July 2020

By Dan Barry, The New York Times, July 12, 2020 An essential worker drove his cluttered Toyota Corolla through the early spring emptiness, past a sign outside a closed parochial school asking people to pray. Time to bear witness in a pandemic. He pulled up to the closed Lower Pottsgrove Elementary School, where masked employees were distributing bags and boxes of food. Dozens of cars waited in line for curbside pickup, many with children eager to spot their teachers. In the global context of...

As we endure the pain of lost loved ones, manage the anxiety of financial insecurity and potentially fret over becoming ill, it is a brilliant time for change in our country and around the world. There is a special kind of racist exclusion in America. When I took my young son to live in India, initially, he struggled everyday on the bus to school. There was a lot of hazing and bullying from older students. I remember him begging me to please take him to school in a rickshaw so that he didn’t...

By Aaron Shroyer, Housing Matters, July 8, 2020 Manufactured housing is one of the most affordable homeownership options available and is one potential solution to the nation’s affordable housing crisis. The per square foot cost of producing a manufactured home is less than half the cost of constructing comparable stick-built, single-family detached homes because of greater supply-chain flexibility, regulatory consistency, and lower on-site labor costs. This puts manufactured-housing...

By David Sirota, Too Much Information, July 9, 2020 The next time you hear conservative politicians insist they want “law and order,” hate “looting” and believe America can’t afford new government programs, show them two landmark reports that emerged in the last 24 hours. The data in those analyses tell the story of conservative politicians letting billionaires and corporations brazenly evade laws and effectively loot hundreds of billions of dollars from the public treasury — all while those...

Visit the Voices for Virginia's Children blog to learn more about the upcoming Racial Truth and Reconciliation Week! Artists and activists are encouraged to submit pieces that address cultural, historical, and racial trauma in addition to the embedded themes of community resilience, truth, reconciliation, and justice. Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities is increasingly called upon to help schools, businesses, and communities across Virginia achieve success through inclusion. Take a...

Ayana Bradshaw, MPH is the Administrative Director for the Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) and the Violence Prevention Initiative (VPI) at The Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. In this capacity she oversees all financial, administrative, operational, managerial, human resources and strategic planning components of the Center. Ms. Bradshaw has over 20 years of experience in multiple facets of public health, including but not limited to developing community health...

By Traci Pedersen, Psych Central, July 9, 2020 A new Canadian study seeks to flip the script on the common stereotype that teens are likely to be mean-spirited. The teen years can carry a negative reputation, often depicted in mainstream media, as perpetrators of bullying, cyber harassment or schoolyard battles, say the researchers. The new study focused on counterbalancing the commonly-used “bullying literature” to raise the discussion of kindness. Through this, the researchers seek to...

By Scarlett Lewis Pamela Brown contributed to this article. Ah, the joy of being at home. Now that most of my in-person speaking engagements and events have been canceled, I have been sheltering-in-place at my farm along with all my animals, including three dogs, a horse, a donkey, a mini horse, and lots of chickens. I love visiting schools and speaking to others in a public forum, but until I can go out on the road again (and I’m positive it will happen in the near future!) I've been...

Just a heads-up about a programme being broadcast tonight then available on iPlayer (in UK). 30 minutes looking at Scotland's approach to tackling violent crime by taking a broad 'public health approach' to tackle the roots of the problem. Apparently the journalist Kate Silverton has been retraining as a child psychologist so this is a pet project she wanted to highlight. Don't blame me if the programme is rubbish!

By Selena Simmons-Duffin and Pien Huang, National Public Radio, July 13, 2020 More than 1,000 current employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have signed a letter calling for the federal agency to address "ongoing and recurring acts of racism and discrimination" against Black employees, NPR has learned. In the letter, addressed to CDC Director Robert Redfield and dated June 30, the authors put their call for change in the context of the coronavirus pandemic's...

Inspired her work with ACEs, resilience and Walla Walla’s Community Resilience Initiative , documentary-film director Amy L. Erickson created Visceral: transforming trauma though theatre , which has its first screening at the 5 th Annual “Beyond Paper Tigers” conference June 24-25, 2020. The film features a number of Walla Walla residents, including Etiene Vela, a student at Walla Walla Community College (WWCC), whose life is transformed by performing in WWCC productions with Kevin Loomer,...