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Fujitsu supercomputer will explore origins of the universe – IT-Online

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

Researchers at the University of Regensburg in Germany are extending their exploration of the origins of the universe boosted by a new Fujitsu supercomputer, the PrimeHPC FX700 underpinned by the new Arm-based Fujitsu A64FX processor.

The universitys QPace4 (QCD Parallel Computing Engine 4) project can now reach new insights, using a supercomputer based on technology developed by Fujitsu for the supercomputer Fugaku, recently ranked number one in the TOP500 list of the worlds supercomputers.

The installation of QPace4 makes the University of Regensburg the first user in Europe to use Fujitsus PrimeHPC FX700 with A64FX processors (CPUs) the latest in a long series of supercomputer first-to-market milestones achieved by Fujitsu.

These CPUs are compliant with Arms Armv8.2-A SVE, the newest instruction set architecture for high-performance servers, and are particularly energy efficient.

Scientists at the University of Regensburg are leveraging the significant increase in compute capability for numerical simulations as part of its exploration of quantum chromodynamics (QCD).

This work aims to understand fundamental particles better, including the inner structure of the proton, and ultimately to determine the state of the universe immediately after the Big Bang.

The supercomputer will also be used by the University of Regensburg in the field of bioinformatics, with a focus on cancer research and immunology.

QPace4 is the fourth supercomputer in the framework of SFB/TRR-55, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It utilises the same processor as the supercomputer Fugaku, which was jointly developed by Fujitsu with the world-renowned Riken Center for Computational Science in Kobe, Japan.

As well as superior performance per watt, the A64FX processor also incorporates Scalable Vector Extensions (SVEs). Developed for applications in high performance computing (HPC), this speeds up complex calculations by allowing the same mathematical operation to be carried out in parallel on large amounts of data.

In addition, the processor is coupled to an extremely fast main memory (high bandwidth memory, or HBM2), which for most applications is just as important as pure computing power, delivering a highly balanced ratio of computing power, memory bandwidth and network bandwidth, and avoiding performance bottlenecks.

A further important difference is that the Fujitsu systems computing power is not based on graphics cards. This makes it easier to program, especially in the case of massive parallelisation, which is essential for so-called grand challenge applications.

The deployment of a new supercomputer in Regensburg is the latest example of the Universitys partnership with Fujitsu, based on HPC and supercomputers in particular. In 2016 it took ownership, together with the University of Wuppertal, of the Fujitsu QPace3 supercomputer, installed at the Jlich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) near Cologne.

Professor Tilo Wettig, PhD, professor of physics at the University of Regensburg, says: Again Fujitsu has provided the University of Regensburg with the ultimate supercomputer to progress our work on fundamental physics and research into vital aspects of human health, such as cancer and immunology.

This partnership has proven highly successful over many years. We applaud Fujitsus commitment to maximizing compute power and minimising energy consumption, we have been particularly impressed with Fujitsus flexibility and responsiveness to us as a customer. The time taken to deliver, install, configure and deploy such advanced technology has been nothing short of outstanding.

Rupert Lehner, head of Central and Eastern Europe: Products Europe at Fujitsu, comments: Fujitsu not only has a distinguished track record developing the worlds fastest supercomputers, we also really understand our HPC customers specific needs around performance, applications and service. Our partnership with the University of Regensburg exemplifies that approach and we are proud to be helping the research team there take another step forward using Fujitsu technology.

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Fujitsu supercomputer will explore origins of the universe - IT-Online

Dell Technologies HPC Community Interview: Bob Wisniewski, Intel’s Chief HPC Architect, Talks Aurora and Getting to Exascale – insideHPC

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

Intel is the prime vendor for the first US exascale supercomputer, the Aurora system, scheduled for delivery in 2021 at Argonne National Lab. The late Rich Brueckner of insideHPC caught up with Intels senior principal engineer and chief architect for HPC, Robert Wisniewski, to learn more.

insideHPC: Bob, we know each other mostly through your work with Intel software and OpenHPC Project. This is a very different kind of role for you, isnt it?

Wisniewski: Thank you. Yes, Im in a larger role, one that requires me to wear a software hat and a hardware hat, covering the whole system. Im currently the chief architect for HPC at Intel. I am also the technical lead for the Aurora Supercomputer at Argonne National Lab, as well as principal investigator.

insideHPC: Congratulations! That will broaden the discussion here now that the Aurora Supercomputer is just around the corner.

Wisniewski: Absolutely.

insideHPC: Lets start at the beginning. Can you describe your role as the chief architect for HPC?

Intels Bob Wisniewski

Wisniewski: Theres two parts to it. One, Im playing the role of PI for Aurora, which is the principal investigator. Thats a specific role relative to Intels contract with Argonne National Lab. Plus, Im the overall technical lead that means I am responsible for the technical direction. Large projects like Aurora must meet technical and schedule milestones. We typically start with our architectural point design, but as the project progress we learn, and products do not necessarily mature as planned so continue exploring technologies and we make changes as we go. We meet weekly and review where we are. Technically, we interact and collaborate very closely with Argonne to review schedules and discuss technical information either on the performance or functional aspects as this information becomes available. We continue to modify our point design to make sure our current design is going to meet their needs. We work closely with Argonne, who has been a great partner.

insideHPC: What about your overall role as HPC architect?

Wisniewski: Part of the role entails working with partners to better understand how they can deliver HPC capabilities. One way we do this is through POC (proof of concept) projects, which have been successful. In the broader role, Im working to make sure that the products that are coming out of Intel are well designed so they can be used by our OEMs in their systems. This is something that Intel made a shift to seven to 10 years ago, when we started thinking from a system perspective and making sure the technologies we were designing, manufacturing, building, and providing to our OEMs were going to fit well into the overall systems they were building.

The close partnerships we have with our OEMs make for a more efficient ecosystem. It comes down to understanding the needs of our OEMs and making sure were designing products that meet their needs. Creating a vision for the future and ensuring this meets the needs of the HPC computing market and our OEMs is a broad view of what my role now involves.

insideHPC: As far as your future heterogeneous (CPU-GPU) architectures and things like oneAPI, are you sharing blueprints with OEMs to enable innovation?

Wisniewski: Yes, we have a solutions group that works to understand OEM needs and help take that knowledge back into Intel. To do this effectively is what you might call co-design, though I guess thats an overused word. Intel Select Solutions offers OEMs easy and quick-to-deploy infrastructures optimized for a variety of applications, like AI, analytics clusters and HPC.

insideHPC: Bob, youre coming into this role at a time when Intel is in the process of changing its HPC focus from general purpose CPUs to heterogeneous architectures. Is that where youre taking us?

Wisniewski: Yes, I think thats a great observation. Were recognizing that HPC is expanding to include AI. But its not just AI, it is big data and edge, too. Many of the large scientific instruments are turning out huge amounts of data that need to be analyzed in real time. And big data is no longer limited to the scientific instruments its all the weather stations and all the smart city sensors generating massive amounts of data. As a result, HPC is facing a broader challenge and Intel realizes that a single hardware solution is not going to be right for everybody.

Intel is scheduled to deliver the Aurora supercomputer, the first U.S. exascale system, to Argonne National Laboratory in 2021, incorporating Intel Optane DC Persistent memory, Intels Xe compute architecture and Intel oneAPI programming framework, among other technologies. (Credit: Argonne National Laboratory)

At the same time, of course, we continue to actively support our CPU architecture. Thats the workhorse in everybodys HPC system. But as you know, with Aurora, were extending our capabilities to GPUs (Intels future Xe architecture), and we will provide both the graphical line as well as the compute line to meet customers needs.

insideHPC: But that doesnt come without its challenges. So youre providing all these heterogeneous solutions and thats good, right? Well, its good that it meets the customers needs, but does that make it harder to program? And to the end customers and OEMs who are going to be providing these solutions, do they need a full staff of programmers to rewrite all the code?

Wisniewski: This is where oneAPI comes in. It is a cross-industry, open, standards-based unified programming model. We believe that heterogeneity is valuable to customers. We want to provide the solution that customers need, but we also want to provide a productive and performant way to be able to leverage all the different solutions. The vision behind oneAPI is that regardless of which architecture you decide to utilize be it from multiple vendors or Intel, you have a single, common, cohesive way of programming them. Thats the vision. Now, there will be challenges, and as a technical person I dont want it to be presented as a simple panacea. oneAPI provides a common framework for writing code so a single code base can be portable and re-used across a diverse set of architectures.

So oneAPI empowers end customers to be much more efficient about how theyre utilizing their resources by enabling greater code re-use while allowing for architecture-specific tuning. A lot of developers remain challenged to achieve enough parallelism to leverage todays architectures, and now we are throwing heterogeneity their way. So their challenge is not just multiple cores, its heterogeneous compute elements as well. Determining which code can be parallelized and how to do that, and now which code can be off-loaded, has increased the complexity of developing applications for todays and tomorrows architectures. oneAPI is going to help us and the community address those challenges and make it easier.

Were recognizing that HPC is expanding to include AI. But its not just AI, it is big data and edge, too. Many of the large scientific instruments are turning out huge amounts of data that need to be analyzed in real time. And big data is no longer limited to the scientific instruments its all the weather stations and all the smart city sensors generating massive amounts of data. As a result, HPC is facing a broader challenge and Intel realizes that a single hardware solution is not going to be right for everybody.

insideHPC: Beyond what Intel is doing, what is the vision for the oneAPI ecosystem?

Wisniewski: To promote compatibility and enable developer productivity and innovation, the oneAPI specification builds upon industry standards and provides an open, cross-platform developer stack. It includes a cross-architecture language: Data Parallel C++, which is based on ISO C++ and Khronos SYCL. The oneAPI industry initiative aims to encourage collaboration on the oneAPI specification and compatible implementations across the ecosystem. Already, more than 30 companies and leading research organizations [LINK TO https://software.intel.com/en-us/oneapi/reviews%5D support the oneAPI concept, and further adoption is expected to grow.

Intels oneAPI product is a reference implementation of the specification for Intel architecture and consists of a base and several domain specific toolkits, including one for HPC. The components that are in the core oneAPI product will be the ones that have general applicability, for example, the Intel compiler along with multiple libraries and tools. For HPC users of oneAPI, there is an HPC toolkit, which includes components such as openMP and Fortran run times, Intel MPI library, and all the things that an HPC user would need to maximize the performance and capabilities of Intel hardware. oneAPI allows a more productive environment across all HPC and even beyond HPC, in areas like edge, cloud, and enterprise computing although I like to think of edge and cloud and AI and HPC all coming together. oneAPI will have components that will allow developers to be able to leverage heterogeneity across various environments and architectures (CPU, GPU, FPGA and specialized accelerators).

Overall, this oneAPI cross-architecture programming approach will help ensure code works well on the next generations of innovative architectures. And it also opens the door for flexibility in choosing the best architectures for a particular solution or workloads needs in performance, cost, and efficiency.

We envision oneAPI as an industry standard that will encourage broad developer engagement and collaboration, while having multi-vendor adoption and support.

insideHPC: So for our readers, whats the call to action for oneAPI? Is it time to download and start playing around with this? What would you say?

Wisniewski: Absolutely. Download the oneAPI specification at onapi.com. Developers and researchers can also directly download the Intel oneAPI toolkits [software.intel.com/oneapi], and test code and workloads for free across a variety of Intel architectures using the Intel DevCloud for oneAPI [LINK TO https://intelsoftwaresites.secure.force.com/devcloud/oneapi%5D. And there are multiple communities forming around oneAPI. It is absolutely our intent that this becomes a broad ecosystem, like the Linux model. The goal is really to make this pervasive, and it will be more powerful as more and more people use it.

insideHPC: I understand you wrote a book recently. Can you tell me more?

Wisniewski: The book is called Operating Systems for Supercomputers and High-Performance Computing. It was written together with my fellow editors Balazs Gerofi, Yutaka Ishikawa and Rolf Riesen.

The book came about from a collaboration with our customer at RIKEN. At some point as we were starting to compare the different versions of multikernels, a new operating system direction that a lot of people the high-end HPC capability class are pursuing, and how they differ from traditional operating system kernels.

We started talking about how it might be valuable if we did a comparative retrospective on these efforts. We thought we could accomplish two things.

First, we could have a little fun looking at the high-end operating systems community and how it evolved over the past three decades. It takes years to write an OS, and you learn hard lessons along the way. We decided to include lessons learned so that future OS developers can benefit from it.

Second, we wanted to provide insight as to why things work the way they do. The people that developed the OS thought long and hard about their designs. But sometimes you miss things. In each chapter, we included a section dedicated to lessons learned, so that readers could gain insight from the developers who spent the hard effort to build the OS. The book was a tremendous amount of work, but I had a fabulous set of co-editors and it was a lot of fun.

insideHPC: I wanted to wrap up and ask you more about community engagement. You are very generous with your time, attending industry events on a regular basis, multiple times a year. Why is that so important to you and the company to go out and engage at these events?

Wisniewski: I really enjoy going to these events and interacting with people. The events that I like going to most are the ones that have savvy audiences asking tough questions or discussing challenges they face. For example, when technical leaders share challenges, I can work with colleagues back at Intel to address them, and that in turn changes our future architectures to be better [co-]designed to meet the needs of our customers.

Dr. Robert W. Wisniewski is an ACM Distinguished Scientist, IEEE Senior Member, and the Chief Architect for High Performance Computing and a Senior Principal Engineer at Intel Corporation. He is the lead architect and PI for A21, the supercomputer targeted to be the first exascale machine in the US when delivered in 2021. He is also the lead architect for Intels cohesive and comprehensive software stack that was used to seed OpenHPC, and serves on the OpenHPC governance board as chairman. He has published over 77 papers in the area of high-performance computing, computer systems, and system performance, filed over 56 patents, and given over 64 external invited presentations. Before coming to Intel, he was the chief software architect for Blue Gene Research and manager of the Blue Gene and Exascale Research Software Team at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Facility, where he was an IBM Master Inventor and led the software effort on Blue Gene/Q, which was the most powerful computer in the world in June 2012, and occupied four of the top 10 positions on Top500 list.

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Dell Technologies HPC Community Interview: Bob Wisniewski, Intel's Chief HPC Architect, Talks Aurora and Getting to Exascale - insideHPC

Check Point unearths critical SigRed bug in Windows DNS – ComputerWeekly.com

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

All versions of Windows Server from 2003 to 2019 are vulnerable to a newly identified vulnerability, dubbed SigRed, in Windows DNS, the domain name system service provided by Microsoft in Windows operating systems.

Uncovered by Check Point researcher Sagi Tzaik and first reported to Microsoft by Check Point through a disclosure programme on 19 May 2020, the CVE-2020-1350 vulnerability is being patched in Julys Patch Tuesday update from Microsoft. It has been assigned a CVSS score of 10, the highest possible.

The SigRed vulnerability exists in the way the Windows DNS server parses an incoming DNS query, and how it parses a response to a forwarded DNS query. If an attacker can successfully trigger it with a malicious DNS query, they can trigger a heap-based buffer overflow, which will in turn let them take control of the server and feign domain administrator rights. This makes it possible for them to intercept and manipulate email and network traffic, compromise services and harvest credentials, among other things.

Critically, SigRed is wormable, meaning that a single exploit can cause a chain reaction, allowing attacks to spread through a network without any action on the part of the user in effect one single compromised machine becomes a super-spreader.

A DNS server breach is a critical issue. Most of the time, it puts the attacker just one inch away from breaching the entire organisation. There are only a handful of these vulnerability types ever released. Every organisation, big or small, using Microsoft infrastructure is at major security risk if this flaw is left unpatched, said Omri Herscovici, leader of Check Points vulnerability research team.

The risk would be a complete breach of the entire corporate network. This vulnerability has been in Microsoft code for more than 17 years, so if we found it, it is not impossible to assume that someone else already found it as well.

A DNS server breach is a critical issue. It puts the attacker just one inch away from breaching the entire organisation. Every organisation using Microsoft infrastructure is at major security risk if this flaw is left unpatched Omri Herscovici, Check Point

Check Point is strongly advising Windows users to patch their affected servers as soon as possible as previously noted, a fix is being made available today (14 July) as part of the latest Patch Tuesday update.

Herscovici said the likelihood of SigRed being exploited at some point in the next week was very high, as his team had been able to find all of the primitives required to take advantage of it, suggesting it would be easy for a determined hacker to do the same.

Furthermore, our findings show us all that no matter how secure we think we are, there are always more security issues out there waiting to be discovered. Were calling the vulnerability SigRed, and we believe it should be top priority for remedying. This isnt just another vulnerability patch now to stop the next cyber pandemic, he said.

Besides applying the patch immediately, Check Point detailed a workaround to block the attack, which goes thus: In CMD type: reg add HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesDNSParameters /v TcpReceivePacketSize /t REG_DWORD /d 0xFF00 /f net stop DNS && net start DNS.

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Check Point unearths critical SigRed bug in Windows DNS - ComputerWeekly.com

Japan has long accepted COVID’s airborne spread, and scientists say ventilation is key – CBS News

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

Tokyo Under pressure from the scientific community, the World Health Organization acknowledged last week the airborne transmission of "micro-droplets" as a possible third cause of COVID-19 infections. To many researchers in Japan, the admission felt anti-climactic.

This densely populated country has operated for months on the assumption that tiny, "aerosolized" particles in crowded settings are turbo-charging the spread of the new coronavirus.

Very few diseases tuberculosis, chicken pox and measles have been deemed transmissible through aerosols. Most are spread only through direct contact with infected persons or their bodily fluids, or contaminated surfaces.

Still the WHO has refused to confirm aerosols as a major source of new coronavirus infections, saying more evidence is needed. But scientists are keeping the pressure on.

"If the WHO recognizes what we did in Japan, then maybe in other parts of the world, they will change (their antiviral procedures)," said Shin-Ichi Tanabe, a professor in the architecture department of Japan's prestigious Waseda University. He was one of the 239 international scientists who co-wrote an open letter to the WHO urging the United Nations agency to revise its guidelines on how to stop the virus spreading.

Large droplets expelled through the nose and mouth tend to fall to the ground quickly, explained Makoto Tsubokura, who runs the Computational Fluid Dynamics lab at Kobe University. For these larger respiratory particles, social distancing and face masks are considered adequate safeguards. But in rooms with dry, stale air, Tsubokura said his research showed that people coughing, sneezing, and even talking and singing, emit tiny particles that defy gravity able to hang in the air for many hours or even days, and travel the length of a room.

The key defense against aerosols, Tsubokura said, is diluting the amount of virus in the air by opening windows and doors and ensuring HVAC systems circulate fresh air. In open-plan offices, he said partitions must be high enough to prevent direct contact with large droplets, but low enough to avoid creating a cloud of virus-heavy air (55 inches, or head height.) Small desk fans, he said, can also help diffuse airborne viral density.

To the Japanese, the latest WHO admission did at least vindicate a strategy that the country adopted in February, when residents were told to avoid "the three Cs" cramped spaces, crowded areas and close conversation.

After a lull, new infections primarily among younger residents in Tokyo have resurged recently, topping 200 for four straight days, before falling back down to 119 on Monday.

Alarmingly, new cases are cropping up not just in notoriously cramped and crowded nightlife spots, but also within homes and workplaces, prompting the national government to consider asking businesses to shut down again in the greater metro region. Authorities are anxious to prevent a corresponding surge in serious cases and deaths, which, thus far, have remained low.

Tsubokura, who also serves as the lead researcher for government institute RIKEN, has run simulations on Japan's new Fugaku supercomputer studying how to guard against airborne transmission inside subways, offices, schools, hospitals, and other public spaces.

His computer model of riders on Tokyo's congested Yamanote train line (see the animation at 7:15 minutes in this video) illustrated how air flow stagnates on packed trains with closed windows, in contrast to free-flowing air on carriages with few passengers and open windows. He suggests keeping windows open at all times to mitigate risks when trains fill up.

But Japan's infamously congested trains, he argues, probably aren't as as risky as his model suggests. "It is very crowded, and the air is bad," Kurokabe said. "But nobody is speaking, and everyone is wearing a mask. The risk is not that high."

Even riding on a crowded subway train if windows are kept open, as they are in Japan these days "is much safer than a pub, restaurant or gym," said Waseda University's Tanabe.

Masking noses and mouths is all the more important, he said, because his research shows men touch their faces up to 40 times an hour. (He said women, more likely to wear makeup, are less face-touchy.)

"Non-woven (surgical) masks are high-performance, but cloth also works it's much better than nothing," he said. "The only way to avoid leaks (of droplets) is to tightly fit the mask."

Mask-wearing and ventilation directives are helping the Japanese reopen concert halls, baseball stadiums and other venues. As of last Friday, such venues are permitted to admit up to 5,000 patrons.

Tanabe will be relying on Japan's new Fugaku supercomputer recently declared the world's fastest to plot optimal ventilation system efficiency.

"It's like predicting a typhoon," he said, noting that forecasting both extreme weather and air flow through crowded trains rely on the same equations to calculate fluid dynamics.

In an article to be published in the September issue of the scientific journal Environment International as schools and other public facilities struggle to reopen Tanabe and other experts argue that safeguarding indoor spaces can be done relatively simply and cheaply, by avoiding crowding and maintaining the flow of fresh air.

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Japan has long accepted COVID's airborne spread, and scientists say ventilation is key - CBS News

Where Two or More Are Gathered, the First Amendment Should Protect Them – ChristianityToday.com

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

The Christian tradition has a lot to say about community. People werent made to be solitary individualists. Aristotle may have been the first to describe man as a social animal, but he was not the first to recognize our inherent sociability.

The Scriptures describe God creating human beings to have fellowship with him. As God himself has eternal fellowship within the triune Godhead, human beings are also designed to have fellowship with each other. As God proclaimed in the Garden of Eden, It is not good for the man to be alone (Gen. 2:18). Over the course of biblical history, God ordains a series of social institutions: marriage, family, state, church. Of course there is an important place for the individual in Christian anthropology. But the point is that the individual existsis created to existwithin a rich set of social interactions, institutions, and associations.

Mainstream contemporary political and legal theory, by contrast, tends to operate within a more constrained social landscape. The focus is on the relationship between the individual and the state. By comparison, non-state social groups get short shrift.

Several scholars have been working to change that, including Luke C. Sheahan, a political theorist at Duquesne University. Sheahans new book, Why Associations Matter: The Case for First Amendment Pluralism, makes the case for the importance of voluntary associations in our political landscape. Rather than the dichotomy of individual and state, Sheahan offers an account of society with three components: individual, state, and association. He argues that the American judiciary in particular has failed to recognize the importance of associations. Finally, he suggests ways to do better in the future. Thats where the First Amendment comes in, with its promises of protection for freedom of speech, religion, and assembly.

The books first task is to develop what Sheahan calls a political sociology of associations. Sheahan, echoing the sociologist Robert Nisbet, argues that human beings are social creatures who crave community and connection with others. This is a point that will intuitively appeal to many readers, but Sheahan doesnt elaborate on the foundations for the insight. One might wonder (as John Dewey did years before) whether this is grounded in psychology, biological instinct, or something else. To these, one could add Christian anthropology. In any case, Sheahan never invokes religious reasons, and it is enough for him that one accepts that humans are social.

Sheahan believes that associating with others has intrinsic value. It is in various social groups, he writes, that ones very personality is shaped and within which one finds identity and purpose. What is an association? Its not just a casual meeting of people. But neither does it have to be a formal organization with a constitution and bylaws.

Sheahan defines associations functionally (again drawing on sociological work by Nisbet), listing seven characteristics. Each association has (1) a function, (2) a sense of purpose (which will often coincide with the function), (3) an authority structure, (4) some amount of hierarchy, (5) solidarity among members, (6) a sense of the associations importance, and (7) a belief that the association has a special status relative to the rest of the world. This is a rich description of an association, whether or not one agrees with every point. This kind of association is one with a strong conception of its own identity and purpose.

So how does all of this apply to our legal system and political culture? Sheahans critique of existing law focuses on the Supreme Courts treatment of associations under the First Amendment. The First Amendment freedom of association protects freedom of speech and assembly (as well as religious freedom and press freedom). But the Supreme Court has done very little to recognize assembly as a right on its own. Instead, it has largely replaced references to freedom of assembly with references to freedom of association.

This might sound like a distinction without a differenceuntil one considers what association means to the contemporary Supreme Court. Association is not valued for its own sake but only as a means to further free speech. Building on the pioneering work of evangelical legal scholar John Inazus critiquing the reduction of association to speech, Sheahan explains that the Supreme Court has made speech as an individual right the predicate for the recognition of any associational rights. Sheahan calls this the First Amendment dichotomy: For the Supreme Court, First Amendment rights are either individual rights, or else there are no limits on how the government can restrict them.

Problems with this line of reasoning were evident in the Supreme Courts 2010 decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez. In that case, the University of California Hastings College of the Law required student organizations to be open to any student. It refused to recognize a student chapter of the Christian Legal Society because the group required its officers to hold Christian doctrinal and ethical commitments, including the belief that sex should be reserved for marriage between a man and a woman. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the university. It could require a student group to admit anyone to membership regardless of the groups own convictions (or else give up its status as a recognized student organization on campus).

Sheahan thinks the court was seriously mistaken in its approach. His point is not just that the courts majority was wrong. Sheahans argument goes deeper, criticizing even the dissenting justices who would have ruled in favor of the student group. The problem, Sheahan says, is that neither the majority nor the dissent gave an account of why associations are valuable apart from their instrumental utility in advancing speech by individuals within the association.

In place of the existing precedents, Sheahan argues that the courts should recognize associations, not just individuals, as bearers of First Amendment rights. He calls this First Amendment pluralism. These rights shouldnt depend on the association being expressive (that is, primarily concerned with speech). This associational right could be rooted in the Constitution (perhaps in the First Amendments guarantee of the right to assemble) or in a specific statute. Sheahan suggests legislation (modeled on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act) that would compel judges to apply strict scrutiny to any government action that infringes on the freedom of association, broadly defined.

An obvious objection to this kind of protection for associations is that it could undercut civil-rights protections. Sheahan has two main responses, both familiar to those following the conversation on associational rights.

First, Sheahan says that his argument only concerns protection for voluntary associations, not for commercial or educational organizations (a racially discriminatory private school could still lose its tax exemption, for example). Second, he suggests that race discrimination might be a unique (and uniquely unjust) form of discrimination, such that a state university (for instance) could rightfully refuse recognition to a voluntary student organization that practices it. Sheahan recognizes that this raises as many questions as it answers. What characteristics make race discrimination different? (Is it the troubled history of race relations in America? The centrality of race to a persons identity?) Are there other kinds of discrimination (sex or, more controversially, sexual orientation) that are covered by the same principles? Does it undercut a principled commitment to associational pluralism to recognize areas where the state has a compelling interest in prohibiting discrimination? These are tough issues. To his credit, Sheahan doesnt shy away from this. But given that hes not the first to confront the issue, hopefully we will see more work on the subject in the future.

Another question that Sheahan doesnt analyze at all is how a defense of associational rights relates to corporate rights. Corporations are voluntary associations of a sort. The Supreme Court has controversially said that corporations can exercise constitutional rights. How does this fit with Sheahans vision of associational rights? And what makes commercial organizations different from noncommercial voluntary associations?

Sheahan doesnt have all the answers. But his book advances an important conversation about how to appreciate the social dimension of lifeincluding associationsin the face of an individualistic intellectual culture. Sheahans synthesis of work by Nisbet and others on the structure of associations is likely to become a point of reference for anyone serious about understanding the structure of human sociability. And his analysis of the Supreme Courts approach to association deepens existing critiques.

Even though this book isnt specifically about religious organizations, this conversation is one that Christian readers in particular have reason to care about. Churches have an interest in seeing continued legal protection as institutions; religious organizations like the Christian Legal Society are directly affected when courts recognize (or fail to recognize) associational rights. Christian teaching is already clear that human nature craves fellowship and sociability. Figuring out how to wisely live that out is a task for everyone.

Lael Weinberger is the Berger-Howe Legal History Fellow at Harvard Law School.

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Where Two or More Are Gathered, the First Amendment Should Protect Them - ChristianityToday.com

The Class of Special Rights Called the First Amendment – National Review

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

Sister Loraine McGuire with Little Sisters of the Poor after the Supreme Court heard Zubik v. Burwell, an appeal demanding exemption from providing insurance covering contraception, in Washington, D.C., March 23, 2016. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

In a piece for the Washington Posts Plum Line blog, opinion columnist Paul Waldman offers a few rather disorienting comments on yesterdays Supreme Court decision inLittle Sisters of the Poor v. Pennsylvania, et al.

The case dealt with whether the Trump administration had the authority to grant religious and moral exemptions to employers who object to covering contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs in their health-insurance plans, as Obamacares HHS mandate requires. One such employer is the Little Sisters, a group of Catholic nuns who serve the elderly, sick, and dying poor.

In a 7-2 decision, the Court ruled in favor of the administrations authority to grant those exemptions and thus, by extension, in favor of the religious and conscience rights of the Little Sisters.

Waldman observes that the ruling is evidence of a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, one that is determined to create a class of special rights that in practice are enjoyed only by conservative Christians. (Justices Kagan and Breyer will be thrilled, Im sure, to hear of their new assignation.)

This class of special rights Waldman mentions is, of course, the religion clauses of the First Amendment, and conservative Christians continue showing up in court to claim its protections only because their fellow citizens and antagonistic government officials continue forcing them to do so.

Later on, after advocating the abolition of employer-based health-care coverage something many conservatives would welcome Waldman further reveals his ignorance. One benefit of removing employer-based coverage, he avers, would be that it would deprive religious conservatives of the ability to keep suing over contraception, which gives them a focus for their endless cries of oppression and aggrievement.

It is difficult to imagine how one could honestly believe that the Christian owners of Hobby Lobby, the University of Notre Dame, and the Little Sisters of the Poor were overjoyed to have spent nearly a decade in court fighting merely to preserve their right to practice their faith in the public square.

The Class of Special Rights Called the First Amendment - National Review

Comet NEOWISE has a sodium tail. Here’s what it looks like. – Space.com

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

New images of the bright Comet NEOWISE show signs of a sodium tail, giving scientists fresh insight on what's happening on the surface.

Comet brightness is notoriously hard to predict due to the complexity of surface outgassing, so any insight into these surface processes is useful to scientists. NEOWISE, formally known as comet C/2020 F3, is relatively bright in the sky for Northern Hemisphere observers, but nobody knows how the comet's brightness will fare as it races towards the sun.

Images of the comet were obtained on July 8 using the Planetary Science Institute's (PSI) Input/Output facility, which has also spotted sodium in Mercury's comet-like tail as well as Jupiter's atmosphere during past observations.

Related: How to see Comet NEOWISE in the night sky this month More: Amazing photos of Comet NEOWISE from the Earth and space

NEOWISE and comets like it are made of dust, gas and plasma (ionized gas). As comets rocket toward the sun from interstellar space or the outer solar system, sunlight causes ice in the comet to turn directly into gas (or sublime). As the ice gasses away, it pulls material from the comet's surface with it.

Scientists can already get a sense of cometary activity by looking at the dust coming from a comet, which can move faster if the particles are tiny and more easily pushed by sunlight. Slower particles tend to be larger and harder to move around. These individual particles affect how the dust tail is shaped.

Like dust, atomic sodium also is affected by sunlight, although it has more specific changes.

"Its [atomic sodium's] momentum kick comes from a very particular wavelength of yellow light the same color seen in sodium vapor street lamps," research team member Jeffrey Morgenthaler, a PSI senior scientist, said in a statement.

"Thanks to acceleration by intense sunlight," co-author and Boston University research scientist Carl Schmidt added in the same statement, "the sodium tail takes on a different shape than the tail seen in off-band filtered images, which are dominated by reflected light from dust. In comparison, the sodium tail is narrower, longer and points directly away from the sun."

Sunlight's push on sodium atoms tends to be stronger than its effect on dust and other gases that come off comets. It is difficult to see sodium tails, however, due to the sun's emissions. Notable examples of comets with sodium tails include Hale-Bopp (the famed 1997 naked eye-comet) and the notorious Comet ISON, which fell apart shortly after rounding the sun in 2013.

Morgenthaler and Schmidt will continue to observe NEOWISE as it rounds the sun. They are also using Monte Carlo computer models to simulate the sodium tail and estimate outgassing rates and speeds.

It was not revealed in the statement exactly when the team plans to submit their results to a journal for peer review, but it is common when observing quickly changing astronomical phenomena like NEOWISE to release interim information to keep the community informed.

Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Original post:

Comet NEOWISE has a sodium tail. Here's what it looks like. - Space.com

Best way to see Comet NEOWISE in the night sky – Los Angeles Times

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

Comet NEOWISE is putting on a spectacular fireball show in the night sky. Never heard of it? The glowing-tail beauty has been wowing comet watchers around the world this week. Comets dont come streaking our way all that often, at least not bright ones you can see with the naked eye.

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Comets ATLAS and SWAN held bright promise earlier this year after passing close to the sun. That didnt happen to NEOWISE, which Space.com says has emphatically ended a quarter-century drought of spectacular comets. Its hailed as the best show since the Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997.

Like all A-listers, the comet has a Southern California pedigree: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Caada Flintridge operates the deep space telescope that discovered the comet on March 27. The comets official name is C/2020 F3; the telescopes acronym, NEOWISE, for Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, was added.

In its discovery images, Comet NEOWISE appeared as a glowing, fuzzy dot moving across the sky even when it was still pretty far away, Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator at the University of Arizona, said on NASAs website. As soon as we saw how close it would come to the sun, we had hopes that it would put on a good show. (Here are early photos of its discovery.)

The telescope started taking pictures December 2009, was turned off in February 2011, got rebooted and renamed in 2013, and has been producing millions of infrared images of distant comets and asteroids ever since.

Space.com describes NEOWISEs most visually stunning trait as a beautiful, gently curved tail of dust which many observers using binoculars and small telescopes have remarked has shown a noticeable yellowish tinge. Got that? Thats what youll be looking for in the sky.

NASA Science Live will air an episode about NEOWISE at noon Pacific time Wednesday on the agencys website as well as on its social media channels.

Last weekend, NEOWISE was visible in the pre-dawn hours. Now it has flipped to evening mode, making for more dramatic viewing against the dark night sky. So peel yourself away from Netflix and go outside for a look. If you miss it, this comet wont be back for about 7,000 years.

NEOWISE will be brightest about an hour and a half after sunset between now and Sunday. Look to the north-northwest and it should be about 10 degrees above the horizon. It will come closest to Earth on July 22. More good news: The sky will be good and dark because the moon is in crescent mode and wont cast light that could ruin your view.

The comet will begin to fade later in July, though still be visible with a small telescope until it disappears to the outer solar system around mid-August, according to Space.com.

Originally posted here:

Best way to see Comet NEOWISE in the night sky - Los Angeles Times

Calgary photographers take pictures of Comet NEOWISE with the aurora – Calgary Sun

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

Photographers who chose to stay up late Monday night hit the astronomy jackpot when it comes to shooting the night sky.

In the starring role was Comet NEOWISE, one of the brightest comets to be seen in years.

But adding to the backdrop was the aurora borealis, and the Alberta-discovered atmospheric phenomena known as STEVE.

Photographer Chris Ratzlaff said Monday night was the first time hed been out to photograph the aurora since the fall.

He composed an amazing shot with the Okotoks glacial erratic below the comet and the green glow of the aurora.

While he had some pro gear to take his shot, he said the comet is bright enough to capture with a newer phone. He tried a few shots with his, just to see if he could.

He said to use a tripod if possible, or find something to stabilize the phone.

I was sitting in a chair and I had my arms stabilized against my knees, he said.

Comet NEOWISE is seen above Downtown Calgary skyline on Tuesday, July 14, 2020. The newly discovered comet has been visible in northerly latitudes for the past week and can be seen with the naked eye.Azin Ghaffari / Postmedia

Ratzlaff said although it was initially an early morning comet, the odds of seeing it at any time of night are growing.

Its definitely an all-evening event, he said. Basically sunset to sunrise. You want to be out.

He also said it helps to have younger eyes if you want to spot it.

I took my daughter out Saturday night and she spotted it immediately and without guidance from me, said Ratzlaff.

To find it, he said look to the right of the big dipper. The two stars in the cups bottom will point in the general direction of the comet.

Comet NEOWISE is seen near a windmill outside Calgary.Comet NEOWISE

If you have an SLR-style camera, he suggested starting with an exposure of 1/3 of a second at f2.8 if possible, and an ISO of 3200. A tripod is a must.

Ratzlaff said people who are really lucky may capture the comets two tails.

You get the dust trail and then you get the ion trail, he said. The ion trail is very straight a straight line out from the head of the comet its kind of blue in colour.

Many photos posted on social media Tuesday featured the aurora with the comet, but also STEVE, which coincidentally was named by Ratzlaff.

The aurora-like beam of energy was seen in a photo taken by Chandresh Kedhambadi, who got his shot near Bragg Creek.

Chandresh Kedhambadi captured this amazing shot of Comet NEOWISE with the astronomical phenomenon known as STEVE seen on the left, as well as the green glow of the aurora.jpg

Ratzlaff expects NEOWISE to be just as bright as it was Monday for at least two more nights. The comet is getting closer to earth, which could add to the brightness. At the same time, its moving away from the sun, which is what causes the tail to be so apparent.

Its so hard to say the running joke is, comets do what they want to do.

Originally posted here:

Calgary photographers take pictures of Comet NEOWISE with the aurora - Calgary Sun

Breathtaking images of comet Neowise over Galway City – Galway Daily

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

Comet Neowise has been tracing a brilliant path through the skies over Ireland in recent days, and will continue to do so for more nights to come over the rest of July.

Local photographer Felix Sproll captured the stunning pictures seen here from Mutton Island last Friday, rewarded for heading out in the wee hours with amazing pictures of the comet lit up in the skies over Galway.

Comet Neowise over Mutton Island lighthouse credit: Felix Sproll Photography

At the start it only became visible just before sunrise, but now its visible the whole night round, Felix says.

Theres no difference really from once it gets dark at like half 11 till it starts getting bright again.

The pictures taken from Mutton Island include two showing the comet over the city, and another Disney perfect moment of it tracing the sky over the lighthouse.

Felix also captured the jaw dropping sight of the comet over Pine Island on Derryclare Lough in Connemara, with the Twelve Bens reaching up for it in the background, which you can see on his website at felixsproll.com. Or check him out on Instagram @felix.sproll for more incredible nature photography of Galway.

Neowise was first discovered by NASAs Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer in March.

On July 3 it passed the closest point of its orbit to the sun, known as the perihelion, at just 44 million kilometres from the star, a stage that many comets do not survive, but Neowise did.

Neowise over Galway City credit: Felix Sproll Photography

For anyone interested in doing a bit of comet watching themselves, conditions are pretty easy to see it right now he says, as long as the skies are clear.

Keep an eye on the weather, thats probably the main thing in Ireland. You need a clear night. If you look north, you have a good chance of seeing it.

You dont even have to have an expensive camera to grab yourself a picture of Neowise right now because its just so bright in the sky Felix adds.

Comet Neowise over the Long Walk credit: Felix Sproll Photography

From tonight onwards the comet will be visible in the sky over Ireland for the next fortnight.

Neowise will be closest to Earth on July 23, passing 103 million kilometres from the planet. You can see it with your naked eye, but astronomers recommend using binoculars for a really good view.

Unlike some comets such as Halley, which return on a semi-regular basis, Neowise wont be seen again for a long time once it completes its passage in the next few weeks.

The next stage of its 6,800 year orbit will take it back out to the far edges of the solar system for a long, deep freeze before it graces our skies again millennia from now.

image credit: Felix Sproll @felix.sproll felixsproll.com

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Breathtaking images of comet Neowise over Galway City - Galway Daily

How you can see Comet NEOWISE over St. Louis again, and again – KTVI Fox 2 St. Louis

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

This month, a cosmic visitor is gracing the skies and its putting on quite the show. Nicknamed NEOWISE after the telescope that first spotted it, a comet swept past the sun on July 3 and has since become visible to the naked eye.

Comet NEOWISE is expected to be at its brightest and easiest to see in mid-July, though it is already surpassing expectations for its naked-eye brightness. However, comets are known to fizzle out at any moment.

According to NASAs Eddie Irizarry, it should remain visible just before and around the time of first light until July 11. You may also be able to see it before sunrise on Saturday. The comet will then dip below the horizon as it transitions from being an early riser to an evening sensation.

Starting around July 12 you will be able to see the comet in the evening as well, Lecky Hepburn tells Scientific American. About an hour after sunset, it will appear near the northwestern horizon. As the month progresses, it will rise higher in the sky, moving from the constellation Lynx toward the Big Dipper.

Comet NEOWISE is expected to be closest to the Earth on July 23, so if it remains bright, during that week will be the best time to see it. That will also be during a new moon when the sky will be dark and when the comet will be visible before midnight, according to Forbes.

Comet NEOWISE was first discovered on March 27 by NASAs Near-Earth Objects Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) space telescope.

The newly discoveredComet NEOWISE also called C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) survived its closest encounter with the sun July 3 without breaking up and has become visible in the Northern Hemisphere.

Photographers, like Tyler Schlitt, in Washington, MO, have been getting up very early to get pictures of the comet. He reminds those looking to get photos to get a far from the lights of the city as possible and dont forget about summer humidity.

In July, you typically have those high humidities so your camera is going to fog up as soon as you walk outside from cold to hot. Typically, you want your camera the same temperature, so I leave mine in the car. I live in the middle of nowhere. I feel safe enough to do that. You can leave it in the garage. You can leave it in a shed that your lock, says Schlitt.

Did you see the comet? Share your pictures here:

How you can see Comet NEOWISE over St. Louis again, and again - KTVI Fox 2 St. Louis

Will Jeff Sessions have the last laugh on Donald Trump on Tuesday? – CNN

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

Cillizza: What's the conventional wisdom going into tonight? Tuberville? Sessions? Or a real toss up?

Sessions says that Tuberville -- who declined debate invitations from Sessions -- is not vetted nor prepared to be a US senator. Tuberville has carried an advantage in fundraising with support coming from the Washington, DC-based Club for Growth.

Cillizza: Donald Trump has made his views on this race VERY clear. How much has that hurt Sessions/helped Tuberville?

Trump is 0-2 in his past endorsements during Alabama Senate contests -- he lost with Luther Strange ahead of the 2017 GOP runoff against Roy Moore. He then endorsed Moore in the general election, which was won by Doug Jones.

Cillizza: Is this rightly seen as a referendum on Trump because he has been so involved? As in, if Sessions wins, is that a message to Trump?

Sharp: I have not heard whether a Sessions' win would be a referendum on Trump. Sessions has, aside from the recusal issue, praised Trump and his agenda while on the campaign trail.

The president has not physically been involved in this race like he was during the 2017 special election contest when he campaigned in Huntsville for Luther Strange (the speech remembered more as the first time the president addressed kneeling NFL football players), and he rallied for Roy Moore days ahead of the general election in Pensacola, Florida.

The President did not hold a rally for Tuberville ahead of the runoff, so his involvement in the race has been centralized on Twitter. Alabama Republicans have long been torn over the Trump-Sessions dispute. Sessions was a popular Senator among Alabama Republicans from 1997-2017. The last time Sessions ran, in 2014, he won without any opposition in the primary. Just a couple of years ago, Alabama Republicans were proud that Sessions became attorney general. Rare is it for someone in this state to get so close to the line of succession to the presidency. The state has had one vice president (William Rufus King, who served six weeks before his death in 1853), one speaker of the House (William Bankhead from 1936-40), and Birmingham native Condoleezza Rice (a longtime California resident) served as secretary of state.

Sharp: I have not heard that it matters. "Lou Saban" was uttered by the President during statements he made in support of Tuberville last night, on the eve of the election. It did prompt reporters in Alabama to look up the name, "Lou Saban," who turns out was actually was a prolific football coach during an astonishing six-decade career. He was the AFL's coach of the year in 1964, while leading the Buffalo Bills. But I've checked out his stats and I don't see any Alabama football connections with this Saban.

The other Saban, University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban, is well known in his own right. GOP campaign strategist and candidates in Alabama will sometimes say that the only endorsement that matters more than the current president is one from Nick Saban. And I don't sense that Nick Saban is getting involved in Alabama politics right now, if ever.

Cillizza: Finish this sentence: "Doug Jones is rooting for ________ to win tonight." Now, explain.

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Will Jeff Sessions have the last laugh on Donald Trump on Tuesday? - CNN

Donald Trump abandons plan that would have forced out tens of thousands of foreign students – Economic Times

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

The Donald Trump administration has abandoned a directive that would have forced thousands of foreign students out of the country. US officials announced last week that international students at schools that had moved to online-only classes due to the coronavirus pandemic would have to leave the country if they were unable to transfer to a college with at least some in-person instruction.

The scrapping brings relief to thousands of Indian students who are studying in American universities.

Indians are the second largest student community with over 200,000 students or a fifth of the one million foreign students taking up courses in the US. American district judge Allison Burroughs announced at an online hearing on Tuesday that the government had agreed to rescind last weeks requirement that international students take at least one in-person class, even amid the resurgent coronavirus pandemic and as colleges prepare online-only coursework, Bloomberg reported.

A senior U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official, however, said the administration still intended to issue a regulation in the coming weeks addressing whether foreign students can remain in the United States if their classes move online.

The July 6 move by the administration blindsided many universities and colleges that were still making plans for the fall semester, trying to balance concerns about rising cases of the novel coronavirus in many U.S. states and the desire to return to classes.

A flurry of lawsuits were filed challenging the rule including one brought by Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and another by a coalition of state governments. Dozens of big companies and colleges and universities filed "friend-of-the-court" briefs opposing the rule.

Trump, who is pushing schools across the country to reopen in the autumn, said he thought Harvard's plan not to hold in-person classes was ridiculous. The universities argued the measure was unlawful and would adversely affect their academic institutions.

ET reported that large technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Paypal had told the US court that deporting students would hurt American educational institutions as well as the US economy. In all, 19 companies and local unions, like the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America, the Software Alliance and the Information Technology Industry Council, had signed the brief in a case where Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 180 other colleges have filed, opposing the July 6 directive by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The revocation of the rule by the Trump administration came ahead of the July 15 ICE deadline for universities to declare whether they would be conducting courses only online in the upcoming semester starting in September.

Continued here:

Donald Trump abandons plan that would have forced out tens of thousands of foreign students - Economic Times

Donald Trump says he will soon sign new merit-based immigration act to take care of illegal immigrants – Economic Times

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has reiterated his pledge to soon sign a "very strong" merit-based immigration act that will also take care of the immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, many of whom are of Indian or South Asian descent.

Trump, who is seeking re-election in November, has long sought to overhaul the US immigration system to be based on merit rather than family ties. Immigration remains one of Trump's signature campaign issues.

"We are going to be signing an immigration act very soon. It is going to be based on merit, it is going to be very strong," Trump told reporters at a Rose Garden press conference at the White House on Tuesday.

"We are going to work on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) because we want to make people happy and I will tell you even conservative Republicans want to see something happen with DACA," he said.

The DACA programme provides for work permits and other protections for people brought to the US as children by undocumented parents. It affects an estimated 700,000 young people, many of whom are of Indian or South Asian descent.

President Trump had tried to cancel the Obama-era programme, but the Supreme Court last month said it could stay in place.

"They always turned it down. They used it as politics. I am using it to get something done, but we will be signing a very powerful immigration act. It will be great, it will be merit-based. The country has tried to get it for 25 or 30 years," he said in response to a question.

"It will be strong on the border, but you will come in legally and you will be able to come in legally and very importantly, we will be taking care of people from DACA in a very Republican way," the president said.

He said the Democrats had their chance and they blew it.

"But we are going to take care of DACA because I am going to be doing it in the not-too-distant future, pretty soon I am going to be signing a new immigration action, very, very big merit-based immigration action based on the DACA decision," he said.

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Donald Trump says he will soon sign new merit-based immigration act to take care of illegal immigrants - Economic Times

The look on Donald Trumps face when hes been proven wrong – Maclean’s

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

Image of the Week: Either the U.S. president succumbed to weeks of expert consensus on masks, or he had an attack of common sense. Which is more likely?

On a July 11 tour of the Walter Reed military hospital outside Washington, exactly 99 days after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend everyone wear masks in public, U.S. President Donald Trump finally decided to agree. It may not be the first time this year hes actually worn a maskhe claimed, almost flippantly, to have worn one at a factory in Arizona a couple of months back, but apparently took it off before the press could photograph him in it. But this is the first time he is flaunting it, embracing the look, flanked by military men all wearing similar face-covering fashions. He told Fox he sort of liked how he looked in it, comparing himself to the Lone Ranger. Leaving the White House for the hospital, he reassured everyone that hes never been against masks, but I do believe they have a time and a place. This might be as close as well get to Trump acquiescing to health officials on anything during this pandemic. Emblazoned with the presidential seal, his broad black mask carries more symbolism than it should, its debut occurring the same day that the U.S.recorded 66,528 new cases of COVID-19, a new daily record. Arizona has more cases per-capita than literally any other state or country in the world, while Florida, Texas and Californias numbers continue to skyrocket as well. As different states flatten their curves at varying levels, one cant help but think that thousands of deaths, not to mention a whiplash news cycle and a flurry of political backpedalling, could have been prevented by leaders who simply listened to health officials from the start.

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The look on Donald Trumps face when hes been proven wrong - Maclean's

I Have Never Known the World to Be More Mindful of Every Breath: Artist Hank Willis Thomas on How Art Intersects With Politics – artnet News

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

Hank Willis Thomas is a name many in the art world are familiar with, and not just because he is the son of lauded historian Deborah Willis (though that helps).And a lot more people could soon be familiar with him and what he stands for.

The multimedia artist, who tackles some of the most difficult and complex issues of our timesystemic racism, marginalized communities, media bias, and income inequality, among othersis also the cofounder of For Freedoms, a super PAC turned nonprofit organization promoting civic engagement in the creative community.

Thomas once said that his personal experiences prompted him to create art that could change the world in a more intentional way. And now, more than ever, he is doing just that.

Through July 16, he and his Los Angeles gallery, Kayne Griffin Corcoran, are teaming up with Artnet Auctions to present Bid forPeace,a single-lot sale of Thomass striking sculpture,Peace, from 2019.

All proceeds from the auction, including the buyers premium, will be donated toGays and Lesbians Living in a Transgender Society (G.L.I.T.S), a non-profit organization that protects the rights of transgender sex workers.

Thomas took some time out of his busy schedule to discuss the evolution of his studio practice, artists importance in bringing about civic transformation, and whether you might someday see his name on a ballot near you.

You can listen to a condensed version of this interview on Artnet Newss Art Angle podcast.

Before we get into what youre up to now, lets go back to where you come from. Tell me a little bit about your upbringing and how you became an artist.

Well, I think were all artists. I was born an artist and have over the past couple of decades really been in a process of discovering more and more what that can mean, every day.

And I do have the fortune of being the son of Deborah Willis, whos an incredible person, as well as an art historian and photographer and photo historian. And I grew upat the Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture, where she worked, watching her discover and tell new narratives about American history, along with her colleagues and fellow artists and peers.

Deborah Willis and Hank Willis Thomas speak at TEDWomen 2017New Orleans, Louisiana. Photo: Stacie McChesney / TED.

And so I think I learned the value of art through osmosis. I didnt really appreciate it or respect it until I was about 30. And by that time I already had a BFA and an MFA. I thought that I was just asking questions and on my own path. And then I realized that was very much following in my mothers footsteps as if shed been pulling the puppet strings all along.

I remember I told my mother that I didnt want to be an artist because all of her friends were broke little did I know.

She won a MacArthur Grant in 2004 for her scholarship on photography and she is renown as a real force in the reconsideration of the tradition of African-American photography and more broadly photography in America. What did she teach you about photography and how it intersects with the tangled story of this country?

I think the fundamental thing that I learned from my mother is that history is waiting to be told. Photography and the landscape of visual representation has always been a contentious space, especially for people who were from what we now call marginalized communities, communities that werent in control of the mainstream narrative. Nevertheless, there were people and will always be people who are part of these communities making images, taking photographs, and telling stories that are in stark contrast to the prevailing narratives, and are also much more accurate.

Theres another way your family history has shaped your work, in a far more tragic sense. Can you talk about your cousin Songha Willis?

Songha was my best friend, big brother, and mentor; my life plan was to be his backup singer. In February 2000, his mother went out of town so he went to Philadelphia, where hed grown up, to look after my grandmother and see some friends from junior high school. They went to a night club and the friends he was with were robbed for some necklaces. The robbers had seen my cousin with them, but he didnt have anything worth taking, so they made him lay face down in the snow and they shot him in the back of the head and killed him.

That was obviously a traumatic experience for me, it was also a life re-centering moment, because I literally had no plan or real dreams for my own life other than to be a part of his, so I had to discover who I was independent of my cousin.

I was really shocked, not only by the horror of the act, but also that the people who killed my cousin were young men, barely out of their teens, and now their lives were also over to an extent after they were caught. The history of our country has been tied to starving people into desperate circumstances where they partake in sometimes heinous acts as a means to feel relevant and important.

So a lot of my work has been in the spirit of reuniting us, collectively, with people who society has tried to alienate us, even from ourselves.

You once said that after his passing you felt that you needed to make art that could change the world in a more intentional way. How did you go about constructing a path to do that?

I first started to look at the stories that were told and who was telling the stories in the media and beyond. I tried to find alternative methods of communicating ideas, one of the most popular ones being advertising. I realized advertising is the most ubiquitous form of communication in the modern world, and that its a language that can be translated across cultural boundaries because weve all become media literate. So I tried through various projects to use the language of advertising to talk about issues beyond what advertising was discussing.

Hank Willis Thomas, Priceless (2004). Courtesy of the artist.

One of your most powerful works, and one of the first times you chose to show something outside of a museum instead of inside, was with your MasterCard ad which you changed into a kind of retelling of your cousins story. Can you talk a bit about how you approachedthat particular image?

The name of the piece isPriceless and it consisted of a photograph of my cousins and a lot of my family members in a state of mourning. I used the language of the Mastercard Priceless campaign, where they would build up nostalgia about all these things you could do with your credit card like take your child to a baseball game, or get someone a gift. I said that picking out the perfect casket for your son was priceless.

I wanted to talk about how even in grief and mourning were still being marketed to, and all of the pomp and circumstance that we go through to prove the value of a life after its been taken.

One of your most famous photographsfrom the branded series was of a Black athletes head with the Nike swoosh literally, with a branding iron, seared onto his head. Just a little while ago you had a show at the Portland Museum of Art and you flew this image on a banner outside the museum, in the city where Nike is headquartered. What is it that draws you to sports, and in particular to the way that African American athletes exist in the sports world?

I think everyone has been conditioned to believe sports are important if only because theyre part of every nightly news broadcast alongside major weather reports and political events. A lot of the success or progress that was made for people who are traditionally marginalized is through sports.

The fact that sports is an opportunity for people to be seen as valuable is something we take for granted.There are many multibillion-dollar industries fueled by the labor of descendants of slaves.

Hank Willis Thomas, Raise Up (2014). at The National Memorial for Peace and Justice. Courtesy Hank Willis Thomas.

As time went on you started to move from photography toward monumental sculpture, how did that transition take place?

Around 2003 I was living in the Bay Area of San Francisco and there was an uptick in homicides, especially in certain neighborhoods. I wanted to create a memorial because I had been in DC and seen all these memorials to fallen soldiers and to presidents, and I wanted to make work that really commemorated all of the other fallen soldiers, the fallen stars in our society who would not be appreciated for their contributions because they were civilians killed.

So I created a piece calledAbsolute Winning Seven for the victims of homicide in Oakland and San Francisco in 2004, made of bullets. I wasreally wanting to think about what it means to create monuments for people who arent seen as valuable or important or society.

One sculpture that really captures this of yours isRaise Up, what was the story behind that piece?

It was based off of a photograph by Ernest Cole, from in a book calledHouse of Bondage that I found in South Africa, whichwas comprised of photographs that he smuggled out during apartheid, before the true horrors of apartheid hadbeen revealed. The picture showed miners completely nude, facing a wall with their hands up; Id always felt it was exploitative looking at the photograph, like I was in some way complicit, leaning in and gawking. I wanted to represent it in a way that was ethical, if it was possible. I created a sculpture based on that photograph, cropping it at the shoulders, and titled itRaise Up in February 2014.

I was really contemplating how a gesture of surrender could be interpreted as a gesture of resistance, and then in July when Michael Brown was murdered in Ferguson, Missouri, and the call to action was hands up, dont shoot it had an incredible resonance with the work.

Many of us in the creative field know in our hearts that our work, at its best, lives outside of the space-time continuum, and can speak to the past as elegantly as it can to the future.

Installation view at the Portland Art Museum. Courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.

A co-curator of your show at the Portland Museum said, we are often surprised by how his [Thomass] work dealing with race and bias becomes more and more relevant.

I can relate to that. Oftentimes when Ive made work I thought I was being self-involved and stuck in the past, and then my eyes were openedoften in really harsh waysthat I was tapped into something deeper than I was even aware of when I started. Thats why Im so fanatic about promoting other artists work because what we do in our studio is almost always the result of a research practice, so all of the independent researchers delving into these elements of our society that are under-researched and therefore underreported. I love the opportunity to promote the work of others because through their work we see radical progression and the evolution of our society.

To round out the monument topic, youre now working on a monument of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King, embracing that will debut in the Boston Commons in 2022. That is a decidedly uplifting image, but at the same time there is this movement across the country where monuments are being torn. As an artist whos creating this work, how are you experiencing this moment?

Im experiencing it with a lot of enthusiasm, for the audacity of the people who are forcing us to do things that should have been done a long time ago. Public space belongs to the public and they should have a say in what kinds of images and objects represent the society.

Its also important that things get reconsidered from time to time. Maybe once a century, at least, you have a reconsideration of all these monuments to men who are celebrated often as a way to put down and disrespect other people.

What do you think art can do when it comes to creating change?

Everyone who engages with art, whether they know it or not, is being changed and affected; the proof of that is that artists who were seen as radical 40 and 50 years ago for dealing with issues related to LGBTQ+, or multiculturism, or womens rights, those are mainstream issues now.

For Freedoms interpretation of Norman Rockwells Freedom of Speech, featuring actor and activist Jesse Williams (standing). Photo courtesy of For Freedoms.

Lets talk a bit about the non-art work youre doing to change unjust institutions. What is the story behind your nonprofit For Freedoms, and why of all things, did you decide to create a Super PAC?

Well, it is still art. Have you ever thought about laws as conceptual art? The whole way we govern society is based around concepts, and I recognize that there are avowed non-creative people literally designing our society through the laws they create in the narratives they choose. By and large, members of the creative community dont even have an opportunity to participate in those narratives, so then how could they ever shape or affect the laws? So my friends and I thought if we created this PAC to elevate the voices of artists as a form of political civic engagement, we could start the movement toward radically changing society.

We realized that there are institutions, museums, that have audiences in the millions and tens of millions that walk in with open minds to be challenged, and those institutions often dont feel like they have the place to speak to the current moment politically or even at all. So weve started to do exhibitions and town halls and billboards to attract the attention of those people. Were attempting to promote the critical work artists are doing by framing it as political speech, because we know that when you say something is political it implies theres something at stake.

Trevor Paglens Nov. 6, 2018 billboard in Hartford, CT. Photo via Instagram courtesy For Freedoms.

I realized back in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected, he was a relatively unknown person who used slogans like Hope and change and that was really great branding to inspire people and earn the nations trust. The fact that these two relatively meaningless statements could be such radical tools for engagement and enthusiasm was kind of frightening to me, and I recognized it was no longer about money in politics, it was really about how you can tell the best story.

For Freedoms is an act of creative patriotism, and we hope that it will continue as a model for generations, because its terrible to see political discourse without critical discourse.

In the spring right before the coronavirus outbreak shut down the US, you staged a For Freedoms convention in Los Angeles. What happened there, and now that the stakes are higher than ever, how are your efforts changing in the run up to this election?

That was a great event, we brought 500 delegates and people from all fifty states plus DC and Puerto Rico to develop a creative plan of action around civic engagement, in an election year; and a week after we got home my wife got sick with the coronavirus.

Wow.

The world changed forever, and the old rules we were engaging with had changed. We realized we needed to start playing a new game and the rules would need to be rewritten. With the protests now, it really harkens back to a moment of change around 1860 when a group of abolitionists came together across the nation to reimagine what society was possible. They were called the Wide Awakes, and they chose then-candidate Abraham Lincoln to support, and through these creative, non-violent performances that had singing, music, and graphic design elements, inspired a movement that pushed our country to a better place.

You shared a pretty gnomic Instagram post of an album cover for a band apparently called the Wide Awakes recently, that featured an inverted pyramid with an eye inscribed in it, and it piqued my interest, realizing as you said that Lincoln actually used the historical group as a get out the vote mechanism. Is this new Wide Awakes 2020 as you called it going to be similarly involved?

We hope so! It depends on if you all join in. For Freedoms has always been anti-partisan because we recognize that the left-right binary doesnt make space for the rest of us, its really through an unwillingness to think outside the box that we get trapped in tit-for-tat arguments rather than truly engaging with issues we care about.

Would you ever consider treading over the line from art and politics into solely politics?

I think anyone who cares at all should consider it. I would hope that Im not the only artist whos seriously considering it, and I will probably at some point, try to run for some office. Id rather my wife do that because I think there are so many women I know who would make much better leaders, but I would never want them to do something I wouldnt be willing to do myself.

Is there anything that makes you really hopeful right now?

I feel hopeful because I have never known the world to be more mindful and more aware of every breath, and of the value of every breath and the necessity for us to speak up for what we truly believe in.

Excerpt from:

I Have Never Known the World to Be More Mindful of Every Breath: Artist Hank Willis Thomas on How Art Intersects With Politics - artnet News

Op-Ed: Civil rights lawsuits alone won’t give us the America we want – Los Angeles Times

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

In the last few weeks, the Supreme Court has shocked many observers, affirming several civil rights protections, despite the widespread fear that the courts conservative majority would go the other way.

The court held that discrimination against gay or transgendered individuals counted as sex discrimination barred by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It struck down the attempt by Louisiana to constrict access to abortion by imposing burdensome regulations on reproductive health providers. And for now, it has preserved Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the immigration program that protects young, undocumented residents from deportation.

These decisions will protect millions of Americans and their communities from the threat of hostile government action. And yet, the truth is, these rulings are a reprieve, not a victory, for civil rights.

The Roberts court itself continues to winnow away civil rights through other avenues: its religious liberty rulings will enable some employers to avoid providing contraception coverage in healthcare plans for employees. The DACA ruling, similarly, leaves open the possibility of dismantling protections for people brought to this country illegally as children.

The task of assuring an equitable, inclusive democracy now requires going beyond litigation and court rulings. Litigation dependent on a federal judiciary increasingly stacked with Trump-appointed judges and bound by decades-old statutes will simply not be enough to make civil rights protections real for the people who need them most. Besides, focusing narrowly on individual instances of discrimination often leaves in place workplace policies and the power structures that perpetuate systemic discrimination against Black and brown communities in particular.

Another route is possible. The nationwide protests and Black Lives Matter have forced Americans to confront the need to dismantle systematic forms of racial, gender and economic inequities that shape our economy and society. If we are to take these demands seriously, we have to do more than look to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. or other judges to save us.

What does this mean?

First, it means expanding our conventional understanding of civil rights to encompass more than legal claims that victims can make in court. For example, we can reduce workplace discrimination by giving workers more power and the ability to walk away from bad employers by creating a strong universal safety net with living wages and universal healthcare. It means expanding the rights of workers to bargain for better treatment through stronger unionization initiatives and offsetting the power of short-term profit-seeking investors by putting workers on corporate boards.

Second, we need to expand our approach to civil rights enforcement beyond individualized cases. The Civil Rights Act is an exemplar of this approach.

Part of that law empowers federal agencies to make compliance with civil rights standards a requirement for receiving federal funds. Such provisions were also written broadly, so that regulators can address patterns of discrimination without having to show specific intentional discrimination by decision-makers, which is a high bar. So, if a citys housing and zoning plan disproportionately harms communities of color, this disparate impact could be the basis of a federal action that forces the local government to adopt a better alternative.

Third, the enforcement of such laws requires powerful and energetic regulatory agencies. During the civil rights movement, the push to desegregate hospitals, for example, was successful because bureaucrats at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare used their authority to require hospitals getting Medicare payments to desegregate.

Where these laws and regulatory tools have been weakened, we have seen the protections for racial equity erode. The Trump administration has stopped several federal disparate impact enforcement actions, allowing private businesses and local governments to carry on discriminatory practices. Meanwhile, the judiciary has for years been chipping away at the authority for agencies to tackle systemic racial disparities, weakening it in the employment context, for example.

Adopting a structural approach to securing civil rights leaning more on legislatures and regulators as the enforcers of rights would be a sharp departure from a court- and litigation-first model.

More than 50 years ago, the civil rights movement embraced an expansive vision of equity. The Movement for Black Lives recently released its vision for a modern-day civil rights bill, the BREATHE Act, which outlines many of the structural changes needed to end police violence and dismantle systems of racial violence, as well as policies to tackle racial disparities in employment and housing.

If progressives win big in the November election, there may be an opportunity to push forward a new civil rights movement that continues the legacy of the 1960s. Anything less will leave Americans at the mercy of a constricted, litigation model of rights one that depends too heavily on a fickle and skeptical judiciary.

K. Sabeel Rahman is the president of Demos, a think tank working to advance racial equity and democracy. He is also an associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School.

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Op-Ed: Civil rights lawsuits alone won't give us the America we want - Los Angeles Times

BIPOC Executive Search Inc. Launches With a Mandate to Help Organizations Increase BIPOC Representation – Business Wire

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A group of senior recruitment and consultancy professionals, with over 50 years of industry experience between them, are pleased to announce the launch of BIPOC Executive Search Inc., a professional services firm specializing in the recruitment of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour for organizations across Canada.

The new venture is inspired by the BlackNorth Initiativea program calling on Canadian organizations to, by 2025, ensure Black leaders hold 3.5% of executive and board member roles, at minimum. BIPOC Executive Search Inc. seeks to support organizations in their quest to fulfill this critically important mission.

Jason Murray, Founder and President of BIPOC Executive Search Inc. says, It is encouraging to see leaders, across sectors, become more intentional about increasing the representation of Black people around decision-making tables. Many of these leaders are now asking where do we go from here to ensure the work gets done? At BIPOC Executive Search Inc., our teammade up of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) community membersbrings professional and lived experience to each client engagement. With a team reflective of the community that organizations seek to attract, when retaining BIPOC Executive Search Inc. clients are assured that Black candidates are pursued for positions at the most senior levels.

BIPOC Executive Search Inc. is the first recruitment firm of its kind in Canada with such a pronounced BIPOC mandate. Black people are often at the forefront of diversity initiatives; while the firm is keen to ensure that the Black population is represented in senior-level positions, work still needs to be done to increase Indigenous and POC representation at senior tables. Among others, joining Murray as senior team members of the new firm are Helen Mekonen, Jefferson Darrell, Jessica Yamoah, Candice Frederick, Sedina Fiati, Stacy-Ann Buchanan, and Erica Ing.

Jason is a leader in the executive search business, and one of a few Black executive search recruiters in Canada, said Wes Hall, Founder and Chairman of the BlackNorth Initiative. With his experience and drive, and with the strength of the BIPOC Executive Search team, its very good to know that organizations across the country will have a specialized resource for increasing Black, Indigenous, and racialized senior hires.

As many workplaces are steeped in historical and institutional structures often responsible for disenfranchising Indigenous and/or racialized employees, BIPOC Executive Search Inc. will provide a range of solutions, services, and training, including Organizational EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) Audits, Cultural Transformation Support, Human Resources EDI Support, Succession Management for BIPOC Staff, Cultural Sensitivity Training, Unconscious Bias Training, and more.

BIPOC Executive Search Inc. is a mission-driven organization. With respect to our purpose, thats twofold: by working with clients to attract, develop, and retain a workforce truly representative of diverse populations, as global citizens well build greater capacity to innovate while we meaningfully tackle some of the most pressing issues of our time, Murray added.

Since research has shown that companies inclusive of Black, Indigenous, and communities of colour perform better fiscally, aside from the moral argument around inclusivity our economy is not realizing its true potential when diversity at the executive level is lacking. Intuitively, we know that many companies share the belief that a diverse team is both good and necessary. Where racial diversity is lacking in an organization and where cultural reform is needed, BIPOC Executive Search Inc. can help.

For more information, please visit http://www.bipocsearch.com.

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BIPOC Executive Search Inc. Launches With a Mandate to Help Organizations Increase BIPOC Representation - Business Wire

Head of the Charles Regatta and Gold Cup Partner to Establish Grant Fund to Support Rowing Programs in Under-Resourced Communities – row2k.com

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

New Fund Will Make Grants of $5000-20000 to Up to Eight Programs

Two iconic American rowing institutions today announced that they will partner to create a new fund that will provide financial and programmatic support to emerging and under-resourced rowing programs throughout the United States, as part of a new commitment to create more inclusivity and diversity within the sport of rowing.

Applications to the fund can begin immediately and will be accepted until Aug. 15. Grant recipients will be announced by Sept. 15.

The Head of the Charles Regatta of Boston and the Gold Cup of Philadelphia will join forces to provide $100,000 in seed capital to launch the Head of the Charles/Gold Cup Fund that will make annual grants to rowing programs that serve under-resourced youth and communities throughout the US. The fund also will provide in-kind equipment and mentoring services that will allow the programs to field competitive teams of 19-and-under youth.

In addition, the new fund will immediately launch a nationwide fundraising campaign to encourage contributions to the fund as it creates an endowment for ongoing annual grantmaking.

"It is long past time for the sport of rowing to honestly confront its lack of diversity and implement concrete actions to attract, mentor and retain a diverse set of athletes, coaches and supporters," said Blair Crawford, chair of the board of the Head of the Charles Regatta. "As a highly visible leader in the sport, the Head of the Charles Regatta must do better. Establishing this fund is just the beginning phase of our intentional and sustained commitment to supporting greater equity in rowing."

Since its beginning, the sport of rowing has primarily been made up of white athletes and has been seen as posing significant barriers to entry in terms of access to boathouses, boats and other equipment, and training and coaching opportunities. While there has been a growth in the number of rowing outreach programs for youth from economically disadvantaged communities in recent years, many of them continue to be significantly under resourced and lacking in ongoing financial and community support. "The Head of the Charles/Gold Cup Fund is designed to provide capital, equipment and opportunities to this new ecosystem of rowing programs and help position them for continuing success in their efforts to field competitive teams made up of promising young athletes," said William McNabb, one of the founders of The Gold Cup regatta of Philadelphia. "One of the particularly important elements of our fund is its commitment to provide year-long mentors from the rowing community and access to ongoing connections."

The new fund will be overseen by a diverse board made up representatives of the two organizations, along with civic leaders from the two host cities, as well as members of the business and sports communities.

The new entity envisions making annual grants of $5,000 to $20,000 to a maximum of eight rowing programs that will be selected each year as part of a competitive application process by a Grant Review Committee. The committee will be primarily comprised of rowers of color from throughout the United States. In addition to choosing the grantees, the committee members will serve as mentors to each of the programs throughout the year. Olympic and world-class rowers from throughout the world also will serve as mentors to the chosen programs.

In order to be eligible for funding, rowing programs need to be committed to fielding competitive racing teams for youth 19 and under who come from under-resourced communities and may be unable to access a range of supports and services. The programs need to be committed to diversity, equity and inclusion in all of their efforts, as well as following USRowing Safe Sport standards.

More information about the Head of the Charles/Gold Cup Fund application process and eligibility criteria, along with a PDF of the application itself can be found on the Head of the Charles Regatta (www.hocr.org) and The Gold Cup (www.thegoldcup.org) websites. Any questions about the fund should be directed to GoldCupHOCRgrant@gmail.com.

Head of the Charles Regatta and Gold Cup Partner to Establish Grant Fund to Support Rowing Programs in Under-Resourced Communities - row2k.com

Franklin County initiative to tackle COVID-19 health disparities in black community – NBC4 WCMH-TV

Posted on July 15, 2020 by Danzig

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) Tuesday, the Franklin County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution and funding to help tackle health disparities during the COVID-19 health crisis.

Commissioners voted to initiate a $175,000 contract with the African American Male Wellness Walk and Make a Safer Community. The groups will use the money to promote awareness and expand access to adequate care within the black community.

Marlon Platt of the African American Male Wellness said, What we want to do is go about educating those in these hard to reach, underserved communities about how they can, one, get healthier with nutrition and preventative care and two, by providing resources such as masks and sanitizer.

He explained the pandemic, as with other health issues like heart disease and high blood pressure, disproportionately affects black men. To address the inequities, the organization is canvassing high-risk neighborhoods. Staff and volunteers will hand out care packages with masks, hand sanitizer and other hygiene supplies. Theyll also educate families and individuals about preventative healthcare and the risks associated with COVID-19.

Theyve blanketed the entire county and theyre being extremely intentional about addressing those high-concentration areas that were seeing right now, said Joy Bivens, the director of Franklin County Job and Family Services.

In addition to the preventative measures, the project also plans to expand access to free COVID-19 testing in vulnerable communities.

The $175,000 project is expected to reach more than 100,000 people.

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Franklin County initiative to tackle COVID-19 health disparities in black community - NBC4 WCMH-TV

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