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

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  • How two local newsrooms are sewing diversity into the fabric of their organizations

    During a year of racial-justice protests nationwide, journalists whose job is to hold institutions to account for racist outcomes have turned their gazes inward, to their own newsrooms. Their efforts have won some progress in diverse staffing at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis and the Express-News in San Antonio. The burden has fallen largely to journalists of color to press for newsrooms that better reflect their communities. In Minneapolis, managers promised a trio of new hires and better training. San Antonio editors began hiring columnists of color in the majority-Latino city.

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  • Journalism beyond competition

    To combat the dire or non-existent future that many local news outlets throughout Colorado were facing, journalism institutions stopped competing with one another and instead joined forces to create a statewide collaborative. Although "kinks are still being worked," the Colorado News Collaborative (COLab) has already produced investigative and human interest stories through this new model of sharing of resources, and those stories were published in multiple outlets across the state.

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  • More People With Felony Convictions Can Vote, but Roadblocks Remain

    A longstanding campaign to restore voting rights to people with felony convictions led nine states since the 2016 presidential election to create or expand such rights, benefiting hundreds of thousands of potential voters. As of 2016, an estimated 6.1 million people were unable to vote because of a felony conviction. As that number has dropped, advocates have faced another obstacle: getting newly enfranchised people to register and vote. Nationwide, a number of advocacy and public-interest groups are racing to register the formerly incarcerated as the 2020 election approaches.

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  • In Safe Hands: First complex heart surgery at Reddington Hospital a huge success despite COVID-19

    A partnership between a Nigerian hospital and a cardiac interventionist group is helping to "bridge the gap in availability of quality cardiac and critical care services" for patients who are in need of care. Although the system was first tested unexpectedly during the coronavirus pandemic, it has shown early success in building and training local specialists to complete cardiac surgeries.

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  • Truth and Redistribution

    Racial injustice in America and the resulting wealth gap are a result of entrenched systemic inequities that can only be addressed if a collective acknowledgement of the past is made much like it was in South Africa. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) identified and cataloged the trauma endured during the apartheid era in order to shed light on the physical, mental, and economic toll of South African apartheid. Publicly and collectively acknowledging the trauma allowed the nation to peacefully transition into post-apartheid. Acknowledgement is the first step to undoing inequity.

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  • Can Prosecutors Be Taught to Avoid Jail Sentences?

    A nonprofit consulting firm, Prosecutor Impact, advances the cause of reducing incarceration and related reforms by helping reform-minded elected district attorneys confront one of the greatest obstacles to change: their own staff's opposition. In Columbus, a two-week curriculum educated front-line prosecutors about local services that can serve as problem-solving alternatives to punishment. It also taught them about poverty's challenges and engaged them in dialogue with prisoners, to make them more open to alternative approaches, which a local defense lawyer says was successful.

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  • Community gatherings offer healing for emotional wounds after disasters

    Wildfires cause anxiety and other mental-health problems, but Sonoma County's Latino people can get help from a convivencia: a community gathering hosted by one of the nonprofit health and community centers in the area. To connect with people who may distrust or be blocked from using government-funded mental health care, or who may distrust mental health care altogether, the support-group therapy comes in the guise of a social gathering. Some sessions may focus as well on domestic violence or other social problems.

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  • The Forgotten Stones That Still Inspire Turks to Help Their Neighbors

    Building on a history of anonymous charity, a mosque in northern Istanbul started a pop-up communal food bank to help those most impacted by the pandemic. The initiative is one of several mutual aid efforts underway in the municipality, with each paying homage to the nation's historical use of a charity stone - a place where "people who had money would leave some on top of the stone, and those who didn’t would take some, according to their need."

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  • Courts rule

    Almost half of U.S. states guarantee citizens’ rights to petition for ballot measures, but the coronavirus made gathering signatures in person infeasible. Massachusetts courts allowed electronic signatures, but other states have not approved virtual citizen initiative campaigns. Ballot initiatives allow citizens to advance solutions and enact structural changes without relying on support from elected officials. MA groups used DocuSign to gather 30,000 signatures to get a proposal for ranked choice voting on the ballot. Not all MA groups were able to quickly or successfully pivot to the e-signature process.

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  • Minnesota Freedom Fund Bails Out Those Who Can't Afford It

    The Minnesota Freedom Fund spent its first four years as a modestly funded nonprofit that used donations to bail people out of jail, as a means of countering a cash bail system that critics see as unfair to people living in poverty and people of color. From 2016 to early 2020, it had a budget of $100,000 per year and bailed out 563 people. Protests against Minneapolis police misconduct produced a windfall of $30 million in donations. The fund has excess funds, beyond what's needed to bail out protesters, and faces some criticism that it has freed people accused of violence.

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