Daily Archives: October 24, 2020

Provided by Prince William County Schools (PWCS)

Freedom and Patriot High Schools have been chosen to benefit from a $149,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations (NOAA) Marine Debris Program. George Mason University (GMU) and Keep Prince William Beautiful will administer the grant. The School Divisions Energy Management and Sustainability Team (EMAST) assisted the schools in earning this opportunity and will help coordinate the activities associated with the grant.

Freedom High Biology Teacher Jessica Dorion and Patriot High Earth Science Teacher Melinda Landry will lead 20 teachers and 35 high school student delegates in a project that focuses on single-use plastic water bottles. The project will span two years, with the first year primarily spent learning about the watershed, aquatic life, data collection and analysis, and behavior management. The second year will involve student-led project-based initiatives to educate the community on the understanding of marine debris and how debris becomes part of the aquatic ecosystem.

The grant aligns well with the curriculum taught in Freedoms Center for Environmental and Natural Sciences (CENS) specialty program and lessons teachers at Patriot conduct using their recently transformed outdoor classroom that features a natural pond/aquatic area.

EMAST will help both schools facilitate and coordinate the project activities. Our community partners have a shared vision of a sustainable Prince William County and conserving resources and the environment. It is our students who will carry on this work now and into the future, said Jeanne Jabara, EMAST energy education coordinator.

Landry said, Its exciting to be recognized by NOAA for our efforts in PWCS. With the financial assistance from NOAA and the expertise from others in our community, Im hopeful that we can make a difference in the amount of single-use plastic waste making its way to our watersheds through education of our youth.

In the fall of 2019, Freedom adopted the stormwater drainage pond on their school grounds. The adoption, coordinated through the Prince William Soil and Water Conservation District (PWSWCD) and Prince William Countys Department of Public Works Watershed Division, provided the students with guidance on the clean-up.

Students learned how trash on their own campus could have an impact on wildlife as far away as the Chesapeake Bay. They saw firsthand that most of the trash collected was plastics, specifically plastic beverage bottles, Dorion said. This project made students more aware of the overuse of plastic bottles within their school and sparked their interest in reducing single-use plastic waste. The grant money from NOAA will help students continue their efforts in teaching others about the importance of how marine debris effects watersheds.

For more information on the work that PWCS students will be involved in through participation in the program, check out NOAAs Marine Debris Program account onTwitter,Facebookand theirwebsite.

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Freedom and Patriot High Schools Beneficiaries Of NOAA Grant - Prince William Living

The details are still emerging, but the horror is clear the beheading of a teacher, Samuel Paty, in Paris, apparently in response to his using Charlie Hebdo cartoons in a classroom discussion on free speech.

After such attacks there are always claims that free speech isnt worth it. Hardly had news begun filtering out about the 2015 Charlie Hebdo murders than there were suggestions that the cartoonists had brought it on themselves. The same will no doubt happen again.

But in such moments, we need to do the opposite: to reaffirm commitments to free speech and the freedom to offend.

What is called offence to a community is usually a struggle within communities. There are hundreds of thousands, within Muslim communities in the west and in Muslim-majority countries across the world, challenging religious-based reactionary ideas and institutions - writers, cartoonists, political activists, daily risking their lives in facing down blasphemy laws, standing up for equal rights and fighting for democratic freedoms.

The unwillingness of liberals to stand up for basic liberal principles, their readiness to betray progressives within minority communities, nurtures reactionaries, both within Muslim communities and outside it. The more society gives licence for people to be offended, the more people will seize the opportunity to feel offended. And the more deadly their outrage will become.

Liberal pusillanimity also nurtures anti-Muslim sentiment, feeding the racist idea that all Muslims are reactionary, that Muslim immigration should be stemmed and Muslim communities more harshly policed. We must reject both kinds of bigots. In a plural society, much of what we say, others will find offensive. If we want a plural society, we need to defend the freedom to offend.

Kenan Malik is an Observer columnist

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The freedom to offend is a priceless commodity - The Guardian

In 1978, the U.S. government approached a sound company with a unique proposal. They wanted to develop a specific technology that would allow aircraft pilots and NASA astronauts to communicate clearly with ground crews and other pilots even with the ultra-loud roaring of jet and rocket engines in the background. The resulting technology would later become available for use outside of aeronautic environments; following its use in military headsets in 1986, the technology gradually made its way into mainstream and public usage.

Today, this technology is known as noise cancelation technology, and is used around the world in headphones and earbuds to help people focus on the music, podcasts and other audio that they want to hear while blocking out the sounds that they dont.

Simply putting on any pair of earphones will block outside noise to some extent. But unless you completely seal off your ear, it is impossible to stop outside noise filtering in and interrupting your audio experience. In order to understand the process of capturing and filtering the noise that leaks in that is key to noise cancelation technologies, it is necessary to first look at how sound waves work and how they are transmitted into your ear.

Sound waves are produced by vibrations which then travel long-distance through a surrounding medium to reach your ear. The most common example of this is the air around us. The reason why we can effortlessly carry on a conversation in a caf is the same reason we cannot hear sound in space it is dependent on the presence of air as a medium.

Noise cancelation works by harnessing the unique characteristics of these sound waves and their medium. The first method for canceling noise is called Active Noise Canceling (ANC), which works by creating its own noise-like waves that work to offset the unwanted noises entering your ears from outside. The second method is called Passive Noise Canceling (PNC), which blocks outside noise from entering your ear by limiting the mediums through which the sound is delivered.

It is said that the most effective tool to cut a diamond is with another diamond. Similarly, sound waves can be offset or even canceled by other sound waves. Just like the waves we see in the ocean, sound waves have peaks (the highest point) and troughs (the lowest point). When sound waves with the same distance from peak to trough come from different directions and collide with each other, the respective peaks and troughs clash, leaving the sound wave at a near zero value.

ANC uses this principle of destructive interference to cancel out unwanted sounds before they reach your ears. Sounds from outside are collected through an external microphone mounted inside the earphone. The earphone uses its internal circuits to analyze those sounds and then replicates them to produce sound waves that are similar to the unwanted external sound but that move in the opposite direction. Through this process, the earphone cancels out the unwanted sound waves before they can reach your ears.

Because ANC uses collected sound and responds based on analysis of this outside noise, noise cancelation takes place regularly and continuously. If the earphone picks up a sound that is similar to a noise it has analyzed previously, a reverse wavelength can be emitted at the exact right time in order to eliminate the unwanted noise. This is why this sound offsetting technology is highly effective in places where the background noise is consistent, for example on an airplane or a busy subway. On the other hand, ANC can be less effective in cases where the external noises are random and more difficult to predict, such as during a conversation between two people or when a sudden noise is emitted unexpectedly.

ANC is more effective at mitigating low pitch sounds than it is high pitch sounds. The system requires time to analyze external noises, and that potential time delay can affect how well it offsets external sound and how much external noise the user hears. In other words, unwanted external sounds might come in faster than the ANC can cancel them out. In the case of bass sounds, which have a relatively long wavelength, the gap between the peak and trough of the waves is wide(more time gap), so a slight lag in the offset timing will not impact the quality of ANC, noted Kim. However, high-pitch sounds with short wavelengths have a shorter gap between the peak and trough points, meaning that even a small delay can make it hard for the ANC to match the waveforms up correctly, causing ANC performance degradation.

When they hear a sound they dont like, most people cover their ears this is because this is by far the easiest way to block out noise. Since sound waves travel the air to reach your ear, the sound cannot properly enter the ear if there are obstacles, such as hands, in the way. This is also why communication underwater is so difficult, given the amount of water in the way between a noises source and a persons ears.

This is essentially how PNC works. PNC-enabled earphones are designed to physically block noise out by closing the ear off from its surroundings or using a sponge that absorbs sound. Headphones with over-ear padding covering the entire ear and in-ear earphones that completely block the entrance to the ear are some of the best examples of PNC technology.

Unlike ANC, which requires microphones and analytical circuits to offset unwanted noise, PNC earphones are fairly easy to make, making them generally cheaper than ANC earphones. Furthermore, if PNC earphones have been made to fit the shape of your ear perfectly, they can block outside noise almost entirely, making them more practically effective than ANC earphones. However, as PNC headphones fit right into the ear canal, some users can find these kinds of earphones uncomfortable to use.

In the end, it is not just the noise cancelation technique that matters when it comes to cutting out those unwanted sounds, but also the shape of the earphones themselves. Up until now, most noise-canceling earphones were produced as canal-type earphones since this shape fits right into your ear compared to open-type earphones, which leave more space around the ear and are subsequently less effective at noise cancelation. Open-type earphones have rarely been equipped with noise cancelation technology, but when Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Buds Live on August 5, the company expanded users options by applying ANC technology to an open-type wireless earphone.

While noise cancelation technology can help you fully immerse yourself in your music or better focus on an audiobook, it can also present dangers if you cannot hear exactly what is going on around you. It is difficult to recognize a dangerous situation when wearing earphones with noise cancelation technology as they block out all surrounding sounds, noted Professor Kim. The volume inside a pair of earphones can reach up to 70 to 80 dBspl1 the same as a car horn but since the sound from a users earphones is much closer to a user and more immersive, it is easy for a user to become insensitive to external noises. On top of this, the activation of ANC technology further reduces external noise by around 30 dB while maintaining the sound in the earphones at 70 to 80 dBspl, making it more difficult for users to detect any auditory signs of danger.

When using their noise-canceling headphones, users need to keep their own safety top of mind and have a good understanding of the situations in which they are using their earphones. If you are looking to enjoy your favorite audio indoors, earphones that feature effective noise cancelation are a great choice. However, if you enjoy using your earphones while doing outdoor activities such as jogging, you should be sure to stay mindful of your surroundings at all times and choose earphones that offer a reasonable level of noise cancelation, allowing you to stay aware of the world around you.

1 Decibel (dB) is originally a relative unit of measurement, representing the difference between the level of a base measurement and that of comparison. When used in the context of sound, 0 dB is defined as the lowest sound level a person can hear and is used as an absolute measure (dBspl = dB + sound pressure level (spl)). In other words, dB is used both when representing the difference between the sound of people conversing in comparison to that of a car horn and when expressing the sound of the car horn in absolute terms, but the latter simply omits spl from dB.

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The Freedom Not to Listen: The Story Behind Noise Cancelation Technology - Samsung Global Newsroom

Donald Trump is now back on the road, holding rallies in battleground states. These events, with people behind the president wearing masks but most others not, look awfully irresponsible to most of us some polls show that as many as 92 percent of Americans typically wear masks when they go out.

Trumpworld sees these things differently. Mike Pence articulated the view in the vice-presidential debate. Were about freedom and respecting the freedom of the American people, Mr. Pence said. The topic at hand was the Sept. 26 super-spreader event in the Rose Garden to introduce Amy Coney Barrett as the presidents nominee for the Supreme Court and how the administration can expect Americans to follow safety guidelines that it has often ignored.

Kamala Harris countered that lying to the American people about the severity of the virus hardly counts as respect.

It was a pretty good riposte, but she fixed on the wrong word. She could have delivered a far more devastating response if shed focused on the right word, one that the Democrats have not employed over the past several months.

The word I mean is freedom. One of the key authors of the Western concept of freedom is John Stuart Mill. In On Liberty, he wrote that liberty (or freedom) means doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow, without impediment from our fellow creatures, as long as what we do does not harm them even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse or wrong.

Note the clause as long as what we do does not harm them. He tossed that in there almost as a given indeed, it is a given. This is a standard definition of freedom, more colloquially expressed in the adage Your freedom to do as you please with your fist ends where my jaw begins.

Now, conservatives revere Mill. But today, in the age of the pandemic, Mill and other conservative heroes like John Locke would be aghast at the way the American right wing bandies about the word freedom.

Freedom emphatically does not include the freedom to get someone else sick. It does not include the freedom to refuse to wear a mask in the grocery store, sneeze on someone in the produce section and give him the virus. Thats not freedom for the person who is sneezed upon. For that person, the first persons freedom means chains potential illness and even perhaps a death sentence. No society can function on that definition of freedom.

Joe Biden does a pretty good job of talking about this. At a recent town hall in Miami, he said: I view wearing this mask not so much protecting me, but as a patriotic responsibility. All the tough guys say, Oh, Im not wearing a mask, Im not afraid. Well, be afraid for your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter, your neighbor, your co-worker. Thats who youre protecting having this mask on, and it should be viewed as a patriotic duty, to protect those around you.

Thats good, but it could be much better if he directly rebutted this insane definition of freedom that todays right wing employs.

There are certain words in our political lexicon that belong to this side or the other. Fairness is a liberal word. You rarely hear conservatives talking about fairness. Growth is mostly a conservative word, sometimes the functional opposite of fairness in popular economic discourse, although liberals use it too, but often with a qualifier (balanced or equitable growth, for example).

Freedom belongs almost wholly to the right. They talk about it incessantly and insist on a link between economic freedom and political freedom, positing that the latter is impossible without the former. This was an animating principle of conservative economists in the 20th century like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

Its manifest silliness. To be sure, when they were writing, it was true of a place like the Soviet Union. But it is not true of Western democracies. If they were correct, the Scandinavian nations, statist on economic questions, would have jails filled with political prisoners. If they were correct, advanced democratic countries that elected left-leaning governments would experience a simultaneous crushing of political freedom. History shows little to no incidence of this.

And yet, the broad left in America has let all this go unchallenged for decades, to the point that todays right wing and it is important to call it that and not conservative, which it is not can defend spreading disease, potentially killing other people, as freedom. It is madness.

One thing Democrats in general arent very good at is defending their positions on the level of philosophical principle. This has happened because theyve been on the philosophical defensive since Ronald Reagan came along. Well, its high time they played some philosophical offense, especially on an issue, wearing masks, on which every poll shows broad majorities supporting their view.

Say this: Freedom means the freedom not to get infected by the idiot who refuses to mask up. Even John Stuart Mill would have agreed.

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Theres a Word for Why We Wear Masks, and Liberals Should Say It - The New York Times

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) From a new pair of shoes to skincare, the non-profit Freedom and Fashion empowers women and kids overcoming domestic violence, sex trafficking, and other injustices. For executive director and New Mexico native Laverne Delgado, the mission is personal.

Im a survivor of domestic violence and Ive gone through sexual assault growing up, said Delgado. I identify with the clients and the women that we serve.

The organization works with brands and influencers to donate luxury clothing, hygiene products, and essential goods to survivors. Delgado says the simplest acts like taking care of your skin or hair can begin the healing process.

Regardless of what economic class youre in, girls are girls, women are women, said Delgado. We love to feel good about ourselves.

This weekend, theyre spreading that good feeling in Albuquerque at the Barrett House. While not actively serving as a domestic violence safe house, they do provide shelter to women and children facing homelessness from all kinds of traumatizing events.

We are a shelter and we serve between 35 and 40 women and children every night, said Heather Hoffman, executive director of the Barrett Foundation. We have folks who are cooped up, feeling a little down, morale might be sagging a little bit, harder to get in contact with those services, that sort of thing.

Hoffman says a surprise like this can mean the world to those in the shelter. Freedom and Fashion hopes to surprise other survivors in the area this weekend.

We are always, always astounded by the caring hearts of others and the way folks think of us, said Hoffman. This additional fun thing to put in front of folks is just absolutely fabulous and we greatly appreciate it for sure.

Delgado also hopes getting the conversation going about traumas like violence can heal families moving forward. The strongest chains we have are the ones we put on ourselves so theres no shame in domestic violence, said Delgado.

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, there are resources and help available through the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

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Non-profit Freedom and Fashion surprising local women and kids in need - KRQE News 13

Cameron Sharp embraces ambiguity on a new ramshackle-folk EP recorded in the quiet of night after the birth of his son

On Earth Day in the spring of 2017, two days after Cameron Sharps Ohio State MFA thesis was approved, the musician welcomed a son, Charlie Moon, into the world. And in the days, weeks and months following the birth, Sharp would retreat to the basement at night to quietly play music while his son slept.

I was flexing a muscle that I hadn't in a while, said Sharp, who records under the name sovroncourt.But it also made me feel more centered and closer to understanding where my feet were on the ground with this major upheaval of life.

Down in the basement, Sharp waited for the furnace to go silent, then recorded hushed takes in front of a hot mic. Often, he did so in complete darkness or with only a single light bulb illuminating the room. Sometimes he closed his eyes. Denying himself a sense of sight helped Sharp focus on the sonic space of the songs. What happens if I step into these songs and have the songs live around me instead of sitting in a space and listening to it? Sharp said. I was thinking about having a space that is filled out not just a wall of sound, but a filled-out space where nooks and crannies are considered sonically, not just instrumentally. And then to be in that space.

The guitar is Sharps largest instrument; all the rest, which he made or collected over the years, can fit into a box or a drawer. The process is one that's relatively immediate and quickly satisfied. Its finding a place where something could happen, whether that's a melody or a note or a drum sound, and then just looking at the drawer of little instruments and picking and choosing, he said. It feels important to let that immediacy of a choice kind of dictate what the next move is, whether that's in choosing what instruments to use or what words to use in a song or how a thing is played.

Sharp released the summation of those choices in the form of a new, six-song sovroncourt EP, Hi Shadow (sshhh), which is actually Side A of a 12-song, homespun-folk album (look for Side B next spring, followed by a physical release containing both sides). Sharp wrote, recorded and mixed the songs and played all the instruments, other than a bassline from friend Glenn Davis, who also mastered the release. That was a really special experience, Sharp said of his time with Davis. Being able to talk about [the songs] and have him help me walk through what this album might be like sonically was really, really helpful.

Listening back now, Sharp, whose unrefined vocals take center stage on Hi Shadow, realized the concept of the unobtainable is a through line in the songs.

Its the unobtainable as a clarifying or a freeing sensibility, Sharp said, noting a particular line on Light Around: When words dont work, dont use words.

[Right now] it's fall, and I was out in the woods, and it's so beautiful to be around these trees as they're changing. That was amazing, and I wanted to take photographs of it because I just want to own it somehow. And you can't. That happens in Light Around. There's this stuff that exists and surrounds us, and oftentimes words don't do it justice. And we all know that. We've been in situations where you just can't articulate that sense, and there's something that is frustrating about that. But that can be really clarifying and freeing.

On the track In a Dream, Sharp sings about a photograph depicting someone waving, but he cant tell if the person is saying hello or waving goodbye. Photography is supposed to help tell us what's happening, but in fact, there are these moments, like that situation, where we should have definite truth, but it just kind of confuses us, he said.

For the closing track, Lookin Out My Back Door, Sharp converted a Creedence Clearwater Revival song into a goodnight tune for his son. I would play it to him, and I started playing it in a slower version and style while he was going to sleep. The song turned into this lullaby, Sharp said, noting that some of his own songs, like Nothing At All, have also begun to change over time. I thought that song was about something very specific. I've been playing it for a couple years now, and as I've played it, I recognize that it's not about this specific thing that I thought it was. That song is much more general. I think 2020 has helped shift the lenses for me on how to understand it.

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Sovroncourt finds freedom in the unobtainable - Columbus Alive

There is a word for why we wear masks, wrote Michael Tomasky in The New York Times: "One of the key authors of the Western concept of freedom is John Stuart Mill. In On Liberty, hewrotethat liberty (or freedom) means doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow, without impediment from our fellow creatures, as long as what we do does not harm them even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse or wrong.

Note the clause as long as what we do does not harm them. He tossed that in there almost as a given indeed, itisa given. This is a standard definition of freedom.

Freedom emphatically does not include the freedom to get someone else sick. It does not include the freedom to refuse to wear a mask in the grocery store, sneeze on someone in the produce section and give him the virus. Thats not freedom for the person who is sneezed upon. For that person, the first persons freedom means chains potential illness and even perhaps a death sentence. No society can function on that definition of freedom.

To all who deem mask-wearing as inhibiting personal freedom, I offer the originalists' definition of the word.Freedom means the freedomnotto get infected by those who refuse to mask up. Even John Stuart Mill would have agreed.

Have something on your mind? Send to letters@adn.com or click here to submit via any web browser. Letters under 200 words have the best chance of being published. Writers should disclose any personal or professional connections with the subjects of their letters. Letters are edited for accuracy, clarity and length.

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Letter: The definition of freedom - Anchorage Daily News

In 2020, Hollywood agents and managers who represent female and minority filmmakers are experiencing a mostly welcome, if long delayed, phenomenon lots and lots of incoming calls.

"I have seen an increased commitment and desire for directors and writers to have something in connection with the potential project," says ICM literary agent Ava Greenfield, who represents Black filmmakers such as Regina King, making her directorial debut this year with the Amazon Studios Muhammad Ali film One Night in Miami, and Matthew Cherry, who sold a series based on his Oscar-winning animated short Hair Love to HBO Max in July. "If, for example, the story is centered on Black woman, there is an initial commitment from buyers to find a Black female director or writer for this project. It comes from this understanding that there has to be a connection to the material by a writer or a director."

Studios, motivated either by a sincere desire to diversify their hiring, a sense that genuine connection to material leads to better storytelling or the simple fear of being internet-shamed are increasingly focusing on staffing films and TV shows about underrepresented groups with filmmakers and showrunners from those groups. Current projects that studios are hoping to populate with Black behind-the-camera talent include Marvel's Blade movie starring Mahershala Ali, which is looking for writers, and MGM's Sammy Davis Jr. biopic, which Lena Waithe is producing.

This approach represents a pivot from the way Hollywood used to do business, relying on a short list of mostly white, mostly male directors to helm a broad swath of material. As the marketplace evolves, a question agents have long asked themselves when they receive word of a new project who should tell this story? comes with new complexity.

"People are very aware of the optics of authenticity," says WME agent Tanya Cohen, who represents clients including M. Night Shyamalan and Janelle Mone. "Since the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests, there's been a real shift, and studios are increasingly being conscious and judicious about finding the voices to tell a story from a very authentic point of view."

Some of that awareness has come as a result of audience or critical backlash. Just a few years ago, movies with Black leads like Fox's 2016 best picture nominee Hidden Figures and Warner Bros.' 2013 Jackie Robinson biopic 42 arrived in theaters with little scrutiny about their white male directors. Instead, they were mostly hailed for their inclusive casts and messages of uplift. In 2018, some critics lambasted Universal's Green Book for white filmmaker Peter Farrelly's reliance on racial clichs, but the movie still went on to win best picture and earn $322 million at the worldwide box office.

But when red carpet interviews at the Mulan premiere in March revealed a mostly white production team working under white female director Niki Caro, a headline on the Canadian pop culture website Flare.com read, "The live-action Mulan is already making me mad." A writer for the British newspaper Metro noted, "I've loved Mulan since childhood, but the remake is too white behind the camera."

Industry figures, too, have begun signaling their discontent when a filmmaker doesn't seem steeped enough in a culture to direct a film about it. When news broke in September that Ron Howard would direct a biopic about Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang, The Farewell writer-director Lulu Wang tweeted her frustration. "As a classically trained pianist born in China, I believe it's impossible to tell Lang Lang's story without an intimate understanding of Chinese culture and the impact of the Cultural Revolution on artists and intellectuals and the effects of Western imperialism," Wang said. "Just saying."

Some in the talent-rep world say they worry the new expectations are limiting. "These are writers who are supposed to be able to fictionalize stories that didn't exist from their brains, and we are curbing their ability to create," says one representation source. And some are beginning to steer their white or male clients away from projects that may become controversial because of their attachment. "Twitter and social media are the sole fear of the studios," says the representation source. "We don't want to spend our clients' time [on projects] that studios are going to shy away from."

If white male clients are guided away from projects, that's just fine, say some agents with diverse client lists. "For 120 years it's been assumed that white men can direct any movie," says one agency source. "The pendulum has swung the other way for so long. If we are now living in a period where the pendulum swings too far to the other side, so be it."

On some recent high-profile projects where a white storyteller is presenting a film or TV show featuring a protagonist of color, creators have been careful to open up the process to a more inclusive group of collaborators. When Damon Lindelof created HBO's Watchmen, which features King as its lead, he kept the number of white men in his writers room to four of 12. In making Soul, which introduces Pixar's first Black lead character, a jazz musician, director and studio chief Pete Docter enlisted Black playwright Kemp Powers to join the writing team while the film was in development; Powers has a co-director credit on the film.

But some representatives say the studio inquiries are getting so targeted by demographic, they are creating a whole new problem pigeonholing the underrepresented clients. "The push for diversity has been increasing steadily, but studios are asking much more transparently now," says one industry source. "Now it's, 'Do you have any Mexican writers?' It's very specific where the diversity asks are coming from, and not all clients want to be thought of that way. Some people really feel rooted in telling stories about their identity, and some people want to be seen as a filmmaker regardless of their gender and race."

Some of the incoming calls are perplexing, like the company that sent a comedy script to the agent of a Black female director whose body of work is dramatic because the comedy featured a Black female protagonist, prompting the agent to wonder whether she should be grateful for the submission or point out the obvious mismatch in sensibility.

"As they start to make this outreach, studios are finding that people of color have interest in telling all kinds of stories," says Greenfield. "It's not necessarily just telling stories featuring trauma onscreen. Black people are also interested in comic books, in superheroes, in interesting histories of Black people as a whole."

If studios are overcorrecting to the point of sending any project to a demographically appropriate filmmaker regardless of that person's creative interests, that's a side effect of the industry's long-standing pattern of exclusion, some agents say. The agency source notes: "It speaks to the systemic failure of our business to have nurtured more of these kinds of filmmakers that sometimes you'll just put someone on a list because they're Black or female."

Mia Galuppo and Borys Kit contributed to this report.

This story first appeared in the Oct. 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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Hollywood Agents Navigate New Complexities of Balancing the Demand for Diverse Voices and Artistic Freedom - Hollywood Reporter

Sal Lando, left, of Sterling, holds up signs during a protest against mandatory flu vaccinations, outside the Massachusetts State House, in Boston, earlier this year. Boosted by the pandemic and the political climate, vaccine opponents have started to appeal to a different subset of society invested in civil libertieswhich some health officials say undercuts public health efforts during a critical moment for vaccines.

Nancy Lane/Boston Herald via AP-File

Years before this year's anti-mask and reopening demonstrations, vaccine opponents were working on reinventing their image around a rallying cry of civil liberties and medical freedom.

Now, boosted by the pandemic and the political climate, their rebranding is appealing to a different subset of society invested in civil libertiesand, some health officials say, undercutting public health efforts during a critical moment for vaccines.

A new analysis from several institutions has found that between 2009 to 2019, conversations around civil liberties in the anti-vaccine community had increased, with Facebook pages framing vaccines as an issue of values and civil rights.

Researchers reviewed over 200 Facebook pages supporting vaccine refusal for their paper published in the American Journal of Public Health this month. David A. Broniatowski, the paper's lead author, said current protests against government lockdowns and masks took their pages directly from the anti-vaccine playbook.

We couldve seen it coming, said Broniatowski, an associate professor at George Washington University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. This was all happening right under our noses, and its continuing to happen.

In recent weeks, protesters gathered in Massachusetts to demonstrate against the governors mandate requiring schoolchildren to receive the influenza vaccine. In Facebook pages and groups touting medical freedom and vaccine choice, the protesters have called the mandate unconstitutional and say it infringes on their rights.

Anita Garcia has been protesting vaccines for years and recently took part in protests against the flu mandate in Massachusetts, where she is from. Garcia is a member of an 866-member Facebook group called Massachusetts for Medical Freedom. She said that with the flu mandate demonstrations, she is seeing protesters turn out to object to what they consider government overreach.

All you can do is try to fight for your freedom, Garcia said. We are for medical freedom, bodily autonomy. Our bodies are ours, not for someone else to govern.

Vaccines, though, save lives2 to 3 million a year, according to World Health Organization estimates. And vaccines have all but eliminated from American life such childhood diseases as measles, which regularly infected 3 to 4 million people a year in the United States before a vaccine was developed. It was declared eliminated from the United States in 2000, though low vaccination rates in some communities have led to outbreaks in recent years.

Vaccines are encouraged, or in some cases required, because they have been proven safe and protect not only those vaccinated but also others who can't be by slowing the spread of preventable diseases.

Historically, the anti-vaccine community has been known for its concerns around vaccine safety and the debunked theory that vaccines cause autism. Broniatowski and researchers found, though, that civil liberties have emerged as a common narrative among vaccine refusal pages on Facebook, including those who also supported alternative medicine and conspiracy theories about the pharmaceutical industry and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates.

The rebranding to emphasize liberties is allowing vaccine opponents to exploit American reactions to the pandemic, said Dorit Reiss, a University of California Hastings law professor who specializes in policy issues related to vaccines.

I do think we are seeing an increase in people in support of them just because more people are vulnerable, upset and distrustful," Reiss said. And the anti-vaccine movement knows exactly what to say."

Medical freedom advocates are moving quickly on social media to capitalize around the frustration around the pandemic. During this month's vice presidential debate, Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris was asked if she would take a coronavirus vaccine. Harris responded by saying she'd take the vaccine if public health professionals recommend itbut that if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, Im not taking it.

Shortly after her remark, accounts and pages on Facebook and Twitter that support medical freedom began circulating a text post that said Kamala wont take a vaccine that DJT pushed. Imagine being forced to take a mandated vaccine from a leader you disagree with!! The irony. Do you NOW understand what Medical Freedom means?

You can see the consequences to these groups sowing distrust around vaccines. And they really matter, and they are going to come out in this pandemic, said Mark Dredze, associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University and one of the papers authors.

In May, a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 31 percent of Americans were unsure if they would get the COVID-19 vaccine once released.

Medical freedom supporters are pushing out their message to a significant portion of Americans who are not anti-vaccine but who are witnessing the politicization of the virus and have concerns about the vaccine, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Children have a fundamental right to access to vaccines," said Hotez, who is also co-director of the Texas Childrens Hospital Center for Vaccine Development. You need a high percentage of vaccine coverage in order to achieve herd immunity to protect all children."

As public health officials fight the pandemic and groups push for the economy to reopen, one expert suggests that health professionals trying to find common ground are going to have to meet people where they are.

You cant have a system that will result in us no longer being able to protect our communities from measles because we allow so much of the choice to occur that vaccine rates plummet, said Ross D. Silverman, professor of health policy and management at Indiana University. There is an alchemy there.

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Stressing Freedom, Vaccine Opponents Are Rebranding in the COVID-19 Era - Education Week

(The Center Square) Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill responded to what he called threats to religious congregations in one Indiana county with a letter warning local health officials to back off.

According to Hill, such a warning constitutes an effort, at the very least, to chill the right of individuals to congregate in exercise of their religious freedom.

According to a news release from Hill, St. Joseph County health officials sent a letter dated Oct. 13 to faith community leaders, saying the rise in COVID-19 cases over the past several weeks have put a strain on hospitals.

The letter, signed by St. Joseph County Health Officer Dr. Robert Einterz and Deputy Health Officer Dr. Mark Fox, also said local and state health officials identified five COVID-19 clusters associated with church attendance, faith communities and congregations in the county.

Health officials said that analysis was inconclusive but pointed out the risks of large indoor gatherings. Their letter urged all faith communities to move to online or virtual worship formats through March 2021.

Health officials also wrote they would have to respond to complaints about safety concerns.

We recognize that not all faith communities will share our sense of urgency related to either the status or the impact of COVID-19 in our community, the letter from health officials said. We are happy to review COVID-19 safety plans for congregations intended to continue in-person worship, however, we will also be compelled to respond to any complaints we receive regarding safety concerns identified in any establishment in the county, including churches.

Hill read that as a threat to religious institutions and responded with his own letter.

Notwithstanding your best intentions of safeguarding public health, I am concerned that the letter facially targets churches and carries a thinly veiled authoritarian tone, Hill wrote. Your decision to write a threatening letter despite a not conclusive study is a surprising and disappointing abuse of your power as county health officials. Here in Indiana, we do not govern by decrees from county officials that strip individual liberty in a such a manner.

The rest is here:

Indiana AG responds to what he calls threats to religious freedom - pdclarion.com