Daily Archives: August 18, 2021

A 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on Saturday, resulting in the deaths of over 1,200 people and injuring thousands more, according to CNN. The Haitian government has declared a state of emergency as hospitals are filled to capacity and displaced people struggle to find accommodation.

And now, meteorologists are warning that Tropical Storm Grace will hit the island nation this week, potentially disrupting recovery efforts and exacerbating damages.

Occurring west of Haitis capital Port-au-Prince and just 60 miles from the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that occurred in 2010 which killed between 220,000 and 300,000 people and displaced thousands Saturdays earthquake sent shockwaves through a community reeling from political instability and rebuilding efforts.

After the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Mose in July, widespread civil unrest took over the country. Haitians protested government corruption and the countrys weak economic situation, leading to an influx of violence and food and fuel shortages.

And despite the allocation of billions of dollars to support the country in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake, missteps from international groups and public institutions have prevented Haiti from fully recovering.

For this reason, humanitarians and Haitians alike are asking the international community to be intentional and cautious about how they support the country in the wake of Saturdays earthquake.

"I offer my sympathies to the relatives of the victims of this violent earthquake which caused several losses of human lives and property in several geographical departments of the country," Prime Minister Ariel Henry wrote on Twitter as part of a series of tweets about the situation. We need a lot of support to help the population, especially the wounded.

While Henry has not yet called on the international community for support, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Global Citizens around the world can help those affected by the earthquake in Haiti by donating to organizations doing work on-the-ground, as well as by sharing factual information on social media from reputable sources.

Haiti Communitere is a community resource center that supports local groups in Haiti by providing funds, resources, and space. Since the 2010 earthquake, the Port-au-Prince-based organization has supported earthquake recovery efforts for communities in Haiti and is currently assessing the damage from Saturdays earthquake to best coordinate local efforts.

Donate to Haiti Communitere here.

Several groups in Haiti, including Haiti Communitere, have suggested donating to the HERO Foundation to provide tourniquets and medical training to police officers in Haiti. As search-and-rescue efforts continue in the country, providing medical supplies, individual first aid kits (IFAK), and medical training are essential to help as many people recover from the earthquake as possible.

Donate to the HERO Foundation here.

The Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF) renewed calls to support its emergency relief fund, which began as a way to assist Haitians affected by the 2010 earthquake. As a local organization, HERF distributes donations to organizations based in Haiti that are coordinating grassroots efforts to help those in need.

Donate to HERF here.

The Florida-based organization Hope for Haiti is committed to on-the-ground efforts in Les Cayes, one of the cities most affected by Saturdays earthquake. These efforts include distributing emergency kits, opening an infirmary for those in need, and partnering with medical teams to identify which areas of the country can most benefit from additional health care assistance.

Donate to Hope for Haiti here.

Ayiti Community Trust was founded to help develop short-term aid into long-term support, supporting several local initiatives in Haiti to address poverty, education, and environmental concerns. In the wake of the latest earthquake in Haiti, the group launched the Earthquake Relief Fund to support local Haitian-led organizations.

Donate to Ayiti Community Trust here.

Project St. Anne (PSA) began as a way to support educational opportunities for vulnerable children in Haiti, but has expanded its efforts to support relief efforts. Because of its local coordination, PSA has ties to community organizations that are serving as on-the-ground support systems for those impacted by natural disasters.

To support its efforts to help vulnerable people after Saturdays earthquake, PSA asks that people donate to its Zelle account, the information for which can be found on the organizations website.

Learn more about how to support PSAs efforts here.

You can join the Global Citizen Live campaign to defeat poverty and defend the planet by taking action here, and become part of a movement powered by citizens around the world who are taking action together with governments, corporations, and philanthropists to make change.

Read more from the original source:

6 Ways You Can Help Haiti Right Now Wherever You Are in the World - Global Citizen

Cannabis has many healing properties and when used to combat anxiety, pain and symptoms of chronic illness, many Black women have shared that using it as part of a health and wellness routine can have life changing benefits.

During the 2021 ESSENCE Festival of Culture, panelists Michele Harrington, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Foria Wellness, a wellness company that sits at the intersection of intimacy and cannabis, Dr. Safiya Lyn-Lassiter, the founder of Ask Dr. Lyn, a South Florida based company that helps people acquire their medical marijuana card, and Mary Pryor, the co-founder of Cannaclusive, an organization created to facilitate fair representation of minority cannabis consumers, sat down together for a powerful discussion on the positive impacts of normalizing medical marijuana in the Black community.

The women spoke candidly about how positively their success with cannabis as healing has been received by their peers and the community thus far.

[Cannabis] is a medicine, says Pryor. And I think that we have to speak to that more. We have to be more honest about how health and equality affects us across the board, especially as Black women, and what education around this plant can really do.

Spreading the word is a critical component, explains Pryor, who has been very vocal about using cannabis to help manage her Crohnes disease.

There are so many things that are changing every day with how the science works and we have to try to educate each other on a regular basis and not be afraid anymore, Pryor adds.

After discovering the positive benefits of using cannabis products to help combat her anxiety during the pandemic, Harrington shared the companys products with some of her close girlfriends and found that they also saw improvements from using cannabis products. Convinced more Black women need to know about the alternative, Harrington reached out to Foria Wellness to offer her services to partner on supporting the popular intimacy brands diversity approach.

Everybody was raving about their pain relief and using the tonic for their anxiety, says Harrington. And I pitched to Foria and said, youre not leaning into this multi-cultural market. We dont know about you. I pitched to them and they created a space for me. I pretty much pulled up my seat to the table.

And we have to keep pulling up to those tables to counterbalance the narrative, insists Pryor.

There are a lot of stereotypes and things that were told to us about our use of this plant, that simply isnt true and its been kind of used against us in terms of criminalization and not given us a chance to have operational businesses or be included in this industry, she explains. But when you think about whos in jail and whos seen as the bad guy its mostly Black and brown people.

Both women shared their hopes for how Black women can continue to propel the momentum of this movement forward, as both consumers and entrepreneurs.

My wellness hope for Black women is conversation and intergenerational sharing and downloading of what we need to live better, be better and want better, says Pryor. There are many things that may not have been taught to us given how weve grown up, so we have a lot of catching up to do on a regular basisthe willingness and the intent is what matters.

Harrington agrees.

My wellness hope for Black women is for us to be intentional with our time and making it a routine to have some sort of me time, shared Harrington. If were not making time for ourselves and being available and present, its not going to allow us to be available or present for anyone else. And also, spreading the word [about cannabis as a tool for healing] and continuing to touch other people so that were continuously spreading the message and changing the narrative.

Watch the full conversation above.

Read more here:

Getting Real About Normalizing Conversations Around Cannabis and Healing In Black Communities - Essence

More than five years ago, several presidents of North Carolina Community College System institutions were visiting the NCState College of Education when the discussion turned to the professional development of community college leaders and how NCState could help support those goals.

In 2015, the College of Education received a $525,000 grant from the John M. Belk Endowment to start the Envisioning Excellence for Community College Leadership program.

Led by Dean Mary Ann Danowitz, D.Ed. who was head of the College of Educations Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at the time W. Dallas Herring Professor Audrey Jaeger, Ph.D., and Associate Professor James Bartlett, Ph.D., the Envisioning Excellence program integrated evidence-based best practices into leadership training programs to help community college leaders improve student success and institutional performance.

With more than $10 million in additional funding from the John M. Belk Endowment in 2018, the program evolved into the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research, allowing the NCState College of Education to further the preparation of future community college presidents, provide ongoing leadership development to community college executives and build capacity for evidence-based decision making and applied research.

Today, the Belk Center supports all 58 of North Carolinas community colleges and is helping produce the next generation of community college leaders through the College of Educations community college leadership doctoral program.

The Belk Center provides critical services to North Carolinas community college through its expertise in executive leadership development and data analyses, said Jaeger, who today serves as executive director of the Belk Center. This work extends NCStates land-grant commitment to every corner and community of the state supporting some of the most underserved populations in pursuit of postsecondary education.

When community college presidents met at the College of Education back in 2015, they were aware that nearly half of North Carolinas 58 community college presidents were expected to retire by 2019.

To address this challenge, the College of Education transformed the way it prepares community college presidents, redesigning the adult and community college education doctorate degree to become the community college leadership program, which helps to produce a pipeline of community college leaders who are prepared to tackle modern challenges.

The cohort-based program, housed in Raleigh and Charlotte, combines the experience and expertise of sitting community college presidents and College of Education faculty for a course of study that blends theory, research and best practices and utilizes a practice-oriented curriculum in leadership that emphasizes equity, completion, learning and labor market outcomes.

A partnership between the community college leadership program and the Belk Center has also allowed for the creation of the innovative and award-winning Executive Mentorship Program, which pairs doctoral students with a current community college leader who serves as their mentor.

These mentors offer each student access to opportunities to experience leadership in practice, ask questions to connect classroom learning to practice and provide career advice to help ensure they are prepared to advance their careers after completing their doctorate, Bartlett said.

Lance Gooden 22EDD, dean of Building, Engineering and Skilled Trades at Durham Technical Community College, said that being paired with Stanley Community College President John Enamait, Ph.D., as a mentor has been one of the most impactful experiences of his doctoral career.

He also credits the doctoral programs cohort model with helping him to get his current position at Durham Tech and for giving him the opportunity to network and collaborate with other researchers and community college leaders through projects and conferences.

When I started the program, I had maybe 14 years of experience in the community college system, but I knew nothing, he said. Having individuals like these professors who are in the classroom with that deep, rich practitioner knowledge and the outside individuals who really expand our knowledge of the community college system was fantastic.

The College of Educations community college leadership program is preparing the next generation of community college presidents through a course of study that blends theory, research and best practices and utilizes a practice-oriented curriculum in leadership that emphasizes equity, completion, learning and labor market outcomes.

Enroll now

In addition to the mentorship program, the doctoral program works with more than 20 community college leaders from North Carolina and across the country who serve on dissertation committees to ensure research connects to the complex problems of practice. Belk Center staff also work with students after they complete their dissertation research to help them develop practice briefs and disseminate their findings to the field.

One of the biggest changes has been the faculty commitment to integrating highly successful community college leaders into courses to provide intentional connections that enable students to connect theory to practice, Bartlett said. The research that students are conducting for their dissertations is now seeking more input from leaders in the field to help ensure they are addressing complex problems from a pragmatic lens.

Currently, 11 College of Education alumni are serving as presidents in the North Carolina Community College System with more working in administrative roles, including Yolanda S. Wilson, Ed.D., vice president of instruction at Wilkes Community College.

Wilson refers to her time as a doctoral student at NCState as one of the most meaningful professional development opportunities of her career. The coursework, she said, allowed her to think through complex problems related to teaching and learning, transfer and completion and economic mobility, challenging her to consider strategic ways to advance student success and achieve more sustainable outcomes.

Through rich discussion, case studies and immersion experiences, I was able to immediately apply what I learned at my workplace and eventually advance to a more senior administrative role at another institution, where I employ those skills for even greater impact, she said.

Through their research and professional opportunities, the Belk Center is also helping current community college leaders address pressing issues related to student success and transfer, teaching and learning initiatives, strategic planning and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The presidential leadership initiatives are focused around continuous improvement and equitable student outcomes that lead to transformational change across North Carolina and its communities, said Professor of the Practice Mary Rittling, Ed.D.

Over the past year, the Belk Center has hosted the Critical Conversations series, comprised of five virtual events focused on topics including leading for equity, teaching and learning and use of pandemic relief funding.

In addition, they created the Presidents Academy Teaching and Learning series which was designed collaboratively with the Aspen College Excellence Program and Achieving the Dream to engage presidents in deep-dive conversations about teaching and learning work. The Belk Center also designed and delivered two events specifically for the North Carolina Association of Community College Presidents focused on strategic finance and trustee relations.

At the Belk Center, we lean on the relationships we have with college leaders and practitioners to inform the research questions that are most impactful to pursue. We think its vital to provide leaders with timely, accessible and digestible research to help them make the decisions they need to for student success, said Holley Nichols, a research associate at the Belk Center. We know that this work is contributing to the policies and practices used in community colleges, which is incredibly fulfilling for our team.

In 2020, the Belk Center put research into practice by collecting and analyzing strategic plans from 55 North Carolina community colleges more than half of which were set to expire to determine how the institutions documented their intent and progress in promoting student success.

The study found that strategic plans varied widely across the North Carolina Community College System, leaving an opportunity for campuses to engage in planning efforts that align systemwide and with labor force needs. The research also suggested that not all community colleges had comprehensive, current or effective strategic plans. As a result of this research, many community college presidents expressed interest in receiving support, which led to the Belk Center developing individualized plans to assist community colleges through the strategic planning process.

The Belk Center stepped in at a critical point in our strategic planning process. Belk Center team members were expert consultants with our planning team and provided resources and reflective activities that led our team to develop evidence-based strategies and action plans for our Vision 2025 Plan, said Brian Merritt, Ph.D., president of McDowell Technical Community College. As a result of the Belk Centers support, our colleges vision to learn and grow is reflective of creating equitable solutions and outcomes for individuals, our community and our institution.

Tracy Mancini, Ed.D., president of Carteret Community College, said that her work with the Belk Center has helped pinpoint meaningful quantitative and qualitative data that have informed strategic efforts at the college.

The Belk Center helped Carteret Community College leaders review their mission, vision and values as they engaged in the strategic planning process and is conducting a diversity, equity and inclusion case study to evaluate the institutions efforts to reach underserved populations in the community.

Through working with the Belk Center, Mancini said that Carteret Community College has been able to examine data related to outreach, onboarding, retention and completion outcomes for unserved and underserved community members, providing a clear picture of efforts that are working and those that need to be refined.

Having access to accomplished current and former community college presidents, as well as experts in governance, planning and success initiatives, has provided our faculty, staff and trustees with the objectivity and confidence needed to develop and model effective support of student and community success, Mancini said.

Since 2015, the annual Dallas Herring Lecture has focused on national issues contextualized to North Carolina, inviting top community college leaders to speak on urgent and emerging topics, framing how to address the issues and proposing a path forward.

The impact of the event has grown exponentially over the past several years, with more than 1,800 people registering to attend the 2020 event. The transformation of the lecture from what was originally a faculty-centric event to one accessible to a national audience, has helped to elevate issues related to community colleges and led to action to address such issues in North Carolina.

For example, the 2019 Dallas Herring Lecture, delivered by Valencia College President Sanford Sandy Shugart, focused on Ecosystem Thinking in Higher Education: The Future of Transfer and argued that the system of transferring credits from community colleges to four-year universities must be redesigned.

Following that lecture, Belk Center researchers took an in-depth look at the variety of pathways, policies and student experiences that impact transfer for North Carolina students. As a result, they were able to provide individualized data to community college leaders that showed success rates for students who transferred to University of North Carolina System institutions and disaggregate the data to look at how transfer patterns differ among historically underserved groups.

The Belk Center also engaged in work surrounding teaching and learning initiatives as a result of the 2018 Dallas Herring Lecture, The Urgent Case: Centering Teaching and Learning in the Next Generation of Community College Redesign, delivered by Achieving the Dream President Karen Stout.

In response to that lecture, Belk Center researchers, postdoctoral scholars and graduate students worked with partners at Achieving the Dream to conduct six case studies of teaching and learning at community colleges across North Carolina. The goal of the studies was to understand how community colleges support teaching and learning on campus and what professional development opportunities are available for faculty.

The case studies demonstrated that community colleges have opportunities to create teaching and learning communities across their campuses to support faculty who are working in classrooms. In addition, the work helped identify key opportunities to support part-time and adjunct faculty who have a significant role in educating community college students.

The work that stemmed from the 2018 Dallas Herring Lecture has helped to facilitate the development of Teaching and Learning Hubs that will offer statewide professional learning programs. The hubs will support faculty at North Carolina community colleges by helping them to learn about, adopt, test and scale evidence-based strategies that have increased student success outcomes nationally.

These hubs, having multiple locations across the state, will work in complement with individual colleges teaching and learning centers and professional development educators to support scalable and sustainable professional learning activities for full-time and adjunct faculty that will impact thousands of North Carolina students for years to come, Jaeger said. This latest project is a natural evolution of the work weve done over the years to support our states community colleges and the communities they serve.

See more here:

Envisioning Excellence to the Belk Center: How the College of Education Has Changed the Way Community College Leaders are Supported, Prepared - NC...

One of toxic whiteness greatest successes is convincing white people that any talk about racism is taboo and, ironically, racist. Youve heard President Obama called a racist because, during his term in office, he talked about race. So, white people like me dont talk about race or racism. We dont build skills or comfort around talking about race and racism.

Chion Wolf :: Connecticut Public

Abby Anderson

Another success of toxic whiteness is indoctrinating white people that the worst possible thing that could happen to a white person is to be accused of racism. In some ways I think this is framed as worse than taking actions that directly hurt Black people. There were politicians who listened to hours of testimony from Black people about negative, blatantly racially motivated interactions with police and then voted against the police accountability bill those Black voters said they needed to feel and be safe in their communities. They were outraged when commenters called the position they took racist.

This narrative of toxic whiteness and the mindset it creates is grounded in the idea that racism is only one easy-to-define and recognize thing an overt, personal or systemic action clear and blatant in its intentional purpose to discriminate. In reality, racism is deep, wide, sneaky, and baked so deeply into our structures, lives, and thinking that we white folks mostly dont see it and rarely perpetuate it intentionally. When Black people or others impacted by these structures and thinking point racism out to us point out the difference between our intention and our impact, we dont believe them and instead accuse them of playing the race card or making everything about race.

Everything in American culture is about race. It was designed that way. Housing, education, policing, incarceration, banking, recreation, economic mobility, health care, all of it is rooted in racially-motivated philosophy and intent.

We are a country that declared in its founding documents that Black people only counted as 3/5th of a person. It took me a long time to realize that fraction wasnt simply about the math of legislative districting and political representation. In making that statement, the bedrock document of our country stated that Black individuals were only 3/5th human, just a little more than half. When a country builds itself and all of its institutions based on the belief that only some of the individuals in it are fully human, using skin color as a metric, it is impossible for those institutions to one day transform themselves to be color blind and race neutral. In fact, color blindness or race neutrality arent the goals. We need individuals and institutions to acknowledge their history and then listen to and hire from the community most harmed to lead the work needed to imagine and create new ways of being that give all people the chance to thrive.

It is hard work for white people to recognize the sea of privilege and toxic whiteness culture we are raised in and benefit from. Its scary. It shakes our foundations. It makes us question everything we were taught, the way weve developed our own value systems. That is all true. It is also true that the pain of recognizing complicity with toxic whiteness and racism cant be compared with the pain of being the target of racist actions, policies, and institutions, whether those are implicit or explicit, intended or inflicted with complete ignorance.

Asking for help is not valued in our society, no matter who you are. We value rugged individualism, honoring those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Rugged individualists dont ask for help. (By the way, Rugged Individualism is also a great marketing tool of toxic whiteness perpetuating the idea that things outside of ones control have no impact on their ability to succeed.) I had to go through a full burn-out resulting in a three month leave-of-absence before I recognized asking for help as a leadership strength, not a symbol of weakness. Our culture lionizes individual leaders, holding them up as the faces of the work, with philanthropic, shareholder, and campaign fundraising dollars funneled to personalities rather than missions.

Take an environment where asking for help is personally and organizationally discouraged and add toxic whiteness message that white people talking about, and inevitably making mistakes around, race and racism is a bigger problem than racism itself, and youre going to get a situation where white people calling each other in and saying, lets talk about how we are doing this race work and wrestle with the hard questions about how it impacts us as white people is rare.

Again, being victimized by racism and the resulting short- and long-term trauma and lack of access to opportunities is something I cannot understand. I will also repeat that understanding, processing, and undoing internalized white supremacy is hard, painful work for white people. Those two things can both be true and not in competition with each other. White people should not prioritize or center their pain and struggle over that of Black people and others who have been oppressed. White people should not explicitly or implicitly ask Black people for sympathy, understanding, or pity because undoing our toxic whiteness requires hard work. That is inappropriate. White people can and should talk with each other to validate and normalize the fact that the work is challenging, deeply uncomfortable, and requires time and emotional energy.

If we as white people do not name the difficulty and challenge, we continue to keep the work quiet, in the dark underground. Toxic whiteness, racism and all of the isms love the darkness. They thrive on white peoples fear, whether that be the fear that other white people will see them as a traitor to their race, someone pushing too hard for change outside of the comfortable -for-white-people norm, or fear that Black people and other traditionally oppressed people will get angry or name our mistakes and missteps on the way to undoing toxic whiteness. Heres the truth: both of those things will happen. White people talking about undoing whiteness angers some other white people. Some will loudly complain or make threats. Others will quietly take you aside.

White people working to undo toxic whiteness will make mistakes. We will misspeak, misunderstand ally-ship, step forward at the wrong times, unintentionally offend, and do harm. Black people and other individuals from marginalized groups will call us out. Sometimes they will do so gently, calling us in. Other times they will respond with anger and resentment, tired of holding space for yet another white persons educational process.

Heres the question us white folks have to ask ourselves: Are your fears of experiencing the legitimate discomfort of those situations bigger and more important than undoing the harm racism and oppression perpetrate on human beings every day? Are those fears more important than creating a world rooted in equity?

The work of dismantling white supremacy is systemic. Personal decisions and actions wont take us the whole way. But, this decision-point white people face is personal. We have the privilege to decide whether to face that discomfort, guilt, and fear. Black people do not get to choose whether racism will impact their lives.

Once you make the choice to walk into the space of unlearning toxic whiteness, naming that it is hard work is OK. Discussing your successes, failures, ongoing questions, fears, and exhaustion with other white people is OK. My conversations with white people, I knew, would both hold me while I cried and hold me accountable to doing better have been my lifeline as I do the work. Its not the only part of the work. Its one piece of the work. Its a piece that can no longer be underground.

Abby Anderson spent over a decade as executive director of a statewide nonprofit and is the founder of The Justice Walk

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The rest is here:

Opinion White people need to circle up - The CT Mirror

August 17, 2021

Previously, Verve was named to the 2020 and 2019 National Winner list, the 2019 Best and Brightest in Wellness list and has received regional Best and Brightest honors in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Verve will be honored during the virtual Illuminate Business Summit celebration in November 2021.

"When talent can choose from a wide range of industries, it's a particular source of pride for our team to be honored with a spot on the National Best and Brightest Companies to Work For list," said Karrie Drobnick, Chief Marketing + Strategy Officer at Verve. "Culture is woven into every strategic decision we make. Seeing Verve named a workplace of choice not just locally, but in the nation is result of putting people at the heart of decision making, communication, hiring and development opportunities.

Companies are nominated and selected based on a lengthy self-assessment completed by the nominees and anonymous surveys sent to their team members. Verve was evaluated on a variety of categories, including: compensation, benefits/employee solutions, employee enrichment, engagement/retention, employee education/development, recruitment, selection/orientation, employee achievement/recognition, communication/shared vision, diversity/inclusion, work-life balance, community initiatives, and strategic company performance.

"Creating a best-in-class workplace requires intentional effort for us and is achieved through servant leadership culture tools, consistent and purposeful communication, leadership development, monthly one-on-one coaching and a robust wellbeing program. These and a variety of other programs and tools empower Verve team members to excel in and bring their best selves to everything they do," said Kevin J. Ralofsky, president and CEO of Verve. "It was our strong culture and engaged team members that led to the successful implementation of our recent technology upgrade to bring a new suite of tools to our members. Our team continues to refine those tools and processes to maximize our member experience and community benefits."

Demonstrating the Best and Brightest Programs' mission of "Better Business, Richer Lives, Stronger Communities," Verve is being recognized for its ongoing commitment to exhibiting sound business practices, empowering employee enrichment and positively impacting the surrounding community. In addition to offering servant leadership training and an award-winning wellness program, Verve is well known in the community for its acts of kindness known as Random Acts of Verve.

Original post:

Fox Cities Chamber: World-Class Culture Earns Verve Prestigious Workplace Recognition For Second Year In A Row - Patch.com

The Brazilian state of Acre, nestled along the border with Peru and Bolivia in the Amazon, has been called the place where the wind makes the curve, a saying that, in Portuguese, means somewhere very far away.

Theres [even] an ongoing joke in Brazil about Acre not really existing, Foster Brown, senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and adjunct professor at the Federal University of Acre, told Mongabay.

But Acre, which is about the size of the U.S state of Florida and 80% covered in old-growth Amazon rainforest, does exist. And, ironically, it is the place where the winds do curve, carrying the Amazons flying rivers, the large masses of moisture that move above the rainforest, from the east to the southeast.

The state has a long history of environmental leadership, punctuated by Acres own Chico Mendes, the famed trade union leader who organized a peaceful resistance movement to prevent forest destruction before his murder in 1988. And Acre, says Brown, is one of the Brazilian states historically considered to be a green state.

But even Acre is not too green to burn. As of Aug. 15, 29 major fires have been set this year in Acre since May, burning more than 1,000 hectares (about 2,500 acres), according to the Amazon Conservation AssociationsMonitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP). Only one major fire was reported by the same date last year, burning 20 hectares (50 acres). In 2020, 91 major fires burned 3,067 hectares (7,579 acres) total in Acre between May and November.

In Acre, as in the rest of the Amazon, fire is used as a tool to clear land for agriculture, mainly cattle ranching and soy farming. Typically, forests are cut during the wet season and then set ablaze during the dry months (May through October) of the same or following year. Because of this pattern, deforestation can be used as a predictor of the coming fire season.

As of this week, there are 20% more deforestation alerts than the same week last year, Sonaira Souza da Silva, a fire expert, and professor at the Federal University of Acre, told Mongabay.

And, according to her most recent July 31 bulletin, less than 1% of land deforested in 2021 has already burned. Thats bad news for the future, she says, because thats all going to burn either this year or next.

This years historic drought in the Amazon, coupled with high levels of deforestation, has experts worried that this will be a bad year for fires.

We have about 20% less rainfall in this region [Acre] from August to October than in the 1980s, Liana Anderson, a scientist at Brazils National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters (CEMADEN) told Mongabay. We have all these factors that enhance the probability of wildfires and on top of that, because of the major drought, we have more dead trees in the forest. So, everything is more vulnerable to fires.

Acre has been the epicenter of mega droughts in 2005, 2010 and 2016. It was in 2005 that fires began, notably, to leave deforested agricultural lands and burn in standing Amazon rainforest, where fires have not historically occurred.

The dogma up to then was that its too wet in the western Amazon for that to occur, Brown told Mongabay. And then 2005 happened The fires were so far out of control and going into the forest So that is when we lost our innocence.

That age of innocence has been lost all across the Amazon. Last year, anunprecedented number of major fires(41% of total fires between May and November) burned in standing rainforest, covering an area roughly the size of the country of Wales in the U.K.

Whether the percentage [of fires in 2021] is going to be more than what it was last year, I dont know, Philip M. Fearnside, an ecologistat the National Institute for Amazonian Research (INPA) in Brazil, told Mongabay. But the fact that theres likely to be more burning means that theres probably going to be more forest fires as well.

A recent study by Silva, Fearnside and others examined burned areas in Acre between 2016 and 2019 and found that unprecedented levels of fires burned in standing rainforest in 2019, which was neither a drought nor an El Nio year (when warming of Pacific Ocean currents influence global weather). This means the risk of forest fires is rising, even when rainfall is normal.

This shows that climate was not behind the record fires in 2019, the paper says, suggesting these fires were intentional and were not unintended accidental fires.

The authors say this adds to mounting evidence that the discourse and policies of President Jair Bolsonaros administration, which began in January 2019, has emboldened land grabbers and led deforesters to believe that violations of environmental laws will be forgiven and that regulations will be further relaxed.

Nearly half of all the forest area in Acre is protected by conservation units. Of those, the Chico Mendes Extractive Reserve is under most social, political and economic pressure, representing 4366% of the total burned area across all protected areas, according to the study. Burning in the reserve increased by 340% between 2018 and 2019, according to the study. Livestock grazing, and the devaluation of forest products such as Brazil nut and rubber, are to blame, it says.

We are trying our best to generate scientific information and translate it into tools and knowledge for society [so] we can control this problem and avoid future fires, Anderson said.

To this end, Anderson and colleagues have worked on several ways to monitor and predict fires, such as the Forest Fires and Forest Fires Risk and Impact Management Platform (MAP-Fire Platform), which allows Brazilian, Peruvian and Bolivian researchers to monitor fires in the triple border region in the southwestern Amazon and provide information to society and decision-makers. Also in the works is a platform to forecast seasonal fires across all South American protected areas.

Another way to stop fires is to raise awareness among communities and farmers engaged in burning. According to Anderson, many of the farmers they speak to feel there is a lack of material or knowledge for them to bring to their communities about alternatives to burning.

When we say that they cannot use fire or they should avoid using fire because of the problems, Anderson said, many times what people will say is we know and we dont want to use it, but its the only tool we have.

There are other ways to clear the land for agriculture that do not involve setting fires such as using a tractor-driven chopper to transform fallow vegetation into mulch, enriching the soil.

In Acre, they have already the policy that subsidized tractors for farmers, Anderson said. This is one example that is easy to understand, if you have a tractor you dont need to use fire. But this cannot be [the only] solution, because there are many places that you simply cannot get to with a tractor.

Greater economic subsidies from the government, especially for small farmers, are needed to support fire-free farming, she says, because owning and maintaining a tractor, for instance, is not affordable for many.

Anderson and her colleagues are also working to educate the next generation. Last year, CEMADEN worked in three public schools in Acre, where more than 500 students were involved in creating activities related to fire to increase societal awareness.

Im fairly optimistic because even facing all the difficulties for the pandemic, we managed to really engage with these three schools, Anderson said. And you can imagine that now we have more than 500 families [with] kids are inside the home, talking about fires, the impact of fires, fires are real, fires are occurring the Amazon and where to find reliable information because, of course, fake news is a big setback, in all this discussion.

Anderson and partners are also working on a book for teachers to discuss the science and risk of fires in the Amazon with students, complete with suggested activities. And because the internet and schools are not available to everyone, they have developed a weekly radio show thats broadcast far and wide across Acre and features young scientists speaking about their research on fire.

By working with the school communities I think we increase the possibility to make [this] relevant for this generation. And hopefully, this information and this way of thinking can change the behavior of a generation, Anderson says. This is highly ambitious, I know. But I think its one strategy that we can use.

But to gain scale and create change, all of these tools and strategies, Anderson says, need more investment and recognition from the government.

Unfortunately, our government is not interested in science, Carlos Joly, a professor of plant ecology at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in So Paulo state, said in a panel discussion hosted by the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research earlier this year. It doesnt matter how much more data we produce showing the destruction of the forest is harmful.

Bringing the government on board may require directing attention to public health and the economy. Smoke from fires can have serious consequences for human health and, according to data from Acres air quality monitoring network, the amount of particulate matter in the air during both the 2019 and 2020 burning seasons reached levels recognized by the World Health Organization known to cause negative health effects.

On the economic side, a 2019 study estimates that direct losses from fires in 2010, such as fences, agricultural production, and CO2 emissions, as well as indirect losses such as respiratory illness, represented economic losses of around 5-9% of the GDP of Acre. As fires increase, the costs will also rise.

Fires are expensive, Anderson said.

The record fires in Acre, and elsewhere, are expected to continue if environmental enforcement continues to be loosened in Brazil. Acre and other Amazonian states must act quickly to avoid an upsurge of social and economic losses in the coming years, Silva and co-authors say.

We know that we know what to do, and we know how to do it, Anderson said. And there is time to act to avoid this imminent disaster.

Citations:

Da Silva,S.S., Oliveira,I., Anderson,L.O., Karlokoski,A., Brando,P.M., de Melo,A.W., Fearnside,P.M. (2021). Burning in southwestern Brazilian Amazonia, 20162019.Journal of Environmental Management,286, 112189. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112189

Denich,M., Vlek,P.L., de Abreu S,T., Vielhauer,K., & Lcke,W. (2005). A concept for the development of fire-free fallow management in the Eastern Amazon, Brazil.Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment,110(1-2), 43-58. doi:10.1016/j.agee.2005.05.005

Campanharo,W.A., Lopes,A.P., Anderson,L.O., Da Silva,T.F., & Arago,L.E. (2019). Translating fire impacts in southwestern Amazonia into economic costs.Remote Sensing,11(7), 764. doi:10.3390/rs11070764

De Oliveira,G., Chen,J.M., Stark,S.C., Berenguer,E., Moutinho,P., Artaxo,P., Arago,L.E. (2020). Smoke pollutions impacts in Amazonia.Science,369(6504), 634.2-635. doi:10.1126/science.abd5942

Banner image: A firefighter holds a small rodent killed in the fire. Photo by Auricelio Dantas de Souza and Antnio Maycon Almeida dos Santo.

Liz Kimbroughis a staff writer for Mongabay. Find her on Twitter:@lizkimbrough_

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Taking advantage of the forced pandemic pause and building off the momentum of a less extractive tourism model already taking shape in the countrys Bay ofPlenty, the online program provided a foundation for shaping thriving host communities rooted in local context and culture.

New Zealands popularity among travelers has steadily increased over theyears. In 2019, nearly 3.9 million internationalvisitorsarrived on the island (Aotearoa, the countrys Mori name); andinternational visitor arrivals were forecasted to reach 5.1 million in2024,according to the countrys Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. And,like most destinations, increased tourism in New Zealand has ledtonatural resource degradation, increased greenhouse gas emissions, loss ofbiodiversity,and overcrowding on beaches and in natural landscapes.

Like many industries coming out of the Industrial Revolution, traditionaltourism models relied on extraction and exploitation.

Places are packaged up and sold as destinations and places you must see beforeyoudie.And the landscapes, culture and people, in a sense, are packaged up as part ofthat sales proposition, said AnnaPollock, founder of ConsciousTravel and a change agent in regenerative-focused tourism.

Yet, long before COVID-19 swept around the globe, tourism professionals in NewZealands Bay of Plenty, in particular, were already exploring regenerativeapproachesleaning heavily on Mori values and wisdom to address tourisms problems whilereimagining the scope and purpose of the industry.

Learn more from South Pole, the Arbor Day Foundation, Justdiggit and Sustainable Surf about the exploding voluntary carbon market and the wide variety of nature-based carbon-offset schemes available at SB'21 San Diego, October 18-21.

In many ways,regeneration hasbecome a buzzword companies are tacking on to their products in an effort torepackage sustainable offerings as having a positive impact on the planet andpeople. But no single product, company or even industry is singularlyregenerative; nor is regeneration new. Rather, regeneration is an ideology andprocess that embraces the interconnectedness of Earths ecosystems andcollective wisdom so that people and the planet can flourish. Its as old as theplanet itself and it may be the answer the world needs as it stands on theprecipice of catastrophic biodiversity loss and climate disaster.

What were being asked to do as human beings, let alone as tourismprofessionals, is seriously rethink how we have related to the natural world,Pollock said.

Taking advantage of the forced pandemic pause and building off the momentum of aless extractive tourism model already taking shape in the Bay of Plenty,approximately 80 tourism stakeholders across New Zealand participated in aprogram called Back to Life in early2021. Led by Pollock, who has worked closely with New Zealand tourism partnersfor more than a decade; and Michelle Holiday a consultant and author of the book, The Age of Thrivability: Vital Perspectives and Practices for a Better World, the 10-week online program provided a foundationfor shaping thriving host communities rooted in local context and culture.

It was a combination of content, conversation and practice as much as possiblealong the way, Holliday said noting that while she and Pollock providedcontent, they were very intentional in honoring and centering local Moriwisdom.

The programs five modules centered on the core principles of regenerativetourism:

perspective and principles (what does regeneration mean and how cannatures proven design principles be applied in a tourism framework?);

purpose (what does flourishing look like within a visitor economy?);

people (how do roles and relationships help create the conditions forhealthy, resilient and productive communities?);

place (how does the uniqueness of place shape us?); and

practice (how do we broaden the understanding of and deepen care fornature and its people?).

Extensive offline reading prepared participants for facilitated discussions andsmall breakout groups where participants ideated and reflected on content.Everyone was invited to contribute to a continuing harvest document where theyshared questions and thoughts on how to apply regenerative principles in theirwork and specific context. The first session, in particular, was so powerful.People were so eager to be together in this exploration, and feel hope for a newway of imagining and doing tourism, Holliday said.

My understanding of regeneration, initially, was very shallow. It was theunderstanding that, like sustainability was do less harm, regeneration was domore good, said Josie Major, New Zealand programs manager for GOODTravel. Similarly, Debbie Clarke, founder of New Zealand Awaits, said she hadan awareness but not a thorough understanding of regeneration prior to Back toLife. Going through the learning process as a group was particularly powerfulfor her: It was a deeply personal and very emotional experience, especiallyaround understanding our place and our belonging to our place, Clarke said.

For people working in an industry centered on doing, taking time to reflectupon and learn from the larger ecosystem in which tourism exists was a jarringdeparture. Initially, Pollock said, everyone wanted practical tools for dealingwith COVID, so you had that dynamic of how are we going to survive this enormouscrisis and an inherent internal desire by many to go back tonormalas soon as possible. The biggest challenge was getting people to understand thatthis is a whole new way of thinking, a whole new way of seeing the world andthat takes time.

As New Zealand prepares to reopen its borders to vaccinated internationalvisitors in early2022,the question is whether the countrys tourism industry will fall back into itsold habits or embrace an entirely new, regenerative approach that honors placeand people far more than extractive profit.

Since the course, its been a fundamental shift in thinking for me. Inparticular, the living systems principles and starting to see the visitoreconomy in our communities as living systems has been a profound shift, Majorsaid. Im taking the time to have conversations that dont necessarily have aspecific output. Im building relationships and still deepening myunderstanding.

For their part, Major and Clarke are committed to continuing the conversationabout regenerative tourism in New Zealand through a new podcast called GOODAwaits which they launched after completingthe Back to Life program.

This is a practice. This is a journey, Clarke said. I think all of us in thecourse really realized, ok, were in this together, were starting thistogether. And there is so much hope.

Published Aug 16, 2021 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST

JoAnna Haugen is a writer, speaker and solutions advocate who has worked in the travel and tourism industry for her entire career. She is also the founder of Rooted a solutions platform at the intersection of sustainable tourism, social impact and storytelling. A returned US Peace Corps volunteer, international election observer and intrepid traveler, JoAnna helps tourism professionals decolonize travel and support sustainability using strategic communication skills.

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'Back to Life' Program Seeds Regenerative Tourism Framework in New Zealand - Sustainable Brands

Why some are comparing the national backlash against anti-racist teaching to Virginias strident campaign to resist school desegregation after Brown v. Board of Education

Arnold Ambers was still a teenager when he woke up at 4 a.m., jumped behind the wheel of a rickety bus and shuttled dozens of children to a nearby segregated elementary school. Much of the fleet lacked heat and, on the coldest mornings of those Virginia winters, hed pull over on the side of the road to brush ice off the windshield with a worn towel.

After finishing the route, Ambers arrived late to his all-Black high school, named in honor of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, which remained racially segregated despite the Supreme Courts decision in Brown v. Board of Education years earlier. As Ambers bused children to racially isolated schools even after the court found such segregation unconstitutional in 1954, officials fought tooth and nail to keep it that way. As one of the nations last holdouts, Loudoun County schools remained racially isolated until desegregation began in 1968. Such discrimination was so pervasive that it became baked into Ambers perception of normality.

That was the sign of the times, the 79-year-old Ambers said, recalling how his family was barred from many public spaces outside the balcony of a Leesburg theater. But by the time he enrolled at Shaw University, a historically Black institution in North Carolina, hed had enough and joined civil rights protests, marching and singing songs like We Shall Overcome. But white folks didnt take kindly to Black people demonstrating, and hell never forget the occasion an irate man spit on him. Its one of the most degrading things that you could ever do.

These days, Ambers is on edge. The racial strife thats engulfed the county in the last several years, he said, brings back memories of Jim Crow.

This year, Loudoun County has become ground zero for a national uproar over schools use of critical race theory, a legal concept thats seemingly been bastardized to encompass any instruction about systemic racism and Black Americans enduring struggle for racial equity. That strife came to a head at a school board meeting in June, when one man was arrested and another injured after the gathering descended into chaos as parents protested critical race theory with signs that read education not indoctrination.

Its painful to realize that weve come a long way, but in the last five years weve really gone backwards quite a bit, Ambers said. And I guess the painful reality is that racism has always been there.

For some observers, the backlash is part of the complex, centuries-long history of racism and oppression that some educators have sought to confront, particularly after George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020. Specifically, theyve likened the blustering rhetoric of critical race theorys staunchest critics and legislative efforts across the state to prohibit teachers from discussing systemic racism to massive resistance, an effort by white segregationists in Virginia to thwart school desegregation for years after the Brown decision.

Among them is Juli Briskman, a Democratic member of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors, who referred to the current upheaval as the massive resistance of our generation. Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which litigated Brown, quipped that segregationists and the current dissidents mobilized around a singular force: The unifying power of whiteness.

In this 1960 photograph, opponents to school desegregation in Louisiana yell at police officers during a protest. One sign reads All I Want For Christmas is a Clean White School. (Getty Images)

While white segregationists employed legal, and sometimes violent, tactics to evade school desegregation, critics said that similar strategies are now being leveraged to block educators from teaching about that very historic reality.

As the rancor reaches a fever pitch nationally, some parents have pulled their kids from public schools and others have touted private school choice as an option to shield children from curricula permeated with ideas we find toxic. In July, a teacher in Tennessee was fired for teaching students about racism and white privilege.

Meanwhile on Fox News, which has warned against the dangers of critical race theory thousands of times this year, pundit Tucker Carlson suggested next to a graphic of the Democratic Party logo and the words ANTI-WHITE MANIA that classrooms be equipped with cameras to ensure teachers arent filling impressionable young minds with civilization-ending poison.

People protest against critical race theory in June outside the Loudoun County Government Center in Leesburg, Virginia. (Getty Images)

In nearly half of states, Republican lawmakers have introduced legislation this year that seeks to limit how educators discuss racism and other divisive issues, and in 10 states such bans have become law. Under a new Tennessee law, for example, public schools could lose funding. In Arizona, teachers could have their licenses revoked.

Jin Hee Lee, the senior deputy director at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, finds the current efforts similar to resistance to desegregation in that both operate on nostalgia that fails to recognize how educational inequities upheld by the status quo marginalize Black children and could be detrimental by further destabilizing public education.

The idea that any efforts to engage and remedy that problem is somehow in itself harmful to other children is beyond ironic, its really quite tragic, she said. An accurate accounting of history and the requirement that all children should be treated equally, and to be included, is beneficial for everyone.

Jamel Donnor, a critical race theory expert and associate professor of education at Virginias College of William & Mary, also sees similar parallels between the backlash to critical race theory, which he called a boogeyman, and Southern resistance to school desegregation. Even to this day, K-12 schools are starkly divided by race and integration efforts remain divisive even in northern enclaves like New York City. In both instances, he said the uproar centers on resistance to inclusion.

First it was the inclusion of black bodies, he said. Now, its the inclusion of ideas [and] materials that purport to provide a more holistic picture, a more holistic understanding of the experiences of people of color in the United States.

Jonathan Zimmerman, an education historian at the University of Pennsylvania, acknowledged similarities between massive resistance and the current backlash with outright racism as a key motivator, but several differences muddle the analogy. Massive resistance after Brown was a battle over the Constitution and its interpretation, he said, while the current feud is largely about American identity.

Many white Americans in particular are deeply invested in a narrative of America thats being challenged, and while he doesnt endorse their perspective, he said they come from a correct perception that these stories represent a radical difference from the stories they were invested in. Meanwhile, he said that in some cases the most ardent proponents of anti-racist teaching have imposed their opinions about history on students. Laws that bar teachers from discussing divisive topics have the same effect.

All truths are subject to interpretation and there is no singular, unvarnished truth, he said. Never has been, never will be.

The very existence of the segregated Douglass School, where Ambers graduated in 1960, was a feat in itself.

To the backdrop of white resistance, members of Loudoun Countys Black community, including Amberss father, held chicken dinners and other fundraisers to buy a plot of land on the outskirts of Leesburg for the countys first high school for Black children. The school was built in 1941, after organizers sold the land to the county for $1, and the countys Black community raised money to fill the building with desks and books.

Ambers and other students at Douglass werent offered the same opportunities as the countys white children and almost immediately after the Brown decision was released, white officials in Virginia and across the South vowed to keep it that way. A prominent force was Virginia Sen. Harry Byrd, who blasted Brown as the most serious blow that has yet been struck against states rights an argument that echoed the Lost Cause, in which Confederate officials sought to inaccurately portray the Civil War as a feud over local control rather than an effort to uphold slavery.

Virginia officials created the Gray Commission, which recommended officials amend the state compulsory attendance law so white children didnt have to attend integrated schools and the creation of taxpayer-funded tuition grants so parents could send their children to private institutions known today as segregation academies. Two years later, Byrd launched a campaign that became known as massive resistance that included a collection of laws aimed at preventing integration, including a policy to pull funding from schools that allowed Black and white children to sit in the same classroom. Through newly created tuition grants, money from closed public schools was funneled to private schools that werent bound by Browns mandates. After the school-closure law was found unconstitutional in 1959, state lawmakers repealed school attendance rules and created a local option that gave cities and counties authority to close schools.

In Loudoun County, educational inequities upheld by racial segregation were felt in teacher salaries, transportation and facilities. At the Bull Run school, Black children brought lumps of coal each morning to provide the building with heat and others hauled in water from a nearby stream.

Shortly after Brown, county officials voted to let students use public education funds for private schools, in effect allowing white families to cover tuition costs while sidestepping integration. In a resolution, officials voted to stop public funding if the federal government forced integration, a reality that came to fruition only after years of legal battles. But the animosity lingered long after and white resistance extended beyond public education. In the mid-1960s, Black youth wanted to swim in Leesburgs public pool but the volunteer fire department filled it with rocks and cement rather than see that happen. The town didnt get another public pool until 1990.

Perhaps the most significant effort to resist desegregation unfolded in Prince Edward County, a rural Virginia enclave with deep ties to the Brown decision. It was here, in 1951, where Black high school students from Farmville went on strike over poor school conditions and sued for equity. Their legal struggle was ultimately one of five cases consolidated into the Supreme Courts Brown decision. Years later, however, segregationists retained the upper hand. Under pressure from two court desegregation orders in May 1959, officials chose to close the countys entire public school system for five years rather than comply. White children were allowed to enroll in the private Prince Edward Academy, which became a model segregation academy for communities across the South, and many Black children, who were excluded from enrollment and unable to use tuition grants elsewhere, were effectively locked out of a formal education altogether.

Such efforts expanded beyond Virginia. By 1969, more than 200 private segregation academies were formed across the South and in seven states Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana families were allowed to use tuition grants, often called private school vouchers today, to avoid desegregated schools.

Rather than focusing on race, white residents in Loudoun County often spoke fondly of their Black neighbors and much of their rhetoric justifying the school closures centered on school privatization, local control and taxpayers rights. The Farmville Heralds publisher at the time, a staunch segregationist, asserted in an editorial that if Virginia, the mother of constitutional government allowed school integration, it would have permitted the rape of ideals and principles for which great men have given their minds and blood, suffering almost unbearable hardships.

Christopher Bonastia, a Lehman College professor and author of Southern Stalemate: Five Years without Public Education in Prince Edward County, Virginia, described the massive resistance strategy through a simple quote: If we can legislate, we can segregate. Now, he said, some critical race theory critics have adopted a similar gameplan. It seems to me that the theory is if we can legislate, we can obfuscate, meaning that if we dont allow this teaching of how racism is sort of baked into U.S. law and policy and practices, then we can maintain this racial innocence.

He also sees similarities between the two camps overall rhetoric.

This claim to colorblindness, which happened in Prince Edward, that is the kind of claim of the anti-CRT folks who question why children should learn to be race-conscious instead of viewing everybody as equals. Hee Lee of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund made a similar connection, noting that claims of colorblindness have been used to entrench existing racial disparities for generations.

It ignores inequalities that exist and it ignores important conversations to try to remedy those racial inequalities, she said. Claiming colorblindness doesnt make inequality just magically disappear. In fact, its very important for us to identify and examine inequalities that do exist.

In this 1956 photograph, two children watch a Ku Klux Klan cross burning from a car affixed with a sign protesting racial integration. (Getty Images)

As Black students in Prince Edward County and elsewhere fought for educational equity, their struggle was about far more than access to white schools. The transformative vision of school integration also included desegregating curriculum, in which African-American experiences and voices were included in classroom instruction, said Jarvis Givens, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

In his Book Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching, Givens traces the life of the father of Black history, and highlights how anti-racist teaching practices have long been a staple of Black educators approach to instruction and doing so has always faced resistance.

To define fugitive pedagogy, Givens turns to the actions of Tessie McGee, a Black history teacher from Louisiana who, in the 1930s, kept a copy of Woodsons book on the Negro on her lap, reading passages to students in defiance of state and district rules. Through her actions, Givens wrote, McGee explicitly critiqued and negated white supremacy and anti-Black protocols of domination, but they often did so in discreet or partially concealed fashion, as part of a larger vision to dismantle Jim Crow segregation while celebrating African Americans contributions to society. She and others did this at grave risk of getting caught.

For many Black educators, that was a real threat as they faced relentless suspicion and surveillance. Such surveillance, similar to Tucker Carlsons call for cameras in classrooms, has been endemic to the experiences of Black teachers historically. Now, contemporary calls to police classroom instruction is worrisome, he said.

Now were seeing it out in the open because a lot of folks are being given permission to kind of surveil what teachers are teaching, he said, and whether or not it adds up to their vision of what it means to be patriotic and American, and whether or not its consistent with the stories that weve been told that we need to tell about the past, of Americas history, for so long.

In this photograph from 1957, a Black mother and her first-grade child walk past segregationist protesters as they enter a public school on the first day of classes in Nashville, Tennessee. As the city underwent desegregation, white parents began a boycott and withdrew their children from public schools. (Getty Images)

Despite Black educators long history offering anti-racist instruction and being subjected to surveillance to prevent it, Givens said the issue has taken on a new form in the last year. Parents are so up in arms this year, he argued, because the instruction is being offered to white kids who are being asked to confront issues of racial inequality.

I think the falling out has to do with the fact that theres a lot of white people who dont want their children learning these sorts of narratives because of what it implicates about their own identities in certain ways and the ways it names whiteness in explicit ways that causes discomfort for people, he said. Thats whats really whats at hand here: What happens when we decide to include Black history in ways that go beyond the terms of whats comfortable for white Americans?

Zimmerman, the University of Pennsylvania historian, said the current moment creates an opportunity for educators to present American history from multiple perspectives and allow students to grapple with the lessons rather than prescribing their own views. Yet partisans on both sides, he worried, are disinterested in an honest debate.

I want more nuance, he said, but, to be as direct as possible, who the [heck] am I? How many people actually do want that and how do we make the case for it?

For 45 years, Virginias efforts to defy Brown were placed on a pedestal outside the state capitol in Richmond. That era came to an end in July, when a 10-foot bronze statue of segregationist Sen. Byrd, the massive resistance architect, was removed from its perch and hauled off to storage.

Yet much of his legacy carries on unabated as schools across the country remain starkly segregated by race and some communities continue to leverage tactics, such as school district secessions, to resist integration.

Some of the very groups leading the charge against critical race theory are also engaged in efforts to block ongoing desegregation efforts today. In New York City, where public schools are among the most racially segregated, students filed a lawsuit this year arguing that the citys use of selective admissions screens at its sought-after high schools, long seen by some as a hurdle keeping Black and Hispanic children from the lauded campuses, violate the state constitution. The lawsuit calls on the city to scrap its competitive admissions practices.

A new group called Parents Defending Education, which offers an IndoctriNation Map to fight indoctrination in the classroom by exposing educators promoting harmful agendas, sought to intervene in the New York City case. The student groups efforts to strike down race-neutral admissions screens, the group wrote in a court filing, is intentional racial discrimination, plain and simple.

Plaintiffs believe the best way to achieve equity is to focus on race and to break the parts of the citys school system that are working, the group, which didnt respond to requests for comment, noted in court papers. Parents Defending Education believes the best way to achieve equality is to treat children equally, regardless of skin color, and to fix the parts of the citys schools that are broken.

Despite the persistence of racial segregation in schools, some school leaders have sought in recent years to grapple with the past and how it still affects the education system today. After Floyds murder in Minneapolis, for example, the head of a private school in Montgomery, Alabama, wrote an open letter about the role his school played in resisting desegregation. The Montgomery Academy opened in 1959 as an all-white school and was seen by many as one of the early catalysts for the white flight from Montgomerys public schools.

We must be willing to confront the uncomfortable fact that The Montgomery Academy, like many other independent schools founded in the South during the late 1950s, was not immune to the divisive forces of racism that shaped this city and community over the course of its history, John McWilliams, who didnt respond to requests for comment, wrote in the letter. In his view, he wrote, Black Lives Matter protests that engulfed the country had clear ties to a centuries-long struggle. I believe that we are witnessing the cumulative impact of over 400 years of white supremacy, racial division and discrimination play out in our streets and cities across the country.

Ambers, who ironically finished his professional career as a school bus driver in Virginias Fairfax County, retiring in 2015, has been forced to face how racism in Leesburg schools persisted long after he left. Just recently, his three children, now adults, detailed to him for the first time how they experienced racial discrimination in the system long after the district was formally desegregated.

They were called the N word and during Black history they were asked to explain things like they were considered slaves, he said. They were treated like Well, youre supposed to know about this so tell us about it.

Arnold Ambers, who graduated from Loudoun Countys racially segregated Douglass School in 1960, was a member of the varsity basketball team (Photo courtesy Arnold Ambers)

Several years ago, the school district began to address issues of racial equity after high-profile reports found inequities negatively affected the academic progress among students of color, prompting school leaders to create a Plan to Combat Systemic Racism, including teacher trainings that focused on helping educators foster racial consciousness.

Then, in September 2020, county officials issued a long-overdue apology to the Black community for joining the campaign of massive resistance decades ago. While noting that much work must be done to fully correct or eradicate matters of racial inequality in the county, the officials wrote that county educators must continually assess the status of racial equity in the school system and correct its past transgressions as it pertains to race.

Even in the face of backlash and intimidation, Briskman, the county Board of Supervisors member who gained notoriety in 2017 when she gave former President Donald Trumps motorcade the middle finger, vowed to carry on.

The work is not going to stop, she said, and were not going to be threatened.

Lead Image: In this photograph from 1961, teacher Althea Jones offers instruction to Black children in a one-room shack in Prince Edward County, Virginia. Beginning in 1959, the county lacked public school facilities for an estimated 1,700 Black children while some 1,400 white students attended private schools financed by state, county and private contributions made in lieu of tax payments. (Getty Images)

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Critical Race Theory and the New 'Massive Resistance' - The 74