This weekend Nick Kristof wrote a column called “Profiting from a Child’s Illiteracy” in which he suggested — without evidence — that a significant portion of American children who are receiving Social Security disability are doing so because their parents find it “easier” to collect government checks than to find and keep gainful employment. Describing their disabilities as “fuzzier” and “less clear-cut” than those of past generations, Kristof claimed that it is SSI, and the “huge stake in their failing” that it gives their parents, which “condemn[s]” them “to a life of poverty on the dole.”

Thirteen facts on those children, courtesy of the Social Security Administration:

• Fewer than thirty percent live with both parents.
• Half live in a household with at least one other person with a disability.
• Almost seventy percent saw a doctor three or more times in the last year.
• Nearly half visited an emergency room at least once in the last year.
• More than half have a disability described as “severe.”
• Forty-three percent have a physical disability.
• Eight percent are described as mentally retarded.
• Seventeen percent have had surgery in the last year.
• Among teenagers, nineteen percent are unable to bathe themselves.
• Thirty-six percent of those requiring mental health care are not receiving it.
• Seventy-four percent of guardians reporting a need for respite care are not receiving it.
• A quarter of those needing disability-specific transportation assistance are not receiving it.
• Their average total family income from all sources is $1,818 a month.

Update | Here are some more welcome facts on SSI, and on Kristof’s wrongheaded attacks on the program.

“When people talk about “the sixties,” what they are thinking of is about two years. You know, 1968, 1969, roughly. A little bit before, a little bit later. And it’s true that student activism today is not like those two years. But, on the whole, I think it’s grown since the 1960s. So, take the feminist and the environmental movements. I mean, they’re from the seventies. Take the International Solidarity Movement — that’s from the eighties. Take the Global Justice Movement, which just had another huge meeting in Brazil. That’s from this century. Plenty of students are involved in these things. In fact, the total level of student involvement in various things is probably as huge as it’s ever been, except for maybe the very peak in the 1960s. It’s not what I would like it to be, but it’s far more than it’s been.

“Elite sectors and centers of power want students to be passive and apathetic. One of the reasons for the very sharp rise in tuition is to kind of capture students. You know, if you come out of college with a huge debt, you’re gonna have to work it off. I mean, you’re gonna have to become a corporate lawyer or go into business or something. And you won’t have time for engaged activism. The students of the sixties could take off a year or two and devote it to activism and think, ‘Okay, I’ll get back into my career later on.’ Now, that’s much harder today. And not by accident. These are disciplinary techniques.”

Happy birthday, Noam Chomsky.

The Cooper Union occupation in support of good university governance and a continuation of the college’s century-plus history of free tuition is now in its fifth day, and it shows no sign of fizzling out.

Eleven students barricaded themselves inside the top floor of Cooper Union’s iconic Foundation Building in New York’s East Village on Monday, calling for reforms in the running of the college, a commitment to keep tuition free, and the resignation of Cooper Union president Jamshed Bharucha. Campus security made an effort to drill or saw through their doors that afternoon, but soon relented and haven’t again tried to dislodge them.

Since then, students have staged a series of support actions outside the building. They’ve also hoisted pizza up to the occupiers with a balloon-launched pulley.

On Wednesday supporters of the occupation disrupted a meeting of the Cooper Union board of trustees, which went on to give its unanimous approval to president Bharucha — even as a growing list of faculty members have publicly affirmed their support for the college’s free education mission.

Despite several scares — police helicopters overhead a few days ago, NYPD in the Foundation Building earlier this afternoon — there have been no arrests or threats of arrest. Cooper Union administration statements have been critical of the occupation, but non-threatening, saying most recently that their “primary concern is for the safety of all students and to ensure that the actions of a few do not disrupt classes and final exams” while also expressing “concern” about “actions and conditions that could affect the safety of the public.”

For their part, the occupiers tweeted just moments ago that they remain “safe, secure, and in good health.”

Tomorrow there’s another day of action planned, starting with a Washington Square Park rally and culminating in a pots-and-pans march to Cooper Union and an “after party” at four.

Monday Update | The occupation has ended peacefully.

Twenty-three years ago today 14 women — 13 students and a staff member — were murdered on the campus of the École Polytechnique in Montreal. Their killer, Marc Lepine, targeted female students in an engineering class and claimed to be “fighting feminism.”

The fourteen who died were Geneviève Bergeron, Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Barbara Daigneault, Anne-Marie Edward, Maud Haviernick, Maryse Laganière, Maryse Leclair, Anne-Marie Lemay, Sonia Pelletier, Michèle Richard, Annie St-Arneault, Annie Turcotte, and Barbara Klucznick-Widajewicz.

The 20th anniversary of the killings drew a lot of attention in the Canadian media and blogosphere, and I collected a number of links then:

• A look back at the shootings, their aftermath, and the larger struggle against misogynist violence.
• A survivor of the massacre — then an engineering student, now a government official and a mother of four — comes to terms with her feminism.
• An essay on the impact of the killings on Canadian society.
• Another collection of links from the blog Spare Candy.