It is the question that puzzles many of us when we hear about the tragic conclusion of a domestic violence relationship. Why doesn't the victim simply look at herself in the mirror, decide it is time for a change, and head out the door?

Perhaps, though, it is we who need to look in the mirror. Are our communities doing enough to make sure that door is not barred shut?

BROOKLYN, N.Y. - Anyone with a passing knowledge of Indiana’s political and business cultures would not be surprised to learn state leaders played feature roles in one of the first great scandals of the George W. Bush administration. Or that the episode involved perhaps the greatest environmental disaster of the postmodern age -- the intravenous exposure of an entire generation of children to a powerful neurotoxin.

After all, “leaders” like Dan Quayle, Evan Bayh and Mitch Daniels have led their state to the No. 49 ranking in Forbes magazine’s 2007 comparison of state-by-state environmental quality. Of Indiana and other bottom-dwellers like No. 50 West Virginia, the business magazine said, “All suffer from a mix of toxic waste, lots of pollution and consumption and no clear plans to do anything about it. Expect them to remain that way."

Indeed, former Eli Lilly and Company vice president, then-Bush budget director and now-Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels appears on Page 5 of David Kirby’s 2005 award-winning bestseller Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy. So does then-Lilly CEO Sidney Taurel. In large measure, the Indiana players inspired the book, the former New York Times reporter said during a recent interview at his home in Brooklyn.

On a bench outside the First United Methodist Church, John Hammond, 52, sits clutching a black lighter and a slowly burning cigarette. Across the street, people mingle at the bus stop, their hands shoved into pockets, their faces downturned against the cutting November wind. An empty Styrofoam cup drifts down the sidewalk, colliding with the skittering leaves left over from fall.

The sound of buses makes the otherwise quiet street sound monstrous. Groans of engines and the screech of brakes echo against the stone face of the church. Women in business suits pass by, walking quickly and avoiding eye contact. Men in shaggy coats nod and say hello.

Hammond's bright blue eyes see it all from below the brim of his red and white baseball cap. "I worked all my life," he says. "My background is psychology and business management from IU, with 25 years' management experience. You wouldn't expect to find somebody like me down here. But it can happen to anybody."

More than two dozen citizens gathered in front of the IU Auditorium on Oct. 27 to "Walk to Support Palestine." The walk was organized by the American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights Foundation.

After mingling and discussing the events that led them to participate, citizens walked behind a banner that read "Freedom and Equality for Palestine" through campus to the Sample Gates and down Kirkwood to the Square. There was no shouting, no slogans.

Marcher Kadhim Shaaban said it is a moral imperative for every citizen to support civil rights for everyone, especially for the sufferings of the Palestinians. "It is also essential for the United States interests in the Middle East and Islamic World that we work hard to aid the Palestinians who are suffering and give them an independent state," he added. "This is an issue that has both moral and strategic importance."

Small Box, a new opera set in a death row visiting room, will have its world premiere in Bloomington next month. The opera will be performed for one night only on Saturday, Nov. 7, at 7 p.m. at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.

With music by Herman Whitfield III and a libretto by Bruce L. Pearson, the one-act, hour-long opera takes a serious look at the death penalty without arguing either for or against.

"The opera," Pearson said in a phone interview, "offers a fairly typical cross-section of those who find their way to death row." With Small Box he hopes to "make people think by presenting a realistic view of prison life." The raw material, Pearson said, "is from getting to know the guys on the row."

Bloomington-area citizens who support universal health care should not count on their elected representatives in Congress for help. Republican Sen. Richard Lugar has publicly stated his opposition to any health care reform at this moment in history. Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh is economically beholden to the insurance and drug lobbies. And U.S. Reps. Baron Hill, D-Ninth, and Brad Ellsworth, D-Eighth, are both members of the congressional Blue Dog Coalition.

The Blue Dogs are a group of 52 conservative House Democrats, mostly from the South and Plains, who boast of their role in blocking President Barack Obama's goal of congressional votes on health care reform before the August recess. "The Blue Dogs have been successful in ensuring the House will have time to assess the committee products on health care reform, both in the House and the Senate, as there will be no vote on the House floor before August," they wrote in a July 29, 2009, statement.

Thus far during that recess, armed and dangerous right-wing vigilantes have hijacked the political debate, Big Med industries have poured tens of millions into "lobbying" for their interests and dishonest television advertising, and Republicans have hardened their resolve to defeat the Democrats' plans for a government-run "public option" for the uninsured and underinsured, similar to Medicare and the Veterans Administration programs.

About 50 Bloomington-area citizens learned about life in Occupied Palestine through a local woman's presentation on her time in a UN-sponsored student delegation to the Gaza Strip in May 2009.

"Every single person in Gaza has a war story," Evann Smith told the audience in a soft and sometimes quavering voice. "There is no single person in Gaza who has not had a direct experience with Operation Cast Lead. ... Everything there was destroyed." Operation Cast Lead was Israeli codename for its war against Gazans launched Dec. 27, 2008, a month before President George W. Bush left office.

Smith, a Bloomington High School South graduate and doctoral student in political science at Harvard University, spoke Aug. 13 at the Monroe County Public Library. Her speech and slide presentation was sponsored by the Bloomington branch of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Gay teens -- gay males, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people -- are four times more likely to commit suicide than their straight peers. For all youths, those aged 16-24, suicide is the third leading cause of death.

Gay teens are four times more likely to attempt suicide than heterosexual teens. Young gay people in grades 7-12 are twice as likely as straight young people to plan suicide and four times more likely to make a suicide attempt that requires medical care.

Growing up gay is very, very difficult for most people. As Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America reports, gay teenagers are at high risk of developing mental illness because of the "hatred and prejudice that surround them, not because of their inherently gay or lesbian identity orientation." That is the crisis referred to in the book's title.

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane. -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

A report on the racial inequalities in the healthcare system paints a grim picture of the shocking and inhumane racial inequities in Indiana. Released on July 15 by Health Care for America Now! (HCAN), Unequal Lives: Health Care Discrimination Harms Communities of Color in Indiana says Indiana's 1.05 million people of color are a lot sicker than whites and have less access to quality care.

"Throughout the nation's history, communities of color have been forced to accept health care that bears little resemblance to what is experienced by members of more advantaged groups," the report's authors say. "For people of color in Indiana and nationwide, life is shorter, chronic illness more prevalent and disability more common. These are predictable side-effects of a health care system that provides these communities in Indiana with narrower opportunities for regular health services, fewer treatment options and lower-quality care."

Editor's note: Below is a first-hand account by my friend Neda Mustafa of an attempt to help a Palestinian farmer pick his grape leaves in the face of belligerent Israeli settlers and an aggressive Israeli military. Unfortunately the following story is all too common here in Palestine. Yet it also shows the power of human solidarity across all borders at work!

This morning I woke up at 5:45 a.m. to head to Beit Ummar to help Palestinian farmers there reap the benefits of their land. (Today it was grape leaves.) The reason they need help (and so early in the morning) is because there is a Jewish settlement next to their land now, which makes their farmland a "closed military zone."

This means that the farmers who own the land are not allowed on it, thus making it difficult to reap their harvests. We went early because the army usually gets there later in the day. So we arrive and walk down to the farm where two Arab families are already picking. We quickly join them and begin picking the grape leaves.