Art by Bette Yozell

As the new school year approaches and Coronavirus cases are surging across the US, decisions about what education will look like in the fall are becoming paramount. Solutions that provide peace of mind and feasibility to parents have yet to come from national or state governments. The White House administration is pressuring schools to resume in-person teaching this fall, and they have blocked the Center for Disease Control from testifying on the reopening of schools. The options being announced by school districts across the country are far from optimal: models that involve classroom education pose greater health risks; online learning is particularly difficult for working parents and did not work well for many children this spring; and the school districts that are still undecided present the extra burden of not being able to plan or prepare.

With parents feeling the unease of an unpredictable and unsurmountable school year ahead, a new movement has arisen seemingly overnight: self-organized pods or micro-schools, in which families bring five to ten children together to learn, socialize and be cared for. These groups range from co-op-style, where parents take turns watching and teaching the children, to pooling resources to pay for teachers, tutors and caregivers. There are vibrant Facebook groups consisting of thousands of parents that have popped up across the country over the last few weeks. These parents are suddenly scrambling to find pods of similarly-aged children and to hire educators.

While self-organizing around schooling pods makes sense as a way of taking control and optimizing for several difficult factors, this trend can have highly inequitable results. There are several forms of marginalization that can result from this model.

Classism

One of the biggest concerns around this model is that, without intentional effort, these pod schooling groups will benefit economically advantaged families and will leave less-affluent families worse off, further widening the socioeconomic divide in the US. I spoke to Tyrek Laing, CEO and Executive Director of Educators for Justicean organization committed to creating a positive, inclusive, and empowering educational experience for students, educators and parents of all individual intersections, ethnic backgrounds, and socio-economic statuses. Laing shared: This would create a less equitable education for kids that are not part of the upper-middle class, who are not part of the 1%. What would school pods look like for children who live in public housing, for parents who are not able to work from home or who don't have the budget to hire teachers?

Those that are able to hire teachers, tutors and childcare will not only fare better, but they will potentially be taking resources away from the families that need them most. As families unenroll from public schools, those schools risk losing funding. When pods are able to offer public school teachers a higher salary taking care of fewer children, those teachers will not be available to the remaining public school students. And when parents are able to afford homeschool resources for their children, they are more able to focus on work and less likely to risk their source of income. Not only are pods less accessible for lower-income families, but many of those families also rely on public schools for meals and services, making micro-schools less feasible for them as well.

Racism

Even though school segregation legally ended in 1954 with Brown vs. Board of Education, the effects of redlining and historical segregation have resulted in more than half of American schoolchildren attending racially concentrated districts. There is also a direct correlation between race and income, with Hispanic families earning 73% and Black families earning 59% of the median household income that White families earn.

Families that are inclined to form homeschool pods are more likely to do so with other families in their school or district, and those families that are able to afford more schooling resourcesand spend the time connecting and coordinating these podsare less likely to be Black or Brown. Without intentionally working against these probabilities, Laing speculated: If school pods are formed at a mass level, it will increase the number of schools that are segregated. An anti-racist approach needs to be taken now in education.

Ableism

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that 14% of all public school students received special education services in the 2019-20 school year, and of those, 33% had specific learning disabilities. As families form learning pods, there is the risk of leaving these students behind without the support they need. Remote learning can be more difficult for children with special education needs. There are often additional services these students needsuch as occupational therapy, speech therapy, and tutoringand students with physical limitations, such as limited vision, hearing and mobility might not have the support they need in a family-organized learning pod.

Sexism

Even before this pandemic, mothers were doing 2.6 times the unpaid care and domestic work that men do. When schooling went online in the spring, 97% of mothers reported doing the majority of the work to support it. Looking at the homeschool pod conversations online, it is clear that the majority of these self-organizers are mothersand its not a stretch to assume that they will be the ones handling most of the logistics and shared teaching as the pods form. All of this additional work risks furthering the pay gap between working mothers and fathers, as mothers have less time and mental space for their paid work.

Clearly, there are many risks of furthering already-existing inequities within our educational system as more parents take education into their own hands. But there are also ways to help mitigate these risks.

Advocacy

Parents who have the time and energy to organize pod schools can also be spending effort on advocating for better solutions from governments and school boards. I spoke with Shauna Causey, the founder of WEEKDAYSa company that provides support for starting in-home child care with the goal of bringing communities together to support each other and creating economic empowerment for womenabout ways that families can make pod schooling more equitable. She explained: Subsidies do exist in the form of childcare vouchers that could be used towards micro-schools, but there is nowhere near enough money to meet the demand from parents. We desperately need more subsidies and government funds. Parents can also work with school boards and PTAs to encourage creative educational solutionssuch as outdoor classrooms and school-organized podsthat optimize more for the health and learning of all children.

Hiring Decisions

The hiring choices that families make around educational professionals for their school pods can be done with an equity lens. As Causey suggests: Look at who you are hiring for micro-schools. A lot of women and educators of color have left the childcare and teaching profession because it didnt pay them a living wage. Teaching small groups of children is something they can do to get paid. Laing agrees: Parents should be intentional to make sure they are hiring teachers who may not look like them or aren't from the same backgrounds as them. Hiring graduate students of color who want to teach would be an excellent expression of solidarity on their journey to higher education.

Support Public Schools

Many public schools are funded based on Average Daily Attendance. This means that as more families unenroll students from public school, those schools can receive less funding, which hurts the students that are still enrolled there. Parents can think about keeping their children enrolled in public school, and using schooling pods as a way for students to work through the online curriculum together. And parents should be cognizant of not hiring teachers out of the public school system. Causey encouragingly shared: We havent seen very many of our micro-school teachers come from the public school, and 85% of our K-12 teachers are interested in using the public school curriculum.

Subsidies

Families that are forming school pods can make the decision to have all families pay a sliding-scale rate based on what they can afford, or can all pitch in to subsidize one family entirely. Causey has seen that A lot of our micro-school groups have one subsidized spot available, and oftentimes the teachers already know someone that would be able to fill that spot. As Laing points out, If you really want to educate your kids, you need to educate them about service. You can do that by connecting with families of lesser financial means, who don't look like you, and finding ways to be of service to them.

Employer Assistance

The ability to create more equitable educational outcomes doesnt only fall on families and governments. Companies can provide childcare perks for employees in the forms of partial childcare subsidies, backup childcare and help finding micro-school teachers. Childcare and schooling is truly the backbone of the US economy. Without it, millions of parents can't work. This should be the biggest thing companies are thinking about right now, Causey shares.

Laing recognizes that People have the right to educate their kids how they feel is needed. But on the mass level, schooling pods could make it difficult for kids of lower incomes, from Black and Brown communities, to keep up. The current pandemic, and the measures taken to reopen the economy without having education solved for, is leaving families in a position of having to optimize between several difficult parameters. This is hard on everyone - especially families that are marginalized by classism, racism, ablism and sexim - and as such we need to create solutions with equity in mind.

See the original post:

How Educational Inequality In America Could Be Impacted By The Homeschooling Pod Frenzy - Forbes

Pittsburghs first experiment in creating an ecovillage is starting to take shape on the Eden Hall campus of Chatham University in Gibsonia.

Named after the schools most renowned student and environmental pioneer, the Rachel Carson EcoVillage is based on the concept of intentional community and is designed collectively by its residents.

Its a community of people who care about both living lightly on the planet, living with nature and also living with their neighbors, says Stefani Danes, an architect and Carnegie Mellon professor whos helping to guide the project. That idea of community is really at the heart of an ecovillage.

Also known as cohousing, an ecovillage typically includes 20 to 30 units of housing, in which everyone has a private house. However, theres also a common house with a large dining room where residents take turns preparing meals for one another along with guest rooms. There can also be everything from shared childcare space to shared tools and/or office equipment.

Theyve launched a website, and the first four homebuyers have committed, out of a core group of 30 to 40 people who are involved with the project. Construction is expected to start soon, once there are 15 homebuyers. More than 100 people have inquired about the project.

The plan for many years was to build an ecovillage in a walkable part of the city of Pittsburgh, but that never panned out.

Ive been attracted to ecovillages, intentional communities, and the like for about 25 years and have always wanted one in Pittsburgh, says Grace Astraea, who plans to move into the Rachel Carson EcoVillage. Having kept an eye on the Pittsburgh Cohousing Group for the last 20 years and their efforts to create something in the city has been akin to watching the worlds longest seed sprouting take place.

One would think that the pandemic would have dampened the interest in this sort of common, shared use of space. But that hasnt been the case.

Having neighbors you know is the best way of seeing through any emergency, says Danes. A community can thrive through all kinds of tough times There is a very strong interest now in intentional communities. Many people have seen the isolation that this pandemic has brought to the surface. Many people live alone, without knowing their neighbors.

The common dinners that are a primary and beloved feature of ecovillages might not happen in a pandemic. But knowing all your neighbors means knowing if someone has a special skill for making masks or knowing that someone is at-risk so a neighbor can shop for them.

The core planning group has even committed to learning a different style of collaborative decision-making called dynamic governance or sociocracy. Theyre taking an online course together to learn about the process.

Rendering of the Orchard Commons at the Rachel Carson EcoVillage.

The Eco part of the Rachel Carson EcoVillage is bound up in the notion of community, too.

Just like friends exercise better when they do it together, a community composts regularly, adopts sharing strategies that reduce the consumption of things and uses things more thoughtfully, explains Danes.

By sharing so much, people can live in a more sustainable, affordable way, notes Danes. Research done on an ecovillage in Ithaca, New York, indicates that ecovillagers average a 40% smaller carbon footprint than most American families.

The houses will be built according to passive house standards, designed with computer modeling to have ultra-insulated walls and windows that waste the least amount of energy possible.

Lots of collaborations are planned with Chathams environmental researchers at the Falk School of Sustainability & Environment, which is based at the Eden Hall campus. Everything from rainwater to trees will be carefully considered.

The trees we plant will become part of a maturing native forest, says Danes. Well be working closely with Chatham on this process of regenerative planting of the landscape.

When fully built out, the Rachel Carson EcoVillage will have 35 units and a common dining house. Two small units will be located above the dining house to provide affordable options. The other 33 will be built in clusters around three courtyards and will range from studios to 3-bedroom houses. Each will have a front yard and a backyard and share a common courtyard. The community will connect to the heart of the Eden Hall campus via a five-minute walk along a wooded trail.

Astraea says that a lot of things have attracted her to the project.

To name a few, the governance model that weve adopted (dynamic governance) is probably the best method available for efficient and effective governing, she says.The location is absolutely gorgeous. The meadow that the village will be built in has a wondrous trail around it that inspires and nurtures and has space enough for many people.

The prices arent out of the ordinary, even with the common facilities included. Studios range from $160-$180,000 and the 3-bedroom houses are in the $400,000 range. Most units will be $200,000 to $300,000.

Youre not paying for the developer who walks away with a pocket full of profit, says Danes. Were selling all of these at cost.

Rachel Carsons nephew gave the Rachel Carson EcoVillage permission to use her name, and is eager to attend the ribbon-cutting celebration, says Danes.

On Sunday, July 19 at 10:30 a.m., there will be a free guided tour at the Eden Hall campus which is open to anyone, including children, whod enjoy learning about our woods and meadows while having a fun walk, says Danes.

Chatham UniversityecovillageEden HallRachel Carson EcoVillage

Original post:

Pittsburgh's first ecovillage moves forward with four units sold. Tour the site on Sunday - NEXTpittsburgh

Every year, extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather-related event and hospitalizes thousands more, disproportionately burdening communities with the least resources.

With fewer parks, trees, and open green space, many under-resourced Black and Latinx neighborhoods will swelter this summer as they continue to fight the pandemic. Findings from the Healthy Neighborhoods Study show that residents in our nine partner communities in Eastern Massachusetts will experience scorching heat with temperatures up to 20 degrees higher than in other parts of the region.

Thats not an accident. Its the result of decades-old racist policies and current development practices.

For years, majority Black and brown communities have been marginalized on many fronts because of intentional disinvestment, redlining, the location of brownfields a site targeted for redevelopment though it may be contaminated with hazardous waste and development that added gray surfaces at the expense of green spaces.

These are the communities that suffer from worse health over time and are most negatively affected by changes like climate disasters and gentrification.

In fact, research has found that communities across the United States that experienced redlining the formerly legal practice of restricting home loans for people of color to certain areas are hotter and have worse air quality.

Typically, cities provide resources like cooling centers at libraries or malls or splash pads during heat waves. But social distancing and state-mandated closures make that challenging this summer. Further, in-home air conditioning isnt an affordable option for many who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic.

It doesnt have to be this way. Communities and elected leaders can do something.

The COVID-19 recovery process offers an opportunity to prepare high-risk communities for the climate challenges they will disproportionately face as temperatures rise. In the short term, cooling plans need to support social distancing, and over the long term, equitable development plans need to green, cool, and resource Black and brown communities. There are practical solutions in the work our community-based partners have been leading for decades.

Recovery and resilience funds must be directed toward at-risk neighborhoods, including support for increased energy efficiency, green infrastructure, flood mitigation, and expanded public transit.

State and city governments must invest in the equitable development of parks and urban green spaces so that all residents have access to safer, cooler, and less polluted environments and a better quality of life. Parks and trees not only cool the environment, but they also create opportunities for people to exercise and play, reduce stress, and socialize.

Additionally, residents should help determine how to expand green space, whether its for a community garden or a park or a playground to mitigate heat island effects over the long run. They should have ownership over what happens in their communities which not only leads to more effective solutions but also meaningfully contributes to better health.

Thats why its essential to center plans and responses for heat and climate impacts on those living and working in the places most impacted. Leaders must spend time in these communities to learn about the unique challenges people face; meet residents where they are, when theyre available, in the languages they speak; and listen. Developers and decision makers need to commit to full community engagement on important infrastructure decisions, such as the proposed effort underway to build a power substation in East Boston.

Society cant continue to tolerate the same kinds of inequities that make some areas more vulnerable to both COVID-19 and extreme heat. Justice demands that policy makers correct generations of discrimination and work to create a future where health and well-being for all are prioritized.

Climate change and COVID-19 are everyones problems. Communities of color should not continue to bear the greatest burdens for our entire region.

Reann Gibson is a senior research fellow at the Conservation Law Foundation and manager of its Healthy Neighborhoods Study.

View post:

Communities of color hit hardest by heat waves - The Boston Globe

With their major institutions founded on white European models and obstinately focused on the distant past, classical music and opera have been even slower than American society at large to confront racial inequity. Black players make up less than 2 percent of the nations orchestras; the Metropolitan Opera still has yet to put on a work by a Black composer.

The protests against police brutality and racial exclusion that have engulfed the country since the end of May have encouraged individuals and organizations toward new awareness of long-held biases, and provided new motivation to change. Nine Black performers spoke with The New York Times about steps that could be taken to begin transforming a white-dominated field. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.

The first step is admitting that these organizations are built on a white framework built to benefit white people. Have you done the work to create a structure that is actually benefiting Black and brown communities? When that occurs, diversity is a natural byproduct. There needs to be intentional hiring of qualified Black musicians who you know are going to bring the goods to your audiences. Intentionally adding qualified Black board members to your organization: Thats going to allow access to these communities you need to bring into the circle. Administratively, people who are in the room will bring different perspectives. Chamber groups like mine, Imani Winds, have the ability to be more nimble; we can make our own rules and make our own platforms. As a chamber presenter, you can support groups that bring blackness and diversity in their programs.

Its incumbent upon leadership from the podium to be part of this: who gets hired, what repertory gets played, where the orchestra plays. If youre not willing, for example, to have minority music interns playing subscription concerts because they didnt take the audition, that doesnt make any sense to me. This person needs the opportunity to play this repertoire; you have to be willing to let that happen, and you cant bow to blowback from the full-time players.

In Philadelphia, for a community concert, they once found a high school that was acoustically inferior; aesthetically no comparison; the chorus in the audience behind me. It made no sense, except for the joy it brought to that community to have the Philadelphia Orchestra in their backyard. They want some sense that they count and they matter, and by going there its us saying yes, you do.

Composer

Im in my fifth year on the board of Chamber Music America, and more than half the board is people of color. Its very evenly balanced as far as gender and race; those changes were implemented through consulting work and training, and facilitated discussions among the board to make sure everyone was on the same page. Going through that process has been eye-opening, and proves how much time it takes. Now we are equipped to have these discussions about how this can trickle down to membership and granting opportunities. And I think presenting organizations need to take the time to get to know the artists. Getting to know new artists takes time and commitment; its a commitment to widen your perspective.

Conductor

I would like changes to be made in how we train musicians in conservatories and universities. A lot of our thinking, and our perceptions of whats good music, becomes indoctrinated at that stage. I say this because even though Im a person of color, I was guilty of not being accepting of new voices and styles outside of Beethoven, Schumann, all the usual music of the past. When we start with preconceived notions, we limit ourselves. People are afraid of being uncomfortable, but with discomfort comes growth. If students learn about composers like William Grant Still or Florence Price and their approaches to making music then they will become more versatile. And we will see that change taking place in our programming; schools wont just be producing conductors who want to do Wagner, Strauss and Mahler. I love these composers. But there are more voices to hear.

Clarinetist

Over the last month, youve seen all these outpourings, and its in these moments when you see: Are we really connected with the communities were doing this work in? At the New York Philharmonic, where I am principal clarinet, I think theres been incentive to partner up with the Harmony Program, which does after-school music education. Im doing the Music Advancement Program at Juilliard; the mission revolves around students from underserved communities. Its being a citizen in that way. The new way is actually getting on the ground and teaching, getting on the ground and having tough conversations about the state of our field and who were trying to reach. Being there to help people understand that the orchestra is there for them.

Singer

Artistic institutions need to be focused on representing and really serving the communities that theyre in. There needs to be community engagement, not community outreach. Outreach is something you do occasionally. But youre always in the act of engaging; its a constant effort. If there are changes in the administration, and the makeup of the board every level of every artistic organization that will spill into how this stuff is packaged. This is the beginning of change that can be meaningful. If we reinvent what the opera or classical music audience is, we wont have the disparities in people hired, people attending, even whats presented, because you will have different people coming up with new ideas.

Composer

Its like anything else: The organizations need to represent what America looks like. Well-intentioned people can just have blinders on. I dont look at it like a sinister plot; I look at it as people are going with what theyre comfortable with. If we had more representation in the leadership, in terms of who is signing off on projects, youll have more people bringing things to the table. What I saw at Opera Theater of St. Louis where I did Champion and Fire Shut Up in My Bones, which is going to the Met is those people are open to a lot of ideas. But we have to bring the ideas to them. We have to open their eyes. I really think in the art music world, people are clamoring for something different. When we did Champion in New Orleans, this African-American guy in his 70s said, If this is opera, I will come. Thats a new audience member we didnt have before. La Bohme doesnt mean anything to him. But these contemporary stories do.

Singer

Please, in the future, cast with your heart, not just with your eyes and your ears. Who gives you the goose bumps? Pick them. Some people see a Black tenor, and they think Otello. Or they see a Black soprano and they think Aida. Who wants to see a Black Cio-Cio San? Youll hear that. But yes, opera is a suspension of disbelief. When someone does Eugene Onegin, they will often cast someone Russian or fluent in Russian. It doesnt have to be who you expect. There are other people who can sing it. When it comes to Otello, you could paint everyone blue and paint Desdemona green. When it comes down to it, its not about color; its about difference.

Composer

Certain groups of people have felt that they did not belong, because most of the time they didnt see people who resembled them onstage. But even if things look good onstage, internally is that what is happening in the institution? Its a family type of thing. That person working in the office goes home and tells the people at home, and they usually have other friends. That is how audiences change. It has to be from the inside out. And if the stage reflects the society, you can find the best artists to be the ambassadors to those coming, and put them in front of the people. It could be the administrator, the person in charge of programming or a member of the orchestra. People have to address the audience, to let them feel I am one of you. And you will see: The whole thing will change like you have no idea.

Link:

Black Artists on How to Change Classical Music - The New York Times

The Junior League of Richmond (JLR) is bringing new meaning to the phrase pop-up shop with the unveiling of its new mobile thrift shop, the Rolling Rack. The mobile boutique will provide a mix of free and low-cost clothing to JLRs nonprofit partners and the Richmond community.

The idea blossomed in the fall of 2018 when Jenna Casebolt, store manager at the Stratford Hills location of The Clothes Rack, one of JLRs two brick-and-mortar thrift shops, says she was trying to figure out how to make the business side of the store work with the nonprofit side.

Both stores have regular paid employees on staff, but they also make ample use of JLR volunteers. [We want] to keep as much money flowing back into our community projects and programs as possible, Jennifer Keegan, community vice president for JLR, says. Last year, The Clothes Rack locations grossed about $250,000.

Casebolt reached out to Keegan for ideas, and when Keegan proposed the idea for a mobile thrift truck, Casebolt was immediately on board.

The need for the truck was clear. Though JLRs two shops have long track records the Cary Street location has been around since the 1940s JLR Past President Savon Sampson says one question lingered: Why aren't we getting the foot traffic from underserved communities?

That question planted the seed for theRolling Rack and its ultimate purpose of serving the broader Richmond community by bringing clothing and other items directly to communities in need.

We really want to be intentional about helping women, Sampson says. She anticipates the truck will be used to partner with local organizations to help women to prepare to reenter the workforce or to help those who are coming out of difficult situations and need a fresh start, such as formerly homeless women trying to reestablish themselves.

[Thirty percent] of the homeless population is made up of women, Sampson says. Eighteen- to 34-year-olds are one of the largest [groups]. I couldn't imagine being homeless in those years. Ive been so fortunate that's never been a reality to me. But unless you have true generational wealth, most of us are one situation away from that experience.

The Rolling Rack is a nimble operation, able to communicate with local partners such as ChildSavers, the Peter Paul Development Center, Doorways and Communities in Schools and bring them only what they truly need at any given time.

For example, a partner like Doorways [a nonprofit that provides lodging for patients and their loved ones who need to be close to Richmond hospitals] might tell us, 'We have some folks who have been asking for coats they didn't expect to be here as long as they have. The Rolling Rack can zero in on those needs and work with whatever merchandise [we have] to provide whatever their constituents need, Keegan says.

She adds that there are other scenarios where the mobile thrift shop could be useful, such as for back-to-school shopping in under-resourced communities where transportation can present barriers for parents trying to acquire clothing for rapidly growing children.

We want it to be accessible to anyone because we want people to feel capable of buying what they need for themselves or their families, Keegan says.

Not everything went according to plan with the launch of the Rolling Rack. After a few delays at the end of 2019, things seemed to be progressing until the coronavirus pandemic descended in March, delaying the shops debut.

Keegan and Sampson hope the community will see the effort JLR is putting in to serve and partner with the broader Richmond community and attract new members.

Were an organization truly focused on developing women leaders and empowering the community that they serve, Sampson says. Were giving people opportunities to volunteer and leveraging those opportunities for the community.

Sampson says there are misconceptions about the Junior League that she hopes increased outreach can help debunk. The League has this stigma that its a white woman's organization, she says. Are we representing the Richmond community? Were growing there. Were in a lot of underserved communities, and a lot of the kids look like me. Im brown. I want to make sure it's not just white girls who are helping, it's brown girls, too.

Im hopeful we're seen as a benefit and tool to the greater community, Keegan adds. I hope [the Rolling Rack] gets people open to thinking of the Junior League for donating, and I hope women in the community see this as a great opportunity to serve and think, Id like to join.

The Rolling Rack will debut from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, July 25, at The Clothes Rack, 2618 W. Cary St. There will be music from a local DJ and food trucks including King of Pops, all outside for easy social distancing.

Never miss a Sunday Story: Sign up for the newsletter, and well drop a fresh read into your inbox at the start of each week. To keep up with the latest posts, search for the hashtag #SundayStory on Twitter and Facebook.

More:

Sunday Story: Ready to Rack and Roll - richmondmagazine.com - Richmond magazine

This article contains spoilers.

I went in completely blind to David Marmors feature-length directorial debut, 1BR. No trailers, no reading a synopsis. Really, its the best way to go into a movieespecially a horror movie, but I must admit it doesnt happen for me nearly enough. Im just a sucker for trailers, plus I have to review press kits a lot, all kinds of reasons. But when I have zero expectations, its impossible for a movie to fall short of them. Granted, its also impossible for a movie to exceed them, but I maintain, Im most likely to be impressed if I just walk in with as little context as possible.

This is to say, if nothing else, 1BR got a fair shake from me. My initial reaction to the first 15 minutes or so of 1BR was a bit of indifference as Sarah (Nicole Brydon Bloom) fumbled her way through a new job and the awkwardness of getting to know her neighbors. Initially, I felt like Id just stumbled into yet another generic horror movie where I found myself struggling just to reach the end. And that sucks because, while I dont really mind writing negative reviews, so much as I just struggle to find anything to say when I dont like a movie. I feared the worst.

Then one of the neighbors in this movie puts Sarahs cat in an oven and, well, I perked up a bit. Im really just a simple creature. If you want to get my attention in a horror movie, bake someones beloved pet. Ill go wide-eyed every time.

1BR is a horror film about a cult that inhabits an apartment complex and their attempts to brainwash Sarah into becoming a member of this cult. They torture her psychologically, emotionally, and physically, all in an attempt to undo the bad conditioning brought about by living in American society.

This movie came out about a year ago, back when most of us still disagreed with the cult. Today? Its not like this cult doesnt have a leg to stand on. Are we not all products of bad conditioning? Are we not sick and depressed and anxious and half-insane from living in this society? Now more than ever, doesnt it seem like the easier way out is to just say fuck it and join a cult? Let someone else do all the thinking? Be pointed to a simple job that allows us to contribute and not have to worry about anything else? Of course, its enticing. Cults arent that tough of a sell when you really think about it. Theres a reason they continue to gain members no matter how batshit insane the members are. Were all tired of navigating in this hell hole called society. Is it really so insane to want to leave it and join a bunch of people with a sense of community? In 2020, youd be insane NOT to at least consider it.

As I watched 1BR, a recurring question proposed to Sarah is Do you want to be a part of this community? She continues answering no until she finally relents and says yes, but I found myself sitting on the couch answering for her, and my answer was kinda.

Of course, no, Id never really join a cult, and I dont condone cults in any way. Theyre harmful to everyone involved, they strip people of their individuality, theyre dangerous, often deadly, and members rarely dress well. Also, theres sexual assault and abuse to consider. Dont join a cult. But as to how people can ultimately be convinced to join one anyway? I get it. Oh, boy do I ever get it.

Sarah is convinced to willfully join the cult and, of course, like all cults, it basically turns out to be a sex thing. Her role is to marryor at least play house withthe one-eyed community weirdo, Brian, played brilliantly by Giles Matthey. Matthey gives my favorite acting performance in 1BR. Everyone was great but his acting really stands out.

Fortunately for Sarah, theres some light at the end of the tunnel, as Brian is somewhat empathetic to her apprehension about joining the community and understands her desire to escape. That light becomes muddled when one of Sarahs friends ventures into the apartment complex and is captured and imprisoned for reconditioning. She essentially convinces Sarah that, enticing as it may be, allowing these people to think for her is not whats in her best interest. Its Sarahs life and Sarah should be in control of it.

I dont know, Sarah. I really just dont know. I mean, youre smart, youre a strong independent woman who dont need no man, all this is true. And I have no doubts you can fight your way out of this cult. Even when the cult ends up being much bigger than you ever imagined in a brilliant plot twist. But I want you to sit down and think about whats coming. COVID-19 lockdowns, idiots refusing to wear masks because they think they know more than scientists, police brutality, mass riots, Tiger King, unemployment, and maybejust maybe four more years of Trump.

You might have an okay thing going with this cult. I mean yes theyre psychotic but they also have your back against the outside world. If America is currently a massive prisonand its seeming more and more like it might bethat cult is the prison gang protecting your ass from the rest of gen-pop. You might not like the cult, but you may very well need them. Just some food for thought, Sarah.

Im not going to delve in-depth into the ending. Its left open-ended to a degree, but I felt like it was a hopeful ending. I personally think Sarah got away, but perhaps she didnt. Even if she got recaptured and killed she didnt go down without a fight.

All in all, 1BR is a clever, smart, tense, and suspenseful ride that I quite enjoyed. Ive never seen anything David Marmor has done prior to 1BR, I know he did some TV work and some shorts, but whatever his next feature film may be, Ill definitely be checking it out. Theres a ton of talent behind 1BR.

In the end, I cant speak for anyone else but 1BR left me wondering if were entering a time where cults and cult-like organizations might become more the norm. As regular society seems more and more insane, I think were going to see a lot more division. And in that division I can see a lot of tight-knit communities emerging. Communities not entirely unlike the one in 1BR.

For the record, Im not claiming 1BR is a political horror film. Its really not. It is a bit of a social one though. Im not sure if that was entirely intentional or not, but either way, its a thinker and a truly well-made film that Ill probably be watching again in the near future.

What did you think of 1BR?

Excerpt from:

1BR: Do You Want to Be A Part of This Community? - 25YearsLaterSite.com

At the start of Michigans COVID-19 shutdown in March, a lot of work came to an abrupt stop.

But organizations that support the states nonprofit sector actually got busier albeit from home.

For us, our work increased, said Kelley Kuhn, Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer for the Michigan Nonprofit Association. We had to look at ways to help organizations navigate through this time of uncertainty, and help them stay informed about new opportunities.

That pivot included regular, check-in phone calls, policy updates, and a four-part, expert-led webinar about Paycheck Protection Program loans.

Were trying to make sure nonprofits know what these programs are, since many of them offer capital that nonprofits havent traditionally had access to, said Kuhn.

Thats not to say these shifts came easily, given the collaborative nature of nonprofit support organizations.

All of our work is about gathering people: for leadership development, supporting nonprofits mission, or providing a physical space for that work, said Hillary Watson, Nonprofit Enterprise at Works (NEW) Building Coordinator. We believe that physically bringing people into the same room is what will reach our vision of empowered leaders, flourishing nonprofits, and vibrant communities. We didnt have a virtual room.

However, NEWs team has built virtual rooms over the last four months, so theyve been bringing people together online to discuss racial equity, board training and more.

Our building reopened in June, but three quarters of our tenants have opted to stay home, said Watson. Its so encouraging to see that while we can offer a range of resources, and our nonprofit clients and partners are having the courage to say this feels safe to us, this feels beyond our risk tolerance, and we can adapt. Its all about adaptation, so that people can engage with their work, and theyll be comfortable enough to actually really focus and achieve their goals.

Kuhns MNA team, meanwhile, will be working from home until at least the end of September.

Some of the nonprofit groups we work with were deemed essential, though, so they modified the way they operated, and their offices stayed open, said Kuhn, noting examples like housing and food assistance organizations. A wave of nonprofits are waiting for Labor Day, as a kind of target date to re-evaluate where things stand, and a lot of organizations are watching to see what happens with schools.

Ironically, the isolation has created more opportunities for partnership, Watson said. Some nonprofits are finding this is the ideal time to do board development or strategic planning work, because their client-facing work is more limited. Others are finding that racial equity is more central to their mission than they thought, and are tapping into the Centering Justice conversations to expand their toolbox for that work. During a crisis, were more aware of where our buckets are full and where theyre empty, and were finding a lot of energy to exchange knowledge and learn from each other.

Both nonprofit support organizations are focused on staying nimble and engaged in this time of constant change. But Kuhn has also found that strengthening the bonds between her coworkers has also been key.

Were very intentional about checking in with our team members, to help people navigate and manage the stress theyre feeling, Kuhn said. Weve sent out care packages were teeing up another one thats about to go out now and scheduled virtual happy hours and things like that. Some team members are struggling, as they deal with losing someone to COVID, or with a spouses job loss, or with having to balance being a teacher and an employee. So were trying to be sure that were addressing these situations and supporting them where they are.

In a way, though, profound disruptions to our day-to-day operations can also make blind spots visible; so while the last few months have presented NEW and MNA with a whole host of challenges, it also offers a rare opportunity for clarity.

The number one lesson is that a powerful vision will always take you where you need to go, said Watson. The nonprofit sector is about improving peoples lives in tangible ways in good times and hard times, in sickness and in health. The pandemic might change how we work, but it doesnt stop the work. We have returned over and over to our vision empowered leaders, flourishing nonprofits, vibrant communities and asked, How do we get from here to there? The here may have changed, but the there is still exactly where we want to go.

MNA, meanwhile, continues to advocate for and inform Michigans nonprofit sector (regarding up-to-date policy changes, federal and state loan programs, etc.), in part through a newsletter thats available on MNAs website.

Were cautiously optimistic about the future, said Kuhn. Were managing as well as we can, and preparing the best we can, but obviously, we cant predict the future. Nobody can. So weve just given ourselves some grace by planning in larger chunks of time. Were looking ahead in three-month increments, so by not just waiting for orders, weve afforded ourselves some extra flexibility, and this allows us to be more focused on the nonprofits we serve.

According to Watson, NEW has arrived at a similar conclusion.

Our end goal is the same [as before], Watson said. So while were constantly tweaking things, from whether or not well be able to have a retreat for our program participants to what benchmarks would cause us to shut down the building again, we know our preferred future happens within a range of options. So we work toward our goals as best we can, we hold the future lightly, and continue our work.

More:

'Holding our future lightly': How Michigan nonprofits have adapted and arrived at a new normal - Concentrate

In the two months since George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, American Jewish day schools have begun to rethink how they teach students about the brutal legacy of American racism.

Among the subjects theyll have to examine? Their own history.

As the day school movement has expanded, its created a deep passion about the need for institutions that, in a secularized America, affirm and enrich Jewish identity. For day school communities, its impossible to imagine that the educational model that dominated the first half of the 20th century in which Jewish students attended public schools and received supplemental Jewish education might be a sufficient incubator of religious and cultural character.

But the origins of some day schools, particularly those founded in and after the 1970s, are connected to a dark narrative of 20th century American history: That of the backlash among white families against the racial integration of public schools. And as day schools reconsider how they teach students about the realities of American racism, they face questions about how those realities intersect with their own institutional heritage.

The Jewish day school movement was founded when the U.S. public schools integrated, said Ilana Kaufman, executive director of the Jews of Color Initiative, in a June 21 conversation hosted by Temple Emanuels Streicker Center, because there was white flight from U.S. public schools.

The actual story, say historians, is a little more complicated. (Kaufman did not respond to requests for comment.) As European immigration expanded the American Jewish population around the turn of the 19th century, said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of Jewish history at Brandeis University, American Jews developed the sense that the public school was crucial to the making of Americans, that it was truly un-American not to send your children to public school. For decades, attending public school was something Jewish immigrants and their children saw as a matter of principle. Jews were very proud that in America the schools accepted Jews, there were no quotas, everybody studied together, Sarna said.

In the late interwar period, that began to change. The day school movement starts in the 20s and the 30s, said Jonathan Krasner, a Brandeis professor currently writing a history of Jewish day schools. That, according to Krasner, was the first of several discrete periods in the evolution of the day school system. Next came a really big push in the post-war era, primarily from the Orthodox community. There were a lot of refugees that came here just before or after the war, and they didnt have the same allegiance to public schools, Krasner said. They were influenced more by things like the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel, events that, for some, prompted a renewed interest in ensuring that new generations would cultivate a strong Jewish identity.

But the day school movement didnt blossom until the 1960s and 70s, an era that proved particularly fruitful for community schools, non-Orthodox institutions catering to students who, while discontented with the public school system, were unlikely to attend rigorously religious alternatives.

What lay behind that discontent? One major and frequently forgotten factor, Sarna said, was the mass flight of Evangelicals into private schools after Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 effectively banned prayer from public schools. That exodus, Sarna said, dealt a serious blow to the Jewish belief in public schools: How could they truly be said to be essential to the American character, if so many of their students were abandoning them?

At the same time, much of American Jewry was on the economic ascent, entering class ranks in which private schools were increasingly considered the norm. The fear was, if we dont have Jewish schools, Jews will simply go to those private schools run by Protestants, Sarna said. And, in the late 60s, the country was transfixed by incidents like the Ocean Hill-Brownsville conflict, in which a predominantly Black school district in Brooklyn terminated the contracts of a number of white, Jewish teachers, drawing allegations of anti-Semitism and prompting a two-month-long teacher strike. Those very, very well publicized incidents suggested to Jews that the public schools were no longer friendly to Jews, Sarna said.

But in many communities particularly urban ones, according to Krasner the decisive moment for day schools came in the early 1970s, as the Supreme Court issued a series of decisions mandating that school districts use busing to integrate schools. (Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case establishing that school segregation was unconstitutional, didnt address the de facto school segregation that resulted from Black and white people living in largely different neighborhoods.) The impact of those decisions was particularly visible in Los Angeles, said Sara Smith, Assistant Dean at the Graduate Center for Jewish Education of American Jewish University.

Before busing, there were two Conservative elementary day schools in L.A., Smith said. After, there were five. Before busing, there was one Reform elementary day school in L.A. After busing, there were two. The increased number of schools wasnt the only indicator that Jewish parents were fleeing the public school system for the day school system: Enrollments skyrocketed, too.

There was really a sense community rabbis certainly spoke about this that on the one hand we as Jews should be supporting integration, because thats a value that we hold, Smith said. But, she said, there was a real fear and paranoia from parents who didnt want to send their kids to be bused across the city to go to schools that were going to be populated by non-whites. Between 1966 and 1980, Smith wrote in her 2017 NYU doctoral dissertation, the number of white students enrolled in Los Angeles public school system decreased by 269,373. That reduction was accompanied by a rise in the number of local private schools. Jewish students, and Jewish schools, were clearly identifiable participants in that change.

To date, Smiths dissertation is the only intensive work of scholarship on the intersection between the desegregation of public schools and the rise of Jewish day schools. But Rivka Press Schwartz, a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and associate principal at Riverdales SAR High School, is sure that the pattern Smith identified in L.A. was replicated across the country. There is a great deal of evidence of people moving to the suburbs, pulling their kids out of public schools and putting them in private schools, Schwartz said. It is 100% true that Jewish parents, then and now, cared about their kids Jewish education, and sacrificed to afford their kids a meaningful Jewish education. But it can also be true that if your neighborhood public school was all of a sudden about to be subject to busing, then sending your kid to a Jewish school might appeal more.

Were adults, she said, and more than one thing can be true at the same time.

How should the day school system reckon with this history? First, said Krasner, its important to note the scale of the issue, which largely doesnt involve Orthodox schools; the Orthodox commitment to day schools, he said, is more fundamental than any change that took place within American society. A 2013-2014 survey by the Avi Chai Foundation, Krasner said, suggested that about 13% of Jewish day school students in the U.S. attend non-Orthodox schools. A fair proportion of those schools were founded before the start of desegregation efforts, meaning that the number of schools whose history was genuinely informed by a rejection of desegregation may be comparatively small.

For those schools, what comes next? The legacy is the legacy, and thats the way that it happened. And, these institutions have done many great things for Jewish identity for many people, Smith said. To meaningfully grapple with their history when it comes to race, she said, schools have to start thinking about real intentional ways to build bonds that dont just feel like service. Too often, she said, day schools fail to place value on cultivating student relationships with those from other communities. In her view, its time for that value to become central to day school curriculums.

What do we do with complicated, painful parts of our history? Schwartz asked. While shes worked to incorporate a more comprehensive education about structural racism into SARs curriculum, shes long had the sense that turning the conversation to the origins of the day school system would be unproductive. Pirkei Avot says, dont say something that cant be heard, she said. I did have the sense this was something that couldnt be heard.

But in the last three months, Schwartz said, those around her have suddenly become more interested in the issue of day school origins. So far, she said, discussions around that subject have been preliminary; the educators in her sphere, preoccupied with the difficult educational conditions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic, have yet to begin planning around whether and how to incorporate that history in their teaching. There are certain things that make it hard for the Jewish community to come into this conversation, she said. Its not just youre racist, or youre clueless, or youre living out your lives as upper middle class white people. There genuinely are things that make it very difficult, which the people who want to make this conversation happen have to also think about.

Smith says that as she wrote her dissertation, she spoke with the founders of several of the Los Angeles schools whose histories she was researching. They werent surprised by what she was uncovering, she said, but they also werent particularly interested in it. I think people understood that these schools are able to exist and thrive because of busing, and that was just the way that it was, she said. Now I think were turning back, and trying to understand, ok, how did we get here?

More:

Will Jewish schools finally address their segregationist past? - Forward

Teaching is the art of developing students to think critically for themselves and to work with others to create solutions and advocate for their ideas. For those working in education, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to rethink how we engage with young people.

As the pandemic unfolded, our team at SMASH, a nationwide summer residential program for STEM education serving students of color, had to move an established, 17-year program into a virtual learning environment. This was new to us and, needless to say, presented a challenge: We had to evolve to stay true to our mission while, at the same time, deliver a program that worked for our learners.

Our experience leading up to this summers program (running throughout July) was both humbling and exhilarating. Along the way, we focused on five areas that we felt were necessary to serve our community of young people:

Access to computers and a dependable internet connection is critical to delivering any form of online learning. This was particularly true of our program as our students needed to successfully leverage the design, prototyping and augmented reality software we leverage in our STEM curriculum and be able to connect using tools such as Zoom.

We also knew that not every learner in our community had the technology resources to access these opportunities. To counter these gaps, we provided our students with laptops and hot spots where necessary. For some students, we also needed to provide headsets to help mitigate in-home distractions and improve communication.

Many high schoolers from underserved communities have never interacted in virtual professional or learning environments before. Moreover, students have different at-home settings, and not everyone is comfortable sharing their private environments with their peers.

All of our students are being educated on how to interact in professional learning environments. This includes basics like expectations on muting and creating virtual backgrounds, and best practices on virtual engagement. Discussions focus on providing constructiverather than criticalfeedback to peers and instructors, and implementing digital best practices such as establishing daily checks-ins, setting well-defined agendas before each meeting, and clearly defining participation roles.

As high school students begin to further develop their identity and voice, we had to be intentional about ensuring that they authentically connect with the work to be done. In this vein, we deemed it essential to stay rooted in an integrated project-based learning approach that provides students with the opportunity to tackle real-world problems relevant both to them and their communities.

STEM is relevant to a wide range of fieldseven beyond STEM professions. Ensuring our revised curriculum helps 15 year olds see how STEM is used to solve real-world problems is critical to driving engagement in this new learning environment. Certainly this is the case with the pandemic as data scientists, epidemiologists and engineers all came together early on to help understand the impact of the disease and generate solutions to the healthcare crisis.

The curriculum also deeply integrates design thinking as a framework for solving complex problems, with a focus on empathy. Understanding a users needs and context in order to develop solutions through an equitable lens is keyand so is the ability to adapt and adjust. Design thinking is not a linear process, rather one that requires multiple iterations, a growth mindset, and perseverance.

This summer, we are providing our scholars with weekly stipends to help them mitigate wages they could have earned in lieu of participating in our program, and to help offset any household income challenges experienced as a result of the current economic downturn. While providing incentives to young people to pursue their education has been met with controversy, the income inequalities faced by our students and their families are real, and we felt it was important to reward their commitment to education.

A sense of community is vital in any learning process. And with students being able to connect with one another virtually without being bound to geography, the team sought opportunities to increase peer engagement and network building across the country. Our students projects will culminate in a national pitch competition that will enable cross-regional engagement and friendly competitionall with the goal of driving for excellence.

In preparation, students are spending the summer doing weekly mock presentations, providing constructive feedback to each other, and iterating their projects to incorporate learnings. Students will pitch the solutions they prototyped to address the real-world problem of their choice to a panel of judges. The competition will showcase the students best work to the national SMASH community and friends of the program, allow them to receive immediate feedback and provide them with an opportunity to win scholarship prizes.

As STEM educators, we believe in the power of learning and iterating. These times have shown us the importance of not staying fixed in our ideas of what should be and, instead, seek out growth opportunities when faced with the unexpected. With continued reflection and evidence-based evaluation, we are confident that we will learn from the five focus areas and use the learnings to further drive the impact of our programming.

Originally posted here:

Moving a Summer Program to the Virtual World While Closing the Digital Divide - EdSurge

By now, youve seen or heard the word privilege in myriad contexts: trumpeted from megaphones at city protests, stamped across aesthetically pleasing Instagram infographics, italicized and bolded in op-eds. In the context of recent race relations, the notion of privilege has been widely discussed and viewed as an exclusively White phenomenon that runs rampant in affluent, predominantly Caucasian, suburban neighborhoods, school districts, and job markets. However, while an emphasis on White privilege is certainly warranted, it egregiously neglects another facet of the conversation surrounding demographic entitlement: privilege in financially secure diverse communities and the blissful oblivion of first and second-generation immigrants.

As a first-generation Ethiopian American who, while not overtly wealthy, has never worried about the status of her familys financial stability, and as a resident of one of the most diverse regions in the country, racism had always felt like a distant concept. To my erroneously superficial understanding, while it did not seem as archaic as a mere relic of a bigoted history, I didnt perceive racism to be of significant pertinence to our world. My neighbors thought I was Indian; waiters spoke to my mother in Spanish at restaurants, and more than half of my high school identified as a person of color, so for years, Id unassumingly bubbled Black into standardized tests without truly internalizing the struggles that came with that label. Having never experienced or personalized the notion of racism and infrequently having been considered Black by my community upon first glance, I found myself in desperate need of the very re-education catered to many as Dear White People.

The inner dissonance I felt was not an individual occurrence. For a number of my close friends many Black, all minorities we collectively found that each of us felt relatively divorced from the intrinsic fear and dissatisfaction almost universal in the movement for racial justice. That is not to say that we were not angry we were, but as objectively privileged spectators and critics of a blatantly unjust institution, rather than as victims of racially motivated prejudice.

To look at racism as an outsider, though, is to exclude oneself from a narrative that cares very little about personal experiences or perceptions. In truth, although relatively affluent people of color and children of immigrants may be brought up in environments starkly juxtaposing the African American canon, it is only a matter of time before one comes face to face with the experiential component of racial injustice. By then, every facet of the privilege found in such immigrant communities exclusive cultural distinctions, communal disassociation, and microaggressive ignorance will have been undermined by the harsh realities of a society that not only sees color but vilifies it.

Growing up, race was an almost nonexistent part of my socialization; after all, how could my parents teach me about a construct with which they, at least at the time, could not identify and were unfamiliar? As a second-generation immigrant, I had been conditioned to view myself as an exception to the racial rules that governed America. At home, I spoke Amharic with my parents, often ate traditional Ethiopian cuisine, wore uniquely habesha clothes on special occasions, and endured years of Amharic music blaring through our living room stereo. When out in public, there was an unmistakable camaraderie between my family and the odd Ethiopian passerby to whom we called Selam in unison. It would not be an understatement, then, to say that Black culture vernacular English, hip hop, soul food had no presence in my house, not out of intentional avoidance but because, truly, Ethiopian American and African American mean very different things.

This same cultural disconnect extends itself to the millions of other Black immigrants in the United States, a divide that continues to widen as the non-American-born Black population grows exponentially. As a result, key statistical differences arise between immigrant communities and their African American counterparts. The Pew Research Center found that Black immigrants are 37% more likely to have earned a college degree than African Americans. They are also 29% less likely to live in poverty, with incomes exceeding those of African Americans by an average of $10,000. These disparities are certainly not due to intrinsic racial inefficacy in the African American community, as has been falsely and maliciously suggested by proponents of race science for centuries. Instead, they can be extrapolated to indicate discrepancies in socioeconomic status, societal respect, and even deliberate moves by immigrants themselves to distinguish their communities from what Americans might view as conventionally Black.

Many immigrants and their children naturally segregate themselves in what are known as ethnic enclaves a phenomenon that contributes to the perpetuation of both intentional divisions from mainstream America and subliminally developed prejudices against American-born Black people. On several occasions, Ive heard immigrant-born adults in my own life simultaneously delineate themselves from and speak pejoratively against African Americans, resorting to the stereotypical and substanceless derogations pinned on the Black community by centuries of de facto American culture: lack of education, cyclical poverty, unkempt hair and dress, salacious and libertine lifestyles.

Due to their disparate cultural environments and tendency to self-isolate, many immigrants are often wealthier, unaccustomed to racial friction in their home countries, and unable to own the history of Black America, from slavery to segregation. Such differences, however, become problematic when used as justification for actively pandering to and perpetuating negative societal perceptions of the African American community. In doing so, immigrants, especially African immigrants, become free riders on the wave of progress towards equality, failing to recognize the grave threat racism poses to their livelihoods as people of color. Unfortunately, whether it manifests itself as higher socioeconomic status, elevated expectations of achievement, or subconscious biases developed against those also considered Black, privilege blinds many to the inescapable truth that racism and societys resultant discrimination of BIPOC, ironically, does not discriminate.

Image Credit: Privilege is when you think something is not a problem because it is not a problem to you personally by Tony Webster is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Continue reading here:

The Other Face of Privilege - Harvard Political Review

The following is a transcript of an interview with former Acting CDC Director Dr. Richard Besser that aired Sunday, July 19, 2020, on "Face the Nation."

MARGARET BRENNAN: Welcome back to FACE THE NATION. This morning, the number of deaths in the U.S. due to COVID-19 has officially reached yet another tragic benchmark, 140,000. Dr. Richard Besser is the president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the former acting director for the CDC. He joins us from Princeton, New Jersey. Good morning.

FORMER CDC DIRECTOR DOCTOR RICHARD BESSER: Morning, MARGARET. Good to be here.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, Doctor, I'm glad you're here. I want to first ask you, because I know you worked in Atlanta, you knew Congressman John Lewis, who, as you know, passed away on Friday. In reading up on him, it stood out to me that he had spent a good deal of time on health disparities in the minority community and worked on that issue and I wonder if that's something you collaborated with him on?

DR. BESSER: Well, you know, we didn't work directly, but I- I lived in his district and his district included the CDC and in his entire career focused on civil rights, focused on trying to undo structural racism, it has a direct impact on health. He was active until the very end of his life. And in- in preparing to come here to speak with you, I found a quote that he- he- he has from- from May in a- a congressional committee. He said, "In the wake of this deadly virus, we should admit we've fallen short. Health inequality is once again costing lives on a scale that no one can ignore. In order to save lives and right this wrong, we must listen, learn and take action." And most importantly, he called on Congress to put ego and ideology aside and- and that's one of the biggest challenges we're seeing right now with this pandemic.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, to that point, according to CDC data, Hispanics, Latinos are hospitalized nationwide for COVID-19 at four times the rate of whites. The black community, we know, is disproportionately impacted. You're a pediatrician by training. Do you expect these patterns that we have seen to be replicated among children when we look at the possibility of them returning to classrooms, at least partially. in the fall?

DR. BESSER: Well, if we're not intentional about making sure that doesn't happen, it will happen. The dea- the death rate for blacks, Latinos, Native Americans far surpasses their proportion of the population. And if you look at how we fund schools in America, most of it's done off property taxes. So wealthy communities are going to be able to make the- the adjustments to their schools that are necessary for them to be safe places for children, for teachers and staff. That's very expensive. It takes looking at your airflow. It looks- making sure that you have enough classrooms so that you don't need as many children in each class and they can socially distance. It means hiring staff who can decontaminate classrooms and disinfect them every night and- and staff to- to screen staff and children every morning. And in low income communities, schools have been under invested in for- for- for generations without additional resources. We will see children of color, black and brown children, disproportionately affected as schools start to reopen.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You know, you warned in an Op-Ed this week, that got a lot of attention, along with three other former CDC directors, that health data is being politicized in a way that you said is really unprecedented. You said, "The terrible effect of undermining the CDC plays out in our population." You called it willful disregard for public health guidelines, leading to a sharp rise in infections and deaths. Are people within the- the CDC telling you that they feel their health data is being undermined and politicized?

DR. BESSER: Well, what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing are the same thing, and that's that CDC is not out front in their typical traditional leadership role, driving the response to this. And we're seeing political considerations continually over- over- overtaking those of public health. We have the world's leading public health agency and they provide direction not just across the- the federal government, but to state and local public health. And without them leading this response, without it being driven by- by science, we're going to have what's happening right now, which is an out of control pandemic continue for months and months and months to come.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But respectfully, though, you know, the CDC has admitted having made some mistakes, not just- so, you know, there is a question here about their competence as an agency due to these early admitted problems with testing kits--

DR. BESSER: Yeah.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Slow to warn the public about the idea that there's asymptomatic transmission and aerosol transmission of this. The mask guidance was very, very late. What's going on? Are- are they--

DR. BESSER: Well, yeah--

MARGARET BRENNAN: --falling short or are you saying they're being muzzled?

DR. BESSER: Well, I- I think there's a little of both going on here. You know, I ran emergency preparedness and response at CDC for four- for four years and led the agency during the start of the swine flu pandemic in 2009 and every response to a new public health emergency, you'll try things and some of them won't work. But when you're in a daily conversation with the public, you develop trust. You explain what you know, what you don't know and what studies you're doing to try and- and learn. And so when you try something and it doesn't work, you have the opportunity to explain what you've learned and what you want to do going forward. The mask issue is- is a great example. Early on, the CDC was not recommending masks in public. They were recommending masks for health care providers. But increasing studies and data showed that because so many people can spread this before they have any symptoms, there was value in the general public wearing masks. But without CDC meeting every day with the media, hearing what the public and the press were concerned about, there was no way to bring the public along on that journey. So it looked like a flip flop and it didn't lead to people making those changes. I found the questions that I got from the press every day led us to do a much better job at CDC.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, obviously, we're talking to our own book here, but we would love to have the CDC director on the program. And we thank you for your time today. We'll be right back.

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Transcript: Dr. Richard Besser on "Face the Nation," July 19, 2020 - CBS News

July 17, 2020 | :

March 12, 2020. The last time my students and I physically shared classroom space. We were moving into spring breaka week off from coursework and the exciting opportunity to return re-energized to further discuss student development theories. Specifically in this course, the midpoint in the semester is when students started to get it; to reach what, for many students, were new ah-ha moments that accompanied the understanding of development theories.

As a faculty member, my biggest concern was the online (re)creation of a deeply engaged and rich environment, while simultaneously supporting students battling various challenges due to COVID-19 including but not limited to the loss of jobs, mental health conditions, and deaths of family members. In the shift to remote learning, I was intentional about student check-ins, providing space for them to process feelings associated with, and impacts of the pandemicpersonally, professionally, and academically. One recurring classroom conversation was the lack of compassion experienced by many students, professional staff, and faculty across higher education. We were collectively astonished at the lack of humanity during a time of crisis. After several discussions about the benefits of exercising compassion, humanity, and grace (noting the importance of those components to the learning process), I invited my class to co-author this op-ed with me. It was obvious I was not the only one struggling with the idea that compassiona human gesture incorporating love, grace, kindness, understanding, and patienceneeded to be embodied and executed. While compassion is crucial, we call for the adoption of Haos (2011) Critical Compassionate Pedagogy, a commitment to openly critiquing institutionalized policies and practices, as well as engaging in self-reflexivity while centering compassion as a means of reshaping higher education, our communities, our students, and ourselves.

In the following sections, we reflect on our commitment and highlight the transferability of pedagogy to practice outside the classroom. We encourage education stakeholders to (re)consider ways to move toward embodying critical compassion in academic environments, noting that while exercising compassion is important during a pandemic, it should not be limited to moments of crisis. To create a critical compassionate environment is to create one in which open communication is valued and students, faculty, and staff are free to be their authentic selves.

As we engage in efforts to create campus environments that embrace critical compassionate pedagogy, we provide the following questions as a foundation to help move us forward: (a) How do we operationalize compassion in higher education? (b) How do we create a culture of compassion both inside and outside the classroom? (c) How do we challenge educational systems that view compassion as weakness and/or a threat to rigor? (d) How do we prioritize the overall well-being and holistic development of our students in the face of a crisis? And lastly, (e) How do we commit to ALWAYS humanize learning?

Learning from the Pause: Compassion in a Pandemic

The current pandemic is a crash course in pedagogical flexibility for all in higher education. What previously was established as normal life is now on indefinite pause. Educators are forced to rethink syllabi and methods of instruction, while students are figuring out how to survive while remaining successful with new ways of learning. Our resiliency is being tested with added stressors of working from home, losing jobs, facilitating childrens education, having limited access to the outside world all while experiencing trauma of a life-threatening virus. Our daily routines have been disrupted, small businesses are struggling more than ever, and some corporations are marketing the pandemic to their advantage. Is this our new society? Take-out food, staying six feet apart, wearing masks, trucks with refrigerators being used to store bodies at major hospitals in highly impacted areasand still, homework due at midnight.

Dr. Raquel Wright-Mair

The overarching paradigm of higher education upholds dominant ideologies of individualism and meritocracy, seeking to maintain oppressive hierarchies. Such structures have required perfectionism and hyper productivity even under the current pressures of a pandemic. During this time, inequities faced in the academy and society have been heightened, reinforcing power and privilege across institutional structures.

The need for critical compassionate pedagogy is essential and must be prioritized when working in the academy. Critical compassionate pedagogy seeks to listen, understand, empathize, and take action towards creating more equitable structures in education. An ethic of care and attentiveness to others starts with our own cognitive and psycho-emotional well-being and engagement in reflexive practices of how we show up at home, work, and in the classroom with particular focus on our positionalities. Critical compassionate pedagogy requires us to extend open-hearted and open-minded compassion towards others, and recognize the multiplicity of hardships, and the intersections of oppression that individuals face. It should not take a pandemic for society to recognize the necessity of grace, compassion, and kindness. Rather, critical compassionate pedagogy should be utilized to create more equitable and honest spaces for participation, learning, and growth for all.

Our sense of normalcy has dramatically shiftedin this redefinition, we should insist on no longer persisting with standards of the past. As we experience new changes, higher education can learn from the pause. We must sit with our differences and learn the power of vulnerability in sharing our experiences. We must also recognize how current policies and practices are working against equitable outcomes and move towards embodying a compassionate pedagogy.

Processing Loss

The university environment should be a place of solace, fostering a sense of community to push the limits of knowledge. Unprecedented changes have ultimately affected the abilities of academic community members to succeed. Not having graduation ceremonies, human connection, and other shared memories was a loss for many and it is important to have a space to process and grieve. Open invitations by faculty and administrators to debrief the magnitude of current realities and process raw feelings have led to a sense of validation and affirmation for many. Through honest, transparent, and personal interactions, critical compassionate spaces have been created to help individuals cope and grieve lost experiences and opportunities.

However, there is more than simply missing out when it comes to processing loss. Marginalized populations have had to process hypervisibility and adapt to a new reality around them without crucial support structures. Many are experiencing the abrupt loss of important resources instrumental to their wellbeing and success. Community members have been left to navigate a virtual university, often without adequate support and resources. Having community and resources to help process loss is central to healing and surviving. When this does not occur it is detrimental and we risk not acknowledging individuals:

You See Me

Do you remember me?

Remember when I spoke to you and expressed the struggles going on with me?

Or that one time when I had that anxiety attack in the middle of class,

You told me, Its okay, go take five minutes to yourself and come back to reconvene.

Or maybe you remember when I told you that my father just died in front of me from COVID-19.

Not getting a chance to hold him for one last time.

Or when my brothers and sisters are getting shot and killed from the violence surrounding me.

Or my mother crying to me when she lost her job and couldnt help to pay for me to sit in these seats.

Well, actuallyNo.

You dont even know me but you see me.

Physically behind this computer screen, with my covered background hiding my reality.

Missing an online lesson because I have no access to Wi-Fi and couldnt afford to pay the electricity.

Having to mute the microphone because of the police sirens in my community.

My parents outside, fighting about feeding my family and figuring out how to make ends meet.

But still. No compassion.

You see me.

But you still failed me.

Rethinking Compassion in the Academy

The academy is often too unwilling to acknowledge the need to shift dominant ways of understanding in higher education. Becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable is easier said than done. The unwelcoming academy could implement more humanity, kindness and equity. Tomorrow is unknown, but leading with compassion, flexibility, and understanding is what we need to help each other heal in crisis. There is no better time than the present to implement changes and commit personally to work towards a more loving, understanding, and equitable approach to teaching and higher education.

We urge higher education stakeholders to consider the following action items, as they prioritize our call to center critical compassion:

One: Redefine Expectations of Productivity

The effort that individuals are putting in may look different now than it did when we were on campus. Different does not mean less than. Individuals support systems have completely changed, for better or for worse. Everyone is doing the best they can at this given time; effort is demonstrated differently when people are experiencing crisis and trauma. Accept that output from others looks different now, honor what is being contributed and understand that some people are not okay.

Two: Be Proactive and Attentive

To provide proactive and intentional support is to recognize and respect an individuals needs. Take the time to be fully present and engaged. Concentrate on communication (verbal and non-verbal) and be prepared to address them in the moment as needed. Provide students and colleagues an additional level of honest, unscripted support.

Three: Lead with Love

Actions and interpersonal interactions are opportunities to demonstrate transparent and caring leadership. How departments interact with and support faculty, staff, and students impacts relationships and connections. Reflect on what you believe truly matters in this moment, and examine what you are willing to sacrifice in order to create a path toward more equitable campus environments. When making decisions, think critically about the impact on marginalized populations within the academic community who are often excluded from decision-making processes. Reconsider and (re)evaluate decisions from a place of love, remembering the lack of it in the academy. To lead with love means to lead with both compassion and critical action towards creating equitable educational environments.

Four: Use your Privilege

U.S. higher education has long been plagued with inequities, and the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated systemic racism and brought it into full view. As educators, it is crucial that we recognize structures of inequality in our society, and acknowledge the roles we play in upholding them. We must leverage the various privileges we hold as we advocate for change toward equity, and practice humility as we learn to be more critical compassionate educators.

Higher education cannot function effectively without centering critical compassion and showing up with heart. Critical compassionate pedagogy throughout the field, in and out of the classroom, will develop a generation of faculty and practitioners who are able to engage on a deeper and more meaningful level. Leading with critical compassion and vulnerability may be the only way the academy will stay relevant as our society is forced to triage how they will use scarce resources and radically re-envision the delivery of knowledge in a new climate fraught with fear and uncertainty. Now more than ever we should focus on, and execute criticality, compassion, and love.

References

Hao, R. N. (2011). Critical compassionate pedagogy and the teachers role in firstgeneration student success. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2011(127), 91-98.

Dr. Raquel Wright-Mair, is an assistant professor of Higher Education at Rowan University. You can follow her on Twitter @DrRaquelWrightM.

Dr. Wright-Mair collaborated on this article with her following students listed here: Lauranne Adriano, Jason Artrip, Alana Brown, Marina Ceneviva, Samantha Contrini, Nicole C. Kides, Gabrielle A. McAllaster, Stacie Mori, Lynn Oberkehr and Anna Pietrzak.

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A Work of Heart: Practicing Critical Compassionate Pedagogy in the... - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

The group has identified districts on the city's southeast side as opportunity zones for Black-owned businesses.

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan A group wants to rebuild Black Wall Street, the term commonly used for the thriving business district in a Tulsa, Oklahoma neighborhood that was devastated when a white mob massacred residents and their livelihoods in 1921. By next year, 100 years since the massacre Black Wallstreet Grand Rapids hopes to continue what Tulsa's Black residents started.

Preston Sain, who co-founded the group Black Wallstreet Grand Rapids (BWSGR) at the beginning of June, said it began with a Facebook group. But it quickly grew into a plan for change.

"Our mission is to acquire and develop real estate to build Black business districts," Sain said outside a vacant building at the corner of Eastern Avenue SE and Burton Street SE, one of the group's seven designated districts.

Sain says the group, which is made up entrepreneurs and business owners in a range of sectors, is driven by the economic inequalities they've witnessed in the city, often referring to a 2015 Forbes article that listed Grand Rapidsas the second worse place economically for African Americans.

He said they see opportunity in the dilapidated buildings that sit on the city's southeast side, and they want Black businesses owners to have the chance to develop them.

"Before these areas where we were born and raised are 100% gentrified with us being excluded," he said.

Tahjudeen Gillsepie,co-founder of Generation Wealthy Unity & Faith, says this is just the start.

Black Wall Street is us finally being able to come together and utilize all of our strengths," he said. "If Black lives truly matter, then Black wealth should matter."

The districts include buildings at the following areas: Eastern Avenue SE and Burton Street SE, Franklin Street SE and Neland Avenue SE, Franklin Street SE and Eastern Avenue SE, Madison Avenue SE (near Brown Street), Boston Square, Oakdale Street SE and Hall Street SE.

The districts include areas where Black business owners both new and established already exist.

Black business owners talk Black Wall Street

Current Black business owners on the southeast side see Black Wall Street as an opportunity to share their knowledge and support with new entrepreneurs.

Sian Gillespie, manages and owns Gillespie Funeral Services Inc. and Ivy K. Gillespie Memorial Chapel, which has been in his family and on Eastern Avenue SE for decades.

To him, BWSGR serves as an opportunity to instill the work ethic his dad taught him into other young people.

"We are not ashamed about being intentional about targeting our Black youth, because our Black youth is in danger," he said.

For Michael Buxton, owner and franchiser of Load A Spud on Madison Avenue, it's about re-imagining the areas they grew up in.

"It means a lot. It's good for the youth to see the neighborhood can be rebuilt," he said. "I just hope we can all work together and be successful and leave a legacy for our kids and their kids and all the other generations to follow."

Meeting the community's needs

In one of the proposed districts, a pair of siblings already have their idea for a new business. Dalshawn and Erica Tyler plan to open Southtown Market inside a building that their grandmother has owned for years.

Initially, the brother and sister had planned to open a cigar lounge within 821 Oakdale Street, but the pandemic changed that.

"This community is crying out for certain things, and we could bring those resources right here," Dalshawn said.

Dalshawn said he and his sister realized that a market would do more to serve their neighbors, especially in an area where access to fresh food is lacking. Their goal is to put their own spin on a version of the Downtown Market.

"We know everybody around here we've been here 30 years plus, we know the older women that don't drive to the grocery stores. We can walk their food to them," Dalshawn said.

He is also hopeful that the kids who have grown up around him and his sister will be motivated by seeing them run a business like the Southtown Market.

"Changing the mindset. Giving them a vision. Without a vision it's hard to see any future, especially when you only feel like you have limited options," he said.

On August 15, they plan to host an outdoor market to help raise money for their new business. The market will rent tables out to vendors and creators who may not have other means of selling their product in person.

Next steps for Black Wall Street in Grand Rapids

The plan is in its early stages, but the goal is to roll out a business plan that they can bring to investors and city officials in the months to come.

"With all the racial unrest we see going on nationwide and locally," Sain said. "We want to improve the character of the communities in the inner city, and we believe economics is the solution to that"

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Group makes plans to bring Black Wall Street to Grand Rapids - WZZM13.com

When Charlotte Lartey was 4 years old, she discovered her sister standing in a bathtub, screaming in pain after pouring bleach on her skin so that the other girls at school would stop calling her ugly and evil.

About eight years later, a boy who had already directed an ethnic slur toward Larteys brother, stabbed her in the chest with a needle and told her to die.

During the first week of her first year as a teacher at Jordan High School in Sandy, Utah, a student scratched the N-word into her classroom door. In her second year of teaching, she walked into her classroom one morning and found LARTEY HAS EBOLA written in large letters across all of the whiteboards.

As the only Black educator at Washougal High School, Lartey wants to make sure young people of color in Washougal dont experience the same discrimination she endured as a youngster growing up in a predominantly white Utah community.

Its very clear that some of the things that happened to me are still happening to kids today, Lartey said. Ive healed, and found inner peace about my experiences, but the world is the same.

In a recent email to the Washougal school board, Lartey said she was dismayed when district leaders had shot down a proposal from the teachers union to hire an equity-and-inclusion teacher.

It was very disappointing to hear from the district that they are not interested or willing to spend any money on equity, or in hiring new personnel to help the district advance the equity goals, Lartey stated in her email.

Although she praises Washougals school leaders for the districts recent efforts to improve its anti-discrimination policies, Lartey said she would like to see district administrators take additional actions to show theyve put their money where their mouth is.

Racism is alive and well in Washougal, just like it is everywhere else, Lartey said. Ive seen Confederate flag-waving. Ive heard (white) kids make slave-owning jokes, slave-whipping jokes, cotton-picker references. Ive heard them say the N-word and that its OK for them to say it.

The school district has made equity one of the six pillars of its new strategic plan, and said the equity component is a major part of the districts newly created assistant superintendent role.

We commit to engage in intentional efforts to identify disparities that create opportunity gaps and act to eliminate the achievement gap, Washougal School District Superintendent Mary Templeton stated on a message posted to the districts website. We further commit to challenge and disrupt systems that are perpetuating institutional biases and oppressive practices, as well as develop culturally responsive school houses. We have not accomplished all that we need to as it relates to our work with equity, but please know that as we engage in this work together, we will need to count on our courage, commitment, honesty and be gracious with one another as we aspire toward true systemic change.

My first year here was the hardest Ive ever had as a teacher. I experienced some things that made me want to walk out of the classroom. I said, Wow, Im not sure how much longer I can do this,' Lartey said. Its been tough at times, but I wouldnt stay here if I didnt feel it was a good place for me to be. There are a lot of good people here that are ready to do this work if someone leads the way, and the same cant be said in Utah, so Im remaining patient.

We need an anti-racist system

Lartey recently completed her second year as a member of Washougal Highs career and technical education department, teaching health sciences, medical science, bio-medicine, anatomy, physiology, medical terminology and health.

Margaret Rice, the districts CTE director, said Lartey brings a wealth of knowledge about AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination), a nonprofit organization that provides educational strategies to help schools move to a more equitable, student-centered approach to prepare all students for college, careers and life, and has been able to apply AVID strategies to her health science classes.

Rice also praised Larteys work leading staff development on AVID practices and for founding a Black Student Union club at the high school.

(She) has a passion for the awareness and elimination of racial injustice, Rice said.

Ive always stood up to racially biased harassment since I was kid, so it feels like Ive been preparing for social justice work my entire life, Lartey said. There is a lot of work to be done to change the educational system, but knowing how much work there is to do is fuel in itself.

As chair of the Vancouver-based Washington Education Association (WEA) Riverside chapters political action committee, Lartey keeps tabs on the latest legislation, as well as on local and state government practices, policies and positions. She interviews and endorses candidates for elected positions and urges other educators to run for school board positions and write to their elected officials about important issues.

WEA-Riverside is a regional council of 15 local education associations that represents more than 4,600 educators in Southwest Washington. Lartey also works with the groups equity committee, which works with school districts in Battle Ground, Ridgefield, Camas, Washougal and Vancouver to create a network of educators of color and help them to hold administrators accountable for their actions.

The Washougal High teacher is a member of the Washougal Association of Educators teachers unions bargaining team, which is currently negotiating for new teacher contracts in Washougal.

In the educational system, there is systemic racism, but it manifests itself on a variety of levels, Lartey said. We see micro-aggression, interpersonal acts of racism, oppressive practices for educators of color and higher discipline rates. We need to create anti-racist systems. Its not enough to not be racist anymore. Too much needs to be fixed. The system is racist, and we need an anti-racist system to (replace) it. Its daunting, overwhelming and isolating work. But its important.

Lartey will also be a part of a webinar panel series along with several other BIPOC (Black, indigenous and people of color) educators in Washington called Collectivist Action through COVID-19 and a Revolution, created and organized by Estefa Gallardo, a member of the WEA board of directors. The four panel discussions, which will be hosted by Zoom, will focus on the varying activism work that is largely being led by educators of color around the state.

Lartey will participate in The B in BIPOC: Black Educator Experiences in a Very White Washington, which will begin at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 23 and can be viewed at action.washingtonea.org/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=426230; and Uprising in Rural and Small School Districts, which will begin at 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 6, and can be viewed at action.washingtonea.org/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=426232.

The WEA board and WEAs Black Caucus have endorsed this project, and it would be great to have our local communities tuning in as we have these conversations about educationalactivism and racial and social justice, Lartey said. I am really excited about this.

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Racism is 'alive and well in Washougal, just like everywhere else' - Camas Washougal Post Record

Kirsten Stevens-Wood, a lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University explores the different international communities that have created fairer communities where relationships and the environment are given primacy.

Frankie lives in a six-bedroom house on the outskirts of Leeds. She is her own landlord but doesnt own the house. Instead, she is part of a co-operative housing group: together, they have been able to buy the house and then rent it at an affordable price back to themselves as tenants.

Just a few miles away, another group has secured funding to design and build an eco-community of up to 30 households, including what is known as a common house: a shared house with a kitchen, laundry, workshops, a meeting space, guest rooms and gardens.

Much further away in north-east Germany is a 37-acre site where a group of people live and work together sharing food, childcare and resources. They have created a community where relationships and the environment are given primacy.

All three of these are examples of intentional communities: groups of people who have chosen to live together in a way that reflects their shared values.

These communities come in a variety of shapes and forms, from squats and housing co-operatives to communes and co-housing communities.

Intentional communities are by no means a new idea, but they have often been cited as the experimental spaces or testbeds for the future.

They are sometimes considered as utopian experiments where groups and people strive to create a better life.

Many people are looking for antidotes to ever-increasing consumption and feelings of social isolation. There is no single solution, and we will need to look at all aspects of our lives, from the way we consume to day-to-day practices.

But for some, the solution is to be found in communal living and intentional communities. It may be that some of the ideas being tested in these communities can create the blueprints for the towns and cities of tomorrow.

Alternative lifestyles

There is some evidence that intentional communities are formed as responses to the concerns of society at any given time.

Back in the 1970s, many new communities were formed as a backlash to mass urbanisation and industrialisation. Such groups bought up rural property, often with land, and attempted a back to the land lifestyle informed by ideas of self-sufficiency.

Many of these communities failed, but some still function successfully today, often in their original form.

For example, Canon Frome Court collectively manages a 40-acre organic farm in Herefordshire. Together, the community grows much of its own food and keeps cows, sheep and chickens.

It is difficult to estimate the number of intentional communities worldwide, but they are certainly in the thousands.

In the UK alone there are around 300 listed (and many more that are not), with new communities springing up every year.

If we were to use intentional communities as a gauge of social discontent, then the multiple pressures of housing, lack of community, an ageing society and, of course, climate change would be central to this feeling.

Look a little deeper, and these problems are actually part a much wider group of social concerns around consumption, global inequality and planetary limits.

In mainstream society, the solutions to these interlocking ideas are presented as top-down measures made via policy, legislation and global agreements, but also as personal choices made by individuals and groups: driving and flying less, consuming more ethically, eating a more plant-based diet, changing the way we work and live.

Those within intentional communities would say that they have been ahead of the curve on this for many years, with ideas such as vegetarianism and self-sufficiency often central to their way of life.

They often occupy the necessary middle ground between government policy and individual action. The documentary maker Helen Iles named her series of films on intentional communities Living in the future.

Living in the future

So what can we tell about possible directions of wider society from the intentional communities of today?

Some rural communities have embraced low-impact development.

For example, Rhiw Las, a rural eco-community in west Wales, has created a sustainable settlement based on strict ecological guidelines.

Meanwhile, urban-based communities, such as Bunker Housing Co-operative in Brighton, look to create high-quality affordable housing for local people. Such co-operatives are based on the principle of collective control and management of the property.

They enable groups of people who might not have access to secure housing to form a legal entity, which enables them to collectively buy and own property. They also have the capacity to incorporate or support co-operative businesses, such as food or printing co-ops.

Urban housing co-ops are particularly relevant in areas where house prices and rents can be prohibitively high and exclude certain groups, such as precarious workers or younger people.

Housing co-ops can offer secure housing options that also empower people and enable them to live within their means.

The group Radical Routes (a network of radical co-ops) also suggests that when people are freed from excessive rent payments, they are then freer to engage with their communities and participate in social change.

Todays urban communities capitalise on urban cycle networks and public transport. They are also more likely to engage with green transport options such as electric carpooling and on-site workspaces to reduce travel entirely.

Fishponds Co-Build, a prospective community on the edge of Bristol, has created its own sustainability action plan. Together, they have outlined ways they intend to reduce their carbon footprint through communal living.

The ideas fermented in past communities, such as straw-bale building and shared ownership, are being developed in exciting and creative ways to transform rural and urban living.

This can incorporate new building techniques, such as PassiveHaus design in Lancaster Co-Housing, and the development of alternative spaces, such as car-free neighbourhoods.

Intentional communities may not be the solution to all our problems, but they certainly represent an area of experimentation in the ways we share space, shape community and provide a peek at potential ways forward in uncertain times.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.

Photo Credit Pixabay

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Communities experimenting with greener and fairer ways of living - Environment Journal

In 1946, George Orwell wrote, But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. These words convey a fundamental truth about the relationship between what we say, the perceptions we hold, and the imagery we evoke through our linguistic choices. Some words or phrases are widely understood to intentionally hurt or provoke, but plenty of others have less obvious insidious and corrupting effects.

The events of the past several weeks have spurred a renewed call to recognize that words matter, particularly in the struggle for racial justice. This has led major media outletsincluding the Associated Press and The New York Timesto capitalize Black, a simple and long overdue signal of respect for the shared identity, history, and experiences of people who identify as Black. For years, other organizations and writers have been advocating for the use of more humanizing language that acknowledges peoples circumstances without defining them by the same.

This awareness has implications for not only how we talk about people, but also the places where they live. Journalists, practitioners, and researchersincluding those of us at Brookingsoften employ short-hand labels such as distressed places, struggling neighborhoods, high-crime areas, or any such combination of deficit plus geography to describe communities impacted by racism, disinvestment, physical destruction, and economic exclusion. But just like the labels we attach to people, such language reduces these communities to only their challenges, while concealing the systemic forces that caused those challenges and the systemic solutions needed to combat them.

At the Bass Center for Transformative Placemakinga center focused on the economic, social, physical, and civic well-being of communitieswe are committing to avoid such labels in our work and employing intentional, systems-informed, and specific language about place. This commitment is not intended to be symbolic, but instead to be more consistent withand true toour efforts to effectively co-design and communicate research and strategies aimed at eradicating systemic inequities and creating more connected, vibrant, and inclusive communities. Our commitment stems from three fundamental truths about how language impacts how we think, and what we do:

Language about place matters, because it can be used to justify actions taken toward people. The United States has a long history of using coded language about place to justify policy and practice decisions that impact people. Take the term blight for example, which transposed the language of disease onto places, with devastating consequences for the people of color living within them. The designation of an area as blighted was used to justify numerous racial injustices throughout the 20th century, including urban renewal, eminent domain, and the displacement of thousands of Black families. Some in power (including our current president) continue to use itoften in combination with terms such as high-crime, inner cities, and other racially coded language as a way to rationalize over-policing in Black neighborhoods, provoke anti-immigrant sentiment, and advocate for policies favoring wealthy investors over long-time residents.

While blighted is at the far end of a continuum of thinly veiled yet harmful language, place language can also produce negative consequences even when its not explicitly infused with racist tropes. Terms such as distressed or disadvantaged further a narrative in which certain placesmostly neighborhoods of colorare seen as un-investable due to their perceived inability to generate profit or political support. These terms paint an image of places beyond repair, where residents ought to move away from or that need to be fixed by outsiders. Such terminology disregards a communitys strengths and assets, as well as the dedicated community leaders that have long been leading strategies to improve neighborhood conditions.

When language about place obscures systemic causes, it impedes systemic solutions. As Urban Institute researchers recently argued, ahistorical and decontextualized language (whether it be about racial disparities, crime, or poverty) focuses on a communitys challenges and minimizes its long-standing injustices. This can lead to ineffective policy solutions that target the symptoms, rather than the root causes, of those injustices.

A robust body of research shows that most contemporary conditions of community distress and disadvantage are not natural conditions or produced by the actions of residents. They are the result of intentional public policies and private actions sustained over generations (including slavery, Jim Crow, discriminatory housing ordinances, federal highway programs, predatory lending, inequitable public education systems, over-policing, and mass incarceration, to name just a few). When we fail to draw the explicit connection between historical and contemporary practices of discrimination shaping the conditions of places, we leave it up to the reader to determine who is to blame for distress, furthering stigma and racism while making it harder to advance structural solutions.

Vague language about place can prevent unique, tailored strategies. Simply naming systemic inequities isnt enough. The term historically disinvested, for instance, accurately calls out a root cause of distress. But it is often used as a catch-all term to describe places grappling with socioeconomic injustices, when in reality, historical disinvestment is just one tool of structural racism that has been implemented in conjunction with an interconnected set of policies and practices aimed at chipping away places economic, social, physical, and civic foundations. Moreover, the challenges wrought by disinvestment cannot be remedied by an infusion of capital alonea strategy often employed with mixed results in communities across the country.

To generate effective solutions, language about place must be specific about the inequities shaping conditions in places, as well as those places unique histories, contemporary circumstances, assets, and strengths. This means resisting the tendency to lump remarkably unique places under a single label. No place is simply just high-povertythat may be a challenge the community is facing, but communities shouldnt be vaguely categorized as poor without meaningfully considering the whole place, the wholeness of the people who live there, and the holistic set of solutions needed to support them.

Shifting language will not repair the decades of harm and stigmatization inflicted on communities, but it should prompt us to be explicit about the systemic sources of their conditions, precise about the systemic solutions needed to combat them, and understanding about how language influence peoples lives. The breadth of a communitys qualities and characteristics cant be captured by one term or stylistic change. But throughout our work, the Bass Center will strive to employ language that embodies the following principles:

We hope other researchers and writers also embrace these principles, so that we can collectively stamp out George Orwells corrupt thought and envision transformative policies, practices, and interventions that holistically support places and the people within them.

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Recognizing that words have the power to harm, we commit to using more just language to describe places - Brookings Institution

Public health experts and advocates have worried about correctional facilities since the beginning of the pandemic. In such close quarters, social distancing is difficult or impossible, and a coronavirus outbreak poses risks to inmates, staff and the surrounding communities.

To mitigate those risks, some governors including those in Indianas neighboring states took steps to reduce the prison population, focused mainly on inmates convicted of low-level offenses near the end of their sentences, or those deemed vulnerable to COVID-19. In April, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear issued orders to release about 1,200 state inmates. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine let out more than 100 people.

But Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb has taken no such action, leaving it to local courts to decide whether inmates should be let out early or put on house arrest. Very few have done so even as the number of COVID-19 cases in the prison system surged.

From March through May, just 27 inmates received COVID-related sentence modifications, according to data from the Indiana Department of Correction. That number accounts for just one tenth of 1% of the states total prison population of around 26,000 people.

There are many more people in the department of correction who could be released, says Amy Karozos, the state public defender. That number is very low.

State Public Defender Amy Karozos

The state public defender represents indigent clients appealing their convictions, but during the pandemic, Karozos decided to pursue sentence modifications to see if she could get clients out more quickly.

What purpose does it serve to keep someone in for another couple months when their risk [of contracting COVID-19] is so high? Karozos said. Youve got to weigh the costs and benefits.

On March 27, the Indiana Public Defender Council wrote a letter to Holcomb, co-signed by Karozos. It argued that Holcomb should commute the sentences of thousands of inmates who were imprisoned for non-violent crimes before Indianas sentencing laws were eased in 2014. Had they been sentenced under current law, some would be out of prison already.

Any time would be the right time to commute the sentences of these nonviolent inmates, the letter reads, pointing out that governors in other states granted clemency following similar sentencing reforms. But, in the time of a state of emergency, it is essential to release this class of inmates now.

Holcomb, whose office declined to comment for this story, did not respond to the letter, and he has held fast through similar calls for executive action.

I do not believe in releasing those low-level offenders, Holcomb said in a news conference on April 13. We have got our offenders in a safe place we believe maybe even safer than just letting them out.

Since then, positive COVID-19 cases have grown to include more than 700 prisoners and 320 corrections staff, although testing has been limited. Twenty prisoners and two staff members have died during the pandemic.

Absent action from the governor, inmates struggle to get sentence modifications, which could mean a reduced prison sentence or transition to house arrest.

Weve been really encouraged by some of the response weve had from courts, Karozos says. But Indiana law makes it difficult to get relief.

A request for a sentence modification must be initiated by an inmate or their attorney. Karozoss clients are lucky: Inmates dont have a right to a court-appointed attorney for a sentence modification, so those who cant afford legal assistance must petition the court themselves.

But that can be a big hurdle. On average, prisoners are less educated than the general public and more likely to have a learning disability.

And decisions to grant a modification rest with the judges and attorneys who put the prisoner away. In a case involving a plea agreement, the prosecutor must sign off.

There are a lot of potential sentence modification cases that dont make it to the courts because we cant get the prosecutors to agree, said Karozos.

If a case makes it to a hearing, the judge still has to approve it. Corrections data, which are based on mentions of COVID-19 in sentencing orders, show that few have made it through this gauntlet amid the public health crisis.

We have not released enough. This is not an effective way to try and reduce the prison population, said Karozos. If someone is not a threat, why shouldnt they be able to serve the rest of their sentence at home?

Starke County Judge Kim Hall struggled years ago with the same statute Karozos battles now. Prisoners who petitioned his court for sentence modifications were often cut off by prosecutors, who have final say when convictions are based on plea agreements.

Thats the end of it at that point. The judge doesnt even have authority to do it, he says, I found that to be inconsistent with evidence-based practices.

Starke County Judge Kim Hall

Hall found a way to override the prosecutors. Plea agreements must be approved by a judge, so for low-level offenses, Hall refused to accept an agreement unless it contained a clause allowing the court to modify the sentence at any time.

I need to have the legal authority to at least hold a hearing, he said.

That clause helped him move quickly when the pandemic hit. Hall realized in March that the coronavirus could be devastating in the confined quarters of jails and prisons.

An awful lot of people are confined because of my sentencing orders, he said. It was urgent to identify who could safely be released, and then get them out as soon as possible.

Hall and his staff identified a handful of inmates who had been convicted of non-violent crimes and were close to their release date. In late March, one of the men on Halls list left prison the first in the whole state.

But he gave up on releasing the rest after a corrections official told him that because of corrections procedures, it would take a couple weeks before anyone else could leave.

In my judgment the emergency trumped that protocol, and people needed to get out before they got infected, Hall said. Therein lies the problem.

Starke County had very few coronavirus cases at the time, and in two weeks, he didnt know if the inmates could have contracted the virus and brought it into the community.

Our numbers were so low, I just didnt want to do anything to jeopardize that, he said.

Since then, corrections data show that the process has been faster. Most of the released prisoners got out within a few days.

Indiana received a failing grade for its response to the coronavirus in prisons and jails, according to an analysis from the Prison Policy Initiative. Most other states failed, too.

But Indiana ranked especially low among states in a key metric: how much the state reduced its prison population.

Between March and June, Indianas prison population dropped from 26,891 to 25,876 a reduction of 3.8%. But that doesnt necessarily reflect an intentional effort to depopulate: The coronavirus has hobbled courts, and while inmates are still released when their sentences end, fewer people are entering prisons.

Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a director at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, said the number of people released from Indiana prisons is exceptionally low. States and governors in particular need to do more to reduce prison populations, she added.

These are people who are very vulnerable and very likely to not only get sick, but many of them will die of COVID, she said. That just doesnt need to be the case.

In April, Holcomb encouraged county officials to take steps to reduce their county jail populations, and those efforts seem to have been successful. From early March to mid-May, 91 of Indianas 92 counties reported an overall 27% reduction in the jail populations. Some jails had cut their populations in half, although the total has risen slightly since then.

Bernice Corley, executive director of the Indiana Public Defender Council, said its likely that law enforcement officers have been bringing fewer people into jail, and that courts have been allowing more people to await trial from home instead of behind bars. But its unclear precisely what methods counties are using to reduce their jail populations.

Data is not being collected. Its frustrating, she said. We dont know how to maintain this good result.

State Rep. Cherrish Pryor, D-Indianapolis, found it odd that Holcomb encouraged local officials to depopulate jails, in light of his refusal to issue an order to reduce the states prison population.

Indiana State Rep. Cherrish Pryor, D-Indianapolis.

Hes telling locals to do something that hes not doing, she said.

Pryor, a member of the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus, has twice written to Holcomb urging him to release non-violent offenders with 60 days or fewer remaining on their sentences. She also highlighted the disproportionate number of Black inmates, and that the coronavirus has hit African Americans especially hard.

Our state has not paid attention, given much assistance to them and that is unfortunate, she said.

In response to the pandemic, a health disparities task force was assembled at the urging of the caucus. Members included representatives from the Indiana State Department of Health and the corrections departments chief medical officer, Dr. Kristen Dauss.

They, too, found that reducing the prison population is a key component of addressing the COVID-19 epidemic.

This story was produced by Side Effects Public Media, a news collaborative covering public health. Jake Harper can be reached at jharper@wfyi.org. Hes on Twitter @jkhrpr.

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Indiana Left It To County Courts To Release Prisoners During The COVID Crisis. Most Of Them Havent. - 89.3 WFPL News Louisville

A few years ago, two graduate students in Michigan State Universitys College of Music both noted a lack of diversity and set out to do something about it. The result was an organization that is elevating and broadcasting musical voices of color.

Professor Rodney Whitaker, the director of Jazz Studies in the college, introduced Jordyn Davis and Jadrian Tarver to each other and suggested they combine efforts. They met in the Union building and that day formed a group called Color Me Music that aims to create a safe space for all members of the college, and brings issues important to students of color to the forefront.

Davis and Tarver have led the group through performances, recitals, block parties and other events. Their original goals have grown to encompass civic engagement and outreach and spread beyond just the walls of the College of Music. They are working with Wharton Center. In June they responded to the Black Lives Matter movement after George Floyds death with a list of action items for solidarity.

The MSU College of Music is making strides to change and be more inclusive and diverse, said Tarver. Im on those calls as we speak and there is a lot of stuff in play that they are waiting to announce.

Color Me Music is building on the successes they have had since the end of 2018 when they officially launched. They have mixed performances with the goal of creating a safe space for students of color and allies to form a community where they can talk and connect.

Its also bigger than students of color, said Tarver. We are talking about each department being in their silo and we wanted to bring the College of Music into a community where we are all working together.

They started by sitting down with Whitaker, who became their advisor, and learning about areas they werent aware of and what had been done before. They met with the dean of the College of Music, spoke with students of color and white students, and pulled together a list of goals.

The public first saw them during the annual MLK concert at MSU.

For Tarver, who studies classical voice and is pursuing his doctorate in vocal performance, singing at that concert was an extremely memorable moment for him.

It was outside my area of study, Tarver said. I got to perform with a jazz band and jazz artists.

From there, Color Me Music pulled together a Black History Month recital focusing on Black composers that was as inclusive as they were able to make it.

We included all of the departments from classical strings to jazz, to classical voice to composition, said Tarver. All of the major departments were represented in this Black History Month recital. That started us thinking into bigger ideas who can we get in the university together?

Next, they began planning a convocation/block party. It launched, creating a way for everyone to get together or, as he said, to mix and mingle and get out of their silos.

Tarver said the event was a success, an opportunity to celebrate. He recalled such things as professors line dancing and everyone having fun playing games, dancing, talking and laughing.

We dont get to see that often because we are all so busy, burning both ends of the candlestick, said Tarver.

In the winter of 2020, they did a recital for Black History Month, one of the last performances done in person before everything was canceled. The recital focused on racial battle fatigue.

We wanted to talk about something overlooked when dealing with minorities and Black people, said Tarver. A large audience is not aware of the racial battle fatigue and the microaggressions that students and black people experience. We wanted to talk about what we have endured and how we heal, what we use to process.

They also hosted a forum to amplify the concerns of students of color in dealing with lack of representation on staff, unqualified panelist addressing race issues, the lack of representation of composers and musicians of color in the curriculum and the need to address racist incidents on campus.

Then came the pandemic and plans changed even though their goals of creating diverse communities and communities of belonging have not.

What has changed is how we will accomplish these goals due to coronavirus, said Tarver. How can we effectively bring about change in a more innovative way while keeping our initial goal.

He said many of them have been doing performances virtually and they are working on the idea of webinars where they can continue the discussion and conversations around particular issues.

They are also trying to push ahead on racial justice issues, whether it is within the College of Music, Wharton, or anywhere else in the university.

On June 11, they responded to a College of Music Black Lives Matter statement with a letter of their own in which they wrote that students of color want to have the same great experiences that their fellow white students do. Toward the end of the letter, they wrote:

From your statement, it is clear that the first phase of allyship has been reached. You have acknowledged the need for change. We are in a desperate need to move to phase two where we work together to create change. We want to ensure true diversity and inclusion within the College of Music.

They then included a list of 11 action items that included such things as including composers and musicians of color and women in music history curriculum, hiring more Black faculty, music history and theory classes taught by Black faculty, programming composers of color in upcoming concerts and events, outreach and communication between students of color and Color Me Music and the Diversity and Inclusion committee, and more intentional collaborations across disciplines.

There are a lot of things on the docket, said Tarver. Its just covid is making things move a little slower than planned.

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Music students team up to improve issues of color - Lansing State Journal

Just a couple blocks west of Mill Creek Park the center of recent Black Lives Matter protests near the Country Club Plaza 3DHQ hopes youth tech outreach now can build a more inclusive future for creative problem solvers in Kansas Citys Black and urban communities, said Fabian Conde.

3DHQ

We want to be more intentional about our Black Lives Matter commitment and our partnership with Urban TEC gives us that opportunity to take direct action and invest in the next generation by teaching them 3D technology skills, said Conde, co-founder and CEO of 3DHQ, which launched in Kansas City as Doob in 2018.

A workshop Friday with Urban TEC a nonprofit digital literacy education organization led by Ina P. Montgomery that provides tech and soft skills training for future technology careers sought to introduce and engage a new generation of creators to 3D technology.

Click here to learn more about 3DHQ, which specializes in rapid prototyping and 3D-printed miniature statues.

By focusing on the potential for 3D printing to overcome a wide variety of challenges facing humanity from use cases in apparel, artificial organs and even mid-trip production of items while journeying through space Conde hoped to inspire young people with the opportunities that await in the industry.

Fabian Conde, 3DHQ

3D printing is just a tool that allows us to do cooler things, he told students at Fridays workshop, acknowledging a steep learning curve that ultimately creates an even better outcome. Conde specifically described 3DHQs own effort to craft a 3D-printed mask modeled by staff Friday at the Plaza shop that met the needs of the pandemic era.

It didnt come easily, he said.

You have to get all that stuff out of the way. Its OK to make mistakes as long as you use it as a lesson, Conde said. Then youre solving two problems at the same time.

Are you starting to see how you can make a difference with your ideas? he continued.

3DHQ recently designed and is now selling a Black Lives Matter keychain, proceeds from which go to support Urban TEC.

We are excited about this partnership and the funds that will go toward Urban TECs STEAM in the Streets program. It will be an opportunity for us to deliver our STEAM activities to different neighborhoods throughout greater Kansas City, said Montgomery, founder and executive director of Urban TEC.

Click here to learn more about Urban TEC.

This story is possible thanks to support from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a private, nonpartisan foundation that works together with communities in education and entrepreneurship to create uncommon solutions and empower people to shape their futures and be successful.

For more information, visit http://www.kauffman.org and connect at http://www.twitter.com/kauffmanfdnandwww.facebook.com/kauffmanfdn

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More than statues: 3D printer on the Plaza showcases Urban TEC opportunity amid BLM movement - Startland News

When Pallavi Payal saw a recent video that was circulating on social media of comedian Sandip Chhetri, she was furious. In the short video, Chhetri is seen impersonating a Madhesi woman, speaking in an exaggerated accent about the recently endorsed amendments regarding the Citizenship Bill, which many people, especially from the Madhesi community, have voiced concerns over.

In the video, he talks about how the amendmentsif brought into effectwill prove to be detrimental to the interests of women, particularly Madhesi women. And while the issues he raises deserve public concern, his insensitive approach in depicting them led to a public uproar on social media in the past week.

The Madhesi community is trying really hard to create awareness about how the citizenship bill could affect Madhesi women disproportionately. By making a mockery of the issue and the community that is already marginalised harms these efforts, says Payal, an independent researcher and artist.

And this is not the first time Chhetri has been condemned for stereotyping Madhesi communities. In his show, What the Flop, which airs on Kantipur Television, he has played the role of Mithai Lal Yadav, a Madhesi person, by employing time-worn, discriminatory tropes, such as using black face paint. He later stopped using blackface makeup on the show after coming under fire for it. Another television show, Corona Birsaune Gaphgaaph on Krishi Television, was also criticised for blackfacing a character.

For decades, regressive cultural tropessuch as using blackface, speaking in exaggerated indigenous accents and reducing characters to just their cultural identity for filler roles or comedy reliefhave been used in Nepali pop culture. And although in recent years, concerns regarding the problematic stereotypical representation of ethnic minorities in mainstream Nepali media has come to the fore, such tropes continue to be used.

According to filmmaker and film educator Abimanyu Dixit, this is because such stereotyping is the foundation on which Nepali films were born. If we trace the history of how films were introduced in our country, most of them were agenda-driven to please and push King Mahendras one language and culture policies, says Dixit, whos also the Posts film critic.

According to Dixit, the trope of Arya Soundarya Chet has been significantly used to differentiate who can or cannot be a hero in Nepali pop culture. There are preconceived features which people associate with heroes and how they should look like, says Dixit. For instance, a hero of a story should be tall, have broad shoulders and long, straight hair and a distinct facial structure, like a sharp nose. If a certain person ticks all of these features, then they are considered heroes, and if they dont, they are considered as others who are always shown as the villains, says Dixit.

Going by this, Pahades, or the people who live on the hills of Nepal (particularly those belonging to the higher caste Brahmins and Chhetris), fit in the role of heroes, whereas other enthic minority groups, the Janajati communities, fit the role of the villains. And this trope has been regularly deployed by filmmakers in Nepal. If we look back at old Nepali movies, they all show Janajati groups as aggressive people who are always the villains of the story, says Daya Hang Rai, a popular actor.

Today, this trope has been slightly altered. Films these days show Janajatis as comedy sidekicks who support the Pahade heroes in their journeys. Actors like Buddhi Tamang, Jayananda Lama, Wilson Bikram Rai, Rear Rai are a few of the handful names who are regularly cast in big banner movies where their roles are limited to comedy roles without proper character development.

Because the Janajatis are now limited to comic characters, the role of menacing villains are now played by Madhesis, says Dixit. Films like the 2019 Saruto, Shatru Gate (2018), Sanrakshan (2017), Bhairav (2015) have shown Madhesi characters as villains. Besides showing Madhesis as antagonists who are selfish, cunning and corrupt, films like Bhairav, Saruto and Sankrashan have also shown the Pahade protagonist to be a hyper-nationalist, who teaches the value of the Nepali soil and nationalism to Madhesi characters.

According to Kalpana Jha, researcher, and writer, this type of stereotypical representation is a byproduct of how cultural minority groups are viewed as by the dominant group whose mentality is informed by casteist, racist attributes.

Such shows are definitely an attempt to demean and degrade certain communities. Its not that they have no understanding of the diversity of the culture, but there is no intention to develop any understanding as such at all, says Jha.

Asmita Shrish, an indigenous filmmaker, also believes that one of the reasons why stereotypes take place in the first place is because of a lack of respect and empathy towards indigenous groups. It also happens because of the lazy working culture among the filmmakers who jump into the bandwagon of simplifying the social world by reducing the amount of processing and thinking they have to do, she says.

We havent yet acknowledged the terms cultural sensitivity or representation. The diversity within various indigenous groups hasnt been recognised yet by formula filmmaking, says Shrish. But Shrish believes that the fault also lies among the audience who have been enjoying this stereotypical representation without asking any questions. There is a consumption/demand for such films or songs or dances meaning the general public still enjoys the stereotypes, they are still not aware or educated. For me, that is the main problem, she says.

Some of the actors who play these stereotypical roles do not see this stereotypical representation as a problem. I am an artist and I should be able to play different roles. For representations sake, I cant go looking for a terrorist because someone needs to play the role of a terrorist, said Deepak Raj Giri to the Post last year, when he was asked about the use of blackface makeup.

Chhetri, however, apologised for his video, saying that his intention was not to hurt anyone. He repeatedly clarified that rather than humiliate anyone, he was trying to represent Madhesi communities. But few are convinced.

If they were really concerned about representation they would hire Madhesi actors and write meaningful roles that will help to break stereotypes and improve social harmony, says Payal. Such programmes are basically cashing in on the existing problematic mindset but at the same time instead of changing it, they are making it stronger.

But it isnt that Nepali films and shows have not evolved at all. In recent years, there have been attempts by the film industry to become more inclusive and it has given opportunities to actors from indigenous communities as well. According to Dixit, Dipendra Lama, Rambabu Gurung, Deepak Rauniyar, Renasha Bantawa Rai are the handful of filmmakers who have somehow shown efforts to break away from writing such roles.

Likewise, actors like Daya Hang Rai, Najir Husen, Rabindra Jha and Ramesh Ranjan Jha have been getting more opportunities in the celluloid to showcase their acting caliber. But it comes with its own set of struggles. Most filmmakers end up boxing their talent by offering them similar roles that confine the characters to their cultural identities only.

I was offered more than half a dozen roles within 15 days of the release of Hostel Returns to play the same kind of role: of a Madhesi student, speaking in an accent, says Husen, who has had to face graver discrimination for coming from a Muslim minority group. There were times when people used to question my nationality. My Instagram would be filled with messages from people who threatened me to leave the movie industry and stop playing movies with their heroines.

Besides affecting the careers of these actors, such representation can add to already existing racism and bias against cultural minorities. Harmful stereotypes create a limited idea of a group, says Payal. This trickles back down into society. For instance, after seeing how Madhesis are represented on TV and films, people will discriminate against them. And the cycle will continue. That is how a random stranger in a microbus has the audacity to tell me that my Nepali is really good for an outsider, she says.

Seeing how powerful a medium television and films can be, a sensitive portrayal of indigenous, ethnic communities can be crucial in highlighting the problems of marginalised communities and also improve social harmony. Pop-culture, if taken in the spirit of culture of the people, can certainly aid in the development of a broader understanding and empathy towards the marginalised communities, says Jha, author of The Madhesh Upsurge and the Contest Idea of Nepal. But the representation has to be more nuanced, with well thought out portrayals of indigenous groups.

We live in intentional oblivion. An inter community dialogue seems very urgent and an effort

towards understanding, empathising and learning about the minority and the marginalised and their way of life is becoming ever more urgent, she says.

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When it comes to portraying ethnicity, Nepali pop culture still depends on stereotypical tropes - The Kathmandu Post