June 2021

By The Associated Press, NBC News, June 25, 2021 A Massachusetts town has created a fund to pay reparations to Black residents as communities and institutions across the country look to atone for slavery, discrimination and past wrongs amid the nation’s ongoing racial reckoning. The Amherst Town Council on Monday voted 12-1 in favor of establishing the fund and requiring a two-thirds vote of the council to authorize any spending from it, The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported . Michele Miller,...

By Stacy Cowley and Ella Koeze, The New York Times, June 27, 2021 Though Congress approved billions in aid for small companies to help them keep paying their employees during the pandemic, there was a big problem: It wasn’t reaching the tiniest and neediest businesses. Then two small companies came out of nowhere and, through an astute mix of technology and advertising — and the dogged pursuit of an opportunity that big banks missed — found a way to help those businesses. They also helped...

By Chandelis Duster, CNN Politics, June 24, 2021 Debt relief payments to farmers of color from the US Department of Agriculture were blocked nationwide Wednesday by a federal judge in Florida, the second halt on the payments as push back mounts against the assistance that some White farmers say is racially discriminatory. Florida District Judge Marcia Morales Howard issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by a White farmer alleging the debt relief program authorized under the...

By Jesse Bedyan, The Mercury News, June 23, 2021 Since 2020, the top 10 Silicon Valley moguls have more than doubled their net worth to $571 billion while the average per capita income among Latinx residents in the valley increased by 5.4% to $30,618, according to the second annual Silicon Valley Pain Index released Tuesday. At the same time, the average income of Black residents declined by 1 percent to $40,381. “We’ve created Kings,” said Scott Myers-Lipton, the report’s lead author, “and...

By Dominique Gené, The Charlatan, June 24, 2021 A my Found said she remembers reading with kindergarten children from Grade 4 to Grade 6. She said it was her favourite thing to do. Her elementary school, Briargreen Public School in Ottawa, offered a program called reading buddies where older students were paired with younger ones to read together. It was programs like reading buddies and working with children at summer camps that Found said motivated her to become an educator. Found just...

By Ruth Gilbert and Rebecca Lacey, The Lancet, April 30, 2021 Having a parent who was maltreated as a child has been identified as the single most important risk factor for child maltreatment, but there is insufficient evidence from high-quality studies.1, 2 To date, only one published cohort study1 has used prospective, population-based administrative data to minimise biases due to recall, selective recruitment, response, and loss to follow up. In that study, the authors included 85 084...

While we like to think of our law enforcement officers as stoic, strong, and resilient, officers are not immune from the effects of trauma simply because they wear a uniform, enforce the law, or carry a badge and gun. Precisely because of their profession, they experience both primary and secondary trauma at higher levels due to their proximity to death, illness, accidents, and crimes.

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker, June 24, 2021 S ince the declaration of Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s birthday as a federal holiday, our country has celebrated the civil-rights movement, valorizing its tactics of nonviolence as part of our national narrative of progress toward a more perfect union. Yet we rarely ask about the short life span of those tactics. By 1964, nonviolence seemed to have run its course, as Harlem and Philadelphia ignited in flames to protest police brutality,...

By Christopher Flavelle and Kalen Goodluck, The New York Times, June 27, 2021 In Chefornak, a Yu’pik village near the western coast of Alaska, the water is getting closer. The thick ground, once frozen solid, is thawing. The village preschool, its blue paint peeling, sits precariously on wooden stilts in spongy marsh between a river and a creek. Storms are growing stronger. At high tide these days, water rises under the building, sometimes keeping out the children, ages 3 to 5. The shifting...

By Agnes Chen, WBUR, June 25, 2021 When Jackson Morgan thinks about who he was at age 18 and 19 — before the pandemic — he puts his head down and pushes his feet into the sand outside his family's house on Plum Island. “The guy I was a year ago, I was very different. I mean, I was a hothead. I had anger issues and stuff,” Morgan says. “I would damn near blackout when I got really mad and start to fight, and I wouldn’t remember bits and pieces of it.” But the pandemic changed everything for...

By Office of News and Public Information, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, Medicine, June 25, 2021 The Executive Office of the President should consider establishing a task force to prevent renter evictions and mitigate housing instability caused by the pandemic, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Building on existing social programs that support those struggling with poverty and housing instability, the report proposes...

Healing the Heart Through the Creative Arts, Education & Advocacy Hope, Healing & Help for Trauma, Abuse & Mental Health “ Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars”. Kahlil Gibran The Surviving Spirit Newsletter June 2021 http://newsletters.survivingspirit.com/pdfs/2021-06-The_Surviving_Spirit_Newsletter_June_2021.pdf Hi folks, June is NATIONAL PTSD AWARENESS MONTH I thought I would share a few of the resources that have...