Just Transition Advisory Committee members made clear in a town hall meeting in Craig last month that the communities who weather a transition from coal to alternative industries are those that take control of the process themselves. The committee wont be providing the plan for economic viability, but rather the support for the community to organize itself and define a vision and strategy.

The Committee was established as a result of House Bill 1314. The bills primary goal is to provide transition assistance to workers and communities impacted by Colorados move away from coal-based electrical generation by 2030.

If Just Transition is going to be an effective partner with Craig and Hayden and other communities facing this transition, it will first be because those communities are leading the way and driving the process internally, said Wade Buchanan, Director of the Office of Just Transition housed under the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment.

Craig City Councilor Ryan Hess fears that a common problem in rural America is a dependency upon outside resources to fix things and a lack of experience within communities to diversify the economy until its an emergency.

I think well hide and wait to see what the state and federal government do before we take local action, Hess said. We cant wait until we hear a plan we dont like to be angry; we need to come up with a plan locally right now. Brainstorming how to take our out-of-place workers and repurpose them locally is more beneficial than brainstorming who can come save us.

Still, some communities naturally transition more easily than others.

Mark Haggerty of Headwaters Economics who leads the teams research in tax policy, rural economic development and community planning around energy and economic transitions was quick to point out that communities who transition successfully have a distinct set of advantages that not every place has. Outside of major airports, universities and national parks, there are precious few examples of places that have successfully transitioned.

The ability of a community to come together around a common vision and a strategy to implement that vision is critical, and thats really difficult for a lot of these coal communities to come around to, he said. Theres an immediate reaction to want to defend what you have because the future is scarier.

The strategy and vision has to come locally. If there isnt one, theres nothing that the state or the committee is going to do to help. Once you have that strategy and vision in place, theres a lot that the state can do to help.

Developing big industry ideas without an investment in people and local institutions as well as policy reform could see Moffat County build the proverbial bridge to nowhere.

Hess sees things similarly with a vision that there should be a focal person whose day-to-day task is looking for grant money, making sure that economic development efforts are all in alignment and whose role is to bring thought groups together.

We cant take on ideas and delegate them to a bunch of people who already have full-time jobs; we need one person who wakes up in the morning whose mission in life is to find economic stability and then growth, Hess said.

Reinventing the industry that can drive Moffat Countys economic engine as well as unemployment and the loss of a strong skilled work force have been a focus of the conversation related to Just Transition, but driving fiscal policy change is a critical component of long term success, too.

Experts who have seen similar transitions both successful and unsuccessful in other communities recognize that the viability of towns like Craig depend on the health of critical infrastructure, which is a unique struggle when transitioning from coal-based industry. Big mines and power plants have paid the bills for a long time, and a transition to renewable energy simply doesnt provide the same kind of financial returns.

An important piece in Colorado is reviewing the incentives around renewable energy. If you replace a coal-fired power plant with a solar or wind energy facility of the same size, youre going to get substantially less revenue from it and its because the state has made a conscious decision to incentivize renewable energy and the way that they incentivize it is by giving them property tax breaks, said Haggerty So the state has essentially given local government money away to meet a state priority and it doesnt work for these communities. We have to change that. If the state wants to incentivize it, great. But dont take it out of local governments budgets.

According to Craig City Manager Peter Brixius, efforts are underway in Moffat County to gather public information, explore new industries and get input from local businesses, though there is not a formally organized group or communication channel as of yet.

Since the announcement in January, the state has been tremendous in the amount of attention this part of the state has received, said Craig City Manager, Peter Brixius. Senator Rankin has especially been involved with the community and has tried to initiate various meetings with a good cross-section of the pubic and private partners and educational institutions. We are trying to define what our priorities would be if there are allocated resources.

By all accounts, this is an urgent issue, but its not immediate.

We expect that coal is on its way out in the whole region, but the only timeline we really have is the one that Tri-State has given us, and were five years out from the first closure, Buchanan said. This first year is really about both the state and the communities trying to come together to develop the framework we need to put in place.

Memorial Regional Health is a critical infrastructure in Moffat County and with the introduction of COVID-19 to an already stressed system, the importance of industry that can sustain community healthcare is even more important today.

Healthcare is part of the backbone and fiber of a community. Were going to need to be here no matter what, said Jennifer Riley, Vice President of Operations at MRH.

Tax base erosion and the erosion of a strong employer base will mean a bigger switch from commercially insured to uninsured or Medicare/Medicaid.

What a benefit it is to have time and to know whats coming and to be prepared for it and to plan for it, Buchanan said. Lets not squander that.

Its not all gloom and doom.

There are potentially advantages for communities based on their costs and quality of life to attract different kinds of businesses, Haggerty said. They will need infrastructure broadband, access to markets, skilled labor force. And that doesnt happen over night. If you have an intentional policy to get there with support from the state, you can start putting those pieces together.

Its not just Colorado thats experiencing the transition. Colorado has some advantages that other states such as Montana and Wyoming dont have, Haggerty said. Colorados economy is not dependent on coal. Youve got the political capital and attention of the legislature and the governor.

Haggerty believes that its not too big an ask for the state to provide some short-term assistance in terms of planning support so that communities have the time and the resources to gather information and learn from their peers.

If I had my magic wand, there would be someone in the area that networked across county and state governments and their goals would be: economic growth and development, preparing for economic correction, transition from one economy to the next and create ways to find full-time skilled jobs, Hess said.

Transition?

The coal transition has galvanized a rhetoric and a commitment thats kind of unique. These communities have quite a bit of resources at their disposal if they know how to ask for it, he said. And its usually not a lack of money thats the problem. Its a lack of strategy and vision.

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Success of Just Transition in community's hands - Craig Daily Press

There has been much talk in the appraisal profession about the adoption of a specific appraisal issue by former Vice President Joe Biden as part of his platform seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Specifically, Mr. Bidens inclusion of a policy to tackle racial bias that leads to homes in communities of color being assessed by appraisers below their fair value has appraisers wondering what, exactly, they are doing that could be perceived as systemically devaluing homes in minority communities. After all, USPAP specifically prohibits any kind of explicit or implicit bias from affecting an appraisers opinion of value.

In a recent letter to Mr. Biden, ASA worked to bridge the gap in the conversation, both by acknowledging that USPAP and its enforcement by state licensing agencies is sufficient protection from overt acts of bias against communities of color, but also addressing a concern expressed in multiple conversations that something in the appraisal process has the effect of carrying forward historic bad acts such as redlining that disadvantaged communities of color in the first place.

In the letter, ASA makes it clear that [t]he cornerstone of USPAP is its requirement that an appraiser must be objective, impartial, and neutral in determining an opinion of value in connection with any appraisal assignment. This bedrock, and its enforcement, demonstrate clearly there is no need to establish a national standard specifically focused on appraisals in minority communities. A standard which addresses this issue already exists.

ASA goes on to discuss how a potential overreliance on the Sales Comparison approach by the mortgage lending community and a nearly exclusive use of a retrospective approach to developing an opinion of value could lead to unintended outcomes that perpetuate historical acts of bias in housing finance. By encouraging lenders to more fully and appropriately incorporate the Cost Approach and Income Approach into the process, and allowing appraisers to apply appropriate weight to the findings that each approach shows, there is more opportunity for single family and multiple dwelling homes in communities of color to reflect values to those in similar, non-minority neighborhoods. ASA does caution, however, not to push for intentional overvaluation where no evidence exists to support higher home values.

The letter closed with this summation of ASAs point: [T]hat comprehensive use of all the approaches to value, and reviewing and analyzing future trends, could begin to overcome historical factors that led to depressed home values in minority communities in the first place.

When asked about ASAs letter, International President Douglas Krieser, ASA FRICS noted There are a range of experiences with the homebuying process, including when the home is appraised. While we believe and would expect that no one is intentionally depressing home values simply because of someones race or ethnicity, we are sensitive to anything in the appraisal process that can unintentionally disadvantage communities of color. We welcome a full conversation around the issue, and hope that open minds from all corners can figure out if theres a problem and, if there is, developing solutions that are well-thought out and based upon the excellent Standards already in place.

To read ASAs letter, click here.

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Seeking All Perspectives, ASA Writes Letter to Biden on Appraisal Impact in Minority Communities - Appraisal Buzz

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A Waukesha man on March 10 stabbed four of his family members, killing two of them, includinghis wife,in a violent outburst linked to his obsessiveconcern overthe growing coronavirus pandemic, according to a criminal complaint.

Adam Roth, 36, wascharged Wednesday in Waukesha County Circuit Courtwith two counts of first-degree intentional homicide, two counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, one count of first-degree recklessly endangering safety, and one count of mistreatment of animals/causing death by use of a dangerous weapon.

The two victims who died from their injuries were Adam Roth's wife, Dominique Roth, 34, and his sister-in-law Deidre Popanda, 26, according to a news release from the Waukesha County Sheriff's Department.

Desiree Popanda, 36, and Gilane Popanda, 62, suffered"significant injuries" in the stabbing, according toTown of Waukesha Fire Chief Dan Buchholtz, and were transported to area hospitals.

According to the complaint:

Gilane Popanda said her son-in-law, Adam Roth, had been "acting obsessive" over the coronavirus for several weeks leading up to the incident.

At 5 a.m. March 10, she said he woke everyonein the houseup to tell them he loved them and was sorry for everything he had said and done to them.

Gilane said her daughter, Dominique, and Adam were in the kitchen eating later that day when he began stabbing her. When Gilane and her other daughters,Desiree andDeidre, told him to stop, he "turned on everybody," includingDesiree's 9-year-old son. The child escaped with his mom and ran to a neighbor's house.

Around 6:45 p.m. March 10, a caller told dispatchers"her brother-in-law was going crazy and was trying to stab her sisters."

When a deputy arrived on-scene, he spoke withDesiree and Gilane Popanda, who were outside "covered in blood," and later transported to the hospital.

When the deputy entered the home, he immediately heard screaming.

The deputysaid Adam Roth had a large knife in his hand and was also"covered in blood." After the deputy pointed his rifle atRoth and told him twice to drop his weapon, Roth obeyed and said, "All right, I am done now."

When police found Dominique Roth, she said "Why did he do this?"and "Please help me" before succumbing to 19 stab wounds.

Police found Deidre Popanda and a family dog dead on scene.

Whena detective interviewed Roth at the hospital the day after the stabbing, Roth said "it (coronavirus)was coming andI had to save them."

Roth made his initial appearance in court via Zoom video April 8. Hiscash bond was set at $500,000, according to online court records.

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 17.

Sophie Carson contributed to this report.

Contact Hannah Kirby at hannah.kirby@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HannahHopeKirby.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

Read or Share this story: https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/waukesha/news/waukesha/2020/04/08/waukesha-man-charged-stabbing-left-2-dead-2-injured/2972486001/

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A Waukesha man murdered his wife and sister-in-law to 'save' them from the coronavirus, complaint says - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Now, more than ever, it is important to be cognizant of brand messaging and how it may be perceived by the public. Concerns about COVID-19 have us operating at a higher level of awareness, and it's vital to keep this top of mind while continuing to execute successful marketing campaigns.

While influencers are a wonderful way to connect brands with viewers, more importantly, they add a human touch to what could otherwise be seen as opportunistic advertising in a tense social climate. Let's go over three ways to practice mindful influencer marketing during a crisis.

1. Rely On Trusted Influencer Partners

Uncertainty is currently a big theme in many of our lives, but coming back to what we know can be reassuring and comfortable. The same idea can be applied to influencer marketing: By partnering with known brand collaborators, you can give viewers something familiar to lean on. Because a large portion of the population is practicing (an often mandated) social distancing at home, social media content use has begun to increase dramatically (paywall) meaning many people are likely checking in with their favorite creators a lot more often.

To use this increased viewership productively, work with creators who have a true and authentic track record with your brand. This means that creators will be able to speak about your brand intelligently and with a strong personal testimony the keys to promoting mindful brand messaging.

2. Keep Messaging Brief And Personal

As much as we'd like to keep things business as usual, they're pretty far from it, which is why evergreen brand messaging is a good starting point but needs a bit of tweaking. Consumers do not want to feel sold to right now, and most of them will see straight through any attempts to do so. On top of that, many feel the need to be more conservative with their spending. These are two limiting factors when it comes to consideration and conversion.

So how do you find a happy medium? By keeping things to the point: No fluff. No exaggerated claims. Just direct and honest communication. Instead of complicated talking points and impersonal brand advocacy, a brief explanation of your brand's value proposition combined with personal testimony from trusted influencer partners can help mitigate viewers' skepticism.

3. Understand What Consumers Need Most

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, seek to understand what consumers actually need specifically, what product or element of your brand will be most helpful to them during a time of crisis. Whether it's providing advice about finding child care, online learning services, meal kit delivery, mental health services, etc., there are ways you can serve communities by simply making them aware of what's available to them.

It is important to be intentional when considering what consumers need, and who better to understand this than the creators that an audience has chosen to follow and look to for insights. Creators know their viewers like one big extended family, and they can act as a positive liaison between your brand and your audience at a time when consumers might otherwise be apprehensive about brand messages.

Wrapping Up

Mindfulness has become a bit of a buzzword in the marketing community, but its importance is staggering in our current state of affairs. Influencers can provide a way to connect with consumers during a time of need, but in a way that personalizes their experience with your brand. Keeping messaging brief and personal arms them with the tools for success at all points of the marketing funnel. They are able to effectively communicate with their viewers and, in turn, help your brand understand what consumers need most. The road ahead may be rocky, but you can rest assured knowing that you've humanized your brand experience even if only a little.

Go here to read the rest:

Three Ways To Be Mindful With Your Influencer Marketing In A Crisis - Forbes

Change and transition are constant and infinite. When our social norms are negatively impacted, we tend to initially react with fear and a mindset of scarcity to the situation and circumstances rather than be proactive and challenge our beliefs and thoughts to take ourselves through a cognitive and abundant process for positive and lasting results.

Rather than allowing ourselves to become intimidated and suppressed from reactive behavior and limiting beliefs, we have an opportunity to stop, pause, think and open our hearts and minds to connect to others while evolving through change. This is a mind shift from living in isolation, frustration and anger from past experiences and anxiety and fear from future unknowns to that of being present and having courage, confidence and discipline and being accountable for our intentions, thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, actions and, ultimately, the outcomes and consequences.

Take a moment to reflect on the possibilities you have to create value, growth and opportunity in times when life and work are disrupted with constant uncertainty and change. These six communication insights can help.

Six Communication Insights For Creating Value, Growth And Opportunity

1. Intentions And Gratitude. Begin with setting positive intentions each day and recognizing and expressing appreciation and gratitude for the value that is being added in the present time. Spend 2-5 minutes before your feet touch the floor in a quiet state, breathing deeply while setting your daily intentions. Begin and end each day with three statements of gratitude. As simple as it seems, these two mental exercises will afford your well-being and life more empowerment and clarity and reconnect you to the purposeful you.

2. Expressions And Shares. Be intentional and purposeful when using the power of verbal, written, physical and environmental language. Writing things down opens the conduit of heart-mind action and connection. Journaling, posting online in blogs and social media and even handwriting a note, letter or email to share and express your vision, intentions or thoughts connects us through an intimate experience, whether virtual or physical. Make it thoughtful and purposeful. Use the power of video connection. Our phones, computers and online apps and tools give us a forum to link, click, dial in and connect to each other, live and in-person, at least virtually.

Use the infinite power of nature to inspire and ignite creativity and joy. Combine walking and talking. Take a brisk, five-minute walk. Clip your favorite flower and foliage to place in a cup or vase to bring the outdoors inside to a colleague or friend. If youre able, host a leadership development exercise outdoors, incorporating the power of nature itself into your curriculum.

3. Creativity And Development. Lets use this moment to indulge and engage in opening our hearts, minds, bodies and souls to the gift of learning and growing. Exploration, discovery, observation, invention, listening, reading, testing these are actions we need to give ourselves permission to do daily, to the extent we schedule ourselves and prioritize time to expend our energy in this space where continuous learning and growth affords us an expansion of wisdom and value to be shared.

4. Vulnerability, Courage, Humility And Discipline. All greatness comes from these four attributes that are naturally internal and eternal to all humans. Great leaders master these attributes to achieve and experience success. Not living in fear of rejection, failure and other limiting beliefs is the purest and most powerful form of vulnerability. Finding the courage, humility and discipline to strike the match to ignite the energy that creates the momentum and builds the energy to take us into that state of abundance and value is the start. Be present with your well-being, and for the sake of others well-being, as able and willing. Even in times of challenge, assuming positive intentions and holding productive dialogue to work through and eradicate limitations, miscommunications and distortions establish a trusting and productive foundation for quality relationships.

5. Service And Sharing. All this would be null and void if we did not share and extend our highest and best selves to our family, friends, co-workers, colleagues, peers, teammates, organizations and communities. Knowing your purpose and purposing the best of into creating value, growth and opportunity for others exponentially extend a lasting and positive experience.

6. Cognition. Lets continue to challenge our own beliefs and thoughts first. Recognize and acknowledge our own limiting beliefs and distortions that trigger our reactiveness. Refrain from criticism, shaming and blaming. Be intentional and assume positive intent of others. Actively engage in investigation, identification, discovery and exploration of meaning and understanding before labeling and confirming a belief or thought. Ensure the decisions you are making stand true and align to your personal values and purpose. When taking action, be responsible and accountable for your behavior and the consequences to come from your part. Retrain yourself to stop, pause, be cognitive and then move into productive action. Enjoy the process. Practice the process by sharing your experience of change and transition with others. This is cognition at its best where we are able to continuously learn and grow while connected to others and making a difference, day by day.

It is important to note there is no perfection in communication, and time is of the essence. The threading of these attributes affords joy and delight in our experiences. At its best, humanity is designed to be evolutionary and experiential. Be grateful for the good and learn from the challenges. Try not to dwell in the muck, where you will remain stuck and miserable.

So why not begin the shift in mindset and mastery of aligning ourselves with our true and best selves, imperfectly and abundantly creating value, growth and opportunity for ourselves, others, our organizations, communities and in the world? Join the transformation and experience the abundance of connection, even in socially disruptive times.

Continue reading here:

Six Communication Insights For Creating Value In Times Of Disruption - Forbes

The Jacksonville Bar Association is seeking nominations for the annual Jacksonville Daily Record Lawyer of the Year award.

Nominees must be a member in good standing of the JBA, exemplify the standards and characteristics of the associations values, and practice with professionalism and integrity.

Candidates also must display outstanding commitment and service to the community.

The 2019 recipient was Kathy Para, who retired from Jacksonville Area Legal Aid after a decade as pro bono coordinator and pro bono director, recruiting attorneys to represent low-income clients who otherwise would have faced often life-changing legal issues without benefit of counsel.

Mike Freed, a shareholder in Gunsters Jacksonville office and founder of Freed to Run, was recognized as Lawyer of the Year in 2018.

For the past three years, Freed has run six marathons in six days from the state Supreme Court in Tallahassee to the Duval County Courthouse.

For the past two years, he was joined by relay teams from the business and legal communities that pledge donations and run a marathon leg alongside Freed.

The event raises money for the North Florida Medical Legal Partnership endowment at JALA that helps local pediatric patients and their families by providing free civil legal aid.

With a 125% match from Baptist Health Foundation, Freed to Run has raised more than $1 million toward the $2.25 million goal.

The 2020 award will be presented May 6 during the JBAs annual Law Day meeting.

Nominations can be made by linking to the form at jaxdailyrecord.com/loty2020 or by email to [emailprotected] before 5 p.m. April 24.

The JBA Law Day poster contest exhibit traditionally is installed near the staircase at the Duval County Courthouse, but with it closed to comply with the COVID-19 social distancing directive from the state Supreme Court, this years contest is on the internet.

Posters drawn by students at West Riverside Elementary School to represent the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution are displayed on the JBA website.

Visit jaxbar.org/postercontest2020 to see the virtual entries.

Votes may be cast by JBA members and the public.

The young artist whose poster receives the most votes will be recognized May 6 at the JBA Law Day meeting.

Duval County Tax Collector Jim Overton says a common inquiry is how to renew a vehicle registration now that all the branch offices are closed.

Overton said there are four choices:

Renew online at duvaltaxcollect.net.

Mail your renewal form and payment to Duval County Tax Collector, 231 E. Forsyth St., Room 440, Jacksonville, 32202.

Call (904) 255-5700 and renew by phone.

Visit the website and request a call back.

After learning of an incident that occurred after a member of the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office apprehended a suspect, State Attorney Melissa Nelson issued the following statement:

Unfortunately, despite having to deal with all of these challenging circumstances, I have become aware of at least one incident in which a defendant, while being detained and ultimately arrested, informed the officer that she was infected with the COVID-19 virus, and then intentionally coughed into the officers face.

In light of this inexcusable criminal conduct, the purpose of this memorandum is to make clear that the State Attorneys Office for the Fourth Judicial Circuit shall have a Zero-Tolerance Policy for any intentional COVID-19-related criminal conduct that either harms or threatens to harm any law enforcement officer or first responder, Nelson said in the memorandum.

According to State Attorneys Office spokesman David Chapman, the charge could be corruption against a public servant.

Thats a second-degree felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison if actual harm occurs; or a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison if its merely a threat of unlawful harm.

Because of the duties that law enforcement and first responders are required to perform, they are at considerable risk of being infected by the COVID-19 virus. Just like health care practitioners, law enforcement and first responders on a daily basis are faced with the reality that they are likely to come into contact with an infected individual. In addition to the potential health hazards related to contracting the COVID-19 virus, law enforcement officers and first responders are also experiencing considerable stress due to these increased pressures and obligations both inside and outside of work, Nelson said in the memorandum.

See the original post here:

The Marbut Report: Nominations open for Lawyer of the Year - Jacksonville Daily Record

As we watch unemployment numbers rise and markets flounder, it is painfully clear how pandemics not only impact individuals health and well-being, but also devastate the entire global economy. The scope and scale of COVID-19 and its related economic fallout stem in large part from the fact that the worlds social and financial systems with their interconnected businesses and supply chains have become so intertwined and interdependent that a disruption to one can ramify, rapidly wreaking havoc for all.

Yet, most investors continue to operate on the assumption that they somehow operate separately from these systems and that systemic risks are beyond their control. We believe theyre wrong. We think individual investors and the financial system at large can and should invest and lend in ways that intentionally enhance, and not destroy, these systems.

Although finance cannot prevent the threat of the next pandemic, intentional system-level decision-making by investors and lenders can help us prepare for it more effectively and mitigate its worst societal and economic impacts. We need better guardrails. By taking a few decisive steps, we can help put these in place.

Heres what we need to do.

Allocate assets to the sovereign debt and municipal bond markets. Only local and national governments have the authority to take the draconian steps necessary to slow or stop pandemics. Investors need to invest in governments strong enough and with deep enough pockets to build guardrails and kindle economic recoveries. In addition, through the municipal bond market investors can support those non-profit hospitals that make up the vast majority of our acute care healthcare system and disproportionately serve low-income communities.

Many institutional investors, in search of yield today, have drastically cut their allocations to fixed income, chasing short-term returns by shifting assets to alternatives such as private equity and hedge funds. This is a short-sighted decision.

Investors should also stop investing in companies that dont pay their fair share of taxes and in financial services firms that promote tax avoidance services. What they are doing may not be illegal, but they are starving government of one of its most basic sources of revenues.

Insist that companies understand their business models and prepare backstops for their meltdown. Todays airline industry may never recover. Why? Because it did not understand that it is in the business of bringing people together: uniting families, convening businesses, solidifying friendships. If it had, it would have invested in Zoom or established its own telecommuting subsidiaries. Flight delayed? Stay at home or stop by our lounge and use our remote conferencing platform.

Todays fossil fuel companies, with few exceptions, lack the imagination for anything more than running out the clock on their current business models in as orderly a manner as possible, although decades ago some among their leaders had active renewable energy portfolios that they since opted to sell. At least the automobile and electric utility industries have an inkling that they should adapt to a future of alternative fuels.

Be willing to invest in firms that invest in the health of systems and prepare for potential systemic breakdowns. Excess manufacturing capacity may not be the most profitable way to run a business, but efficiency is not about letting people die because no one planned for ramping up ventilator production. The pursuit of efficiency has to stop short of abandoning all protection against disaster. If a firm makes belts, investors should ask whether they have a suspender line in the wings. Suspenders may be redundant and inefficient but its best not to be caught with your pants down.

Pharmaceutical companies that emphasize vaccines, generally a less profitable line of business than patented prescription drugs, deserve credit for understanding that prevention, particularly of pandemics, is part of their industrys mandate. A drugstore chain can remake itself into a full-service preventative healthcare provider. Invest in the system today or pay the price tomorrow.

The financial community thrives on lending. Debt is the most efficient way to boost the consumer economy. It works its magic for corporations too. Except when it cannot be repaid. We lent profligately to the housing market in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. Corporations loaded up on debt in the days before COVID-19 hit. The bonds of debt are excruciating to unwind; it can feel like forever; it can turn worlds upside down. The economic, social, and human costs of doing so destabilize.

The equivalent of belts and suspenders for lenders is the willingness to forgo a loan that is in fact too risky and to forgive those that cannot be repaid through no fault of borrowers. That means tough love to strengthen borrowers and lenders both. That strength will be needed to get through the next systemic crisis, pandemic or otherwise.

Being prepared means anticipating the worst, building in circuit breakers and guardrails, assuring redundancy and resilience, even when the worst seems unimaginable. Being prepared means investing in the health of fundamental systems.

We may be lucky and dodge the worst-case scenarios of the current fast-moving pandemic and the slow-motion train wreck that global warming will bring, but the 21st century will see other such systemic disruptions and we had better be ready for them.

William Burckart and Steve Lydenberg are the authors of the forthcoming book 21st Century Investing: Redirecting Financial Strategies to Drive Systems Change (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2021).

Excerpt from:

Five investment strategies to mitigate systemic risks before the next pandemic - ImpactAlpha

On February 15, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art opened An American Project, a retrospective, of the work of multi-award-winning photographer and teacher Dawoud Bey. The show was supposed to run through May 25, before traveling to other museums, including the co-organizer of the show, New Yorks Whitney Museum of American Art. But due to the COVID- 19 pandemic, the SFMOMA and other museums, closed temporarily in March. Recently the museum put up a short video of Bey talking about visualizing history, and he took over the museums Instagram account the week of March 30.

Bey came out to San Francisco for An American Project, and at a preview had a conversation with Corey Keller, (who curated the show along with the Whitneys Elisabeth Sherman), in which he talked about going to see protests of the widely criticized 1969 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,Harlem on My Mind, which mostly excluded African American artists.There was no protest that day, and Bey ended up going into the show, which made him think seriously about being a photographer.

An American Project includes Beys first show, Harlem USA, along with The Birmingham Project, commemorating the 1963 dynamiting of the 16th Street Baptist Church in that city which killed four girls; Night Coming Tenderly, Blackabout the Underground Railroad; and Class Pictures, portraits of high school students accompanied by their words.

Bey sat down with 48 Hills and talked about changing from wanting his photos to show people in a positive light to just making honest photos; how for The Birmingham Project, photographing children the age of the ones who were killed makes history more specific; and the way the darkness and positioning of the photographs in Night Coming Tenderly, Blackpull viewers into the experience of being on the Underground Railroad and running for their lives.

48 HILLS Your godmother gave you a camera when you were 15. When did you start using it?

DAWOUD BEY When I got the camera, and it was a very basic Argus C3 Rangefinder camera, I had no idea how to use it. I was more fascinated by the camera itselfthe fact that the lens came off, and I began to figure out when you turn this dial the shutter would open slowly. I had no background in photography, and I didnt any think of it in terms of what would my subject matter be. So I just started walking around with this camera. I never made any memorable photos with that camera, but I did start to notice photography magazines like, Oh, theres actually magazines about this stuff. So it got me engaged with photography, and I started looking at photography books and magazines, and then the possibilities of what one might do with a camera opened up.

I guess the pivotal thing that happened was the following year when I was 16 and I went to see Harlem on my Mind at the Met. I actually took the camera with me, and I did take a picture of the banner in front of the Met.It was seeing that exhibition that began to expand for me considerably the notion of what the subject of photographs might be. Even though Harlem on My Mind was not an art exhibition, clearly the photographs were not that ones I saw in everyday newspapers and magazine, which up to that point was my only frame of reference for what photographs were.Seeing that exhibition and thinking about my familys history in Harlem, because my mother and father met in Harlem, and beginning to realize one has to have a kind of nominal subject around which to wrap their picture making, that allowed me to begin making photographs.

48H So that led to your first show, Harlem USA.

DB Yes. They were photographs of everyday people in Harlem in the public and semi public spaces of Harlem, largely in the streets, and a few in churches and in barber shops and greasy spoon luncheonette restaurants. Those were very much in the tradition of other pictures I had been looking ata lot from photographers of the WPA and Farm Security Administrator. Walker Evans became an early influence and Roy DeCarava.I started looking at the lot of photographs, trying to get a sense of how photos are made and what good photographs look like.

48H With that show, Harlem USA, what kind of photos did you want to make?

DB When I started out, I guess I wanted to make photographs that in some significant way contested the stereotypical notions of Black urban communities like Harlem, which are often described through a lens of some form of social pathology. So when I started out, I probably would have said I wanted to make photographs that represented the people of Harlem in a more positive light. But as I continued on, I couldnt quite figure out what a positive light looks like. This was merely people in the act of living their lives.

I eventually came to this notion of wanting to make an honest representation of everyday people in Harlem. It allowed me to let me let go of this binary notion of positive and negative, and just try and describe clearly the people in front of me without trying to put them in a box. Just allow them space to breathe, and I realized that was enough.

48H You have talked about showing your work in the communities where you took the photos and how the act of being seen is political.

DB I thought it was very important that the work I was making in that community be shown in that communitythat the people who were the subjects of the work would have access to the work. Certainly a number of these photographs are made in places very different from where theyre shown, but theyre first shown where they were made, from my first show at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. It gave me a very clear and intentional way of thinking about the institution as a place of display. Not just the end point for the work, but to use the space of the museum to set up a series of particular relationships: between the museum and the community in which it sits, and trying to use the work in a way that a piece of community is in the work. It creates a different relationship between museum and the community, where they are aware theyre being exhibited in this space, which makes them more likely to want to have access to that space.

I think it changes the dynamics. Certainly at the Studio Museum in Harlem, its a very different set of circumstances because that place is set up in order to have a place for art objects within the African American community. I wanted my photographs in Harlem to extend that conversation. Usually the first showing of the work is in the place in which the work is made. The Birmingham Project was first shown in Birmingham because it has a very particular relationship with that history. The Class Pictures project was made in several different communities around the country, but each piece first shown in the city in which it was made.

48H Why did you decide to have the students you photographed in Class Pictures write something to go along with their portraits?

I thought it was necessary because I wanted a very dimensional representation of those young people. Im always acutely aware of the limitation of photographs because photographs dont do a lot more than they do. Theyre mute visual objects that present a particular piece of information. But all the information that lies out of the frame, which is a lot of information, tends not to be what the work is about.

In terms of making a contemporary portrait of young people in America, I thought it was important they not only be visualized in my photographs, but that they have a place of self representation and talk about their own lives in a way that the photograph is not capable of. That the two thingsmy portrait of them and the textcould add up to something more than either alone can represent. In that project I though it was really important to give them a literal voice in the construction of the image.

48H You talked about your work having a through line? What is it?

DB A sense of history and place. Theres always been a kind of close looking at a place. Photographs become history the moment that theyre made. They begin to recede into the past as soon as they are made. Its about bringing all of that into the conversation through my work. To have them become a part of the conversation from which theyve been largely excluded.

48H You said you went to Birmingham for years getting to know the city before deciding what you wanted to photograph to commemorate the bombing the 16th Street Baptist Church by white supremacists.How did you decide on young people the same age as the children who were killed in a diptych with someone who would have been their age if they lived?

DB I didnt want to just photograph young people in BirminghamI wanted them to be those specific ages. The girls were 11 and 14, and the two boys killed that afternoon were 13 and 16. I wanted them to be that age because for me, the work resonated more deeply in terms of what does an 11-year-old Black girl look like, because one of the girls who was killed in the dynamiting of the church was 11. Not just what does a young girl look like, but what does an 11-year-old African American girl look like.

Its a way of making that history less mythic and more specific.History as time passes tends to become very gauzy. The four little girls. It almost sounds like a girls singing group. Like what is that? I wanted to very specifically give you a sense of what a 14-year-old African American girl looks like, a 13-year-old African American boy. I want them to be that age as a way of invoking their presence in the work, not a presence, but their presence through those young people.And through the adults who were the same age they would have been if they had not been murdered.

48H The photos in your Underground Railroad series, Night Coming Tenderly, Black, are very dark. Why did you want them to look like that?

DB I wanted the viewer to think about moving through that landscape under cover of necessary darkness, as they moved, in that case, toward Lake Erie. I wanted to make photos that evoked that particular sensation. It kind of allowed the viewer to momentarily, through the photograph, inhabit that space under those circumstances, to imagine oneself moving though that terrain under threat of death.

The positionality of all of them is eye level and meant to be experienced as if one were the person moving through that landscape. I wanted it to be a heightened physical and psychological experience.

I had a very interesting experience at the Art Institute of Chicago when I showed them for the first time. I came into the gallery and two women had just finished looking at the work and they looked disoriented and they said to me, Youre the one who made these photographs, right? I said yes. But you made them now, right? Obviously you didnt go back, but why am I feeling Im someplace Im not? It kind of pulled them back. I really want the work to pull you into the experience, so its not just a space of the imagination, which it is, but that it resonates as experience.

See the rest here:

'Change the dynamics': Dawoud Bey on photography, place, and history - 48 Hills

Wait, what? You read that headline correctly. Just daysafter The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, Ohioslargest newspaper, laid off 22 newsroom employees, the remaining 14 employeesreceived more bad news. They have been prohibited from reporting on Cleveland,Cuyahoga County and Summit County, as well as any statewide news, reportsCleveScene.com. Those regions will now be covered by sister publication,Cleveland.com, a non-union shop. If the remaining newsroom employees want tokeep their jobs, they will be restricted to covering Geauga, Lake, Lorain,Medina and Portage Counties, other counties in northeast Ohio, instead of beatstheyve covered for years.

The Plain Dealer Newspaper Guild, representing the union, spokeout on Facebook on April 7 about this latest blow to a once-respected mediaoutlet. The post received 634 reactions, 274 comments and 770 shares, as of 8:30p.m. Eastern yesterday. Here is an excerpt:

The Plain Dealer newsroom will no longer be coveringCleveland, Cuyahoga County or the state of Ohio.

Editor Tim Warsinskey announced Monday to the 14 remainingstaff members that the newsroom would, with a few exceptions, become a bureaucovering five outlying counties: Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina and Portage.

The move would bar most of the reporters from coveringstories in Cuyahoga and Summit counties, as well as statewide issues, wherethey have developed expertise and have institutional knowledge.

This latest announcement comes as the newsroom has workedceaselessly in covering this unprecedented pandemic, putting aside their ownpersonal family and financial situations to cover the news and tell the storiesof health care workers and the community

Warsinskey called the move a company-wide strategydecision. He did not say which company.

The Plain Dealer, which is owned by Advance Publications,consistently has maintained that The Plain Dealer and Advance Local, areseparate companies. Advance Local operates the nonunion Cleveland.com newsroom,which has not announced layoffs.

The two-newsroom operation was never going to becometenable or permanent, Warsinskey told staffers.

In effect, he is admitting that this decision is part of abroader move to eliminate The Plain Dealer and its staff altogether and not anattempt to provide meaningful coverage on areas the company has stoppedreporting on in any depth for years. The announcement comes three days afterThe Plain Dealer laid off 22 people in the newsroom, including 18Guild-represented journalists and four nonunion managers.

Its clear that the company doesnt value the expertise ofits veteran reporters and it doesnt think the community does either, said thepost. Readthe complete post on Facebook.

In another interesting move, last night, there were nostories on The Plain Dealers website. There were scrolling photos, but noarticles. A Google search directed us to Cleveland.com/plaindealer,but there was no link to that site from PlainDealer.com that we could find.

It is not clear if this move was intentional, or perhaps atechnical glitch. It seems to foreshadow what is coming. Cleveland.com willtake over news reporting for what used to be the biggest paper in the state.Meanwhile, Cleveland.com looked like this. It contained Cleveland-based storieswith bylines from Cleveland.com reporters.

The Plain Dealers editor TimWarsinskey shared The Plain Dealers position with News 5 Cleveland on thechanges:

There are two separate, but related, newsrooms inCleveland, and two outstanding news products The Plain Dealer andcleveland.com. Together, they serve the market well with The Plain Dealerstories appearing online at cleveland.com and cleveland.com stories appearingin print in The Plain Dealer, an approach that has been in place since separatenewsrooms were established in 2013.

By design, this approach helps provide thoughtful, impactfulcoverage in the most efficient way possible and ensures that Greater Clevelandhas more access to local journalism via digital platforms as demand for thoseplatforms continues to grow.

Today, there are 77 journalists and content creators inthese newsrooms covering Greater Cleveland, doing outstanding reporting,writing stories and creating content that our readers want and deserve. Thisnumber is comparable to the staffs in similarly-sized metro areas in Ohio andacross the country. But its not just about the numbers of journalists we haveon hand. Its how they are deployed to create a broad base of coverage for allof the communities we serve in Greater Cleveland.

On Monday, The Plain Dealer shared a new reporting focuswith the members of its newsroom, one that offers to bring high quality localjournalism to five counties in Greater Cleveland, and the nearly 1 millionpeople who live in them. Lake, Geauga, Portage, Medina and Lorain counties havebeen underserved by media in this market for years despite making up a largepercentage of The Plain Dealers subscription base.

The Plain Dealer, along with our sister companyCleveland.com, has an opportunity to change that with The Plain Dealers newfocus on these five nearby counties. This broadening of our coverage area isespecially important in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when all ofour readers, regardless of where they live, deserve to know how the virus isaffecting their local communities and how their local communities areresponding, Warsinskey said. Readthe full statement on News 5 Cleveland.

Cutting staff at a time when local journalism is more importantthan ever seems ludicrous, even if financially necessary. This latest move, however,makes absolutely no sense. Why would a media organization take skilledreporters with well-honed beats and move them to a bureau-type operation thatno longer reports news from the newspapers largest coverage area? It is almostunfathomable. We understand the guilds frustration and can only imagine how newspapersubscribers feel. It seems like Warsinskey and Advance Publications are notgiving the full story here. From the outside, it looks like they are cutting unionstaff and hoping the remaining staff will hate their plight so much that theywill leave voluntarily without a buyout or a mass firing. That would free thecompany up to transition to a digital model with non-union staff.

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Remaining Staff at The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer Prohibited from Covering Cleveland - Subscription Insider

In speeches, commentaries and conversations about the coronavirus pandemic, we keep hearing war-like metaphors being deployed. It happens explicitly (we are at war, blitz spirit, war cabinet) and implicitly (threat, invisible enemy, frontline, duty).

This, after all, helps project an interpretation of the extraordinary reality facing us which is readily understandable. It helps convey a sense of exceptional mobilisation and offers to decision-makers an opportunity to rise up as heroic commanders.

It is also true that the language of biomedicine and epidemiology is already heavily militarised. We battle a virus, and our body has defence mechanisms against the pathogens that invade it.

But the coronavirus crisis is an international, pan-human challenge. It certainly requires exceptional collective mobilisation, but no real weapons, no intentional killing of fellow human beings, and no casting of people as dehumanised others. Militarised language is unnecessary.

Explaining and encouraging community resilience and togetherness in the face of adversity by evoking images of war conjures up distorted myths and narratives of heroic past national glory and military campaigns. This might function as a cognitive shortcut to evoke collective effort, but the narrow narratives it reproduces are open to exploitation by opportunistic politicians.

We could just as much favour analysis of the evolving situation in calmer scientific and medical terms. You dont need ideas about war to tell a story of the human race naturally coming together when faced by a common danger.

Indeed, one striking phenomenon has been the huge proliferation of organic networks of mutual aid. From street-level up, and often with the help of social media, a huge number of people have been organising solidarity networks to help each other and especially the most vulnerable.

People have come together and organised within neighbourhoods, cities and regions but also across nations to help each other without needing to call it a war or military duty. The language of mutual aid and solidarity works just as well.

Anyone interested in political theory and ideologies must be watching all this with some intellectual curiosity. Different perspectives come with different assumptions about human nature, the role of the state compared to other institutions, and so on.

War is the business of the state par excellence. Some argue it was war-making that actually made the modern state. Framing the response to COVID-19 in military language will reinforce such statist thinking and the statist project itself. It will reinforce the state and its power.

It is of course true that, given the political architecture in place as the crisis hit, states do hold much organisational capacity and power. They have a crucial role to play in tackling the current emergency. But other political entities matter too, from spontaneous bottom-up networks and municipalities to regional organisations and the World Health Organization. Military metaphors, however, either conceal their contributions or co-opt them by describing their efforts in military terms.

One could just as much pitch the crisis as being about medicine, health workers and human communities across the globe. One could analyse events around particular socio-economic classes, such as supermarket workers, delivery workers and essential equipment manufacturers, in every country affected by the virus. Looking at socio-economic classes across borders could also set up more searching discussions about homelessness, refugee camps, working conditions and universal healthcare.

An analysis based on class or social justice is just as appropriate as one revolving around military metaphors. But instead of reinforcing statist and military thinking, it would explain the crisis in anarchist, Marxist, feminist, or liberal internationalist terms, for example.

Language matters. It helps frame particular stories, interpretations and conversations while at the same time closing off alternative perspectives. It reinforces particular theories about how the world works, and sidelines others.

Framing political issues in the language of war both illustrates the prevalence of militarised thinking and further enables it. The more we use military language, the more we normalise the mobilisation of the military and the more we entrench military hierarchies. When the next international crisis arrives, rather than examining the deeper structural problems that caused them, we jump again to heroic narratives of national militarised mobilisation.

Who benefits from this? Politicians can project an image of decisive generals protecting their lot. Agents of state coercion can project themselves as dutiful and robust but popular administrators of the public will. They can then mobilise this (typically masculine) brand for their own political agenda later on. If you are Trump, perhaps you can even egg up some anti-Chinese patriotism.

Missed is the opportunity to develop a more nuanced understanding of human capabilities not restricted to national boundaries. Yet this international solidarity and these pan-human capabilities might be what we need to tackle other problems of international scale, such as the climate crisis.

When a crisis of global proportions gives rise to organic expressions of mutual aid, our imagination has grown so restricted that we find ourselves framing the challenge in statist and national terms. Instead of seeing the whole of humanity rising to the challenge together and observing the multi-layered outpouring of mutual aid, our imagination is restricted into encasing this in military language.

But that does not capture the full story. The human race will come out of COVID wiser if it does not frame its understanding of its response to it in narrow military language.

Read more here:

Stop calling coronavirus pandemic a 'war' - The Conversation UK

April 7, 2020 | :

After varying amounts of struggle, universities across the country moved online for the spring semester in response to the coronavirus pandemic. But now the question is, whats next?

While some hope campuses will re-open come fall, no one knows for certain. In the meantime, university leaders are girding themselves for the possibility theyll have to offer another semester online and asking themselves how to best prepare for more long-term remote learning.

Many are thinking outside the box and outside the (virtual) classroom about what resources students will need if online classes continue next year.

Over spring break, most campuses didnt have the time to build the highest quality online programs as they scurried to open their virtual doors, but fall may hold new possibilities.

Clare McCann, deputy director for federal higher education policy at the think tank New America, stressed the importance of not only intentional instructional design but online student support now that schools have a small (albeit very small) extra amount of time to prepare, she wrote in an email.

Dr. Alison Davis-Blake, president of Bentley University, is working to create a true virtual campus, not just online courses, she said, to offer as much of the campus experience as possible online.

For example, the school held an online career fair and continues to offer remote career counseling. Groups of 40 students virtually meet with a student affairs representative for weekly check-ins and coaches continue to touch base with their athletes, even though they cant play. Student government is up and running, alongside fraternities, sororities and other student groups that continue to virtually meet.

The university plans to look at student and faculty surveys this summer to assess its online education this spring, and most importantly, what could be improved in the fall if remote classes continue. The hope is to offer more experiential learning opportunities and to make more on-campus services remotely available.

But as Davis-Blake pointed out, an online fall semester would pose a new challenge: on-boarding a first-year class amidst the pandemic.

University leaders are asking themselves, How do you orient students when youre not face to face? she said. What can you do over the summer to bring students in?

Shes thinking through a number of options virtual tours, group chats for new students, or even small regional group gatherings, if theyre safe when the semester starts.

Preparing for the possibility of a fall semester online, its almost as if youre building a university from the ground up, Davis-Blake said. For colleges, the key is thinking about what is an important part of your campus experience? And [then] trying to bring that forward.

Its a question Dr. Wayne A.I. Frederick, president of Howard University, is contending with as well. The historically Black college (HBCU) is known for its family dynamic, he said, so hes considering what that means and what that looks like if students remain online in the fall.

The camaraderie students feel at an HBCU is difficult to create in a distance learning environment, he said. We do have to start thinking, What are our values, what are our traditions, and how do we uphold those in the middle of a crisis such as this?

For all universities, but particularly schools like Howard, which serve high percentages of low-income students, the possible continuation of online learning comes with another worry retention rates.

Frederick is concerned that students financially impacted by the coronavirus may not come back to campus next year, so continuing online options in the fall even if on-campus classes are safe might help students who need to work and might otherwise struggle to return, he said. In the meantime, part of the schools preparation for fall is carefully monitoring students and reaching out to those who may need help with their finances.

Frederick finds that the crisis, and the accompanying shift online, is impacting his students in diverse ways, with Black communities disproportionately affected by the coronavirus. Some need mentorship, others need devices to just to get online, and as a student survey found, many need quiet spaces to study at home.

So, as time goes on, he wants to continue tailoring services to their individual needs. For example, if places like libraries reopen before campuses next semester, Howard University might create a guide to finding safe, local study spots.

In preparing for the fall, we need to ask our students what they need rather than be proscriptive, he said.

Though everyone hopes for more normalcy in the next academic year, Davis-Blake thinks the process of making emergency plans for fall might actually help universities understand and address their students needs better. Campuses may find that some supports actually reach more students more effectively online, while others require an in-person touch.

I really believe this is a period not just to hunker down and say, Well, how do we get through? she said. This is a time for creativity. Even if we come back to campus and were all face to face, there are things were learning and will keep learning about how to deliver education even better through virtual and in-person activities. In every calamity, there is a possibility and an opportunity for innovation, for growth, for the human spirit to really rise.

Sara Weissman can be reached at sweissman@diverseeducation.com.

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Campuses Might Still Be Closed in the Fall. How Should... - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

My inbox is flooded with news about the coronavirus outbreak. Every hour, Im hearing about how many people are infected and dying, how woefully unprepared we are for this pandemic, and how the economy is tanking. Its enough to make my head explode with panic and dread.

Of course, I want to stay informed, and its important to know what I can do to help prevent the spread of the infection. How can I do that without feeling overwhelmed? Is there a better way to consume the news?

It turns out that there is, according to media experts and researchers. Taking in a constant stream of alarming news increases your stress and anxietyand has long-term consequences for your physical health, too. The key is to balance your media diet with news stories that are more inspiring or offer solutions, and then share them with friends and family. Taking those steps will help instill a sense of hope and personal agency, in yourself and others.

Of course, we need to know whats going on with the coronavirus pandemic in order to make good decisions, like washing our hands regularly and social distancing. Those actions help us fight the spread of the disease. But, as a new paper published in Health Psychology suggests, constantly reading negative, sensationalist news stories can have long-term consequences for our well-being.

Alison Holman and her colleagues at UC Irvine have studied past epidemics and disasters to see how news reporting affects people. They found that those who read or saw more sensationalist, repetitive news stories experienced acute stress and other symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder, with poorer health up to three years later.

These effects can be even harsher for people in communities that have already suffered disaster. In one study, Holman and her colleagues found that New Yorkers (who lived through 9/11) following sensationalist news stories about the Boston Marathon bombings had as much stress as people who actually lived in Boston where the bombings took place.

Media coverage tends toward sensationalism, showing repeated images designed to grab your attention, and repeated exposure to that is not good for our mental health, says Holman. This can become a distress cycle, where people have a lot of fears about what the future looks like, and it just gets worse and worse as people continue to pay too much attention to the media.

Holman also points out how a diet of bad news hurts our ability to make good decisionsespecially under circumstances where the future seems uncertain or ambiguous. In the current epidemic, she sees this playing out by people hoarding products like toilet paper or, more seriously, protective masks needed by health care workers. Overblown fears lead people to run to the doctor when they have even mild symptoms of infection, thereby clogging up health care facilities needed for more serious cases.

Luckily, there are ways to get factual information without gorging ourselves on negative news. Holman recommends going to The Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization websites for information about the virus that is less alarmist and also non-partisan. Reading the facts about the disease and what we can do to prevent its spreadmaybe once a day, suggests Holmanis infinitely better for us than scrolling through our newsfeeds on social media every hour.

Dont let yourself sit there in front of your computer and constantly look up and refresh your screen to see whats going on, says Holman. Things are changing fast, but we already know what we need to do.

Still, its hard to pull our attention away from fear-inducing news; our minds fight us. As John Tierney, coauthor of The Power of Bad, explains, our brains have a negativity bias thats designed to root out danger so that we can stay safe. We cant help but be hijacked by bad news stories, and news sources want to capitalize on that by publishing the most sensational stories designed to invoke fear.

As an example, he points to the many articles and websites monitoring death rates from COVID-19 and speculating on how bad it could get without having all of the factslike how many real cases there are in a community, including people exposed to the virus without showing symptoms. Following this barrage of misinformation might incite fear rather than rational responses to the pandemic, Tierney says.

Media researcher Karen McIntyre of Virginia Commonwealth University also warns us that negative news can lead us to be less kind and helpful toward others, right at the time we need to come together the most. While research suggests that experiencing positive emotions can make us better friends and neighbors, consuming a lot of negative news leads people to be less tolerant of others, engage in more antisocial behavior, trust people less, and criticize the media more, she says. All of these general, negative effects of negative news are just exacerbated during a time like this, when were seeing even more negative news.

Sensationalist news is pretty hard to avoid, thoughespecially if you are tuned into social media. Social media has its upsides, of course, allowing us to check in with people we cant see in person due to social isolation. But it can also be a firehose of bad news, where stories about the pandemicwhether accurate or notare shared over and over again, perpetuating fear, anger, and hopelessness.

As media expert Jeff Hancock of Stanford University warns, Getting your news from news outlets in social media is problematic, because were still having a hard time distinguishing between reputable sources online and non-reputable ones.

To avoid being taken for an emotional ride by these highly emotional, clickbait, misinformation-type stories, he suggests avoiding them altogether and reading only news stories written by reputable journalists or looking to science experts to provide accurate information about the pandemiclike this site from John Hopkins University.

We also need to be careful about how a constant diet of negative news might affect our rational response to the pandemic. Cognitive biases impact how we process news, too, according to McIntyre. For example, our brains confirmation bias drives us to seek out only information thats aligned with what we already believe and to discredit the rest; the anchoring bias means we rely heavily on the first piece of information we hear and ignore what comes after. Biases like these can prevent us from learning from the ever-changing news around the pandemic, hurting our chances to fight it effectively.

The optimism biasthinking bad things are less likely to happen to us than to other peopleis a problem, too, says McIntyre. If you think youre unlikely to get COVID-19, you may be less inclined to take the necessary precautions to prevent it from spreading. So, we need to be careful about how these biases make us pay attention to certain types of news and ignore others.

Being aware of these biases can help you prevent yourself from falling prey to them, she says.

What can we do instead? We can be more selective about our media consumption and use it to promote more kindness, connection, and inspiration.

If you are going to use social media, Hancock suggests using it to see how the people you care about are doing, how you can keep calm, or how to help others in needespecially your nearby neighbors and communities.

Media can show us what people are doing so that we might feel like its not just usnot just mestuck at home, he says. If I can see what other people are doing, it can make us feel like were all in the same boat, and I think that can be really powerful.

While fear leaves people feeling helpless and exhausted, seeing that were in it together helps ease the emotional burden we feel and encourages more agencythe sense that we can do something constructive to fight the pandemic. You can encourage more coming together, McIntyre suggests, by reading whats called solutions-based journalismstories that go into depth around a problem, but also let you know whats being done to solve the problem effectively.

When you see whats workingthat the news isnt all bad, and there are a lot of things that the world is doing well right nowthat helps ease the helplessness and hopelessness you may be feeling, she says. And it can lead to more altruism, too, because reading a news story about how somebody is doing something to help inspires you to want to do something to help, too.

Where can people go to get this kind of news? McIntyre suggests the Solutions Journalism Network, where you can find a large database of solution-focused news storiesincluding stories related to the virus. She also mentions that several newspapers, including the New York Times and the Guardian, have sections that focus on uplifting news stories, which can help us break up our diet of bad news.

Though most newspapers operate on the assumption that if it bleeds, it leads, it may surprise you to know that positive, in-depth reporting engages readers more than sensationalist stories, says McIntyre. Research shows that people share uplifting stories more, and they keep their eyes on the page longer when they read solution-based storiesall the more reason for news outlets to provide more positive and in-depth coverage and for all of us to share it.

Its important that we do try to read the news thoroughly and listen to all the facts, says McIntyre. Making sure that youre checking your sources, that youre going to reliable sources to get information, and that you get a mix of sources, incorporating some constructive news into your mixall of these things help.

Staying informed without alarming yourself is not just important for you, but for everyone. If we can all do our part to put ourselves on what Tierney calls a low bad news diet, no doubt we will get through this pandemic together better and help preserve our own mental health in the process.

Read more here:

How to Be Intentional About Consuming Coronavirus News - Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley

Most kids in this country grew up in some sort of a neighborhood or even a cul de sac. Maybe you knew a few of your surrounding neighbors, or maybe not. Maybe Mom would wave at Jim across the street or sometimes chat with Karen on the curb/sidewalk/driveway/stairwell/apartment building hallway/what have you. Maybe your relationship with those who lived near you was friendly but never intimate or involved. Maybe you had one or two parents, or a big blended family, maybe one or more older siblings to teach you about life. Not me, though; I was raised by more than 15 adults.

It wasnt quite since birth, but since age three when my family moved to a commune called Tierra Nueva Cohousing on the central coast of California. This intentional of parents taught me everything.

Before I even learned how to share space with my younger sister, at the age of 3 I was already learning how to share almost everything with a community of over 20 families. Cohousing, which originated in Scandinavia, involves getting a like-minded group of people together and building a communal living arrangement. Typically, this means clustering houses so that cars are on the perimeter and open space is maximized. Though we lived in separate homes, we were all connected under a canopy of avocado trees through weaving terra cotta pathways.

In cohousing, sharing resources is key, and for this reason these communities have shared laundry facilities, workshops, game rooms, etc. We shared cars, cats, a garden, (free!) child care, a chicken coop, and a yoga studio. We also shared the common house, our general gathering place for shared meals, meetings, parties, and guest housing. (The common house was also where my friends and I would play dress-up, start a fire in the library unsupervised, sneak-watch inappropriate TV, and have our first spin-the-bottle experience.)

Tierra Nueva proper was established in 1997 after its founders Frank and Steph Recceri had already held years of meetings, retreats, and community-building activities in preparation. Cohousing is all about nonviolent communication, consensus-based decision making, and generally pitching in so the Recceris cultivated a community where families were happy to collaborate, share, and grow together. As kids, we always felt safe as well as encouraged to explore and figure things out on our own. I know it sounds like the wholesome beginning of the Rajneesh movement but dont worry: The Tierra Nueva community is to this day still thriving upon the same ideals it was built on over 20 years ago.

Growing up in this little community had its pros and cons. Living closely with people from all different backgrounds can be just as wonderful as it is challenging. I was not only raised by many adults; I was also raised and taught by my peers. But growing up on a commune was, for me, the best possible parenting I could have had. Heres what it taught me.

This became clearer to me when I was a teenager. Because we share almost everything in cohousing, there can be quite a lack of privacy. These adults watch you grow up, and then once youre a teenager you are under a microscope. They question your decisions and know all too much about that boy youre dating at school or that blowout fight you got in with your best friend. Sometimes its great; you feel loved and seen. Other times, it can be a drag, especially in that weird teen stage of life.

When my cohousing sisters and I hit around 15, we began to experiment with marijuana and alcohol. Unlike a normal household, where you usually keep this stuff from your parents, try it at a friends house or behind the school, we were trying it in cohousing. When one of my close friends started smoking weed out her window every night, the next-door neighbor threw a huge fit, called the cops, and threatened to send her to juvie. And this didnt happen only once: This happened nearly any time any of us would try to smoke inside, outside, on the roof, in the woods, you name it. Of course, we also tried to use the common house to throw a rager. And as any parent knows, teens can be careless, they dont necessarily clean up, they can be very loud, and they dont often give a rats ass about where they are partying as long as it isnt their place. Needless to say, the rager attempt did not go well for us.

The girls and I also used to brag about where we lived. We were the cool, easygoing hippies who always had a good unsupervised place to throw a party. But because we were using communal space, we were actually under a surprising amount of scrutiny. We would usually get a scathing email to the whole community the next day or a neighbor would just plain crash our party, frowning and muttering about the noise. But hey, sometimes we would actually get an elderly neighbor party crasher who just wanted to join in on the fun!

In cohousing, there was always something to explore, and we kids were lucky enough to do a lot of that exploration on our own. The entire community was a safe space in which we could play, grow, and use our imaginations. Every morning, I would wake up, run over to my best friends house, decide what game we were going to play that day, dress up, and hit the sidewalk. Our mothers wouldnt see us home until dinner.

We would spend all day playing out our elaborate imaginary games: Wed be orphans running away from the orphanage, wed set up camp and start some mud soup for dinner. If the boys ever found their way into our game, they would have to be the bad guys; we would run from them, through the common house, down the green road to the garden and onto the trampoline. Through unsupervised play, we gained independence, creativity, as well as rooted communication skills.

If conflict arose between us kids, we were taught the importance of nonviolent communication. For example, my best boy friend and I loved to fight with swords; we were usually Zoro and Elena or Lancelot and Guinevere. When it came time to pick out our clothes and character for the day, the adults around ensured that Riley and I used our words to get what we wanted instead of hitting each other immediately, which of course was what we wanted to do.

This simple reliance on verbal communication from such a young age proved to be more valuable than I could have imagined, and it would even set me up for success when I went off to college. There, I was sharing ideas and space all over again except this time, I got to show students from all different backgrounds the value of what was instilled in me so young. Throughout my life, this positive communication has improved my work, relationships, and creative endeavors.

If given the opportunity, would I raise my future children in cohousing? Absolutely. In the end, the pros outweigh the cons. I feel incredibly grateful that I experienced the childhood I did; being raised by a literal village provided me with a great sense of love, shelter, and what we all seek: community and connection. I learned how to empathize and walk in someone elses shoes.

There is wonderful value in humans working together to create something so special and sacred together, and each one of those 15+ adults as well as the kids in Tierra Nueva taught me and supported me in ways I will never forget.

Here are the best green gifts for your own little flower child.

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I Was Parented by 15 Adults on a Commune & This is What It Taught Me - SheKnows

By Livio De La Cruz, Committee MemberDemand to be Counted 2020 Census Project

Every 10 years the federal government counts everyone living in the United States through the census, and it is meant to make sure that when the government is distributing federal resources, the distribution is done equitably. The problem is, if people are not counted, funding is not distributed for them.

Its really easy to say government doesnt work, because for us and our communities, so often it doesnt. The census is not different. Historically, African Americans have been undercounted in the census. We already dont get the level of resources our communities need and that we pay for. Given that we are already undercounted and not receiving our fair share of the American pie, the changes made to the census process disproportionately threaten the future quality of our lives and our communities.

I dont remember the last census in 2010. I was still in high school. Im guessing an employee of the US. Census Bureau came to my house, just as theyve been doing for every household in the country every ten years for over 200 years. Clipboard in hand, the employee must have spoken with my parents to complete the questionnaire. I assume we were counted. But Ive never really given the census much thought until now.

Political scientists and statisticians have long since argued the census isnt the best way to get an accurate count of everyone in the United States; off the bat, its an imperfect method. Unfortunately, that doesnt change the fact that it is the method used to count us, and then to dedicate and distribute funding and other resources based on that count.

In the past the census was solely a door-to-door effort conducted by trained staff. That process is no more. In 2020 we are responsible for counting ourselves. The census is moving to the internet. This might seem like a great idea, and it may appear to make the census more accessible, but that isnt true for our communities. Black folks are much less likely to have access to the tools and resources needed to understand and complete the census.

Being undercounted in the census -or not counted at all- has real-life consequences. We are the very people who need these resources the most in our communities. We dont have enough affordable housing. We dont have enough affordable resources and activities for children and youth. We dont have access to healthcare in our communities at the level we need it. We dont have transportation options that serve our needs.

We dont have enough of anything.

As if those challenges arent enough, the current political climate is also a factor affecting whether we are all counted. People feel distrustful of the government. Even though there are strict laws in place that are supposed to protect the information we provide through the census, as people of color we know that our rights can be violated at any time.

The result? The census feels like a risk. Opting out feels easier. Opting out feels safer. Maybe it is.

But the only way to fight intentional erasure is by intentionally being counted. It takes all of us to make sure everyone is counted in 2020. Getting rid of the current systems that hurt our communities, and strengthening the systems that help us, requires many kinds of tools and actions. We have to fight for our own liberation on every front, including being counted in the census. This is something we need to be intentional about in solidarity with each other, in fighting for economic and social justice for those who need it the most.

We are doing outreach work for the census because we demand to be counted. We see all of the forces that are working to stop us from being counted, from having our voices heard, and we refuse to let them win. We refuse to be silenced, ignored, or erased.

The U.S. Census Bureau has already started mailing information to every household with instructions on how to be counted in the 2020 census. If you dont see anything in the mail, you still have until July to go online or complete the census by phone. Learn more at http://www.demandtobecounted.org, and do what you can to spread the word in your corner of our community: In 2020, demand to be counted.

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2020 Census: The Only Way To Fight Intentional Erasure Is By Intentionally Being Counted - The Seattle Medium - Seattle Medium

Our world has become very small and very large all at the same time. The novel coronavirus COVID-19 is affecting our communities and with it brings the emotional response to threats and crisis.

The human response to crisis has a cycle of emotional reactions, and with pandemics denial and fear are most prevalent in early stages. Denial is by far the most dangerous as it prohibits planning, prevention and response. You can visit denial for short periods, but it isn't a place you want to live.

Fear prompts anxiety, which can generate action and heightened awareness or vigilance. The eventual response state we can redirect and shift ourselves is to conscious awareness, where we can cope.

It is important to know what you are doing and how you are feeling is normal. We can learn from this experience and use it to create lasting change in our communities. This nation has stood politically divided and the space between has brought harmful words and emotions, as well as violence, hate and injustice.

You've felt fear for your family, friends and loved ones, not wanting them to be infected with the virus. That fear is no different than people of color feel in our country every day. They fear for their children, knowing they will likely experience explicit racism and the systematic racismthatdominates our social institutions. Parents of young black men know well the fear of violence or death, acts disproportionately experienced in Americabytheir sons.

You've experienced denial. Your mind needed breaks fromthe possibility the virus will affect you. This denial is no different than that of a young gay man wanting to experience love and physical intimacy with his partner without the fear or acknowledgement of possible risk of HIV infection. The denial is no different than for your friend who suffers the disease of addiction. They want nothing more than to share in the novelty of a glass of wine or beer at the barbecue each summer.

You've gone shopping and stocked food and household goods, afraid you or your family will go without basic needs and nutrition. Each month, low-income families ration and vigilantly count their WIC and food stamp assistance, afraid their children could go without basic needs and nutrition.

You've fled from public spaces and isolated to reduce the risk of exposure to the virus. The same action is taken by immigrants and refugees longing to stay in their countries. When presented with few options of survival, they fled to create a new life and keep their children safe.

You've become vigilant washing your hands, carrying disinfectant, and increased awareness of your surroundings. This risk of something you can't see is the same for transgender women of color, knowing those who have murdered and beaten women just like them who look just like their neighbors and coworkers.

Mainstream America is experiencing a glimpse of the emotional burden experienced daily by minorities in America. Human history shows those holding power in society do not create positive change for minority groups until they are affected. Today in this country is no different.

There is a phrase used in social work and additional fields for a practice of intentional use of our experiences to improve our work with others it is called use of self. This practice of humility acknowledges our own behavioral patterns, explicitand implicit biases, and emotions. This practice involves seeing the world not from a place of judgment but understanding while acknowledging the purpose of behavior. Sometimes we get it right, and other times we lean on peers to return to empathy.

Area nonprofits continue to respond to community needs and do it while pinching every penny and using every ounce of human capital they employ. Support them.

May we each use these experiences to inform and enhance how we see one another. May we gain empathy and understanding for those suffering from the yesterdays of oppression, the todays of the pandemic, and may we not rest until the tomorrows have less suffering for everyone.

These are simple steps toward solutions knowing that no one should live like this not in our community, not in this state, not in our America.

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Pandemic coping mechanisms awaken us to others' reality | Columns | Journal Gazette - Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

San Bernardino County Superintendent Ted Alejandre on Wednesday came out in support of California Schools Superintendent Tony Thurmonds call for California school campuses to remain closed for the remainder of the school year with the expectation that students' education will continue through distance learning.

"Our public school leaders in San Bernardino County recognize the significant impact the coronavirus is having on our students, staff and families, Alejandre said in a press release Wednesday afternoon. In the interest of their health and safety, and out of an abundance of caution, I am recommending San Bernardino County school districts extend school site closures through the end of the 2019-20 school year.

"We believe it is critical to move forward in a collaborative and unified manner in San Bernardino County about the status of our public schools amidst this public health crisis. I have conferred with San Bernardino County district superintendents and public health officials. There is agreement among us that the need to continue safety efforts and social distancing to curb the spread of COVID-19 warrants the continued closure of school campuses across our county.

"This is an intentional decision that puts the safety of students and staff first and foremost. While our school campuses are closed, we have an obligation to ensure our students continue to receive quality education services through the remainder of the school year, with a focus on the delivery of instruction through distance learning and providing school meals to our students.

"I want to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of school staff to serve our students and families with continuity of learning, nutrition and social/emotional supports during these unprecedented circumstances. We recognize the closure of school campuses through the end of the school year brings about many questions for students and parents-particularly our graduating seniors. We are collaborating with state leaders in the development of guidance on these matters and will continue to update our school communities. I encourage families to check local school district websites for additional information."

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San Bernardino County schools superintendent supports continuing the rest of the school year through distance learning - Redlands News

We find ourselves in unique and anxious times. People are frightened, people are unsure, and people are isolated. Quarantine and social distance have become common vernacular for us as we wait and watch for increased numbers of infection, for the COVID-19 virus to take hold of our own families. Being community has become a challenge.

As a new pastor, finding myself in this COVID-19 world is a challenge that they simply dont teach us in seminary. Faith leaders and faith communities have been hit hard by the imposition of crowd sized and quarantines. Our churches are closed and our people are scattered to their safest corners. For faith leaders, rebuilding community in a virus-shaped moment is a professional and spiritual requirement. Caring for congregations and neighbors is not an optional task, it is a divinely mandated part of our work in the world. In times like this, we are minister, chaplain, spiritual guide, factual news provider and a non-anxious voice for those around us.

As we go digital to worship, many ministers are reaching out to offer connection. worshippers join us from their living rooms, we are at home together. We are reconstructing the home church that was the ancient genesis of our churches today. We are gathering in groups, as did early Christians, in our virtual homes. These gatherings arent just an expression of religion, they are also a way to simple be with other people in intentional space. You neednt even be a Christian to encounter a newfound sense of community connection with us. You neednt be religious to find a willing listener and social contact in the ministers around you. Most of us are no longer concerned about shoving doctrine into your brain (some of us never were). We are learning one of the most important lessons of pastoral leadership in this crisis. We are learning to be lighthouse keepers keeping beacons of connection glowing in the dark and the fog. We are guardians of community.

Whatever your feelings on doctrine and dogma may be, no matter how you feel about churches and their leaders, please know that our most important proclamation these days is not a call to convert the masses, it is a call to sustain a sense of hope, to awaken the better parts of us. We are here for you working to follow a simple, gospel command to love our neighbors as ourselves.

The Rev. Benjamin Fitzgerald-Fye

Auburn

Continued here:

Letter: On our own, but we're still together - Blue Mountain Eagle

As the Covid-19 crisis continues to wreak havoc on small businesses across the country, local and national actors have begun to realize the enormity of the economic challenge at hand.

Shortly after a record high 3.3 million in weekly unemployment claims were announced, President Trump signed the CARES Act into law. The race to save our small businesses is on, and it promises to be a challenging one.

Over the past several weeks, many cities enacted local emergency relief funds to give small businesses the capital infusions they need to survive until larger pools of capital are made available through the federal government.

The federal governments CARES Act created two relief vehicles: (a) a ~$350 billion Small Business Administration Paycheck Protection Program and (b) a Federal Reserve Main Street Business Lending Program.

In theory, there would be a natural staging and sequencing of these relief packagesinitially locally generated, then federally supported.

In practice, it appears that the sequencing of relief packages will be anything but linear. Like the public health response, this will be messy and chaotic.

Many small businesses will collapse in the process. This is less a criticism of Congress and the agencies administering relief than a reflection on the complexity of the challenge before us.

Let us start by reviewing

Local economies have not had the luxury of waiting for the passage and implementation of the CARES Act. Across the country, municipalities, philanthropies and related intermediaries have created emergency funding facilities for their small businesses, targeting a narrower definition of small businesses (generally 25 or fewer employees).

These facilities vary widely based on the needs and capabilities of any given place. This week, we detailed a typology of local funds that shows the disparate sources of capital, terms and conditions, and delivery systems organized into five main categories based on the entity leading the charge: city government funds, public entity funds, philanthropic funds, financial institution funds and business chamber funds.

From $100 million in Chicagos Small Business Resiliency Loan Fund seeded by the City and administered by local Community Development Finance Institutions to the Indy Chambers proposed $10 million Rapid Response Loan Fund, community leaders are on the front lines trying to stop the bleeding.

Going forward, the Small Business Administration (SBA) will be a key scaled funding resource for businesses with under 500 employees: The CARES Act appropriated almost $350 billion to the new Paycheck Protection Program.

The program facilitates zero-to-low interest loans that are forgivable if businesses retain their employees through June 2020, making them similar to repayable grants if conditions are met. In addition, applicants can qualify for a $10,000 forgivable advance (grant) within three days of application.

The program appears to be well structured and accessible, but the quantity alone represents a massive distribution and execution challenge for many banks and the chronically underfunded and understaffed SBA (and may nonetheless prove to be insufficient in scale).

The Federal Reserve is also wading into uncharted waters with its proposed Main Street Business Lending Program as part of the estimated ~$4 trillion of capacity created by the CARES Act.

The program is light on details to date, but the Fed is working to put it together. Some estimates predict an allocation of ~$1 trillion to this particular Main Street initiative, which will be focused on small businesses but also include midsize companies with up to 10,000 employees.

The Fed will look to bank intermediaries in order to distribute its loan program. It remains to be seen whether the program will truly reach small businesses in the most need, or be gobbled up by midsize corporations.

The presentation of this hierarchy of small business relief efforts is logical and ordered. But the real world of small businesses and the communities in which they are situatedatomistic, distributed, with intermediaries of widely varied capital and capacitymeans that implementation of these packages will be more symbiotic and iterative than sequenced and separate.

The bad news is that the existence of CARES Act capital does not guarantee that it will serve its intended purpose. The good news is that the circumstances have forced action at the local level.

The SBA, and eventually the Fed, face an enormous challenge of scale, distribution, and delivery.

The SBAs single largest FY2019 program represented $23 billion in loans. Moreover, during hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, the SBA averaged a 70-day timeline to go from acceptance to initial disbursement.

The SBA has already had difficulty with its disaster loan application website in the face of Covid-19. Disbursing ~$350 billion represents an unprecedented challenge under any circumstance, not only for this agency but also for the many financial institutions tasked with deploying the capital. In these circumstances, with severely curtailed social interaction, timely distribution presents an even greater challenge.

While the Paycheck Protection Program allows access for microbusinesses with ~10 or fewer employees (including sole proprietors), the systems in place are not set up to reach them.

This is a recurring problem weve seen with programs aimed to provide capital to places that need it the most: To be effective, these programs must establish local distribution capacity.

In particular, we worry about black-owned businesses which are already less likely to be approved for small business loans, compounding their already-stacked deck of less start-up capital and lower revenues than white-owned businesses.

If proper distribution systems are not set up, the nation risks losing tens of thousands of our most vulnerable businesses, hitting black-owned businesses and the neighborhoods they support especially hard.

SBA certified lenders comprise a relatively small proportion of existing institutions. Distributing the volume of money that the SBA is tasked with will necessarily require a larger number of lenders.

The groups currently offering their help to reach the most vulnerable businesses include Community Development Finance Institutions (CDFI) and to lenders without SBA certification such as Financial Technology companies.

Fortunately, the SBA and Department of Treasury have authority to determine additional lenders.

The economic effects of the Covid-19 crisis have already been devastating, and like the virus itself, have the potential to rapidly multiply in the absence of well-targeted intervention.

Despite the best intentions of policymakers, we believe that local efforts and intermediaries will play a larger role in providing relief to small businesses than previously understood.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean these intermediaries must be properly empowered. This requires that the full financial systemlayers of governments as well as multiple actorstake several intentional actions:

We are increasingly convinced that local funds will have to play an ongoing, indefinite, and expanded role in mitigating this crisis, and believe an initial $25 billion is needed for these funds immediatelycompared to $500 million currently raised, by our conservative estimate.

We propose that already appropriated federal funds, to the greatest extent possible, be used to support local emergency funds to support small businesses and nonprofits, in addition to their efforts to reach businesses directly.

In the meantime, we encourage local governments, philanthropies, and private sector partners to continue supporting these funds.

It is perpetually difficult for the federal government to understand the vast and varied needs of the smallest businesses in far-flung corners of the country. In this, local communities play a vital role in mobilizing to communicate the needs of their at-risk constituents upwards.

As President Roosevelt said in the depths of the Great Depression, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. This crisis demands that successful local experimentation rapidly informs the ongoing federal responses.

We propose that the federal government expand the remit of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council to act as a channel between a subset of the local emergency funds that have been established and the federal agencies tasked to lead the economic rescue.

Many local economic development institutions are repurposing their focus in response to this crisis; so too can the federal government.

Our assessment of local relief efforts shows the critical role being played by local, regional and national CDFIs, private financial institutions that are 100 percent dedicated to lending in ways that support broad-based community wealth.

Financial technology companies offer intriguing but largely untapped assets that have platforms to speed the delivery of resources to cash-strapped small businesses.

We propose that the SBA speed the eligibility process for banks, while the federal government explores waysthrough the SBA, Fed, or otherwiseto engage local CDFIs and financial technology companies as additional outlets and intermediaries to increase its reach and speed to market.

We also propose major financial institutions explore partnerships with CDFIs to bridge the distance between large capital institutions and small businesses.

The economic effects of the Covid-19 crisis have already been devastating, and like the virus itself, have the potential to rapidly multiply in the absence of well-targeted intervention.

The bad news is that the existence of CARES Act capital does not guarantee that it will serve its intended purposethe capital is unlikely to be delivered fast enough to avert economic disaster for many small businesses and the communities they support, the products are unlikely to reach the smallest businesses that may be the most in-need, and the institutions charged with distribution lack a comprehensive network of capable intermediaries.

The good news is that the circumstances have forced action at the local level. If we can cooperate to support and understand the best practices being established on the ground, funnel that information into a feedback loop to inform other communities and the federal response, and engage a more holistic set of intermediaries to execute on these learnings, we may yet stand a chance to salvage our small businesses and establish a more effective financial system going forward.

Bruce Katz is the director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University, created to help cities design new institutions and mechanisms that harness public, private and civic capital for transformative investment.Michael Saadine is a real estate and social impact investor. Colin Higgins is a program director at The Governance Project.

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We need more than the CARES Act to save small business in Philadelphia - The Philadelphia Citizen

Artist and curator Amy Jorgensen (courtesy Amy Jorgensen)

This is the latest installment of the interview seriesMeet the Art Community of the US Southwest. Check out our past interviewshere.

Amy Jorgensen is cofounder of Granary Arts and is currently their Executive Director and Chief Curator. With the vision of supporting long-term engagement between artists and communities, she has curated over 50 exhibitions of artists working in contemporary art and produced companion exhibition catalogues. In addition to developing a spectrum of cultural and educational programming, she launched the Granary Arts Fellows program, Film Feast, and the initiative Critical Ground which explores the impact of art criticism hierarchies and the democratization of art critique. Dedicated to the arts as a maker, facilitator, and educator, Jorgensen was recently honored as one of Utahs Most Influential Artists. In 2019 she spearheaded the publishing of the portfolio and exhibition of DE|MARCATION, the first comprehensive look at the state of contemporary photography in Utah.

Jorgensen is also an interdisciplinary artist whose diverse practice involves creating conceptual, immersive works that blend photography, performance, and video. In the realization of her work, she mines historical and contemporary perspectives to explore alternate and intersecting narratives of the body, desire, violence, and power.She is an Associate Professor of Visual Art at Snow College where she is head of Photography and Media, a member of the Board of Directors for the Utah Arts Council, and a member of the Acquisition Committee for the State of Utah Allice Merrill Horne Art Collection.

Born in Milan, Italy, she received a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University, and an MFA from the University of California San Diego. Jorgensen lives and works remotely in the high plains desert of Utah, and wholeheartedly embraces the practice of building the community you want to be a part of.

***

How long have you been in Ephraim/Utah?

I moved to Ephraim, Utah 15 years ago after an equal amount of time living in major metropolitan areas. It was an intentional move designed to cultivate a life with greater access to the wide open spaces of the West, and be in closer proximity to family. I finished high school in Utah, and placed some deep roots on this turf, the landscape holds formidable ground in my imagination.

What is the first strong memory you have of art?

My parents home was filled with art every wall, table, surface, and stairwell covered. They had a deep appreciation for the relationships and attachments they made with artists and places, in many ways they were collectors of both memory and objects. My childhood friends jokingly referred to my house as the museum. So, I suppose Ive been living and working in museums and galleries for a lifetime. They had a large-scale painting that hung over the dining table, my recollection is that it came from Germany or Poland. It was a heavy and dark scene of a nighttime forest in the depths of winter, and deeply marked with visible brush strokes, more like peaks and troughs. In the midst of this low-key sea of murkiness, there was one blob of creamy white paint. It was my favorite part of the painting, a kind of visual lifeboat in this emotionally hopeless image. This one, creamy, solitary mark on the surface of that canvas is my earliest and strongest memory of art. In retrospect, its such a powerful and visceral indicator of the connections we build to art, and the experiences of the artists who create it.

What are you questioning through your practice right now?

At the time of this interview, the world has been utterly upended by the coronavirus pandemic, COVID-19, and most of the country is under some form of isolation or lockdown to prevent the spread of the virus. Its difficult to think of anything else; this is a defining moment. I am questioning how this will change us. What are the long-term impacts going to be for artists and creative communities? And how will the arts speak to this moment from the perspective of the future?

As Granary Arts transitions from a physical to a virtual space as part of this global response, we are collaborating with the PARC Collective as our next Granary Arts Fellow. They will be exploring the impact of incubation in communities through online content sharing.

What challenges do you face as an artist in Ephraim/Utah?

Ill respond from two perspectives, first, as a curator. In the state of Utah, there are only a handful of museum-based curators dedicated to contemporary art, and they are all located in urban areas. Im the curator at a non-profit contemporary art space located in rural central Utah in a county with a population of roughly 30,000. There are many challenges embedded in the above statistics isolation, politics, resources, networks, poverty all of which are amplified tenfold as a rurally-based curator. Yet, Granary Arts and our mission of supporting contemporary practice is thriving. Built into heart of our structure is the interchange between local and global what has meaning and value to one is also relevant to the other.

Responding as an artist, isolation is the most significant hurdle. In a rural area, there is no immediate access to the vast cultural network and resources found in urban centers, so you have to work much harder to build those systems yourself. I recall when I first moved to Ephraim, the people taking my ticket at the local movie theatre were also the police chief and a city council member. It was fantastic, yet it was the moment I realized everyone in small towns wears multiple hats. The vision for cofounding Granary Arts with fellow artist and long-time friend Kelly Brooks emerged from a similar realization. We recognized that we wanted to live in a place with access to great contemporary art, and that meant engaging in the community, and making it happen.

What is the most impactful or memorable art experience youve had in the last year?

A project many years in the works, I was able to see the completion of DE|MARCATION: A Survey of Contemporary Photography In Utah, a limited edition portfolio co-curated by myself and Edward Bateman, and published by Red Butte Press. Originally inspired by a visit to the archives of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, I began to think about how the portfolio format, popular in the 1970s, could be used in contemporary practice. There were multiple goals: build the photographic community, provide a platform for Utah voices, support the working careers of artists, and place the work of Utah photographers, as a group, on the national radar. The project took three years, dozens of collaborators, and thousands of hours to create.

The collection surveys the contemporary photographic landscape of creative practice by artists in the state of Utah as they navigate new territory in the global dialogue of imagemaking. The works delineate new boundaries and challenge the photographic traditions of the West as a hallowed land the landscape as a rugged vista to be conquered and tamed under the banner of Manifest Destiny and the settling of Zion. Intended to serve as a record of a historical moment, the collection reflects the dynamics of shifting cultural narratives and our relationship to place in a richly interconnected world.

When you are working a project do you have a specific audience in mind?

In curating programming at Granary Arts, I map out an 18-24 month trajectory. Within that timeframe I create a narrative arc for exploring a cross-section of ideas, voices, and perspectives that will resonate with our audience. Its a wholistic approach recognizing the spectrum of the art ecosystem, and the interesting challenge of building real connections with those who may have limited experience with contemporary art.

What questions do you feel arent being asked of or by creative people in your community?

How do we communicate the value of creative labor to audiences, and ultimately increase monetary compensation for creative work? Artists, writers, curators, and other creative collaborators contribute significant time and energy to cultural programming. Yet, most art labor is unrecognized, undervalued, and underpaid. As a small non-profit we feel this burden and would like to contribute to a change in the system. Weve been collecting data to quantify the amount of work involved in our programming for many years, and recently have launched an internal initiative to map how we can share this data most effectively with the public, and then share the template with other arts organizations. Stay tuned

How do you engage with and consume culture?

My remote location certainly dictates much of this. I stay engaged via the more traditional forms of publications, journals, and conferences. However, online formats are critical at this juncture, particularly as we are all now working from home, and in the era of coronavirus. Online content is my initial means of accessing exhibitions, artists, critical content, etc. I really love being able to follow artists work in progress on Instagram and Facebook. And of course, doing studio visits, visiting museums, galleries the best part of my job is supporting and connecting creatives. There are so many ways in which we can engage with one another, and I approach it as participating in culture rather than consuming active rather than passive. Its a larger question of how do we support our community, and keep this art ecosystem alive, fed, and thriving.

What are you currently working on?

We recently launched Critical Ground, an initiative exploring how the dialogue of art critique might shift towards communities and artists working outside the frameworks of NYC and LA. It explores the impact of art criticism and the democratization of art critique through the sharing of ideas and experiences with the intention of mapping an alternate way forward that is more inclusive of the spectrum of work created across the country. In practice, its a series of conversations and brainstorms between visiting critics and artists, curators, writers, and other stakeholders from the region. The conversations are roving: they are studio visits, site visits, and formal and informal discussions. It is a space where strategic thinking meets creative action with the intention to shift the current framework of art critique hierarchy to highlight work outside metro-centered locales. An experimental venture, the intention is to create a platform and space for this conversation in Utah, and to serve as a model for other places in the country with like-minded vision.

Who in your community of artists, curators, archivists, organizers, directors, etc. is inspiring you right now?

Im a huge fan of the ACME initiative at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City. Its a hybrid working model using Art, Community, Museum, and Education to explore themes and issues under the umbrella of activism and engagement.

Where are the centers for creative community in your region?

I live in a region called Sanpete Valley, defined by classic basin and range geography. Artists have been moving to this area for decades, as its a haven and home to several artist-run collectives and nonprofits. Casino Star Foundation, Spring City Arts, Hub City Gallery, Summer Snow, and The Fairview Museum all host exhibitions, open studios, festivals, workshops, lectures, and performances.

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Meet the Art Community of the US Southwest: Amy Jorgensen Wants to Democratize Art Criticism - Hyperallergic

Deadly misinformation spread across social media long before COVID-19 emerged, but amid the ongoing pandemic attempts to tackle such content are once again in the limelight. These efforts provide an opportunity for classical liberals to emphasize the importance of freedom of association and to prepare for discussions about how private institutions handle misinformation amid acrisis.

Too often we think of the freedom of speech to be afreedom that protects speakers from government censorship. And while the freedom to speak is anecessary condition for afunctioning liberal society its not the only freedom implicated in what people refer to as the freedom of speech. The freedom of speech also entails afreedom for publishers and platforms to associate with whomever they want. That The Wall Street Journal is free to reject an oped submission written by the leader of the American Nazi Party is as important afreedom as the freedom of the leader of the American Nazi Party to write the oped in the first place.

The Internet has prompted arevolution unlike anything seen since the invention of the moveable type printing press. Billions of people are able to not only express themselves but form communities of likeminded people across national boundaries. Fortunately, the widespread availability of venues for online speech has not been accompanied by obligations on the part of Internet companies to host speech they find repellent or dangerous. The online site Medium, for example, removed acontroversial essay by Aaron Ginn apparently because they did not wish to be associated with it. In the U.S., Internet companies are shielded from liability for actions associated with removing content.

The freedom of private companies to disassociate from speech that they consider harmful is especially important during the current crisis. Social media companies have implemented avariety of policies aimed at dealing with COVID-19 misinformation. Twitter has expanded its definition of harm to include content that is contrary to health information provided by global and local authorities. Facebook established its COVID-19 Information Center and committed to removing content that could contribute to imminent physical harm. Twitter and Facebook joined Google, Youtube, Reddit, Microsoft, and LinkedIn to issue astatement on COVID-19 misinformation, stating that they are combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world.

These policies have affected heads of states, publications, and individuals. Facebook and Twitter removed videos of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro falsely claiming that the antimalaria drug hydroxychloroquine was an effective remedy. Twitter also removed atweet posted by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro that claimed ahomemade brew could be effective against the coronavirus.

In the U.S publications and pundits have seen their content removed. The Federalist published an article calling for intentional infection gatherings akin to chickenpox parties. Twitter locked The Federalists account in response. President Trumps personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, like President Bolsonaro,supported the hydroxychloroquine remedy in atweet quoting ayoung conservative activist. Twitter removed the tweet. Conservative pundit Laura Ingraham had to remove asimilar tweet in order to avoid her Twitter account being suspended.

Social media companies are not the only Internetbased firms attempting to stop the spread of dangerous information hurting customers. Amazon is attempting to remove scams associated with the ongoing pandemic, removing more than one million products so far.

Social media companies are often relying on other organizations such as government agencies or the World Health Organization as proxies for content moderation and factchecking. While there are certainly advantages to such an approach, it is not without risks, as my colleague WillDuffield has explained.

Popular Internet companies ought to be free to take steps to tackle COVID-19 misinformation. The spread of bogus claims about cures can result in death. But at atime when official organizations have reversed recommendations on the wearing of face masks we should prepare for abreakdown of these organizations reputations to affect the perceived legitimacy of Internet companies content moderation decisions. Amid misguided calls to breakup socalled Big Tech and to amend the law that allows for social media companies to moderate content without fear of liability we should be especially wary of such an outcome.

Special thanks to Cato Institute intern Stephanie Reed and Cato Institute Research Associate Rachel Chiu for their research for this post.

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Combating COVID-19 Misinformation with Disassociation | Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute