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While political eyes are on the November 2 Virginia election as an early electoral test for the Biden Administration and precursor to 2022 mid-term elections, the leaders of Virginia’s 27 Trauma-Informed Community Networks are building awareness and support for their work that should be compelling for the victor, regardless of political party.

At the heart of any healthy and productive relationship is trust. However, if their formative years were characterized by physical, emotional, or traumatic abuse, they can be robbed of the ability to trust others both at home and in the workplace. For individuals working as law enforcement professionals, finding ways to build or rebuild trust in the midst of trauma is imperative.

By Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report, October 25, 2021 At the beginning of 2020, Brisandi Ruiz was hopeful about the year ahead. Her two-year-old was enrolled in a high-quality preschool program near their home in Greenbelt, Maryland. The office manager of a medical technician company, Ruiz was working to validate her medical degree from her home country of the Dominican Republic, so she could practice medicine in the United States. Her husband, Francisco Villar, had steady work in the...

By Reece Jones, The New York Times, October 28, 2021 The searing images of Border Patrol agents on horseback charging at unarmed Haitian men and women shocked many Americans last month, including President Biden. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said , “He believes the footage and photos are horrific. They don’t represent who we are as a country.” Many Democrats made the same argument during the Trump administration, condemning a series of harsh anti-immigrant policies, from the...

By Sherry Glied and Richard Frank, Fast Company, October 28, 2021 At the end of May, tennis star Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open citing anxiety and depression. A few months later Simone Biles missed a significant portion of the Olympics for reasons related to her own mental health. These cases and others have drawn much-needed attention to the toll mental health conditions exact—for employees and employers—in workplaces that go well beyond high-profile athletics to warehouses,...

By Linda Poon and Jeff Green, Bloomberg Equality + City Lab, October 28, 2021 Earlier this year, Philadelphia’s partnership with the student-led group Philly Fighting Covid Inc. abandoned testing sites in Black neighborhoods . It seemed like the latest affront in a long legacy of racism that has fueled distrust in the medical system, dating back to the infamous Tuskegee experiments in the 1930s. But Philadelphia, after a slow start, is closing out the year with one of the highest Black...

In The Black Panther movie, we marveled over Okoye and her magnificent band of the Dora Milaje, powerful female warriors. In this true-to-life depiction, Wakanda is Dahomey, present day, Benin, West Africa. Okoye is a famous female warrior and forgotten queen named Queen Hangbe who lead the most powerful army in West Africa fighting against the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the MINO also known as the Amazon Women of Dahomey. Today, we are remembering their brilliance, fierceness, discipline...

Sharpen announces a free emotional wellness toolkit for educators.

By Henry Louis Gates Jr., The New York Times, October 12, 2021 “The freedom to write”: PEN America’s always resonant motto has a special resonance for Black authors, because for so many of them, that freedom was one they fought hard for. “Liberation” and “literacy” were inextricable. “For the horrors of the American Negro’s life there has been almost no language,” as James Baldwin once noted . Recall, first, that in many states it was illegal for an enslaved person even to learn how to read...

By Brian Calfano, Spectrum News 1, November 1, 2021 If the effects from ACEs tell us about human challenges, Kathy Wade’s work in Cincinnati and beyond shows us human possibilities. “We know that art is our most common bond, cause art makes us human," she said. The jazz singer turned entrepreneur turned child advocate runs several programs under the umbrella of her organization, Learning Through Art. And the EMMY-award winning "Books Alive!" series, featuring the indominable Paige Turner, is...

By Sam Levine, The Guardian, October 28, 2021 Hello Fight to vote readers, You don’t have to be an expert to see why Texas’ new maps for its state legislature and congress discriminate against minority voters. Ninety-five per cent of the state’s growth over the last decade has been driven by minorities. But the new maps Texas enacted don’t include a single new district where there is a Hispanic majority. It’s an astounding fact that underscores how powerfully Texas Republicans have wielded...

By John McWhorter, The New York Times, October 29, 2021 Condoleezza Rice, the first Black female secretary of state, who now heads Stanford University’s Hoover Institution — and who, by her account, attended segregated schools in the Deep South — was a guest last week on “The View.” When asked about the critical race theory debate, she said , “One of the worries that I have about the way that we’re talking about race” sometimes these days is that “somehow white people now have to feel guilty...