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duggardata · 3 years

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Anna and Mary Maxwell Might Be Attending [Bible] College. (Wow!)

Recently, an eagle–eyed Anon spotted the 2 Youngest Maxwell Girls, Anna (28) and Mary (25), in the absolute last place you'd ever expect—a college campus. It's all on Facebook... Anna and Mary appear in a photo posted by Appalachian Bible College to its official Facebook Page, along with caption: "The first day of classes. That's something to smile about!" (Permalink.)

Why Are We So Surprised By This?

Ordinarily, two young women attending college wouldn't be at all shocking, but the Maxwells are not ordinary. Anna and Mary's Parents, Steve + Teri Maxwell, are openly anti–college. Steve thinks that state–run education, including higher education, is "a godless, promiscuity–promoting, humanistic environment," and that it traps young people in debt. He is wary even of Christian colleges, since he believes they cause children to rebel. He’s proud of his sons' lack of higher education, and praised them for "avoid[ing] the influence and cost of college." Teri is, sadly, just as opposed to college—especially for women. Back in 1999, she wrote an article speculating that college may undermine a woman's ability to be a good and godly wife. Her article laments—

"As far as our daughters go, I wonder how many of us developed independent spirits during our college or working days. Has this made it more difficult for us to submit to our husbands in the meek and quiet way we would like?"

Finally... Anna and Mary's views on this topic seemed to be aligned with their parents, until now. According to Steve + Teri, all of the Maxwell Daughters had planned to be Stay–at–Home–Daughters until marriage. (See Also.) (And all 3 Daughters seemed to be doing so, since none had moved out.) What is more, in 2010, Anna described college as "silly," and said that she thought attending would expose her to unsavory influences, and possibly hold her back from her ultimate goal of "be[ing] a stay–at–home wife and mother."

So, yeah... This is quite a surprise! And, while neither Steve + Teri, nor Anna or Mary, has actually confirmed that they’re enrolled at Appalachian Bible College, their appearance on the Facebook Page is definitely suspicious!

Tell Me About Appalachian Bible College.

TL;DR If you just want to know how conservative and restrictive Appalachian Bible College is, skip down to “Student Life.”

Appalachian Bible College (ABC) is a tiny (~250 Students), insular bible college, located on 150 Acres in rural Mount Hope, West Virginia. (The Maxwell Family hails from Leavenworth, Kansas, which >800 Miles Away.) It self–describes as a “non–denominational and fundamental” institution, primarily associated with “Baptist and Bible churches.” Unlike many so–called “bible colleges,” ABC is nationally and regionally accredited. (Hurray!)

A lot, lot more information... After the jump.

Admissions—

ABC requires prospective students to submit an application; transcripts from high school or home school; ACT, SAT, or CLT test scores; and two reference letters, one from a pastor and one from another mentor, e.g., teacher or youth group leader. A high school diploma or GED is required, unless the student is homeschooled. In that case, a detailed homeschool transcript is needed, and standardized test scores are “especially important.”

As part of the application, prospective students must attest that they agree w/ the college’s Doctrinal Statement.

Academics—

ABC offers four degree programs—Bible Certificate (1 Year), Associate of Arts (A.A.) (2 Years), Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) (4 Years), and Master of Arts (M.A.). In addition, it runs an online program for degree–seeking or non–degree seeking students. (But, Anna and Mary were spotted on–campus, so they don’t seem to be in the online program!) Anna and Mary haven’t gone to college, so they almost certainly aren’t in the Master’s program. Let’s just look at the rest...

(Sidenote—Before we go on, just want to point out... All ABC graduates must, in addition to completing academic requirements, show that they are members of a church and that they possess good Christian character. If they don’t, they won’t give their diploma!)

Bible Certificate—ABC describes the one–year program as an “opportunit[y] for you to dig into Scripture and build your life on its unchanging truths.” The program has two tracks—Bible + General Education and Bible + Ministry. As the names suggest, both tracks’ core curriculum is the Bible and Bible study. Both also require three courses in ministry—Foundations of Ministry, Biblical Theology of Missions, and Personal Evangelism & Discipleship. Where they differ is is what else they require...

For the Bible + General Education Certificate, students must also take four ‘core’ classes—English Composition, Speech, Physical Education, Music, and “Success Seminar”—plus, an elective of their choice. (This curriculum also mirrors the first–year curriculum of ABC’s A.A. and B.A. Degree Programs, so students can easily continue their studies, should they decide to do so.)

For Bible + Ministry, ‘core’ classes are waived in favor of extra theology. Students take Principles of Biblical Interpretation, along with classes on Systematic Theology (2 Classes), the New Testament (Survey Class + 2 Classes), and the Old Testament (Survey Class + 2 Classes).

Associate’s Degree (A.A.)—ABC also offers a 2–Year A.A. Degree in Bible + Theology. (That’s the only major offered.) For this degree, the curriculum is a 50/50 split between General Education and Bible + Theology courses, plus a few ministry classes and electives. All students take the following courses—

General Education English Composition (2 Classes), Speech, Physical Education, Music, Biblical Worldview, and Ethical Issues in Ministry

Bible + Theology Principles of Biblical Interpretation, Survey of the Old Testament, Survey of the New Testament, Matthew to Acts, Genesis to Deuteronomy, Paul’s Letters (2 Classes), and Doctrine (2 Classes)

Ministry Theology of Missions, Foundations of Ministry, Evangelism & Discipleship, and Homiletics I (Males) / Bible Teaching (Females)

Additionally, students must take a history class, a science or sociology class, and an elective.

Bachelor’s Degree (B.A.)—Finally, ABC offers a 4–Year B.A. Dual Degree in Bible + Theology and in Ministry. Each student completes General Education classes. Beyond that, each student is also a “double major.” Everyone’s first major is Bible + Theology and everyone’s second major is ministry–focused—but, not everyone has the exact same Ministry Major. (More on that in a bit...) As far as curriculum, students must complete the General Education, Bible + Theology, and Ministry courses required for the Associate’s Degree, plus the following additional core classes—

General Education Health, Psychology, Sociology, Finance, 2 History Classes (History of Western Civilization and American Church History), and 1 Science Class (Earth Science or Biology)

Bible + Theology Joshua to Esther, Hebrews to Revelation, Isaiah to Malachi, Job to Song of Soloman, Doctrine (2 Additional Classes), and Bible Capstone

Ministry World Religion and Cults, and Homiletics II (Men) / Women’s Ministry (Women)

Finally, students must also pick a Ministry Major and complete its mandatory coursework. At ABC, there are seven ministry majors to pick from—some of which have concentrations. Here’s the list of Ministry Majors, with additional concentrations or sub–specialties listed in parentheses—

Biblical Counseling (Youth & Family or Women’s Ministries)

Camping Ministry

Elementary Education

Missions (Biblical Languages, Foreign Language / Spanish, International Studies, Nursing, or Teaching English)

Music (Pedagogy, Performance, or Worship)

Pastoral Ministry (Biblical Languages or Youth & Family Pastoring)

Interdisciplinary

The Pastor Ministry Major seems to be limited to male students.

Click the links to check out the coursework each Ministry Major requires.

Student Life—

So, yeah... ABC is not a progressive place. At all. They’re upfront about it, though, which is nice. Their Student Handbook is online, available for all to read. Here are some highlights... (All italics are mine, not in original.)

Discipline / Consequences—Students who break the rules face discipline in the form of “a verbal or written Carefrontation, a fine, a work assignment, a temporary room or dorm confinement, a social [or] ... campus restriction,” or “some other determination.” Egregious offenses may result in the student being “suspended ... , asked to withdraw from the college, or dismissed.”

Dress Code—There’s a detailed Dress Code, with different different activities requiring different standards of dress. Perhaps surprisingly, pants are allowed for female students for all but the fanciest standard of dress. (For that, they’ll have to wear skirts or dresses.) Here are a few of the rules...

“Earrings may be worn by females only,” and “all other body piercing is prohibited.”

ABC students are prohibited from getting new tattoos. If a student has an old tattoo, they may be required to cover it at all times if the Dean of Students deems it “offensive.”

Prohibited Activities—ABC says that, “in order to remain above reproach,” students are prohibited from the following “questionable activities”...

Consuming “alcohol as a beverage,” tobacco in any form (including e–cigarettes), or drugs for non–medicinal purposes. (Penalty for violating this rule is dismissal.)

Serving alcohol to others, even if done in the course of a student’s off–campus employment.

Gossiping, or engaging in “other forms of impure speech.”

Listening to, viewing, or reading “unwholesome” media or literature, or accessing websites “that do not promote godliness.” (See Prohibited Media and Prohibited Music.)

Attending “commercial movie theaters.”

Gambling.

Dancing.

Prohibited Media—Per the ABC Student Handbook, ABC students shall not consume “any media (including social media) that features vulgar or obscene language, sexual innuendo, nudity, immodest clothing, or ... a blatantly non–Christian message.” Additionally, students may not—

Watch movies rated PG–13, R, X, or NC–17, or shows rated TV–MA.

Play video games or use apps rated A, M, or RP.

... and, they’re strongly cautioned to avoid media that promotes “unbiblical definitions of love”; endorses “witchcraft or the occult”; mocks “law or law enforcement”; denigrates “marriage and the traditional family”; or contains “excessive violence.” Students are urged not to consume media made by people—e.g., actors, producers, directors—“known for their stand against Christian values.”

Prohibited Music—Students are banned from listening to music “that includes God–dishonoring language, anti–biblical messages ... , a prominent resurfacing beat, pulsating and driving or dance rhythms, or sensual overtones in the music itself or in the performance.” They’re specifically cautioned to avoid...

Rock—Because the “lyrics may be unacceptable” and “[t]he beat of the music may become the most prominent element.”

Country—Because the “lyrics may be unacceptable” and the underlying “music may be connected to a heavy rock beat.”

Folk—As “[e]xistentialism, humanism, or hedonism may be propagated through the lyrics.”

Jazz—Since syncopation may be “extensive[ly] use[d],” and “a sensual performance style may be employed.”

Contemporary Christian—Since “a sensual performance style may be employed,” “a beat may be overly prominent,” and the “lyrics may be theologically incorrect or existential in their emphasis.”

Relationships—

“The Bible restricts sexual activity to marriage between a man and a woman. Thus, fornication, adultery, incest, sexual abuse of a minor, homosexuality, indecent exposure, sexual harassment, and other such activities are forbidden.”

“[N]o display of affection through physical contact (including holding hands) on the part of non–married couples, on or off campus.”

Dating students are forbidden from sitting together in class or chapel.

No male–female pair, dating or not, may be alone together in anyone’s home or residence, on– or off–campus.

No male–female pair, dating or not, may socialize off–campus without a chaperone, unless they’ve been at ABC for at least 4 Semesters.

Divorced students “shall not be permitted to date other ... students.”

According to ABC’s Student Handbook, all these rules apply to all students, at all times, on– or off–campus.

All in all, it’s great if Anna and Mary are attending college, even if it’s a super–duper conservative one, like ABC clearly is. The fact that they’ve possibly left home and are out there, living on their own... Crazy to even think about, given Steve’s apparent iron grip on his household. It can only be good from them to venture out on their own, even if it’s just to a slightly less stifling place.

#mary maxwell #anna maxwell

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tangent101 · 4 years

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Corruption at Blackwell Academy

Nothing does better to help point out the corruption at the root of Arcadia Bay than their pride and joy, Blackwell Academy. This private high school has, according to Max, one of the best art programs in the country and in many ways works more like a private college than a high school (including having dorms). But there is a dark heart beating in Blackwell, and that is the Prescott family. This heart has tainted the academy and the surrounding community.

When Max ventures forth into Arcadia Bay itself, she mentions that a lot of businesses have shut down. It used to have a thriving fishing industry but that has collapsed, while businesses supporting fishing have also dried up until there’s only a few areas which still bring in business - and these businesses naturally have Sean Prescott’s strings attached to them, such as the gated community he’s trying to have built.

Further, it seems the Prescott Manor is located at the heart of Arcadia Bay, even as Blackwell is at the “head” (the high point) of the community. While I’m a bit surprised it’s not oceanfront property, thematically it makes sense for Prescott Manor to be where it is - a hidden property we never see, but which ultimately touches everything around it.

Seeing that Blackwell itself plays a prominent role for the game (with over half of the game set at the school), it makes sense that we’d see the worse of Arcadia Bay’s corruption (and the Prescott influence over it) at the school, and we easily do so with Principal Raymond Wells himself.

On the surface, Wells seems to be a typical administrator. He’s one of the few black characters in the game, and the only one in a position of authority. But with Max’s first encounter with him, we get our first taste of how far Prescott corruption has taken hold with Wells accusing Max of “having something to hide” off of the most flimsy of reasons... and while on the surface he takes her claims of Nathan having a gun seriously, he never bothers to send his head of security to search Nathan’s room.

Seriously. If David Madsen had searched Nathan’s room, he’d have found information on Nathan’s gun (if not the gun itself), the photograph of Chloe in a compromised position, and more. The game would have gone far far differently in that case. And it would have been a reasonable precaution. If Max was lying or mistaken about the gun? Then Wells would have been in a position to force Max to formally apologize to Nathan for her words! Meanwhile he’d have looked effective at his job! Instead he pulls Nathan in for a quick verbal warning and that leads Nathan to assaulting Max in the parking lot.

We also learn from Chloe that Wells is a drunk. Now Chloe isn’t exactly the best person to talk to about these things. She refers to the school as Blackhell and got expelled, so she may be prejudiced about this. But we actually get to see Wells drinking whiskey at the end of Chapter 1. Further, in Chapter 3 when Max and Chloe search his office, you find he has several bottles of liquor hidden away. And trust me, if you tried drinking on the job or even just at the job after you were out for the night, and weren’t working at a bar... then you’re going to get written up at the very least.

Drugs and alcohol are quite evident in Blackwell, both among the administration and the student body. We can find a known drug dealer’s RV parked in the Blackwell Academy parking lot at one point. We learn that Rachel Amber (beloved icon and the lost Lenore of Life is Strange) was a drug mule for said drug dealer. We learn that Nathan Prescott also deals and distributes drugs at Blackwell (and Chloe accuses him of that when we first encounter Chloe and Nathan in the Blackwell bathroom).

Several students end up drugged by date rape drugs that were acquired from Frank Bowers (who never thought to consider their possible use for sexual assault apparently). One student admits to getting high before class, and at the End of the World event, the Vortex Club is full of students drinking alcohol and getting high off of various drugs (many of which Nathan provided). In fact it seems clear that Nathan’s popularity among the jocks is due to his being the middleman between Frank and their own drug habits.

David Madsen is another sign of the corruption at Blackwell. He is not a wise choice to have as chief of security for a school of rich teenagers. When we first meet him, he yells at Max for not leaving the school promptly when she leaves the bathroom. Excuse me? What is it women do in bathrooms? If you were in the middle of something when a fire alarm went off, would you just pull up your underwear, fix your clothes, and leave? No. You’d clean up first. And that takes a minute or two. If David were given any actual training, he’d have just treated her decently and told her to evacuate with the rest of the students and faculty.

(That’s another thing. There is a set procedure in place for fire alarms. Students and faculty are to line up outside so that the fire department knows everyone is safe and no one is trapped in the building. This was not done. Sure, part of this is to get the game moving rather than show boring realistic details and it could be claimed it happened “after hours” but you still should have seen the remaining students lining up with teachers. The laxity of Blackwell (suggesting that the fire alarms are misused frequently) is just another sign that Blackwell is corrupt and Wells an inept administrator.)

We see additional evidence that David is one of the worse choices for head of security at Blackwell at his accosting Kate Marsh and accusing her of being involved in something (later on we learn he’s blaming her for drugs at Blackwell showing once more he is a tool and an utter idiot). The girl is hysterical, there is a write-up in her file from the nurse that David should have known about, and he confronts her and baselessly accuses her of something. There is a legitimate reason why Max can accuse David of being responsible for Kate being on the rooftop of the dorms at the end of Chapter 2. He helped drive her there.

On a related note, additional corruption in Arcadia Bay can be found in its police force. At one point in Chapter 3, Max can talk to a police officer at Two Whales Diner, Anderson Berry. Berry admits outright to being on the take. More specifically, Sean Prescott did Berry’s family a favor and that he can’t get out of it. Nathan goes on further to state his father owns the police... and seeing that in LiS2 with the Sacrifice Chloe end that David is worried about Nathan getting out of jail three years after killing Chloe... he’s probably right. (Minimum sentence for involuntary manslaughter is 10 years, no parole. Boy’s getting out on appeal. Fortunately, Save Chloe is a valid option and has Jefferson locked away.)

No discussion about the corruption of Blackwell Academy would be complete without talking about Mark Jefferson. This predator has a couple dozen folders filled with photos of women in compromising positions, having most likely been drugged and then photographed while semi-conscious. While the fine folk at Dontnod have stated that Jefferson did not touch his victims sexually... it is clear that this was a metaphor for rape. You have a date rape drug used on two girls (Kate and Chloe). Both girls are messed up as a result of the drugging and subsequent encounters. Kate is suicidal and being blamed by society for what happened to her. Chloe is adversarial and confrontational and even states she would happily see Arcadia Bay turned to glass (one thing that some victims of sexual assault say sometimes is that they hate the world.) You even have the Dark Room and its vinyl-lined extra-large sofa. Yes, that is not at all suspicious.

Mark Jefferson is a popular and attractive white male teacher in a position of authority over students. He has taken one student (Nathan) under his wing and is coaching him in his ways (do note that Chloe is assaulted by Nathan using the same tools Jefferson uses on his own victims). There are rumors going around the school that a missing student, Rachel Prescott, was sleeping with Jefferson and this is not considered a bad thing. There’s no investigation of these rumors (half a year after Rachel disappeared). There’s no official denial of those rumors or any word at all. If a teacher in any decent school had that sort of accusation against them, I don’t care how popular the teacher was, there’d be an official investigation and the rumor mill would mention that.

It’s clear that Jefferson has done this to several students at the very least. If we assume that Jefferson was teaching at Blackwell for the past three years then he’s been preying on teenage girls for that entire time. The write-up for Jefferson shows that in the late 2000s he taught in several schools before settling down in his hometown of Arcadia Bay. (It’s odd how many characters in LiS were born in Arcadia Bay. The only two students whose records we have who were not were (amusingly enough) Nathan and Victoria. Go figure.) So it’s possible Jefferson was preying on students for four or five years, and may even have been at Blackwell Academy when Max’s family had to leave.

Getting back to Nathan, there are multiple examples of the corruption of Blackwell in regards to Nathan. We already know of how he’s dealing drugs at the school, providing various drugs for the jocks, alcohol for the Vortex Club, and the like. His school file shows he’s assaulted students and teachers, and it is strongly implied that Max’s English teacher is out because of Nathan. (Oh, hey, more corruption! Most schools require students to be in class even when the teacher is out sick and provide substitute teachers. When there is no substitute available, the principal or vice principal will fill in as the substitute teacher.) Nathan’s files however are sealed and his official student report shows him to be a “good student” without any problems. Suspicious? Suspicious.

When I first started writing about the Corruption of Blackwell, I was thinking along the lines of the $5,000 in cash found in the desk drawer of Principal Wells. It was just the tip of the iceberg, but it still smells fishier than Arcadia Bay’s docks. Yes, the money is marked as “handicapped fund” but legitimate businesses will use checks to finance construction. That includes schools. If there is a bake sale or the like to raise funds? Those funds are put in a bank account. You don’t go paying cash for business unless it’s under the table - at least, not when you’re a legitimate and popular private school.

Amusingly enough, the money for the Handicapped Fund gets used to put in a handicapped ramp at the school. But the ramp is being built for the Prescott Dormitory. (Oh, hey, the Prescott family again!) Do note, Blackwell Academy is built on a hill. To reach the school from the street, students have to walk up a couple flights of stairs. If you go to the parking lot, you have to climb a flight of stairs in a narrow enclosure to reach the school - if you use a wheelchair you cannot access the school at all.

David Madsen’s map of Blackwell Academy (for placement of security cameras) shows no means of reaching the dormitories from the parking lot. In fact, the parking lots are placed poorly and students checking into Blackwell have to trudge across the entire school with their belongings, up a flight of stairs and down another flight of stairs. It is poorly designed and I can hear the griping of every student and parent on moving day about how it’s messed up that you can’t just park the car next to the dorms.

In short? Putting a handicap ramp at the dormitories makes absolutely no sense. Students in wheelchairs cannot reach the ramp because when they get off from the street in front of Blackwell they have to climb a flight of stairs. If they park in the handicapped spaces in the parking lot, they have to climb a flight of stairs. They cannot get into the school itself because of more stairs, so installing a handicap ramp at the dormitories makes absolutely no sense at all. (If Blackwell was interested in becoming ADA-compliant, the first ramp would be at the parking lot, followed by the school itself.)

Let’s look at this further. We know that Sean Prescott has a construction company (Prescott Development) seeing he’s pushing a housing development, Pan Estates, a gated community that will be built in the “deep forests” near Blackwell. He’s run into some problems with local protests and the like keeping him from just building everything he wants. So Principal Raymond Wells gets $5,000 in cash to build a pointless and useless handicap ramp that workers at Prescott Development can use for a quick job. Further, cash is often used to pay undocumented workers. Prescott is spending some money for a fluff job to keep his undocumented workers paid and busy.

If Max and Chloe take the money, there is no investigation. There was a break-in at the school. The police could easily lift Chloe’s fingerprints from the scene and arrest her for the theft. They most likely have her fingerprints on file seeing she has been arrested in the past for various minor crimes (such as vandalism). So why would there be no investigation unless there was a reason to keep the money hushed up?

As I said, the corruption at Blackwell and Arcadia Bay goes deep. The Prescott family is at the heart of it... but at its head is Blackwell Academy. I truly feel for Max in this. She really wanted to go to Blackwell. A favored photographer of hers was teaching there, her best friend lived in the town, it was her childhood home! And she goes there and finds skeletons in the closet, bodies in the junkyard, and signs of corruption everyway she turns. Talk about a coming of age story... maybe Chloe was right. Turning the town to glass? It may have been for the best. It allows Max and Chloe to leave and make a life for themselves. It would be a better life than what they had back in Arcadia Bay.

#life is strange #lis #blackwell academy #arcadia bay #raymond wells #david madsen #sean prescott #nathan prescott #mark jefferson #anderson berry #frank bowers #chloe price #max caulfield #my posts

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liamscxtt · 3 years

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a day in the life ; self para

when: thursday, august 28th

where: literally everywhere

nb: just a brief (long) narrative of what the typical day looks like for liam.

trigger warnings: homelessness, death and drug mentions, drug abuse

5:00am

there’s a moment when you first wake up when everything is just a haze. a moment when you forget who you are, what day it is -- all of your problems just don’t exist, for that moment. the moment only lasted a few seconds before the blaring sound of the alarms coming from the phone bring you back to the brutal aspects of reality. and yet, those were the best five seconds for liam.

groaning, he turned over and tapped on his screen, desperately trying to shut the alarm off; the bright screen burning his already sleep deprived eyes. he probably only got about three hours of sleep, if that. he was used to it at this point, and then there were days like today. days where he wanted to wither into the depths of his own self-loathing.

he looked out the window to see the sun beginning to rise. a sky painted with shades of blues, purples, and oranges, almost like a messy yet somewhat neatly put together painting made by a middle schooler. there was something beautiful about waking up with the sun, parts of it that brought him peace. his sister loved watching the sunrise - she always went on and on about how sunrises were the true underdog; how mother nature picked it’s most beautiful mixture of colors for the sunrises, all because it took a special person to appreciate the beauty that came from it. he never really understood what she meant, until he was forced to watch the sun rise every single morning. and as always, she was right. sunsets had nothing against sunrises.

these quiet mornings were the best part of liam’s day. the hours where he felt most connected to his sister and to himself. the hours he felt truly at peace. it was crazy to think that liam’s favorite time of the day was between 5:00am and 6:30am.

he turned on his car to play youtube on his aux before climbing out of his vehicle. the sweet melody’s of the soft pitched tunes filled his car and the immediate area surrounding it, and a smile creeped on his face as one of her favorite songs began playing in the background. he wasn’t religious, but there was a part of him that truly found strength in knowing that his sister wasn’t far away.

he rolled up the worn down mattress topper, collected his pillow and blanket in one hand. he broke down his bed as he pushed the backseat of his 2006 ford escape upright and neatly tucked his belongings into his trunk.

5:30am

he pulled into the vacant parking lot of the soulstice gym. the gym was set to open in a half hour; luckily for him, there weren’t many college students that would dare to wake up at the crack of dawn just to work out. he stuffed everything he needed to get ready for the day into a duffle bag; shower supplies, and a clean outfit. he desperately needed to do laundry, and he needed to get food...but pay day wasn’t until next week. he was gonna have to find cash, and find it quick - maybe he’ll just pick up another shift at the bar. he practically lived at that place now.

his footsteps echoed through as he walked through the empty fitness center; not even the cleaners had arrived for their early morning shift. he quickly hopped into the showers and get ready for the day. lord knows he needed to wash the dirt and sins that painted his skin from the previous nights festivities. he couldn’t even recall what exactly happened, and that was both a blessing and a curse. it was shortly after he turned on all the lights and greeted the early morning cleaners, jimmy and george.

“good morning, son!” greeted george.

“mornin’, will.” jimmy greeted shortly after.

jimmy and george worked closely together, and were usually gone for the day 2pm; and yet, liam knew the guys quite well.

jimmy is in his early-forties, married with two children. he worked two full time jobs to get his children through school. his son played division II baseball at a school somewhere in the midwest, and is majoring in sports education. he wants to be a gym teacher. his daughter is studying to be a nurse at monarch. she aspires to work in women’s health. jimmy always spoke so highly of them two.

george is in his mid-sixties, but is still kicking it like he’s twenty. he’s also married with children and even grandchildren, but his story is more tragic. he’s a retired firefighter, who is still working a full time job because his pension wasn’t enough to make ends meet. can’t make ends meet. his only daughter passed away at a young age - drug overdose, he says. his only son is constantly in and out of jail for drug charges - leaving george and his wife to take care and raise their two grandchildren, layla and michael. layla is 14 and is getting ready to start high school. she loves to play volleyball, and apparently is a natural. michael is 9 and is getting ready to start fourth grade. he love cars, spider man, legos, sonic, and baseball cards. he wants to be a youtube gamer when he grows up. liam didn’t know the kid, but he thought he was fucking awesome.

two completely different stories, and yet liam believed that those two men deserved the world and then some.

“what’s up, guys?” liam greeted with a smile as he filled up his metal water bottle at the nearest filling station. “when are the kids set to go back, george?”

“this coming monday. mikey’s already complaining how he doesn’t need school to be a youtuber. apparently he’s ‘done his research’.” the comment makes both liam and jimmy laugh.

“tell the little man to put that energy into a sport, or a trade. i need a new mechanic.” jim jested, once again causing the other two to laugh. “what about you, will? getting ready to start the semester back up? gabby is already stressing because some of her professors already posted the syllabus.”

“shit, i haven’t even gotten my textbooks yet. i might have to join mikey with this whole youtuber plan and hope for the best.” liam said with a nervous chuckle. he almost had completely forgotten about the upcoming semester approaching.

to quickly divert the question away from him, he spoke once more. “say, george. i found a few baseball cards at the bar the other night. remind me to bring them in for you.”

“you’ll make that boys entire week. maybe i’ll use that to bribe him to go to school.”

jimmy just smiled. “you’re a good kid, scotty boy. never change.”

2:30pm

it had only been a half hour since liam clocked out from his morning job, and he quickly made his way over to the library. the mention of school that morning brought liam into a panic. he grabbed a spot at one of desks in the computer station, powering on the device and pulling out his notebook. luckily enough, most of the textbooks he needed the library had available. leaving his stuff behind, he went to go fetched them.

he already had mastered the technique of not having his own textbooks. every week, he would go and scan all of the chapters he needed for each and every class. luckily, monarch offered free scanning and printing. he made small talk with the librarian that sat at the desk nearby as he printed out at least three weeks worth of chapters for each of his classes.

he sat down once more, and took the time to put the pile of papers neatly into his binder. it was time to start planning.

6:30pm

now it was time to work his night time job, mars bar. he was working with adrian tonight, so he knew it wouldn’t be that bad.

his stomach had been grumbling half way through his shift. he hadn’t eaten anything all day. but he continued to push through. he had to, at least until pay day. he continued to chug water; if his stomach was full of water, his body didn’t have time to remind him that it needed some sort of nutrients. he was a master manipulator when it came to his own body now.

1:00am

the rounded out the tips that he received from his customers. it was a good night, and luckily enough he would be able to do laundry the next day. his body was tired, though; aching from the lack of sleep and abuse his body endured from the festivities. he felt like he could sleep for an entire month, and then some.

he drove around for a bit after his shift, a thing he did as he needed to both unwind and find a somewhat safe space to park his car. university police were patrolling the parking lots that night, which immediately told him not to park there. he couldn’t park in greek row - too many people he knew by this point. he was left to park in a nearby park, in a nearby neighborhood. he found himself saying a small prayer that nobody would mess with him that night.

he lit up a joint once he found his place, feeling the smoke fill his lungs as he listened to the calming music that played on the radio. ed sheeran was playing, a song from his multiply album. it was one of his and his sister’s favorite albums. that’s the one thing they shared in common, their taste in music. but she was more pop in a sense, and he was more edgy. but still, the music brought him comfort.

he got his bed ready; a mattress topper, paired with a pillow and a blanket. he made himself comfortable and looked at his phone, just to see he missed a text from his mother at 10:45pm.

hi honey! spoke with your aunt today, and we’re making plans for christmas. did your father reach out to you? let me know what plans he has set. i’ll arrange my trip around your plans.

i hope you had a great day! i love you! ❤️

her message was followed by a bitmoji image of her holding a huge heart. and he smiled.

i haven’t spoken to him all week, but i’ll reach out tomorrow and let you know. i’ll call you tomorrow. love you ❤️

there was a huge part of him that wanted to call her now, that wanted to tell her he had been struggling both physically and mentally...but then he remembered the damage and the financial burden his injury left. it ruined his family. he ruined his family. and just as he was about to press call, he let out a frustrated sigh before locking his phone and tossing it not too far away from him, rolling over to attempt to get some sort of rest.

just to do the same thing. all. over. again.

#𝐥𝐢𝐚𝐦: self-paras #p: a day in the life #don't @ me #this is long af #and it sucks #????: self-paras

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grailacademy · 5 years

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Welcome To Grail Academy - Chapter Fourteen: Too Young To Die

For an abandoned taffy factory, the beastly structure sure was animated. The tall smokestacks obscured the light of the sun, like grey obelisks marking an apocalyptic shrine. Groups of men and women in beige jumpsuits and caps rolled large crates out on trolleys, loading the packages onto the backs of taffy delivery trucks. A man with a thick beard and baggy eyes barked directions from the catwalk above, his potbelly bouncing as he yelled. It was systematic chaos, ants gathering food, bees building a hive, cockroaches scattering under light. The floor manager saw the line of children file into the factory through a garage door, nodded and pointed to a hallway that funneled out of the worker’s space. Queenie leading the pack, she directed everyone to follow.

Rettah held onto Yorick’s sweaty hand, pulling him along like a puppy on a leash. She was rambling about something, it could have been about a comic book she was reading, or maybe she was explaining their cover at the factory, but he wasn’t paying attention. He was still in sensory overload. Her hand on his was like holding an alligator’s tail, he felt every pore and ring of her fingerprints, every drop of sweat. The shouting and mechanical whirring of the machines sounded like standing in the middle of a bomb range. His heart was a flamenco dancer twirling and leaping in his chest, his legs were shaking, the images of Buck were stained on the insides of his eyelids every time he blinked. Scarlet swayed behind him, hands on his head.

The noise, noise, noise of the factory rattled in the distance as a new sound overtook Yorick’s ears. An argument, behind a closed door of what looked to be a freezer, presumably the place where this taffy company once stored product preservatives.

“The shipments are ahead of schedule, but the border keeps stopping our deliveries before they can leave Calicem.” A man’s voice, deep and gravely.

“We certainly can’t go after city government. It’s still an independent settlement.” A woman’s voice, stern.

“That’s exactly why we SHOULD. There won’t be any assistance from Mistral military.”

“Yes, but you forget their connections to Haven. The alliances between academies could prove to be bothersome, at the least.”

“Those toddlers are only a small inconvenience. If we move fast, we can collapse the communications tower and prevent any distress signals.”

Another woman’s voice, gentle and soft, cut through the bickering and hummed “Goodness, you call the hunters children while I sit here with a couple of infants! Play nice, you two”, the voice tittered.

The door to the locker was pushed open and the meeting came into full view. A circular wooden dining table sat in the center, a series of eight mismatched cushioned lounge chairs sitting around it. A tray with a silver tea pot and bowls of sugar cubes and biscuits was adjusted directly in the center. Those sitting at the table were all holding a cup of their own, although some did not drink the warm beverage. The room was cold, frigid, not quite to the point of frost or needing a jacket, but enough to send a chill down Yorick’s back. A man in a heavy orange and gold coat had his fist clenched on the table, his clean shaven head glistening in the reflection of his tea cup. A short woman sat across from him, the locks of her chestnut hair curling over her shoulder as she sipped her tea delicately, with her pinkie out. A boy with ragged black hair, shaved short in some parts and left long in others, sat on a crate in the corner, arms folded over his chest. “Be patient.” the gentle voice continued, echoing from somewhere in the far back of the room, dripping from the darkness like molasses. “There is no need to cause such a disturbance over a few delivery trucks. Let our people do their jobs, they have families to feed.”

“Pardon the interruption, but we have a new recruit” Queenie stated, gaining the abrupt attention of everyone’s eyes on her. She and Rettah stepped out of the way, and Scarlet shoved Yorick into the room. The boy on the crate shook his head and stood up, leaving the room. His arms unfolding as he trudged out made plain the dark marks on his back underneath his tank top, which Yorick stared at for a brief moment. He tripped over his feet and slipped into the room, not knowing what to do with his hands. He patted his legs and puffed out his cheeks, before that gentle voice hummed again. “You….”

suddenly, the darkness shrunk and a streak of black whooshed past the table. Now he was being embraced in a tight hug, by a pale woman who held his head to her naked breast. She was as cold as death, but somehow had the nurturing touch of a mother. She released him after an uncomfortably long five seconds, smiling excitedly and inspecting him. “Oh, he’s perfect! Just as I had imagined him. A magnificent specimen! Yes!” She poked the flesh of his forearms, prodded at his stomach, lifted the ends of his hair and counted a few strands, pulled one of his shoes off and felt around to make sure he had all his toes, stretched the goggles on his head as far as they could go, letting them snap onto his forehead when she let go. The process had Yorick giggling nonstop, since he had neglected to mention that he was extremely ticklish.

“What—Who are you? Where am I, what is this?” He asked, noticing the long trail of black hair winding behind the woman. She tittered again, petting his head and calming down.

“You must be very confused, I’m sure. My name is Sable Zil Alhaqiqa Trinity. But you may call me Sable. And this,” she held her arms out and gestured to the space around her, “is my temple.”

The man sitting at the table cleared his throat, and Sable turned to explain, “These are some of my disciples. Lolanthe Aylin, a scholar and the head of our production department, and Aurum Fitzroy, the leader of our field scouts.” She leaned over and whispered, “he also makes a wonderful raspberry biscuit.” Yorick looked back and saw that the man was angrily chewing on a biscuit with speckles of red berry in it.

A black tendril of hair draped itself over Yorick’s shoulder like an arm, Sable’s signal for him to turn around. “Walk with me, Yorick.” He glanced back to the rest of RSQ as the pair strolled down the hallway, and caught Rettah waving goodbye before the locker door shut behind them. “How do you know my name?”

“I know lots of things.”

Wow, that’s totally not creepy, he thought. Sable’s hair slid along the floor behind her, as if she wore a dramatically long veil to a wedding gown. They travelled through the factory, each assembly line and packing room adding to its daunting size. “Are you afraid of me, Yorick?”

“A bit, yeah.”

“That is understandable, haha.” She chuckled. He laughed as well, until Sable’s hair lifted off his shoulder and fell into place on her back. “I’m a strange person. We are strange people!” She was right about that.

“Do you know about the Hedge Witches?”

“We….learned about them in class, I think.” He scratched the back of his hand. The little he knew about them wasn’t exactly in a good light.

“Then you know what we do here.”

“You’re anarchists. Terrorists.”

Sable snorted, “Oh, nothing that dramatic.” They reached a room with ceiling-to-floor windows that hung above the work floor, but the windows were almost entirely covered with sheets of scribblings and notes. “My disciples are not mindless brutes. They are scientists, artists, teachers, chefs, lawyers, those who have been wronged by Calicem government. The ones who run this city, they are oppressors. They profit from marginalized people’s misery.” As she spoke, Yorick strolled around the room and read some of the notes. They seemed to be a combination of diary entries and experiment logs. “....The world has been cruel to us. We were born out of hate and fear, not love. That is why I do this, Yorick. I want to create a new world. A better one.” The branches of hair slithered up the walls of the room like spilt ink, and when Yorick turned around, Sable was reclining in a hammock of her own hair. He could sympathize with her reasons. But Yorick questioned her, “Why do you need me, then?”

“Because,” Sable plucked a piece of paper off of one of the walls and handed it to Yorick. ”This power is your destiny.” Yorick clutched the newsprint photo in his hand, recognizing the face of his grandmother on the paper.

“Who. The hell. Is Sable.” Esmerelda slammed her hands down on the headmaster’s desk, grinding her teeth. Her team and herself were all looking worse for wear, Bernard blinking in and out of consciousness on the couch in the corner, Nico sitting beside him with his partner’s head in his lap, wincing with every breath he took. The school nurse peeled Bernard’s eyes open and shone a small light to see if his pupils dilated (which they didn’t), and applied a salve to the many purple and red marks across Nico’s chest and stomach. “It’s a miracle you don’t have any broken bones. Just a couple of bruised ribs.” The nurse remarked while she wrapped gauze around Nico’s torso to hold him together. Esmerelda herself had bandages wrapped around her forearms where the wires cut her, and around her neck where Queenie had attempted to slit her throat.

“I understand that you’re upset-” Madehold tried to calm down her students, but to no avail. “-UPSET!? My team and I could have died out there. Upset doesn’t even begin to describe it. For gods sake, they took Yorick and killed one of their teammates! How could you let those monsters into the academy? And why did they know so much about you and the school? And WHO IN THE GODS NAMES IS SABLE!?”

Madehold let out a long sigh, lacing her fingers together and holding them up to her lips as she sat there. It was one thing to have to deal with these kids screaming at her so late at night, but it was another thing to do so while she was inebriated. After a moment, she turned in her office chair and stood, making her way to the window. “I guess I have some explaining to do, don’t I?”

#rwby #rwby oc #grail academy #welcome to grail academy #ebny #team ebny #nico #esmerelda #bernard #yorick #fanfic #fanfiction #rwby fanfic #rwby fanfiction #oc #ocs #oc fanfic #oc fanfiction #punk

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Brooke Baldwin: These women inspired me in the year since Covid-19 knocked me flat Ha. Through all the body aches and sweat-soaked sheets and golf-ball sized glands, I learned a lot about vulnerability and connection. Being sick and weak was awful, but it did give me clarity about what I value in life. I also considered myself one of the lucky ones — I never struggled to breathe, I had access to great medical care and would ultimately come through without long-term health effects. I never had to add to the stress of the doctors and nurses in hospitals doing heroes’ work. And I am very aware of my privilege as a White woman, in a country where communities of color are disproportionately affected by this awful virus. But there was something in that essay I left out, and now I’m coming clean. One of the reasons I was able to kick Covid-19’s ass was because I had a support network of women, a sisterhood — or what I call a “huddle.” Let me back up: The year leading up to my getting Covid-19 I had been crisscrossing the country on weekends interviewing trailblazing women for a book. (It’s called “Huddle: How Women Unlock Their Collective Power.”) Part journalism, part memoir, it examines the way women team up to give one another the support, strength and inspiration they need to meet the challenges of daily life — and to change the world. It’s a special kind of bonding and empowerment that I call the huddle. As someone who was very lonely in my 20s and into my 30s, I learned to huddle by activating my own small tribe of women who stood with me every step of the way. They were with me (virtually) during Covid-19 as well. I knew, as I fought that virus, that all of these women had my back and that I was truly never alone. After I recovered and got back to work, the pandemic raged on and I paid extra close attention to women. I started to see how women, and especially women of color, were disproportionately affected by this deadly virus. I noticed that women of all races, ages, classes and backgrounds were carrying a great burden in getting us through the pandemic. They were mothers, caretakers, breadwinners, school teachers and (suddenly) homeschool teachers, nurses, doctors, essential workers and activists. And even as women are going to bat for our entire country, more than two million of them have lost their jobs or been forced to leave their profession to school their children and care for their families. Many are less able to care for themselves: According to a report released earlier this month by the Kaiser Family Foundation, more women than men are skipping their health care services and getting sicker as a result. Yet even in these dark circumstances, women are holding one another up. They are huddling. One need not look far to find them. The bold circle of women who drew up the Marshall Plan for Moms are advocating for direct monthly payments to mothers to compensate them for their unseen, unpaid labor. And women everywhere working on the front lines of our national crisis are becoming especially vocal about the mandate to take care of one another. I checked back in with nurse Emily Fawcett at Lenox Hill Hospital. I’d interviewed her the very week I got sick, and she shared with me the incredible demands she and other nurses have endured throughout the pandemic. Nurses are what Fawcett called “natural huddlers.” So together they confronted, for example, the day that the hospital oxygen supply ran low and they had to race to every room to switch out oxygen tanks. And the day Fawcett witnessed five patients die alone — without family members allowed in the room. “Some days I felt so isolated and overwhelmed, but my huddle of close girlfriends truly gave me the strength, courage, love and support to keep going,” Fawcett told me. They gave her daily moral support via group text, and made sure she didn’t have to go to the grocery store a single time for three months, even regularly providing lunch for all 30 of the hospital staff members on her floor at work. Meanwhile, mothers all over the country have borne the brunt of school closures and domestic caretaking — but in so many cases it did not stop them from helping each other. Loraya Harrington-Trujillo, a South Orange, New Jersey, mother of two young children was struggling to homeschool her kindergartner, manage a 3-year-old and help her live-in mother care for her father, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease — all while working from home at a full-time job on the leadership team of a startup. It didn’t take long for her situation to become untenable. “Something had to give, and it couldn’t be my family,” she said. She made the painful decision to leave her job, knowing how difficult it would be to reenter the job market. “I never expected to be someone who stepped back from my career,” she explained. Like so many other American women, she had no choice. In Suwanee, Georgia, Shanita Cooper, mother to a 6-year-old, lost her job as a nurse just before the pandemic began when the small home-health-care company where she worked folded. As someone who always “makes a way out of no way,” Cooper poured money and energy into her wedding décor business until she could find another nursing position. But when schools closed, Cooper found herself in an impossible situation. She had to be available all day to help her daughter with virtual homeschooling, which meant she couldn’t possibly take on long nursing shifts. With large gatherings suddenly restricted by the state, her wedding business went under. “I grew up poor in rural Georgia, the oldest of six children, but this was one of the hardest moments of my life,” she said. To add insult to injury, she was denied unemployment benefits, due to her status as an independent contractor and because she had submitted her application for assistance during the summer months when school wasn’t in session for her daughter. Devastated and depressed, she found support from the other “mamas” in her circle. “A lot of us had to step away from work. We were all struggling together and helping each other,” she said. “If someone had a job interview, someone else would babysit her kids. If someone needed gas in their car, someone else would give them $20.” When Cooper was featured in a Vogue article in March about the invisible crisis among mothers during the pandemic, she read about Loraya Harrington-Trujillo, whose story was also featured in the article. The two women formed a connection and Harrington-Trujillo activated her huddle to help lift up Cooper. “After reading the Vogue article, so many friends reached out to me and said how unfair and terrible [Cooper’s] story was,” Harrington-Trujillo told me. “I texted them all back and said what are you willing to do to help?” In the days that followed, Harrington-Trujillo rounded up more than 50 people who sent money, news about opportunities, networking connections and moral support to Cooper, allowing her to catch up on bills and renew some of her nursing-related certifications that had lapsed during the time she had been unemployed. Harrington-Trujillo, who has spent her career working for companies that bolster women and girls, told me that “investing in women will pay tenfold into their communities.” To her point, while she was rounding up support for Cooper, Cooper was busy offering help to other women across her state who shared her frustration with navigating the complicated system for applying for pandemic-related unemployment assistance. Cooper started a Facebook group to share what she’d learned, answering questions and advising other women who were experiencing similar difficulties. And even though Cooper has yet to receive any much-deserved assistance from the state, she has helped countless other women successfully apply for and receive their benefits. Of the common ground she found with Cooper, Harrington-Trujillo told me: “We are both beneficiaries of women who have invested in us — through sponsorship, donation and emotional support — and we’ve both been actively reinvesting in others as well.” This kind of huddling, I learned, is not something we women do only in times of crisis. Huddling is also a part of our legacy — a secret to our success in the workplace, the source of historic changes in society and the place where we derive so much joy. As I interviewed all the other extraordinary women for my book, they often generously asked me about my own life, career and voice. It was a great blessing but also a painful challenge because I realized I couldn’t hold space with these women and not be as brave as possible in my own life. As dearly as I’ve held onto my platform (and really, dream job) at CNN, I’ll be leaving CNN in a few weeks. Now that it’s time for me to take a leap, I realize how a year after feeling so terribly vulnerable, I’m now bolstered by — and have drawn courage from — the women across the country who shared their brave stories with me. How inspiring it is to know so many of us have each other’s backs. Source link Orbem News #Baldwin #Brooke #BrookeBaldwin:ThesewomeninspiredmeintheyearsinceCovid-19knockedmeflat-CNN #Covid19 #flat #Inspired #knocked #opinions #Women #Year

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khalilhumam · 3 years

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Six policies to address social problems affecting Black boys and men

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/six-policies-to-address-social-problems-affecting-black-boys-and-men/

Six policies to address social problems affecting Black boys and men

By Ashleigh Maciolek Last month, the Center on Children and Families and the Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative hosted an event to review the unique situation of Black men in the United States and to discuss possible policy directions for improving their social and economic outcomes and opportunities. The unique challenges facing Black boys and men require a specific set of policy responses, from the earliest days of life through adulthood. A key theme of the event was that policymakers must pay particular attention to the intersection of institutionalized racism and sexism in society and they must be intentional with their support for Black boys and men. Anything less than systemic change will allow the current system to continue to function as it was originally designed—to the detriment of Black men. To that end, the experts identified six key policy areas to systemically address the challenges Black boys and men face:

Criminal justice reform: To truly address the social issues problems affecting Black boys and men, there must be significant reform to the criminal justice system. Black men are drastically overrepresented in the prison population, accounting for 32% of the prison population but only 6% of the overall U.S. population. They are five times more likely to be incarcerated during their lifetime than white men and they are more likely to serve longer sentences than white men (on average, 19% longer). This reality has multiplicative effects on the life chances of Black men. They face barriers in finding employment and housing, many lose the right to vote, and many lack access to social services, including federal student aid. All of this taken together reduces the economic opportunities available to Black men and hinders their role in social and family life. To address these obstacles, criminal justice reform must be made a policy priority. The objective should be first, to reduce the number of Black men behind bars and second, to improve re-entry conditions.

Improving the education system: As compared to Black women, white men, and white women, Black men have lower levels of educational attainment. Only about 28% of Black men (aged 25-29) have a bachelor’s degree or higher, while about 30% of Black women, over 40% of white men, and nearly 50% of white women do. Comparatively, Black men have fewer opportunities to receive higher education because those with a felony record face limited access to federal student loans. Moreover, many of the service providers within the educational system do not cultivate the full potential of Black male students. This includes grading biases, higher suspension and expulsion rates, higher rates of in-school arrests, lack of Black male role models within the school, and other forms of overt and covert racism. To improve the economic outcomes for Black men, there needs to be a policy response to these educational disparities. First, federal student loans should be made available to those with a felony conviction because it will provide many Black males with the opportunity to further their education. Second, the infrastructure of the education system should be improved to better support Black male students so that they can achieve their full academic potential.

Improving employment rates and opportunities: On average, Black men experience higher unemployment rates, lower labor force participation rates, and lower earnings than their white male counterparts. These trends are not only indicative of lower economic power, but also lower access to quality healthcare, and fewer social connections. Dr. Rashawn Ray noted that there are about 1.5 million Black men missing from social life entirely. To address this, policy should promote better employment opportunities for Black men. As a starting place, improving educational outcomes for Black boys and men will consequently improve their chances in the labor market. But beyond that, policy should aim to match unemployed Black men with gaps in the labor market. Most prominently, there is rapid growth within the HEAL sectors (health, education, administration, and literacy) and a lack of Black men in these roles. Policy should respond by providing scholarships and other incentives to encourage more Black men to become nurses, health aides, teachers, social workers, and other similar professions.

Place-based policies: In 2017, 26% of Black households lived in high-poverty neighborhoods as compared to just 5% of white households. High-poverty neighborhoods are typically characterized by poorer quality schools, less access to jobs, social networks, and health care, and higher rates of crime, pollution, congestion, and noise. Moreover, evidence suggests that boys tend to be more sensitive to their environment growing up, which often materializes in behavioral issues, lower educational attainment, lower earnings and more. Therefore, to address some of these adverse outcomes for Black boys and men, there should be greater investment in neighborhoods. Effectively designed and implemented place-based policies can improve the chances for Black men and their families, and ultimately restore communities. Using the opportunity zone model, these policies can provide neighborhoods with greater resources and invest money in areas that need it. But as Dr. Sean Joe noted, they need to better facilitate opportunity structures within the region and not for external actors (e.g., developers).

Mentorship programs: Mentorship programs (such as the Mentoring Alliance led by Dr. Sean Joe) for Black boys and men have been a vital part of strengthening connections within a community. Providing young Black boys with access to a Black male role model has the potential to benefit them across several areas, including academic performance, mental health, social and emotional well-being, and preventing risky behaviors. While mentorship programs should be promoted through public policy (i.e., greater investment), the scholars emphasized that the approach must be deliberate. Specifically, Dr. Rashawn Ray emphasized that mentors must exhibit four qualities: positive, academic, accessible, and visible. Black boys should be able to see and touch successful Black men. Richard Reeves added that they should be durable because mentors that come and go often do more harm than good. And finally, Dr. Sean Joe commented that there must be a shift away from “savior-ship” to sponsorship. Black men must be willing to sponsor Black boys into opportunities (e.g., jobs) to make a difference in their lives.

Reparations: The final policy area suggested during the panel discussion were reparations to be paid to American descendants of slavery. The racial gaps present in wealth, income, housing value, educational attainment, health status, employment, incarceration rates, and more are all the result of deep racism within the U.S., stemming from the egregious act of slavery. Reparations can be used to correct this injustice and to reduce the disparities that remain pervasive in society. During the conversation, Dr. Rashawn Ray said that reparations are the only way to deal with racism in America and that the country must “provide restitution for the centuries of the way that systemic racism has operated in our country.” While there is momentum on some national level reparation policies, Richard Reeves suggests that reparation payments at the local level are also viable. The policy of reparations—including how they are issued, how they are financed, and at what level—must be explored.

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socialcoldstreams · 5 years

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Pseudo news: "More Utah women are graduating with STEM degrees, but not at the same rate as men"

For unknown reasons, many career fields are dominated by one gender and no one, apparently, knows why.

Warning: This is not a politically correct post.

This situation can be made to look better or worse depending on how you define “STEM”. Most pseudo news reports define STEM as “TEM” – meaning technology, engineering and math and ignore nearly all of the fields of science. This hand waving trick makes the situation appear worse. In fact, they really mean just “TE” as nearly 50% of graduates in Math are women but the field is small enough that it makes barely a blip in “TEM” employment ratios.

Here is the chart that accompanies this pseudo news article:

By leaving out science fields where women fill most positions, this chart presents a skewed view. The Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) or Physical Therapy, for example, are not part of “biological/biomedical”. The “math” category is a no op – as it is so small as to have little impact on the “computer science” and “engineering” categories, which is what these stories are actually about. (The above chart is for Utah only and the national distribution is somewhat different.)

About 90% of nurses (health science) are women (many of which are likely not include in the “Biological/biomedical” category, above). About 75% of physical therapists (health science) are women. About 75% of veterinary medical students are women. Similarly high numbers in psychology. About half (or slightly more) of medical school graduates are women.

The root issue is – why are some fields dominated by one gender? About 90% of elementary school teachers are women and about 75% of K-12 teachers are women, as additional examples. These examples are ignored by the pseudo news media – have you ever seen a news media report on the “problem” of fields dominated by women?

This story works as propaganda by using

cherry picking of the available data, which is a step away from censorship

What You See Is All There Is – by omitting conflicting data, you are drawn to a conclusion based only that which is presented to you

Because these stories intentionally omit conflicting data, these are pseudo news stories being used as propaganda messaging.

Source: More Utah women are graduating with STEM degrees, but not at the same rate as men | Deseret News

It is a reality that there are fewer women in the “TE” fields and no one knows why. I am an old software developer. When I entered the field, about 40% of computer science graduates were women (today it is under 20%). My first two bosses were women. My second job was at a high tech company co-founded by a woman. For half of my time there, my boss was a woman with a PhD in electrical engineering and also, for about half my time there, our VP of R&D was a woman. When I was promoted to project manager, my first hire as a new manager was of a young woman (a political refugee, no less). Three of the women I worked with when we were all in our 20s, went on to finish out their careers (today) as vice presidents at technology companies. But by the early 1990s, something began changing. No one has come up with a plausible explanation as to why fewer women chose careers in “TE”.

Here is another example, from 2007, as shown in a chart – note that they have left out all of the health sciences, which are dominated by women (and are not included in “biological sciences”). They do at least title the chart “Degrees earned in Selected Science and Engineering Fields” without explaining the selection process and why some fields are not shown (this looks suspiciously like “cherry picking”):

Here is a chart from a 2016 NSF report showing percent of degrees awarded to women. The green line is roughly the 50th percentile, dropping slightly below that in recent years.

The fields that are omitted from pseudo news “STEM” reports employ large numbers of people and are are dominated by women.

Related: Women earn 57% of college degrees now, compared to 43% earned by men.

These pseudo news report are focusing on “TE” and not “STEM”.

The root issue is why are some fields overwhelmingly dominated by one gender? This issue works both ways but only one category is publicized by the pseudo news media.

Similarly, why do women in college so outnumber men in college?

Note – I am starting to use the term “pseudo news” based on Daniel Boorstin’s 1961 book (“The Image: A guide to pseudo events in America”) that explains how pseudo events have come to dominate news reporting.

Pseudo news: “More Utah women are graduating with STEM degrees, but not at the same rate as men” was originally published on SocialPanic

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benningtonalumnirelations · 5 years

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Knowing Kay

Mary Lou Peters Schram ‘56 reflects on Kay Crawford Murray ‘56,their 50-year friendship, and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s & 60s.

I met Kay Crawford (later Murray) in the women’s restroom of the train station in Albany, New York. It was September of 1953. We were the only two people in the restroom. Curious, we faced each other over the sinks.

Kay said: “You look like you might be going to Bennington College.”

I was immediately grateful for that sentence because I was going there for the first time. I had never been East of Ohio till then and I had no idea what this famous college was going to be like. I was also grateful that she used the words ‘look like’. She was dressed like a proper middle class young lady in a cotton print dress and a white wool jacket. I had been buying MLLE. Magazine for a number of years and was dressed for New York City in a dark long-sleeved dress, a black hat and gloves. I dumped the hat and gloves into my suitcase before I said any more.

In more normal situations we might not have spoken at all since she was African-American. There had been no African-Americans in my high school or my neighborhood in Canton. However, it happened that my father, raised as a Quaker, was the one person I knew who talked about African-Americans as if they were like everybody else.

I said: “Do you know the College? Tell me about it.”

Not only did she know it but Kay was also on her way there for her sophomore year. We went outside to find the bus to Vermont and talked during the long drive to Bennington. I explained that I had spent my freshman year at Ohio University and had not liked it at all. All my dreams about college as a place where people talked about books and ideas had been shot down. What I had found instead were concerns much like those in high school. Dating was a primary pre-occupation. The girls mostly refused to talk in class because the boys might think they were too brainy to date. Sororities were a big concern, also Popularity. Even though I had been invited to submit some articles for a campus newspaper and did, there had been nothing at Ohio U to satisfy my ideas of what college should be.

Kay explained that Bennington was nothing like that; to start with it was all girls so there was little concern with dating, at least during the week. Most students were concentrated on their majors. Some students even stayed up all night to finish assignments. Dancers, painters and actors wore their professional attire every day. I thought it all sounded wonderful.

After we had thoroughly hashed this subject, we arrived at the college itself, and found that we were both going to be in McCullough House. When I was checked in and shown my room, I was introduced to my assigned roommate – a tall, commanding product of a prep school who queried me immediately on my background. It turned out that one of the important words she was looking for was “Harvard” where her father had gone but my father had not. After finding me deficient in this division, she set out for another suite where she expected to find someone more to her liking.

Released by this roommate, I walked down the hall and found Kay in her room only about twenty feet from mine. She was in tears, something I was to see often through that first semester. She was the only African-American Bennington had yet admitted and she was lonely on campus in spite of efforts by the Administration to make her more comfortable.

It was not so unlikely that we would be friends – both coming from big-city steel towns (Cleveland and Pittsburgh) to the very different New England, from middle-class families with a strong Protestant bent, scholarship students expecting to work part time on campus, and anxious to prove our families had been right in sending us to a highly regarded school. I could to relate to her unhappiness, remembering how unhappy I had been at Ohio U.

After that first day, we saw each other daily although we were seldom in the same classes. I was intent on a Language and Literature major and a career as a writer. Kay had committed to Psychology. When our first Non-Resident Term ( later FWT or Field Work Term) came, we both spent this ten weeks in Manhattan but different parts of the City and seldom saw each other. I worked at the impressive J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency, where my secretarial skills didn’t rate at top level.

During that first semester, I had found some things about the college that I hadn’t expected. One was that there really was something worthwhile about prep schools. Although Lehman High School had been considered the best school in Canton, and my English teacher the best available, my training had not been exceptional. The prep school grads had had more in Language and Literature than I had, and I found my writing training was only average.

When I attended a meeting for writers one evening, a story of mine was read aloud, and it was put down rather thoroughly. I wore a red blazer and grey pedal-pushers and was established as hopelessly Midwestern, naive and untalented. Shortly after that, there developed a contingent which I named the Greenwich Village Circle, who were scornful of me and determined to keep me out of any writers’ groups; this included writing for SILO, the literary magazine. This lasted through my three years in Vermont. Luckily, Stanley Edgar Hyman, who became my mentor, didn’t share this attitude, and gave me valuable help, even forwarding one of my stories to The New Yorker where he was a staff writer.

At the end of the summer before our Junior year, I spent a weekend in Cleveland with Kay and her mother. It was at this point we learned that neither of our mothers were interested in promoting our friendship, so we gave up trying to convince them and went on with it anyway.

Junior Year

Several things changed in our Junior year. For one thing, both Kay and I had learned to play bridge. This started us on a campaign to teach all the other students in McCullough to play so we would have our choice of partners. Many days we came back from dinner and waited downstairs in the card room to catch all the house members as they returned. In this way, we managed to convert and teach a large group of players so we always had a game when we wanted one.

For our junior year FWT or Field Work Term, we decided to try working in Boston, and Nina Gelles who also lived in McCullough agreed to go with us. The FWT Office worked trying to find jobs for all of us. Kay got a job at Tufts, and Nina at Brandeis. I was supposed to get a job at an insurance company but they turned me down; somehow I had flunked the Personality test. I blamed this on something that had happened to me since arriving at Bennington. I had always been very respectful of authority, but Bennington had instilled me with the idea that my own evaluations might be worth considering and so I started to argue with almost everything. (Perhaps this was happening to many young women my age right then.)

The three of us found a one-bedroom apartment in Back Bay. We tossed for beds. Kay and I got the double bed, Nina got the couch. It was a bitter cold winter in Boston; Nina arrived with her fur coat (what animal this was I can’t remember) which she wore every day to work and slept under at night. We had a struggle with shopping and cooking our meals but were successful enough to keep hunger at bay.

The great thing about Boston was that it was full of other college students; we met many and therefore had many party invitations. In order to get work for these three months in Boston, my last job option had been be as a nurse’s aide at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. This was more education than I really wanted. They sent me to an all private room (thirty of them) floor which had only one (or on good days two) nurses assigned there because private-duty nurses handled a lot of the overflow. For thirty dollars a week, I was the only nurse’s aide they had had in two years. I came close to ruining my arches by wearing sneakers on the tile floors and running all day – sterilizing equipment, serving breakfasts, staying with patients just out of surgery, emergency trips to the Pharmacy, stealing clean sheets from other floors because they stole ours, and generally trying to make this impossible situation work during the hours I was there.

When it came time to leave Boston, we called for a taxi to take us to the train station. The taxi driver who turned up told us that three students with many suitcases, books and the cooking equipment we had acquired over the winter required a “moving” rate which would cost us more to get to the station than the train trip to Vermont.

While we tried to solve this, the driver (straight from Dublin) called a friend of his who was not working that day and arrived in his own much larger car with trunk. The two of them asked how much money we had and decided that, if they went private, with the two cars they could drive us to Bennington. Having little choice, we agreed. It turned out to be great fun though it cost me all of my last week’s paycheck.

In the second half of our junior year, both Kay and I got involved with student government. She was on the Council, my part came when I was elected House Chairman of McCullough. The first memorable event of that spring was that the other students who had worked on the campus newspaper had not returned. I was the only member of the staff who came back to campus and therefore was the person who received 1) the key to a darkroom in the barn (which had somehow been acquired by the Bennington BiWeekly) and 2) the very large (six or seven hundred dollars) invoice which the BiWeekly had run up at the Hoosick Falls printer over previous semesters.

The Bugler

I was already a newspaper junky, from my two years as a Feature Editor in high school. No way was I going to refuse this opportunity, even though I had no equipment except my portable Royal typewriter. Also my middle-class anxiety was raised by the unpaid bill. I engaged two other products of high school journalism - a writer and a saleswoman. When I found an old copy of the BiWeekly which gave me information about inches and columns, I called Hoosick Falls and made a date with the printer.

I also had to borrow a car since I didn’t own one. Hoosick Falls turned out to be almost an hour away. The car I borrowed from another student was a 1937 Plymouth.

The BiWeekly, now renamed The Bugler, was more fun than I had had in months. After a helpful tutorial from the print shop manager, I wrote up our stories, did the layout, and presented this to the hot-type typesetter. With the printer’s help, I wrote headlines, pulling antique typeface from old drawers, letter by letter with tweezers, and ran off proofs for corrections. It took all day but by five o’clock I had two hundred copies of a four ((or in later issues, six) page newspaper. It was dinnertime when I got back to the campus. I skipped dinner ands set up a table in Commons and sold the papers for a quarter each. If no one seemed thrilled with my writing, the student body was pleased at the paper’s re-birth.

I put out five editions that spring, replete with fat ads from town merchants. After the fifth edition, I got word from the Administration to come in and talk to them. They were impressed by the Bugler, particularly the time it must have cost me to get it out, but they had decided I had to kill it, here and now, if I wanted to graduate the following year.

I didn’t argue with this. As much as I loved doing it, I knew The Bugler had cost me a great deal of time that hadn’t gone into my classes.

The college listed me on their roster as Editor of the Student Paper. Once that credit, appeared,, I began to receive each week a highly professional newspaper full of violence and fear “ The Southern School News. “

“ Brown vs. Board of Education” had gone to the U.S. Supreme Court the previous year and the decision was causing a many-year sensation. All the states now had to educate their African-American children equally as well as their white children. From shore to shore, the schools for African Americans were dilapidated, even dangerous, under-staffed with mostly poorly-trained teachers. It would all have to be changed. The Federal government was going to enforce this new law.

. Of course, the reverberations from the one-time Confederacy were titanic. This group of top editors, writers, and newspaper owners from the South had gotten together and agreed to create the SSN by setting out to record all the conflicts, riots, meetings and statements from politicians on how these States were carrying out this new law, or evading it. In doing this, they wrote up stories that often didn’t make it into their own newspapers, covering them honestly and clearly - the battles and the enforcement of the new directive.

Along the way, the SSN decided to send this incendiary publication to the college newspaper editors of - I don’t know how much of - the country. Since I got one, I have to think it went to the Ivy League, and maybe all the Northeastern colleges. What an opportunity they grabbed to change the point of view of the coming generation!

I got the SSN and read it, in quiet sunlit Vermont while my hair stood on end. I didn’t even tell Kay because I thought she would be frightened. I read it thoroughly every week. This was on top of her long talks to me on what it was like to lead an African American life in the U.S. I didn’t know it but I was becoming deeply committed to taking part. I devoured every issue as it came. I had enough background to acknowledge the reality of the South. I had gone to Kentucky every summer and seen the truth of how black people lived as a group apart, consistently maligned and suspected. I had seen the Black Drinking Fountains and Black Waiting Rooms in the tiny train stations of Kentucky, and heard my own aunts and uncles vibrate to while not expressing their fears. I had also heard the Northern side from Kay’s experiences in Pittsburg and Cleveland, and from the Quaker side of my family. I fully agreed with the necessity of the coming change. What I didn’t know at the time was how I was internalizing this conflict so that it would bring me into this struggle.

Two years later, I met a dedicated Socialist who was friends with several men who had started riding the Greyhound buses into the South to integrate it. When Les Rosenthal and I began discussing the Civil Rights struggle, we looked at each other and resolved to join it.

Senior Year

Much of Kay’s senior year was devoted to finding a graduate school that would take her and, more difficult, enough money live on while she was in school.

For her Senior Year FWT, Kay went to Washington DC for a room at International Students House and a job with the Navy in the Pentagon. This last was somewhat marred by the fact that the Navy never got her a typewriter to work on before the ten weeks of FWT was up.

For my last FWT, I went to work at an insurance company in White Plains, and got a room there because I was engaged to a man who lived there. I should have gone to New York City, because I broke the engagement two months before graduation. Kay and I marched in the graduation line together. We planned to meet in NYC sometime soon in the Fall.

GOING TO NEW YORK WAS NOT AS EASY AS I EXPECTED

My father refused to give me money to go to NYC to work. What was this?? He thought I should stay at home till I married. My parents were already picking out eligible men they thought I might marry. This was in 1956. I had thought I was going to be an independent person.

The way I changed the story was by going to my Aunt Blanche and borrowing enough from her to cover my trip to the Big Apple. I think it was only about $75. I found the apartment in Manhattan where my roommate from Ohio U was now living and where she had offered a brief spell on her couch. Anxious at the cost of being on my own, I found a job (with the help of Bennington) in five days.

This job was in the Marketing Division at Lever Bros., the large English firm which had only recently built a dramatic new building on Park Avenue. My job, nothing glamourous except the building, was to gather statistics on the sales of their critical food products: margarines and vegetable oil. {no computers then, I worked on a mechanical machine that went Clunk as it registered tens and again at hundreds). This paid $78 a week.

Lever Brothers had considered that, while they really wanted to hire a man for this job, they were having trouble finding one at that price, so decided to accept a woman. When in my interview, I accused the boss of the unfairness of this, he apologized for it, which of course did not change the salary. I ascertained the date when I would get my first pay check, and was ready to go back to my Aunt and negotiate a further loan. I found a one-room apartment plus kitchen and bath in the upper West Side, for only $90 a month. When the summer got very hot, the police came and turned the fire hydrant into a two story fountain for the kids.

I had no money for a TV, or a telephone or even a radio. In place of communication devices, what I did have was entertainment from former Bennington students already living in the City, and frequent visitors from the college. Kay had enrolled in Columbia Teacher’s College and moved to a rooming house there so we were only walking distance apart.

I was having almost half my pay used to buy Savings Bonds. The point of this was to go traveling as soon as I had some money saved up. I reached some reasonable amount in fourteen months and by then I was eager to take off. I quit my job, gave away or sold my furniture and asked my father to pick me up in New York so I could leave my possessions in Ohio.

The Grown Up Life

I returned to New York in about eight months after I left, married to Les Rosenthal, the socialist I had met in Puerto Vallarta, By this time, Kay was studying Testing, and working part time, but she was also engaged. Finding her engaged, I got to meet her wonderful choice, Archibald Murray, smart, charming, an attorney and already on his way up.

While Les and I experimented with how we might get involved in the Civil Rights Movement, I worked several short-term jobs including at TIME Inc. as a researcher.

These interesting jobs had to be temporarily put away, because our first baby, Joshua, was born in Jan. 1959. The next summer, we delivered a VW Bug to Los Angeles by driving it there, which got us the trip out there and allowed us to show off Josh to both the Peters and the Rosenthal clans.

While we were in L.A, we also dropped in on Les’s high school buddies. That got us involved in the NAACP March at the 1960 Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. I was cheered by this opportunity. Josh stayed with his grandparents and we were being lined up for the march when I saw we were in the first row of marchers. I found this puzzling and still don’t know if this was accidental or deliberate. We also got good seats in the auditorium where all the candidates came to explain their program positions to the mostly black audience. Jack Kennedy showed up, after a long wait but with much fanfare. Johnson, who later turned out to become the most critical, did not appear. Perhaps afraid of being booed?

I thought that, because there was national coverage of the main event, I might see a photo of us in the march, but I never have, not even in later national coverage focused on it. As I was to find out later, there was, in those days, a general prohibition against photographs of African-Americans and any publicity about their events. It would be promoting their validity, the importance of their concerns and these were treated as if that was un-American. Not until the general interest was aroused by Martin Luther King, did the news media change.

Back in New York, Les decided to enroll in Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. What Drew did was get Les enthused about going to grad school, and that winter he applied to UCLA, where he had done most of his undergraduate work, and he was accepted.

In that July of 1962, Kay and Archie rented a car and drove out from Manhattan to visit us in Madison and see our baby, no. 2 , Julia; and say goodby to us on our last days before we moved to California.

The next four years, the years we were in Los Angeles, Kay and I had little contact except for phone calls and Christmas cards. Kay and Arch were in Albany while Arch was Governor Rockefeller’s liaison to the legislature. When they moved back to the City, Archie talked Kay into giving up on Testing, and everything else except going to law school. Since he was soon on the Board of Trustees at Columbia, his concept had great relevance and Kay agreed gratefully though she told me that she would be giving up all social life and anything other than her work with the Bennington Board for law school

I worked fulltime at UCLA in Graduate Admissions which meant leaving at 8 AM and getting back at a 6 PM. I was depressed at leaving my new baby with a neighbor, and overtired besides. It was a hard year. Julia was not well and not growing. I begged to quit my job and the Rosenthals agreed to; finance us through the year. After I quit, we got an apartment at the Public Housing Project in West LA.

What we had wanted all along had fallen into our laps. We had already begun to do some work with SCLC The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and with SNYCC - Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, but we soon had started much more. Mar Vista Gardens was an attractive development of two-story garden apartments. They encouraged graduate students, they liked to have them as leavening in their usual mix of one-third each white, black and Hispanic tenants. When summer came, Les started going door to door. He was great at this and we rapidly got acquainted with all 200 plus families.

We created a Tenant’s Association, and a weekly newspaper “The Eagle Post Dispatch”. The wonder of the printing device we got is that the ink and the paper could be created for pennies. We turned out approximately 250 two-sided copies of the Dispatch for less than a dollar. When we went door-knocking to raise money for other projects, people gave us quarters to reprint the Dispatch. With their quarters, we re-started a HeadStart classroom and made all the toys it needed. We bought old paint in bright colors and painted the old scuffed equipment in the play-yards. We started a babysitting co-op.

We went along with the residents on their conferences with the Housing Authority. We worked with the HA but also sometimes against it. We also went to the police to defend our tenants. We picketed the local market because they tried to sell half-spoiled produce to our tenants, also to get them to hire African American clerks.

These activities went on seven days a week. When Les was in school, I had to pop Julia in the stroller and handle things till he got back. After two years of this, we were exhausted. Les had finished his coursework for the doctorate and wanted some relief. He was offered a neighborhood organizing job in Oakland and decided to take a year out. We moved away, nervously leaving the Tenant’s Association for the tenants to manage.

In Oakland, Les started, a new neighborhood association in a large mixed neighborhood close to downtown. I went to work for the Poverty Program office, doing research on current projects. I helped an Oxford grad interview workers who had applied for jobs in the City of Oakland-organized Job Fair (which had very few jobs to offer to the many applicants.) Later I wrote How-To (Community Organization) programs – for the Boalt Hall Law School students to train neighborhood groups in such new proposals as How To Start a Community Policing Organization. With Les’s help, I wrote approximately ten of these pamphlets but never got to see one put in operation though the Boalt Hall Association commissioned a number of them.

We had thought that when we left New York we would not see Kay and Archie any more but what happened is that both Kay and Archie started working with the National Bar Assn. and came to San Francisco nearly every summer for their Annual Meeting. We had many happy reunions courtesy of the National Bar. During those years, Kay finished law school and began her long-time job as General Counsel for the New York City Juvenile Justice System where she served from 1979 until she retired in 2002. ** It was also during those years that she began to reap the many awards she received for advancing diversity in legal careers for women, and particularly for African American women. Archie became Executive Director of the Legal Aid Society, and later was the first African American President of the New York State Bar Association.

Oakland was a fractured community and while we were writing programs for Boalt Law School, we hit 1968, the year when riots or near riots began to threaten across the country and when Martin Luther King was murdered. It began to be time for white organizers to leave black organizations. The neighborhood group that Les had so brilliantly put together threw him out. There were two results from this. He developed asthma at this distress, and had to begin to free-lance.

I began working for the University of California at Berkeley, and started looking for a house cheap enough to buy. I taught summer Headstart in Watsonville and we found a summer house, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We were greatly relieved to move out of Oakland. Les found a teaching job at Santa Clara University, and an organizing job in Monterey County, starting a self-help housing group. In another two years, we divorced.

I have always been happy that I spent those years in community work. It opened me up to a better understanding of the world. I switched to public relations, using skills I had learned from organizing.

The 50th Reunion

Kay and I had agreed to go together to our Bennington 50th Reunion, when I was still in California. I had remarried and Will Schram, my second husband, died in 1987. The college was about to phase out 50th Reunions for individual classes but the Kay and I argued against that. Then “9-11” happened and Archie Murray died unexpectedly shortly after the attack. He had been going downhill but was not expected to die so soon. I flew into New York over the towers of the Trade Center still smoking. When we got together, we were too discouraged to do much talking. We were happy at leaving the city and going to Vermont, escaping to the campus.

A very somber time. We got the car out. We were better off when we got into the countryside. Finally, we got to campus. There was real solace in being at the campus where nothing terrible had happened in the longago past. At the last minute before we went to bed for the night, Joan Constantikes showed up and we were happy to see her. There were not a lot of classmates. Some familiar faces but most people were near to mute, avoiding talking about 9-11 as if that was possible. In the evening, we listened to our same chorus from 1956. It was good restorative to be on campus, a comfort to be surrounded and remembering a time which had been much kinder.

Traveling

Our friendship was renewed by the trip to Vermont. Kay proposed that we travel somewhere together. She had traveled a lot and had a good travel agent who knew how to find good trips. The first one we took together was on a small ship down the coast of Central America and through the Panama Canal. We were accompanied by Dolphins a lot of the way and stopped nearly every day to picnic with local monkeys, wade inland or take a speed boat. For the next ten-plus years, we took a fabulous trip at least once a year. We had wonderful times we hadn’t had time for when we were young.

We took a train across Canada, through the Rockies, and walked on the glacier. We went to the American castles of Newport and saw the Platinum Room. We went to Congress when it was in session, and heard a major debate. Because Kay was an attorney, I took her to the Marin County Civic Center to see the courthouse designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

We spent two weeks in Florence in great museums with lectures on the artists. After this were side trips to the Italian towns which took part in those great days. Topping that trip was one to England, Scotland and Wales where we went to the top of Edinburgh and to the top of the Castle, up several hundred more steps up with a long, steep descent. We walked part of the wall around York which had been originally built by the Romans, visited Bath and Wales, had two stays in London and a boat trip on the Thames. I wanted to sail on the Mediterranean but Kay had already done that. Instead we agreed on a trip to Istanbul and explored the Blue Mosque and incredible Hagia Sophia, for centuries the world’s largest building, followed by a boat trip on the Mediterranean along the coast where cities had been designed and built first by the Greeks and then by the Romans. Almost the last trip we took together was to Barbados where Kay and Arch had owned a house. She wanted to see the island one more time; we stayed at a beautiful beach hotel and saw the Caribbean’s only marsupial.

We last visited in New York in the spring of 2017 and saw more of the Metropolitan than we had the energy for. Kay died in January of 2018 after a wonderfully successful life.

Mary Lou Schram

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clintbeifong · 7 years

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Okay But What Can I Do?

Some thoughts on mobilizing for long-term resistance.

First of all, protesters, congressmen-callers, post-rebloggers, bullshit-flaggers, you are all amazing. We are amazing and we are strong, and we will not stop resisting until America is safe for everyone.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been wondering what part I can play. I’m not a teacher who can shape young minds; I’m not a lawyer or a doctor who can volunteer my services; I’m not a lawmaker who can take a stand, or a celebrity who can draw mass awareness. I can march, but what do I do when I get home? How do I resist when away from the action? When I’m not in a city? When I know countless injustices are around me but I can’t see them, so I can’t fight them?

The answer seems both obvious and intimidating: volunteer. Volunteer your time, your skills, your resources, to groups in your community who support what you believe in.

That sounds so easy and obvious, but if you’ll like me, maybe your experiences volunteering have mostly felt like you were in the way. Or maybe, also like me, you aren’t sure how to find a local cause to assist, or how your particular skill set might apply.

Or maybe you wish you could so something bigger. So do I. But what I can do right now is try to make my community safer and more supportive for targeted groups, to help the people and organizations already working to protect, and support, and bring justice to those who’ve been denied these things.

Well, here are some preliminary thoughts:

Environment:

Local conservation and/or research centers need plenty volunteers. If you like to talk, you might volunteer as a tour guide and tell visitors exactly why this work is important. Data is crucial and many of these efforts enlist volunteers to count wildlife, take water sample and so forth. Literally everywhere needs marketing, administration, and web design, so if any of these are in your skill set, there are organizations all around you that need your help.

Town meetings or equivalent. Attend and speak up for your environment. Become knowledge about relevant bills and measures.

Find our what projects your local conservation commission is engaged in and see if they need help. Outdoorsy types might help plant oysters, cut scrub to reduce the risk of forest fire, and so on.

Reduce/Reuse/Recycle. Find you what programs your town or city has. Donate reusable coffee cups to your office break room or your local school. Love kids? Love crafts? Kiddie crafts use all sorts recycled materials. Help a preschool, after school program, or scout troop collect and repurpose.

Farmers Markets. Attend a farmers market. Bring your friends. Support local, responsible farming.

Free Speech/Information:

Your local library. Shelf books, read to children, transport underprivileged families there and back, make buttons. Do you cosplay? Dress up as a character for the next event or children’s book release. Organize a book talk on a book that’s important to you. Do you make fan art or videos? Teach a workshop and help kids of all ages engage more with their fiction.

See if your local school has a student newspaper. If you can teach basic writing or journalism skills, layout design, or marketing, contact the advisor and offer to help. If your school doesn’t have a paper, consider starting one. Help kids learn early what responsible journalism looks like.

Same goes for creative writing clubs. Having a place to express yourself is crucial. Fiction teaches writer and readers alike to step inside others’ shoes and lets us see through their eyes. The only way we’ll ever truly unite our various concerns is if we learn to listen to one another. Fiction can help with that.

You local newspaper might be struggling. Subscribe, if you can afford it. Write Op-Ed pieces. Help your kids start a paper route.

Start a book club. Get your friends or fellow students hearing new voices. You don’t have to start with 1984 (Though you’re welcome to). Get people talking.

Student or local repertory theater groups need set designers and builders, lighting and sound technicians, musicians, costume designers, prop buyers and so on. It might not seem like a critical resistance job, but theater has always been subversive. One of those students might be the next Lin-Manuel Miranda. Someone in the audience of even the most minimalist production of, say, Rent might learn something critically important while viewing in the show.

Local museums need tour guides and docents. They need marketing and awareness, and they need attendence. If you’re passionate or knowledgeable about whatever area it is, see if you can help. Take your kids. Take your parents. Teach them about something they didn’t know before. Anything. History is important. It doesn’t have to be about the civil rights movement for it to matter. The more people know more history, the less it can be distorted or erased.

LGBT+:

You community might have a gay/straight alliance, LGBT+ shelter, or other outreach programs. See if they need advertising, fundraisers, administrations, cookies for a bake sale or lasagna for a community dinner.

See if your local school has an LGBT+ club or gay/straight alliance. Join it. Or start one. Listen to people, hear their experiences, share your own. Find out what the school’s anti-bullying program is, or their policy on gender-neutral bathrooms is. Speak to your school board about what needs to change.

Homelessness:

You local shelter might need clothing and food donations, rides for people experiencing homelessness, help with resumes, haircutting services, game or craft nights, or someone to play with homeless children and tell them that they matter.

Religious:

Find you what your church, synagogue, or mosque is doing, and volunteer to help. If you aren’t sure where your church stands, talk to your priest/pastor/minster/etc and express your concerns. Change are there are people there who want to help, and people who need help.

Women:

Have a tampon drive. Donate sanitary supplies to your local shelter. Offer transportation to and from Planned Parenthood.

Elders:

Check out your local nursing home or council on aging. Spend time, read stories, share music or movies. Bring scouts or student groups by to spend brighten days.

Kids:

Become a Big Brother/Big Sister

See if the local YMCA, youth center, 4H etc need anything.

Some disclaimers:

This is by no means a complete list.

See if your community has a website that organized volunteer opportunities.

I’m a middle class white person, and I’m thinking as such--as someone with the resources to help, but unsure how to begin.

A lot of these are asking for resources or skills you might not have. That’s okay. You you might not have the time or money or mental health etc to participate. That’s okay. You might not have these things services near you, and that’s okay. You might not feel safe or comfortable with some of these. That’s okay.

Do what you can within your comfort level, your available time, your skills, and your interests.

Some of these are about schools, if you’re not a teacher or student, you need to ask permission before you do anything.

The point is, I have a plan. I’m looking at my skills and what my community has and what it needs and for the first time since this shitstorm began, I have plan for exactly who I can help, and exactly how.

Oh, but one last thing. Find out what the places you want to help actually need. Remember, as good as this might make you feel, that isn’t the point, and it isn’t about you. If a group or organization says they don’t need your services, or they’d like you to do something different, be polite. Give your email and tell them not to hesitate if they ever do need the service you were offering. Ask if they know of any similar organizations that might need your skills.

And DON’T GIVE UP. Don’t get bored. Change your focus, change your schedule, sure, but don’t forget they you’re doing this. As long as you’re helping one person, you’re making a difference.

Feel free to add more ideas to the list:

#resist #he will not divide us #love trumps hate #volunteer #original post #sorry I didn't proofread

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jmariebe · 7 years

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Testimony, Log 4: Are you able or disabled to do the job and how do you know?

I’ve had PTSD, trichotillomania, general anxiety disorder and bipolar depression since I was seven years old. I know this now after years of therapy and prescribed medications through various psychiatrists, psychologists, cognitive behavioral therapists, and psychiatric nurses. I’ve been seeing medical professionals in these fields since I was 28 years old. I am currently 49 years old. So, I’ve spent over 20 years trying to get help for these medical illnesses. Along with these medical illnesses there are symptoms. This is how the medical community determines what kinds of mental health illnesses you have and how to treat them. My particular mental health issues are considered to be chronic. I will always have these illnesses. While my mental health issues are considered to be without cure, with ongoing treatment, they can be reduced in their severity and there is great hope that I can not only function in society, but thrive in a career. Since I didn’t realize what my illnesses were until I was 22 years of age, the symptoms from these co-morbid conditions have dominated my daily life and social interactions my entire life. The symptoms range in severity and there are many symptoms that can occur when you have these illnesses.

When I was seven years old, my second grade teacher noticed that I was pulling my hair out, going bald all over my head, and leaving the pulled strands of hair all over the floor around every desk I sat at. This prompted her to alert my mother. At the time (1975) trichotillomania (considered to be related to OCD) was not well known in society, so my mother did the best thing she could do and she took me to a dermatologist who prescribed me coal tar shampoo.

After beginning treatment with medical professionals at the age of 28, the link between childhood sexual, physical, and verbal abuse was made.

Trust issues play an important role in building relationships. Developing the ability to trust people again was and still is at the core of my treatment from the medical community. There were and are many other treatment options available based on ongoing research by medical professionals. As someone with multiple illnesses (PTSD being the dominant one), I keep up with ongoing research efforts based on the diagnoses I’ve been given because it helps me understand my illnesses and it helps me to manage the symptoms too; this is similar to a diabetic watching their diet or an allergy sufferer avoiding certain environments or products. But PTSD was not determined as the dominant illness until the last year. It was part of the co-morbid collection of illnesses, but not considered to be the illness causes the most debilitating health and social problems I was having. OCD and depression were the dominant illnesses determined by medical professionals on IUP’s campus and by external medical professionals up until 2007-2011 when Indiana Community Guidance Center began helping me. It was at this time that PTSD became the dominant illness affecting and effecting me.

In 2003, I went to IUP to study in the Composition and Rhetoric Department and had a crush on a professor there, Claude Mark Hurlbert. Despondent that he did not want to start a relationship with me, alone in Indiana, PA, and not having a strong network of social relationships to begin with, I fell into a major depressive episode and called a friend, Irene Pannetier, who also studied composition and rhetoric at IUP. She asked me why I was so upset (crying uncontrollably and talking of suicide). I told her the whole story and elaborated on my life extensively. Then, the first day of the school week after this incident I began getting medical help through IUP’s mental health services. They diagnosed me with OCD/Trichotillomania, generalized anxiety and depression and prescribed me Luvox after trying several other medications. All of these events in the Fall 2003 semester occurred before Irene and several other composition and rhetoric students decided to use a research taping device to tape conversations I had with Irene and spread the taped conversations throughout the English Dept.

Fast forward to 2006-2007, during the time I was seeing medical professionals at Indiana Community Guidance Center, it was determined that the behaviors witnessed by members of the English Dept. and my own details of what I was experiencing, led to a determination that the dominant illness at this time was PTSD with co-morbid OCD, generalized anxiety, and depression as present, but not dominant in terms of my symptoms.

I had a mental breakdown due to specific triggers. Triggers for PTSD sufferers are any social act (verbal, physical, visual, olfactory [sense of smell], etc.) that causes someone with PTSD to relive past traumatic events and begin acting and feeling and returning to those states of mind that were experienced when the initial traumas occurred. My particular triggers involved every form of trauma I experienced: a certain smile that was similar to a sexual predator’s own smile during the time I was sexually abused, someone grabbing me in a violent manner, enraged yelling and extreme acts of violence, insinuations about my sexuality, a certain look that is leering combined with the position someone has physically to your own and how they hover around you.

So, Indiana Community Guidance Center, like other medical professionals before them, including IUP’s Mental Health professionals, asked me for details about my life at the time when my mental health symptoms began (age 7, pulling my hair out). The details of my appointments with the medical professionals at Indiana Community Guidance Center were being given to IUP, notably IUP’s English Dept. in order to help me, and them, through the behaviors I was exhibiting and relieve faculty and students’ own feelings of discomfort about how I was acting. I was not informed that Indiana Community Guidance Center was working with IUP’s English Dept. by providing details of my medical diagnoses and therapy sessions. This would violate FERPA, HIPAA, and perhaps other laws and policies.

Instead of helping me, though, the details of my therapy sessions were used to further harass me. The weird smile became prevalent in IUP’s English Dept., then at other colleges where I taught. It was used when someone wanted to keep me in line, threaten me, taunt me for the sake of it. Loud noises were made around me if someone didn’t like something I said or did. Sexually suggestive language began to be used. Side glances, getting very close to me from behind. When I was upset that Lingyan Yang was coughing uncontrollably behind me at an IUP event on campus, coughing became another trigger because now not only was I experiencing trauma triggers from my life before IUP, but I was now also experiencing new trauma triggers from my experiences while studying at IUP. Any taped details that related to my traumatic experiences were then added to their repertoire of harassment and micro-aggression. So, one therapy session I had with Indiana Community Guidance Center, for example, involved breast size discussions in my family growing up. Breast size became a topic of conversation on campuses. Staring at people’s body parts, including women’s breasts, people’s behinds, people’s faces, staring into space, became like memes. I was aware of all of this now being placed on social media. I was aware of the “allergens” and “snow” expanding from IUP to other campuses, to outside academia, to local people’s awareness, to regional, national, and finally to international awareness and surveillance.

At the Sheraton Inn while at an conference in Vancouver, Canada, I was in a colleague’s hotel room and we were discussing an event featuring Gayatri Spivak among other noted scholars. My colleague opened up about the harassment she was experiencing on her own campus. People insinuated she was a lesbian too, she said because she was never married and single and she felt they didn’t understand her or her culture (she is an immigrant from India). I replied that they were using it (calling her a lesbian) as a method of attacking her and not because they understood what it meant to be a lesbian. Our conversation also included a discussion of a man I met at the conference that seemed to be interested in having dinner with me. This led to a discussion of Jeffrey Williams, who I liked at the time. The specific words used in my conversation, the themes I explored, and previous texts from conversations were then discussed by people I worked with and I noticed them appearing on T.V.

No one would tell me that I was being taped. When I discussed the idea that I was being taped, it was suggested that I make an appointment with my psychiatrist/therapist. When I told my psychiatrist about all of the textual and behavioral connections I was making, they increased my medication dosage, added some new ones at times, and focused their attention on my paranoia. But this only made me more paranoid and at the same time increasingly aware that I was being taped and the contents of the taped recordings were being used to defend their actions, which by now they realized would surely lead to a lawsuit. My ability to think clearly and perform my duties as a teacher and scholar decreased as the years went on.

When I informed IUP’s campus police that Mahmoud Amer was stalking me, there was no effort to at least inform me that they investigated the situation and a report was filed (Clery Act). IUP also did not inform me that Mahmoud Amer used my laptop’s webcam to film me in my apartment. The only clue I had about Mr. Amer’s act was from IUP’s website homepage the next day: there was a photo of Gian Pagnucci taken in his office with his computer on and the webcam lit up. Gian had a really wide smile on his face. It was then I realized that whatever I was doing in front of my laptop was being filmed.

From 2004 to 2017, it became increasingly more difficult to interact with students, develop lesson plans, remember words, ideas, definitions, what I was going to say next, organize my thoughts, organize my writing, make connections and function cognitively while outside of work. My social interactions and health status did not improve when IUP decided to have Indiana Community Guidance Center provide them with details of my therapy sessions. In fact, my mental state and social interactions became much worse. The medicines I was being put on were causing me to lose more sleep, gain a tremendous amount of weight, and some of the side effects were similar to the symptoms of the illnesses they were treating!

Enter 2013. I graduated from IUP with my Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism. I moved back to NJ after I realized that I wasn’t going to find full time, tenure-track, or post doc appointments in Pennsylvania. While in NJ I applied for several different positions at various colleges. My situation became even worse, but because I returned home I at least had the comfort of people and surroundings that were foundational to my identity, the parts of my identity that I have always relied on to help me through my life.

With the same strategy they used via illegal surveillance, IUP’s faculty, students, alumni, and staff attacked my teaching and research based on what they knew were my own abilities: discourse analysis. Since I was intensely hypervigilant for years, coupled with the knowledge that I was being taped, my regular self-consciousness became completely debilitating. And, whatever I did in this “reality” show, was used to argue that I could be hired or should not be hired by the educational institutions I applied to. It seemed/seems like everyone knows everything about me and can use this information to get me hired, fired, in love, out of love, friended/unfriended, housed/unhoused, silenced, killed, hospitalized, and made more ill than ever if they wanted to do so.

See all of my previous posts regarding this trial for connections to this testimony.

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brigdh · 7 years

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Reading Wednesday

The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island by Mac Griswold. A fascinating piece of microhistory focused on a single family farm in Eastern Long Island. The Sylvester Manor, as it's now called, was first settled by an English-Dutch family in 1652, and the current house dates to the 1730s. And yet was still being lived in as a normal family home! Griswold, the author, literally stumbled over the house while rowing around Long Island and made friends with the current owners, eventually even convincing them to allow multiple seasons of archaeological excavation in their front yard. The book is based on those excavations, as well as historical research, family legends, and Griswold's own speciality as a landscape historian (she was particularly interested in how the various trees and shrubs came to the plantation). Although there's three centuries of history to cover, the focus is very much on the first generation of the family, with everyone later than 1801 getting short shrift. Which was fine by me, since that's the period I was most interested in. Griswold makes a valiant effort to put the focus on the enslaved Africans and Native Americans of the plantation, but inevitably there's simply many more documents and details available about the white masters. I think she does a good job with what she has to work with, and does produce some fascinating finds, but it's just not much in comparison to the European history. As is, sadly, so often the case. Sylvester Manor was a northern provisioning plantation, which means that it grew the food, bred the horses, and crafted the barrels necessary for the running of their partnered sugar plantation down on Barbados. The history of Northern slavery has been mostly forgotten (or erased, depending on your perspective), and this book does an excellent job of demonstrating how closely tied together North and South were economically, rather than the antagonist perspective you get from many simplistic histories of the Civil War. A good book, though I'm still searching for my one ideal history of NYC slavery. (For a comparison, if you want to read just one book about slavery in the NYC area, I'd highly recommend this one over last week's New York Burning.) The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World by Abigail Tucker. Despite loving my two cats very much, and enjoying watching YouTube cat videos as much as any person on the internet, I am not actually one to read many books about cats. Everything from cozy cat mysteries to true-life inspirational cats turns me off. In fact, a cat on the cover is more likely to make me turn a book down than to pick it up. (I might make an exception for I Could Pee on This, and Other Poems by Cats.) And yet here I am, reading a book about cats! The Lion in the Living Room is a pop-science book (very much in the style of Mary Roach or Sarah Vowell) about the history of cats. Her main topic is how they became domesticated – or if they even are domesticated – looking at the archaeology, biology, and history of humans' relationship with cats. She also covers topics from how good cats actually are at controlling rats and mice (spoiler: not very), Victorian cat shows, newly developed breeds, the impact of cats on the environment, the rise of the NTR (Neuter-Trap-Release) approach to controlling street cat populations, the history of the LolCat meme, toxoplasmosis (the parasite in cat's urine that might attract sufferers to cats), Egyptian religion, and interviews internet star Lil Bub. There's a ton of fun and fascinating facts sprinkled throughout the book. I particularly liked it for its straightforward scientific approach to cats, without much fluffiness, which unfortunately seems to be causing many negative reviews (I guess if being told that housecats are massively contributing to the extinction of birds and small mammals hurts your feelings, this may not be the book for you. Though I don't know how any reasonably well-informed adult doesn't already know that). Highly recommended for a breezy look at the history and science of cats. The Resurrectionist by Matthew Guinn. A novel I'd been stumbling across in different bookstores for the last several months, always being intrigued by the cover but never quite enough to buy it. And then I found it for $2 in a second-hand store and finally brought it home. Well, I'm glad I only paid $2. In 1999, Jacob Thacker is a doctor with the South Carolina Medical College, currently stuck on administrative duty as he recovers from a Xanax addiction. This past makes it easy for the Dean to blackmail him when a construction team uncovers dozens of human skeletons in the college's basement. Jacob is ordered to cover it up without the press finding out, even if that means reburying the bodies somewhere secret. In alternating chapters the book jumps back to the 1850s and 60s to tell the story of Nemo Johnston, first enslaved and then free, who is also employed by the South Carolina Medical College. The school's very first Dean used Nemo as 'resurrectionist', a grave robber with the task of procuring dead bodies, mostly of other black men and women, for the school's students to practice on. Nemo is, of course, the source of the skeletons Jacob is being forced to deal with. Jacob is kind of a terrible human being. He refers to his partner as a "woman in a man's world" because she's a lawyer; describes an ethnically Japanese coworker in this way: "Janice is as American as he is, but he can never help feeling that there is some reserve of samurai in her, some native allegiance passed down in the genes, that views him as the foreigner every time they meet"; and, when he first learns about the existence of Nemo, calls him "the poor, dumb bastard". It was around that last line when I decided that the author was deliberately writing Jacob as a dick, and perhaps that is the case since Jacob's entire plotline revolves around gaining enough courage and empathy to not accede to the cover-up. But since it takes being fired, blackballed, and rescued from his ensuing suicidal despair to consider that, hey, maybe the current African-American community has a right to their ancestors' remains!, I think the author drastically underestimated how incredibly horrible Jacob comes off as. Even if that wasn't the case, Nemo's story is simply vastly more interesting than Jacob's. Unfortunately he gets much less page time and not really a plot arc so much as a series of random vignettes at different times of his life. At one point he gets elevated to the role of teacher – a black professor of a medical college! in the South! before the Civil War! – but how this came about or his feelings regarding it are never explained. And some of what little page time he gets is taken up by the story of white nurse Sara Thacker, who (spoiler, I suppose, but it's super obvious from page one) turns out to be Jacob's great-great-grandmother. I think Guinn was trying to do something about class or women's rights with this idea, but the plotline honestly is so thin that it feels like a last-minute addition which never got fleshed out enough to be worthwhile. At least Nemo doesn't turn out to be Jacob's great-great-grandfather, because I honestly spent at least fifty pages terrified that a tragic mulatto novel had somehow been published in 2014. Overall: interesting premise, terrible execution.

(LJ post for easier comments | DW, ditto)

#books #book reviews #mac griswold #abigail tucker #matthew guinn #cats #history

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rutgerssocialworkabroadmexico · 7 years

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Day 2 - Merida

I started the morning with another breakfast at the hotel with the other girls from the program. If you really enjoy dinner foods, you would love breakfast in Mexico. About 90% of the breakfast foods at the hotel buffet would be considered dinner entrees and sides at home, from pork and other meats to mashed potatoes and chocolate cake. But who doesn’t want to have chocolate cake for breakfast? There are some breakfast foods available like pastries, fresh fruit, small pancakes and cereal. We all departed around 8:30am to go to la Universidad Autonomy de Yucatan (UADY), specifically their school of nursing and their school of social work. We began our visit with introductions to the faculty of the school and they gave us a tour of the facility. We first saw the office of psychology where students are able to get mental health services or talk to a professional psychologist about any problems they are having. The office was very small and the social work office was located in the same vicinity. We then went over and toured the nursing school building. Before we entered the building, I spotted my first cat of the trip! I was so excited to finally be in the presence of a feline since I miss my cat from home so much. We have seen dozens of stray dogs since we arrived, but no cats before today. As a public health major, the nursing school facility was by far my favorite part of the tour. We got to see where the nursing students practice all sorts of procedures. They had practice models and mannequins for everything you could possibly imagine: the birthing process, breast cancer examinations, breast feeding, CPR, intubation, sutures and more. They even had the exact same mannequins that I use at my lifeguarding job to practice CPR! The program director was telling us that breast cancer is the second highest cause of death for women in Mexico and it is largely due to the stigma surrounding breast examinations and screenings, and the reluctance of the Mexican women to have their breasts physically examined. As a public health student, I’m very conscientious of preventive health measures, so I hope I can learn more about this matter on my trip. The facility also had several educational posters and bulletin boards about health promotion. We then ventured across the street to la biblioteca that the nursing school, medical school, social work school and health science students all share. It was a beautiful facility and it even featured a christmas tree made entirely of books. I could totally see my friend Erika recreating this christmas tree at home with her own personal library. After visiting the library, we went back to the classroom we started in and learned all about the social work program here at UADY. University in Mexico differs dramatically from that of the United States. To start with, social work here in the Yucatan is extremely community-based, as opposed to individual-based like it is in the United States. The classes here are also much, much smaller than we are used to at Rutgers with around 25 students per grade. The social work program here at UADY was accredited in 2014 with its first generation of students. The program also has their own objective which is essentially the same as the code of ethics back at home. We also learned about the social work program’s educational model for integration and its components; social responsibility, innovation, flexibility, education based on competency, internationalization and education based on practice. These principles apply to all majors here at the university and each principle has its own requirements. Similar to Rutgers, the professors here are more of facilitators than teachers and focus more on helping students learn on their own. The program here parallels a liberal arts education, in that you have certain requirements to fulfill that are not directly a part of your major or focus. There is also an English language requirement here and students take English classes in the mornings for two hours twice a week. The program directors explained the curriculum of the social work program at UADY to us and there were many similarities and differences between the UADY curriculum and Rutgers curriculum. Like in the United States, completion of 8 semesters are required to earn a bachelor’s degree and you can complete a master’s in an additional 4 semesters. They also have a mix of different ways to earn credits both inside and outside of the classroom like Rutgers does. Their typical class day consists of 3 classes between 2pm and 9pm, with each class lasting 2-2 1/2 hours, with one half hour break in between 2 of the classes. However, their course load is much heavier than we are used to, as they take 7 different classes a semester. They are required to take between 32 and 43 credits per semester, but their classes are worth more credits than our courses at Rutgers. The credits range from 4 to 8 credits per class and they must complete 320 credits to graduate. The main difference between the UADY program and universities in the U.S. is the price. Eight semesters of tuition at Rutgers totals around $120,000, while eight semesters of nursing school at UADY totals $160. As a college student currently going broke due to rising costs of education, this astounded me. However, the program is more competitive at UADY than large public institutions in the U.S., since UADY only accepts a small number of students. Next, we learned about the program’s field work component. The field work begins in the third semester and the students must first pass a class on theory and methodology of social work before getting field work placement. There are four different areas of fieldwork they can be placed in; community, education, health, or justice. The field work locations the students are placed in are also sites we will be visiting over the next two weeks. There is also a mandatory social service component to the UADY social work program and all university and technical students across Mexico. The university and technical school students are required to do 6 months of social service (480 hours) after the completion of six semesters and after their field work is complete. They participate in social service between 8am and noon, and then attend class from 2pm to 9pm. I don’t think I would be able to be up and running around for 13 hours straight. The last part of the curriculum is the professional integrative practice, which occurs during the 8th and final semester. This component is a four credit course with 160 hours of work, and requires the students to turn a social work theme into a research project. That concluded our first visit to UADY and we all headed back to our hotel for some free time. My roommate Liesa and I headed out to the pool and enjoyed the sun, cool water and poolside margaritas. It was quite a relaxing afternoon. Liesa, Molly, Sarah, Chrissto, Cassandra, Jeny and I went to an amazing pizza place half a block from our hotel for dinner, and since the meal was so affordable, we spent the following half hour grabbing a drink at the bar across the street. We met up with the rest of the group and spent the rest of the night out in Merida walking around, shopping and taking pictures. It was a perfect ending to a perfect day!

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maxwellyjordan · 4 years

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Symposium: Religions’ wins are losses

This is the first entry in a SCOTUSblog symposium on the Roberts court and the religion clauses.

Leslie C. Griffin is the William S. Boyd professor of law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She is the author of Law and Religion: Cases and Materials. She wrote amicus briefs in support of the respondents in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania and Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, and she is writing an amicus brief in support of the respondent in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia.

The First Amendment has two religion clauses: establishment and free exercise. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Religion won several cases during the Supreme Court’s 2019-20 term, and it could win more in the upcoming term.

That sounds like a great idea. But it is not.

Religion’s victories are bad for civil rights, especially for rights of women, LGBTQ individuals and people of color. As religion’s influence increases at the court, victories for civil rights decrease. The court’s recent cases confirm that some religious exemptions are incompatible with civil rights. Things could get even worse this coming term for civil rights, as religions appear to repeatedly trump civil rights — even those of religious people.

Public funding

In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, Chief Justice John Roberts changed the traditional establishment clause rule that government should not fund religion. He wrote that, once a state decides to subsidize private education, “it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.” Espinoza was a 5-4 decision, with Roberts joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Although Roberts did some damage to past establishment clause interpretations, Thomas and Gorsuch would end them completely, saying in a concurrence that the clause does not block the states’ choices about religion at all. With three more votes, your state could choose whatever religion it wants.

Why would anyone object to this? Because the majority lost the traditional ideal, defended by the dissenters and James Madison, that people should not be required to pay taxes to support other religions. In Espinoza, an amicus brief by rabbis supported Montana, explaining that “[a]ll religious schools in Montana are affiliated with Christian denominations,” and that invalidating Montana’s no-aid rule would fund schools that “incorporate in their teaching materials that are antithetical to Jewish beliefs and values.” Other Christians also briefed in favor of Montana. Nonetheless, Jews, other Christians and minority religions are now expected to pay for programs that teach religious ideals with which they disagree. They are especially worried that their tax dollars will now pay for schools that do not protect LGBTQ rights.

LGBTQ rights

LGBTQ rights will be before the court this coming term, in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. Philadelphia runs an adoption program, and it noticed that some of its religious participants would not allow same-sex couples to adopt children. This violated Philadelphia’s nondiscrimination rules, and the city therefore ended its contract with the offending agencies. One of the agencies, Catholic Social Services, sued, arguing that it has a free exercise right to do business with the city while continuing to discriminate against same-sex couples, whose marriage rights are protected by the Constitution of the United States. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit sided with Philadelphia, and the Supreme Court granted cert.

A win for the Catholic agency would be a terrible statement that the free exercise clause promotes the avoidance of the civil rights of LGBTQ Americans. Two of the court’s cases this past term demonstrated that the court also values religion over women’s rights.

Reproductive rights

In 2014, in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, another 5-4 decision, the court ruled that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act entitled closely held corporations to be exempt from a federal regulation requiring employers to cover certain contraceptives for their female employees. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent argued — correctly — that under the free exercise clause, everyone is supposed to obey the law, and that RFRA’s protection for religious freedom is not supposed to harm third parties, as it did in this case by limiting thousands of women’s contraceptive insurance.

The Trump administration expanded the exemption to include more religious and moral objections to contraception, and it also eliminated employers’ obligation to inform anyone of their decision to opt out of the mandate. This summer, the court, by a 7-2 vote in Little Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, upheld the new rules, which gave bigger exemptions to more employers and much less coverage to women. Ginsburg wrote another dissent, explaining that “[t]oday, for the first time, the Court casts totally aside countervailing rights and interests in its zeal to secure religious rights to the nth degree.”

Ginsburg has always promoted women’s rights. She and Justice Sonia Sotomayor alone understood how the expansion of religious rights hurts women by restricting their reproductive freedom. As legal scholar Maya Manian wrote last month, “Regulations restricting access to contraception and abortion disproportionately harm poor people and people of color.” Religious freedom often hurts civil rights.

Expansion of RFRA

Notice that Burwell and Little Sisters were decided under a statute, RFRA, that gives religious plaintiffs the right to sue the government for substantially burdening their religion — not under the free exercise clause, which requires everyone to obey the law. This fall, the court will hear another RFRA case, Tanzin v. Tanvir. Muhammad Tanvir, the plaintiff, was approached by FBI agents who asked him whether he could tell them anything about the Muslim community. When he said no, they put him on the national “No Fly List” and threatened deportation. Unable to keep his job as a trucker or to fly back to Pakistan to see his mother, Tanvir sued the FBI for monetary damages under RFRA. The court will decide if such damages are available.

What will happen if the court expands RFRA in this case? Civil rights would suffer more, enhancing people’s ability to say that requiring them to obey the antidiscrimination laws would violate their religious liberty. A smart amicus brief for neither side in the case makes the essential point that RFRA is unconstitutional. “RFRA’s invalidation of constitutional laws to the benefit solely of religious actors is a patent preference for believers, which violates long-settled and critically important principles under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause,” the brief says. The worry is that the Supreme Court no longer recognizes the establishment clause and will give RFRA the victory instead of the establishment clause and civil rights.

Women lose to religion again

Another area of religious rights that the Supreme Court is expanding is the so-called “ministerial exception” doctrine, which itself is a court-made rule. In 1972, Billie McClure, a female ordained minister in the Salvation Army, sued her employer, arguing that she had received less pay and benefits than the male ministers. Even though Title VII of the Civil Rights Act does not contain a religious exemption for gender discrimination, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit dismissed the case, saying courts cannot interfere with employment decisions involving employees who qualify as “ministers.” Courts around the country have recognized this “ministerial exception,” which is an affirmative defense to any discrimination case, including race, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability and so forth. I think those cases could be decided on the facts, in the courts, with juries and judges deciding. Sometimes the plaintiffs would win, and sometimes they would lose. Instead, in the courts’ thinking, if your employer can label you a minister, you automatically lose.

The Supreme Court in 2012 unanimously approved the ministerial exception, in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC, saying it did not even matter if the employer had promised to obey the antidiscrimination laws yet disobeyed them. This past term, in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, the court extended the exception to apply to one Catholic teacher and one maybe-Catholic-but-probably-not teacher at Catholic elementary schools. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had correctly recognized these women as teachers, not ministers. As teachers, their lawsuits for disability-based discrimination and age discrimination could proceed. The Supreme Court reversed and decided they were ministers, even though neither had been ordained and neither had ever had any indication or personal belief she was a minister. Only Sotomayor, joined by Ginsburg, recognized that the court had just robbed “hundreds of thousands of employees” of any right to sue their employers for any violation of the antidiscrimination laws.

Religious schools are not subject to the antidiscrimination laws as long as they can call an employee a minister. Alito’s opinion for the court made it even easier for employers to win. Even women who cannot be ordained priests and were never called ministers become ministers the minute they get into court. As Sotomayor’s dissent pointed out, the ministerial exception now seems to apply to many more people than thousands of schoolteachers, including “countless coaches, camp counselors, nurses, social-service workers, in-house lawyers, media-relations personnel, and many others who work for religious institutions.”

Where we stand today

In one term, the court limited contraceptives access, expanded the number of school employees who could be called ministers and said those schools were entitled to government funding. Religious organizations now have broad exemptions from the country’s antidiscrimination laws, can refuse contraceptive insurance coverage as they choose and are entitled to government funding while they disobey the laws.

Those cases are victories for some religions. But they are losses for everyone else, including many of the members of those religious institutions.

The post Symposium: Religions’ wins are losses appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/08/symposium-religions-wins-are-losses/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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dariamalek · 4 years

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What It Was Like Growing Up With Immigrant Parents

[DISCLAIMER: Grab a snack, it’s a long one!]

It’s no secret that I am the first generation Canadian in my family.

I’ve spoken about the effects that it had on me growing up; living in a different home, growing up in a different culture. However, I’ve never spoken about the reason why everything was different for me and it was because my parents were the first people from their families to immigrate to Canada and reside here in Toronto.

I was born to two Iranians in 1997 in Downtown, Toronto to a Biochemistry graduate for a mother and an Engineering PhD as a father. My mother couldn’t fully speak English and my father was doing his best to support the three of us in a small apartment.

Both my parents were headstrong, smart and driven. It was difficult for them coming to a new country, learning a new language and having to get up on their feet so quickly just like any other immigrant. I may mention it is a tad easier for immigrants now in a Western dominant society however, in 1994, it was a little more difficult.

My father immediately started working as a courier and a pizza delivery man. He learnt English through his work and was doing everything to give my mother and him a roof above their head as my mom studied hard in adult high school to continue on and get her nursing degree.

Up until I started kindergarten, it was pretty easy for me living in a house with my parents. I was speaking fluent Farsi, as it was the first language I spoke. I didn’t start speaking English until I was four, ironic now since I’m an English Literature masters and writer. I got very used to a different outlook on life. I went in to kindergarten with a very cultural view on relationships. My best friends were also first generation Canadians which made it easy for me to connect with them. We were both learning something new. Nothing really made a difference then until I started getting older.

Iranian traditions are very different. For one thing, we were Muslim. I was in kindergarten when the 9/11 attacks occurred. I know you’re probably thinking: “what does this have to do with anything?” Others began to have a different outlook on the Middle East, and I was one of the very few children in my elementary school who was Middle Eastern. By the time I was maybe in fourth grade, the bullying began, mainly related to the terrorist attacks that occurred a few years prior.

As years passed, and middle school fast approaching, teens started dating and having sex and “hooking up,” which in our culture, was quite frowned upon. Casual sex and whatnot were just a “natural occurrence” at that stage. In the Iranian culture, it’s tradition to wait until you are married to have sexual relations, as it might be the same for other cultures, but my family almost completely eliminated the idea of sex when I started middle school, almost making me fear it. Thus, continuing the great “prude” and “pussy” bullying stage.

I got a lot of heat for having different opinions on certain subjects that were completely different than the Westernized view but, it wasn’t my fault. I was born into it. However, this sparked a fire deep inside me that made me hate my culture. I hated my religion and my culture. I hated the fact that I wasn’t “Canadian” enough. Even though I spoke perfect English perfectly and dressed like them and acted like them, I was still as different as they come. It was strange for the other kids too, considering the other few Middle Eastern kids in my middle/high school were completely white washed.

So this is what I did: I took on a new persona. I Westernized my name, my look (the emo stage was born here) and I completely transformed myself into something that none of those kids could complain about because there was no such thing (at the time) as a “punk Middle Eastern kid.”

This worked. They thought I was Western enough for them now. However, I began having problems at home. I kept fighting with my parents over the fact that they’re not Canadian enough, or white enough.

“Why can’t you be more white?! You’re embarrassing me!”

However, I was completely ignoring the fact that they’re not originally Canadian. They weren’t raised into this Western ideology that we all follow. Their parents followed a completely different mindset that was the norm in their country and now, in Canada, a country full of immigrants from different cultures, it’s suddenly not normal? It was already so difficult for them. If I didn’t feel like I didn’t fit in, I couldn’t imagine how they felt. But I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I was being selfish and wanting to remove anything about me that differentiated me from everyone else and it sucks that it had to be my culture.

It was after high school where I was accepted to university and the first thing I noticed was some of the courses that were available: Italian Literature, Iranian Film; heck, there was even a whole field for Communication and Culture. It made me realize that every single one of these cultures has something to offer to an intellectual mind. I’ve taken courses about Italian Literature, Indian dance and African music. I’ve learnt so much about jazz and the African American literary tradition. I finally realized that maybe I could learn something from my Iranian ideology about myself and my family. I began to form a stronger connection with my parents. Asking them what it was like for them, what’s the same, what’s different, the struggles they face.

All those times I rebelled against them brought me to where I was today. They had the highest expectations of me. I kept being told do “do what makes me happy” in the future but my parents wanted multiple degrees from me, pressured me into back up plans and PhD’s. I was frustrated and eventually said: “screw this, I’m going to be a musician.” Now, looking back, I realize they were teaching me stability. They came to this country where they didn’t have their family here, and they still don’t. They didn’t have someone else to lean on financially and emotionally. They were pressuring me because they wanted me to have a back up plan to fall back on to in case one thing doesn’t work out. They never wanted me to be out of a job or struggle financially. And now I realize that if I wasn’t pushed and overwhelmed I would not be sitting here with a successful, yet aspiring, writing career getting my Master’s degree at a university and so happy about my future within this career. They didn’t have a chance to do what they wanted or dreamed because they based their careers on the money to provide for their child.

Jumping back to my elementary years, I watched my family move multiple times, starting in the fourth grade and this was because my father ambitiously began to work on his passions and start his own business. He had a passion for cars and wanted to start a luxury car business. Sure he had to start slowly and put a lot of time and energy down, and I didn’t get to see much of him, but he slowly grew his company bigger and bigger and eventually we moved out of that old apartment to our first big house.

My mother found her true passion in teaching after volunteering in my school because she didn’t want to put me in daycare and couldn’t stand to be alone at home without me. I watched her work her way up from a volunteer, a lunch supervisor and eventually she became a teacher for students with autism. I watch her do so much for these kids and defend them against everyone who try to take away their resources.

And how my parents managed to do this was because of the effect their culture had.

My mother taught me the value of family. She didn’t want to put me in daycare so she put aside her job, bought her own clothes from a thrift store, had to buy our groceries with coupons only to buy my clothes from the high end baby stores and to stay at home and raise me. She stayed up until hours in the morning putting together the most perfect lunches for me and my dad. And I still probably came home, complaining about what other children had, not knowing what my mom was sacrificing to give me what I had and that taught me priorities. In Iran, “daycare” wasn’t a thing back then. Most women were housewives. However, my mom had the chance to go work and be the independent woman she dreamed to be but she chose her family over her dreams of being a nurse because I was her priority.

My father taught me to be strong and never take [crap] from anyone. In the Iranian culture, the man if the man couldn’t bring in the money, he wasn’t a “man.” Iranian dads were known for being cold, giving all child-like priorities to the wife. There was no “gender equality.” But in the case of my father, who regardless of how late, used to kiss me before bed every night, he was making sure that I wasn’t less than any of the other children. My father taught me that if you can’t do something, you better work your butt off to do it anyways. He made sure to teach me that you should never allow people the slightest bit people put labels on you. He taught me the strength of a man, and sometimes, it’s okay to be cold but you need to know when and to who. He taught me truly how hard it is to work like I man (in that day and age) and he taught me that women can and should work as hard - success doesn’t have a gender. He showed me that, if you work hard enough, you can transform anything to something you love. And that is the most important thing.

Now, it’s not like my parents just rejected the Western culture. They embraced that too. In Iranian society, there are only a selection of certain successful professions (and it may apply to some of you as well) which are: lawyer, doctor, dentist, chemist, etc. You get the gist. But my parents realized that they were living in a society of opportunities for every passion. They encouraged me to research them and to be educated, as well as educate them, and help them. Unlike further Iranian societal tradition, where the parents always know more than the kids, they never doubted my knowledge. They learnt from me, just as I learnt from them. They taught me equality in the family. And let’s be real, I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for the frustration and different views. I found myself and my passion within all that.

They gave me insight to a whole new culture and country, a country I found myself writing a successful novel about today. They gave me inspiration and an insight to who I am. Because let’s face it, your citizenship does not define your roots. Just because you were born in Canada or get your Canadian citizenship (or any other country) doesn’t mean that you are “suddenly Canadian.” You have a whole culture behind all that. Modernization is great for certain things, like the economy (which even that is questionable) however, if you want to understand who you really are, it goes much deeper than your citizenship status.

I must say, that I am so proud of my parents. For someone who’s born and raised in Canada, there are so many hardships that I have faced that would have been twice as hard for my parents who were immigrants. They learnt a new language, adapted to new laws and societal views and became two very successful individuals living very comfortably in a country that isn’t theirs, all while not forgetting their roots and their culture and embracing it. They taught me the beauty of different parts of the world and taught me to respect each and every one of them. They taught me that there are good and bad people from every culture, but that one person does not define that country and/or region. And I can say that I am just as proud of any other immigrants out there in any country. Your culture, not only brings so much to you, but to the country you’re living in. Canada wouldn’t be the same without all the different cultures. We wouldn’t have the Taste of Danforth, Salsa on St. Clair or Caribana. Even educating and embracing the culture of the Aboriginal culture can help you understand the birth of the country you are living in. I am proud of you, and you must be proud of yourself.

My parents, and all the other immigrated cultures, have taught me a totally new level of self confidence and self realization. They taught me that you must embrace a deeper version of yourself in order to be completely comfortable with yourself. You can use your culture to connect with others, to help others - which is as easy as helping an individual at the airport who doesn’t speak English, but speaks the same language as you. It can help you understand your family and your upbringing rather than question why your parents dress or act a certain way, or have certain sensitivities.

Stop romanticizing being “white washed.” We are basically saying that people who aren’t “white washed” aren’t accepted; they’re different and not the norm. Put aside this ridiculous behaviour and act like yourselves! Being “white washed” doesn’t make you cool or modern. Think about how offensive it can be to someone who is pure Canadian, who’s family have extended generationally in this country and within its culture. You’re using their culture, adapting it as your own, when it may not be. It’s wonderful to educate eachother on different cultures and embrace them and love them but, that doesn’t mean forgetting your own or using someone else’s culture to benefit your spot in society. There is nothing wrong with where you come from and it’s offensive to your parents who worked really damn hard to bring you here [from some countries] for a better life.

Yes, times have changed. It’s almost 2020. It sounds a little old fashioned, for lack of a better word, to think that one specific way of life is the norm. If we are aiming for modernization, and being smart about it in terms of society, then we need to realize that there is no longer a “norm.” Whether it’s culture, sexuality, gender, language, physicality - we are all the norm. We are all equal.

Think about it this way, a soup without the different ingredients is just water. And that’s just not as good.

With love,

daria xx

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chestnutpost · 5 years

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Here’s What Female Politicians Are Doing To Fix Child Care

This post was originally published on this site

What Women Want Now is a program by HuffPost and sister sites dedicated to creating content about the issues and stories that matter most to women. Read more here. Join the conversation with #WhatWomenWantNow.

Kristel England-Keefe has helped literally hundreds of families find child care over the last three years in her role as a referral specialist with a nonprofit organization that serves Sonoma County, California. But when she and her husband have tried to find care for their own two boys, they’ve struggled.

Both parents are college graduates. Both have jobs. But England-Keefe says that putting the two kids in child care at the same time would cost at least $2,000 a month and probably a lot more. As it is, she says, they can barely cover rent in their two-bedroom apartment, which has no washer-dryer, no air-conditioning and sits just above a noisy street next to a fire station in the city of Santa Rosa.

Their makeshift child care solution is sending the older boy, who is four, to preschool. There, he gets the kind of activity and outdoor time he can’t in the apartment building. But keeping him at preschool all day would be too expensive, so England-Keefe drops him off on her way to work and picks him up on her lunch break to drive him home, where her husband has been watching the younger boy, who is two, since morning.

A few hours later, at around 4:30 p.m., England-Keefe finishes work, drives home again and takes over watching the kids so her husband can go to his job auditing tables at a casino. His shift ends at 2:30 a.m., which means he gets only a few hours of sleep before the 2-year-old is awake and the cycle begins again.

Aaron P. Bernstein via Getty Images Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) is a former preschool teacher and working mother, so perhaps it’s not surprising she’s been leading the charge for Congress to do something about child care.

When England-Keefe and her husband get a day off together, they frequently spend the time taking turns sleeping. “We are not married … we are housemates,” she quips. “Our entire family is in a constant sense of stress.”

If they could find more affordable child care, England-Keefe says, they could get a little time every day to recharge. Or maybe her husband, who has trained as an emergency medical technician, could go back to school and get a nursing degree ― and the much better pay it would bring. “We would just be a family and work on our relationships or work on our economic status, or really work on anything,” she says.

Finding good child care is a struggle all over the U.S.

Stories like England-Keefe’s are pretty common in the U.S. For two-parent families, the average cost of child care for each child works out to about 10 percent of income, according to Child Care Aware of America, which has been compiling these figures for more than a decade. But that figure disguises a lot of variation. The cost burden can be absolutely crushing for parents who live in high-cost areas, have lower incomes or are paying for more than one child at a time.

In Mississippi, for example, the average cost for accredited infant care is $5,300 per year. That’s about 7 percent of median income for a couple in that state. But in California, the average cost is $16,000 a year, or 18.6 percent of a couple’s income.

For single-parent households, the burden is a lot higher because household income tends to be a lot lower. In California, that $16,000 for infant care represents a whopping 60.4 percent of a single parent’s income, on average. And, again, that’s for just one child.

This problem is almost uniquely American. In France, Sweden and pretty much any other economically advanced country, the government finances extensive child care programs. The systems don’t work perfectly, but the reality is that working families in those countries can usually find high-quality care for their children at prices they can afford.

MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE via Getty Images When the U.S. needed women to work in factories during World War II, the government made sure to provide child care. But lawmakers let the program, known as the Lanham Act, lapse when the war ended.

In the U.S., working parents seeking help with child care must rely on a patchwork of relatively modest federal, state and local initiatives. Some families find their way to programs like Early Head Start, which has a heavy focus on child development and is available at no cost. But only low-income families are eligible and, even for them, slots are extremely limited.

In Texas, more than 46,000 low-income children were on a waiting list for subsidized child care as of last September, according to a report in the Texas Tribune. That number was actually 38 percent lower than earlier in the year, thanks to new federal funds that became available, and experts think it still represents just a fraction of the families that would be eligible if they applied.

The consequences of unaffordable child care are particularly perverse for women, who frequently end up with primary or sole responsibility for child-rearing. Some end up turning down jobs or promotion ― in some cases, because better-paying jobs require different, more expensive child care arrangements that they are unable to make. In other cases, it’s because higher income could mean they are no longer eligible for government programs that target the poor.

“For families who qualify for subsidies, many times a promotion and raise of even 20 cents an hour would push them over the income limit for programs and so they have to turn down these opportunities,” Lauren Hipp, senior campaign director at the advocacy group MomsRising, told HuffPost.

Many experts believe the lack of affordable child care in the U.S. is among the reasons that the percentage of women in the workforce has actually fallen slightly since the 1990s, while it is has risen in peer countries like Canada, Germany and Japan.

“This has important ramifications for their future work prospects, including their career path and earnings potential,” a trio of researchers concluded in a major 2017 report from the Economic Policy Institute. “Likewise mothers’ career paths and earnings have implications for family income levels and well-being and the economy as a whole.”

Not that the only effects are economic. Kids end up in poor-quality settings, the worst of which are downright hazardous. Parents like England-Keefe end up with complex, overwhelming arrangements that undermine the whole family’s well-being.

And the political system has paid only fleeting attention ― until now.

Child care is on its way to becoming a top-tier issue.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton introduced a proposal designed to make child care more affordable while simultaneously boosting its quality. A year later, a group of Democratic senators led by Patty Murray, from Washington state, wrote and formally proposed legislation to do the same thing. And just last month, Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts senator running for president, unveiled a major child care initiative of her own.

At the moment, the odds of any of these proposals becoming law are low. In theory, child care isn’t a partisan issue. In practice, the most serious initiatives require some combination of new spending and new regulation, two things the Republicans who have run Washington for the past few years generally oppose.

Boston Globe via Getty Images Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) just rolled out a sweeping child care proposal as part of her presidential campaign, giving the issue new visibility.

But Murray and her allies, including her counterpart in the House, Virginia Democrat Bobby Scott, have been working to shore up support for their measure. Warren’s proposal could give the issue a much higher public profile — because she made it the first major spending proposal of her campaign, and because the size of the investment she has proposed works out to something like four or five times what the federal government already spends on existing early childhood programs.

There is even action at the state level. Lawmakers in both Massachusetts and Washington are pushing legislation that would create a universal child care program. Newly elected governors in California and New Mexico have said guaranteeing access to affordable child care is atop their agendas, though they’ve yet to specify how they would do that on a permanent basis.

Only twice before in U.S. history has child care gotten this kind of political attention. One time was during World War II, when the U.S. needed women to build the war machine. Stories of moms leaving young children sleeping in the back seats of cars parked outside factories helped prompt the federal government to set up and run child care centers all across the country.

The arrangement worked well for parents and kids alike. Research later showed that the families ended up with higher incomes, while the kids did better in school. But after the war, Congress let the program lapse, in no small part because many lawmakers wanted men back in the factories and women back at home.

Not that all women were stay-at-home parents. Mothers in lower-income families frequently had to work just to keep food on the table, and finding child care was a struggle. But by the 1960s and ’70s, they had a lot more company, as traditional gender roles started to break down and more women gained access to the workplace.

This created a new demand for child care, and for a brief moment, it looked like the federal government would respond. Congress passed a bipartisan bill to create a universal care program in 1971 ― only to have then-President Richard Nixon veto it because, he said, government provision of child care would weaken families and move the U.S. closer to communism.

New York Daily News via Getty Images In 1971, then-President Richard Nixon followed the advice of conservative adviser Pat Buchanan (right) and vetoed a major child care bill, citing the proposal’s “family-weakening implications.”

Although not everybody in Washington saw child care as such a fundamental threat to the American way of life, there weren’t many lawmakers terribly interested in tackling the issue, either. More often than not, they treated child care as a “woman’s issue.” And without many women in government, that was just another way of dismissing it altogether.

It’s by no means coincidental that it was Clinton, the first woman to be a major party nominee, or Warren, who has spoken frequently about the challenges she faced as a working mother, who made ambitious child care proposals cornerstones of their campaigns ― or that it is Murray, a former preschool teacher and working mom, who keeps pushing for child care to be a top priority for Democrats in the Senate.

Another reason the issue is getting new attention is a surge of grassroots support, not just from unions like the Service Employees International Union, which has long talked about child care, but also newer organizations like MomsRising and the United Parent Leaders Action Network, or UPLAN. These groups rally members through social media and turn out working parents to appear at rallies ― in many cases with their young children in tow.

Child care is too expensive — and yet not expensive enough.

A major challenge of the child care crisis is that it is really two problems, quality and cost, that are difficult to address simultaneously.

Definitive data on the quality of child care is difficult to find, but one of the most comprehensive studies to date, a major federal research project from 2006, found that the majority of child care in the U.S. was mediocre or poor. Only 10 percent was considered high-quality. A newer set of studies by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., determined that just over half of all American families live in a “child care desert,” which researchers defined as census tracts with either no licensed child care providers or less than one slot for every three kids.

Parents “may settle for a child care setting that doesn’t feel as safe to them, or end up on really a long commute from their home because that is the only care they can get,” Erin Moore, national organizer for UPLAN, says. “People are resilient, find workarounds, but it’s not a good situation.”

Quality child care does exist in some places. The models that experts most frequently praise are Head Start and the system that the U.S. Department of Defense created for military families once the Pentagon realized that a lack of child care was hurting troop morale and causing some families to leave the military altogether.

The care in those models earns praise because it adheres to high standards. Head Start has a detailed curriculum and requires its educators to get extensive training. Nearly all military child care providers must meet guidelines set by the National Association for the Education of Young Children that cover everything from safety to worker-to-child ratios.

Win McNamee via Getty Images Hillary Clinton proposed a groundbreaking child care initiative as part of her 2016 presidential campaign, but almost nobody noticed.

It costs a lot of money to run programs like these, in no small part because it requires paying child care workers a lot more to attract and retain talented employees. Today, child care workers typically make less than $11 an hour, according to official government statistics. Even parking lot attendants earn more than that.

But child care is already so expensive for families that any effort to drive up quality is likely to make it even more unaffordable ― unless, of course, the government also spends a great deal more money.

This is precisely what promoters of these new plans have in mind. The Murray and Warren proposals differ in some important specifics, but their basic approach is the same. Both would spend a great deal more money on child care. Families could get this care by going through either large centers or in-home providers, as long as those live up to the kinds of high standards that Head Start and military child care are supposed to meet.

Like all policy proposals, these proposed initiatives have drawn some criticism. Some of it has come from progressive writers like Kathleen Geier, who, although supportive in general, thinks the proposals should go farther and make child care absolutely free. (Both the Murray and Warren proposals envision some families paying fees, depending on income.) Matt Bruenig, founder of the progressive People’s Policy Project, feels similarly ― but also says the government should do more to help stay-at-home parents.

Others are more skeptical of the whole approach, arguing that the new quality standards would simply drive up the cost of child care without actually improving quality. The Trump administration just put out a report making that point. Murray, Warren and others promoting these plans will need to address these criticisms and, perhaps, adapt their proposals to win support.

But ultimately, the biggest dispute over any major child care initiative would likely be about the dollars involved. The leading proposals all envision increasing federal spending on early childhood by three, four or even five times, depending on the details, and that’s more than some lawmakers would want to spend.

Advocates of these plans already have a clear, firm response to that concern: They say the investment is worth it.

“I have talked to so many people who cannot afford child care,“ Murray told HuffPost recently. “They are not going to work, they have quit their job, they have turned down promotions. … or they are putting their child in a setting where their child doesn’t get the kind of care they should. Every one of those has a cost ― to the family itself, to the community, to the businesses, to our country’s future.”

England-Keefe knows all about this. She’s seen it happen, at work and in her own life. At one point, she says, she and her husband thought briefly about separating just so their household income would change and qualify them for subsidies. They dismissed the idea, even though England-Keefe says she understands why other couples might do it.

“No one wants to work the system,” she adds. “We just want a system that works.”

The post Here’s What Female Politicians Are Doing To Fix Child Care appeared first on The Chestnut Post.

from The Chestnut Post https://thechestnutpost.com/news/heres-what-female-politicians-are-doing-to-fix-child-care/

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