Daily Archives: December 19, 2020

On a Sunday evening in late September, with wildfire smoke hanging in the air, a few dozen people gathered in the rooftop kitchen of a Hollywood apartment building called Treehouse for their weekly communal dinner.

The buildings co-founder and chief executive, Prophet Walker, stacked plates and cleaned up cutting boards behind the tiled kitchen island, while the buildings designer, Sean Knibb, manned the pans of turmeric chicken sizzling on the stove.

The rest of the residents drank wine and chatted as they waited to eat. A woman with the vibes of an Instagram astrologer waved hi at a man who seemed to leap from a Vineyard Vines catalog. One wall of the kitchen was open to the deck outside, but people were squeezed together at small tables. Nobody was wearing a mask.

It looked like a scene from the past, or from the future. These people werent friends, at least not before they moved in. They werent family, save a few parents with their children. They were co-livers, a building-sized pod in the time of COVID, in a housing experiment with grand ambitions.

Co-living isnt a new idea, or even a new target for tech money. Start-ups like Common, Bungalow and WeLive, the co-living division of the smoldering office-space Hindenburg WeWork, have been raising venture capital and carving up apartment buildings across the country in recent years. Most sell rooms to renters as a cheaper option, a nouveau-SRO with foosball in the laundry room and catered Taco Tuesdays on the patio.

Treehouse is taking a different tack. Walker and co-founder Joe Green, a tech entrepreneur in the Facebook orbit and big booster of psychedelic research, say they want to create the togetherness of intentional communities like co-ops, communes, or Burning Man without the anticapitalist politics or freegan cuisine. In an era when luxury is synonymous with isolation private jets, private islands, Uber Black versus Uber Pool theyre betting that real community can be packaged as a premium, an amenity that keeps atomization at bay as surely as heated floors banish cold feet.

From the outside, the five-story building on Carlton Way near the open cut of the 101 looks like any other upscale new construction sans serif font, little balconies, black-painted steel. But inside its walls, things look different, starting with a floor plan heavily tilted toward shared spaces.

The laundry/art room in the basement.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Rotating committees of residents determine which rental applicants get approved, and the process involves more checks of vibe than credit. Leases come with signed commitments to community values, and instead of simply showing up for scheduled events, residents are encouraged to create their own classes and shindigs for the rest of the building. Only 10% of the units are set aside as affordable for low-income tenants, but all are currently occupied by poets.

The rooms are pitched at the upper middle of the rental market in central L.A., with rents starting at $1,715 a month, plus a $210 fee to cover utilities, housekeeping, free coffee and Sunday dinners, yoga classes and other events.

Specifically, theyre pitched at people like Kimberlee Archer. When Archer left Facebook for a high-ranking job at Snap in May, the 38-year-old marketing executive could have rented an upscale pad with ocean views or found a spot up in the hills. But she wanted to live with other people, pandemic be damned. Before leaving Oakland, she googled coliving space.

A few weeks later, she moved into one of Treehouses units really just a bedroom and a private bathroom, furnished in the style of a cozy boutique hotel (Knibb also designed the Line Hotel in Koreatown).

Ive lived by myself, Ive lived with family members, Ive lived with roommates, Archer said. But after a career heavy on work travel, she realized she didnt need a lot of space she was used to living in a hotel room. What I enjoy is having really good conversations with people I dont work with.

A bedroom in Treehouse Hollywood.

(Treehouse)

She shares a kitchen with four other suitemates and shares the common spaces of the building with the rest of Treehouses 40-plus residents: Theres the lobby/cafe, laundry room/art studio, screening room/Japanese-themed bar, two-story library curated by the resident librarian, and on the roof, a garden, a deck, the communal kitchen, and yes, a little treehouse, wrapped around a 100-year-old olive tree shipped in from Sacramento.

The company views the Hollywood building as a beta test for its bigger plans: a network of Treehouses across Los Angeles, from Koreatown to Compton. A complex keyed toward families interested in co-life is already in the works in Leimert Park. Residents will be welcome to stop by any other Treehouse in the city for coffee or drinks on the roof when theyre in the neighborhood.

Walker and Green make an odd couple of utopian housing entrepreneurs. What brought them together was loneliness.

Walker grew up in Watts, broke someones jaw in a fight over a DiscMan and went to Ironwood State Prison on an assault and robbery charge when he was 16. He got out and got into Loyola Marymount University, then worked on some of L.A.s splashiest real estate projects as a developer with Morley Builders, attempting a run for state Assembly in 2014 along the way.

Green grew up in Santa Monica and went to Harvard, where he found himself sharing a dorm with Mark Zuckerberg. He declined a chance to quit school to go work at the social network but managed to start a series of successful tech companies of his own. In 2013, he teamed up with Zuckerberg to start FWD.us, a lobbying shop that used tech money to push for immigration reform, among other issues.

By the time Green and Walker met in 2016, both had reached a similar conclusion: They had found success but felt more alone than ever.

I never experienced lack of community until I made money, Walker said. Growing up in Watts, he said, he felt like the child of everyone on the block. Prison, if anything, was an even more intense experience of closeness with his neighbors. Living in a hundred-person open dorm requires radical transparency literally theres no dividers between 15 toilets, Walker said. We needed each other to not go crazy.

After his run for office, he started thinking about how L.A. bred loneliness the skyrocketing rents, the neighbors who never met, the way that markets and neighborhoods in the city segregate people by race, class, age and interest.

For Green, loneliness struck when he was on a spiritual sabbatical following the self-described failure of his lobbying efforts. Alone with his thoughts, he realized he had been happier as a kid first in his Santa Monica neighborhood, with friends up and down the block, and then at Harvards Kirkland House, where undergrads lived in separate rooms but shared common space.

He began reading about the spread of loneliness in modern society, and was drawn to the work of Johann Hari, who argues in his book Lost Connections that leaving the multigenerational home and familiar neighborhood is a new phenomenon of the last 70 years, and that this isolation is to blame for increasing depression, anxiety, addiction and suicide.

In 2016, mutual friends introduced the pair at the opening of Locol, a burger stand in Watts started by celebrity chefs with the mission of bringing healthier fast food to low-income neighborhoods. Walker had helped build the restaurant with a construction crew drawn from the neighborhood, and he says he was looking for a new project that captured the same feeling of building community and using physical space to actually do so.

They hit it off, but Treehouse wasnt fully born until Green went on a silent meditation retreat a few months later. I spent several days being unable to get my mind off of a vision for this building, Green said. When he got back to San Francisco, he spoke with his friend Michael Birch, the tech millionaire behind the elite S.F. social club the Battery, who reintroduced Green to Walker. Soon, they started scouting out locations.

Unlike most co-living companies, which reconfigure existing apartment buildings, Walker and Green saw that they needed to build from the ground up to get the mix of public versus private space they wanted.

But the decision to start from scratch presented its own challenges. Banks typically finance real estate projects based on dollars per rentable square foot, a model that assumes that shared spaces in the building, such as stairwells and lobbies, are worthless. Green and Walker had trouble finding a lender willing to back their plan. It was, frankly, through some relationships and luck that we finally found a bank that was willing to do a construction loan, Walker said.

A number of prominent tech names have since bought into the vision, though Green is the largest financial backer. Alexis Ohanian, who started the online community Reddit, chipped in, as did L.A. investor Arlan Hamilton and Justin Kan, who co-founded the streaming platform Twitch.

By that Sunday in late September, it seemed like the vision was working, at least to a visitor, even in the face of the pandemic.

After Knibb introduced the meal squash blossoms, jeweled rice, chapulines and a big salad along with the chicken Elizabeth Williams, an Australian screenwriter, saw that a journalist had joined for the evening and immediately introduced herself.

Williams had moved into Treehouse after a few cripplingly lonely months in a Studio City apartment, after moving to the U.S. in 2019. She explained that she grew up in a close-knit neighborhood in Townsville, North Queensland, no locks on doors, the kids would just swarm around like bees, where her fondest memories were of neighborhood game nights and jam sessions. She was happy to pay extra for a built-in community.

Michele Esquivel, Treehouses lone inhabitant older than 50, sat eating squash blossoms and rice at a table with three building mates. Her 14-year-old daughter, Violeta, hung out at the next table over.

For years, Esquivel had wanted to move into the city from Orange County, where she worked as a nurse at Kaiser, mostly to help Violeta pursue her budding career as a slam poet. The closest place they had been able to afford was in Long Beach, until she heard about Treehouse earlier this year.

Now they live in a suite with three other poets, whose rooms make up the 10% of units that are affordable in Treehouse, which the building includes in exchange for denser zoning allowances. Esquivel said that it could feel like a retirement home for millennials from time to time, but she was surprised at how well it was working out.

I felt the vetting process was long and tedious, and they asked really odd questions, but I understand it now, Esquivel said. To maintain the vibe of the building, potential renters have to go through an extensive application process, with other renters serving on the application committee. Everyone has to sign a commitment to the buildings core values being kind, present, curious, candid and responsible as part of their lease.

Prophet Walker, left, and Joe Green in a communal space at Treehouse. Every Sunday, residents gather here for a shared meal.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

One question had been what she would bring to the table as a resident; she had picked her cooking and her massage therapy practice. Now she sets up her table on the roof deck and gives massage sessions to residents. Other Treehousers give fitness classes in the basement gym, or teach lessons on medicinal herbs in the rooftop garden. Every Sunday, a rotating group of residents gets a $500 budget to cook or order family dinner for the whole building.

The building shares a Slack for internal announcements, which also plays host to the occasional call-out and heated conversation. To keep conflicts to a minimum, residents have set up a regular series of conversations, called Tree Talks, where the community values are often invoked to keep things kind and candid when residents are being less than responsible. A resident who washed their dogs clothes in one of the shared machines was a source of building-wide tension. Now, after a Tree Talk, a washer and dryer set is earmarked just for items that might have pet hair on them.

Esquivel said there were some initial issues with dish-doing and living room clutter within the poets suite, but the benefits have outweighed the rough patches. We would have never met anybody in these circles, Esquivel said, and especially for her daughter she thinks its been a wonderful experience, shes learning to cohabit with other people, other age groups.

A dissenting voice on the deck came from James Swiderski, who owns a solar energy company. He had always lived alone, and described his decision to move into Treehouse as a personal challenge. He planned to leave soon. Im glad I came, I dont regret it, Swiderski said. But it was an overstep for me, to be honest.

For Green, too, co-life has only been a temporary change of pace. When the pandemic first swept over California, he was staying in the spacious Beverly Hills house that his dad grew up in, which he said was in certain ways the peak of what Americans think they want. But Beverly Hills got lonely.

He moved into a room at Treehouse, where residents had created a building-wide bubble of viral trust after a few nervous weeks that had left the common areas mostly empty. Immediately, Green said, he could feel his COVID isolation anxiety melt away. He could post on Slack and 10 minutes later have a Settlers of Catan game going on the roof. It felt so much better, because I had people to be around. Still, after several weeks, he returned to his primary home in San Francisco.

Walker has no plans to leave. After the meal wound down and people began to filter back to their rooms, he finished doing the dishes, then plopped down in a booth, proud of the social feat he was in the process of pulling off: filling a building with strangers who were becoming friends, or at least fond acquaintances, against the head wind of a pandemic that has mostly driven Americans further into isolation.

Between its opening in fall 2019 and the beginning of the pandemic, Treehouse had rented only a third of its rooms. In the months since, the building has nearly filled up. The pandemic showed us if nothing else how important community and proximity is, Walker said. We have all these massive online communities, and thats like cool, cute, but people in quarantine in New York and Italy still felt compelled to sing out their windows with their neighbors during the first lockdowns.

Walker reached for a painful memory from his teenage years in Watts to underscore the point: I watched my best friend get murdered in front of me, Walker said. That should be like a death knell to anyones psyche, but he credits the neighborhood with saving him.

The entire block came outside, Walker said, and then when they saw what happened, every single person, just about, hugged me, like youre gonna get through this, this sucks, but weve got you, and every day weve got you. His hope for Treehouse is that it can build that kind of neighborhood, one where everyone knows your name and comes together in tough times, but for people like him who left their neighborhoods behind.

And of course, he hopes that it can make a lot of money at the same time. It just so happens that through density arbitrage, through a host of laws, through real estate financials, the Treehouse business model is an incredible investment, Walker said. But truly, were trying to build a community.

Read more from the original source:

Treehouse is trying to cure L.A. loneliness with co-living - Los Angeles Times

December 17, 2020

O'AHU Working together with residents across O'ahu, the Honolulu Department of Community Services (DCS) organized the creation of urban gardens at seven City-owned, special needs housing locations this week. With the goal of providing sustainable, fresh produce for those facing food insecurity, more than 160 garden beds were crafted and 20 fruit trees planted through a Food Security-Scaping Program seeded with CARES Act Coronavirus Relief Funds. The project will benefit nearly 1,100 residents from vulnerable communities including: previously homeless families & youth, kpuna, domestic violence survivors, and low-income families.

"Growing our own food on-island is vital to making our community more resilient," said Mayor Kirk Caldwell. "Expanding our food production footprint will not only provide locally grown produce; it is part of a movement where the food we eat is grown, picked, processed, distributed, and prepared by the people of Oahu for the people of O'ahu. Along with helping to sustain the bodies of those affected most by the pandemic, this project will also feed their spirits as they see their hard work grow into what will become vibrant urban gardens."

At ALEA Bridge in Hale'iwa, program coordinators installed 13 garden beds and fruit trees like mulberry and avocado in late November. April Keller and her young son venture out to the flourishing gardens every morning to look at the array of growing vegetables, including tomatoes, squash, lettuce, and kale as well as herbs like mint.

"My son really loves tomatoes and picking them off the vine so we are both really excited to see them growing," Keller said. "He is fascinated with the whole process, and it's a good teaching opportunity for him."

Keller looks forward to tending the garden and making healthy meals and mint tea for her family. She recently harvested cabbage, cilantro, green onion, parsley, and kale from the gardens to create kalua pig and cabbage with cilantro rice.

"This pandemic has truly shone a light on the need for food security among our vulnerable communities. Each of these project locations is a place that has offered safety and stability to 'ohana through housing," said DCS Director Pamela Witty-Oakland. "Now we get to work together to plant literal seeds for their future that will help to feed nearly 1,100 residents not just for weeks or months, but for years to come."

Participating Affordable Housing Sites

People Served

ALEA Bridge serves formerly homeless families and youth.

15

Mnoa Gardens provides affordable rentals for kpuna.

92

West Loch Senior Villages provides affordable rentals for kpuna.

173

Hale Maluhia shelters survivors of domestic violence.

56

Kahauiki Village serves formerly homeless families.

549

Vancouver House serves formerly homeless and at-risk families.

107

DE Thompson Village provides affordable rentals for kpuna.

100

"The project emerged out of an intentional response to implement multi-faceted solutions, prioritizing sustainable relief to individuals and families being hit the hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis," said Lala Nuss, climate resilience and equity manager at the Office of Climate Change, Sustainability, and Resiliency.

This project is inspired by the City's Community Recreational Gardening Program, founded in 1975 and supporting nearly 1,230 plots at 10 community gardens. In addition, the Mnoa Gardens plot neighbors the public community garden located at Mnoa Valley District Park. "This is a fine example of how a community garden model can be incorporated into diverse properties and potentially make a significant impact on food security and the health of our communities," shared Joshlyn Sand, Director of the Honolulu Botanical Gardens and the City's community garden system. "We have seen the passion that our communities have for these kinds of gardens, and now this amazing program can help empower more future gardeners in so many ways."

The project is made possible by a private-public partnership with the Honolulu Department of Community Services, the Office of Climate Change, Sustainability and Resiliency, Department of Parks and Recreation, Department of Land Management, Hawai'i Community Foundation, SSFM International, Supersistence, local landscaping companies, and community-based nonprofits.

The Department of Community Services (DCS) is an agency of the City and County of Honolulu focused on creating opportunities to improve the quality of life for the people of O'ahu. DCS oversees the City's work in key areas such as housing, homeless services, community development, aging & disability resources, grants, housing & rental assistance, workforce training, and youth services.

This press release was produced by the City and County of Honolulu. The views expressed are the author's own.

Link:

Urban Gardens Created To Address Food Insecurity In Honolulu's Vulnerable Communities - Patch.com

Cream City Hostel, 500 E. Center St., opened in the summer of 2019, and will soon transforminto the first cooperative housing for Milwaukee residents thanks to a $450,000 program-related investment loan (PRI) from Bader Philanthropies, Inc.

Cream City Hostel was not yet through its first year of operations when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and it was forced to close its doors. The shift to cooperative housing will begin in January 2021, with hopes to introduce it to the neighborhood in the spring or summer of 2021.

RiverBee LLC, the buildings ownership group of more than 40 Milwaukee investors, hopes to provide housing for at least 12 residents. This model could be replicated in other communities.The cooperative tenant housing model offers an intentional living community that helps support people dealing with losses and uncertainty such as jobs, instability and landlord challenges. Its also particularly well-suited for the COVID-19 pandemic realities by creating a safe pod of known residents.

The beauty of this pivot is that the project will stay true to our original vision of this work, which was to collectively empower the community, ourselves and each other to make our lives and neighborhoods better, says Juli Kaufmann, social entrepreneur, managing member of RiverBee LLC and president of Fix Development. We are proud to continue to create a safe and diverse place to bring the community together.

Kaufmann led the $1 million redevelopment Cream City Hostel project, partnering with Riverwest residents Wendy Mesich and Carolyn Weber. Additionally, more than 40 community members, most of them from the Riverwest and Harambee neighborhoods, became direct investors in the building, using a crowdfunding ownership model. Kaufmanns business model is to use real estate as a tool for social change and is the only real estate model of its kind in Milwaukee. Her work focuses on creating small businesses and local jobs using community-based funding options.

Were glad to partner with Bader Philanthropies because theyre a community partner thats mission-aligned, said Kaufmann. We wanted to pivot thoughtfully, in the same vein as the hostel was designed for the neighborhood to be the highest and best use for the community. This model will fill a need for low-income residents.

See original here:

Cream City Hostel to become cooperative housing - OnMilwaukee.com

DENVER (CBS4) So many people have experienced tough times during the coronavirus pandemic. Those can include being sick, losing a loved one, losing a job and being isolated from your loved ones.

During Fridays coronavirus briefing, Gov. Jared Polis said, Theres been a 600% increase in telemedicine use for anxiety, depression and substance abuse.

In any other year, the holiday season marks the passage of another year and can provide a welcome respite for the troubles of the day.

Holidays are also rituals that bring our families and our communities that meaning, joy and connection, said Aimee Voth Siebert, Behavioral Health and Inclusion for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

This year, 2020, is different, the holidays may be tough on many more this year.

Disasters like this pandemic, unfortunately, can shake up a lot of our routines, said Voth Siebert, As individuals we may be feeling more isolated this year.

So, what can you do if you feel depressed, anxious or alone this year? The first thing is find help; seek out a mental health professional or just talk to a trusted friend or family member, but dont feel like you have to suffer alone.

You can also think of the positive things that happened this year for a quick mood boost.

Its been a tough one but continuing to ask that question, What has made it better? can be really helpful, said Voth Siebert.

You can also help others. Volunteer or give socially distant gifts by leaving them on doorsteps or through the mail and remember is that its OK to grieve if you have had a loss in your life, even if it is the holidays.

Theres no right or wrong way to grieve and no timeline for these feelings, said Voth Siebert.

Its also important to remember that everyone is going through something. So embracing the spirit of the season can help others while helping yourself feel better.

Lets use this as a reason to be kind to each other and intentional about caring for our mental health, said Voth Siebert.

If you feel anxious, depressed, suicidal or have a substance abuse problem the following resources can help you find the help you need:

Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255 https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

Colorado Crisis Services: 1-844-493-8255

Health First Colorado (apply for medical insurance and find Dr.): https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/hcpf/colorado-medicaid

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration: Findtreatment.samhsa.gov

Colorado Spirit Crisis Counseling Program: covid19.colorado.gov/crisis-counseling-program

Colorado LADDERS (find a substance abuse treatment or mental health provider): Colorado.gov/ladders

UCCS GRIT Resiliency Training- build skills to support one another: grit.uccs.edu

Mental Health During the Holidays: covid19.colorado.gov/mental-health-during-the-holidays

Read more:

COVID In Colorado: Isolation, Depression Due To Pandemic Amplified This Holiday Season - CBS Denver

NASHVILLE Tennessee voters are divided along partisan lines over issues ranging from the coronavirus pandemic to the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election's outcome, according to a new Vanderbilt University survey.

"Political partisanship is the ultimate factor shaping Tennesseans' beliefs on every vital issue of the hour the pandemic, the economy and the election," said Dr. John Geer, the Ginny and Conner Searcy Dean of the College of Arts and Science and co-director of the Vanderbilt-Tennessee poll. "The disparities in decision making between Tennessee Republicans and Democrats are at an all-time high, a signal to the new administration on the challenges that lie ahead to unify America."

The survey of 1,007 registered Tennessee voters was done between Nov. 18 and Dec. 8 and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.6 percentage points. Vanderbilt University's Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions conducts the survey twice annually. It is directed by Geer and Josh Clinton, the Abby and Jon Winkelreid chair and professor of political science.

Republicans "overwhelmingly doubt the validity of the results of presidential election," according to Vanderbilt, which says just 12% of Tennessee Republican voters surveyed said they were confident that national votes were counted fairly and accurately. That compares to 97% of Democrats.

Even when assessing the accuracy of the vote count within Tennessee, which Republican President Donald Trump easily won over Democrat Joe Biden, Tennessee Republicans had more doubts about the accuracy of the results than did Democrats. Poll directors said that finding suggests Trump's repeated attacks on the process extended into red states and his own supporters.

Just 15% of Republicans polled here think Biden is the legitimate winner, while 70% think Biden is trying to "steal the election," according to the Vanderbilt survey.

Meanwhile, 95% of Democrats told pollsters they think Biden is the legitimate winner. And 70% of Democrats believe Trump, who still hasn't accepted the results, is trying to "steal" the election. At the same time, 35% of Republicans said they don't think Trump should concede after the Electoral College certifies the votes, which occurred this week after the survey was conducted.

"In no other time in recent history have we seen voters so skeptical and dissatisfied with election results," Geer said. "Even those voters satisfied with the outcome remain concerned that the opponent is trying to steal the election. Such obstinance must be curbed or could result in a long-term decline in the public's faith in democratic institutions."

When vaccines to protect people from COVID-19 become available to the public the first round are being distributed this week 75% of Tennesseans polled stated they are likely to get vaccinated.

But more than one out of three Republicans surveyed 36% said they are unlikely to get the vaccine, compared to just 15% of Democrats, according to pollsters. That comes despite increased concerns and awareness of the coronavirus at the community level.

For example, 80% of registered voters surveyed said they know someone who has contracted coronavirus, a finding that is consistent in urban, suburban and rural communities as well as partisanship. And 66% are concerned that they or a member of their family will get infected, a rise of 6 points from Vanderbilt's spring poll. Concern among Republicans polled rose 17 percentage points from last spring's poll, going from 37% to 54%. Concern among Democrats remains high at 88%, up 6 percentage points from spring.

Sixty-two percent of Tennesseans polled believe the pandemic is now a large or extremely large public health problem, an increase of 34 percentage points across urban, suburban and rural communities since last spring. Among Democrats, 83% think the pandemic is a large or extremely large public health problem, up 32 percentage points from the spring 2020.

But only 47% of Republicans think COVID-19 poses a large public health problem, according to the poll.

Polarization also impacts socializing and travel plans. Despite raised awareness and concern for COVID-19, 32% of Tennesseans said they don't plan to change how they would normally celebrate the holidays with family and friends. Fifty-two percent of Republicans said they won't change their plans, compared to only 14% of Democrats.

Just over one out of every five Republicans surveyed 22% said they don't usually wear a mask or face covering in a store or public place where they encounter other people. That compares to zero percent of Democrats and 11% of registered voters who are independents. Vanderbilt officials say a zero percent finding is "rare" in polling and underscores the "dramatic polarization" on mask wearing.

But Republicans, Democrats and independents do share something in common. They are somewhat or very concerned that the pandemic has harmed student learning, with 87% to 88% worried it has diminished learning for students at the elementary, middle school students and high school levels.

"It's clear that Tennesseans increasingly see the negative impact of the pandemic on their communities, especially as an inhibitor of public health and a quality education for their children," said Clinton. "Yet there still remains significant, intentional resistance to the CDC's top recommendations to prevent the spread of the virus."

The latest poll found Tennesseans' confidence in the U.S. economy rebounded to fall 2016 levels at 53%, up from 35% in the spring. Confidence in the Tennessee economy increased from 51% to 67%.

But Republican Gov. Bill Lee is taking a first-time hit in his job approval ratings, which dropped from 64% in May to 57% in the latest Vanderbilt poll.

The governor has come under fire from the medical community and Democrats who accuse him of not doing enough to stop the state's spiraling COVID-19 infection rates and now rising deaths.

"Democrats' approval of Gov. Lee declined by a significant 22 percentage points, which likely reflects dissatisfaction with his response to the pandemic among Democrats and independents," Clinton said.

But he noted Lee's approval among Republicans remains the same as it was in May, saying the governor's support in his Republican base "remains strong."

Thirty-seven percent of Tennesseans surveyed, meanwhile, said the pandemic continues to be the leading priority for Tennessee state government, followed by the economy (28%) and education (13%).

But there's a partisan split there as well: 64% of Democrats prioritized the pandemic, education (13%) and the economy (8%). But 40% of Republicans surveyed cited the economy as their top priority followed by the pandemic (19%) and education (13%).

Health care was the top priority for 9% of Tennesseans polled, followed by infrastructure at 5%.

Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow him on Twitter @AndySher1.

Read the original here:

Poll: Tennessee voters split along party lines over COVID-19, presidential election outcome and priorities - Chattanooga Times Free Press

Portrait of Monsignor Fahy by John Canfield, untitled publication by the Seton Hall Office of Public Relations, 1976, held the Priest Vertical Files of the Archdiocese of Newark, Box 24.

I learned about Monsignor Fahy in the spring semester of 2018. It was at an intergenerational panel discussion at the Walsh Library of former Seton Hall student-activist leaders. The event was organized by the Concerned 44, an activated student group. The panel discussion was a teach-in about the history of protest on Seton Hall's campus and discussion about the progress of the then student movement. You can follow the Concerned 44 on Instagram. If it weren't for this panel discussion I would not have learned about President Fahy and I'd still be pronouncing Fahy Hall wrong. As an alumna, I can't help but be angry that it took this long. I became more interested and invited colleagues into the journey of getting to know Fahy.

Monsignor Fahy with the leadership of the Black Studies Program, Newark Star Ledger, April 21, 1975.

Alan Delozier, University Archivist, did the work to uncover the Fahy Inaugural address which is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago. The CORE has integrated the speech as a required reading for the Journey of Transformations course. And this article intends to showcase a digital communal reading of the text as an activist performance practice. The point of the project is to position the text and its ethos as a cultural imprint on our collective memory. To me, Fahy is a white anti-racist abolitionist ancestor who risked and used his power to benefit others. Social justice is a term we're hearing a lot. What is it? How do you define it? What does it look like? Everyone will have a different answer. I define it as: righting a wrong. If it doesn't right a wrong, it is not justice. Not only did Fahy leverage his power to right a wrong with some of the most impactful undertakings of Seton Hall's history but he acknowledged the problem. Often, we rush to solutions without first doing the self interrogation to name the problem. He used this moment, his inaugural address, when everyone was listening and we're still listening 50 years later.

The video, this collective recitation, brings many voices together for one message. Faculty and students, separate, but together. It carves a lineage. There are protests now as there were 50 years ago. In the streets and on our campus.

Greg Iannarella offers insight into what moved him to gravitate toward one of the most unwavering parts of Fahy's speech, "This section always felt really powerful to me. The description, the intentional language, invoking real scenes and real communities, conjuring the people! It's a moment where he turns the gaze outward and challenges the audience to see what is relevant."

Participants were encouraged to think about their location as a backdrop. These choices offer additional meaning and subtext. Virtual performance lets us become our own set designers. Brooke Duffy presented her portion outside of a new school. "It is a public elementary school in Teaneck that was recently renamed for Theodora Smiley Lacey, a civil rights activist, 'living legend.' The NorthJersey.com website describes, 'it was because of her efforts that Teaneck became the first city in the United States to voluntarily integrate its public schools.'"

Program of Monsignor Fahys Inaugural Address, October 14, 1970, from the Priest Vertical Files held by the Archdiocese of Newark, Box 24.

This isn't the last we'll hear of Fahy's address. Jon Radwan describes a new participatory oral history project designed to ensure access, inclusion, and equity in its research process to document and preserve the entirety of this part of the University's history. "We are confident that the Inaugural Address is only the beginning of learning about Msgr. Fahy's social justice leadership. Our recent proposal to the New Jersey Council for the Humanities seeks funding for a large scale oral history project. We plan to contact alumni, faculty, and administrators who worked closely with Fahy to record their stories about SHU's collaboration with Newark activists to launch the Black Studies Center." To support this project please contact Angela Kariotis and Jon Radwan.

Centering historical figures creates their own mythology. Retrospectives are not without their limitations. But there are so few white allies to look up to for this work. Allies must dig deep, activating themselves, stepping into their consciousness. We can extend the Fahy legacy and course correct. Like 50 years ago, it is a transformative yet fragile time. We must have the will to meet it.

See the article here:

50 Years Later, Msgr. Fahy's Inaugural Address Foreshadows Issues of Today - Seton Hall University News & Events