by Joy Portella As Americans steel ourselves after another roiling set of recent events – a raid on the offices of the president’s private attorney, a literary screed by the former head of the FBI, and lest we forget, we bombed Syria – it can be comforting to look to another Western democracy that’s…
Current Events
Minerva Strategies by Joy Portella Peace between Israel and Palestine has been elusive for decades, and the politics of this ongoing conflict are tremendously complicated. But the humanitarian impact of Israel’s five-decade occupation of Palestinian territories is clear: Palestinians suffer terribly. A group called the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) recently published a thoughtful…
Joy Portella by Joy Portella I’ve been working remotely this month from Sicily – the subject of a whole different blog – so I haven’t been paying as much attention to the news as I usually do. I’ve only been skimming the headlines: mass shooting in Las Vegas; Harvey Weinstein outed as a sexual predator; Trump…
By Sara Veltkamp — Our country is experiencing a cultural shift in how we think about addiction and the people who use drugs. Seattle and King County are at the forefront of this change, and we see it happening through the current heated debate over the piloting of safe consumption sites – locations that…
by Joy Portella I’m a moral argument girl. I get queasy when I read persuasive pieces about how the United States and other wealthy countries should provide international assistance because it increases our national security or provides jobs back home. Here’s a recent article that illustrates that line of thinking. I know that framing is…
By Joy Portella, President, Minerva Strategies — There’s a swirl of executive orders being signed by President Trump this week but there’s one that really struck me. The President reinstated a Reagan-era policy called the “Mexico City Policy” aka the “Global Gag Rule,” which prohibits the U.S. from funding organizations that offer abortion services or…
By Joy Portella, President, Minerva Strategies — Everyone knows that war hurts people. Media provide almost daily examples of this. Look at what we’ve heard and seen from Syria in just the past month: The tragic plight of conjoined twins in Eastern Ghouta, the despair of doctors in Aleppo, and most famously, the battered and…
By Kelly Boudwin, Minerva Strategies – It is exactly 41 days, 23 hours, 48 minutes, and 17 seconds until the 2016 summer Olympics commence in Brazil. And it’s not just the athletes racing against the clock to prepare; the host country is balancing the added pressures of the Olympic torch amongst the issues of its…
By Joy Portella, President, Minerva Strategies – I have often counseled clients not to pursue opinion pieces written by two authors. I’m not a big believer in the power of dynamic duos. Opinion pieces, generally, are tough to get right. Clients agonize over them, and after multiple rounds of review and numerous layers of approvals,…
By Kayla Albrecht, Graduate Assistant, Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living, MPH Candidate, UT School of Public Health Austin Regional Campus— South by Southwest (SXSW) is just around the corner in Austin, Texas. Soon the city will be packed to the brim with tech gurus, music aficionados, and camouflaged celebrities. But at the UT School of…