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

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  • A GOP Governor and BLM Activists Agreed on Restoring Voting Rights to Felons. Will It Last?

    More than 3,000 Iowans voted in the 2020 presidential election thanks to an executive order signed by the Republican governor after a protest campaign by activists to erase Iowa's permanent ban on voting by people with felony records. But that number was just a fraction of those newly eligible to vote, due to limitations in the order and a lackluster effort to inform the public. Iowa has a disproportionately high number of disenfranchised Black citizens who could be helped by a more permanent constitutional fix. That fix has now been stalled by the choice to act by executive order.

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  • With free print newspaper, Indian farmers record their protest

    Because of internet shutdowns, six friends created a bilingual newspaper to document and record the farmer protests in India. Thousands of farmers have been protesting for weeks about the government’s new agricultural laws. Since there are many older farmers and the government has blocked the internet, they give out free print copies of their biweekly “Trolley Times” newspaper with information on speeches, medical aid, and community kitchens. While producing the newspaper has become harder, they are able to print about 5,000 copies for the farmers.

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  • ‘Make no mistake': Drag queens are leading a racial reckoning in Chicago's famous LGBTQ neighborhood

    The Chicago Black Drag Council launched after a series of protests that called on Chicago’s LGBTQ neighborhood to address racial discrimination and oppression. A handful of businesses quickly agreed to a live-streamed town hall to discuss ways to increase inclusivity. As a result, a prominent host of popular drag shows was ousted for racial discrimination and the business chamber dropped the neighborhood’s nickname, “Boystown,” from marketing materials because it is not inclusive. The Drag Council has also raised tens of thousands of dollars in cash and supplies to support Black- and trans-led initiatives.

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  • How grass-roots efforts by Georgia's Latinos helped tip the Senate races

    Black and Latino organizers with the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights (GLAHR) knocked on over 300,000 doors in between the general election and Senate runoffs. Canvassing in predominantly Latino neighborhoods, they also reached out to ineligible voters to encourage them to urge their U.S. born family members to vote in their family’s interests. Latino support of Democratic candidates increased in the Senate runoffs adding to narrow Democratic victories. GLAHR also helped elect the first Black sheriff of Gwinnett County, who quickly ended a program that allowed the county jail to collaborate with ICE.

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  • On the Columbia River, something stirs beyond the dams

    The Grand Coulee, a 500-foot-tall dam on the Columbia River, nearly eradicated the salmon population that the Colville Tribes relied on, but the Indigenous community initiated a restoration effort to save the fish. They released by hand 100 adult Chinook salmon and scientists were able to confirm that the species was spawning on the upper part of the dam for the first time in 80 years.

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  • How unemployed Californians launched new careers in a pandemic with 9 weeks of training

    Digital Upskill Sacramento is providing 9-week paid training sessions to participants who want to enter the tech industry. The program is allowing people who didn’t have the time, resources, or opportunity before to get hands-on training in addition to potential employment opportunities. This initiative is a result of a collaboration between several organizations and funding from the city. The funds were allotted for job training in growing industries, especially as the pandemic resulted in the loss of many jobs.

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  • In the first six months of health care professionals replacing police officers, no one they encountered was arrested

    Denver's STAR (Support Team Assisted Response) program deliberately reduces potentially violent encounters between uniformed police officers and troubled people by responding to certain low-level crises with a mental health clinician and a medic. In STAR's first six months, the team offered 748 people help rather than jail, without requiring any arrests to resolve problems. With more resources, the team could have handled more than 2,500 incidents. The police chief supports the program's expansion, saying it frees his officers to handle more serious matters.

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  • 'Changing the game': Black in Technology works to support Black students in computer science

    Black in Technology was created to support Black students in STEM at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The organization has planned numerous events for its members related to mentorship, recruitment, and community building on campus in the STEM and technology industry, and successfully helped them receive internships and job opportunities, while raising the visibility of Black and Latinx students in technology fields.

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  • HBCU student media confronts local news bias

    In 2018, The A&T Register, the online student-run newspaper for North Carolina A&T State University, the largest Black university in the country, conducted a media investigation. It examined the way local media wrote headlines that associated the university with crime. They examined headlines that fell into two categories; those that used the campus as a locator for crime, or headlines that based outdated affiliations. Then, the editor-in-chief, Alexis Wray, presented their findings to local outlets hoping to effect change. They did. Their investigation led to changes in future headlines.

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  • How New York Quietly Ended Its Street Drug War

    From 2009 through 2019, street arrests for drug possession and sales fell by 80% in New York City, sparing hundreds of thousands of people harsh incarceration terms while defying warnings that more lenient enforcement of low-level drug crimes would wreak havoc on the city. The reforms came about because of persistent advocacy by groups opposed to racially disparate enforcement and its social harms, as well as legislative and court-imposed limits on punishment and stop-and-frisk policing. Now ticketing rather than arrest is used far more often for all types of drugs.

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