Between the 1920s to 1980s, the use of asbestos was at an all-time high in the United States. From construction to the military, asbestos was utilized in a variety of different industries. Unfortunately, this abundant usage has led to the discovery of some serious health complications. Asbestos is a known human carcinogen and people who closely worked with this naturally occurring mineral are facing the consequences. One of the most common diseases associated with asbestos exposure is mesothelioma cancer, and it continues to be diagnosed to this day. With the United States not fully banning usage of asbestos, there seems to be no end in sight of its damaging effects.
What Is Asbestos?
As previously mentioned, asbestos is a mineral that is found in abundance across the United States. It’s known for its tensile strength, sound absorption and heat resistance, making it an unmatched additive at the height of its usage. Products such as flooring tiles, roofing tiles and insulation incorporated asbestos, because in the event of a fire, it could slow the burning process. This was also true when it came to usage in the military. The Navy incorporated asbestos in different areas of ships such as the boiler room and sleeping barracks. Asbestos was also great because it doesn’t degrade easily in water, making it a no brainer for use in ships. With that being said, when asbestos does degrade is when it can cause the most harm to the health of humans.
Asbestos Exposure And Health Complications
Asbestos that is degrading or damaged can release fibers into the air. These needle-like microscopic fibers can be inhaled or ingested by humans, causing damage to our internal organs. They get embedded in the linings of our lungs, heart and abdomen where they cause inflammation and scarring to occur. Over the course of 10 to 50 years, tumors may develop and this can lead to the diagnosis of mesothelioma cancer. Symptoms of this disease are minimal, and often mimic those of less severe illnesses. Coughing, shortness of breath, lack of appetite, chest pain and fever are all symptoms of mesothelioma, but unfortunately, when symptoms do appear, the disease has usually progressed into a later stage. Another disease that asbestos exposure can lead to is asbestosis, a chronic lung condition that heightens the risk of developing mesothelioma.
Source: The author
Who Does This Disease Affect?
The two largest populations that are diagnosed with mesothelioma are military veterans and construction industry professionals. The reason for this is that servicemen and women who worked on Navy ships and military bases were directly in contact with asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) on a daily basis, as is true of the majority of construction professionals. Working with ACMs without the proper protective equipment is typically how someone will end up being diagnosed with mesothelioma. Asbestos fibers can cling to clothing and stay airborne for several hours, so for those working with these materials everyday, exposure is extremely prevalent. While rules and regulations have gotten better surrounding asbestos exposure, these two groups are still disproportionately affected, many of whom still are unaware of the dangers of asbestos despite there being more research.
Source: The author
Why Is Asbestos Not Fully Banned?
While asbestos usage in the United States has become more regulated, it is still not fully banned. Asbestos is allowed in up to 1% of certain products and plays a key role in the chlor-alkali (chlorine) industry. As of April 2019, a “final rule” regarding asbestos usage had been issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) detailing more regulations to limit exposure. These regulations were as followed:
The public is protected from uses of asbestos that are no longer on the market and are not covered under any other laws.
The EPA is not allowing new uses of asbestos
Uses of asbestos covered under the 1989 partial ban will stay banned.
Researchers, experts and the public have been upset with this new ruling, as it still does not take into consideration the legacy usages of asbestos as well as all of the preexisting ACMs that are across the country to this day. There are currently 67 countries with full asbestos bans and it is unfortunate that the United States continues to let the public be harmed from such a dangerous carcinogen.
Help Spread Awareness
September 26th marks the 17th anniversary of Mesothelioma Awareness Day (MAD). Help spread awareness by sharing information about asbestos exposure with your loved ones and educating them about the serious health dangers it poses.
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to talk to Breakthrough Birmingham students about human rights. Breakthrough Birmingham is an affiliate of the Breakthrough Collaborative, an educational program in which college students from across the U.S. teach high school students in traditionally underrepresented communities in an effort to reverse educational inequity and help students achieve post-secondary success. This summer, Breakthrough went fully virtual, and although this had its challenges, I was amazed at how successfully the leadership pivoted and stayed committed to providing quality education for the students. During our time together, the students and I talked about what human rights are and different examples of human rights violations, particularly those related to the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-Black police brutality and injustice. As part of our class, I invited students to write for the IHR blog, to reflect on how the duel pandemics of Covid and racial injustice are impacting their lives and what they hope to see happen in the future. While the conversation rages over how to resolve these crises, the voices of our nation’s young people are often lost in the noise. But they are certainly an important part of this conversation, as they will inherit the world that we leave them and be left with either a huge mess to clean up or a legacy of progress to carry forward. I wanted to share two essays from Breakthrough students Jeremy and Charles.
Jeremy*
One day I was in school learning like normal, then bam! The world suddenly changed. I am going to be talking about Covid-19, aka coronavirus. It is very important to talk about this because people are dying daily and more and more families are suffering from the recovery of their losses. It is impacting how stores handle things and how we make money. Personally, I am uncomfortable with this situation going on, and I do not like it at all. It is really bad for me and everyone else on this planet. It is boring having to stay inside my home for an extended amount of time. When Covid first arrived I was actually excited that I was able to stay home. After a while though it started getting really boring, now I want to go back to school to see my friends.
I have mixed emotions about this. Like I said earlier staying home was great! I was all happy and joyful that I was able to stay home and sleep in as much as I wanted. Now I am just waiting until I can escape and go to school like normal!
In the world today, there are a lot of changes I want to happen. First of all, there is a lot going on while in quarantine. All the violence, Kanye West running for president, the “Karens,” aka the people who refuse to wear masks because of their president’s orders, and the other stuff that shouldn’t be allowed to happen. I think there are a lot of ways we can make this change. For example, the Black Lives Matter protests are attempting to make positive change.
The schools are already helping us students make that change, by sending quizzes on if we should go back to school, rotate days, or just do virtual learning. I think I could have my family go out more to make the experience more normal.
After all this mess going on I would like to just say this, don’t worry! I know a lot is going on right now, and it is just messy all around, but we will get through this! It will definitely be over soon, but it will still feel like it is lasting forever. If you know what I mean. Staying positive during this pandemic is key. I always like to stay as positive as possible. Just like any other person, I have experienced things that shouldn’t be happening on a daily basis! On the bright side, this whole situation does make me feel thankful and alive because I am able to spend more quality time with my family.
The pandemic has made me feel like I can handle that anything comes my way. This is not always the case though. Everyone in the world may feel strong, prepared, ready, but who can tell us what’s coming? This really tells us how anything can happen with just a snap of the finger! From sunny skies to dark clouds and thunder. From daily life to Covid-19.
“Jeremy” Source: the author
*Jeremy will be attending Ramsey High School, and his favorite subject is science. His hobbies include walking his dog, riding his bike, building houses online, and conducting science experiments. He aspires to be an architect, and when asked what inspires him, he notes, “New construction inspires me.”
Charles**
Many people are affected by anti-Black police brutality. Many people are killed due to this, particularly, George Floyd’s death, which was recently in the spotlight. Anti-Black police brutality does not just stop there. Celebrities, such as Jay Pharaoh, have faced police brutality because of the color of their skin. This topic is important because this is an ongoing problem that needs to be stopped. I understand what it is like to have friends and family who are police officers, but we still need to hold them accountable.
I feel distraught every time that I think about police brutality. I have to face the thought of being a victim of police brutality. It makes it harder now because everywhere I go I’m scared that I might be beaten by the police. It does not get any easier. Now the thought of driving is becoming a reality, and that idea fills me with fear. My mom for instance constantly talks about how to approach an officer if I were ever stopped. This is a thing that most African American parents talk about or should talk about with their kids.This is important to me because I cannot predict if I will or will not be one of those victims of police brutality.
My experience with this topic is hearing about people being beaten by the cops. Also, I have recently seen these things in the media. I’ve had experiences in which I, personally, was scared to call the police because I thought I would be the next victim of police brutality. I never had an encounter in which I was beaten by the police, but seeing events like this occur on the news and social media platforms impacts how I see the police force in the United States.
I know that no matter how many protests we assemble, the act of police brutality will never end. As human beings, sometimes we have to make compromises. I think we can solve this problem by making sure police officers swear to not brutalize innocent people based on race. This should be a part of the oath they swear by, and there should be punishments for not complying with this oath. According to a New York Times article, in 2019, 59% of Police-reported uses of force in Minneapolis were used on African Americans. This statistic shows that African Americans are most likely to face police brutality. A DoSomething.org article shows that in New York City in 2018, 88% of police stops involved Black and Latinx people. The article also states that 70% of those who were stopped were completely innocent. I do think that police officers should be held culpable for their actions. These statistics are examples of African Americans being more likely to face police brutality or harassment.
I think that instead of being more accepting of different races and cultures white Americans are being more hateful towards minorities, especially Black people. The ongoing anti-Black police brutality has made me grow more furious each and every day. Systemic racism and politicians lead white people to misinterpret the reality of life as Black people in America. White Americans should use their privilege to educate themselves and use their voices to advocate with Black people instead of using their voices for ignorance. Rather than learning new Tik Tok dances or trying to go viral, people should utilize their voice and the endless resources available to educate themselves and their followers on the history and present state of our nation.
“Charles” Source: the author
** Charles will be attending Ramsey High School, and he likes all of his classes, especially science. His hobbies include reading and poetry. He aspires to be an entrepreneur, and when asked what inspires him, he mentions his parents and “knowing he can put his all and mind into anything he wants to achieve.”
Vintage advertisements in a mid-20th century newspaper. While advertising revenue remains essential to both digital and print media, revenues have only plunged further amid COVID-19. Source: AnnaliseArt, Pixabay.
Throughout the past three decades, newspapers, magazines and online sources of news and analysis have faced deepening challenges. As I explained in a blog post last year, “the labor crisis in journalism [is] a human rights concern unto itself.” In particular, consolidation of media outlets into fewer holding companies restrains the “viewpoint diversity” in coverage, an essential quality for citizens of democratic societies to stay informed and to hold leaders to account.
Just over a year later, these concerns have only escalated with the twin public health and economic crises brought on by the novel coronavirus pandemic.
The Poynter Institute has maintained a regularly updated list of all closures, pay cuts, furloughs, layoffs and other employment changes at American outlets, here. One cumulative figure for media-sector impacts? Over 36,000 to date in 2020, according to the New York Times.
Granted, media and journalism job losses are a small fraction of total job losses. According to another New York Times report on unemployment claims since the start of the pandemic, estimated at 36 million jobs vanished throughout the United States through mid-May; by May 21, NPR added in an update, the total climbed to 38.6 million unemployed, with America’s poorer families and minority communities facing job loss rates double the national average.
Because of the advertising revenue-based funding model for most media organizations today, however, proportional financial losses in the field have been extreme, far offsetting increased readership and subscription rates. At Boston Globe Media—publisher of the storied daily paper, The Boston Globe—subscriptions surged by more than a third between March and May, but ads plunged by 30%, according to Digiday. Per CNBC, meanwhile, the New York Times might see ad revenue drop by a staggering 50 percent in the second quarter of 2020.
A subject covered less comprehensively amid drastic shifts is the combined effect of remote work, lockdowns and mass layoffs on labor organizing and activism—to say nothing of daily individual hardships—throughout this industry. In brief, it’s been a bloodbath. VICE Media offers an instructive example.
In mid-April, the Wall Street Journal initially reported that some “300 Vice employees in its digital operations unit” were set to be laid off, per an internal document obtained by the Journal. In response, as The Hill reported, Vice pushed back, claiming “that the plan [had] not been ‘vetted or endorsed’ by Vice Media Group and that no decisions at the company [had] been made.” Just a few weeks later, VICE ultimately went ahead with layoffs, though fewer than the Journal had suggested: cutting 155 workers as of May 15, on top of roughly 250 just a year earlier.
At the same time, the extraordinary financial stratification of digital media companies has not gone unnoticed. Kim Kelly, a freelance journalist who has been published in Teen Vogue and contributed to The New Republic and others, in addition to VICE, said on Twitter that this “annual bloodletting ritual” left her “sad and furious.”
Kelly pointed to Dubuc as one example of many sky-high “executive salaries,” despite the precarity of rank-and-file journalists: While Dubuc’s VICE CEO salary has not been published, the New York Post in 2016 published details about her sale of a 4,200-square-foot Upper West Side townhouse for $9.4 million.
It’s part of an indelible pattern at media firms. Poynter noted early last year that even companies with “revenues down, posting a loss and stock price sliding” still pay out millions in top-level corporate compensation – more than “$5.2 million for [Gannett’s] Bob Dickey and [$2.8 million] for Craig Forman at McClatchy.” Coronavirus-related layoffs at McClatchy have hit roughly 4.4% of all staff; Gannett has laid off an unknown number of workers at its 261 newspapers throughout the country, though dozens of smaller-scale losses have been reported individually.
(As a structural concern, these patterns map onto the trajectory of TV broadcasters a generation ago. As Halliwell and Morley explained in American Thought and Culture in the 21st Century, deregulatory actions from the 1980s through the 1996 Communications Act “loosened restrictions on station ownership [and] allowed media conglomerates…to amass greater numbers of [TV] and radio stations” (p. 278). Many of the same conglomerates own significant stakes in digital and print media firms today, replicating their TV models at newspapers and magazines.)
Back at VICE, the company’s WGAE-represented union was blindsided by the cuts, condemning the company’s leaders for “repeatedly failing to discuss workshare programs…used to avoid layoffs” at other outlets, according to a union statement posted on Twitter. Moreover, the statement continued, VICE “did not agree to make further cuts to executive compensation” to avoid layoffs “in the middle of a global pandemic.”
Between the more than 30 million unemployment claims and tens of thousands of media-sector layoffs since the start of the pandemic, though, a large number of freelance workers have been excluded from most tallies. Especially in media, where delays in paychecks and low “kill fees” for scrubbed articles routinely put freelancers in a bind, the data are undercounting and effectively excluding many who already struggled.
As early as mid-March, long before many major cities followed New York and Seattle into lockdowns, freelancers saw their lined-up interviews, previously accepted pitches, speaking engagements and editing opportunities suddenly canceled.
Taylor Crumpton, an Oakland-based freelance cultural journalist who has written for Paper Magazine, Pitchfork and many other outlets, was one of few to give a precise dollar amount: $2,000 in lost commissions through March 2020. As Crumpton explained further to Girls United, an Essence Magazine project providing mentoring and community for young Black women in digital spaces, simultaneously working as a social worker on the “front line…with homeless youth” was simply “frightening.”
She added: “The disheartening part of this is witnessing my counterparts lose 50–80% of their yearly income, so I’ve been uplifting their links to purchase products, or donate to PayPal, CashApp, and Venmo. Because of this pandemic, I lost a cover story with an artist who I’ve been working towards interviewing for years.”
Through early May, Crumpton added in a Twitter update, other opportunities evaporated, from co-hosting a podcast to multiple staff writer positions.
Crumpton, Gracie, and their colleagues’ experiences speak to society’s digital superstructure, especially amid a global pandemic that precludes most in-person interaction. As E. Gabriella Coleman explained a decade ago in her survey of digital media ethnographies, the totality of our “digital age remains a powerful structuring emblem with material and cultural consequences” (490), including both its capacity to give voice to or further “marginalize groups,” in academia and in practice.
In other words—just like the wrenching, cyclical losses across America’s broader economy—the social, economic, and other costs of media’s implosion are not evenly distributed, but are weighted heavily against those already long excluded.
The New York Times newsroom ca. 1942. Source: janeb13, Pixabay
But what are the implications of these far-reaching changes for organizing efforts in media? And what particular, heightened challenges do they pose, especially now?
At unionized outlets, bargaining with executives over protections for fired, furloughed or otherwise affected workers continues. Both the BuzzFeed News and VICE Media unions, for example, have been engaged in discussions, while Wired, part of Conde Nast’s portfolio of outlets, is seeking union recognition. All three, among many others, have centered robust severance packages in their demands – vital financial safeguards for suddenly unemployed former colleagues, often living in some of the nation’s most-expensive cities.
At BuzzFeed News, the union’s overriding goal has been making any crisis-response decisions collectively and, most importantly, preventing any job losses, union members or not. One potential model for distributing costs while preserving employment sought by the BuzzFeed News Union is the modified “Work Sharing Program” at the recently recognized Los Angeles Times’ own newsroom guild. The Program, adopted at the start of May, implemented across-the-board pay cuts and hour reductions, but with a minimum 12-week ban on layoffs.
Crucially, the Program—whose name derives from the “Work Sharing Program” under California Unemployment Insurance laws, established in 1978—“allows eligible employees to receive unemployment benefits” while working reduced hours, subject to state approval. Although the Program’s legal requirements and applicability restrictions are extensive, it helps fill income gaps for individual workers while allowing the company to absorb lost advertising revenue.
Though union-led efforts are in flux, they offer some promise to their members and other workers at those outlets. For others working at non-union outlets and for freelancers, in particular, the challenges are even greater.
Some media freelancers may have access to membership in the IWW Freelance Journalists Union, from “journalists, writers, [and] editors” to “researchers, programmers and printers.” But IWW-FJU’s New York City membership criteria, for example, are limited to current industry workers. For those already laid off or who have worked more than a month in other sectors to make ends meet, may be ineligible to join, or, if they are already a member, “must transfer” their union membership, where possible.
Regardless of union affiliations or publishing platforms, freelancers face compounded frustrations that are all-too-familiar, but worse than before. These include challenged or reneged invoices, late payments, slashed budgets, and the logistical difficulties of simply doing their jobs—when they can—entirely remotely, without any meaningful separation from their commitments to family or roommates at home.
Nor are billionaire philanthropists and “impact” investors, like the high-profile owners of the Washington Post or L.A. Times, likely to save the day. Another billionaire-backed publication, the Atlantic, was reported to be joining the vast ranks of hobbled legacy media outlets. In total, 20% of all staff are being laid off at the magazine.
It would almost seem remarkable—except for its familiarity—that just last year, billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, “the California-based widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs,” further consolidated financial ownership and control of the magazine through Emerson Collective, an “impact investing” LLC founded by Powell Jobs, POLITICO reported at the time. Powell Jobs herself wrote in the Atlantic about the values of journalism—a lifeblood of democracy—as well, aligning herself with journalists’ “struggle for the soul of this nation,” the “side of those who are fighting for the truth.” (Forbes estimates current Powell Jobs’ net worth is $19.5 billion.)
What’s left for solutions? Crowdfunding, like any number of fundraisers for furloughed and freelance workers or for state-specific media sectors, is heartening proof of media camaraderie and commitments to mutual support, but a limited source of relief given the extremity of losses.
For similar reasons, expanding subscription-based funding is unavailing at best in times of Great Depression-level unemployment – such individualized, voluntary forms of support simply lack necessary scale. Such “subscription-powered” media have been extended with some success to individual journalists and writers through newsletter-styled Substack, on Patreon, or other platforms. Unfortunately, as Forbes magazine recently explained, subscriber models, whether for media outlets or solo writers, “need a lot of name recognition” to work.
Given the enormous losses accelerated by the pandemic and less-than-promising options above, public efforts, coordinated and funded through the state, are likely necessary. This alternative is favored by the NewsGuild-CWA, America’s largest journalist union, which announced their Save The News initiative and related efforts “calling for federal, state, provincial, and local governments to provide public funds to sustain news operations.” As the NewsGuild explained, such efforts are “quite possibly the only way to ensure long-term viability for…news-gathering operations.”
Prospects for passing remain uncertain and, even if passed, myriad structural and financial challenges predating the pandemic will not be resolved. Much, much more will be necessary.
Not everyone has the chance to leave the city for a new home. It’s in the few dry and wet and dark spots that a forgotten bunch of people hide from the harsh winds and the temperature which is slowly dropping off. I am writing about Kenyan street families because they are the ones I know of and understand their history pretty well. These groups of homeless people depend on the company of each other for survival and to see another day.
Street people have for a long time fully depended on begging for money, food or doing casual jobs to get money, but with how Corona Virus is affecting the world, specifically the economy sector, all their sources of survival have been deflated, creating a threat of hunger, which I believe is more severe and more dangerous that the Corona Virus itself.
I was reading through the news on my phone and I got so emotional when I came across a boy who ran away from home in 2007 due to poverty and domestic violence saying that, “Even if you have fifty Kenyan shillings to buy food, you end up buying a loaf of bread. One slice for you and the other slices for the others. You don’t know how many days they haven’t eaten and it’s only that one slice of bread they are getting.” He added that, there might be new members in their group who haven’t known how to work or look for food. They are still learning and adapting to their new environment.
To add to that I also think the Corona Virus has contaminated the money or even people who are now taking advantage of the voiceless street people. When a street person decides to work for someone then this person may end up telling him or her that he doesn’t have cash and therefore he has to do the payment through mobile money, and yet the street person doesn’t have a phone, which make things more and more difficult and complicated.
Source: Yahoo Images
In an effort to contain the spread of Corona Virus, directives such as closure of schools, closure of hotels, staying at home, a 7pm to 5am curfew and shutting down of many non-essential businesses have greatly affected the street people community. The closure of schools brings more people to the streets, especially children, due to poverty, sexual violence and domestic violence in general. This adds pressure to people who are already in the streets. When the hotels were open, they supplied this community with the food that was not consumed, which at least made their stomachs full, but now the Corona Virus has crushed the hotels to the ground, leaving them hungry.
For the street people all that they have got is each other and it is that little slice of bread each one gets that barely sustains them each passing day. Even though their unity is their greatest strength, it appears to be their greatest fear and enemy as efforts of social distancing are tricky because they live to share — if one has it, the others have it too. If they don’t have it then the others won’t have it too. They live by faith and caring for each other.
As the news gets hotter and hotter I heard that the government rolled out a Covid-19 emergency response fund to cushion the painful wounds inflicted by the Corona Virus pandemic, for example the street families, the elderly, the refugees and the poor. And yes I was shocked when I discovered that no help trickled down to the street people who I know are the neediest people and makeup more than twenty one thousand of Kenya’s population according to the last conducted census.
In all these government and Non-governmental organizations, those with no homes, no jobs, no families and some with no hope of tomorrow are clearly forgotten. About this I am talking to the whole world. At least make sure that a street person if not people have eaten something. Share the little that you have, because there are women with small babies and they do not have milk in their breasts. They haven’t eaten and kids haven’t also eaten.
Just show a little humanity, which is free of tax.
As we fear for the days to come and wonder how long this pandemic will last, many in the street think of the present — of where and when they will get their next meal. If you get a chance to show you generosity never fail to show it. Make someone remember what you have done for him or her because whatever you do to the least of these it will be done to you.
Source: Yahoo ImagesSource: The author (2019)/Graphic Design: AleMaciell
Gender and sexuality issues are not often discussed, especially in the school environment. The reasons are innumerable, and they have been historically considered controlled themes. In Brazil, the data relating to violence and prejudice are alarming and refer to the discussion of institutional security, especially within environments that are more closely linked to these young people such as school. This statement is verified when analyzing the 2016 data from the Brazilian Association of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transsexuals (ABGLT) on dissenting gender and sexuality youth in the school environment, of which 60.2% of young people feel insecure in their educational institution due to their sexual orientation and 42.8% for the way they express their gender.
Prejudice in the face of experiences outside heteronormativity can silence young people and teachers in the school setting. School is often an arsenal that regulates not only sexuality but also gender.
Source: ABGLT (2016)/ Reprolatina (2011)
Silence in the face of the theme and oppression in relation to teaching work
The discourse that school, gender, and sexuality must constitute separate instances has been gaining strength. Reactions such as the Escola Sem Partido Program have motivated the persecution of teachers on charges of political and ideological indoctrination. It emerged in 2004, through the initiative of the attorney of the State of São Paulo, Miguel Nagib, and it has a threatening effect on teachers across the country. It seeks to criminalize teaching work around themes such as gender and sexuality. It is no coincidence that gender and sexuality are part of the themes that the defenders of this initiative point out as being the most permeable to ideological indoctrination since the persecution of these themes constituted an alignment with the agendas of the religious group representing a part of the population that supports moral precepts linked to the extreme right and Christianity.
The need for teaching work in this theme is corroborated by the National Curriculum Parameters (NCPs), they place these themes as transversal and relevant for discussion in educational establishments as well as for the pedagogical intervention process. NCPs are guidelines developed by the Federal Government that guide education in Brazil. They are separated by discipline and adopted by the public and private schools.
The school is a space where it is possible to observe the emergence of the visibility of dissenting gender and sexuality as well as conflicts over these experiences that seek to affirm forms of life hitherto subjugated. However, there are also positive experiences regarding the valuation of gender and sexuality differences at school.
Therefore, the interest in analyzing such experiences evaluated as positive by young people and teachers in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul in the central-west region of Brazil. The intention was to prioritize the reports that were evaluated by the participants as positive to better understand how they resist a prejudiced reality, which allowed a reflection not only on gender and sexuality but also on the agency of the participants concerning this theme in school institutions of different contexts.
Youth Experiences
School is a very important space for socialization, and it is part of the teacher’s job to ensure this interaction by attending to all representations. The young 20-year-old Sofia, from a private school pointing out something positive affirmed that “the teachers discuss and work on these themes in the classroom”. That corroborates the importance of making the discussion about gender and sexuality common every day.
Aurora, 19 years old, from a private school, in turn, says that she lived “an assumed relationship with a colleague at school”, which points out that, in addition to possible environments for discussion on this topic, the school also makes it a possible experience. The homosexual relationship is seen as different and the school acts positively on this issue when it allows the relationship to be seen.
In terms of school dropout, trans experiences seem to be the ones that stand out the most. For this reason, José Francisco, 25 years old, from a private school, reported: “At school, in high school, I was able to use the bathroom of the kind in which I identify myself. All of this was important, as school avoidance is avoided and dysphoria is reduced, enabling a better use of studies, which was my case”.
Source: The author (2019) /Graphic Design: AleMaciell
In their school experience, as well as that of many young people, the fact that they can use the bathroom according to their gender identity is the validation of the school’s acceptance of this difference. Another important acceptance reference cited by José Francisco is the social name and the comfort it can generate. According to him, “My positive experience at school took place in some ways … with the social name respected by all employees, teachers and coordinators. The name was on lists, in the closet, in the call and the like”. We can understand what the use of the social name and the bathroom might represent, when we are faced with indexes related to the violence suffered by the trans population. According to the National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals – ANTRA, in Brazil, 90% of transgender people depend on prostitution to survive.
Teacher’s Experiences
The school is an important space for socialization and discussion, the teacher has a fundamental role in this mediation. In this sense, Rafael, 35 years old, from a private school, informs that the first posture he has is to verify how young dissidents of gender and sexuality are treated by colleagues, then he has a welcoming attitude: “When I notice some isolation and others signs of suffering I try to talk to the person and ask for permission to speak with the coordination and psychologists “. When recognizing the difference in the school environment a teacher meets his daily challenges and at that moment his or her attitude may or may not collaborate with freedom and the recognition of different representations of gender and sexuality within this space.
It is not uncommon that when this theme appears it is linked to certain control efforts through great strategies of knowledge and power. Marcelo, 28, from a private school, positively does not directly refer to a threat: “I try to explain that this feeling for the same sex is normal”. However, he justifies in the sequence: “but I mention the importance of using condoms to prevent STDs”.
Here, it is not a question of questioning the importance of guidelines about the prevention of this type of infection/disease, still there is a risk of restricting the experience of sexuality to a certain threat. One way to avoid this type of approach is to bet on the pedagogical and curricular policy of identity and difference. Teachers who have participated in this research feel unprepared to put this policy into practice. Ana, 42 years old, from a public school, justified this lack of preparation due to the complexity of the theme, pointing to the effects that this might present: “If we are not well grounded we risk to reinforce what has been put in place for centuries”. However, she affirmed that she is interested in the theme and this makes her look for authors that can be helpful to her, but she does not believe that this can happen to all teachers. This scenario points to the urgency of actions that promote a fairer school and that above all, guarantees human rights, for example, the integration of Public Policies, mentioned in the NCPs for sexual orientation. However, the school, or at least part of the teaching staff, seems to be unaware of these policies which hinders practices and attitudes that can promote the resignification of the school space for young dissidents.
Source: The author (2019) /Graphic Design: AleMaciell
Toward a More Welcoming School
Young people’s experiences show us the importance of bringing the discussion about gender and sexuality to a daily practice within the school environment as we could realize how can the school be a possible place for the awareness of dissident experiences in terms of gender and sexuality. The evasion problem especially of transvestite and transsexual people appeared with the indication of the need to call people by the name that corresponds to their gender identity as well as the authorization for the use of the bathroom by that same self-assigned identity.
Teachers’ experiences value the welcoming attitude toward young dissidents of gender and sexuality which should be demarcated by the recognition of the difference in the school environment. The positive experience of dealing with these themes does not mean that they cannot be linked to speeches that may present them as a possible threat, as an example when dissident affective-sexual experiences are associated with diseases. Even so, some teachers are looking for more knowledge to approach the theme as they do not feel prepared to approach the theme from the perspective of the curricular policy of identity and difference.
Source: The author (2019)/Graphic Design: AleMaciell
Finally, even though the NCPs proposing to approach the theme in a transversal way, the legislation seems insufficient to guarantee in the curriculum the presence of the theme in the school as it should be taught. However, even so, the school presents itself as a possible place to resist attempts to criminalize teaching work around gender and sexuality. It is not a matter of minimizing the moral effects of the School without Party Program rather however young and teachers act independently of a “desire” in short they are involved in power relations, there are positive examples that seem to make the difference in terms of gender and sexuality, an experience that can be recognized at school.
*Fabricio Pupo Antunes is a 3rd-year high school student at Colégio Novaescola in Campo Grande – Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. He is a junior researcher in gender and sexuality, supervised by Prof. Dr. Tiago Duque at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul, where he is also a member of Impróprias – Research Group about Gender, Sexuality and Differences (UFMS – CNPq). His research has been awarded in important scientific fairs, seminars, and academic congresses in Brazil and abroad with Regeneron ISEF, a finalist in the Behavioral Sciences area this year.
This article was originally published on the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy blog on June 19, 2020.
Discussions of police in everyday life have triggered strong reactions from citizens as long as we have had the concept of police. Arguments over whether they should wear uniforms, whether they should be paid, and whether they should carry weapons have all persisted throughout time and across multiple countries. The concept of the police in America was borrowed from the British system of having “beat cops” or officers who patrolled at the local level. In England, still today, these community officers do not carry weapons. The British police force was established in 1829 and employs the concept of police by consent, not by force. As a result, the general opinion is that arming the police sends the wrong message to citizens and creates more problems than it solves. Yet, in the US, officers cannot envision a police force that is not armed with firearms. Policing in America has evolved over time and developed into a punitive system of “enforcement” that has pushed the entire system away from community problem solvers and toward a militaristic mind set of reactions to certain situations, often without rational analysis of what is actually occurring. Thus, policing has evolved more toward fighting a war– the war on drugs, the war on poverty – in which police are the soldiers and citizens are the subjects. However, the evidence is clear that overuse of police as a form of social control has devastating consequences for the health of communities (Public Health Behind Bars, Robert Greifinger, 2007). Such over-policing leads directly and indirectly to destabilized communities and overall social injustice. Further, it creates a system in which activities of the poor and minorities are more highly policed and punished than activities of the wealthy or white majority. Communities that suffer the most from over-policing generally suffer from a host of other deprivations and become tangled in a web of instability. Once that occurs, perceptions of destabilized communities begin to shape the ways that people outside the community view persons who live in those communities. Persons from those communities are often portrayed as more violent, more aggressive, and less likely to respond to reason. These labels apply to everyone from that particular community, including children, and often follow those children as they enter school. Children from these communities are labeled trouble makers at very young ages (as young as 3 or 4) and are often pushed out of mainstream educational facilities. Because of interaction with the criminal justice systems, adults have trouble finding jobs and/or stable housing, and family dynamics are disrupted. A cycle of negative police/citizen interaction begins to occur because of overuse of punitive approaches to address social problems, and police officers are tasked with providing interventions across a wide array of social services more appropriate to social workers, school and marriage counselors, substance abuse counselors, soup kitchens and homeless shelters, and general mechanic and car maintenance.
When police are the first responders to social problems, punishment is the response most often handed down. Punishment, enforcement, and restraint are the skills for which police receive most of their training. Examples of this problem can be noted across the life span, but are perhaps most easily demonstrated in adolescents. For example, white youth and minority youth participate in delinquency such as recreational drug use, underage drinking, skipping school, fighting, and other types of delinquency at similar rates. Self-report studies indicate that delinquency is almost universal as a part of adolescent development. However, black and brown youth are held in juvenile detention centers at 3 to 4 times the rate of their white counterparts. Their numbers continue to increase even when juvenile crime statistics drop. Part of the reason for the disproportionate numbers of youth in juvenile detention stems from the presence of police officers in schools. Because these youth are identified as more dangerous and less amenable to treatment, school-based police officers respond with punitive practices that work to remove them from school. Once removed from school, the only real intervention at the community level is the juvenile court. Most black and brown youth live in urban areas with larger public schools. More police officers are assigned to these schools; therefore, more poor children and children of color are victims of overusing police and courts for behaviors more appropriately handled by schools and parents. Overuse of punitive practices creates a school to prison pipeline that suspends and expels more minority youth from school than their white counterparts. Even when youth are “caught” for the same activity, the minority youth is more likely to be arrested, petitioned to juvenile court, and detained in a detention center which sets off an array of negative interactions and social stigma that is almost impossible to overcome. The school to prison pipeline creates generational disenfranchisement, poverty, and systematic oppression of entire communities.
Source: The Hamilton Project
But problems in school are not the only contributor to the overuse of police in society. Lack of adequate health care also works to ensure that poor people and people of color will go to prison instead of to mental health clinics or rehabilitation centers for substance abuse and mental health issues. Instead of having diagnoses that are recognized and treated, even at very young ages, people without adequate health insurance or preventative health care are labeled by the symptoms of their illnesses. As services shrink in the community, law enforcement is used as the social service delivery system for this group. Instead of citizens receiving counseling and accurate mental health diagnosis that could treat their health issues, they are arrested, incarcerated, and offered very few if any services. For a drug charge, a person with insurance will likely go to a rehab facility. A person without insurance will likely go to prison. Studies indicate that 20% of jail inmates and 15% of prison inmates suffer from major depression or psychosis and as many as 87% of those have comorbid substance abuse issues. Citizens without insurance in our society are more likely to have unresolved trauma, which is often exacerbated by interaction with poorly trained police officers. Those same individuals are more likely to be perceived as dangerous, more aggressive, and not amenable to treatment. As a result, they are more likely to be arrested, more likely to be detained prior to trial, and more likely to be incarcerated. When they are eventually released (95% will return to communities) they are sent back to communities with little to no continuity care plan which almost insures that they will encounter the criminal justice system again.
So, what alternative police practices and systematic strategies could we envision that would work to dismantle this perpetual cycle of violence, trauma, and overall injustice that is levied disproportionately on poor and minority communities? First, I would propose that police agencies examine the role of police in everyday life and create policies that actually reflect those defined roles. The role of the police is “to protect and serve.” Let’s unpack that statement – to protect and serve – not to arrest, apprehend, serve as judge and juror, intimidate, harass, incarcerate, shoot, bully, or kill – protect and serve. Yet most of our emphasis in police departments across the US revolves around tactical weaponry, restraint techniques, defensive driving, and legal procedures of arrest that will lead to convictions. Perhaps refocusing training on de-escalation strategies, trauma informed care, and implicit bias could provide better understanding and more opportunities for officers to assist in resolving conflicts peacefully. Do police officers really need full armored SWAT gear? And military grade weaponry? When police posture defensively as if their role is to protect themselves against dangerous citizens (again as if they are soldiers and citizens are the subjects) the response from citizens is likely also to be defensive and reactionary. Beyond new recruits at the police academy, officers who have been on the force for long periods of time and serve as field training officers need the same training as new recruits on the above-mentioned issues. Many times, they work to undermine positive training received in police academies. If these more seasoned officers resist training, or refuse to comply with new protocols, they should be reassigned to departmental activities that do not require citizen interaction. We can no longer afford to have business as usual and rely on statements like, “that’s the way it has always been.” Agencies must be proactive in removing old ways of thinking and performing and replace them with more educated and better-informed practices that work to restore police-community relations. A merit system could be implemented that rewards positive behavior with pay incentives or merit toward promotions. Police should be treated as professionals, paid as professionals, and held accountable as professionals.
Source: Justice Policy Institute
Secondly, I would propose that we examine the services for which police are being used in place of other, more appropriate social service delivery specialists. For example, commissioned law enforcement officers are not the proper authority to handle adolescents in schools – especially when dollars spent to employ the police could be redirected to employ social workers and counselors to address the underlying causes of much adolescent behavior. The experiment with School Resource Officers (SROs) was intended to create trust among students and police where police would function in a counselor/educator role. However, the reality has been that schools have turned over general disciplinary actions as well as drug/alcohol enforcement provisions to SROs. They do not work as much in an education/counselor capacity as they do as the enforcer for a host of school-based rule infractions that lead to more kids being suspended, expelled, or processed in juvenile court. Instead of fostering healthy relationships with police and students, students do not trust them and try to avoid them. A better alternative seems to be to employ a school based social worker at each school instead of an SRO. One argument for SROs has been the prevalence of school shootings and the need for student safety. However, school shootings were not the original intent of SROs, and school shootings remain very rare occurrences. When these tragedies do occur, it is rarely an SRO who protects students or who intervenes during these instances, which makes school safety concerns an inadequate argument for placing police officers in schools. Their presence adds to the school to prison pipeline and works to create hostility between youth and police very early in life. Zero tolerance policies should be replaced with restorative community policies within schools to teach negotiation strategies that students could actually use in future interactions. Dialogue about complex issues should be encouraged among students and opportunities should be seized to provide education around community health, community harm, and community restoration.
This conversation would not be complete without recognizing that the work of policing a community is stressful. Rarely do police officers receive adequate training for the job. Even more rarely do they receive counseling and support for their own trauma that they experience on the job. For example, one of the most stressful parts of law enforcement jobs is not the hostage negotiation that ends in a shoot-out; instead, it is responding to traffic accidents. Officers might retire from the police force without ever using their firearm, but the chances of them viewing a dead child in an overturned car after a crash are high. When officers’ trauma is not addressed, that trauma becomes the lens through which everything else is viewed. A normal response is to have a heightened sense of self-preservation – and every possible encounter with a citizen presents the possibility of a negative outcome. Some of the resources within police departments should be reinvested in the officers to provide training, support, and counseling that they need to be healthy community members both on and off the job. To complement these resources, the culture within the department must also change to promote positive mental health among officers. Currently the stigma of mental health issues as signs of weakness permeate police culture. Changing those views will take time, but the culture of health that is discussed in communities must also apply to police agencies throughout the US.
Source: University of PhoenixSource: University of Phoenix
Finally, and probably the most inflammatory part of this post, we must have honest conversations about the systematic racial oppression in the US and the role that all systems of government have played in developing and keeping it in place. Minority groups are presented as more dangerous, more violent, more in need of police, and only responsive to force. Such portrayals are not accidental, but work specifically to detract from empathy that might otherwise be shown to them as fellow human beings. The scourge of racism is so deeply engrained in our justice systems in the US that even minority officers do not know how to discuss it, react to it, or work to dismantle it. The militarized hierarchy within police agencies causes a veil of silence among officers who fear reprimand if they are perceived as trouble makers, liberals, or sympathizers. Citizens have so little trust in the police, or the system of justice, that they are often victims without a voice. These are not characteristics of a free society, and they must be replaced with conversation, understanding, and a shared vision for what citizens want the police to do in their communities and how that will be accomplished. In the end, police officers are public servants, and their role is to protect and serve the community and every member of the community. For anyone who reads this and has an interest in taking a deeper dive into racism in the US, I would recommend three books to read: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein; Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria by Beverly Daniel Tatum; and So you want to talk about race by Ijeoma Oluo.
It takes a lot of love, effort and dedication to be a good mother. For that reason, I believe it is important that everyone has the choice whether or not to be a parent, and when to take on that responsibility. Unfortunately, many girls around the world do not get to choose. Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic remains a pain to society because it is definitely complicating the efforts of reducing teenage pregnancies. It has caused an immeasurable disruption to every aspect of our lives in the last few months. To contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, governments have taken drastic measures to minimise the spread. Learning has been suspended, with schools being closed indefinitely. Religious meetings and worship programs have been affected similarly meaning there will be no more youth programs in the religious institutions, including churches and mosques for the time being.
In Kenya, the Ministry of Education has put in place strategies to ensure continuity of education through distance online learning delivered through radio, television and the internet. However, these strategies have further widened the inequality gap, as learners from poor, vulnerable, and marginalized households are unable to benefit from continued learning through these platforms due to lack of access. Further, with the loss of livelihoods particularly in low income households, some children may be forced into income-generating activities to support their families’ survival. Also, school closure has stopped the provision of school meals and sanitary towels.
And it’s more complicated for girls living in refugee camps or girls that are internally displaced. For them, school closures are even more devastating as they are already a disadvantaged group. Girls at secondary level are only half as likely to enroll as their male peers. While the magnitude of the COVID-19 crisis is unprecedented, we can look to the lessons learned from the Ebola epidemic. At the height of the epidemic, five million girls were affected by school closure across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the countries hardest hit by the outbreak. And poverty levels rose significantly as education was interrupted.
There is evidence that links poverty with teenage pregnancies during this pandemic. One reason is because many young girls are getting involved in economic activities to supplement what their parents are bringing home. On the other hand, as the cases rise day by day there is a strain on the healthcare system, leading to the disruption of healthcare services, re-prioritization of sexual and reproductive and health services and a. shortage of contraceptive commodities and essential drugs. As SRHR services are reducing, sexual behaviour is rising since the teenagers have nothing to do, and it seems to be more risky where parents don’t really care what their children are doing while at home. I feel that there will be more unintended pregnancies all over the world, many of which will occur among teenage girls.
As I have discussed, there is no culture or tradition, it just happens. There are girls, especially those who come from communities or families that are rooted in culture and traditions, these girls must undergo what their parents wants them to, and the girls have no choice in the matter because their hope was school where they would run for help.
Source: Creative Commons
For example, in the Maasai community, when a girl is at least nine years old she is circumcised then married after two to four weeks. These girls are now expected to take care of their husband and to bear children at that early age.
Unintended pregnancies among teenagers may result in some difficulties in the lives of young girls. There are unsafe abortions, which may happen as a decision of the girl maybe to feel clean and also as a result of family decision in order to keep the family name clean. There is increased poverty where a girl who is being provided everything with the struggling parents bring another baby who needs to be taken care off and be provided everything as they are babies and as they grow all the way to adulthood. At some point there may be denial where by the parents kick out their daughters because of getting pregnant early because they have disgraced the family. This may cause psychological problems because she doesn’t have the supporting system which may force her to get married not only at an early age but also to an old man who may be violent on her. If not marriage she may have suicidal thoughts. Early pregnancies are the leading cause of deaths among the teenage girls because their bodies are not yet matured to give birth. The girls who are forced into marriage as teenagers, the responsibility that they are given drains them off because also their minds are not yet matured to do what is expected of them, which may lead them to be beaten and abused. Everyone deserves to enjoy their childhood.
Something has to be done before it’s too late. The governments should have committees that will develop and implement proven solutions. Different stakeholders should work to respond and to prevent by meeting the unique needs of adolescents by may be providing sanitary towels and also help them access SRHR services. The people responsible for taking care of pregnant teenage girls should teach them how to improve their sexual and reproductive health and well-being. Lastly I believe there are already existing activists in our towns and villages and they can potentially help to reduce negative coping mechanisms, such as child, early and forced marriage, especially during this time, where every energy is driven to the corona situation.
“The people of Texas are informed that in accordance with a Proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.”
What is Juneteenth?
Celebrated on June 19th, Juneteenth commemorates the official end of slavery. Although President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the U.S. government made little effort to enforce the executive order, allowing Texas and other Southern states to uphold the institution of slavery for two and a half years after it was declared illegal. It was not until Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, that the news of freedom and the end of the Civil War reached the enslaved people there. Alternatively called “Freedom Day,” “Emancipation Day,” and “Cel-Liberation Day,” African Americans have celebrated Juneteenth since the late 1800s.
History
In the decades following the ratification of the 13th Amendment, Juneteenth celebrations grew in size and popularity. Some formerly enslaved men and women and their descendants made pilgrimages back to Galveston to celebrate the holiday. Early celebrations often included a ritual in which revelers tossed ragged garments that enslaved people would have been forced to wear into the river and adorned themselves in fancy clothes taken from their former plantations. In 1872, a group of African-Americans ministers and businessmen purchased 10 acres of land in Houston and created Emancipation Park as a place to hold the city’s annual Juneteenth celebration. The festivities typically involved fishing, barbecue, rodeos, baseball, and prayer services.
In the early 1900s, Juneteenth celebrations declined, as White employers did not recognize the holiday and would not let Black people off work if the holiday fell during the work week. Educational text books for students marked the official end of slavery as January 1, 1863, without mentioning its continuance through the end of the war. American Independence Day was celebrated on July 4, and Juneteenth went largely under the radar. Celebrations were revived in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and cities across the country reinstated the festivities. Through the tireless efforts of Al Edwards, an African-American state legislator, Texas declared Juneteenth a state holiday in 1980. Other states are following his lead. In fact, 45 states and the District of Columbia have either made Juneteenth a state holiday or an official day of observance; however, it is not yet a national holiday. This year, several corporations, including Target, Twitter, Nike, and the NFL have announced that June 19 will be a paid holiday for their employees.
Source: Creative Commons
The Struggle Continues
As we celebrate the official end of institutionalized slavery, it is important to remember that the struggle for true freedom and equality for African-Americans is far from over. As the country is waking up to the duel pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism, Juneteenth celebrations are expected to be particularly festive and well-attended this year. Following the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Rayshard Brooks and countless other victims of anti-Black violence, there is a renewed sense of urgency and activism around the Black Lives Matter movement. Massive protests are happening all over the country with hundreds of thousands of Americans demanding an end to systemic racism and police brutality. In order to truly understand and participate in Juneteenth celebrations, it is important to remember the horrors of slavery, the extreme violence inflicted on Black people in the years following liberation, and how these legacies continue to plague our society. In anticipation of Juneteenth, the Equal Justice Initiative has released a new report – Reconstruction in America – describing the various ways in which White people and the State invented new forms of slavery, perpetuated anti-Black sentiment and justified violence and oppression. As Bryan Stevenson aptly reminds us, “Slavery did not end in 1865, it just evolved.” Today, Black Americans still do not enjoy the same freedoms and rights as White people, as they continue to experience lynching, police brutality, mass incarceration, and unequal justice disproportionately to their White counterparts.
While Juneteenth in years past has focused on celebrating the advances that Black people have made in the United States, this year is expected to center around a call to action. For White people who want to show their support, this includes showing up for the causes of anti-racism and equal justice, understanding the structural and institutional underpinnings of white supremacy and white superiority, exploring their own complicity in upholding a racist social order, and using their privilege and agency to take actionable steps to dismantle racism, both in their personal lives and on an policy level.
History is calling the future from the streets of protest.
What choice will we make?
What world will we create?
What will we be?
There are only two choices: racist or anti-racist”
by Peter Verbeek, Ph.D.
Associate Professor,
Program Director MA Program Anthropology of Peace and Human Rights
Source: Yahoo Images
On March 9, 2020, the IHR published my blog entitled ‘A Time to Recognize and Safeguard The Rights That Connect Us.’ On that date, there were 717 reported cases of the corona-virus infection in the US and 26 reported deaths. Today, about 3 months later, on June 6, 2020, while I am finishing writing this new blog, there are 1.94 million reported cases of the corona-virus infection in the US, with 111 thousand reported deaths. These numbers take one’s breath away; they invite retreating into a state of silence – to a state of being ‘comfortably numb’ (3), and to leave it all to others, whomever they might be, to deal with this shocking reality. But I cannot afford to become a passive bystander to this, no-one can. Not when so many scientists and practitioners are speaking up and calling for action on the urgent human rights aspects of the pandemic, not when so many health-care workers are putting their own health and well-being on the line for the care and comfort of COVID-19 patients, and not when so many of those most affected by and at risk for COVID-19 are out in the streets protesting against the human rights violations of police brutality and murder, and for the equal justice to which they have an inherent right and that is so long overdue.
On March 6, 2020, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, M.D, urged policy makers and governments “to take great care to protect the most vulnerable and neglected people in society, both medically and economically” while devising and implementing measures to curtail the virus outbreak. She also wrote that “human dignity and rights need to be front and center in that effort, not an afterthought,” and added that “COVID-19 is a test for our societies, and we are all learning and adapting as we respond to the virus.”
Here in the US, the “COVID-19 test of our society” that Bachelet referred to, once again highlights the glaring inequalities and deep-rooted racism that continues to severely harm and disadvantage people of color, in particular African-Americans, and that in all its ugliness diminishes life for us all. In a statement released on June 3, 2020, Bachelet commented that “structural racism and police violence are of course found across the world,” and that “the anger we have seen in the US, erupting as COVID-19 exposes glaring inequalities in society, shows why far-reaching reforms and inclusive dialogue are needed there to break the cycle of impunity for unlawful killings by police and racial bias in policing.” She added “in addition, there must be a profound examination of a wide range of issues, including socio-economic factors and deep-seated discrimination. To move forward, communities must be able to participate in shaping decisions that affect them and be able to air their grievances.”
What role does science have to play in bringing about solutions for what plagues our society? What can scientists do to make things better? Taking my cues from conservation science and from my own work in the behavioral science of peace I propose two things: (a) taking our science to the streets-metaphorically, and (b) taking a holistic and comprehensive approach to the crises that we face. My inspiration for the former comes from an article that was released this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), which documents the mass extinction and biodiversity loss caused by human activity and how it threatens our mere survival. It is one of the most urgent calls for “humanizing conservation” that I have come across in the last 10+ plus years.
I’ll let the authors, Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Peter H. Raven, speak for themselves:
“In view of the current extinction crisis and the lack of widespread actions to halt it, it is very important that scientists should metaphorically take to the streets (my italics). We have, for example, started a new global initiative we called “Stop Extinctions,” to address and publicize the extent of the extinction crisis and its impacts on the loss of biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human well-being, aspects still rather ignored by most people. There is time, but the window of opportunity is almost closed. We must save what we can, or lose the opportunity to do so forever. There is no doubt, for example, that there will be more pandemics if we continue destroying habitats and trading wildlife for human consumption as food and traditional medicines. It is something that humanity cannot permit, as it may be a tipping point for the collapse of civilization. What is at stake is the fate of humanity and most living species. Future generations deserve better from us.”
The major crises of the present time, the corona-virus pandemic, systemic racism, and the ecocide of climate change, mass extinctions and biodiversity loss are not disjointed separate crises, but, rather, interlinked existential crises that are impacting the entire world population. Attempts to solve one of them without considering the others are folly and doomed to failure. Attempts to solve one of them in one part of the world without considering the rest of the world are equally foolish and doomed to failure. What this implies for policy is that “we the people” need political leadership and governance informed by the science that shows how and why these crises are interlinked and why they constitute existential crises.
This also implies that across natural and social disciplines scientists need to develop and publicly share comprehensive solutions in ways that both clearly inform and can drive policy. I think that the times of coasting through a scientific career from tenure track to tenure on strictly basic research with no immediate applied value for society are over. Every science career should involve interlinked basic and applied work, and tenure and promotion reviews as well as grant reviews should be updated so as to properly assess achievements in each of these interlinked domains. The crises facing us are too formidable not to enlist all available good minds in both properly delineating the relevant component parts of the crises that we face as well as developing solutions to them.
Photo: Liz Lemon; Source: Flickr
While I have confidence in science in the part it can and must play in dealing with the crises that we face, my confidence in politics and governance here in the US in its present form is at an all-time low. In my opinion, the kind of informed and enlightened leadership that draws on science to map out the immense problems that we face to find the appropriate solutions, is, with few notable exceptions, missing in action here in the US, whether we look for it to the left or right of the political spectrum or right down the center aisle. As a consequence, the global leadership that is needed to guide international partnership efforts to combat global crises, leadership for which the US as the main democratic superpower is uniquely qualified, is equally lacking at present. Global partnerships developed and spearheaded by the US and built on mutual trust and respect that accomplished so much good for so many in the past, from defeating fascism and bringing down the iron curtain to establishing a universal human rights framework and systems to deal with global health responses, are, to put it bluntly, pretty much in shambles right now. Looking in solely on the status quo of the political side of things here in the US and their global effects, the future for humankind appears to look grim, indeed.
In his Gettysburg Address President Lincoln, exhorted Americans to resolve that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. I think that President Lincoln’s call to preserve the essence of what and who we are as a nation has rarely been more urgent than now. I also think that the thousands of lawful nonviolent protesters that are out in the streets right now, are heeding President Lincoln’s call for action magnificently, showing America’s inherent greatness in doing so. I am deeply moved when I see the people most affected by the corona-virus pandemic and most at risk, risking their well-being by taking their rightful call for justice and equity, so long overdue, to the streets. I say to you, your lives matter tremendously, to all of us, and to the future of this country! And I say to you, take it beyond the streets! Run for office and practice to become the informed and enlightened leaders and policy makers that we so desperately need right now! I have my vote and science at the ready to share with you!
And to return to the call by the eminent conservation biologist Paul Ehrlich and his colleagues, yes, we must take our scientific knowledge “to the street,” as scientific knowledge is truly of the people, by the people, and for the people. We must step down from our ivory towers and speak up publicly and clearly about what the facts tell us and what we see as solutions to the crises that we face. Yes, we need those peer reviewed publications to keep our work valid and meaningful, but we should work with our institutions and granting agencies to provide free access to these journal articles to all. The existence of large for-profit publishing houses dominating the journal article universe becomes untenable in the face of the role that science has to play in combating the existential crises that threaten us all.
We must overcome any distrust and tribalism that hampers collaboration between natural and social science. We need good minds in both major areas of science to work together on the interrelated crises of the corona-virus pandemic and ecocide. For those of us working in the behavioral science of peace we must call a spade a spade when it comes to human rights violations right here at home. Attacks on human dignity, whichever form they may take, and irrespective of where they take place, or who commits them, from teargassing lawful and peaceful demonstrators during a respiratory disease pandemic to publicly insulting and disparaging individuals and groups holding a different opinion than one’s own, are attacks on human dignity and thus constitute human rights violations and should be properly labelled as such (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, see Articles 1,3,5,12,19,20).
Source: Yahoo Images
As peace scientists, we must also speak up about the solid evidence that our biological inheritance includes a capacity for peace through our ability for empathy and for taking the perspective of others, and through our natural preference for reciprocity and justice (1). We can point anyone who has any doubts about the content validity of our comparative findings to the international news feed showing peaceful demonstrations from Asia to Europe to Africa and the Middle East in solidarity with the protests against police brutality and murder and systemic racism that are going on throughout much of the US. Politicians of all stripes should be made aware of the fact that people in vastly different cultures across the globe all demonstrate a shared disposition to not take kindly to injustice. And we can point anyone who expresses doubts in how science and government can effectively work together to deal with crises as monumental as the corona virus pandemic to New Zealand, where the Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced yesterday that the country has officially eradicated COVID-19 and will return to normal after the last-known infected person recovered.
News reports show that many of the protesters who have taken their grievances to the streets of America following the murder of George Floyd are young. As US scientists let’s take to the streets – at least metaphorically – to offer our support and to help make a difference toward a just society and a sustainable future for all – in sum, toward a sustainable peace. As Paul Ehrlich and his colleagues propose, “future generations deserve better from us.”
(1) Verbeek, P. (2018). Natural peace. In P. Verbeek & B.A. Peters (Eds.), Peace ethology. Behavioral processes and systems of peace. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Publishers
Poverty and a lack of adequate housing are considered human rights violations, as they interfere significantly with an individual’s ability to live safely and with dignity. For people experiencing poverty and/or homelessness, these situations impact all aspects of their lives, especially their physical health.
One way that these health issues manifest is in the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and HIV/AIDS among these populations. Overall, rates of STDs, particularly chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis, are at an all-time high in the U.S., according to a 2019 report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2017-18, there were nearly 2.5 million total reported cases of the three STDs, including over 1.7 million cases of chlamydia, 583,405 cases of gonorrhea, and 115,045 cases of syphilis.
While the CDC report examined STD prevalence among various demographics, it did not focus on STD rates among low-income or homeless populations. However, a literature review published in 2018 in the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases found that STD prevalence ranged from 2.1% to 52.5% among the homeless adult population.
This study also identified many of the factors that increase the risks of contracting an STD among homeless individuals. A number of these risk factors also apply to individuals living in poverty, even if they have stable housing. Additional studies offer more insight into the recent rise in STD cases, as well as recommendations for how to decrease their spread among all populations.
Factors contributing to STD prevalence among low-income and homeless populations
There are several factors that contribute to the prevalence of STDs in low-incomes and homeless communities, including lack of access to affordable prevention and treatment options; lack of comprehensive sex education; the comorbidity of issues like mental illness or substance abuse, and the stigma surrounding STDs.
According to a 2019 report by the National Coalition of STD Directors, “…poverty is both a cause of infection, and a barrier to the ability to seek care. Poorer populations are less likely to receive appropriate sexual health education, suffer higher rates of substance abuse, and may have more trouble accessing sexual health services.”
Poor or homeless individuals are less likely to have health insurance, or resources to pay for out-of-pocket healthcare costs. Many individuals living in southern states, including Alabama, fall into what is known as the coverage gap, meaning they make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to pay for health insurance.
Even if individuals have health insurance, their coverage may be limited to certain providers or services, and may exclude STD testing or treatment. The time and money it takes to travel to healthcare facilities, especially in predominantly rural states like Alabama, also present a barrier to care, even for insured individuals.
Additionally, budget cuts have forced many STD clinics to close or reduce their services. The loss of these clinics is harmful because not only do they often provide STD testing and treatment on a sliding fee scale, they are staffed by individuals with specialized knowledge in diagnosing and treating STDs.
The other primary factor in higher STD rates is a lack of comprehensive sex education. As the NCSD report states, “States typically define the broad parameters of sexual health education in public schools. Not surprisingly, these parameters vary widely among states.” Studies show a correalation between insufficient sex education and higher STD rates. Kathie Hiers, the CEO of AIDS Alabama, says the state represents a “perfect storm” for the spread of AIDS and other STDs, in part because of its “poor educational systems that often ignore sexual health.”
This lack of education about STDs also perpetuates the stigma surrounding them, which prevents people from seeking treatment, according to Hiers. Other conditions that are prevalent among poor and homeless populations, including mental illness, incarceration history, and intravenous drug use, also make individuals more susceptible to STDs, and present barriers to seeking treatment.
How to prevent the spread of STDs among low-income and homeless populations
The studies and experts cited in this post offer several recommendations for steps that can be taken, nationwide and in individual states, to decrease the spread of STDs among low-income and homeless populations, including:
Removing financial barriers to healthcare, including adopting Medicaid expansion. The Alabama Hospital Association estimates that by adopting Medicaid expansion, an additional 300,000 residents would be eligible for health insurance.
Increasing or restoring funding to public health agencies and STD clinics that provide free or low-cost testing and treatment.
Improving access to healthcare facilities through transportation and operating on evenings and weekends.
Providing comprehensive sex education in schools. In 2019, the Alabama House of Representatives failed to address a bill that would have made the state’s sex education curriculum more scientifically and medically accurate. The bill would have updated the curriculum’s language to address “sexually transmitted diseases” as “sexually transmitted infections,” which is considered less stigmatizing.
Expanding resources to support homeless individuals, and increasing their access to stable housing. A 2016 report by the Homelessness in Alabama Project offered several specific recommendations for addressing homelessness in Alabama.
UAB is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer committed to fostering a diverse, equitable and family-friendly environment in which all faculty and staff can excel and achieve work/life balance irrespective of race, national origin, age, genetic or family medical history, gender, faith, gender identity and expression as well as sexual orientation. UAB also encourages applications from individuals with disabilities and veterans.
