Category Archives: Intentional Communities

A number of recycling industry groups have spoken out against racism in recent weeks. | Pix_Arena/Shutterstock

Recycling organizations, environmental advocacy groups and municipal programs are joining the call to oppose racism and work for systemic change.

Many recycling-related organizations have spoken out in the weeks following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died as a Minneapolis police officer knelt on Floyds neck for more than eight minutes.

Protests calling for police reform and racial justice have taken place around the country and world in recent weeks. The following groups join several major recycling companies that commented on the situation.

The Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA) wrote about racial injustice in a column that was previously planned to highlight the organizations upcoming SWANApalooza conference.

Instead, SWANA CEO David Biderman wrote about Floyds May 25 death, as well as the recent deaths of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Ky. and Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Ga.

These deaths reinforce the unfair and obvious truth that African Americans throughout the United States remain too vulnerable to senseless violence and racism, Biderman wrote. Because we are all intricately connected by our common humanity, when one segment of our community is hurting, we must all respond.

He added that there are many African Americans in the waste and recycling industry and that, in many areas, African American employees make up the vast majority of the front-line personnel. He called on SWANA members to work together to overcome racial, economic and other barriers that divide society.

Would I like many of you to register for SWANApalooza? Of course. But what I really want is to look my children and future grandchildren in the eyes, tell them about Americas response to George Floyds tragic death, and have them be proud that, to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we helped bend the arc of the moral universe towards justice, Biderman concluded.

The New York Department of Sanitation (DSNY) touched on the widespread unrest throughout New York City, noting that people in every neighborhood are speaking out loudly against racism, inequity and inequality.

Our department is as diverse as our city, and for many New Yorkers, sanitation workers are the public servants they are most likely to meet in a given day, DSNY Commissioner Kathryn Garcia wrote. We all have an obligation to live up to the ideals of tolerance and justice.

Beyond the protests, Garcia described looting in some neighborhoods and highlighted the role that DSNY workers played in cleaning up after these events.

Weve done it before, Garcia wrote. After 9/11. After Hurricane Sandy. During this COVID pandemic. We are the DSNY family, and we support our city in times of need and times of pain.

The Oregon Refuse & Recycling Association (ORRA), a group of Oregon haulers and MRF operators, denounces the senseless murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others, ORRA said in a statement.

We know that this moment in history calls for self-reflection and for committing to doing things differently, ORRA wrote. No person should live in fear we stand united with all people of color in calling for justice and accountability. To this end, we commit ourselves to doing our own hard and intentional work to be more inclusive, to assessing our own biases, to listening, and to fostering an industry where people of color can thrive.

Keefe Harrison, CEO of The Recycling Partnership, issued a statement explaining that the organization will incorporate social justice into its recycling advocacy and support work.

We at The Recycling Partnership stand with Black people and people of color, Harrison wrote. We stand against racism. Today, and in all the days to come, our mission to advance recycling will carry with it a flag of social justice including the right to pursue a healthier and more sustainable life. We call on our community, company and industry partners to listen, learn and do more to uphold equality. We pledge to do the same.

Several organizations called for environmental advocates to stand with movements for racial justice.

The Product Stewardship Institute (PSI), which supports extended producer responsibility systems, issued a statement noting that Floyds death has brought many issues to a head. The organization touched on institutional racism, police brutality and militarization, racial injustice and other topics, explaining that PSI stands in solidarity with those demanding systemic change.

Many of the same beliefs, practices, and systems that create and perpetuate white supremacy also create and perpetuate environmental destruction, the organization wrote, describing disposal facilities being sited in low-income communities of color, as well as climate change impacting the worlds most vulnerable communities.

There is no environmental justice without racial and economic justice, PSI wrote.

The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) also called for solidarity from the environmental movement. The group, which frequently advocates against incineration and chemical recycling technologies, called on its supporters to sign a petition demanding the Minneapolis City Council defund the Minneapolis Police Department.

The environmental movement must join hands with the movements for Black and indigenous lives, GAIA wrote.

Green California, a group of numerous environmental organizations including Californians Against Waste and the National Stewardship Action Council, issued a statement in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

While Green California includes organizations that were founded on principles of racial justice, many of our organizations have not historically fought for Black lives by standing against police violence and police brutality, the group wrote. Now, many of our member organizations have issued statements condemning police brutality and calling for reform, but we want to speak as a group to the current moment and its impact on the nation and our future as a democracy.

The group wrote that it will be examining our own roles in perpetuating racism and reorienting towards actively dismantling its causes.

Shareholder advocacy group As You Sow wrote that it is devastated by the police brutality that cut short George Floyds life, and the systemic racism in our society that led to it. George Floyds murder is one more in a long list of violent acts and brutality against Black Americans that exposes deep, pervasive, and toxic racism.

The organization said it embraces the demands of protesters across the country and internationally, calling for real, meaningful and lasting change.

Structural racism, abuse of power, and economic disempowerment are forces that undermine our efforts as individuals, communities, and nations to live well and with dignity, As You Sow wrote. We must recognize the imperative to listen to and amplify the voices of all those who live under a constant threat of violence and intolerance, and who lack basic freedoms. Only through addressing these problems can we build a stronger whole.

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More industry voices speak out on racial... - Resource Recycling

Staff members from the Housing Authority of the City of Austin and CommUnityCare, including ULI member Rodolfo Rodriguez at far right, near one of the citys facilities.

COVID-19 has hit many communities hard, often in disproportionate ways. Individuals and families who live in public and affordable housing are generally more at risk for contracting and dying from this disease due to previously inequitable social determinants of health conditions; they are also being affected economically.

Often working low-wage jobs with little to no benefits or protections such as paid sick leave, these individuals are either faced with unemployment or with being forced to choose between their health and financial stability.

In one of ULIs recent webinars on confronting the impact of Covid-19, Dr. Megan Sandel with the Boston Medical Center explained that adequate housing is critical to fostering social equity and promoting overall well-being. Safe, healthy, affordable, and well-located housing can be thought of as a vaccine, protecting residents from health issues that arise from poor housing quality and locationthis is even more critical as people are spending more and more time in their homes.

Other social factors, including access to food and supportive services, also affect overall health. These factors have been exacerbated during this pandemic, as social isolation in an era of physical distancing and economic uncertainty abounds. This is felt strongly in already vulnerable communities.

In Austin and Atlanta, ULI members are fighting to protect the residents they serve and support from impacts of the pandemic. These actions can be adopted and adapted by anyone who builds, operates, and manages housing units in the United States and elsewhere.

As a response to meet the needs of high-risk residents who need access to COVID-19 tests but face transportation challenges, Rodriguezs team partnered with a local health care provider to delivery door-to-door on-site testing at their largest senior public housing community.

New Programs to Fight COVID-19 in Austin

The Housing Authority of the City of Austin (HACA) in Austin, Texas, provides housing stability to nearly 20,000 residents who live in deep poverty through an array of housing programs like traditional public housing and housing choice vouchers. Through a collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, HACA launched a Community Health Needs Assessment at three of its 18 sites in late 2018, which revealed that 76 percent of residents self-reported one or more chronic health issuesthis automatically puts them at higher risk of mortality or complications from COVID-19.

ULI member and Health Leader Rodolfo Rodriguez is the founding director of Health and Wellness Ecosystem at HACA, whose first-of-its-kind role was designed to improve the health and wellness outcomes of public housing residents at the individual, community, and systems levels. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Rodriguez secured a grant from the St. Davids Foundation, led the design of the Bringing Health Home Pilot Program, and intentionally recruited, trained, and hired HACA residents as state-certified community health workers (CHW). The team of resident CHWs conducts virtual outreach to their neighbors across HACA sites. Using guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they assess their peers over the phone in their preferred language for COVID-19 symptoms, reinforce preventative measures, link them to medical care, refer them to testing sites, and connect them to other available resources.

Since the launch in early April, the team has assessed over 500 residents for COVID-19 symptoms, and recommended 13 residents for testing, of which nine cases came back positive. As a response to meet the needs of high-risk residents who need access to COVID-19 tests but face transportation challenges, Rodriguezs team partnered with a local health care provider, CommUnityCare, to delivery door-to-door on-site testing at their largest senior public housing community; 85 elderly residents participated in the on-site testing and 90 percent of residents gave consent to share test results with HACA in an effort to help limit spread.

We are trying to prevent COVID-19 deaths, contain the virus, and protect public housing residents by identifying households impacted by COVID-19 and support the full recovery of positive cases as they quarantine by meeting their basic needs through relief packages, says Rodriguez. Those COVID-19 relief packages meet basic needs like groceries, disinfectant supplies, laundry service, medical supplies, and personal protective equipment. Rodriguez has been presenting on this replicable and scalable model with peer cities, such as Denver, that are interested in launching their own version quickly. Rodriguez and his team, including a public housing resident, also virtually presented at the 2020 Housing Is Summit encouraging other housing authorities across the United States to take similar steps to join the fight against COVID-19.

Supporting Homeowners in Atlanta

President and CEO of Atlanta Habitat for Humanity Lisa Y. Gordon. Gordon also serves on the advisory board for ULIs Terwilliger Center for Housing and as district council chair for ULI Atlanta.

Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, which supports around 1,000 owners of single-family homes and manages the Atlanta Habitat ReStore, has quickly pivoted their approaches to support their residents and the Greater Atlanta community during the pandemic and beyond. President and CEO of Atlanta Habitat for Humanity Lisa Y. Gordon, who also serves on the advisory board for ULIs Terwilliger Center for Housing and as district council chair for ULI Atlanta, described four values the organization has adopted as its operations change due to the pandemic: maintain the safety of employees and volunteers; adapt, evolve, and be flexible; minimize fiscal impact to operations; and look at ways to adapt its existing model. Habitats model is to build with volunteers, Gordon explains, but if that is dangerous, how do we evolve? Currently we are building with small crews of two to three contractors, without our usual volunteers.

With nearly 400 people on the waiting list for a Habitat house in the Atlanta area, the organization feels the urgency of getting back to building. We normally build 50 homes a year, Gordon says, but we are thinking it will probably be 30 to 35 homes this year, depending on corporate sponsorship, grants, individual donations, and earned revenue. Habitat is also looking to new technology to bring efficiencies into its homebuilding process to supplement the loss of volunteer labor, including using prefabricated walls.

Atlanta Habitat is helping its homeowners navigate the pandemic in other ways as well. Gordon notes that about 10 percent of its 1,000 mortgage holders have been affected in some way. They are helping directly with alleviating food insecurity, have implemented a series of classes with homeowners about crisis budgeting, have set up a mortgage relief fund and raised over $100,000 in three weeks, and have staff members proactively calling homeowners to check in with them. The organization is learning many lessons as a result of changes to how they operate and support residents.

Atlanta Habitat has increased our communications with homeowners, providing timely and purposeful information focused on helping them through this crisis. We see our additional role as being a resource to our homeowners, but not inundating them with emails every day, Gordon says. We have been very intentional about when we send mail. Strategic communication is most effective right now; too many emails are becoming noise.

Atlanta Habitat has also quickly been able to get its popular ReStore onlinewith a touchless payment systemto continue bringing in revenue to the organization in support of new home builds through the sale of home furnishings and appliances. We had conversations about an online ReStore for several months. Then, we received an analysis for launching an online store shortly after the pandemic began. Sometimes things can be slow to change, but when an emergency comes up like a pandemic, all of a sudden we got it done, Gordon says. Within two weeks, our staff was working with a consultant, identified the right software and solutions, and had the online store implemented.

The ability of both HACA and Atlanta Habitat for Humanity to be creative and nimble, while always thinking first about the needs and safety of their residents, is resulting in new strategies and protocols that will support their residents now and into the future.

If you are a ULI member interested in sharing how your community is helping those struggling with the impacts of COVID-19, please email us at health@uli.org.

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ULI Members in Action: Housing Organizations Enter the Fight against COVID-19 - Urban Land

Everyone Needs Someone Else

WHY Americans OF ALL AGES are coming together in intentional communities

By Jeffrey Kluger

Theres not a lot to do in Syracuse, N.Y. when youre living alone and a winter storm system dumps 3 feet of snow on the city. Theres no going outside, but theres no staying inside at least not for too long if you want to remain sane. A dinner with friends would be nice; so would a yoga class or a shared movie and a good long talk. And when thats all done, it would also be nice to have just a little bit of that wintertime solitude, watching the snow fall, all alone, from the privacy of your own home.

At one place in Syracuse, all of that happens on those long snow-filled nights. That place is Commonspace, a co-housing community on the fourth and fifth floors of a restored 19th-century office building. The community is made up of 25 mini-apartments, fully equipped with their own kitchenettes and baths, with access to a larger, shared chefs kitchen, library nook, game room, coffee lounge and media room. The 27 residents (couples are welcome) live together but only sort of in private apartments that are, once you step outside your door, un-private too. And theyre part of a growing trend in an increasingly lonely country: intentional communities.

In cities and towns across the U.S., individuals and families are coming to the conclusion that while the commune experiment of the 1960s was overwhelmed by problems, the idea of living in close but not too close cooperation with other people has a lot of appeal. An intentional community is a very different beast from the more familiar planned communities, which can be big, unwieldy things hundreds or thousands of families living on small parcels across hundreds of acres of land. While there may be some common facilities a swimming pool or golf course or community lake the communities are really just villages writ large or cities writ small, easy places to be anonymous.

Intentional communities, by contrast, are intimate: a couple dozen apartments or single-family homes, built around central squares or common spaces. And theyre operated in ways intended to keep the community connected with weekly dinners at a community center or other common area, shared babysitting services, shared gardens or games or even vacations. If you dont want to participate, fine; no one will come pester you to play a pick-up game you dont want to play or join a committee you dont want to join. But when you need the community because a spouse is away or a baby is sick or youre just plain lonely and would like some companionship its there for you.

Its that business of relieving loneliness thats key to the popularity of intentional communities. Human beings may not always get along, but the fact is, we cant get enough of one another. There are currently 7.6 billion of us in the world but we inhabit only about 10% of the planets land, and roughly 50% of us live on just 1% of that land.

We evolved to depend on our social connections, says Dr. Vivek Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General. Over thousands of years, this got baked into our nervous systems so much so that if we are feeling socially disconnected, that places us in a physiologic stress state.

According to a study by AARP, over 40% of American adults suffer from loneliness, a condition that, Murthy warns, is as dangerous to our physical health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and more. Worse, loneliness is a condition that makes no demographic distinctions; it affects millennials just starting their careers, widowed boomers just ending theirs, empty-nesters, new divorcees, first year college students a thousand miles away from family and high school friends. Social media, which ostensibly draws people closer, in fact may be atomizing us further, creating virtual connections that have little of the benefits of actual connections.

A gusher of studies since the early 1990s have established the health dividends of social ties. Among people with cardiovascular disease, those with more social connections have a 2.4 times lower risk of mortality within an established period than those with poor social ties. Social connections lower the risk of cancer, speed recovery among people who do contract the disease, and reduce the risk of hypertension and other cardiovascular illnesses. Even wound-healing improves with social connections. Multiple studies suggest that part of this may come from the psychological boostincluding the sense of responsibilitythat meaningful relationships provide. When friends and family members are counting on you to be around, you make better health choices, even if theyre unconscious. Other studies have shown that similar brain structures control both physical pain and social painand that pain relief, through analgesics in the first case and relationships in the second, operate similarly as well. Being socially connected doesnt simply make you healthier, it just plain feels good.

Intentional communities are about creating attachment, the feeling that someone has your back, says Harvard University psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a decades-old survey of the health of a population of Harvard graduates and their descendants. We often ask people in studies, Who would you call in the middle of the night if you were really sick or scared? Intentional communities can help you have an answer to that question.

Its not easy to come by a firm count of how many intentional communities are out there. Only about 160 of them have been built from the ground up with co-housing in mind, but the regularly updated Fellowship for Intentional Community lists 1,539 communities in all 50 states that have also used existing housing stock to establish co-housing arrangements.

There are urban communities like Commonspace in most major cities. There is Milagro in Tucson, Ariz., 28 single-family homes on 43 desert acres built around a central green space with a shared community center and other facilities. There is Village Hearth Co-Housing, a similar set-up in Durham, N.C., but one intended for singles, couples and families in the LGBTQ community. There are other communities for seniors or artists or veterans; there are even rural communities for people who want the independence of owning their own homes but the collective experience of farming the same land.

For each of the communities, the relative compactness of the population is what creates the feeling of togetherness. You cant possibly know three hundred people, says Troy Evans, real estate developer and the co-founder of Syracuses Commonspace. But you can know fifty. What we try to do in Commonspace is create a neighborhood in a building.

To all appearance, theyve succeeded at that. The communitys 25 apartments rent for an average of $850 per month, which is admittedly pricey for a tiny, 200 sq. ft. space, though services like thrice-weekly cleaning of all of the common spaces and the costs of activities like the weekly farm-to-table dinners are included. And the social benefits which are impossible to measure in dollars and cents are included too.

We set everything up with a town square feel so when you come out of your door theres not a long, dark hallway like in most apartment buildings, says Evans. Town squares, of course, can be noisy not to the liking of even some people who choose to live semi-communally. Thats why one of the floors has fewer apartments built a quiet lounge where locally roasted coffee is always on offer.

The mini-apartments are cleverly laid out, with a platform bed built atop storage cabinets and floor-to-ceiling windows that create an open feel. The bathroom is complete though it has a shower without a tub and the kitchenette is limited only by the fact that is has two electric burners instead of a full stove, because local regulations forbid open flame in such small quarters. The apartments are all equipped with TVs and high-speed Internet, and a Slack channel allows residents to stay in touch without having to remember 26 other email addresses.

Still, its the 6,000 shared square feet, not the 200 private ones that really defines the Commonspace experience, providing what Evans describes as a lot of collision space, which is something people who would otherwise be living alone often crave. What weve found is demand from people who were landing in Syracuse for the first time and not knowing anyone, he says. Weve got people from eight different countries and seven different states. Its a really cool, diverse group.

That diversity is not only cultural but temperamental. Rose Bear Dont Walk, a 23-year old Native American studying environment and forestry at the State University of New York, Syracuse, moved in to Commonspace over the summer and soon grew friendly with another resident who works in computer coding. His mind operates arithmetically, hers works more emotively, and they took to talking about their different ways of approaching the world.

Hes always building something or talking about building something or listening to podcasts, she says. One day, when she was weaving decorative strands out of plant fibers, she decided to make him a bracelet. It was just this way that our worlds connected, she says. He is very logical and mathematical and was very excited about this little tiny rope bracelet that I was bringing home.

Meaningful as those kinds of connections can be, Commonspace residents dont always have a lot of time to make them. Millennials can be transitory characteristic of most people early in their careers and the average length of tenancy is just eight months.

Things are very different at other intentional communities, like Milagro in Tucson. There, the buy-in is typically for life. The 28 homes in the landscaped desert space are sometimes available for rent, but are typically owned by their residents and have sold for anywhere from $175,000 to $430,000, depending on the market. The investment in house and land means an equal investment in the life of the community.

Brian Stark, a married father of two, has lived in Milagro since 2003, two years after the community opened, and considers himself a lifer. For him the appeal is not so much the community-wide dinner in the dining room every Saturday, or the happy hours or the stargazing sessions or the shared holiday parties. Its the easy, collegial pace of the place, unavoidable when neighbors all know one another.

You almost have to assume that someone may stop to chat with you when youre coming or going, he says. It took some getting used to but when were in a hurry for school or a meeting, weve learned to explain our rush and connect another time.

Even more important are the benefits that accrue to any communitys most vulnerable members: babies and seniors. For families with very young children, we do baby care trades, Stark says. And having a supportive community to help as you grow older is also a wonderful alternative to assisted care living.

Intentional communities are not without stressors. Stark recalls the decade of committee meetings that went into the simple business of deciding whether there should be path lights in the community important for safety, but murder on the deserts spectacular nighttime sky. Even when the community agreed that lights were a good idea, there was continued wrangling over cost, wattage and more. A similar struggle ensued when it came time to have all 28 homes painted, as residents debated color schemes for the homes stucco, trim and side boards.

Still, the long meetings and compromises are a small price for those suited to intentional communities. Thats true of diverse, cross-generational communities like Milagro, and it can be even more so when residents come together with a particular shared need for a particular kind of solidarity as in the LGBTQ or aging Boomer communities.

Shortly after the opening of Village Hearth, the North Carolina LGBTQ community, one of the founders explained to a local reporter that she was tired of hearing about this or that intentional community that has a nice lesbian couple or a nice gay couple. She and her wife didnt want to be a curiosity in even the friendliest surroundings, so they founded a community in which nothing would be remarkable about them at all.

There is little science so far that explicitly addresses the medical benefits of co-housing arrangements, but the benefits of the human connections the communities provide are being powerfully established. In one recent meta-analysis of 148 studies gathered from around the world, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, compared subjects reported state of loneliness with their overall life expectancy. The total sample size was more than 300,000 people and produced sobering results: Adults who are socially isolated, she found, have a 50% greater risk of dying from any cause within a given time frame than people who are more connected.

In a follow-up study in which she used census data to assemble an even larger sample group of 3.4 million, the results were a bit less stark, but no less conclusive, with social isolation and loneliness leading to a 30% increase in risk of mortality on average. Of course, being alone is not the same as being lonely, Holt-Lunstad stresses. Many people enjoy their solitude, and other people can feel lonely even in a group. The key is the subjective experience. If that experience is bad, thats when health can be affected.

More often than not, social media falls into the category of bad rather than good experiences. Even without being trolled or cyberbullied, people can suffer merely as a result of having replaced real relationships with virtual ones. Murthy does not believe social media is all bad, provided its often used as what he calls a way station rather than a destination, helping to establish real-life connections.

Using social media as a way station might mean that if Im traveling to a different city, in advance of the trip I look on Facebook or LinkedIn to see if I have any friends there, he says. Then I reach out to them and we get together.

The exact mechanisms that make loneliness so physically damaging are not easy to tease out, but chemical markers in the bloodstream, like cortisol, a stress hormone, or c-reactive proteins, indicators of inflammation, are considered worrisome signs. They indicate a weakened immune system and metabolic disruption, says Waldinger. This is when you start to see signs of illness like rising lipid levels and blood pressure.

Residents of intentional communities also see another kind of benefit to health and happiness in co-housing: as a way of alleviating transitions that can be both stressful isolating. Stark, the Milagro resident, recalls that when his older daughter, Maia, was born 12 years ago, the Milagro community was still new. Unbidden, the neighbors pitched in to help the family, cleaning their house, making them meals, even doing their laundry so that he and his wife could have the luxury of doing what few parents can do: focus their attention exclusively on their new baby. Since then, the Stark family has returned the favor, making food for people recovering from surgery and offering to make a pickup at an airport.

Everyone at some point needs someone else, Stark says. Intentional communities, in their quiet way, are helping to make sure that powerful human need gets met.

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Why Americans of All Ages Are Embracing Communal Living - TIME

STEPHENS CITY It should be smooth sailing for Stephens City candidates this year, as the Town Council elections in Stephens City on Nov. 3 will be uncontested, according to the Frederick County Office of Elections.

The filing deadline for candidates was 7 p.m. Tuesday. Three of councils six seats are up for election. Members of town council are elected for four-year terms, and they run without a party designation on the ballot.

Incumbent Ronald Bowers, who has been on town council for 32 years, is seeking another four-year term. Im Just Me Movement Co-Founder Christine Tina Stevens, who won a special election to Town Council in November, is seeking her first four-year term. Newcomer Julia Young, who is studying political science at Lord Fairfax Community College, is seeking office for the first time.

Council member Joseph Hollis, who has been on the council for 18 years, did not file for re-election.

Stevens, 45, said her priorities for the next four years include continuing to make adjustments to the Capital Improvement Plan, improving the sidewalks and finding ways to expand the roads to improve traffic.

She would also like to see a community center that could be used by the elderly and veterans. She also wants there to be interest and young blood on the council and hopes to encourage more town residents to attend council meetings. Helping the community heal from the COVID-19 pandemic is another priority.

We are in a double whammy here, Stevens said. Weve got COVID-19, but we also have a lot of racial tensions around the world. I think as a council we can be more intentional in our messages. I think we can help support our communities and people of color and let them know that their voices do matter and that Stephens City is here for them. We are here for them for any concerns they may have with these racial tensions. And in terms of COVID-19, we are stronger together, so being able to support our community with any challenges they have faced.

Young, 28, grew up in Winchester and currently lives in Stephens City with her husband and three children. She would like to see Stephens City become a more welcoming place for people of color and the LGBTQ community.

I definitely think theres still a lot of work that needs to be done, said Young, who is bisexual. My husband and my children, they are actually Latino. They are white-passing so nobody would expect it. But we live right on Main Street. I see kids with their basketball and running. And I see people cross the street to avoid teenage black men. We see things all of the time because we are always sitting on our porch. And so there is definitely work to be done. I think theres work to be done everywhere, but especially in a place like this where our history is the Civil War. Our history is divisive. Theres a lot more work to be done than people would like to admit needs to be done.

Like Stevens, Young also wants council to find ways to support the community during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she would like there to be a town-commissioned food pantry drop off or coordination to help the Sherando Food Pantry. She also wants the town to provide handicapped-accessible playgrounds and parks for disabled children.

If elected, Young also hopes to foster growth of residential and commercial development.

To be perfectly honest, I think the only way is to move forward and growth is key, Young said. There are things that are treasured about small towns, but you dont have to lose the neighborly quality that people desire and knowing each other and the warmth that small towns can exude when you wind up expanding.

As for Bowers, 83, he said, I just would like to continue to serve the citizens of the town. He said there are several housing developments planned and that there certainly is going to be a lot of changes in the next four years.

Rich Venskoske, director of elections/general registrar for Frederick County, said because the three candidates are the only ones who filed by Tuesdays deadline, they are expected to win the election unless there is an extremely popular write-in candidate. Town council members are not paid.

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Stephens City Town Council election to be uncontested - The Winchester Star

1.How is a small-business person supposed to feel about being looted by members of their own community, not being protected by the police, not being allowed to protect their own property, then being financially victimized, when they have to take out a loan to pay for something that wasnt their fault? Will frequenting their businesses if they survive the financial consequences of the pandemic even scratch the surface of what needs to be done to restore their faith in humanity?

2.When looters were destroying the businesses large and small in south Minneapolis destroying the hopes, dreams and life savings of businesses that are the economic lifeblood of the community, what should the police have done about it that would have met with the approval of the protesters?

3.If most cops are good cops, would dismantling or defunding the Minneapolis Police Department be an assault primarily on the bad cops, or on the good cops?

4.To what extent would dismantling or defunding the Minneapolis Police Department be a de facto but intentional victimization of the families of good police officers? What constructive value would there be in doing that?

5.In the sphere of public opinion of the voters across the state, will what happened in the Twin Cities during the protests increase or decrease the city-rural divide?

6.Did the protesters here and across the nation make a good impression on the National Guard and on the law enforcement officers who were called in to keep the peace? Does this matter? Yes, it does! The voting friends, neighbors and co-workers of the National Guard members and law-enforcement officers are going to want to know from the people they know from the people who were actually there what their impression was of the protesters and the way that they conducted themselves.

7.Did the echoing of protesters inflammatory language by government officials to describe the officers involved in the George Floyd incident increase or decrease the odds that those officers will be convicted during a fair trial, anywhere in Minnesota? If they are convicted by a tainted jury, will that conviction be justice or retribution? If they are acquitted on appeal because it can be shown that the jury was tainted by inflammatory language, who will take responsibility for tainting the jury pool?

8.Could it be that what we are seeing in the nationwide protests the long-awaited awkward emergence of the younger generation, stepping up to take control and responsibility for the future of our nation? Can that possibly happen without a grand-scale revolution in the way we now view our world?

9.There is a world of difference between we the people empowering politicians with our vote so that they can do great things for us, and politicians empowering we the people so that we can do great things for ourselves. Will the obviously well-intended effort of Gov. Tim Walz and other politicians to bring about community and police reforms through legislation and programs result in a different outcome than past initiatives that followed that same path? Or, should we be trying new solutions that were created by we the people solutions the likes of which no one has ever seen or tried before? Which is most likely to succeed?

10.In a crisis, some people turn their negativity inward and suffer a lot rather than risk hurting others with their anger. Some people, in need of an emotional punching bag and someone to blame for the way that they feel, release the wrath of their negative energy anger on to other people and other entities. Some people, like Gov. Walz and the volunteers who showed up to clean up afterward, convert their negative energy into positive energy in an effort to solve problems. Which use of negative energy is most likely to create constructive solutions that will fix the problems in the Minneapolis Police Department and in the communities they serve? What can be done to pre-emptively convert future negative destructive energy into constructive energy, so as to prevent dysfunctional consequences like the looting of neighborhood businesses?

11.Which is greater prejudice?

a)Painting all blacks with the same paintbrush, and claiming that the blacks all do this, or that the blacks all think that?

b)Lumping all the protesters who defied the curfew together with the looters, and calling them the black community?

c)Lumping all individual police officers together and saying that the police think this or that the police do that?

I am a 70-year-old retired federal law enforcement officer who worked in a federal prison for 28 years. I was on the riot squad for 20 years. I was a Bureau of Prisons certified self-defense instructor who never taught a chokehold. I was a union official in various capacities for 25 years. I was in the Minnesota Air National Guard for six years.

Ah! That explains a lot, doesnt it? Im a right-winger, and an unconditional supporter of the Minneapolis Police Department, right?

I have the better part of a masters degree in secondary education with a minor in psychology, and almost a minor in industrial arts. Married for 49 years to a schoolteacher. We have three grown adopted Korean children. I bought as a kit, built, then flew one of the first motorized hang gliders in the state of Minnesota back in 1980, back when these things were in their infancy. We have bicycled almost 125,000 miles.

Politically, on a left/right scale, I am a left-of-center moderate. On a vertical scale between progressive and regressive, I am an off-the-charts progressive. I am all about doing things that are experimental, in an effort to do things better than they have ever been done before.

Lumping people together and painting them with the same brush is prejudice personified. Prejudice is the gross failure of individuals to have the empathy and foresight to see, to value, and to tolerate the souls of others. People are prejudiced because being prejudiced is simple, convenient and easy, and because an emotionally satisfying buzz of passion binds them together with other like-minded people, in the belief that if they are all saying the same thing, that they all must then be right.

Footnote: My wife and I have participated in five protests in the past four years.

John A. Mattsen lives in New Brighton.

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OPINION EXCHANGE | The unasked questions about George Floyd's death and the aftermath - Minneapolis Star Tribune

On Memorial Day, communities across this country watched in horror as a former officer in Minneapolis held George Floyd to the ground, his knee restraining Floyd by his neck, actions which directly led to Floyds death.

Police agencies across the country, including the Mountain View Police Department, came out to condemn, in no uncertain terms, the inexcusable actions of the officer. The Mountain View Police Department reiterated a vow to continue the strong partnership with the community, as it has for decades. The actions of the former Minneapolis police officers, at their very core, went against everything the Mountain View Police Department stands for, from human rights to rendering immediate medical aid for those calling out for help.

With more than 36,000 calls for service in 2019 alone, the Mountain View Police Department is a valuable organization in our community, serving vulnerable populations, our children, and more with a Mountain View-first mentality. The department is known as a dedicated leader in the community policing model. In the last three months alone, the police department has single-handedly helped distribute nearly 10,000 face coverings to those who need them to help us flatten the curve of COVID-19. They have distributed more than 2,000 bags of food to those in need. And they have been working in close collaboration, as they have for years, with community-based organizations to help find housing resources for those who need to stay healthy and stay safe while we battle this pandemic.

For more than 20 years, officers have served the children of Mountain View as mentors and trusted adults with the Dreams and Futures program, which helps students learn and deal with peer pressure, family issues, drugs, and more. These officers are beloved by their students, and they are repeatedly requested for reading days, assemblies, and more.

And thats not all our community comes out in force every year to help the Mountain View Police Department build meal baskets for families in need for Cops N Gobblers, thanks to the incredible donations made from our community members. Last year, in less than 45 minutes, Mountain Viewers, in tandem with officers, built over 400 baskets, that were in turn distributed by both officers and families to those who needed some help making their Thanksgiving Day special.

Every year in December, Mountain View officers help bring holiday gifts to thousands of Mountain View students with the Cops That Care program this event takes months to coordinate, but is worth every smile of the more than 1,000 children that walk through the door to receive a present of their choosing in time for the holidays.

These are just some of the efforts you may know about, and are part of the fabric of who we are and the values we hold. They are ingrained in the community policing model, which the Mountain View Police Department wholeheartedly embraces and follows. This doesnt include the tens of thousands of calls for service Mountain View officers were dispatched to last year calls for crime, calls for help, calls for someone to be there to support them when no one else was.

Of those 36,000 calls last year, less than a fraction of 1% just 26 calls total resulted in use of force, resulting in at most, minor injuries. Thats because Mountain View officers are trained holistically to constantly work to de-escalate, to help those in need at their pace, and to ensure that every possible avenue is taken before force is even brought to the table as an option. This isnt just a policy that we have it is ingrained in multiple policies, it is repeatedly covered in training every year, and it is a constant topic of discussion within the department.

Your Mountain View police officers care deeply for this community. They work to build bridges every day, not because its their job, but because they, like you, are men and women searching for a better way to serve the greater good. They will continue to meet you at the table, be there when you are having your worst day, and be there for every call in between. Because that is what it means to be a police officer in Mountain View.

Going forward, there will be many moments and conversations with many community members in many neighborhoods. Mountain View police will continue to be there to listen, to learn, and to help create intentional, meaningful movements forward.

Margaret Abe-Koga is the mayor of Mountain View and Max Bosel is the police chief.

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Guest opinion: A message from the Mountain View mayor and police chief - Mountain View Voice

The death of George Floyd and the protests that followed have brought on a range of emotions for Steven Harris, CPA, CGMA, and Herschel Frierson as they advocate for racial justice, diversity, and inclusion in the accounting profession and the world.

As African American men and leaders in the accounting profession, they have wrestled with anger over injustice. They feel compassion for the victims and those who are pursuing helpful change. They are disappointed by the lack of progress in this area in society and the business community.

As fathers of college students, they admit to fear for what could happen to their children if they come into contact with the police. But the events of recent weeks also give them hope that they can help lead the accounting profession and their communities toward positive, lasting change.

Harris, partner in charge of the Entrepreneurial Services Group at RubinBrown LLP in St. Louis, is the chairman of the board of the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA), a not-for-profit association open to all accounting or finance professionals and students. Frierson, a managing director in the consulting group at Crowe LLP in Indianapolis, will replace Harris as chairman of the NABA board on July 1.

In this Q&A, they shared their thoughts on the tension thats gripping the United States as well as how leaders of the accounting profession can advocate for racial justice, diversity, and inclusion.

Steven Harris: For me, this started before the unrest. It started with COVID-19 and what was happening in the African American community, how the virus was really hitting our communities very, very hard. A lot of underrepresented minorities lack access to resources. Then this virus comes in, and it just really impacted our communities in a major, major way. Then on top of that, you see this unrest that takes place [following Floyds death], and Im just going to be honest, were not strangers to these incidents.

We just keep replacing the name and the situation thats happening. Our organizations have always been at the forefront of standing up for equality and really being totally against racism and injustice in any form or fashion whether its in our profession or within our overall community and across our nation. So were quick to take action and really denounce it.

But I think this time it was a little different, and I think it was different because of what we were already facing in the COVID-19 environment. You just felt the sense that we had to do more, we need to do more, and the sense that theres an exhaustion that has come over all of us in this situation. In the course of two to three months, there were multiple incidents. Different states. Different people. Different situations that had a very profound impact on us because you could see racism live. You could see it happening.

There was the incident in Georgia. There was the incident in Kentucky. There was the incident in Minnesota. So weve got to take it to the forefront of what were going to do, and theres a bigger calling to action for us to make some change.

Herschel Frierson: Within our profession, why dont we have more CPAs? CIAs? Why dont we have more African Americans in our profession? What can I do to bring more people to our profession?

The question comes: I dont know what to do. Yes, you do. Everybody feels like they dont know what to do and they want the answer. The answer is in the mirror. People, go to lunch with someone who doesnt look like you or have the same beliefs as you or maybe not the same religion, or someone from the LGBTQ community. Thats the answer.

Within your firm, within your profession, go to someone else. Ask: How can I make you successful in your career? How can I support you in your community? We get so many questions like, I dont know what to do. I dont know what to say. And Ill push back: You have that opportunity. You extend that hand out to someone else. You have that opportunity to change. You go mentor someone. You go volunteer in the community. You have that answer.

Harris: In a time like this, every word of the statement that your firm wants and needs to send is analyzed. Being intentional about whats said, whats not said, and also understanding the perspective and the mindset of how people are going to receive it is so important right now.

Herschel and I have had conversations about how you think youre saying the right things, and how some people feel like youre not saying enough. Some people might feel like you said it just right with your tone and temperament.

I want to challenge everybody to move beyond the message and move into the actions, how we make the changes.

Harris: One thing were missing the boat on as a profession is we need to do a real assessment across every organization and every company, and look at leadership, and really say, What does the leadership of this organization look like? Because if were all sitting around and the board of directors all look alike, were not moving the needle there.

And when we look at top leadership of organizations and there are no people of color or no women in those organizations, were going to continue to get the same results that were getting because theres not enough diversity of thought in the rooms where these decisions are being made.

Frierson: Go outside your typical colleges where you recruit. Emphasize the historically black colleges and universities because they have great accounting and finance programs. If you stick with your typical colleges and universities, are you working with diverse student organizations on campus?

NABA has student chapters across this country at major universities. And the question is, what are you doing to connect with those organizations? Thats very powerful.

The profession needs more diverse partners. Quite simply, the table needs to be bigger. Every single firm and company in our profession should be reaching out to NABA. Youre talking about diverse talent. Youre talking about what do we need to do to make a change. Who can I talk to? How can we work together? NABA is there for you. There are resources there for you in our profession that can help you move the needle.

Frierson: What is your true passion? Our profession, as much as we talk about policies and procedures and GAAP rules and things of that nature, at the end of the day, were a people business. The profession will not survive without our people. So we need to take a step back and look at our people and really look at our company mission statement. Its good that everybody is putting out statements in support.

But I think our next step is to go back and look at what your values are and challenge them, and really do a test. Really look at your value statement and your mission statement and ask, When I look back at the past 10, 15 years, are we truly, truly living up to what we say on our website?

Ken Tysiac (Kenneth.Tysiac@aicpa-cima.com) is the JofAs editorial director.

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Q&A: Advocating for justice, diversity, and inclusion - Journal of Accountancy

AUGUSTA, Maine (WABI) - The Maine Department of Health and Human Services DHHS has been awarded $989,045 in federal funds from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The funding will allow the state to contract with behavioral health providers and organizations to offer crisis counseling to individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 as well as those who are close contacts of such individuals.

State officials say this work supplements the work that is already being done by the Maine CDC Behavioral Health Response Team.

The money will also allow for the launch of a public awareness campaign regarding mental health to help Mainers find positive ways to cope with the changes to their lives that have been brought on by the pandemic.

Some of the money will support the Maine Frontline Warmline that was created to help first responders and health care workers.

Full statement from Maine DHHS:

"The Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) will use nearly $1 million in federal funding awarded this week for a program to help Maine people cope with the psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, through both direct support for individuals exposed to the virus and proactive outreach aimed at reducing the long-term behavioral health impacts of the pandemic.

Individuals are increasingly reaching out for behavioral health support in the face of the pandemic. Maines Intentional Warm Line, which offers non-crisis peer support to adults, has received more than 6,000 calls since March 30, 2020, an increase of 40 percent. Call duration increased 60 percent over the same period to an average of nearly 22 minutes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on not only peoples physical health, but also their mental health and emotional wellbeing, said DHHS Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew. This funding will support additional boots on the ground to help those in Maine facing behavioral health challenges now and to prevent post-COVID challenges in the long-term.

There are immediate behavioral health impacts from this pandemic as well as potential long-term effects as people grapple with disruption, isolation, traumatic experiences, grief, and economic instability, said Dr. Jessica Pollard, Director of the DHHS Office of Behavioral Health. These funds will support our work to proactively help Maine people cope with this distress and support their health during the pandemic as well as when it is over.

DHHS will use $989,045 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to:

Contract with behavioral health providers and organizations to offer crisis counseling to individuals diagnosed with COVID-19, close contacts of such individuals, and people living or working in an outbreak setting. Community health workers will be trained to provide psychological and emotional support, assessment and case management, and facilitate connections to Maine CDC contact tracers. Behavioral health providers will stand ready to offer additional support to individuals with more significant psychiatric needs. This work supplements the ongoing work of Maine CDCs Behavioral Health Response Team, whose trained volunteers have been responding to outbreak settings to help minimize the impacts and support those affected.

Launch a public awareness campaign offering information on expected emotional reactions to public health emergencies, building resilience and coping skills, knowing what warning signs to watch for, and when and how to seek help. While the campaign will serve the general public, it will target those with pre-existing behavioral health conditions, first responders and health care workers, and those experiencing significant economic impacts from the pandemic. Support the Maine Frontline Warmline for first responders and health care workers, NAMI Maines Teen Text Support Line, bolster the Intentional Warm Line, and add Psychological First Aid as a service accessible through Maines 211 system.

Maine DHHS also will assess the behavioral health needs of various communities, including people of color such as new Mainers, Tribes, first responders, and health care workers, to determine how best to direct future resources. DHHS plans to apply for a second round of federal funding to extend this project over a longer term, recognizing that public health emergencies have both immediate and long-term psychological impacts.

The Maine Emergency Management Agency is the direct recipient of this award and will transfer the funds to DHHS.

Visit the Maine DHHS Office of Behavioral Health for mental health and substance use disorder information and resources available during the pandemic at: http://www.maine.gov/dhhs/samhs/coronavirus.shtml.

Helplines:24/7 Statewide Crisis Line 888-568-111224/7 Intentional Warm Line 866-771-927624/7 Suicide Hotline 800-273-TALK (800-273-8255)24/7 Disaster Distress Helpline: 1-800-985-5990 or text "TalkWithUs" to 66746 Maine FrontLine WarmLine for health care workers and first responders: 221-8196, free, confidential support 8am-8pm, 7 days a week NAMI Maine Teen Text Support Line 515-8398 (TEXT)211 and 211maine.org"

More here:

Nearly $1 million in federal funds will be used to support pandemic related mental health efforts in Maine - WABI

About a decade ago, an academic cottage industry arose around the concept of the end times of human rights. Some found arguments about the demise of human rights overblown, but certain elements rang true: The movement had come to be seenand not just by dictatorsas elitist, driven by outsiders, or just plain irrelevant to many citizens around the world. Naming and shaming, standard approaches in human rights advocacy, were increasingly having limited effect. The business model of Global North donor supporting Global South activists exacerbated these problems.

Fast forward. In the wake of the myriad abuses occurring in the United States, another debate is emerging: Can the United States support democracy and human rights around the world as we have for four decades, even as racial inequalities, disparities, and inequities at home are more evident than any time in recent history? How do the societal and economic cracks and crevices in our system, laid bare now as canyons, affect our national security policies going forward?

I want to add another dimension to these debates. Despite the cratering of U.S. global leadership and multiple crises, if we embrace a 21st century conception of sustainable development here and abroad, we can recover with a new, better approach to advancing social justice and dignity, one that puts addressing structural racism front and center. Done comprehensively, it would improve communities all over the country but also positively impact American diplomacy and development work overseas.

Racism in the United States has always been an impediment to realizing the promise of democracy, but also to embracing, and being seen to embrace, human rights. It deterred Eleanor Roosevelt and the U.S. delegation to the U.N. in 1948 from turning the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the touchstone of the movement, into a legally binding document. The Truman administration, in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in Brown v. the Board of Education, cited the unequal system of public education defined by race as a national security issue that the Soviets were exploiting.

Cold War dynamics and lingering effects have led to a systematic downplaying of social and economic rights. Instead, a focus on rights of the person (e.g., highlighting torture, indefinite detention) has tended to dominate many U.S. human rights nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The 1975 Helsinki Accords between the United States and the Soviet Union indirectly gave rise to one of the worlds most preeminent NGOs, Human Rights Watch (HRW). However, HRW did not make tackling racial injustice at home the priority. Initially called Helsinki Watch, it signaled its role as a solidarity group monitoring the compliance of the Soviet Union with international human rights obligations.

When the United States visibly departs from the rule of law, dictators are enabled. For many of us who work internationally, the derogation regarding indefinite detention highly motivated us to try to close Guantanamo among other efforts to change deleterious counterterrorism policies. Within the same groupan overwhelmingly white, privileged communityfew of us have to date made reducing inequality at home an equally critical or even existential issue.

This situation is no longer tenable. Advancing rights at home and overseas needs to finally be clearly understood as interconnected and should lead to changes in domestic and foreign policies. Intentional approaches to breaking down silos need to be established. Measurable progress reducing inequality and inequities must feature prominently, but challenges exist requiring paradigm shifts.

How countries reconcile with their violent past and how it influences the present is not a well-understood or consistently recognized factor in either diplomacy or development. This present pastour continued legacy of structural racismhas burst into view on prime-time television and social media. Our deep deviations from the rule of law have, however, freighted our efforts to advance human rights abroad for some time nowso much so they led me to search for approaches that at least acknowledged the tensions. Even minor efforts met with resistance and institutional obstacles.

In 2009, I helped organize a U.S.-Russia civil society summit in Moscow attended by President Obama who joined his former colleagues. This conversation, with Black Americans talking about their work in community organizing in the United States and Russian activists talking about work inside Russia, was a modest attempt to shift traditional approaches for assistance to peer-to-peer engagement. One concrete recommendation from the summit was a series of joint projects, including one on history and memory:

In the United States, these might include the legacies of slavery and the treatment of indigenous peoples, and in Russia, it might include the legacies of terror and the institutionalization of deportations and slave labor in the gulag. It might examine how these issues are presented to the public in each country, for example, through a comparison of text books, tourism, movies, and popular novels.

Some activists on both sides objected, believing it lent credence to the Kremlins what-about-isms (e.g., Dont talk to me about Russian human rights abuses. What about racism in the U.S.?). In any case, after a few years of peer-to-peer meetings, the U.S. walked away. Vladimir Putin had again become president, most international support for Russian human rights evaporated, and the Kremlin launched hybrid warfare to undermine democracies, including specifically target(ing) the Black community to sow division and suppress voter turnout.

Still wanting to address the tensions inherent in our present past while advancing human rights overseas, when I joined the Obama administration in 2010, I proposed an initiative on reconciliation, accountability, and justice. Colleagues at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) were receptive. (Some of these same colleagues have written recently about the need for a U.S. conflict prevention plan.) We immediately encountered impediments; USAIDs mandate is to address internationalnot domesticdevelopment. The problem was, however, not just a bureaucratic one. As I wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2017, the international community is not well organized to manage the problem of historical memory. (T)roubling, since how countries deal with violent episodes in their past shapes how they develop. (C)onsider the United States own lack of reconciliation with its legacy of slavery and how this affects race relations and inequality today. Over and over again, we witnessed the lack of accountability for the past as a driver of contemporary development and, often, of conflict.

Suffice to say, to date, the international democracy and human rights work that the State Department, USAID, NGOs, and private foundations have funded, programmed, and promoted has, like the United States itself, attempted to sidestep this profound wound. While obscuring what is going on inside the country, we have trainedindeed, congressionally mandatedour eyes to gaze only on abuses occurring elsewhere, similar to what one writer has labeled the exotic poverty problem.

The world has turned upside down. Anything that seemed impossible a few weeks ago may now actually be imperative. How extremely foresighted then that a global framework for a 21st century approach to sustainable development already exists and applies to the Global North and the Global South: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This agenda has reducing inequality and leaving no one behind as foundational. Implemented, it could help radically reduce violence and increase access to justice. Expanded definitions of sustainability (beyond climate) and development (happens everywhere) represent paradigm shifts needed to erode the silos of development at home versus overseas. Only, however, if we organize and educate ourselves.

The clock is ticking. With the SDGS adopted in 2015 and running through 2030, time has been wasted. Equally problematic, there is little awareness that this agenda even exists. Yet we still have ten years, the decade of action. Moreover, there are pockets of traction: Some cities, universities, business leaders, and philanthropies have recognized the value-add of the SDGs, including in the United States. At Carnegie Mellon, we are conducting a Voluntary University Review to see how our education, research, and practice align with the SDGs.

Now is the time to make the agenda for peaceful, just, inclusive communities a societaldare I say national project that delivers for all citizens. We need a national conversation about what sustainable developmentincluding tackling structural racismmeans. We need to support a next generation of experts trained for the transnational, distributed world, educated in holistic, human-centered design, listening and responding to needs in whatever locality they work. They must reflect the demography of the United States. We need resourced plans to broaden the pipeline of talent, targeting educational institutions early and often.

The foreign policy community should rethink labels common in international development circles. We should no longer be comfortable talking about the United States as a developed country given disaggregated data at the city level, even before the pandemic, that show life expectancy in communities of color below places the World Bank labels as less developed. The average life expectancy in parts of Ward 5 in the District of Columbia is 67. The average in Botswana is 69.6. We can no longer ignore educational, health, and economic disparities that have defined generations.

The era in which the human rights community considers inequities and inequalities as outside their remit must end. Traditional approaches to advancing human rights by monitoring compliance with legal frameworks (or capacity building) are inadequate. Some, namely the Ford Foundation under Darren Walker, have recognized the need for change. Yet behind closed doors, activists complain Ford has walked away from advancing rights.

The foreign policy community must recognize structural racism as a fundamental threat to the well-being of this country, just as we would a foreign one. If we do not have the will to meet this moment, we may well be witnessing the end times of human rights and the ultimate undermining of our democracy. That is what the Putins of the world are betting. We can prove them wrong and establish that the United States, despite history, is a beacon. Reducing inequality and inequities here will do more to help advance human rights than a million reports monitoring abuses overseas.

Link:

Inequality, the SDGs, and the human rights movement in the US and around the world - Brookings Institution

Viewpoint by Linda Eckerbom Cole

The writer is Director/Founder, African Women Rising, shuttles between Santa Barbara, California and Gulu, Uganda.

SANTA BARBARA, California (IDN) African Women Rising (AWR) has created a campaign to build 2,000 new Permagardens, which will help feed 15,000 at-risk people who are experiencing food scarcity due to COVID-19. Permagardens empower communities to meet their own food needs and are a long-term solution to hunger.

Margaret has not been able to sell her fish at the local market for two months now. The restrictions put in place to prevent COVID-19 from spreading in Northern Uganda have had devastating consequences for her and her household. With no other income, the family is struggling.

Margaret is old and doesn't have the strength to work in the field. Her husband is blind and not healthy, leaving Margaret as the primary caretaker and breadwinner for the eight grandchildren in their care. They have reduced food intake to once a day.

This is the situation for many of the women in the communities where African Women Rising works.

The restrictions are also affecting the 1.4 million South Sudanese refugees in the region as they are unable to access markets, agricultural fields or other sources of income. To compound the situation, the World Food Program (WFP) has reduced food distributions due to lack of funding. Refugees receive food once a month, but it only last two weeks.

As a response, African Women Rising is rapidly increasing the scale of our Permagarden program to reach the most vulnerable and food-insecure families both in the refugee camps and in the host communities. A Permagarden is a proven, regenerative approach that can start producing food within two weeks and can support a family for years to come.

More than teaching techniques, African Women Rising's Resilience Design Field Crop and Permagarden programs are about sharing the principles behind water and soil management and developing a contextual understanding to design a system to be as productive and regenerative as possible. AWR's programs have 24 different agroecology-focused indicators they track.

The overall goal of the Permagarden Program is to increase access to diverse and nutritious sources and adequate quantities of vegetables and fruit throughout the year. Farmers do this through the design and establishment of small Permagardens around their home.

The Permagarden method combines components of permaculture an agricultural approach using design principles to utilise natural systems for production and bio-intensive agriculture, a farming approach that maximises crop production through sustainable practices that increase biodiversity, to create a highly productive garden and homestead compound.

It is designed to work in both the rainy and dry seasons and is a whole compound approach that improves soil fertility and water management to produce nutritious crops. The method shows how farmers with only a small amount of land can produce food throughout the year by learning principles behind proper gardening and resource management and matching those principles to fundamental practices.

The approach helps meet the short-term food needs of program farmers even as it builds their long-term resilience. Farmers learn to manage natural resources through the intentional design of their compound, harvesting water and capturing waste streams to enhance the fertility and productivity of their plots.

The management of existing trees and planting of other fruit and multipurpose trees, a living fence and other biomass plantings provide materials for building, pest remedies, dry season nutrition and medicine. This helps reduce pressures on the environment such as the collection of fuelwood, gathering of wild foods, burning of charcoal that will continue to worsen as time goes on.

To reach 2,000 more vulnerable families (impacting upwards of 15,000 individuals), we need to raise $200,000.

The cost of one garden is only $100. This includes:

Mary started her Permagarden in 2014. As a landless widow was taking care of four grandchildren, her life can be a challenge. Her Permagarden is right next to the house and bursts with production throughout the year. She grows papaya, tomatoes, pumpkins, four kinds of leafy greens, onions, yams, peppers, okra, passion fruit and citrus.

On 15x15 she can produce enough always to have something to eat. There is even extra food that she has been selling at the market and to neighbours. With that weekly income, she has been able to buy essential items such as salt, soap and school supplies. She has also invested in chickens and goats.

Mary's success is not an exception. Results like these are standard in our Permagarden program, and we have data to prove it. Families become food secure, have new income, can invest in assets, can send children to school and pay for medical care. The Permagardens can provide relief in time of instability, assistance that is not merely a Band-Aid but offers long-term solutions.

Help us spread Mary's success to those who need it most. Your support can go a long way to ensure that women like Margaret have the tools and skills they need to provide for their families now and well into the future.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Uganda has been effectively shut down. We have temporarily closed our programs, except for an increase in targeted, regenerative agricultural activities to ensure people have access to food.

Our staff have been redeployed into COVID-19 response, especially in the refugee camps. There are 1.4 million refugees in 11 camps in Northern Uganda. An outbreak in the camps would lead to a humanitarian disaster. In addition to the Permagarden programs, African Women Rising is distributing soap, installing hand washing stations and providing information on how to keep the virus from spreading. This is a critical emergency. [IDN-InDepthNews 13 June 2020]

Photo (top): Margaret with one of her granddaughters. Credit: Brian Hodges for African Women Rising.

Photo (in Text): Mary in her Permagarden. Credit: Brian Hodges for African Women Rising.

VIMEO link: https://vimeo.com/427529848

Donate: https://www.africanwomenrising.org/donate-today/

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African Women Respond to Covid-19 Hunger Emergency - IDN InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters