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

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  • Wyoming Voter Turnout Lags Averages; Could Access Reforms Help?

    Colorado’s election reforms have increased voter participation in local, state, and national races. Voters can register to vote online or in-person, even on election day, and eligibility is cross-checked with existing state agencies. State voter registration rolls track address changes, rather than automatically purging voter-roll. Every registered voter is mailed a ballot that can be returned by mail or dropped off at official sites. Turnout increased from 66% in 2008 to 72% in 2016 and was the second highest in the nation's 2018 midterm elections. Several other states have implemented Colorado’s reforms.

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  • The Pandemic is Resurrecting India's Folk Arts by Forcing Performers to Make Their Online Debut

    Shaale.com is an online platform that hosts performances and learning content on classical and folk arts from India. The coronavirus pandemic meant lost income for most of the country’s performers, especially those in rural areas. So many have figured out ways to monetize their arts by putting them online where overseas and domestic subscribers pay to access the performances. Other platforms, such as the nonprofit Kalbeliya World, provides performers with a chance to earn money by offering classes to people from around the world. Most of the students are from the Europe and the Americas.

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  • Fighting Wildfires With Fire

    The absence of an active "fire culture" in the American West has contributed greatly to the scale of catastrophic wildfires fueled by decades of aggressive fire-suppression tactics. In Florida, Australia, and pockets of experimentation in California, ancient practices of controlled burns – frequent low-intensity burns – minimize the buildup of dead-tree fuel on the ground. Such human-set fires have been known to go out of control. And their smoke can be a health hazard. But Native American and other indigenous cultures have shown the overall benefits of letting forests burn.

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  • California's Project Homekey Turns Hotels into Housing

    Long-term efforts to convert vacant hotels into housing for people experiencing homelessness jumped on an accelerated track in California when $312 million in pandemic-relief money paid for 2,389 housing units around the state. Project Homekey, an extension of Project Roomkey's program to put unhoused people temporarily in hotels, is putting a dent in the shortage of permanent housing options in cities like Oakland. Because the pandemic undercut the hotel business, owners are more willing to sell properties.

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  • The Obama Justice Department Had a Plan to Hold Police Accountable for Abuses. The Trump DOJ Has Undermined It.

    One of the most powerful tools used to reform policing practices, widely credited with restoring public faith in such troubled departments as the Los Angeles Police Department, is called a consent decree. The U.S. Justice Department sues cities where police abuses are seen as rampant. Then, under the watchful eye of a judge and independent monitor, the department agrees to a package of reforms. Under the Trump Justice Department, though, the tool has gone unused in new cases. In existing cases, the government has become passive, allowing cities to flout their agreements without consequence.

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  • Europe's New Trick Against Wildfires: Let It Burn

    Led by Portugal and Spain, European nations have shifted their responses to wildfires from a heavy emphasis on suppression to a more prevention-based approach. Climate change has increased fire risk greatly. By letting smaller fires burn, to reduce the fuel available to future megafires, and with other forest-management methods, Mediterranean countries have had no large blazes so far in 2020. Portugal, three years after a massive fire killed at least 120, registered its lowest number of fires in a decade. In Spain, prevention includes Fire Flocks, herds of sheep and goats whose grazing cleans up forests.

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  • Here's How Chicago Police Spent 4 Million Hours Of Anti-Violence Overtime

    As Chicago touts the latest in a series of anti-violence police units, a look back at the Violence Reduction Initiative launched in 2012 teaches lessons about how a program that claims credit for falling violence still might be termed a failure for its lack of focus and for the collateral damage it inflicts on a suffering community. VRI spent $4 million on police overtime to saturate 20 South and West Side areas, targeting not only illegal gun possession but a host of minor offenses, burdening mostly Black residents with parking fines and frequent police stops, alienating them from their protectors.

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  • Here Comes the Neighborhood

    In New York's and San Francisco's Chinatowns, groups responding to anti-Asian hate crimes and harassment illustrate the tension between community-led public safety efforts that either rely on the police for assistance or actively avoid entanglement with the police because of a lack of community trust. The groups actively patrol streets and get to know residents and mediate disputes, maintaining a visible presence as a deterrent. There's no evidence they have reduced anti-Asian bias incidents, but residents of the two neighborhoods, mainly business owners, said both types of groups make them feel safer.

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  • In Rio, Mapping Gunshots Can Backfire

    Crime-tracking mobile apps give millions of Brazilians crowdsourced data on urban violence, alerting people to dangerous places and filling gaps in government data on shootings, robberies, and other risks. But apps such as Fogo Cruzado (“Crossfire”) and Onde Tem Tiroteio (“Where There's a Shooting”) offer statistically crude glimpses of crime, distorted by media and racial biases that one expert blames for myths about the risks people actually face.

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  • Utah Is Trying To Prevent Gun Suicides. Are Other States Paying Attention?

    Concerned about the high numbers of suicides in the state, Utah's local government introduced a three-pronged approach to preventing further suicides that hinged on targeting gun owners and Second Amendment activists. Although there has been some push back along the way, suicide rates have decreased since the state shifted their approach from awareness-only to one that is "data-driven and aims to involve community members from gun store owners to high school sports coaches."

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