edge

Read the full op-ed, Savoring life on earth – while I keep my nuclear survival kit ready, published in the San Francisco Chronicle on Oct. 9, 2017.

by Susan Gluss

As president Trump belittles “rocket man” and imperils the nuclear agreement with Iran, I can’t help but think about the end of life as we know it. Literally.

I’m not the only one who’s skittish. The Nobel Peace Prize was just awarded to a group that wants to ban nuclear weapons — a welcome warning.

Ever the pragmatist, I’ve started stockpiling water. I’ve stored a survival kit by the front door with a checklist of items: dried food, a first aid kit and sneakers. Happily, this works as an earthquake stash, too, which reassures me no end.

As I skirt fear of an apocalypse — it brings into sharp relief a conundrum that’s haunted me for years: What is our life’s purpose?

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November election is crucial for women

Young, college-aged, women, are you feeling the Bern? If so, this one’s for you. I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. Please hear me out. It’s important that women get this.

I’m not voting for Clinton because it’s her time. I’m not voting for her because it’s a historic first for a woman to be president.

I’m voting for her because women’s rights are getting trampled. And she will be our fiercest protector. We need her.

Why? Do you realize that women don’t have equal rights under the U.S. Constitution? The battle for an Equal Rights Amendment failed just short of ratification over three decades ago. This translates into lower pay, workplace discrimination and — taken to its extreme — sexual slavery.

Every battle you face — and you will face them — will be that much tougher because of your gender. You do not have the same rights as men under the law.

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Trump reveals Republican Party’s true views on abortion

Read the full op-ed published by the San Francisco Chronicle on April 6, 2016.

by: Susan Gluss

Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster for the Republican Party. It’s not just that he’s ruining their chances to win the presidency. It’s also that he has exposed the party’s hypocrisy on abortion.

When Trump said women should receive “some form of punishment” for getting an abortion if the procedure was banned, conservatives were quick to denounce his comments. Ditto the right-to-life advocates.

But Trump’s comment reveals the truth about the Republican Party’s antiabortion juggernaut.

Laws in 38 states now allow a person to be charged with homicide if she or he is deemed responsible for the unlawful death of a fetus, according to a Guttmacher Institute report by analyst Andrea Rowan released last fall.

Not all of these laws clearly exempt the pregnant woman herself from being charged, writes Rowan. “These laws are even being used to pursue women who are merely suspected of having self-induced an abortion, but in fact had suffered miscarriages.”

In Indiana, a young woman named Purvi Patel is now serving 20 years of a 46-year prison sentence — the first woman to be convicted under Indiana’s feticide law for ending her own pregnancy.

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