Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • What's Happened To Hawaii's Police Shootings Review Board? Audio icon

    The groundswell for greater accountability in police shootings has barely caused a ripple in Hawaii, where the state’s Law Enforcement Officer Independent Review board has finished only one case in its first three years of existence and has suspended meetings during the pandemic. With one of its two citizen member slots vacant on an otherwise law-enforcement-heavy board, the panel fails a basic tenet of accountability by severely limiting public access to the cases it’s considering and its deliberations, says one critic.

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  • Home alone yet connected: Casa Feliz equips seniors to be tech savvy

    Casa Feliz works with seniors to foster good health and emotional well-being. The staff took several measures to help seniors cope with COVID-19 stay at home orders. They organized opportunities for social interaction and activities over zoom, where the seniors exercised together, played games, and did other creative activities. Staff visited homes, sent fliers with tutorials and recorded videos to ensure all seniors could access Zoom. They also worked with a food bank to deliver groceries each week, where they would include any materials, like art supplies, that they would need for the Zoom activities.

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  • For Indigenous Zapotec Families, Spinning Becomes a Lifeline

    Mark Brown has brought Ghandian economic principles of economic justice and local autonomy to the Mexican countryside to form a farm-to-garment textile business that employs villagers who once made woolen textiles until the industrial clothing era started producing cheap synthetic clothing and rendered their craft unprofitable. Khadi Oaxaca aims to regenerate the village way of life in a sustainable way and employs several hundred villagers who grow the cotton, spin the thread, design the clothing and bring it to market for tourists - bringing a previously economically depressed village out of poverty.

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  • ‘I just need a connection': the refugees teaching languages across borders

    NaTakallam offers classes in Arabic, Spanish, Persian and French that are taught by refugees. The 64 teachers conduct classes with 770 students entirely online, allowing people from all over the world to learn from native speakers. It also circumvents work restrictions for refugees in their new homes, which means they can earn money. The group’s teachers also speak in university classes, offer translation services, and some now work on New York University’s Arabic-language program. Deep friendships that help combat the isolation experienced by many refugees have also emerged from the online classes.

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  • How Bangor drug court participants are getting help staying sober during the pandemic

    Bangor drug court in Maine has turned to the use of Zoom to keep in contact with program participants during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although meeting via video call can disguise some physical symptoms of drug use, this new process has so far seen success with all participants still enrolled and one even graduating from the program.

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  • How Decades Of Bans On Police Chokeholds Have Fallen Short

    One of the key police reforms sought after the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, bans on chokeholds and other neck restraints, has failed to curb abuses in some of the nation’s largest police departments because of lax enforcement and easily found loopholes in such policies. Despite existing bans, some as old as 30-40 years, multiple people in those cities have died when neck restraints were used during their arrests with few repercussions. Lack of effective training and disagreements over such tactics’ efficacy are among other reasons experts say the practice persists.

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  • Turning manure into money

    Dairy farmers in Massachusetts are working with Vanguard Renewables, a food waste energy company, and Dominion Energy, an electric utility company, to capture manure methane gas from cows and convert it into natural gas. They are also adding food waste to the manure from manufacturers and retailers to increase energy output and increase income for farmers. The partnership has expanded to dairy farms in other states who are looking to lower their greenhouse gas emissions.

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  • How Massachusetts v. EPA Forced the U.S. Government to Take On Climate Change

    In order to get the U.S. government to take action on climate change, 30 environmental groups and 12 state governments joined forces to sue the Environmental Protection Agency arguing that it was required to regulate greenhouse gas emissions according to the Clean Air Act. While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor in the landmark Massachusetts v. EPA case in 2007, the justices’ decision didn’t specify how to reduce that pollution and future lawsuits could challenge the government’s requirement to reign in those emissions.

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  • There's already an alternative to calling the police Audio icon

    CAHOOTS, the 31-year-old program considered a model for the growing number of community-based crisis programs, fielded more than 24,000 calls in 2019, less than 1% of which required police involvement. The program's unarmed first responders use "unconditional positive regard," meaning support and acceptance for people in a mental health crisis. Although Eugene is relatively small, its proven system of de-escalation, meant to avoid police violence, has now been adopted in Denver, Oakland, Portland, and elsewhere.

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  • Thinking Outside the Box to Test for Covid-19 in Rural Kentucky

    When an anonymous donor sent a corporate wellness director a offered to cover the costs for 1,000 COVID-19 test kits and processing, the director created a task force and partnered with two other local entities to create a drive-through testing site. Although the operation required a larger donation from the anonymous donor and the future of being able to restock tests is uncertain, the group has been able to offer free tests to local community members as well those from surrounding areas.

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