Category Archives: Intentional Communities

Allegheny County added 27,230 residents during the past decade, according to long-awaited data released by the U.S. Census Bureau. That 2.2 percent increase puts the countys population at slightly more than 1.25 million people, and it represents the first increase in the countys population since 1960, a time when the Pittsburgh Pirates played in Forbes Field and their fans were capable of feeling emotions other than existential despair.

Census figures also show the countys make-up becoming increasingly diverse and in some ways, increasingly complex. The number of residents who identified as having Asian ancestry increased by nearly 72 percent, according to an analysis by University of Pittsburgh researcher Chris Briem. The number of people who identified as Hispanic or being multiracial also leaped, by 80 percent and 190 percent respectively.

The city of Pittsburghs population, which has also experienced a decades-long decline, slid a little further but by less than 1 percent to land at 302,971. That keeps the city above a 300,000-person threshold that is often used to define a city as major. (Although a decent ballclub wouldnt hurt either.)

But the city's stabilizing overall head count conceals considerable shifts within its borders.

'Really drastic changes'The census reports a Black population within the city limits that is 13.4 percent lower than in 2010 a drop of 10,660 people, to 69,050. At the same time, the Black population in the rest of the county grew by 12,477. Taken together, the numbers offer strong proof that Black residents have moved across the city line and into nearby communities.

There were really drastic changes from neighborhood to neighborhood, said Matt Merriman-Preston, a political consultant who has long made a study of demographic trends. Black-majority neighborhoods in the East End and the neighborhoods in the North Side declined pretty significantly. But in the other East End neighborhoods, you see a huge increase in population.

His own analysis shows that City Council District 9, which represents Homewood and other mostly Black communities, lost more than 2,600 people, while nearby mostly white districts 7 and 8 grew by more than 2,000 people each.

Overall, the Black population in Pittsburgh now makes up 22.7 percent of the city, down from 26.1 percent in 2010. And Merriman-Preston says the job of ensuring that population is fairly represented may get trickier in the days ahead.

Mathematically, those Black residents would have proportional representation in city government if two of the nine members on City Council were Black. For years, the city's council map has been drawn to assure Black voters held the majority in two districts. But Merriman-Preston, who worked on drawing the council maps after the last census, says it wont be easy to do that again.

Ten years ago when we drew the lines, it was pretty difficult to find a shape that worked in order to draw two minority-majority districts," he said. With the Black population smaller and more geographically scattered, "Theres going to be challenges when the city does reapportionment this year," he said.

But that challenge may contain an opportunity, he adds, if Black voters end up having significant, even if not overwhelming, influence in more districts.

The question you have to answer is whether city voters are in the same place they were in 30 or 40 years ago, when only Black voters would vote for Black candidates, Merriman-Preston said. The citys nine school board districts regularly produce three Black board members, he noted, and the nomination of Ed Gainey as the Democrat running for mayor this spring suggests that attitudes among white voters are changing, even if we havent eliminated all the barriers to political power.

In fact, demographically, the group that would appear to have suffered the largest decline is people identifying themselves as white alone. Briem's analysis suggests their numbers dropped by nearly 51,000 countywide, and by nearly 12,000 in the city itself, during the past decade. But complicating efforts to gauge such changes is the fact that there was a massive increase by 43,000 in the county and more than 10,000 in the city in the number of people who reported being of more than one race.

Such shifts, said Briem and others, are shaped not just by a different demographic make-up, but by residents thinking about their own make-up differently.

The big getting biggerBut whatever the make-up of Allegheny Countys population, its raw growth is a notable reversal from earlier census estimates that the county would continue to shrink as well from the overall pattern in western Pennsylvania.

Only two other counties in the western part of the state grew at all during the past decade: Butler and Washington. And only Butlers 9,901-person increase was statistically notable: Washington grew by less than 1 percent. Every other county in the region lost residents, led by Westmorelands worst-in-state 10,506-person decline, with Cambrias 10,207-person loss close behind.

Indeed, both nationally and in Pennsylvania, most counties lost population during the past decade, with growth concentrated in large metro areas that have only gotten larger.

Philadelphia County added nearly 78,000 residents, a growth rate of more than 5 percent, and other southeastern Pennsylvania counties also enjoyed solid population increases.

The new census data will be used to draft new district maps for the states Congressional delegation which is set to shrink from 18 to 17 seats and for state legislators. Politically, the most obvious impact of the numbers is that the states political center of gravity is shifting eastward, towards Philadelphia and away from the lagging west. And broadly speaking, counties that have trended Republican in recent years have shrunk, as Democrats look to build on favorable trends in the suburban areas that have grown.

Some worst-case scenarios for Democrats which involved communities of color being undercounted with a loss in political weight for cities did not appear to bear fruit.

Still, challenges remain for Democrats going forward. The tendency of Democratic base voters to concentrate in urban areas can limit their partys options when it comes time to draw maps. That can give Republicans an advantage in representation not much different from intentional efforts to gerrymander districts.

The tendency for Democrats to pack themselves in is true everywhere in the country, said Merriman-Preston. We have a big problem with the map favoring smaller Republican districts. It makes it even more apparent that we will need a fair redistricting process.

Excerpt from:

Allegheny County Grows In Population And Complexity - 90.5 WESA

In the runup to the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with the murder of George Floyd, prosecutors and defenders alike were extremely concerned with seating a jury. The court set aside three weeks just for the selection process.

Determined not to repeat the mistakes of earlier, racially charged and highly publicized trials, they set out to assemble a pool of prospective jurors who could truly be considered impartial and reflective of the surrounding community. Finding a group of men and women who had no strong feelings regarding the very public case was sure to be a challenge. But finding a racially representative jury would prove just as difficult.

Minneapolis is about 64 percent white and 20 percent Black. But according to figures from the State Court Administrators Office, the jury pool in Hennepin County where Minneapolis is located was 80 percent white and only 8 percent Black in 2020. In fact, looking at the demographics of Minneapolis juries in the years leading up to Chauvins day in court, it is clear balanced cross-sections of locals were rare, and predominately white juries were far more common.

Analyzing these data and crunching the numbers from courthouses around the country it is clear that while the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution compels state and federal courts to assemble impartial juries in criminal cases, in practice, the individuals occupying the jury box tend to live in a very different world than the defendants upon whom they pass judgement.

In the end, Chauvins jury comprised six white people, four Black people, and two people who identified as multicultural. By local standards, the group was considered remarkably diverse, and the verdict the jury delivered after 10 hours of deliberation was historic. Chauvin became the first Mineeapolis police officer charged with the murder of a Black man.

However, those Minneapolis jurors and the verdict they handed down look more like the exception that proves an unfair norm. Reversing this historic trend will not be easy, but that isnt stopping lawmakers and activists from pushing for more consistently fair and representative American juries.

One initiative aimed at balancing the scales of justice is working its way through the California legislature; if passed, it would go on trial in San Francisco beginning in 2022.

BE THE JURY

This is something that defenders and our clients have been noticing for a long time, says San Franciscos Public Defender Mano Raju, Its very difficult to get a jury of your peers.

While Californias courts do not collect information on jurors race, gender, ideology or income, the lack of racial representation in the states juries has been hard for public defenders to ignore, Raju says.

In an effort to turn the tide on the trend of off-balance juries, San Francisco Assemblymember Phil Ting introduced AB 1452 earlier this year. The bill would authorize a first-of-its- kind pilot program in the city called Be the Jury, which would compensate qualified, low-income jurors $100 a day for service. Championed by the citys treasurer, public defender, and district attorney, the goal is to make San Franciscos juries more racially and economically diverse.

Although our state boasts the highest minimum wage in the country $13 per hour for small employers and $14 per hour for larger employers California jurors are compensated just $15 per day beginning the second day of service. That puts the state on the lower end of the scale of juror compensation rates nationwide. By contrast, several states pay jurors less than $10 a day, while many pay $30 to $50 per day. State law requires employers give time off for jury duty, but nowhere does it state that they must pay employees while they serve.

Californias per diem jury duty rate would barely cover lunch in San Francisco, to say nothing of other costs, like parking or childcare.

To their credit, California judges understand this. Approximately 3,800 low-income San Franciscans were excused from service for financial hardships in 2018 and 2019, according to data provided by the Financial Justice Project, the organization funding Be the Jury. Unfortunately, dismissing large numbers of prospective jurors because it is economically infeasible for them to serve has other consequences.

A survey conducted by the Administrative Office of the Courts of California found that 35 percent of jurors reported that having to serve on a jury would deal a serious blow to their monthly budget. And considering that 59 percent of Black families and 53 percent of Latino families qualified as very low income last year, its not hard to connect the dots.

Were a very diverse city and we want to make sure that folks from all walks of life, all colors of your skin, have access to this opportunity, says Anne Stuhldreher, director of the Financial Justice Project, a department within the San Francisco treasurers office that evaluates how fees impact low-income residents. We know that income highly correlates with race.

For this reason, Stuhldreher supports the idea behind Be the Jury. This is a good test case for the state in terms of if this kind of compensation would make a difference in creating more economically and racially diverse juries, she says.

Douglas Welch, a San Francisco deputy public defender, says mostly white juries are problematic because everyone interprets evidence through the lens of their own lived experiences. Juries composed of individuals with higher incomes, who have enjoyed the benefits of generational wealth and white privilege, have less understanding of realities that some people live in, he says.

Welch also notes poor juror pay is not the only underlying cause of whitewashed juries in San Francisco. An exodus of people of color from the city over the past few decades is also a major factor.

The burgeoning cost of San Francisco real estate has pushed out middle class residents of all ethnicities, but disproportionately impacts people of color. Furthermore, gentrification driven and informed by the tastes of young tech workers has transformed vast swaths of the city erasing cultural institutions and touchstones and changing the fabric of neighborhoods that were once predominantly Black, Latino, or Asian.

The Fillmore District was transfigured by so-called urban renewal efforts in the 1950s and 60s, and its historic jazz clubs have long since been replaced by posh retailers. The citys Black population has fallen from a peak of about 15 percent of the citys total, to just 5 percent. Valencia Street in the Mission has become a high-end shopping district, contributing to the 27 percent decline in the neighborhoods Latino population over the past decade. According to the Bay Area Atlas, 54 percent percent of low-income households of color live in neighborhoods being gentrified or at risk of gentrification.

The contraction of San Franciscos communities of color is not reflected in the citys jails, however. Although the citys population is just 5 percent Black and 40 percent white, the jail population is 48 percent Black and 40 percent white, according to the District Attorneys office. The majority of Welchs clients are people of color.

The communities that are most overwhelmed by our criminal legal system certainly should be supported in participating in the most important part of it, which is serving on a jury, says Welch. So many people are kind of disenfranchised from the ability to do it. Its often the very people who are going to be the best jurors, and have the best understanding of reality.

A study conducted by the The Racial Equity & Diversity Lab at Tufts University on group decision-making indicates diverse juries spend more time deliberating over the facts of a case than homogenous juries and are less likely to rely on bias. Thats an all-too-important endeavor when jurors come together to analyze someones life experiences, Welch says.

There are realities that many people confront that are just not on the radar of people of privilege, says Welch. We all come from different experiences. Understanding some of the challenges of somebody who lives in a much more challenging environment that you live in is really important. The relationship that somebody from a position of privilege might have with law enforcement is sometimes going to be dramatically different in a lot of cases from the experiences of a poor person or a person of color.

San Franciscos Be the Jury passed through the state Senate in late June and awaits Gov. Gavin Newsoms approval. If signed, the pilot program would go into effect in January and run until 2023. Its co-sponsors hope it will be a catalyst for state reform. But other reformers say paying low-income jurors for their time is just one piece of the puzzle.

THE SHALLOW POOL

Have you ever wondered how the courts track you down to issue your summons? At least once a year, each countys jury commissioner compiles a list of eligible jurors by randomly choosing from source lists. Under current state law, these indexes are compiled from the Department of Motor Vehicles and voter registrations. This means that only those who have a valid drivers licence or are registered to vote get their jury summons.

This selection process means millions of people, including many low-income people of color, are never asked to serve.

Beginning in January another new piece of state legislation, SB 592, also known as the Fair Juries Act, will expand those lists by requiring jury commissioners to add Franchise Tax Board records as sources for jurors. This means anyone who files income taxes will be added to the index. The goal of this bill, as authored by San Francisco Democrat Sen. Scott Wiener, is to broaden and diversify jury pools.

The state of California has, for decades, only used the Department of Motor Vehicles and voter registration to summon jurors, says Oscar Bobrow, chief deputy public defender in Solano County and a co-sponsor of the bill. When you only use those two lists, based on historical data, you get an under-representation.

One study, which surveyed 1,275 residents on a master list in Orange County, found that when both voter registration and DMV lists were used, African Americans were underrepresented by 18.92 percent relative to their population. Another study found that 41.3 percent of jury-eligible people in California are not on voter register lists; a disproportionate amount of individuals on that list are people of color.

Bobrow has been pushing for legislation to expand the jury summons lists since he was a deputy defender in Contra Costa county over a decade ago. Non-representative juries have long been prevalent in both counties.

Panels that are brought into the room are hugely disproportionately Caucasian, he says. You get a panel of 100 people and you see two people of color in the room on a regular basis. It precludes people from getting a fair cross section.

He says that prior to the legislation, the states Supreme Court had acknowledged on more than one occasion that the juries in his county are not representative, but that this has been ruled non-intentional. While it may not have been intentional, he says, something needed to change.

Although at least 17 other states already use tax filers to select jurors, according to the California Public Defenders Office, Bobrow says the legislation took years to gain traction in the Golden State.

Bobrow believes, at least in part, that may be due to the fact that failed legislative attempts included clauses for collecting data on jury demographics. He says California Jury Commissioners will not collect this kind of information, which is both perplexing and frustrating for himself and others trying to ensure jury pools are reflective of their counties.

In 2017, Weiner had proposed SB 576. The bill would have required jury commissioners to issue a short questionnaire detailing a jurors race, gender, ethnicity and ZIP code. That bill died in 2018.

This was part of what we pushed for in legislation and we get shut down every time. Jury commissioners dont collect it, they dont care. Jury commissioners are, by statute in the state of California, required to tell the judges that they work for whether or not they are getting a fair cross section with the community, says Bobrow. How do you know whether youre getting a fair cross section if youre not collecting data on whos showing up?

Despite a constitutional mandate that jury pools in the United States need to be representative of their population, almost no data exists in California that can prove juries are living up to the rule.

Bobrow says the few states that do collect this kind of information, such as New York, are able to identify areas where more juror outreach should be conducted.

In 2010, New York Gov. David Patterson signed the Jury Pool Fair Representation Act. The act allows commissioners to collect and assemble race and other demographic data into an annual report designed to address the underrepresentation of minorities on New York juries.

The law had also expanded New Yorks source lists of prospective jurors from DMV and voter registration lists to include payers of income and property taxes, students receiving financial aid, senior citizens subject to rent increase exemptions, recipients of workers compensation, public housing residents, and people subscribing to certain utility services.

They collect the data and they have a report every year. It says, These are the number of people that are summoned and this is a percentage of that population that is African American, Hispanic, Asian, says Borbow, New York has expanded the roles of who they summon. They use at least four lists, and they merge and purge duplicate names, and they have a way more diverse population of people that show up.

Without data on juror demographics, Bobrow says it will be difficult to identify the means by which California can also expand its potential juror lists. But still, hes eager to see Californias new legislation come into play.

Hopefully we will be able to see more diverse panels showing up for service in all the courts in the state, says Bobrow. With the expansion of this new list as well as the legislation that passed the year before, the inclusion of people that have had prior felony convictions.

FORMER FELONS

James Binnall was a year into his career as a San Diego criminal defender in 2009 when he was summoned for jury service. He walked through the attorneys only entrance of the court and into the jury room, where he proceeded to fill out a potential juror questionnaire.

When one of the routine questions asked if he had ever been convicted of a felony, Binnall checked yes.

In 1999, Binnall caused a DUI car accident that claimed the life of his best friend in the passenger seat. He served more than four years in a maximum security prison in Pennsylvania. During that time, he became passionate about the law and took his first LSAT behind bars. Six months after his release, he enrolled in the Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. He graduated in 2007, the same week his parole was set to expire.

It was Binnalls first time being summoned for service in California since he passed the bar in 2008. And it wasnt until that day, moments later when he was dismissed from the court, that he learned his prior felony conviction meant he couldnt serve on a jury.

It was ironic to me and sort of hypocritical, says Binnall. You could go through the entire sort of vetting process for becoming an attorney and then also be summarily dismissed from jury service because they assume that because you have committed a felony that youre just unfit to serve.

Thus began Binnalls decade-long project of researching and advocating for felons rights. His work was highly influential in the passing of California Senate Bill 310. The bill, authored by Assemblymember Nancy Skinner, restored the right to serve on a jury for people with past felony convictions who are not under state supervision or have a sexual violence record. Before January, anyone with a former felony conviction was barred for life from the juror box.

SB 310 was so crucial. Its needed in California, in terms of the size of California, the diversity of California, and the size of the criminal justice system. It impacted a ton of people, says Binnall, now an associate professor of law, and criminal justice at California State University, Long Beach, and the author of Twenty Million Angry Men: The Case for Including Convicted Felons in Our Jury System. Folks who were excluded missed out on this entire civic experience.

The legislation was passed in the wake of a broader ongoing discussion surrounding rights of those with criminal conviction records. Between 2016 and 2020, at least 13 states had expanded the right to vote for people with felony convictions, allowing millions of individuals once barred from that civic practice to join in democracy. California has allowed former felons who are not under state supervision to vote since 1974.

When Newsom signed SB 310 in 2019, More than 20 other states, including Colorado, Illinois, and Maine, had already allowed people with past felony convictions to serve on juries, although restrictions on people under state supervision and the type of crime vary per state. Over 20 states continue to permanently deny anyone with a prior felony conviction.

Resistance in allowing former felons to serve on juries was, and still is, palpable across the United States, says Binnall. Attempts in 2019 to pass bills to allow convicted felons to serve on juries recently failed in New York and Louisiana.

When it comes to folks with convictions across the country this is a very pervasive exclusion, far more so than voting, says Binnall. And obviously, this has a dispatrive impact on racial minorities because they are overrepresented in our criminal justice system.

According to his research, an estimated 19 million Americans have felony convictions. Of that group, nearly 7 million were African American, despite comprising 13 percent of the U.S. population. Nationwide, approximately one-third of African American men have felony convictions.

Even after Californias bill went into effect this year, Binnall noticed a prevalent issue: How would people with past felony convictions know they were now eligible to serve on a jury?

Months after the law went into effect, Binnall studied how each county in California was sounding the alarm bell to their former felons. He learned that 22 of 58 counties provided misleading, incorrect or insufficient information about eligibility. He says that only one county, to his knowledge, had a mechanism for getting former felons back on those potential jury lists if they had been removed.

Notification is crucially important if we want this legislation to have any effect at all on making jury pools more diverse, says Binnall, adding that legislation was implemented to ensure notification to former felons regarding their right to vote in California. Jury service, he says, should be held to the same standard.

But Binnall has high hopes in activism for the rights of felons. Nearly 60 percent of Californians who voted in the 2020 election supported Prop 17, which extended voting rights to people with felonies who are under state supervision, lifting the disenfranchisement of an estimated 50,000 people.

I think now that Prop 17 passed with respect to folks on supervision who could vote, it sort of undercuts the carve out for the jury system and its role. If folks are responsible enough to vote when theyre on supervision, why are they not responsible enough to serve, or at least to be put into the jury pool when theyre on supervision? says Binnall. I think thats the next step in the evolution of this.

BIAS BOX

Even if these legislative measures accomplish the goal of a broader, more representative jury pool, they still fail to address a major component in the lack of diverse juries around the nation: how ingrained racism, whether intentional or unconscious, continues to infect juror selection.

Beginning next year, the final step of the juror selection process known as voir dire will undergo major reform in California. In September 2020, Newsom signed AB 3070, the Anti-Discrimination Jury Selection Act. The bill will amend an existing law said to enable wide-spread discrimination in jury selection.

During voir dire, judges and prosecutors question the background of potential jurors for biases. Since the dawn of modern criminal cases, lawyers have been allowed to exclude a certain number of jurors without stating reason by issuing a peremptory challenge, also known as a peremptory strike.

These strikes are intended to exclude jurors who may have bias that would impede their ability to have an impartial view on the facts of a case. Intentional discrimination in these strikes is against the law both the California Supreme Court in 1978 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 issued rulings, known together as Batson, against using race as the only reason to strike a prospective juror.

But a growing number of states, including California, have begun to acknowledge that what happens in the name of impartiality often disgueses discrimination.

A highly influential study led by UC Berkeley law professors and students set out to prove what was witnessed for quite some time. The study, Whitewashing the Jury Box: How California Perpetuates the Discriminatory Exclusion of Black and Latinx Jurors, analyzed almost 700 cases in which the California Courts of Appeal heard objections to peremptory challenges from 2006 to 2018. They found prosecutors tried to remove Black jurors nearly 75 percent of the time and Latinx jurors almost 28 percent of the time. Potential white jurors accounted for just 1 percent of these peremptory challenges.

This is a process of exclusion that goes back to the very moment that this country allowed Black people to exercise the right to sit as jurors, says Elisabeth Semel, director of the Berkeley Law Death Penalty Clinic and co-author of the study. This is a long, long history. I came into this story as a lawyer in the mid 1970s and saw what other people had seen for generations.

Under current law, prosecutors who are challenged under Batson for removing a juror must state race-neutral reasoning. But Semel says stereotypes, often correlated with race, have been consistently used to justify striking jurors for decades.

Her study revealed prosecutors in these cases successfully argued their peremptory challenges against African Americans because they had dreadlocks, were slouching, wore a short skirt and blinged out sandals, visited family members who were incarcerated, had negative experiences with law enforcement. The report also found prosecutors had kicked potential jurors solely because they lived in East Oakland, Los Angeles Countys Compton, or San Franciscos Tenderloin.

Judges rarely find that these kinds of answers constitute intentional racism, she says. In the last 30 years, the California Supreme has reviewed 142 cases with discrimination claims yet found just three violations.

This new legislation takes a deeper approach. Prosecutors who are challenged under Batson will now have to provide clear and convincing evidence that their strikes werent related to an individuals protected group, such as race or class. And AB 3070 goes as far as to provide a list of presumptively invalid reasons to exclude jurors, which are based on the findings in Semels report that are often used to strike people of color.

A jurors clothing, demeanor, employment status or neighborhood will no longer be a pretext for dismissal without grounds that these factors will hinder the impartiality of a juror. And notably, Semel says, expressing distrust in the criminal legal system or admitting to a negative experience with law enforcement is high on that list.

Its meant to address discrimination in a realistc way, Semel says. Much of discrimination is not purposeful or concious but it is the result of stereotypical thinking. It is intended to greatly reduce the reliance on stereotypes.

This kind of progressive reform to a long held practice has not gone unchallenged, she says. Both the Alliance of California Judges and the Association of Deputy District Attorneys criticized the report and the legislation that followed, saying this new process is unworkable and will undoubtedly make the juror selection process longer and more difficult.

But to Semel and advocates around the state, its necessary. For too long, the jury system around the nation has been biased against minorities, she says. Furthermore, Semel contends it is the legislatures mandate to ensure fairness to communities in their right to serve and the trustworthiness, efficacy, and morality of the justice system hinges upon this effort.

It matters to the integrity of the system, she says of initiatives like Be the Jury and AB 3070. It matters to peoples willingness to serve and peoples belief that the system actually is doing justice, as opposed to just chewing people up and spitting them out.

See original here:

Balancing the Scales of Justice - SF Weekly

Its an especially immediate problem in 2021, but it has much deeper consequences than just the vaccination campaign. Consider some recent anecdotal examples Ive witnessed recently: A colleague praised a student for convincingly espousing a conservative perspective in classroom discussion, when the student himself obviously didnt hold that view. A second colleague noted in lecture, with properly distanced intonation: What would you say to a conservative, who might respond .

The implicit presumption in both conversations was clear, and likely correct: No one was actually present who held those conservative viewsor, really, to know that they were being accurately captured at all.

The overall academic world has always leaned liberal, but even in that context, the political imbalance within social work and public health is striking. In a 2018 survey of public health scholars in the Society for Epidemiologic Research, 72.4 percent reported their politics as liberal/left-leaning. Less than 5% responded: conservative/right-leaning. A 2014 analysis of one social work program found that 9.4% of students identified as Republican; 55.9% identified as Democrats.

In many fields, not just mine, conservative estrangement from our professional and academic communities damages discourse on both sides of the partisan divide. In public health, particularly, it hurts the credibility and cultural competence we need to do our jobs across vast swathes of America. In our political conversation, it deepens the moral and intellectual decline of American conservatism itselfa palpable decline exemplified and worsened by the Trump presidency.

The partisan wonk gap provides fodder for jokes on social media. The gap is real, though, and its not funny. And it hurts conservative priorities as well as liberal ones.

In early 2017, I attended a health policy dinner with Democratic and Republican House members. In casual conversation, it was obvious that Democrats were connected with a cadre of health policy professionals. Republicans were not. Soon after, House Republicans passed a conspicuously shoddy bill to repeal and replace Obamacarea bill that was supposedly the Congresss first priority under a Republican president. The bill had so many basic flawsincluding a nearly $13,000 proposed increase in yearly health insurance premiums for low-income 64-year-oldsthat it politically self-immolated once it faced real scrutiny.

That same estrangement enables palpable absolutism and lazy groupthink among progressives. Many of our students do not havemay never have hadthe experience of being openly challenged by conservative peers in our classrooms.

I fear that many struggle to distinguish truly unworthy arguments presented by some conservativessay, prevarication about climate change, or denying the Republican Partys long history of voter suppression and appeals to white racismfrom more worthy and serious arguments presented by conservatives that everyone should learn from and address.

For decades, for instance, conservatives and libertarians argued that public employee unions wield excessive influence on state and local governments. It should not have taken front-page police misconduct cases, union opposition to evidence-based vaccine mandates, or my own states seriously unfunded pension liabilities, for progressives to see merit in these views.

I dont write these words as a conservative attacking supposed evils of cancel culture. I dont write as a conservative at all. Im an emphatic liberal Democrat. Over my career, I have witnessed many harms inflicted by conservatives opposition to syringe exchanges and other essential public health efforts most definitely including our current public health crisis. Angered by such memories, ensconced within a community of like-minded scholars, I might forget that liberal/left communities are collections of imperfect humans like any otherwith our own blind spots and biases arising from group conformity. Progressive academia often lacks sufficient voices in the room to call us on our errors. John Stuart Mill reminds us: Those who know only their own side of the argument know little of that.

Conservative fears about job discrimination strike me as understandable, too. Imagine two job candidates, Martin and Michael. Martin finds that cultural norms among recent immigrants promote upward mobility, and that the role of structural barriers to block that mobility is overstatedchallenging the consensus in his field. Michael conducts an analysis of equally high quality, but finds the opposite result. Or imagine Lynne and Laurie. They conduct essentially identical statistical analysis of mandatory minimum sentences for illegal gun possession in 43 jurisdictions, Lynne finds that mandatory minimums reduce gun crime by 4 percent, and concludes that such policies are valuable. Laurie finds that mandatory minimums have zero impact on gun crime, and that such policies exemplify mass incarceration as a futile strategy that fails to address structural causes of crime.

I suspect that Michael and Laurie would have an easier job talk at many schools, because they come bearing findings more congenial to the liberal professors in the room. Martin and Lynne might have narrower margins for methodological judgment calls or presentation stumbles. They would face the additional burden of addressing the (potentially quite real) danger that their findings will be used by political figures who do not wish minority communities well. If the issue were truly sensitivesay the efficacy of affirmative action, the comparative successes of charter schools for minority and low-income students, or the unintended consequences of Ban the Box policies barring employers from inquiring about criminal convictionsId be even more worried that someone would face a competitive disadvantage because of her views, or her substantive findings.

We should be open and intentional in addressing these concerns, and in guarding against our own group-think and biases.

What can universities and other institutions do? Targeted student outreach would definitely be wise, particularly toward conservative rural communities where students might be very socially engaged, but might not be considering graduate study or PhD-level research. As with other forms of outreach, this requires thoughtful, culturally competent engagement on the part of universities hoping to broaden their student bodies.

Ive also come to support a radical policy with obvious ironies: We should practice affirmative action for religious, social and economic conservatives in areas of academia where those holding these views are scarce. If someone applies to our school who was (say) president of University of Texas Students for LifeI want her in my classroom. I want progressive students to present, defend, refine and improve their arguments knowing that a peer who disagrees with them is right there, ready to engage. Of course, I want conservative students to have the same experience, learning from their peers, ready to defend, refine and improve their own views.

Targeted outreach to conservative groups, to communities and campuses where conservative views are common, would be useful tools to address this challenge. So would admission preferences to promote viewpoint diversity. Yes, there are plenty of awkward ironies here across the usual political lines. And for a million reasons, conservatives may always be scarcer in public health and social work than in the corporate sector. Still, we can do better. Countless American conservatives honor, through their lives and service, values of compassion, self-sacrifice and inclusion dear to liberals; they care about exactly the same issues that draw people into public health and social-service professions.

George W. Bush saved millions of lives around the world through the Presidents Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR)a program we might well emulate in vaccinating the world against Covid; liberal students would be well-served by appreciating the impact of the Christian conservatives who helped drive the effort. And a conservative student in our programs would meet countless residents of Chicagos South Side who identify with the political left, and who honor, through their own lives and service, values of entrepreneurship, faith-based service and personal responsibility dear to conservatives.

We can learn from each other, honor and challenge each other, across partisan and ideological divides. To do this, we need both sides routinely present on our faculties and in our classrooms. Thats not the reality right now. We must fix that.

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Opinion | Why Public Health Experts Arent Reaching Conservatives on Covid - POLITICO

Incase, a leading global design-driven bag and accessories brand for todays creatives, announces the expansion of its sustainable MacBook and carry products collection in partnership with BIONIC. The all-new Incase Hipsack with BIONIC offers a stylish solution for storing accessories, made from material created from plastic pollution recovered in marine and costal environments. Additionally, the popular Incase x BIONIC Compact Sleeve, Commuter Backpack and Accessory Organizer are now available in two new colorways: Baltic Sea and Sand. The complete Incase x BIONIC collection is available now at Incase.com.

Each product in the Incase x BIONIC collection responds to the global plastic pollution crisis while supporting a movement for repurposing one that can only come to life because of the brand synergies Incase and BIONIC share. The collection features modern, intentional designs that combine style and function while also offering a more sustainable solution to meet the essential device protection needs of every creative.

We are proud to expand our BIONIC collection with additional color options as well as the new Hipsack for consumers looking to make more sustainable product choices, said Brian Stech, CEO of Incase. Our collection designed with BIONIC yarn is aimed at removing some of the plastic invading our waters and repurposing it into everyday products you already need. We believe it is an important step for change that Incase users can effortlessly take part in.

The complete Incase x BIONIC collection, now available in Baltic Sea and Sand colorways, include:

For more information about the Incase x BIONIC collection, please visit: https://incase.com/pages/BIONIC.

About Incase:

Incase, an Incipio Group brand, designs solutions to protect the ideas of todays creatives. Since 1997, our heritage has been deeply rooted in the lifestyles of those who create on the Apple platform. Through this dedication, we are able to focus on our consumers evolving needs and continually expand our product offering while promoting creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit.

Informed by the principles of intentional, aspirational, and functional design, the ecosystem of bags and accessories we introduce transcend both age and demographics to provide creatives with the best possible experiences while in pursuit of their passions. Our team employs exacting design protocols to ensure each Incase product meets the needs of our consumers, emerging markets, and an ever-expanding world of product experiences. Our brand, team, and products leverage technology and lifestyle to inspire global creativity.

Incase. Ideas Protected.

About Incipio Group:

Incipio Group is a global leader in consumer technology solutions operating an innovative and diverse portfolio of owned and licensed brands at the intersection of design, functionality, and lifestyle. The company has an award-winning product portfolio that includes protective cases, shells, sleeves, bags, power management, enterprise and B2B solutions sold under the Incipio, Incase, Survivor, Griffin, Kate Spade and Coach brands. Incipio Group has operations in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and China.

About BIONIC:

BIONIC is a mission-driven materials company producing traceable high-grade textiles and polymers, made with marine and coastal plastic. BIONIC builds recycling infrastructure on polluted coastlines that have little or no municipal waste management; providing jobs, education, and empowerment opportunities to local communities and environmental organizations. Its recovered plastics are then transformed into high-quality textiles andpolymers.

Excerpt from:

Incase Expands BIONIC Collection of Sustainable Carry Accessories | Shop-Eat-Surf - Shop-Eat-Surf.com

Frank Ruiz| Guest columnist

As California embarks on a critical journey to protect 30% of the states lands, waters and ocean, as directed by Gov. Gavin Newsoms October 2020 executive order, it is all the more essential for Latino voices, historiesand priorities to be heard in the process.

During the pandemic, nature became a refuge and source of health for millions of Californians, from bird watching to taking daily walks around our neighborhoods. Never in my life have I seen so many Latino families hitting up the hiking trails as I have during the pandemic.

Yetnature were all beginning to enjoy is deteriorating, and it is most often degraded near low-income communities and those of color like the Eastern Coachella Valley, where I live.

People of color are more likely to live in nature-deprived communitiesand the most polluted parts of California,bearing a disproportionate load of environmental and health problems caused by nearby refineries, power plants, warehousesand industrial activities.

One result of this is asthma faced by Latino children, who are disproportionately likely to die from it. Whats more, our parks are often inaccessible, either located close to rail tracks, ortoo noisy to enjoy. Climate change will only exacerbate these conditions and worsen the consequences we are already facing from wildfires, drought and extreme heat.

The initiative to protect 30% of Californias lands, watersand ocean by 2030 known as 30x30 is a tremendous opportunity to ameliorate the dual crises of climate change and the ongoing loss of nature,while bringing equity to disadvantaged communities.

Access to nature for all is a way to improve health, economic prospectsand many other aspects of life that are worse off in Latino communities. As a pastor, I believe it is our moral responsibility to take care of the environment and the generations that follow us. As a mental health professional, I know that increased access to the outdoors promotes community health and well-being. As a Latino conservation advocate, I know that protecting nature must be done in a holistic way that brings Latinos and other communities, who have traditionally gone unheard, to the table.

As California proceeds with 30x30, the initiative needs to create more educational and job opportunities for Black and brown communities, as well as better access to the outdoors. And the state needs to intentionally build resilience to the climate impacts that disproportionately affect us, from wildfires to drought.

While I am hopeful for 30x30 and its potential, I fear that new resources and investments in nature and climate action will mostly accumulate benefits to wealthier communities, not those who need it most. California will not be a leading green state unless we implement these policies while ensuring equitable access to recreation and parks, youth career pipelines and access to educational opportunities.

As Californians continue to face economic and public health crises, while increasingly recognizing thedual threats of global temperature rise and biodiversity loss, we must recognize that our human communities are not separate from natural ecosystems. Just as threats to nature threaten us, protecting nature through initiatives like 30x30 will help us protect ourselves.

Similarly, we think of the desert and the ocean as two separate ecosystems, but they are deeply intertwined. Both regions are precious to Latino communities and must be protected under 30x30 to ensure our heritage, livelihoods, access to natureand global climate are preserved.

This past year, we have learned that access to nearby nature is not an amenity, but a necessity for health and quality of life just as access to clean water is. Continued funding and public engagement in 30x30 is needed to make sure nature and water accessare sustainable, intentional and equitable for Latino communities.

Since the start of the pandemic, many of our communities have been living in survival mode, concerned about putting food on the table, staying healthyand paying the rent or mortgage.

But this past year, awareness has risen that nature is a safe place for solitude and a more affordable and healthier way to vacation. When you experience nature, you love it, and when you love it, you want to care for it.

So we are calling for ambitious protections under 30x30 and new parks in the places that Latinos love, with Latinos engaged and at the table to determine our path forward.

Frank Ruiz is the Salton Sea Program director for Audubon California. Earlier, he co-founded Por La Creacin,a faith-basedinitiative by the Hispanic Access Foundation that seeks to educate and empower Latino communities in environmental advocacy, protection of public landsand public policy.

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As California works to protect 30% of its lands, Latinos need a seat at the table - Desert Sun

Afra Smith, founder and CEO of The Melanin Project, said when she was starting her company to build generational wealth for Black women, she had to continuously justify her competence and vision.

I was having to answer a million questions about my identity and target market and that creates a system where you seem like you dont belong. I dont want to have to justify why I am working with Black women. I am a Black woman and my target market is Black women, she told Madison365.

To delve into this challenge, and other challenges like this for women and BIPOC entrepreneurs Smith and five other panelists will lead a discussion during the virtual Social Good Summit on Friday, Aug. 13, noon-2 p.m.

At the free event, people can expect to hear from Smith, Elmer Moore, Judy Cooper, Maria Khokhar and Ian Aley. Hanif NuMan, of ReSCI Consulting, LLC, will be the moderator. And Shayna Hetzle, of partnering organization and sponsor, The American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate & Social Impact, will be the opening speaker.

The theme of the summit, which is in its sixth year, is Race and Entrepreneurship and will focus on how entrepreneurial ecosystems respond to the call of diversity, equity, and inclusion without harming active and aspiring BIPOC entrepreneurs.

There is a lot of focus and money spent on diversifying startups, hiring and things like that and we wanted to focus on what is beneficial, what works for people of color? Alnisa Allgood said, who is the co-founder of Social Good Madison that organizes the Social Good Summit.

Allgood said there are organizations that tout prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion, however, they continue with their same game book and simply try to add people of color to it.

When they expect a person of color to fall in line they are saying we dont want your culture, we just want your color, Allgood said.

They say they want diversity but if they are not changing the organizational culture, and if they are a predominately white organization, they arent putting in the steps to make people of color feel welcome, respected, Allgood later added.

Smith expects to discuss some of her own struggles as a Black entrepreneur in the Madison area.

Especially a Black entrepreneur who is looking for more than profit.

When she was starting her business that uses financial advising, wellness coaching education and empowerment to build wealth for Black women, she wanted to have a positive impact on her community. And sometimes funders or people were too focused on money. She said she felt there was a mistrust in her ability to support the economics of Black and Brown communities.

Ive often had to spend some time educating people on (the importance of having an impact) so that delays me in getting what I need. If you are going to create a system that you say you want to support, you ensure your system is intentional about being inclusive, Smith said.

I dont want to be looked at as just a small business owner. I want to be looked at as someone who can create jobs and build infrastructure and impact my community.

Both Allgood and Smith said that they hope the event will start and continue a conversation about redefining entrepreneurship, and how organizations need to be intentional about their efforts to be inclusive.

The panelists will discuss a list of prepared questions before going into a question and answer session with the audience. Allgood said she is expecting an opportunity for participants to speak one on one with panelists at the end of the event.

For information, visit socialgoodmadison.org/summit/.

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Social Good Summit will delve into race and entrepreneurship - madison365.com

On another white-hot day in Kansas City, about 60 people spent Friday driving up and down streets registering the temperature and humidity every second.

The goal? To know in granular detail what intuition tells us more generally: that some places in cities are hotter than others possibly as much as 20 degrees, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

In 2017, in an attempt to demonstrate and understand that temperature differential, the agency began providing funds to cities to gather weather data. Grants this year went to nine cities including Kansas City and two communities in Indiana: Richmond and Clarksville. About 30 other cities, including Detroit and Cincinnati, have gathered this data since the initiative began.

Theres some evidence that Kansas City has a worse-than-average urban heat problem. When it comes to the temperature difference between a city and the nearby countryside, Kansas City ranked seventh among 60 cities measured in a 2014 report by Climate Central. On a typical summer day, Climate Central estimated that Kansas City on average was 4.6 degrees hotter than surrounding rural land.

The question now: Which parts of the city are the very hottest?

A coalition of partners led by a University of Missouri-Kansas City researcher gathered the measurements and will now create a map combining tens of thousands of temperature and humidity measurements with a satellite map, allowing them to quickly learn the conditions in a given location.

We want to show how humans have impacted the weather, said Fengpeng Sun, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at the university who is leading the project. This is not natural.

His primary goal is to educate Kansas City residents that climate change is happening in our neighborhood, not just in the Arctic.

The results also could direct corrective action more specifically to the neighborhoods most in need.

It could very well show us that the temperature is spiking in a particular area of Kansas City, said Kristin Riott, executive director of Bridging the Gap, a nonprofit whose mission includes tree planting. If we went there and found out it didnt have enough tree cover, we could plant more trees.

Expanding the urban forest is one of the lowest-hanging-fruit solutions for protecting occupants from climate change, Riott said. Every city in America is worried about its tree canopy.

As extreme heat events become more frequent due to human-caused climate change, the risks intensify for urban communities.

People who need green space most for cooling and other benefits, including social distancing during the pandemic and to decrease the amount of flooding on their streets during extreme rainfall, have the least, said Timon McPhearson, director of the Urban Systems Lab at The New School in New York City.

In 1995, Chicago suffered a sustained heatwave that killed more than 700 people, primarily in the citys Black communities on the South and West sides areas that have experienced decades of underinvestment in large part due to racist housing practices.

Formally established in the 1930s by the Home Owners Loan Corporation, redlining assigned risk grades to various communities largely based on race. The name redlining reflects the fact that so-called hazardous neighborhoods inhabited by BIPOC populations along with Jewish and Catholic residents were outlined in red on loan corporation maps.

Redlining has traditionally been associated with the refusal to approve mortgage applications, as well as disinvestment of essential services such as grocery stores and banks, and an absence of amenities in affected areas. However, many redlined areas also have large expanses of pavement and hardscape. These areas often suffer from a scant tree canopy and a scarcity of green space in comparison with more affluent and predominantly White communities.

The disparities are often stark. A June 2021 opinion article in the New York Times, citing a number of sources including Earth Define and American Community Survey, reported that trees and green spaces covered an average of more than 34% in White neighborhoods, compared with less than 20% green space in BIPOC communities.

The overlap between heat islands and redlined communities is more than a coincidence, according to Juan Declet-Barreto, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists:

All of these things are intertwined. But I dont think it was intentional in the sense that people conspired to say, Lets make these neighborhoods hotter. I think it was more a systematic denial of the good life to people of color. And redlining and land surface temperatures that are higher in those neighborhoods are just one indicator of that, Declet-Barreto said. You can see that these things go hand in hand with food deserts, for example, with the lack of schools, with the lack of a solid tax base that pays for services that many of us take for granted.

People with lower incomes, people without a social safety net, people who have to get on a bus or ride a bike and go to work instead of driving their air-conditioned vehicle to their air-conditioned office, are generally going to be more exposed and are going to have worse health outcomes.

In Scorched: Extreme Heat and Real Estate, a 2019 report from the Urban Land Institute, co-authors Elizabeth Foster and Katharine Burgess address a number of heat adaptation strategies, including green infrastructure solutions.

There is also a business case to be made for incorporating green infrastructure, such as planting trees, as part of an overall heat mitigation and urban resilience strategy, according to Foster.

Extreme heat is a dangerous hazard all by itself, but it also worsens other hazards. Really high temperatures stress utility infrastructure just when demand is highest. People tend to turn on their air conditioners and blast them all day long, leading to a risk of widespread power outages.

There are quite a number of market opportunities in increasing resilience, both at the offset and the market level, Foster said. When you implement green infrastructure, rain gardens or drought-tolerant vegetation or trees, that not only decreases or helps mitigate extreme heat or flood risk, but it also creates a really valuable social amenity.

Low-income households pay a disproportionate amount of their income for energy costs in comparison with more affluent residents. They also often live in energy-inefficient homes or apartments without air conditioning, making it even more difficult to deal with excessive heat. Disinvested neighborhoods should be prioritized for planting urban trees as a means of mitigating this disparity, according to Declet-Barreto.

A uniform application is not going to address the inequities that are already built into the city. You may end up putting a whole bunch of trees in neighborhoods where people dont need the trees because they can pay for air conditioning in their homes. You need to consider the needs of the most vulnerable, which are typically the persons with lower income in any given city. And that should be a guiding principle, Declet-Barreto said.

Enhancing tree canopies is an excellent strategy for mitigating heat island effects, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. But simply planting trees is not sufficient. Quality and maintenance must be prioritized as a matter of policy, especially in disinvested neighborhoods. Heat mitigation policies must also address the effects of decades of redlining, segregation and disinvestment for BIPOC communities.

However, the majority of funding still flows toward wealthier, predominantly White neighborhoods. This is because municipal parks budgets are often inadequate to maintain park quality which leaves local conservancy groups to pick up the slack. While affluent neighborhoods often enthusiastically take up this challenge, it is rarely possible for low-income neighborhoods to do so, McPhearson said.

The challenge that we face is we have decades of that legacy in place that make it so you cant change the status quo overnight, McPhearson said We have to change the systemic structures that are in place. When were talking about heat, its not just that low-income and minority communities have less access to green space. Its that they have lower quality housing. Its that they have streets that may have also been built out in ways that makes it hard to put new street trees in.

And so, it means that those buildings need to be retrofitted with increased insulation. It means that they need to have green roofs installed, which are very expensive, even if theyre very effective. They need to have air conditioning subsidized because maybe they cant afford them. So, were trying to at the same time deal with the current rise of heat and heat exposure and decades of racist planning that created the risk in the first place.

For his research in Kansas City, Sun identified 80 square miles in older and more developed parts of the city that include many of the zip codes where incomes generally are lower and socioeconomic challenges greater. He made it a point to include zip codes with residents with documented lower life expectancy.

In those areas, Sun said, The concern is, What is causing that? And what can we do to improve that?

Tru Keshia Smith grew up and now lives in one of those neighborhoods where, she said, the sun is just going to shine. She said street trees are lacking or, in many cases, damaged. Although the neighborhood has parks, she said they need more trees; she was at one of them recently and noticed that people were bumped up against what trees were available.

Smith, who is the program director for Bridging the Gap, has volunteered to take heat and humidity measurements for Suns project.

I am very fond of the community I live in, she said. Its very important to make sure that communities that look like me can also be part of the solution. I feel I should be part of the process.

Read more from the original source:

Urban heat island research aims to spotlight disparities and solutions - Energy News Network

Both Sing Sing and Eastern State established penitentiary models that influenced how modern prisons operate under mass incarceration. But both were left with crumbling infrastructure along the way. Eastern State, which closed in 1971, became a museum in 1995. At Sing Sing, the museum will occupy the now-empty 1936 powerhouse, which once provided the prisons electricity, as well as the cellblock constructed by incarcerated workers in 1825. The 476-foot-long, roofless structure looks and feels like a bombed-out ruin; the crumbling marble and frayed barbed wire still holds the weight of punishment and isolation.

Sing Sing village changed its name to Ossining in 1901, trying to separate itself from the prisons increasingly notorious reputation. Throughout the 20th century, the prison embedded itself into the American imagination, appearing in books, films and movies, and embodied the complicated juxtapositions of prison. While Sing Sing has long led the nation in reform through programming and education, for example, 614 people have been killed there on the electric chair.

At the start of the 21st century, Ossining officials began exploring ways to share the history through a museum. The plan faced roadblocks: as an active prison, there was concern the site would scare away potential visitors. Prison administration had its own hesitations. There was pushback in talking about what was happening in criminal justice or whats happening in prisons in general when youre right next to an operating prison, according to Ossining Town Supervisor and ex-officio museum board member Dana Levenberg. It was a sensitive subject.

The 2008 economic crisis slowed progress. When it picked up, there was interest among local politicians, prison administration and the inter-municipal organization Historic Hudson River Towns. As criminal justice started rising in relevance, the project started picking up, getting more legs, and getting more people interested in looking at this [through] a different lens than just a museum or just the history, explains Levenberg.

In 2015, the project secured $100,000 in state funds. Brent Glass, a national leader in preservation and museum interpretation, was hired not to simply oversee museum development, but to figure out the other roles that a site such as this needed to play. The board civic, cultural and educational leaders in Ossining and the surrounding Hudson Valley, former members of prison administration, formerly incarcerated, victims and a family member of someone formerly incarcerated all represent different viewpoints, but are in agreement this must be more than a traditional museum.

I only represent one small sliver of history when it comes to Sing Sing, but my message has always been the history of Sing Sing needs to be told respectfully, and we should never, ever turn it into an easy thing for a baseball cap or keychain, says Osborne, whose great-grandfather, Thomas Mott Osborne, became Sing Sings warden in 1914 with a reputation as a radical prison reformer.

People are going to come see the prison because of its name, thats terrific, says former Sing Sing superintendent and board member Brian Fischer. But once we get them there, our goal will be to ask the question: youve seen the history, what should we be doing tomorrow? We want to encourage people to ask: whats next? Fischer believes prisons represent something deeper about societal values: Primarily, a prison is a reflection of societys attitude toward criminal justice, as he puts it. Prison isnt a static thing they were created and changed over time as society changed.

The interior of the now-empty, circa-1936 Power House. (Photo courtesy Sing Sing Prison Museum)

The changing landscape of prison museums shows visitors arent afraid of the question and reflection that follows. Eastern State Penitentiary, which focused on architecture and prison design in its early years, now includes a 16-foot-tall, steel graph representing the explosive growth of the countrys prison population between 1900 and 2020. The graph, installed in 2014, dramatically affected programming and prompted the museum to hire formerly incarcerated tour guides. Attendance doubled between 2014 and 2019, according to the museums senior vice president Sean Kelley.

The graph changed the whole nature of the visit to the prison at this point, were trying to work contemporary reflections into everything we do, Kelley says. We didnt force this conversation Americans are ready to have this conversation.

Sam North, a history teacher at Ossining High School, grew up in the shadow of Sing Sing without knowing anything about it. Years later, that stuck with me, he recalls. There was absolutely [nothing] happening in the schools, or even in the community, connected with Sing Sing Correctional Facility.

Ossining is now a modest suburban village located an hour north of New York City by train. The prison sits on the base of the waterfront with the village propped above; the two locations are further divided by MetroNorth railroad tracks. Unlike prisons in upstate New York, built in remote locations often surrounded by wilderness, its an easy 10-minute drive from pretty much anywhere in town down to the prison.

Despite that proximity, North notes, It was just not a thing anybody talked about. The museum is changing that. Glass began working with the school district while North was teaching a course on racism, classism and sexism. With guidance from Glass, he and other educators from Ossining and nearby Peekskill high schools developed two curriculums on mass incarceration, one that could be integrated into existing history courses and another to be taught as a standalone class.

In implementation, North says, it felt like the district was dragging its feet, like it was still nervous to touch this particular topic. In the meantime, he recruited students to help the Sing Sing Prison Museum team vet design teams for the future museum, given that the space will someday host school groups.

The district approved the class in the fall of 2020. North has since taught four sections of the standalone course for 84 students. He screens documentaries such as The 13th and Just Mercy and leads discussions around current-day topics that intersect with the criminal justice system. To engage his students around protests against police brutality, for example, North brought in local politicians to discuss and answer questions around police reform. In another class he showed Zero Percent, a documentary about the college program in Sing Sing, which was followed by a virtual visit with members of Hudson Link.

In the coursework, the students have been engaged with the museums progress: Theyre really savvy to [the location], North notes, Theyre concerned about what the focus will be and how to make sure people wont be glorifying prisons.

North expects to teach the course fully in person this fall. Student feedback, so far, shows the class leaves an impact. Throughout the semester my perspective has shifted completely on how people who make mistakes are punished, not only in the correctional system but in general, one student wrote. This is a topic that is not talked about enough, sadly, especially in a town that has a prison, and you did a very good job of delivering the information for the first time during times like these.

Glass sees the relationship with the Ossining school district as indicative of more opportunities to strengthen the relationship of the village to the prison. Ive said to a number of public officials that Ossining can use this museum to, in effect, reinvent itself as a place where criminal justice reform is a forum, he says. Instead of being identified as a place of incarceration, as it has been for 200 years, use the museum and other places in Ossining to attract organizations devoted to criminal justice reform.

Stephanie Lynn, a self-described community builder in Ossining and member of the board, spoke of a gardening program that takes place inside the prison. She envisions how a prison garden program could connect to greater Ossining with the help of the museum; perhaps introducing culinary programming inside prison while setting up employment at local restaurants for returning citizens. We could have a museum restaurant, or a restaurant in town connected to the museum, that could be a launching point for jobs, she suggests.

Two years ago Lynn worked with other community members and Sing Sing Prison Museum staff to present The Wait Room, a dance honoring the lives of women with incarcerated loved ones. Staged in the waterfront park that abuts the prison, the performance was a boots-on-the-ground effort, with a Hudson Link employee driving his van to the site every night to watch over the performance equipment. Still it attracted visitors from across the state, earning a review in the New York Times.

The Wait Room, performed in September 2019,exploredthe physical, psychic, and emotional toll that incarceration takes on women who haveimprisoned loved ones. It was staged just outside the walls of Sing Sing Correctional Facility. (Photo by Fred Elmes)

The team faced challenges in aligning the event with the men incarcerated less than a mile from the performance. The superintendent was originally going to let us advertise the event on the prisons internal television system so men could tell their wives, according to Lynn. We intended to have a bus for the women visiting their husbands to bring them to performances.

Because of an uptick in violence at the prison that summer, the prisons superintendent quashed the plan. Instead, volunteers with the performance brought vans to the prison entrance and offered to drive departing visitors to the performance.

Sometimes the fluidity between the prison and what we want to do cant always happen, explains Lynn, Because of security restraints and concerns.

That hurdle gets to a larger challenge the museum board faces: how to meaningfully connect the museum to the men incarcerated at the prison. Its also unique, as there are few prison museums located on the site of a working prison. (The Museum of Colorado Prisons, located next to Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, and the Angola Museum, at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, are two; neither present particularly nuanced looks at Americas relationship to mass incarceration.)

Board member Sean Pica, who was formerly incarcerated at Sing Sing and is now executive director of Hudson Link, has taken some of the responsibility. When I speak to the guys on the inside about the project, I want them to know Im on the board, he says. That theyre trying to include the voice of the men that live there makes it a very different kind of project from iterations in the past. I think the men are excited at the potential of capturing the history and voices of the other side.

About a year ago, Hudson Link kicked off a word-of-mouth archive project just spreading the word wed like your stories, Pica says. I dont care if its about the mess hall, religion, family, write it down and get it to me. These narratives, to be offered to Sing Sing Prison Museum, capture the kinds of prison stories rarely documented, Pica believes. And the board has been responsive to telling those stories. Pica characterizes his fellow board members as a bunch of community members that happen to have a notorious max-security prison in their backyard, and want to capture [the experience] in a way thats humanizing.

Most of the focus, for now, has been centered on formerly incarcerated individuals. In his interviews as a Justice Center fellow, Nacimento Blair discussed with his mother what it was like for her in the prison visiting room, where she was disrespected by guards, and about providing for a son unable to work because of his incarceration. He hadnt realized she kept many of her feelings and struggles from him as he worked to get through his prison term.

He spoke with a young man whose father is incarcerated about his feelings around having one parent missing, and if he was treated differently in school because of his fathers incarcerated status. Blair and his wife discussed the stigma of being married to someone incarcerated. Each of the other fellows he interviewed shared how they earned unofficial incomes inside, such as writing cards for prisoners who couldnt read or write.

Blair hopes these conversations will help a future museum audience understand the dynamics of punishment, as he puts it. We need to see how punishment doesnt just impact the person doing the time, but its a whole community thats affected.

Interviews from the fellows which also include interviews with a correctional officer and volunteers at the prison will be used to craft the master narrative presented about Sing Sing and how it intersects with the larger history of mass incarceration. Glass believes this early work sets a framework for collaboration throughout the museum development, so that affected people have a final say on how the story is told.

In summer 2020the museum launched Justice Talks, an online forum to discuss contemporary issues (wrongful conviction,solitary confinement, theimpact of COVID-19) as well as historical topics such as the1971 Attica Prison uprising.(Screenshot courtesy Sing Sing Prison Museum)

Projects like our museum have to tell something that was supposed to be forgotten, says Victoria Gonzalez, a museum staff member helping with research. Shes also dug into lesser-told histories of the more distant past, such as the womens prison that operated in the mid-1800s.

So far, according to Glass, the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has given the project free range, even though the museum board will need to work closely with administration to open the museum to the public. Sing Sings current superintendent, Mike Capra, is 100 percent behind the idea, Glass says. Hes even asked me if we could have a re-entry counseling office in the museum. (The New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision declined to offer an interview and issued a statement that we support the vision of the project and believe the museum will provide visitors with a truly unique experience.)

For all the potential opportunities envisioned for the site, COVID-19 has taken an undeniable hit. Because of the pandemic and challenges in fundraising for the $45 million project, which requires a full rehabilitation and renovation of the power house and stabilization of the cellblock, the opening of the preview center was pushed back from the end of 2020 until the end of 2021. Id still call us a startup in many ways, notes Glass. Until we actually open that preview center, I wont feel satisfied.

But, as the pandemic tore through Americas prisons and the country erupted in protests following the murder of George Floyd, museum staff and board wanted to provide a forum for discussion. Last summer, the museum launched the first of its Justice Talks in collaboration with Ossining history teacher Sam North. For the first webinar, North brought some of his students from Ossining High School, as well as students from nearby Peekskill High School, to ask questions of local and state politicians. The conversation addressed issues of systemic inequality.

Over the past year, Justice Talks have covered contemporary issues, including wrongful conviction, solitary confinement and the impact of COVID-19, alongside historical topics such as the 1971 Attica Prison uprising.

Board member Ronnine Bartley organized a Justice Talk titled Families Staying Together. Barley married her husband Lawrence while he was incarcerated at Sing Sing, and they have a son. The event is taking a look not how you go through the hardships or the barriers when youre visiting, but how visiting consistently helps transform you or your familys existence, she says. Im sick of the negatives if you keep putting the negative out there, thats all people will believe.

Still, Bartley has seen firsthand how prison operates to push people apart families, friends, loved ones and entire communities. She knows of the division inside prison, too, such as between incarcerated residents and prison staff. She adds that even though correctional officers hold power over the people incarcerated, theyre negatively impacted by the system as well.

Glass characterizes this early work with the department as building an environment of trust that were going to tell the story, the real story, good, bad and ugly, as long as we dont ignore the effort theyre making now within the culture of reform.

But theres inherent tension even as Sing Sing and other prisons look to reform. Prison abolition has become a larger part of public dialogue since last summers uprising; the movement argues the countrys criminal justice institutions are incapable of reform. New Yorks state prisons remain brutal and deadly a reality made starkly clear during the pandemic. Can a prison museum, on prison property, tell that story about itself?

That final answer isnt clear, but there are current topics agreed on by board members from Sing Sings former superintendent to the man formerly incarcerated there. They point to the vast racial disparities in U.S. prisons, the ineffectiveness of an ever-growing prison population, the negative impacts of long-term sentencing and the effectiveness of supportive services over punishment. They emphasize the importance of developing an inclusive narrative of mass incarceration, as opposed to one crafted by the state. The men that live at the prison will have a role, and a real voice, over what [future] exhibits look like and what the story being told feels like, as Pica puts it.

In many ways, the museums planning process reflects Americas larger relationship to mass incarceration: widespread acknowledgment that it isnt working, less clarity in how we fix it and how to address the overwhelming trauma it has caused. The museum, at the least, will be an intentional space to continue those discussions.

When Bartley ponders a future Sing Sing Prison Museum, she envisions togetherness. A learning space for children, alongside support and resources for prison staff and the formerly incarcerated. You have a space here everybody thats involved in the criminal justice system has a space, she emphasizes. Thats how I visualize it, and I believe the rest of the board is visualizing that as well.

This article is part of For Whom, By Whom, a series of articles about how creative placemaking can expand opportunities for low-income people living in disinvested communities. This series is generously underwritten by the Kresge Foundation.

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Can This Prison Museum Tell the Full Story of Mass Incarceration? - Next City

Arise Detroit

Arise Detroit will celebrate its 15th annual Neighborhoods Day Aug.7. Across the city, more than 150 community groups, block clubs and improvement projects will host a wide range of events for residents. Festivities will adhere to federal safety protocols regarding COVID-19 for the second year in a row. All events will take placeoutdoors.

Luther Keith, the executive director and founder of Arise Detroit,says it will be a special day for residents throughout the city. The organizations that participate are are engaged in many facets of community life aimed at making a difference in thecity.

One thing Id like to emphasize that Neighborhoods Day, though its one day, it really reflects what people in the neighborhoods do throughout the year, hesays.

We have some neighborhoods of Detroit that are really challenged in a lot of ways, economically with blight. We need a resurgence of this city economically, jobs for people, education generally, looking at the quality of life, a safer city. Luther Keith, AriseDetroit

These organizations and projects have always been there but havent been showcased,Keith says.In founding Arise Detroit, Keith, a journalist, says he was intentional about the organization being a vehicle to lift up and showcase the work of these communitygroups.

What I found out back when I was a columnist is that a lot of people dont know what [these groups are] doing, or they dont get the publicity. And we needed a vehicle to lift up andshowcase.

People also werent aware of all of the organizations and activitiesin the city, and by highlighting the work these groups are doing, it might inspire others to do the same in theircommunities.

Weve been able to simply tap into that. If more people learn about it, more people say, well, why cant we do this in our neighborhood? Why dont we have a Black Friday? Why dont we have a neighborhood cleanup? Why dont we have a school supply giveaway? And so by seeing that, it inspires other people and thats how [Neighborhoods Day] hasgrown.

Looking ahead at where Neighborhoods Day will be in 5-10 years, Keith says its not just about Neighborhoods Day but the city as a whole. We have some neighborhoods of Detroit that are really challenged in a lot of ways, economically with blight, he says. We need a resurgence of this city economically, jobs for people, education generally, looking at the quality of life, a safercity.

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Communities Across Detroit Will Show Pride During the 15th Annual Arise Detroit Neighborhoods Day - WDET

The Minneapolis-St. Paul region is set to receive $1.14 billion from the American Rescue Plan, which local leaders say should be used to close the racial wealth gap that has existed for far too long.

The Center for Economic Inclusion held a virtual panel and discussion Thursday on strategies and opportunities that would aid in distributing funds in a way that eliminates long-existing gaps in the immediate and long-term future.

Earlier this year, the American Rescue Plan was signed into law. It directs $1.9 trillion toward rescuing the nations economy from pandemic-related fallout. Its funding a nationwide vaccine program, personal stimulus checks, increases in the child tax credit, small-business support, extended unemployment insurance and more.

As we recovered from the last economic downturn, Minnesotans, in particularly this region, failed miserably at doing so in an inclusive way, according to the Urban Institute, who ranked Minneapolis and St Paul last in a record of 274 cities in our ability to ensure that all people moved forward and are coming forward out of that economy, said Tawanna Black, CEO and founder of the Center for Economic Inclusion.

The rescue plan was design in a way that elevates solutions that address the pandemics disproportionate impact on low-income communities and communities of color, said Joseph Parilla, a fellow with the Brookings Institutions Metropolitan Policy Program.

The funds are being distributed in two rounds. An estimated two-thirds of funding from the first round, which was distributed in the spring, went to public health, stabilizing government budgets, and housing and homelessness, he said.

Several priorities could be funded in the second round of the rescue plan which is set to be distributed next spring that elevate inclusive rebuilding momentum. To achieve this, funds should be direct to stabilizing and improving the upward mobility of low-income communities, like funding programs that close the digital divide, Parilla said. Additionally, money could help secure a better rebuilding of the economy by being directed toward initiatives that fund workforce services, emergency financial assistance, and the racially equitable creation of jobs.

Being inclusive goes beyond funding and planning, said Aarica Coleman, housing and redevelopment authority administrator for the city of Bloomington.

Governments need to work with organizations, nonprofit and for-profit leaders who are already established in the communities to reach other community members, Coleman said.

The first thing is to make sure that just as the country and this region has been intentional about excluding and extracting, lets be intentional about including and growing, she said.

Government entities can also use the funding to lay a foundation for how they operate in the future, while also being more innovative and creative in their solutions for challenges identified in a citys long-term comprehensive plan. For example, in the housing sector, city staff in charge of housing or zoning decisions may have more resources to look at creative solutions to housing shortages, like tiny homes, Coleman said.

In his work with other Minnesota mayors, Edina Mayor James Hovland said he found that they recognize the need for communities to pool resources when planning for the distribution of rescue plan funds. Their communities have shared interests, like housing, workforce development and racial equity.

If we can really leverage these resources, we can really make some significant inroads, he said.

But local governments likely want to stabilize their budget problems first. Once these problems are solved, local governments could establish networks between other local entities to target issues that challenge numerous communities. This is where the second round of rescue plan funding could come into play, Hovland said.

We can create these pooled resources, particularly out of that second [round], I think where people are going to feel more comfortable committing some of that to the common good and to develop a strategy that gets all boats rising, he said.

Related:

MN leaders reflect on missed Legislative opportunities

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Panelists urge inclusion focus in American Rescue Plan - Finance and Commerce