Category Archives: Intentional Communities

A UC San Francisco-developed tool to detect early signs of literacy weaknesses that could lead to dyslexia got a boost in the California governors recent budget proposal, and could be in widespread use in the states public schools by 2023.

Dyslexia is a brain-based learning challenge that affects about 15 percent of the population and is unrelated to intelligence, according to the International Dyslexia Association. Children with dyslexia have trouble learning to read and write, and can fall behind if the condition is unaddressed.

UCSFs free digital assessment, which has been piloted with 2,000 students at dozens of California schools to date, is meant to spot pre-reading challenges in kindergarten or first grade, so educators can intervene before dyslexia is typically diagnosed, said Marilu Gorno Tempini, M.D., Ph.D., Charles Schwab Distinguished Professor in Dyslexia and Neurodevelopment, and co-director of theUCSF Dyslexia Centerand theUCSF-UCB Schwab Dyslexia and Cognitive Diversity Center.

We dont usually diagnose dyslexia in kindergarten kids are not expected to read fluently yet, Gorno Tempini said. But we know there are risk factors and the hope is that if we address those factors earlier on, the kids will not develop the difficulties with written language associated with dyslexia.

By the time dyslexia is recognized in third or fourth grade, kids have suffered through feeling incapable or being bullied for years she added. In a worst-case scenario, these kids fall further behind and eventually drop out. So we are really creating a prevention tool here.

Governor Gavin Newsom, who struggled with dyslexia as a child, allocated $10 million to UCSF for dyslexia research in his January budget proposal. Lawmakers will debate the 2022-23 budget over the next few months, with a final budget plan due in June.

The UCSF Dyslexia Center received $15.2 million in the current years state budget, and $3.5 million from the 2019-20 state budget. Last year, a budget trailer bill allocated $4 million for dyslexia early intervention in the school system last year, as well.

UCSFs assessment tool, calledMultitudes, is unique because it is based in the latest neuroscience research and designed to be paired with interventions, said Gorno Tempini, who is affiliated with theUCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences.

Dyslexia has been addressed mainly as an academic issue and not a neurological/health one, and research usually goes through schools of education or psychology without a comprehensive brain health approach to the issue, Gorno Tempini said. Here, we are combining the brain and education sciences, the imaging, the biology and the technology to really understand the strengths and weaknesses of dyslexia and bring it back to empower families and schools and children.

Though administered by proctors on iPad currently, Multitudes will ultimately be web-based, administered by educators and take about 20 minutes. Some elements of the assessment are adapted from partner universities in other states, and UCSF is validating them for the California school population essentially validating and revising the assessment in real time, saidPhaedra Bell, Ph.D., a UCSF program manager and director of school partnerships of the Multitudes project.

This isnt a tool that is done, said Bell. It will continue to be perfected and the data we collect will continue to inform it.

The Multitudes project team is prioritizing equity in the creation and use of its tool, noted Michelle Porche, Ed.D., associate director of community outreach for the UCSF-UC Berkeley Schwab Dyslexia and Cognitive Diversity Center.

The 30-plus schools across California that are piloting Multitudes were chosen to reflect the states demographics, and the scientists, clinicians, teachers, designers and software engineers who are working on the tool are from diverse communities.

The study of dyslexia has been limited by a lack of racial, ethnic, and linguistic representation, but we are increasingly intentional about addressing structural racism that creates barriers to success for students of color in California.Michelle Porche, Ed.D.

We are building inclusive partnerships with schools and communities, so that we can recruit participants for our studies that reflect the racial, ethnic and linguistic diversity of the state, said Porche. The study of dyslexia has been limited by a lack of racial, ethnic, and linguistic representation, but we are increasingly intentional about addressing structural racism that creates barriers to success for students of color in California.

Initial research for the UCSF assessment was conducted at specialty schools for dyslexia, such as the Charles Armstrong and Chartwell Schools, and funded by Charles Schwab and other philanthropists, notedChrista Watson Pereira, Psy.D., UCSF assistant professor of neurology and advisor to the Multitudes project.

These independent schools, and the families and students who go there, gave us the opportunity to have a cohort of 400 children with dyslexia and other learning challenges who volunteered hours of their time to be tested and scanned with MRIs, and donated their DNA, said Watson Pereira. From these children we gathered the evidence to make the tool that we are now scaling to public schools.

The English version of Multitudes was piloted in fall 2021; the Spanish version will be piloted in spring 2022 and the Mandarin version in fall 2022. The goal is to reach 10,000 kids by the end of 2022, and to have the free tool in widespread use for California schoolchildren in 2023, Bell said.

At the same time Multitudes is being validated and refined, UCSF researchers are working with the schools of education at University of California, Berkeley and University of California, Los Angeles to curate best-practice materials, curriculum and interventions for educators to use when reading challenges are detected. The Sacramento County Office of Education also is working closely with UCSF on the best way to train teachers across the state in early reading instruction.

Currently, schools often use a single approach for reading issues that may not work for all students, Gorno Tempini said. For example, a school may use specific dyslexia fonts that are presumed to make reading easier for students who struggle, yet these fonts may not help children whose language issues stem from auditory problems.

The idea is to have multiple interventions available at every school that can be tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of each student, rather than each school having a different approach, Gorno Tempini said. Different brains learn differently, and from a neurological point of view, precision education makes the same sense as precision medicine.

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UCSF dyslexia researchers develop tool to flag early reading challenges - University of California

The global COVID-19 pandemic has upended every aspect of work life around the globe, including the burgeoning world of diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. While theres never an ideal time for a global pandemic to emerge and hinder progress toward any goal, the timing of the pandemic could hardly have been worse for DEI initiatives.

DEI was already often treated as an afterthought relative to more concrete and traditional goals like revenue, costs, and profits at most organizations prior to the pandemic. The need to focus on massive logistical challenges in the face of COVID-19 only served to draw more attention away from the relatively nascent DEI world.

Moreover, with millions of workers shifting to remote work, the collaboration and socialization that are often essential to building a sense of inclusiveness were further handicapped.

We reached out to DEI experts to see how the COVID-19 pandemic specifically impacted their DEI efforts and how they plan to stay the course in response.

One of the most fundamental benefits of a focus on diversity and inclusion is that it drives frank and open discussions among diverse individuals that help promote greater understanding of and appreciation for diverse experiences and backgrounds. With the shift to remote work, there are fewer informal opportunities for these kinds of interactions. Companies that dont proactively create these opportunities in some other formats risk losing their benefits altogether.

In the wake of the social unrest after the murder of George Floyd, we sensed in our daily stand up meeting, that our colleagues were missing opportunities to connect over breakfast and lunch as we did when we were mostly in one physical location prior to the pandemic, says Cydney Koukol, EVP of Communities with Talent Plus, Inc. That realization led to the creation of virtual conversations at Talent Plus, called Perspective.

Perspective conversations began on the Friday following George Floyds death. The first one was scheduled for an hour and lasted nearly two hours, Koukol says. Since then, she says, sessions have included Black Lives Matter, the Supreme Court decision around workplace bias and homosexuality in the midst of Gay Pride Month, the reopening of schools after the advent of COVID-19, interracial marriage, the life of Martin Luther King, AAPI and the Asian Community, and the emerging local celebrations of Indigenous People.

Need Help Navigating the Right Path for Your DEI Efforts? Click Here to Learn More with the 2021 DEI Employer Considerations Guide

In the wake of the shift to remote work, Koukol says these sessions have necessarily become virtual. These sessions have been well-received, she says. Currently we are in the midst of adding three new individuals to our DEI Think Tank Team that oversees this initiative. They have asked to have a facilitator work with them in a workshop environment as the previous group had the opportunity to do. They felt that having that type of orientation together helped to create a stronger group that was able to lean in and listen.

Its no surprise that a global pandemic infecting hundreds of millions of people and taking the lives of over five million peoplenot to mention the disruption to everyday lifehas caused significant mental and emotional stress for countless workers around the globe.

Remote work was not new to Avanade at the start of COVID-19our workforce was already completely enabled to work remotely, says Hallam Sargeant, Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer atAvanade. But theres a difference between being enabled to work remotely and doing it, day-in, day-out for almost two years during a pandemic, Sargeant says. Weve seen the need for flexible working arrangements as new demands were placed on caregivers.

Sargeant says Avanade has seen a loss of connection without in-person time between colleagues. Companies that embrace and prioritize DEI often find that those efforts help employees more effectively deal with mental and emotional stress, in part because they have a sense of community and belonging at work.

Weve seen an increased need for mental health resources and support during this challenging, isolating time, Sargeant says. Those problems are not specific to DEI, but I think weve seen how an increased focus and investment into DEI initiatives help companies tackle these challenges. One of the pillars of our I&D framework is belonging, or ensuring that everyone can be their authentic selves at work and that they feel welcomed and valued.

Rather than seeing COVID-19 as an obstacle to DEI, Kristie King, Senior Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Doma, argues that the pandemic has actually made her organization stronger with respect to DEI.

At Doma, we pride ourselves in the fact that we are breaking through the barriers that have held back the title insurance industry for centuries, King says. This same resolve applies to how we engage with our workforce, especially in these unprecedented times. We understand our obligation to foster an inclusive environment and the benefit that brings, which is why we are being very intentional about our focus on inclusivity, understanding that this pandemic has upended the way we experience work and live our lives. It is for this reason that we are even more committed to ensuring our employees feel heard, valued, respected and are fully supported.

As noted above, the widespread shift to remote work has meant that its more difficult to bring colleagues together for the kind of close collaboration that supports creating a sense of community and inclusiveness. But remote work isnt all bad for DEI. The employment model also presents opportunities for organizations that might not have a great deal of access to diversity in their own backyards.

DE&I has certainly been augmented by the rise of remote work, says Nate Tsang, founder and CEO of Wall Street Zen. The ability to hire outside of state and national boundaries more than ever means new opportunities, and new considerations. You can gain a wider range of diverse backgrounds, opinions, and education thanks to the wider availability of candidates. At the same time, we as a global society have to make sure the best candidates actually have the chance to apply and be hired for these new remote jobs.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts were really starting to gain ground in the final years of the 2010s when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and upended virtually every aspect of corporate life around the world. While COVID-19 certainly hasnt killed DEI, it has created new obstacles and realigned priorities, often away from DEI efforts. Companies that wisely continue to place great value on DEI are nevertheless finding new and innovative ways to continue to embrace and support DEI efforts.

Lin Grensing-Pophal is a Contributing Editor at HR Daily Advisor.

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The Impact of COVID-19 and Remote Work on DEI - HR Daily Advisor - HR Daily Advisor

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ST. LOUIS - Ameren Corporation (NYSE: AEE) is proud to announce that it has once again received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Foundation's Corporate Equality Index, the nation's foremost benchmarking survey and report measuring corporate policies and practices related to LGBTQ+ workplace equality.

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"At Ameren, we're fostering a culture of diverse co-workers who bring a variety of perspectives that help us serve our customers better and we work hard to provide the support that employees need to be successful in their careers," said Sharon Harvey Davis, vice president of diversity, equity and inclusion and chief diversity officer for Ameren. "That's why we've been intentional about providing meaningful benefits and services that give all our employees, including those who identify as LGBTQ+, the opportunity to grow at Ameren and provide for their families."

Ameren's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Employees & Allies Network (GLEAN) employee resource group has been instrumental in ensuring that co-workers who identify as LGBTQ+ have a safe place to connect with one another and help other co-workers learn how to be allies. The company also provides equitable health benefits for transgender employees and same-sex partners.

"Being able to be who you are wherever you are is not to be taken for granted," stated Harvey Davis. "We appreciate the recognition for the work Ameren has done and our commitment to continue to build a culture that allows our co-workers to bring their whole selves to work."

The Corporate Equality Index rates workplaces on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer equality based on four criteria: nondiscrimination policies, equitable benefits for LGBTQ+ workers and their families, supporting an inclusive culture, and corporate social responsibility. More than 1,200 of the nation's largest businesses participated in the survey.

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"When the Human Rights Campaign Foundation created the Corporate Equality Index 20 years ago, we dreamed that LGBTQ+ workers from the factory floor to corporate headquarters, in big cities and small towns could have access to the policies and benefits needed to thrive and live life authentically," said Jay Brown, Human Rights Campaign senior vice president of programs, research and training. "We are proud that the Corporate Equality Index paved the way to that reality for countless LGBTQ+ workers in America and abroad. But there is still more to do, which is why we are raising the bar yet again to create more equitable workplaces and a better tomorrow for LGBTQ+ workers everywhere."

The full Corporate Equality Index report is available online at http://www.hrc.org/cei. Learn more about Ameren's diversity, equity and inclusion efforts online at Ameren.com/diversity.

Opportunities at AmerenAmeren is an industry-leading and innovative Fortune 500 company that is a vital part of the communities it serves, building a sustainable energy future for generations to come. Ameren currently has more than 600 open positions in Missouri and Illinois, including opportunities in IT, supply chain, skilled craft and engineering. Learn more about Ameren's job openings and comprehensive total rewards package at Ameren.com/careers.

About Ameren CorporationSt. Louis-based Ameren Corporation powers the quality of life for 2.4 million electric customers and more than 900,000 natural gas customers in a 64,000-square-mile area through its Ameren Missouri and Ameren Illinois rate-regulated utility subsidiaries. Ameren Illinois provides electric transmission and distribution service and natural gas distribution service. Ameren Missouri provides electric generation, transmission and distribution services, as well as natural gas distribution service. Ameren Transmission Company of Illinois operates a rate-regulated electric transmission business in the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. For more information, visit Ameren.com or follow us on Twitter at @AmerenCorp, Facebook.com/AmerenCorp or LinkedIn.com/company/Ameren.

About the Human Rights Campaign FoundationThe Human Rights Campaign Foundation is the educational arm of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), America's largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) people. Through its programs, the HRC Foundation seeks to make transformational change in the everyday lives of LGBTQ+ people, shedding light on inequity and deepening the public's understanding of LGBTQ+ issues, with a clear focus on advancing transgender and racial justice. Its work has transformed the landscape for more than 15 million workers, 11 million students, 1 million clients in the adoption and foster care system and so much more. The HRC Foundation provides direct consultation and technical assistance to institutions and communities, driving the advancement of inclusive policies and practices; it builds the capacity of future leaders and allies through fellowship and training programs; and, with the firm belief that we are stronger working together, it forges partnerships with advocates in the U.S. and around the globe to increase our impact and shape the future of our work.

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Ameren Receives Top Recognition As An LGBTQ+ Equality Workplace - RiverBender.com

Last year NPQ published an article by Dax-Devlon Ross titled Generational Differences in Racial Equity Work that really resonated with our readers. Increasingly, these differences are a dividing line in the work, especially in communities of color. We recently hosted a conversation with a few leaders of color working with this challenge, including Ross, to learn more about it and what we could be doing.

The context for these generational differences in racial justice work is a period of social justice movements, some say a transition between a dying worldview and an emerging one. It is a time when power is being challenged across the board in society. Political philosophers Hardt and Negris observe in Assembly that the main challenge to social change leaders now is organization, or more specifically, leadership and decision making. They write,

We need to take up the problem of leadership under current conditions and investigate two primary tasks: how to construct organization without hierarchy; and how to create institutions without centralization. (14)

They call this nonsovereign leadership and argue that it marks a profound break from the political logics of modernity, or from representative democracy to participatory democracy (14). Sovereignty, in contrast, is exclusive in the right to decision making. They propose that for a multitude to take power a first requirement is this: to invent new, nonsovereign institutions (39).

In particular, the Black Lives Matter movement moved many organizations to make promises to change practices that harm people of color, especially Black people. Nonprofit organizations, many with decades-long records of predominantly white leadership, who had resisted systemic change, are finally hiring leaders of color as a way to address long-term (often inaugural) organizational racial justice issues.

Now, leaders of color are being tasked with shifting dominant culture organizationbut to what? A term used, one that I propose in my book The Power Manual, is liberatory. Leaders at the edge are exploring how to build liberatory organizations. But, many have not ever experienced it. And this is actually a field-level issue, as Hard and Negri point out, not simply a leadership issue.

Kad Smith, a millenial nonprofit consultant at CompassPoint says,

This is exactly what Ive been experiencingas a leader in an organization, experiencing it as an intermediary partnering with organizations that are doing power building, everything from power building organizations to kind of more traditional big wig, white-led nonprofits, some elements of what Dax was speaking about was a direct reflection of my day to day.

Angela Romans, a Gen Xer and Founding Executive Director of Innovation for Equity, says,

Five years ago, I was co-leading an organizations internal DEI work with a Latina millennial woman. Our working group actually had three generations: Baby Boomers, Gen Xs, and Millennials. And these conversations started showing up. Our leadership team was majority people of color. And we felt a lot of challenge from our younger folks who are in less positional authority saying, why arent you doing better? And we were an organization that led racial equity work outside. Our external work was on point! But internally, our folks were like, Yall are not walking the talk.Now I work with leaders of color, mostly Black leaders. And Im seeing these nuances continue to happen.What can we do about it? Whats my role in helping to be more liberatory in my behavior?

Sean Thomas-Breitfeld, a Gen Xer and Co-Executive Director of Building Movement Project, whose work explores generational and racial differences in leadership, says,

I teach a class on race and inclusion in nonprofit organizations, and its interesting and sometimes challenging talking about organizational change.It happensin the workplacethese differing perspectives about what it takes to make change and what the standard should be around equity inside of organizations and as an instructor.

Ross, a Gen Xer, and an author and equity consultant, says,

We need to talk about these things, because if this is showing up here, here, and here, then theres something going on. And so that was what inspired me to write, and I think why Im in this conversation right now is because as I continue to talk to folks who feel like they can reveal themselvesespecially the folks in sort of the elder side of the spectrum, and when I say that, I mean folks who are older Gen X, and even younger Baby BoomerI find just a lot of internal conflict, a lot of it linked to the choices they made in order to become who they became in the world, and under the belief that that was the way to do it. And to have that be upended and questioned, I think it creates a lot of strong emotion. And theres not a place for that to be articulated without it being perceived as if youre just salty. And I think its more complicated than that. And I think it needs to be made more nuanced.

Mistinguette Smith, a baby boomer and nonprofit consultant, says,

I am someone who turns 60 this year. I am someone who started doing work helping organizations do their work around racial equity 30 years ago. And I am preparing to leave this space. And I am trying to discern what I need to ensure that I leave behind and not just take with me.

Thomas-Breitfeld observes that there are differences in what it means for an organizational workplace to be equitable. This is exacerbated by the fact that positional power often overlaps with age, so older people with more experience tend to be in leadership. And, he highlights, this is further complicated when the leader is a person of color.

For so many leaders of color, their path to having positional power was very fraught, and often extended, in comparison to what theyve seen of their white peers. And theres this sense, which was put perfectly in a focus group that I did in Memphis a few years ago, where someone said, Look, I have all these young people who are trying to get me to give up my positional power without recognizing that I just got here.

Were seeing a lot of transitions, and a lot of people of color moving into those executive leader positions newly. And it happens to coincide with a time when were also contesting what executive leadership means, and what kind of power people should wield, and its hard, I think, for those of us as leaders of color to not somehow feel like our leadership is being contested in part because of our race.

Ross adds that people expect more from leaders of color and there is often lack of agreement about whos vision leads the organization.

That contestation could also be from a place of, But I do also expect more from you. I think that that in and of itself could be a problem. Its not just that I see you as someone I can challenge, but I see you as actually someone who I expect to hold accountable. I implicate boards in this as well, because I think what a lot of boards have done is used it as a cover: Lets go get a person of color in here, and lets have that be the thing that were going to do to address our challenges around diversity, equity, and inclusion, and not really have a deeper conversation about what our politics are.

Thomas-Breitfeld agrees. He has seen this trend of boards hiring leaders of color to address organizational equity and justice issues without appropriate support and resources.

We did a set of interviews with organizations here in New York, where we talked to the outgoing white leader, the incoming leader of color, and someone who was on the board. And what Dax is describing absolutely was true of that small sample, that a lot of boards were trying to solve for DEI challenges that had been leveled against the white predecessor by replacing that person with a person of color.

And so then what happens is: that person of color comes in and still has to lead the organization, grow the organization, and we know that funders are not always as supportive of people of color as they claim theyre going to be. So theyre going to do that and also have to do all the cleanup from the DEI mess of their predecessor.

Oftentimes people complain about the executive director job not being sustainable anyway, but I think these are the sorts of situations that make it particularly burdensome and unsustainable for executive leaders of color.

Mistinguette Smith also agrees and adds that often leaders of color do not have the power to make the changes asked of them.

And what is implicit and often not safe for a person in that position to say is, I just got here, and I dont yet have the power to do the things you want. In fact, Im not sure I have the power to protect you. Power is not positional, power is accrued over time, and I just got here. That is never explicitly on the table, but I take a lot of phone calls from people who want to talk about that privately.

And she adds a crucial element, Black people are often working outside their cultural values, especially in how they deal with conflict.

And theres another piece thats connected to that, for me, that is specific to Black people. We know that we often finally get hired for the thing that we were qualified for 15 years ago because they now need a brown person to come do the HazMat cleanup. And were doing that, and the hazardous material were trying to clean up is distrust. And all of us do trust-based work based in the cultures we come from. And one of the things that is hardest for me, having seen what is now the third wave of work toward racial justice happening in the nonprofit/social sector, is that this is the first time Im seeing African American people trying to do that work based not in African American cultural values, but in nonprofit cultural values.

In traditional African American culture, what challenge looks like and how challenge is responded to looks way different than what Im seeing in meeting rooms where people say things to an elder whos been holding it up for 20 years with no dollars and no public support such as, Well, if you had done a better job, we wouldnt have to be here at all. Like that is not a thing that would have happened inside of African American culture but is actually vaunted in nonprofit culture.

This resonates with Kad Smith, who shares that being raised by his grandmother informs what he perceives as acceptable challenges and unacceptable ones. And, he adds that there is a polarity between younger people feeling theres not enough time and older leaders feeling they just got here.

It can be particularly tough for folks to show up in those conversations with humility and with an open ear towards, Well, what am I missing about your experience that would help me bridge the gap between what it is that we both think is getting in the waybut are coming to conclusions around why its getting in the way and how its getting in the way from very different places?

Perhaps this and the next exchange captures the heart of the challenge.

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Ross sees a conflation of organizing work and nonprofit work.

Such that people think that theyre working for social justice organizations when actually theyre working for sometimes really mainstream organizations that do some social service work. Thats not actually what they were set up to do. And you want it to now be social justice work, but thats not actually what it is. So you need to find some place to do your movement work.

Kad Smith asks how these apparent polarities become more integrated.

Im working with organizations that are using radical approaches to pedagogy, radical frameworks, in environments that I wouldnt from first glance say are conducive to it.So if were going to be really trying to be bold and imaginative and radical in our approach, where does it also get paired with some pragmatism and some practicality of what thatll look like when we get into the work?

To summarize, the generational conflicts these leaders are seeing are:

I recall one very powerful moment, a few years ago, at the Race Forward conference in Detroit. There was a panel of Native leaders on climate justice comprised of an elder and two young leaders. There was a point at which the elder stopped one of the younger people who was speaking, to correct him. And she did so so lovingly, and so gracefully. And the younger person stopped and thanked her, was very grateful for her correction. I remember being captivated by that interaction and thinking, Well, thats really different.

Romans takes this up, calls it the gentle correction, and asks,

Culturally, wheres the space for gentle correction? And how is that taken on the side of folks who are managing up, saying, you know, I really need you to do this differently. And also the older folks who are in positions of authority who are trying to gently correct folks who are younger, and theyre not having it. Its triggering on both sides.

How do we touch and connect with those cultural spaces, the cultural traditions that we have of correction, on both sides? Sort of up and down and across and all around? Thats not how, traditionally, nonprofits have operated. And how do we do this in the political social climate that were in right now where nothing is gentle?

Romans is also seeing more entrepreneurship at a younger age.

Im seeing more folks at younger ages get in positions of leading an organization, being the highest leader of an organization. Its the I dont want to stay in an organization for 20 years and not be recognized and not see progress. Therefore, Im going to start my own.

Also, Im seeing some of those leaders advance through organizations more quickly now, because there is that push from boards, from other external places to put a leader into that position, put a person of color in a position of power to clean up the mess, all the things that folks have said, to do that damage control.

And that is, I think, raising a lot of questions for me. Will they do it better than we did, than the folks who toiled? How could they do it better? What could we learn from them? And how can we share some lessons learned with them in the spirit of being intentional about, as Dax was saying in his article, telling the story.

Kad Smith sympathizes with both sides, but notes there is a need for humility, empathy, and synchronicity.

I cant imagine what it would feel like to be in an organization for 20 years, and only on my 18th and 19th year feel like were starting to make the progress that I thought was possible two decades ago. Comparably, can you imagine what it feels like to be someone whos excited to come into a career and to be completely disillusioned to a sector that says it wants to do one thing with these very particular vehicles and seemingly is doing something entirely different. So I think its about the perspective piece and about the humility of willing to be empathetic. I mean really, truly be empathetic to where people are coming from and the totality of lived experiences that keep them in the work. How does that make us stronger as people who choose to be a part of organizations? So it is different than a family, it is different than the community. Were choosing to be here. And that choice grants us access to the membership that then means that theres a certain level of accountability we have to one another when we start to talk about how differences are not actually helping us move in a synchronized way.

For him, having mentors who share and are adaptable is important.

The organizations I partner with dont seem to have that practice really developed, especially when were talking about BIPOC leadership. But when you have access to mentors who can give you the game, who can tell you what its been like, and can also show that they can adapt and care for you, that is an invaluable resource for new leaders.

When we see folks modeling what it looks like to adapt as a leader, and that can take shape in many different ways and forms, paired with creating and prioritizing the space to connect and really be able to share what is it that makes us want to be a part of this organization. I think that goes a long way.

Finally, hes committing to addressing ageism as well as racism.

Ageism is one of those things that I used to always think about it towards one end of the spectrum, for myself, being a young person told that grown folks are talking. It wasnt until I got into adulthood that I realized that ageism is a very real phenomenon that our elders experience, and I can now see that so much more clearly. Conflict cannot be pathologized to the point where ageism continues to play out in ways that actually makes our efforts significantly weaker. Every organization thats doing racial equity work should be thinking about how ageism intersects in their specific context.

Romans agrees that mentorship is important, and connects it to succession that builds liberatory organizations.

Doing that in a way that is intentional and thoughtful is important. We talked about the I just got here, but some of them really didnt just get there. And so what does it mean for folks to be able to rest? Does that mean you need to trust me more? Does that mean I need to show some mastery that youre not seeing from me? Does that mean theres a retirement plan for you? What do you need?

She also wants to see more spaces for intergenerational conversations,

Some of that is desperation, out of pain, of not having their voices heard and not knowing where there are spaces for that to happen. So I think building on Mistinguettes point about more intentional intergenerational spaces for conversation, for storytelling, for trust-building, and funding that. Because theres a need for that.

Mistinguette Smith notes that community care goes both ways. For example, older leaders of color should be cared for financially as they leave the work.

Whereas, particularly for Black people, and also for other people of color, moving out of organizational leadership doesnt mean moving out of community, doesnt mean moving out of the movement. What it often means, though, is falling off of a financial cliff. And so the holding on is not about holding on to community and meaning the way it is for white leaders; it is literally holding on to the ability to pay the gas bill.

She shares an experience she had when she ran into Black feminist leader Barbara Smith at a conference.

She talked about how one of the things that was really meaningful, was having younger people who are discovering her lifes work anew also discovering that she is currently living in poverty and doing something about that. So, thinking about community care as not just a thing for younger people but as an intergenerational obligation.

I help people experience what that looks like in small bits of practices. A small example of which is facilitating a conversation that was a Black Native dialogue about land, holding a ritual where we were helping young people learn that you dont eat until your elders are all holding a plate, and having that cultural, spiritual ritual be really meaningful for those who serve, even though their noses were out of joint at first, and also those who were served, because they have been hungering for that literal and cultural food.

For Thomas-Breitfeld, its unpacking individualism.

I think some of that boils down to real deep conflict around individualism versus what is the kind of community that people are having in mind? It would be interesting to unpack that, because I do think that theres a level of hyperindividualism that lets the critique of elders and critique of leaders of color run wild in ways that can potentially be undermining of the institutions that everyone is actually a part of.

Ross hopes that we can make space for Black leadership to express itself in multiple ways.

There is room for a variety of different kinds of Black leaders and Black leadership, and they dont all have to only live in this specific orthodoxy. Lets not expect them to show up in the particular kind of ways we say they must. Or we fall into the binary trap once again. And that binary trap which we recognize has always created problems.

So what can we do to begin to address intergenerational differences in racial justice work?

The nonprofit sector faces a challenge: creating social change organizations that support multiple and synchronous types of leadership. Leaders of color are at the forefront of this challenge. But the sector is not supporting them. Its time to take on the challenge, especially those who care about organizational development, leadership, and infrastructure. Lets move beyond foundation-sponsored affinity groups for leaders of color. These are not simply leader-level issues. We need experimentation with higher-level organization that incorporates what exists into something bigger. The nature of growth and transformation is integration and complexification. This is an evolution in how we organize ourselves for social justice.

Read more:

Leaders of Color at the Forefront of the Nonprofit Sector's Challenges - Non Profit News - Nonprofit Quarterly

WebMD's Chief Medical Officer, John Whyte, MD, speaks with Alexander Hardy, Chief Executive Officer, Genentech, about the impact COVID-19 has had on pharmaceutical partnerships, clinical trials, disparities, and misinformation,all of which he sees as silver linings of the pandemic.

John Whyte: Partnerships, regulatory flexibility, virtual care, speed of innovation, diversity, and inclusion. These were not concepts or even buzzwords that typically were associated with the pharmaceutical industry just a couple years ago, but the COVID pandemic has changed the way we develop drugs, and many like my guest today believe the process has changed permanently and it's all for the better.

I had the opportunity to sit down with Alexander Hardy, the chief executive officer of Genentech. We had a wide-ranging conversation about the impact of COVID, the renewed focus on accountability to ensure diversity in clinical trials, the urgent need to combat misinformation. One thing you'll notice is that he kept coming back to what he sees as the silver linings of the COVID pandemic.

Alexander, thanks for joining me.

Alexander Hardy: It's a pleasure, John. Thanks very much for the conversation.

John Whyte: I want to start off with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on drug development, and you have consistently talked about the need for partnerships, and that's one of the things that you've learned and you've partnered with Regeneron on monoclonal antibodies, you've partnered with Gilead Sciences on treatments for COVID pneumonia in hospitalized patients. That's not the normal thinking for the pharmaceutical industry, this idea of partnerships. How did you come to that sense of need for partnerships?

Alexander Hardy: Well, I think it's one of the silver linings coming out of the pandemic, is the growing understanding of, of the impact that we can ... greater impact we can have as a result of partnerships and, you know, the, the examples you're, you're talking are private partnerships, but there's also public/private partnerships.

And, you know, our partnerships with the FDA and with BARDA, for example, have been very, very important as well. But I think, you know, we, we were all really challenged by the, the threat of the pandemic to, to our world.

And that's what galvanized us into, into action.

John Whyte: But isn't the pharmaceutical industry inherently competitive, right? So, here you're trying to compete against others, and you're saying, "No, we've got to work together to address this."

Alexander Hardy: Absolutely. I mean, you know, the, the ... We're all aligned around the enormity of the threat, and I think that was the ... The call to action was what changed mindsets. And the, the need for speed. So, you know, we're constantly partnering. We, we do a lot of particularly early-stage partnerships.

And those will continue to be very important, but those will often take months and sometimes years to, to make those partnerships happen.

And these partnerships happened literally in, in weeks.

And, and, you know, I think that's, those are the sorts of things that we want to carry on out of the pandemic, and, and, and the partnerships were, as you said, with, with companies that we are actually fierce competitors with and will continue to be fierce competitors.

Because that's a, that's very, very positive in terms of motivating progress and, and, and, and pushing the frontiers. Um, that's great, but I think partnerships are here to stay, and I, I think that's really exciting.

John Whyte: Yeah. Well, let's talk more about these public/private partnerships. You mentioned the FDA, a regulatory agency. What do you say to folks who will suggest that there should be this inherent tension between regulators and industry? What's your thoughts around that, that there, you know, can't truly be partnerships, because they have to decide at the end of the day with no vested interest whether or not they're gonna allow a drug to market? Is that change in thinking that's gonna persist?

Alexander Hardy: You know, I, I think this is a really a really interesting topic. So I see no change and I believe in no change in terms of high regulatory standards. They should maintain those, and they are maintaining those in the highest rigor. But I think the, the opportunity for dialogue, uh, the opportunity for fast and frequent conversations and consideration of doing things differently, because the science is moving so fast outside the pandemic.

And then inside the pandemic, you know, obviously there were frequent times where we needed a fast decision because things were changing.

John Whyte: Has COVID changed clinical trials permanently?

Alexander Hardy: I think COVID has certainly changed clinical trials permanently. We've already talked about the, the speed.

And how clinical trials are done. I think the other aspect which I, I think is another silver lining is we've seen, you know, the, the tremendous negative impact of, of COVID on underserved populations.

You know, we've, we've... It was always there, but now we've seen it in, in starkness.

John Whyte: I'm gonna turn to that.

Alexander Hardy: Yeah.

John Whyte: (Laughs) I have some, some tough questions. As you know, minority populations have represented the very small percentage of clinical trial participants, in the single digits, that, as you point out, COVID has shined a light on these disparities that honestly have persisted for decades. And, and now a broader population is recognizing that. Genentech has done several surveys in 2020, in 2021, including health care practitioners, in terms of trying to understand the impact of disparities and what we need to be doing. Can you talk a little bit about what your studies found?

Alexander Hardy: Well, the, the studies are very concerning. They show that, that people who are medically disadvantaged don't trust the health care system. Fifty percent of them don't trust the health care system.

John Whyte: Half.

Alexander Hardy: Yep.

John Whyte: Half. Yep.

Alexander Hardy: And that actually results in them, you know, what is the outcome of that? That results in them not doing the checkups and the preventative medicine. Taking their medicine, getting vaccinated. So it has real, it has real outcomes. And, again, we've seen those real outcomes in the pandemic. Really quite, really quite alarming, and very, very stark. We also see the issue of, of misinformation. You know, 80% of providers believe that misinformation is impacting specifically, disproportionately, the medically disadvantaged population. So, we already know that misinformation around science and, and medicine is an issue. It's a disproportionate impact on those medically disenfranchised.

So, it's another call to action for us to solve. So, the, the survey data, unfortunately, is not getting better. It's getting worse.And it's, it's a further call to action, and, and, and there is responsibility of, of companies like Genentech to, to lean in here and be part of, of, of changing this. Uh, I mean

John Whyte: So what is your commitment? And I'm gonna push on you if I may a little.

Alexander Hardy: Please do.

John Whyte: You have a great line on your site from your medical affairs group, that it says investigators need to be intentional about recruiting diverse populations. But if you think about it, people are incentivized to be first, right? You want to be first to market, so you enroll who comes in the door, and minority populations are not typically coming into the door, even though these trials are being conducted in very ethnically and geographically diverse centers. So how is Genentech going to address that? You want to be intentional in recruitment, and you've done that in the setting of COVID, in terms of trials, but how do we do that in a post-COVID world?

Alexander Hardy: Well, you know, you know, this is, this is an area where I don't just want to talk about it. It's about action. And, and we were actually already taking action prior to COVID. This was already an area of focus for us. But, but actually we did things in COVID that have further proven, you know, what can be done here.

And, and, you know, let's unpack this, because, you know, it, it is often said, OK, speed is important.

And clearly speed is, is important, but, you know, if we, if we are trying to, to make sure that the studies are represents of the U.S. population, is that gonna be at the expense of speed? I don't believe it is, and I think we've shown that during COVID. Actually, the fastest study that we've ever set up, recruited, and moved to data analytics to, to final study report was in COVID and focused on, on underrepresented population, which was the IMPACTOR study.

85% of the population we recruited it was a phase III study were in underserved communities. The largest recruitment site was right on the, the edge of the Navajo nation.

John Whyte: But you do that from the very beginning, that point about being intentional. Some of your colleagues will say we do this post-market, right? We do it almost in a, in a phase IV. That's where we can look at it, because we need to get the drug available to people. Are, but are we gonna flip that around to some degree, as you're pointing out? We're gonna focus on getting them involved early on?

Alexander Hardy: Absolutely. We have a commitment that every single molecule team has to do a look at their, their clinical trial program with an inclusive lens. They're held accountable for doing that. And then, you know, to turn it into, to specific action to help them we have a, for example, we set up an inclusive research site alliance of, of sites that we're helping get up to speed where they have access to these populations.

And then we can, we can just put the studies into those sites. This is in oncology, so these, these sites are around the country in, in areas with, with underserved populations. We have an ongoing relationship with those sites, and we have a huge oncology portfolio. And we can then, those molecule teams can just go to those sites all the way through from phase I through to phase III, and they're ready to go.

John Whyte: But how do we hold, then, people accountable, as you say? Because when we look at the field of oncology, typically African-Americans represent 3% of clinical trial participants, and, as you know, many cancer trials are conducted outside

Alexander Hardy: Absolutely.

John Whyte: ... of the world. So it's a different prism and what we're seeing of what defines diversity. But how are we gonna hold people accountable? There's been multiple examples, including breast cancer, where we're talking single digit numbers of African American women, not just percentage, but numbers of participants. And we don't know what the right number is in some ways.

Especially in diseases where it, you know, is small percentages. But you just look at that and you say, hmm, that, that can't be right. Not that there needs to be proportionality, but there needs to be representation.

Alexander Hardy: It isn't right. And, and it hasn't been right. And you should, you should hold us accountable. And we're prepared to be held accountable. For now and in the future, you know, are our studies representative of not only the American society, but specifically, let, let's go down to a particular tumor type. Let's say triple-negative breast cancer

John Whyte: Exactly, yes.

Alexander Hardy: which is obviously one which is disproportionately impactful to underserved populations in the United States. You know, are our studies mirroring that, that disease incidence and prevalence?

John Whyte: Historically, no.

Alexander Hardy: And historically, no. But you know, as I am explaining to you, we, we, we now have that lens. We're now very transparent, and we have a mechanism. And there's lots of, there's lots of other things.

And, you know, we're, we're, we're very keen to talk about these things, because we, we only we don't want to just change Genentech. We actually want to change the industry and the whole medical environment in this space. So, you know, our ambitions are beyond just Genentech here. This, this needs to change at large.

John Whyte: Should we pay participants in clinical trials, particularly phase II and phase III? There's been a lot of discussion about that, particularly in the last 18 months. Not just from an issue of inclusion, but an issue of equity. These participants are giving us a great deal. Everyone else is benefiting from it. Academia, the clinical research organizations, you know, industry. Should they get paid to participate? That could increase the number of participants.

Alexander Hardy: I think we should consider this. And, and I'll tell you why, and, and it's, you know, it, you know, that's part of the reason why, you know, only 5% of the American population is involved in clinical studies in oncology is because, you know, it, it asks a lot of the patient to, to travel in frequently to a center, to, to go through all the treatment and the tests involved and the, the screening and so on and so forth. And we're missing out on 95% of the, of the populations with, with cancer data. And, and as, as the science becomes increasingly personalized, we're just, we're actually missing a big scientific opportunity to learn from that.

But there's also and I think you raised a really good point here's also an equity lens there.

That, you know, who are the people that can afford to take the time off to travel, to be part of a phase II, phase III studies. We're not reaching the underserved communities when we don't have these sorts of compensation.

John Whyte: Because historically correct? folks have not supported the idea. The fear of paternalism, undue influence, and inducements. But we know, particularly in cancer, if you fail standard therapy, if you don't enroll in a clinical trial, you have very limited options.

Alexander Hardy: You know, I think, you know, that some of the things we're gonna have to deal with are the topics you talked about. So there needs to be a discussion here around these things, because it's, it's, it's not simple. And there needs to be a, a discussion of what are the unintended consequences here or what could be the potential conflicts of interest involved. But there needs to be a discussion because the status quo is not satisfactory. And, again, you know, where the science is going, my, my concern is, you know, we've talked about some of the opportunistic parts of, of the, of where the science is going, and, and the COVID impact in terms of speed and partnership, but my concern is that the science could be heading in a way that actually perpetuates or even worsens disparity of access. So, for example, you know, as we're doing more and more science discovery and treatments that are focused on particular subpopulations with genetic characteristics of their cancer, you know, do we have that data? Do we really understand that data for our populations in the United States? Are we developing the drugs to produce the evidence which then will translate through to access for those populations? That answer is, no, we're not, and we need to do a better job. And there needs to be a whole bunch of different things that happen.

John Whyte: Sure.

Alexander Hardy: And you, you talk about the, the, I, I think the role of the investigator is critical. As a sponsor of clinical studies, you know, we have to ask for diversity. We have to build that into the contract.

John Whyte: You have to demand people.

Alexander Hardy: Exactly. Demand it. We have to work in partnership with the sites to recruit.

John Whyte: Back to partnerships (laughs), yes.

Alexander Hardy: Exactly.

John Whyte: Absolutely.

Alexander Hardy: To recruit the, the patients to make sure there's awareness, there's trust in those communities. This is what clinical studies are. Consent process, make sure that's really clear, transparent, and understandable. Building trust entirely all the way through. Investigators need to be representative.

John Whyte: And I want to point out, because you have a great section on your site that's actually called advanced knowledge of clinical outcomes across race, ethnicity, and gender, and it's exactly to your point. To phrase it another way, it's this variability of drug response. That people might respond differently to drugs based on certain characteristics. But if we don't study it, we're not gonna learn that. How did we come to this thinking over the past 18 months? Or am I being too tough? It was evolving to that point anyway, in terms of this representation in clinical trials?

Alexander Hardy: I, I, I think this was evolving, but like everything else in our world, it's been accelerated and the pandemic's had a role in accelerating it. There's also been, of course, the, the broader increase in, increase in awareness around social justice and inequity in our society and an awareness of the inequities. So I think these things are all working together.

And, you know, I see tremendous movement and, and, and commitment. I hear it constantly from the, the medical societies, from providers, from payers. I mean, we're, we're all, you know, lined up around this issue and, and making a difference. I mean, you know, as a company we have, we feel, you know, it's not just our role to advance science. The science is, is fantastic, but unless it gets ultimately to the patients that need it, and if we're talking about improving outcomes in a particular disease, which is our, is our passion, to, to, to push advances in, in, in, in outcomes and, and, increase survival in, say, lung cancer, you have to do that, not just improving outcomes in terms of this molecule, but equity is also how you're gonna do that.

We, we have a, we have a, a vision in, in the pharma division to, to increase the medical impact, the patient benefit, by three to five times in the next 10 years at half the cost to society. You know, part of that is increasing the output from our, from our labs with better molecules.

But it's also topics like personalizing care, making sure that the drug goes to the specific person that's gonna benefit from it. It's about topics like health equity, making sure that everybody has access, which is a complicated, long-term issue.

But that's how we're gonna get to three to five times patient benefit compared to what we're delivering right now at half the cost to society.

John Whyte: Absolutely. And, and let's talk about the future and as well as leadership during the pandemic. And, and as you know, we're interviewing several CEOs such as yourself to talk about how the pandemic has impacted leadership. And I want to start off with asking you, how has your leadership style changed, if at all, during the pandemic?

Alexander Hardy: You know, my, my leadership style was, was very much about empowerment and enabling. Making sure that decisions are pushed down the organization. Deeply, deeply listening to the experts.

We have so many technical experts at a company like, a company like Genentech in all their different fields. What the, the pandemic has done is sort of heightened the need for that, for us to, to move at the speed of the, the pandemic. It's actually accentuated the, the need for those things.

John Whyte: This is a beautiful campus that we're at. You can't go around (laughs) as much talking to people.

Alexander Hardy: Exactly, exactly.

John Whyte: You can't just, you know, meet with folks as easily, can you?

Alexander Hardy: Yeah.

John Whyte: Has, has it had to change the way that you engage with folks, or have you, like many others, have you just pivoted and marched forward?

Alexander Hardy: No, it, it's fundamentally changed, you're right. I do miss the, the ability to, to bump into people as I walk around the campus and hear what they're, they're working on and what do they need from us. Again, that's that's my style of leadership. What, what do you need? What's standing in your way?

One of the things, for example, that we've done, and, again, I think this is, this is, this is a silver lining, we're gonna continue to do this after the pandemic is, you know, every couple of weeks during the height of the pandemic we, we had an all company virtual we called it the Genentech executive committee office hours where we would, for, for 90 minutes, it would be the executive team with all the employees dialing in, and we would have live questions.

John Whyte: OK.

Alexander Hardy: In a, in a large organization, I mean, this shortened the distance between the leadership team and the organization. We could see and hear exactly what was on the minds of, of people.

John Whyte: Well, let's talk about what's on the horizon for a few minutes. Alzheimer's disease is an area you're working on. That has undergone some controversy with some other areas of drug development. Recently there's been talk of a trial relating to vaccines for Alzheimer's. Lots of research going on. What's your prediction on where we'll be in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease in a few years?

Alexander Hardy: I'm very excited about Alzheimer's. I, I think, you know, this is, this is an area where, you know, the industry has once again, I, I don't think it's fully understood, but where the innovation in the United States of this industry has been really extraordinary.

The, the science is enormously hard, but everybody understands the unmet need, and we've been continuing as an industry in Genentech, despite setbacks, we've continued to, to push forward and, and, and, bring forward different approaches. And I think, you know, I think that's enormously exciting. We've, we've got lots of failures in our rear-view mirror, but I'm actually optimistic right now that, that we're gonna see some significant progress, and we, we have a number of different

John Whyte: In Alzheimer's disease?

Alexander Hardy: In Alzheimer's.

John Whyte: OK.

Alexander Hardy: You know, we have a number of different approaches in research and in development. We're, we're waiting right now for the phase III readout on two phase III studies reading out on one of our late-stage molecules. We'll have to wait for the results. I mean, you know, it's all about, you know, does this change cognition? We've already seen it, it has some effect in terms of biomarkers, but for us, you know, we have to see that profound impact on, on cognition. You know, I, I think this is, is an area where we'll see, you know, tremendous progress.

John Whyte: Right.

Alexander Hardy: I think precision medicine is, is a large part of where we're gonna continue to make progress, which is enormously exciting. If we can make sure the drug is, is being used in that population that expresses a particular form, a subtype of that particular cancer tumor type, you know, I think we can, we can really profoundly improve outcomes, reduce the burden in terms of side effects and reduce the cost to society. So it, it fits the sort of thing that we want to make, we want to see the progress made.

I think also cancer immunotherapy is enormously exciting. It continues to be enormously exciting.

John Whyte: Absolutely.

Alexander Hardy: And, and it offers so much. We're also seeing, you know, new modalities. I mean, we're, we're a company that, that has a history in terms of monoclonal antibodies. We're really excited about the progress we're making with antibody engineering, and some of our nearest, nearer-term investigational molecules are bispecific drugs. I mean, this is, this is enormously exciting. And, and, and then you're talking about the combination of these different approaches. And, and the prospect is, you know, continuing to make improvements on some of the really difficult to treat cancers.

So I think, you know, neuroscience and oncology, these are enormously exciting times.

John Whyte: Are we gonna see partnerships in there? Are we gonna see speed? Are we gonna see diversity? Are we gonna see all those things that we've been talking about?

Alexander Hardy: We're gonna see diversity. We're gonna see, certainly, speed. I mean, you know, it speed, we're, we're optimizing for speed in a great, a great degree. We're increasingly going from signal-seeking phase I studies where we see a clear sign of efficacy, to then going straight to phase III. Um, this is tremendous risk involved in this, but we, you know, we're, we're doing a better job with the phase, the phase I studies, uh, taking on additional risks, and then this is the area where, of course, you know, regulatory partnerships are really critical where there's that dialogue.

You know, we've seen something that it really, that could, that could profoundly change the treatment paradigm in a particular tumor type. Having that discussion and then the support to go to phase III, uh, which is, which is enormously exciting.

John Whyte: What's the one word you would use to describe the last 20 months?

Read more:

Change Makers: Alexander Hardy on the Future of Health - Medscape

One year after a military coup in Myanmar, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom joined human rights advocates and religious leaders in condemning the violence that has claimed 1,300 lives.

In the year since the Feb. 1 overthrow of the civilian government by the military, known as the Tatmadaw, the army has targeted religious minorities and destroyed houses of worship in Myanmar, also known as Burma, the commission noted.

USCIRF continues to stand with the people of Burma in condemning the military junta, which has only increased religious freedom violations since it took over the institutions of the state one year ago, Commission Chair Nadine Maenza said.

We urge the U.S. government to support the continued pursuit for accountability for the many human rights abuses perpetrated by the Tatmadaw, especially those committed against the predominantly Muslim Rohingya and various Christian communities.

The commission specifically noted the military has targeted Christian Chin, Kachin and Karen communities, along with Rohingya Muslims.

In 2017, the Tatmadaw targeted Rohingya Muslims, who weresystematically killed, raped, tortured and pushed out of their own homelands within Burmaand their villages and places of worship burned. CommissionerAnurima Bhargava said.

Last February, the Tatmadaw unleashed violence and persecuted anyone perceived to stand in its way, including many religious minority communities. USCIRF once again urges the U.S. government to determine thatthe atrocities committed against the Rohingya constitute genocide and crimes against humanity.

In its2021 annual reportand a November 2021Burma update, the commission urged the U.S. government to hold Burmese officials accountable by using the international legal system, implementing targeted sanctions, and designating Burma as a Country of Particular Concern for engaging in systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom.

In a video posted on social media, Baptist World Alliance General Secretary Elijah Brown called on Christiansand Baptists in particularto pray for the people of Myanmar and press for freedom for all.

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We remember our Baptist brothers and sisters [in Myanmar] whothe year before the coupwere the second-fastest-growing Baptist convention in the world, and yet over the last 12 months, have had their lives upended by violence as they have sought to avoid military aerial bombardment on civilians, the crack of sniper rifles, the intentional targeting of pastors and religious leaders and their families, the occupation of churches, the intentional stoking of ethnic violence, and the suffering of a country that is in collapse, Brown said.

He also urged prayer for persecuted Rohingya Muslims and for the well-being of all who seek to live in peace.

We pray for the restoration of democracy, for transformative peace and justice, and for the flourishing of all of Myanmar, Brown said.

In September, Burmese military shot and killed Cung Biak Hum, a Baptist pastor who was trying to help a member of his church extinguish a fire after the mans home was set ablaze during a bombing attack.

In early December, Salai Ngwe Kyar, a pastor in the village of Thet Kei Taung and a student at the Asho Chin Baptist Seminary in Pyay Township, died from injuries sustained during a military interrogation.

A few days later, the body of a Church of Christ pastor was discovered with a bullet wound to his head after being arrested and subjected to enhanced interrogation.

On Dec. 13, several church buildingsincluding at least three Baptist houses of worshipwere damaged severely by bombs and then looted by the military.

A few days prior to the one-year anniversary of the coup, Physicians for Human Rights, Insecurity Insight and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Public Health and Human Rights released a study reporting 415 attacks on medical workers in Myanmar and on the countrys fragile health care infrastructure.

Attacks on health care workers and health care itself has become a prominent feature of the coup dtat. Today, Myanmar is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a health care worker, the report states.

The study revealed 286 health care workers in Myanmar have been arrested or detained, 30 have been killed, and 128 medical facilities have been attacked.

The military junta in Myanmar targeted health care workers because many of them played a prominent role in the Civil Disobedience Movement and peaceful protests in the weeks immediately following the coup.

Last March, a Baptist doctor in Myanmarwho asked to be identified only as Octaviawrote in an email, Doctors, nurses and first responders have become the No. 1 enemy of the military for our role in saving lives and also for the countrywide Civil Disobedience Movement we initiated.

BWA supported the launch of the Red Ribbon Charity Clinic to provide medical care for individuals injured in the Civil Disobedience Movement protests, in addition to supplying oxygen concentrators to clinics in refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.

The global Baptist group also provided food and emergency tarp shelters to displaced people hiding in the Burmese jungles and supported 200 Burmese pastors, enabling them to stay in Myanmar and minister to their people.

More here:

Conditions worsen in Myanmar one year after coup - Baptist Standard

(Credit: Luke Jamroz)

The long-awaited Greensboro Opera production of George Gershwins Porgy and Bess starring Rhiannon Giddens,Thomas Cannon, and Sidney Outlaw was performed on Jan. 21 and 23, 2022 at the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts. Originally the opera was scheduled to take place in 2020 but was postponed due to the start of the pandemic.

The wait was well worth it.

Over the past two years living with COVID-19, life has been altered for everyone. People have clung to what brings them comfort and to the people that are most important to them. Artists, especially performing artists, have felt this deeply. In 2020 when performances were being canceled and rescheduled, the opera community found ways to keep going and to support one another. While it took this production four years in total to finally be performed, it happened because of the resilience within the community.

The story of Porgy and Bess overlaps with todays current pandemic. Porgy and Bess is set in the small Charleston, South Carolina neighborhood, Catfish Row during the Great Depression. Much like today with the effects of the pandemic, the people of Catfish Row rely on their community to keep them going.

This production in particular showed this sense of community and reliance. The stage direction of the opera by Everett McCorvey, along with Associate Stage Director Richard Gammon and Assistant Stage Director and Assistant Choreographer Peggy Stamps did not take many risks in changing or modernizing the staging, but it worked. It was simple and direct. It showed the Catfish Row community as they were.

The ensemble opened the show setting the tone and giving the audience a sense of the way of living in Catfish Row. There was music, dancing, and some division among the community. The two scaffolding sets on either side of the stage separated the men and women; the mens chorus on the stage left playing craps and the womens chorus on stage right scattered on the scaffolding doing a variety of household activities. This staging choice was carried throughout most of the opera.

As the story develops and Robbins is killed, the people of Catfish Row stand by each other for protection and comfort.

Grammy Award-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens sang the title role of Bess. Her unique voice with folk, blues, gospel, and classical influences served her well here and made for a memorable Bess. Giddens interpretation of the reprise of Summertime was outstanding. For the final glissando at the end of the piece, Giddens sang from a high B down to the B below middle C. This choice fit her voice and style perfectly and was executed seamlessly.

Giddens acted with devotion to her character and was diligent in creating a genuine connection with other characters, making all of Bess choices and experiences touching. She depicted Bess internal struggles in her relationships with Crown and Porgy and with happy dust in a convincing manner. She made these things evident through her visceral acting and her vocal expression. Each note she sang came across as if it was important and unique, creating a deep connection to her suffering.

Giddens portrayal of Bess paired well with Thomas Cannons Porgy. Cannon was fully committed to the character. This was evident through his physical representation of Porgys disability and the longing, sorrow and heartbreak in his voice and expression during Oh, Bess, Wheres My Bess? and Bess is Gone.

Baritone Michael Preacely sang the role of Crown with a rich, warm sound. He demonstrated a strong possession of Bess that meshed well with his co-stars characterization of the title role.

The supporting roles that stood out were Clara performed by soprano Indira Mahajan, Jake sung by baritone Sidney Outlaw, Sportin Life by tenor Robert Anthony Mack, Serena sung by soprano Angela Rene Simpson, and soprano Paisley Alexandria Williams short scene as Strawberry Woman.

Soprano Indira Mahajan sang the role of Clara. In the score, Summertime is marked Lullaby, with much expression. Mahajan followed this direction carefully. Her fluttery vibrato soared through the concert hall from the first notes of Summertime. This part of her singing stood out and was stunning. Her pianissimos were nicely controlled, but sadly most ending consonants were lost.

Outlaw commanded the stage in It Takes a Long Pull to Get There while not overpowering or upstaging the ensemble. His voice was so free and open, and full of spin. This control of his technique allowed for impeccable diction.

Robert Anthony Mack played a very fun and engaging Sportin Life. Macks playful version of It Aint Necessarily So had a fun jazz and classical mix that was delightful and fitting for the character. Also, his dancing and general ease of movement were excellent.

In My Mans Gone Now and Oh, Doctor Jesus Angela Rene Simpsons dark, warm, soulful tone added to her heartfelt performances.

Paisley Alexandira Williams spirited Strawberry Woman was cheerful and flawless. Her voice sailed to the high notes effortlessly. Her stage presence was captivating.

Awadgin Pratt conducted Greensboro Opera Orchestra with great care. He was engaged with the singer(s) and treated each piece with a level of individuality. This made for a united performance between the singers and orchestra.

That said, the full ensembles sound was never blended the mens voices continuously overpowered the womens. Mainly only the soprano one part of the womens was heard which created a lack of fullness in the ensembles sound. The only times there was a united sound between the choruses was when the womens chorus or the mens chorus was singing with a soloist.

For example in Claras Summertime, the added female voices supported her beautifully. This was also the case in It Takes a Long Pull to Get There, there was a nice blend between all voices. There was no discussion on the chorus, so theres no way of knowing if this was an intentional choice to vocally demonstrate the typical disunion between males and females during this era and the communities built between the sexes or if this was simply a stylistic choice. However, it still sounded off in the hall.

Ultimately, this production of Gershwins Porgy and Bess was quite enjoyable. All of the music, acting, staging, and design elements were carried out in a pleasing way. The strong sense of community throughout the opera was uplifting.

The rest is here:

Greensboro Opera Review: Porgy and Bess - OperaWire

The year was 1832, and beneath an immense, cloud-filled sky, William Cullen Bryant guided his horse through rippling grasslands as he looked upon a land seemingly shaped by God. A former lawyer, an editor, and a poet, Bryant was visiting his brothers, homesteaders who had set out for the Illinois frontier from Massachusetts two years before.

He found himself stunned into rapture. After riding through the prairies encircling vastness, he wrote of an empty countryside whose majesty could only have come from a higher power:

Man hath no power in all this glorious work: /The hand that built the firmament hath heaved /And smoothed these verdant swells, and sown their slopes /With herbage, planted them with island groves, /And hedged them round with forests.

But Bryants reading of the prairie could not have been more wrong.

The treeless expanse that the poet saw had been shaped explicitly by humankind: For centuries, the regions Native peoples had set low-intensity fires to these grasslands, mimicking the effects of lightning, to encourage game to graze on the new growth that followed. The species growing on these lands, fire-adapted and free of arboreal shade, were there because of humanity.

This misconceptionthat North Americas landscapes were essentially untouched before European arrivalactually fits into a much larger story. Geographer William Denevan labeled it the pristine myth, the belief that all of nature was once a sparsely populated wilderness, where humans had little or no influence. Many Europeans and Euro-Americans imagined the landscapes of the Americas as prime examples of such natural spaces.

I loathe that word pristine. There have been no pristine systems on this planet for thousands of years, says Kawika Winter, an Indigenous biocultural ecologist at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa. Humans and nature can co-exist, and both can thrive.

Traditional Indigenous practices such as controlled burning have helped to shape the Great Plains in North America. Dukas/Universal Images Group/Getty Images

For example, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in April, a team of researchers from over a dozen institutions reported that humans have been reshaping at least three-quarters of the planets land for as long as 12,000 years. In fact, they found, many landscapes with high biodiversity considered to be wild today are more strongly linked to past human land use than to contemporary practices that emphasize leaving land untouched. This insight contradicts the idea that humans can only have a neutral or negative effect on the landscape.

Anthropologists and other scholars have critiqued the idea of pristine wilderness for over half a century. Today new findings are driving a second wave of research into how humans have shaped the planet, propelled by increasingly powerful scientific techniques, as well as the compounding crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. The conclusions have added to ongoing debates in the conservation worldthough not without controversy. In particular, many discussions hinge on whether Indigenous and preindustrial approaches to the natural world could contribute to a more sustainable future, if applied more widely.

Thanks to todays environmental challenges, these debates have also reached the public sphere. Spencer Greening, a member of the Gitgaat First Nation and a graduate student studying Indigenous resource management and archaeology at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, believes this attention could have a positive effect. Often, Greening explains, science and research are tools used to extract profit from nature.

As a society, if we were to flip the script and say: Instead of putting our resources into excess profit, we need to put our resources into saving the planet, Greening says. That shift is going to be huge.

The myth of pristine wilderness has deep roots. Some draw the line all the way back to 1095, when Pope Urban II purportedly introduced the concept of terra nullius: the idea that any non-Christian land is a blank slate for the taking. The link between this phrase and Pope Urban may be apocryphal; nonetheless, over the centuries, waves of European colonization rode on the back of this sentiment. For example, in the 17th and 18th centuries, English writers expounded on the idea that if Indigenous peoples did not fully occupy, or sufficiently cultivate, land, they had no title to it. These concepts formed the basis of British colonization, including their justification for ruling Australia and dispossessing Aboriginal peoples of their lands.

Such thinking led many European colonists to ignore the influence of Indigenous peoples they encountered. As University of Maryland, Baltimore County, ecologist Erle Ellis, a lead author on the PNAS study, puts it, Within the pristine myth, these people dont have agency, and thats pretty important to the whole concept of that myth. Once you start thinking of these people as actors and as shaping nature, it means that anything you do to them changes nature.

The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the late 18th century and then spread to other parts of Europe and to the U.S., radically shifted conceptions of humans and the natural world. New jobs in industry moved populations away from rural areas and into cities. Meanwhile, factories created rapid economic growth that commodified natural resources, leading to pollution and resource depletion.

British colonists in Australia in the 18th century encountered landscapes that had been cultivated by Aboriginal peoples in ways they did not fully understand. Felix Cesare/Getty Images

In reaction, thinkers in both Europe and the U.S. began to romanticize the concept of wilderness as untouched by humanity and its destructive influence. Writers and artists, such as Henry David Thoreau and George Catlin, depicted American landscapes either without humans or featuring Indigenous communities who had minimal to no impact on their environment.

As Denevan pointed out in his formative paper on the pristine myth, people in the United States in the mid-18th and 19th centuries, in particular, were observing a landscape in which Indigenous communities had been dramatically depopulated. Colonization brought genocide, ethnic cleansing, and pathogens to the Americas. Though estimates vary, one study determined that Indigenous peoples in the Americas lost at least 65 percent and as much as 90 percent of their populations by around 1600. To some European and Euro-American explorers and pioneers in the United States, certain spaces truly appeared to be people-free wilderness.

In the years since, Western societies have tended to tell just two stories about healthy, species-rich ecosystems. In one, humans are destroyers, fated to overharvest resources and tip nature into chaos. In the other, Indigenous peoples receive from the land and change little in return.

But there was always evidence running counter to these narratives. In Australia, for example, colonists viewed the landscape with puzzlement, describing it as looking cultivated, like a park found on one of Britains private estates. At the same time, some colonists disparaged Aboriginal fire management, likely without realizing that this practice had nurtured the environment they encountered.

Learn more, from our archives: How Early Humans Shaped the World With Fire

Similarly, prior to colonization, intentional Indigenous burning practices shaped the prairies that Bryant rode through in 1832. By amplifying a natural cycle, intentional fires stimulated plant growth and kept colonizing tree species at bay, boosting diversity and allowing expanses of fire-adapted grasses to thrive.

On both North American coasts, tribes used fire to encourage the growth of food trees, like nut-bearing oak and chestnut, which created the wide-open forests that dazzled Europeans when they arrived. Today a direct line can be drawn from the loss of cultural burning practices in Australia and the American West to the wildfires that, exacerbated by climate change, have scorched both regions in recent years.

Around the world, human influence is visible in wilderness nearly everywhere. Even the vast Amazon rainforestwhat many non-Native people may see as the premier example of unpeopled wildernessbears enduring evidence of human intervention.

In a 2017 study, researchers found that tree species with food and cultural value, like the Brazil nut and cocoa tree, were hyperdominant across the Amazon Basin: about five times more common than they would expect from chance alone. These trees were often found far from their native range and were most abundant around archaeological sites that predated the 16th century, suggesting that humans shaped the makeup of the forest visible today.

In addition, satellite imagery combined with ground surveys has revealed the traces of bustling civilizations in parts of the Amazon. Though scientists once believed the Amazon Basin held as few as 12 million people, more recent models that factor in the particular soils created by human occupation suggest at least 810 million people could have lived in the region.

Ellis explains that studies debunking the pristine myth began with research in the Americas, but havent stopped there. It just kept spreading, he said. People kept looking, they would ask, Is there a human influence in these places? And you find it.

The PNAS study Ellis co-authored, for example, underscores how global these patterns are. For that analysis, he and his colleagues integrated data from geographical, archaeological, and conservation science with the most up-to-date computer model available to map human populations and land use.

The model spit out maps of Earth categorized by anthrome, that is, patterns in the ways humans have interacted with and altered ecosystems. By 10,000 B.C., their results suggest, there was relatively little wild, uninhabited land left in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, or the Caribbean. At most, only 17 percent of Earths lands showed no evidence of human habitation or use, a number the authors believe is likely an overestimate.

The model also suggests that by 10,000 B.C., 77 percent of current key biodiversity areasthe rainforests and woodlands, grasslands, reefs, and marshes that today are refugia for important specieswere located in cultured anthromes, where small human populations intensively used less than 20 percent of the land.

Further, this approach suggests that, around 1500, this connection between human cultivation and biodiversity started to fall apart. This shift coincides with the period in which European colonization kicked off in earnest.

If many wild places are actually a product of human intervention, what does that mean for conserving such spaces?

The myth of pristine wilderness has long influenced discussions of protecting and preserving nature. The assumption that human activity is harmful or at best neutral for the environment is prominent within conservation and shapes environmental policy.

This thinking informs public opposition to Indigenous management, and has led to laws that bar Indigenous peoples from living and hunting within national parks and other forms of protected land. (See, for example, the Blackfeet Nation in Glacier National Park.) Such rules largely ignore the varied ways that humans can interact with nature.

Learn more, from our archives: Stop Calling the Aleutians Pristine

Yet in October 2021, scholars based in Australia and Germany published their examination of case studies from around the world that showed displacing Indigenous people for the sake of wilderness has negatively impacted landscapes. Among the examples, the researchers highlighted traditional swidden farming, in which farmers let their plots lie fallow to regenerate for a few years after cultivation, in the uplands of tropical Asia and New Guinea. Though some critics have framed this method as incompatible with conservation, research suggests this agricultural approach can increase biodiversity and make forests more resilient to climate change.

Not everyone believes that widespread adoption of preindustrial or Indigenous practices would offer a universal solution for managing natures resources, however. Among the critiques is the observation that humans have unquestionably contributed to extinctions throughout history, at many different scales. (That said, humanitys role in past extinctions is complex and controversialas archaeologists studying the disappearance of mammoths, mastodons, and giant sloths can attest.)

Another point of contention is whether traditional and Indigenous management practices are truly sustainable for local species, or simply sustainable because they are being used to support relatively small human populations. Given the size of the Homo sapiens population globally today, perhaps it is not realistic to imagine that people can be trusted to preserve nature if some of it isnt set aside.

In Hawaiis Heeia National Estuarine Research Reserve, ecologists and nonprofits are revitalizing the area by applying Indigenous land management approaches that emphasize a reciprocal relationship with the natural world. Kelii Kotubetey

Ellis notes that many of these arguments are motivated by fears that debunking wilderness will lead to a free-for-all, giving people license to denude nature at will. But he believes this debate misses the more fundamental point: A recognition that cultural beliefs, rather than scientific fact, have shaped the entire wilderness concept.

Culture, Ellis adds, is flexible: You simply cant say what a human society can do.

For instance, in Hawaii, Winter is training people to rethink what ecologists term ecosystem services, the resourcesincluding food, fuel, and shelterthat environments provide humans. As manager of the Heeia National Estuarine Research Reserve, he works with nonprofits that are revitalizing Hawaiis traditional moku system of land management, in which humans care for the land holistically on small communities called ahupuaa.

Whether planting seeds, gathering food from the forest, restoring a fishpond, or harvesting from the sea, the mindset of people in the ahupuaa is one of interdependence: that their actions in one place affect all the others in their moku and that the lands health is essential to the communitys healthand vice versa.

If we define ecosystem services through an Indigenous lens, it looks like this reciprocal relationship, Winter says. The overarching theme is to give before you take.

Greening takes a similar position. As part of his doctoral thesis, he is examining how natural resource management plans could be rewritten to include humans as a member of a relationship with the land and its resources. You have these boundaries of how youre supposed to harvest them and live with them, he said. Thats what the Western world has lost with industrialization: that we are a part of this ecosystem.

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How Conservation Invented the Pristine Wilderness - SAPIENS - SAPIENS

What does the future hold?

Two years ago, after the New Years Eve snowmageddon storm, my first column of the new decade predicted the beginning of the new roaring twenties with the roar not coming from wild dance parties, but instead from wildfires, intense storms, rising social upheavals and yet more wars.

Sadly, most of these predictions are coming true and are joined with continued societal stress from the pandemic that refuses to go away. The weather and its impacts now dominate the news as we anticipate more crisis generating intense storms, heat domes and summers filled with smoke and the threat of local wildfires.

One result of the pandemic is that continued social isolation has prevented the completion of volume two of Everything Shuswap, because all the chapters involve social interaction. With many restrictions still in place, many cultural activities are on hold, community events are cancelled, and the economy remains at half-throttle. Consequently, my columns have branched out to cover other fascinating topics such as the intentional communities of the 70s and 80s.

The plan for the final chapter of the last volume is the topic What does the future hold?

The future for humanity has the potential to head in one of two directions, either towards environmental and social collapse or towards a more promising future where solutions to the current problems are working, society has become more equitable and sustainable, and health and happiness are the norm. In order to achieve a more promising future than what the cards are currently dealing, a number of prerequisites need to be met that would lay the foundation for a better future.

With the climate continuing to heat up as more carbon and methane is pumped into the atmosphere, the earths biological support system is in free-fall. It was easy to think that the Shuswap would be less impacted because of its geography, but in fact the temperature is rising faster in the north than in mid-latitudes and, like most of the continent, we are in line for the increasing number of impacts from jet-stream instability. Thus, key to our ability to thrive in the future will be pre-emptively adopting climate change adaptation measures that will minimize the impacts from fires, heat, drought, storms and other emergencies.

Read more: Column: Ancient cedar stands at risk in Shuswaps own Fairy Creek

Read more: Christmas & climate change: Shuswap environmentalist recommends planet-friendly season

Another key prerequisite is overall, societal and economic stability from the world level down to the regional level. It is possible that one day soon, political tensions could ease, and financial inequality will lessen given the need for everyone on the planet to concentrate on survival by working together as the planet overheats. If co-operation replaced competition, if the wealthy paid their true fair share, and if governments and citizens adopted common goals, all regions like the Shuswap would benefit.

Think back to how different our world was in 1992 when personal computers were just being developed, cellphones looked like large walkie-talkies, there were few homeless people, homes were affordable and massive forest fires, storms and intense droughts were a rarity.

Considering how massive societal changes are occurring now, what might the Shuswap be like in 2052? In the following series of articles, I will explore the possibilities that the future holds if the key prerequisites are met to accelerate climate change adaptation, improve sustainability and achieve equitability.

What might the city of Salmon Arm and other local communities look like with mass migration likely, as people are forced to flee flooded coastlines and southern regions where temperatures are too hot to support populations? How will land and water be managed to support both a larger population, as well as to promote greater carbon absorption and conserve water? How will education work, and how will people keep in shape and enjoy sports and recreation when snowfalls are rare and summer temperatures are too high for outdoor activities? How will agriculture work? What will people eat?

One value of considering what a better future might look like is that it enables backcasting to identify what policies and programs are needed to reach the future desired state. By imagining an ideal future condition, one can better understand what is needed to get there. If we want our grandchildren to experience the best possible future, there is no better time than the present to help make that happen.

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Column: How will climate change impact the Shuswap? Salmon Arm Observer - Salmon Arm Observer

Federal payments that kept millions of families out of poverty have expired without Congress allowing them to continue, plunging people in need back into a state of indigence they believed theyd never have to endure again.

Its foolish and short-sighted and unconscionable, said Beth McConnell, director of policy in Philadelphias Office of Community Empowerment and Opportunity. We are literally taking food out of childrens mouths.

The Biden administrations one-year expansion of the child tax credit (CTC) starting last July was meant to help families navigate the pandemic with cash infusions of as much as $3,000 a year per child ages 6 to 17, and $3,600 a year per child from newborn to age 5.

The expanded CTC has especially helped the poorest Americans. To get the credit before the expansion, households had to earn at least $2,500 annually, omitting those who didnt make that much.

Under Bidens plan, however, the CTC became fully available to all those in poverty, regardless of income.

But now, as the omicron variant proliferates exponentially, that lifeline has been snatched back, allowing those in poverty to languish without a means of survival theyd grown to depend on, advocates and low-income people say.

Its definitely a hardship, said Samantha Rodriguez, 28, a South Philadelphia child-care worker with a 6-year-old daughter. Shed been receiving a CTC payment of $250 a month that started in July and ended last month.

That money was paying for our food, said Rodriguez, who described herself as a single mother making less than $20 an hour. She has a masters degree in business and is enrolled in a teachers certification program. Her goal is to some day open a charter school to help children with special needs. But Rodriguez is yoked to student debt of $90,000, making economic survival precarious.

Ill have to figure out now how we eat, said Rodriguez, whos applied for a second job as a driver for Uber Eats. Im determined not to have to go to food pantries for help.

Overall, Mai Miksic, early childhood policy director for Philadelphia-based Children First (formerly Public Citizens for Children and Youth) predicts longer lines at food pantries, and people relying more on community-based programs that give out diapers and clothing.

As dire as life might get, there will be some short-term relief, however small.

The CTC expansion was supposed to be for 12 months. That means those whove received payments between July and December of 2021 are still owed another six months of cash.

But, there are two conditions. First, the money will be given only to people who file their 2021 income taxes this year. That could be a problem because many low-income people dont ever file, often because they dont make enough. Many of these individuals were allowed to sign up for the CTC in 2021 by using a non-filer portal on the government website.

But, advocates say, the non-filer option will no longer be available, and people will have to file traditional tax returns, something those in poverty may be unable to do because theyre unfamiliar with it, or cant afford filing help. Tax services for those in poverty are available.

Second, even if people do file their taxes, the CTC wont be mailed to them in monthly installments as it was last year. Instead, the money will come in one lump sum, like a tax refund after being processed by the IRS, making it more difficult to meet monthly bill payments.

I intend to file my taxes to get the remaining six months payments, said Susann Ali, 38, a Head Start teacher from Germantown. But until then, we are without money that was helping me pay my three kids Catholic school tuition.

And after those payments are completed, Ali said, she worries that Congress wont restore the help shed grown to rely on:

I thought that by now, theyd have extended the credit, and Im scared it might not ever happen.

The expanded CTC was expected to be so popular that Congress would automatically renew it for 2022 and beyond.

But so far that hasnt happened, despite continued efforts to do so. And surveys show that not all Americans like the idea. A December Morning Consult/Politico poll discovered that just 47% of Americans favored extending the expansion, as opposed to 42% who were against it.

More important, Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) said he wouldnt support the credit expansion going forward without a work requirement attached. Manchins vote is key in an evenly split Senate.

That view is espoused by conservative entities such as the American Heritage Foundation, which explains that extending the expansion in 2022 would actually stymie anti-poverty efforts by persuading people not to work, but simply collect government funding.

Thats a minority view.

In a widely recognized study last fall, Columbia University found that the enhanced CTC has had no negative impact on workforce participation among parents.

Columbia research also discovered that the augmented tax credit kept nearly four million children out of poverty and that food was the top item families spent their federal money on.

If one of the goals was to reduce child poverty, the expanded credit was tremendously successful policy, said Temple University sociologist Judith Levine, director of the schools Public Policy Lab.

But now children are being thrown back into poverty and the timing is terrible with the pandemic surging and parents having to stay out of work to be with their children as schools and child-care centers close.

The end of the expanded CTC wont halt the typical CTC that families have been receiving for years. But it will mean less money. The expanded CTC grew to amounts of $3,000 to $3,600 per child. The normal CTC was around $2,000, and given in one lump sum.

Congress failure to expand the CTC beyond 2021 rankles experts on poverty and inequality.

Allowing the expanded child tax credit to expire is yet another demonstration of the U.S. governments intentional neglect of families with children, a clear example of legislative violence, said Mariana Chilton, director of the Center for Hunger-Free Communities at Drexel Universitys Dornsife School of Public Health.

Chilton espouses universal basic income, a proposed government program in which every adult citizen receives a set amount of money regularly.

The failure to make the CTC expansion permanent means a moment of optimism in which deep injustices and hardships could have been changed may be over, noted University of Pennsylvania sociologist Pilar Gonalons-Pons.

And, Levine said, the United States, which fails miserably at reducing child poverty, loses an opportunity on the world stage to catch up with peer nations that treat children and families better.

That failure resonates with Mia Thomas, 37, the unemployed mother of a 13-year-old daughter in West Philadelphia.

The expanded CTC had allowed Thomas, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, to attain something rare in her life: a bank account.

The money was a godsend that allowed me to actually create a small nest egg, she said. But now, Im straining without the monthly payments to make rent and pay bills.

Ill still try to keep my bank account. But its going to be a struggle.

Read the rest here:

What happened to those in poverty with the child tax credit expansion ended? - The Philadelphia Inquirer