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By WSKG, May 23, 2022 An estimated 100 million people around the world are forcibly displaced, the highest number on record, according to the United Nations. The figure represents 1% of the world’s population and would be equivalent to the 14th most populous country, the U.N. said in its statement . At the end of 2021, 90 million had been displaced from their countries, including 14.4 million people displaced within their countries’ borders due to violence. An estimated 23.7 million people,...

By Michael Segalov, Photo: Netflix, The Guardian, May 31, 2022 Barely three minutes into the first episode of Heartstopper – Netflix’s new LGBTQ+ coming-of-age romcom series, which has been a knockout success with critics and viewers – I turned to my boyfriend, curled up next to me on the sofa. Aimed primarily at a younger audience, the show is about an openly gay male sixth former at an English comprehensive (played by 18-year-old Joe Locke) who falls in love with the school’s most popular...

By Brooke Baldwin, Photo: Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty, The Atlantic, May 31, 2022 T his week, for the first time in my career, I found out about a mass shooting in America just like most of you: not from a TV producer breaking into my earpiece on live TV, or a CNN internal email alert, or from someone shouting in the newsroom, but from a friend. And I’m processing it with something new: a feeling of deep cynicism. Before, when I was in it, I believed something would change. At CNN, where I...

By Choose Love, Image: Screenshot from interview, Choose Love, May 25, 2022 Scarlett Lewis, mother of Sandy Hook victim Jesse, shares her frustration with MSNBC anchor Katy Tur after the recent elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. My reaction is too little too late. We need to have a plan. Every school shooting is preventable. The fact that I’m talking to you today, 10 years after Sandy Hook, 20 years after Columbine, and we’re still having the same narrative. We’re doing the same...

Ingrid Cockhren, PACEs Connection CEO, welcomes Rev. Deanna Hollas , the nation’s first known “minister of gun violence prevention,” for this week’s episode of "History. Culture. Trauma." on Thursday, June 2, at 1 p.m. PT; 4 p.m. ET. They will discuss the more than 60 mass shootings in the United States during the month of May 2022 — including the shooting of 10 Black adults and one White adult in Buffalo, New York, and last week’s killing of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.

The collective trauma of the past two years has accelerated America's already dire gun violence epidemic. Recent shootings in Buffalo, NY , Uvalde, TX and Tulsa, OK have put 2022 on track to have a record number of mass shootings in a single year. The trauma of gun violence in our country ripples far beyond the individuals lost or injured and greatly impacts their families , loved ones and our society, as a whole. How can we, as a country, address this epidemic of violence? How can we use...

In a wonderful step towards ensuring better care for postpartum parents, Oregon joins three other states in expanding postpartum Medicaid coverage to one year. Please head to https://www.forbes.com/sites/erinspencer1/2022/05/31/four-new-states-expand-postpartum-medicaid-coverage-to-one-year/?sh=32a132e923d0&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=forbeswomen&cdlcid=5d0105691802c8c524b7f679 to read the full article. This is thrilling and a significant step forward...

Twenty years ago I had a major brain change. I didn’t know how to move forward. It was like I was stuck in a time warp. Then I started writing. First mind mapping and then stories and then book after book. Characters filled my mind with hope and delight as memories and scattered pieces of my life were woven into a pattern that led to understanding my true self. Although writing was therapeutic for me it wasn’t until I began editing my work and getting them ready for publication that true...

By Heather Cox Richardson, Photo: Unsplash, Letters from an American, May 26, 2022 One of the key things that drove the rise of the current Republican Party was the celebration of a certain model of an ideal man, patterned on the image of the American cowboy. Republicans claimed to be defending individual men who could protect their families if only the federal government would stop interfering with them. Beginning in the 1950s, those opposed to government regulation and civil rights...

By Sarah Mosquera, Photo: Sarah Mosqueda/Montana Free Press, The Guardian, May 27, 2022 The sound of drumming filled the rolling hills of the National Bison Range. Members of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) and neighbors gathered under a large tent to sing and dance in celebration of a historic event: the tribes’ reclamation of management of the bison range after more than a century of federal management and nearly two decades of negotiations. “This all dates back to the...

By Heidi de Marco and Angela Hart, Photo: Heidi de Marco/KHN, California Healthline, May 31, 2022 Every Friday, Frances De Los Santos waits for a shipment of healthy, prepared meals to land on her front porch at the edge of the Mojave Desert. From the box, the 80-year-old retired property manager with stage 4 chronic kidney disease unpacks frozen food trays that she can heat in the microwave. Her favorite is sweet-and-sour chicken. In the three months since she began eating the customized...

By Petula Dvorak, Photo: Courtesy of the Martorella Family, The Washington Post, May 30, 2022 When she was growing up, Memorial Day meant a trip to the Honor Wall in the center of Deana Martorella Orellana’s hometown, where the names of Charleroi, Pa., men who died in the world’s battlefields are etched in black granite. Her family is making that trip without her this year. She died with inspirational notes stuffed in her pockets. That March morning in 2016, she had gone to Veterans Affairs...