June 2020

JUNE 3, 2020| LISA IRISH | ARIZONA EDUCATION NEWS SERVICE When COVID-19 hit the Navajo Nation, it limited students’ educational opportunities after schools closed, eliminated essential school services, exposed ongoing inequities, and made health and economic hardships families face worse. Navajo health officials said COVID-19 started spreading across the nation after a tribal member attended a basketball tournament in early March then went to a church revival the next day in Chilchinbeto, a...

By Race Forward, June 2, 2020 In the days since four Minneapolis Police Department officers killed George Floyd, hundreds of demonstrations have broken out around the country. Race Forward stands in solidarity with the millions who have marched to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and for those Black lives who have been taken prematurely by police brutality. We join their condemnation of all forms of racist violence, whether state or state-sanctioned or from...

By Robert K. Ross, The California Endowment, May 13, 2020 Some of you may be aware that I very recently lost my life partner, my rock, my bride, and my best friend, Robin, to breast cancer. I am still grieving, processing, and the healing will take some time. Her passage obviously came at an already challenging time. On top of the health and economic tsunami that COVID-19 hath wrought, we also recently lost a talented, social justice-minded star at TCE in regional director Beatriz Solis – to...

By Jacqueline Garcia, Cal Matters, June 4, 2020 Seven of every ten residents of southeast Los Angeles County have lost their jobs or had their wages cut during the pandemic, and 40% have less than $500 in savings to help them survive the economic devastation, according to a survey released today. The survey was conducted for a Los Angeles foundation seeking information on how small cities in the region are faring, including Bell, Bell Gardens, East Los Angeles, Huntington Park, Maywood,...

By SSIR Editors, Stanford Social Innovation Review, June 1, 2020 The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers has ignited protests and focused the national discourse on institutional racism and how to eradicate it. SSIR's editors have assembled a list of resources to help leaders of social change and activists trying to put an end to this intractable American scourge. Racism in the United States has been a longstanding crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic has cast into an even...

From Greater Good Magazine, June 3, 2020 Our mission at the Greater Good Science Center is to elevate the human potential for compassion. But that does not mean we deny or dismiss the human potential for violence, particularly toward marginalized or dehumanized groups. or centuries, African Americans and other communities of color have been subject to this physical and structural violence, denied their humanity and often their basic right to exist. That’s why we are gathering Greater Good...

Dr. Moira Szilagyi, a pediatrician and interim chief of General Pediatrics at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), has a couple of tried-and-true methods of breaking down communication barriers with teenage patients, and they’ve worked well during the COVID-19 pandemic. One way is prefacing any query about mental health by saying that many of her teen patients are having a tough time, so they don’t feel think they’re the only one. “That’s usually sufficient,” she said, but if it...

By Hannah Sherfinski, The Cap Times, June 1, 2020 For two months, our country has been enduring the effects of COVID-19. With over 1 million COVID-19 cases reported in the U.S. and over 30 million Americans filing for unemployment, many of us are panic-stricken about our future physical, mental, social and financial well-being. Worst of all, we must cope with these fears in isolation. These intense feelings of uncertainty and desolation may trigger the body’s instinctual fight, flight or...

By Dana Lambert, EdSource, June 1, 2020 California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond’s voice broke as he recounted the last moments of George Floyd’s life as he lay dying on a Minneapolis street. “I am haunted by the sound of his voice, begging to breathe, begging for life and we must address that trauma head on,” Thurmond said during an address on Facebook Monday. “We must have hard conversations.” Floyd, an African American man, was asphyxiated by a white police officer...

By Katie Orr, KQED, June 3, 2020 Child care provider Pat Alexander has hung onto her in-home child care center during the COVID-19 pandemic, but just barely. Alexander was caring for 13 kids in her Elk Grove home in Sacramento County, but now she's down to three. So far, she's survived the hit to her income. But a proposed 10% cut to the amount of money the state gives her to care for children from low-income families would force her to re-evaluate her business. Gov. Gavin Newsom has...

By Sarah Bohn, Magnus Lofstrom and Lynette Ubois, Public Policy Institute of California, June 3, 2020 At no time in recent history have deep racial disparities in well-being appeared as obvious as they do today. The death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers last week is the latest in a long history of violence against African Americans in this country. At the same time, the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected Californians according to race. As glaring and...

Public health advisory concerning COVID-19 has been posted on the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Disease Prevention & Control Website at: https://www.sfcdcp.org/health-alerts-emergencies/health-alerts/ . Copied from advisory: SITUATIONAL UPDATE Emerging data indicates populations experiencing structural oppression bear a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 disease and death, have a higher prevalence of predisposing co-morbidities, and are more likely to experience conditions...