Category Archives: Intentional Communities

TOWN OF MANLIUS Two candidates are vying to replace long-serving Onondaga County Legislator Kevin Holmquist in the 10th district, which is comprised of most of the town of Manlius. Republican Mark Olson has been the mayor of Fayetteville since 2004. Democrat Heather Waters was elected to the Manlius Town Board in 2019. A map of the district is available below the candidates profiles.

Mark Olson

REP, CON, IND

Occupation: Mayor of Fayetteville, 2004-Present; regional sales manager, Tri State Marketing

How will your experience serve you in government?

My experience in public service goes back to the age of 14 when I first joined the Fayetteville Fire Department. Later in life I became a village trustee and now have been Fayettevilles mayor for the past 17 years and still active with the fire department.

My experience maintaining a balanced budget, lowering taxes, and providing top of the line services from waste disposal to beautiful parks will parlay perfectly into my work as your next county legislator. As mayor I have worked directly with county executives office, WEP, DOT, Office of Emergency Management, Community Development Board, County Office for Aging as well as social services. These relationships and my experience working with these departments will help all the residents I serve in my new role as legislator.

What do you think are the biggest challenges in your community?

Fayetteville has been a beautiful slice of the suburbs for many years. Nothing is ever perfect, but we are always working to grow and change to adapt with challenges that we might face. Our community has mostly made it through the public health aspect of the pandemic, but the economic impacts will be felt for quite some time. We have to work together to build up our community and each other.

What are your ideas for addressing these challenges?

As a community, we are coming together to support local business. People are being more intentional about buying local and supporting small businesses. This is the grassroots step to rebuilding, and we can all take part in it on our own. At the County level, we need to continue to invest in the Main Street and Community Development Block Grant programs that have helped revitalized local town centers and villages. These funds attract new and returning customers to local businesses, from restaurants to print shops to artist galleries. Thanks to incredible investment coming from the American Rescue Plan, towns and villages are being given direct funds to do some of this work themselves, through infrastructure improvements and more. As county legislator, I will support our residents. Communities are made up of individuals who want the best for our neighbors. By prioritizing people over politics, we can rebuild rather than divide.

Heather Waters

DEM, WOR

Occupation: Assistant dean for advancement, Syracuse University; Town of Manlius Board Member; Community mediator

How will your experience serve you in government?

I currently represent our 30,000+ town of Manlius residents, and Onondaga Countys District 10 is nearly the same area. The county and town have similar departmental operations, from wastewater to law enforcement. I delivered a balanced budget to residents during the pandemic, and I can lean on my 22 years of experience securing grants, as well as my training as a mediator. I made sure that at the first meeting of my term, residents had a new open podium for public comment, and we have robust citizen engagement in our comprehensive planning process (across all age groups).

What do you think are the biggest challenges in your community?

Too few people know how to make their voices heard by the legislature on the annual $1B+ county budget, much less the plans for the additional millions in rescue funds. We must demonstrate that we value the health and prosperity of our families and independent businesses as much as the possible sales tax revenue we can generate from a new tourist-friendly project. We need to demonstrate continued commitment to equity and opportunity for all, and the understanding that the villages, towns, Syracuse City, and County need each other to thrive.

What are your ideas for addressing these challenges?

Lets make all the legislatures meetings fully accessible (both in-person and remote). 2) Help the countys Health and Human Services to partner significantly with town/village recreation departments on public health education and programs (mental health support, nutrition, smoking cessation, preventing tick-borne diseases, as a start). 3) Enhance support for civil service exam preparation and commercial driving training, directly marketing to those who have paused or switched careers during the pandemic. 4) Dust off, update, and vote on the 2012 Sustainability Plan, which should include models for towns/villages to take the NY Climate Smart Communities pledge. 5) Work creatively with youth ages 13-16 to increase bus ridership, and promote biking and pedestrian safety with running and cycling communities across the county.

More here:

Olson and Waters square off in OCL's 10th district - Eagle News Online

Annie Tucker| Guest opinion

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Gender-based violence is a violation of human rights. It is a public health crisis, locally in the Corridor and across the globe, and includes domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking, child abuse, and all forms of violence in families and communities.

Domestic violence is a pattern of intentional violent and coercive behaviors between people in an intimate or family relationship. It involves physical, emotional, sexual, verbal, financial and psychological forms of abuse with the goal of gaining and maintaining power and control over someone. It is not a matter of anger management: Most abusers manage their tempers well at work, in the community, etc.

More than 1 in 3 women and more than 1 in 7 men in the United States have experienced physical abuse, sexual violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Most cases of domestic assault are never reported to the police, especially by members of historically marginalized communities.

Domestic violence is perpetrated by and affects people of all income levels, all educational levels, all professions, all races, religions, ages and sexual identities. No one is immune.

Over the past 18 months, the COVID-19 crisis has exposed and worsened the deep, systemic inequalities that exist throughout society both here in the United States and around the world. During this time, COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on systemically oppressed communities.

Domestic violence has been called the pandemic within the pandemic. It has further disproportionately affected people whose social identities are intersectional, especially because these identities are tied to lack of privileges and discrimination.

People committed to a safe and just society have been working determinedly to eradicate gender-based violence and to support those affected by it.

The Johnson County Coalition Against Domestic Violenceobserves Domestic Violence Awareness Month by presenting the Pat Meyer Vision Award to a local individual and a business or organization for their work to prevent or end domestic violence or their support of domestic violence survivors. Ending domestic violence was and is Pat Meyers vision. Meyer founded the first shelter in Iowa City and was the first director of DVIP, the Domestic Violence Intervention Program. Current advocates continue to provide services and resources to victims of domestic violence, sexual violence and human trafficking here in the Corridor.

The 2021 winners of the Pat Meyer Vision Award are Johnson County Sheriff Brad Kunkel and Big Grove Brewery.

The awards will be presented at noon Oct. 28 at the Iowa City Public Library, Meeting Room A. The event will also be accessible on Zoom. The event is free and open to the public, and boxed lunches and bottled water will be provided.

For more information, descriptions of the winners work, the Zoom link, and updates, go to:Facebook: @jccadv; Instagram: @jccadv; Twitter: @JCCADV1

Or contact: jciowacadv@gmail.com

How to recognize abusive behaviors:https://www.thehotline.org/

How to recognize early warning signs of an abusive relationship:https://www.huffpost.com/entry/early-warning-signs-of-an_b_6009076

How to help prevent sexual violence by being an active bystander and choosing intervention, not silence: (From RVAP, Rape Victim Advocacy Program, in Iowa City):https://rvap.uiowa.edu/assets/Uploads/74d9c6dc78/Bystander-ALL-Brochure-4.20.15.pdf

What to say to someone you think is being abused:http://www.clicktoempower.org/domestic-violence-facts/what-to-say-when-you-think-someone-is-being-abused

Local resources:

Johnson County:

Domestic Violence Intervention Program (DVIP) Hotline: 319-351-1043. Toll Free: 800-373-1043.

Monsoon Asians & Pacific Islanders in Solidarity: 319-466-9000 or 866-881-4641

Nisaa African Family Services: 319-333-2453

Rape Victim Advocacy Program (RVAP) Crisis Line: 319-335-6000 or 800-228-1625

Womens Resource & Action Center (WRAC): 319-335-1486

Linn County:

Waypoint: 24 hour Crisis & Support Line 319-363-2093 or 800-208-0388

Annie Tucker ofIowa City is the director of Mediation Services of Eastern Iowa and a member of the Johnson County Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

See the original post here:

Opinion: Domestic violence is the pandemic within the pandemic. Here's what you need to know. - Iowa City Press-Citizen

In order to motivate people to address climate change, it should be addressed in human terms, National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy said during the Oct. 14 Peter M. Wege Lecture on Sustainability.

For too long, climate change has been a planetary issue where people feel like they cant fix it, McCarthy said. Lets talk about climate change solutions as a way to advance human beings, not just their air quality. We have to convince people that their lives are going to get better.

Nearly 800 participants tuned in virtually to the 19th annual Wege Lecture, which is U-Ms flagship sustainability lecture series. It was hosted by the School for Environment and Sustainability and the Center for Sustainable Systems to commemorate the centers 30th anniversary.

The talk was moderated by Tony Reames, assistant professor of environment and sustainability and senior adviser for the U.S. Department of Energys Office of Economic Impact & Diversity.

As President Bidens chief adviser on domestic climate policy, McCarthy advocates for a whole-of-government approach to tackling the climate crisis, creating good-paying, union jobs, and securing environmental justice.

She cited the need for states, and particularly cities, to collaborate with the federal government on climate change efforts.

Even though the Biden administration is paying attention to climate change, it still comes down to community-level work and whether we can light a fire of hope that we can move forward together, said McCarthy, who previously was the 13th administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Thats where you can grab peoples imagination and let them know that its all about them, and that nothing were asking will do anything but make their lives better.

McCarthy credited Ann Arbor for the great job it is doing with climate change work, noting the city is focused on energy efficiency, waste and recycling efforts, and transportation and building solutions.

Thats why Im excited about the university and the work youre doing there, because the university is a big part of Ann Arbor, and you can bring juice to the table, McCarthy added.

She said its important to be intentional in making sure that everyone, including underserved communities, benefits from climate change solutions.

Its not going to be good enough if we fix the planet and leave the most impacted communities to be on their own, McCarthy said, noting that the Biden administrations Justice40 Initiative was formed to address environmental injustice.

We need to invest in major infrastructure like our water systems if we want to be able to respond to peoples needs today, McCarthy added. There are people in the United States of America who dont have access to clean water. How dare we be in this position today?

She added, You cannot build this country and allow it to be on the backs of those who are poorest and who are communities of color. That will never be a sustainable future.

The lecture was followed by a question-and-answer session about advancing environmental justice with Kyle Whyte, the George Willis Pack Professor of Environment and Sustainability and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

Read more from the original source:

Climate solutions need to focus on human beings, McCarthy says | The University Record - The University Record

By Lee Chilcote, The Land

From Severance Music Center to Playhouse Square, from 78th Street Studios to the Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland has a rich arts scene, and one that punches well above its weight compared to other U.S. cities of its size. Yet artists and arts organizations in Cleveland say they havent always had strong backing from city hall under Mayor Jackson, and they want that to change Nov. 2.

Great cities have great city halls with people who wake up every day thinking about how to support the arts, said Jeremy Johnson, the newly minted president and CEO of Assembly for the Arts, a Cleveland-based nonprofit arts and culture organization. Ive been impressed by how much weve accomplished without city hallthink about what we could do [by] working with city hall.

Although Cleveland has a Public Art Program that invests 1.5% of the citys budget for capital projects into public art, including murals that brighten blank walls across the city, Johnson said the city can and should do more. Last month, Assembly for the Arts partnered with Collective Arts Network (CAN) Journal to ask all seven mayoral primary candidates for their support.

Cleveland is one of the largest cities that does not fully embed and promote arts and culture in its government structure, the two organizations wrote. This, despite the fact that the creative work in Northeast Ohio generates an economic impact of $9.1 billion, supporting 62,499 jobs and supplying more than $3.3 billion in wages and proprietor income, according to a study by Ohio Citizens for the Arts.

When asked if theyd champion the arts at city hall, the responses from all seven candidates were unanimous: lets do this thing.

Every single candidate said they would establish a cabinet-level position in their administration to support the arts; work with the arts and culture community to create a cultural plan; and allocate a line item in the citys budget to support the arts, wrote Michael Gill, executive director of the CAN, in the Journal. Cleveland has none of that currently, and its about time.

Now, Assembly for the Arts and its arts partners are stepping up their efforts by co-sponsoring a debate between Bibb and Kelley along with Ideastream and the City Club that will air Monday, October 11 at 7 pm. Additionally, Assembly for the Arts is planning its own The Arts Vote program on Monday, October 18 at 6 pm to showcase the arts sector as a powerful voting force and change-making partner in Cleveland.

Were inserting the arts into the mayoral election, said Johnson. Theres a lot of work to do, but lets start by being part of the conversation and not being left off of the table.

Dayzwhun at Cleveland Walls in Midtown. [New Departure Films]

The Land reached out to five diverse arts leaders across Cleveland for their perspectives on how well the city is doing when it comes to support for arts and culture. Their answers revealed their frustrations with the current administration but also their hopes for the next one.

Joyce Huang, vice president of community development at Midtown Cleveland, just completed the Cleveland Walls project, a public art event that brought 19 new murals to the citys east side. She said its frustrating that the city doesnt invest more in public art and that its sole arts staffer, public art coordinator Tarra Petras, is tucked away in the Cleveland Planning Commission.

From a neighborhood perspective, its important to have someone at city hall with more status and power, Huang said.

A stronger effort is needed to track the impact of the citys Public Art Program, create a public art registry, and ensure opportunities for diverse, younger artists who are underrepresented, she said.

Theres so much talent here, we need to come up with a way to showcase that, Huang said. I feel like were just scratching the surface.

Daniel Gray-Kontar, executive director of Twelve Literary Arts, a nonprofit group that provides literary arts programs to youth of color, said the next mayor should lead efforts to create a cultural plan through meetings with residents. He cited Twelves work in Hough, where they conducted grassroots engagement to get residents opinions about the E. 66th St. redevelopment project, as one example. Additionally, he said, too many young people are leaving Cleveland because of lack of opportunity.

Artist Keith Benford, Jr., who works with Twelve, agreed that Cleveland needs more opportunities for young artists to grow and develop in place. A lot of the arts initiatives are happening at the grassroots level, he said. Now we just have a lot of tall grass and no one can see whats on the other side of it.

Mordecai Cargill, with the racial equity and placemaking consulting firm Third Space Action Lab, lives and works in Clevelands Glenville neighborhood. He said artists and arts organizations can help change peoples perceptions about this historic east side community.

We need to leverage the work of artists and creative professionals to challenge and re-create the narratives for these neighborhoods, he said.

Ricky Watts at Cleveland Walls in Midtown. [New Departure Films]

One city where strong mayoral advocacy for the arts has made a difference is Newark, New Jersey. Regina Barboza, executive director of Newark Arts (a post previously held by Jeremy Johnson), said having the mayor on board has made a huge difference. Newarks mayor since 2014 has been Ras Baraka, son of the well-known poet Amiri Baraka.

Newark has an arts mayor, she said. Now its becoming known as an arts city, which frankly it always has been.

After being elected, Baraka led efforts to start a creative catalyst fund at city hall to support artists and small arts organizations that currently provides $750-800,000 in grants each year.

Newark is a big town and not everyone can come down for arts courses, Barboza said. This allows groups to take it to the communities and keep it in the communities.

Additionally, Baraka created an Arts and Cultural Affairs Director position at city hall that is currently held by artist Fayemi Shakur. Currently, the city is trying to cut red tape to help artists gain access to affordable housing and creative space, to fight the impacts of rising rents and overall gentrification.

Newark is trying to be intentional about providing space to artists and keeping them in place, said Barboza.

Fred Bidwell, chair of Assembly for the Arts, said a new mayor could help Cleveland follow Newarks example. For too long, he said, the city has been a passive supporter of the arts. Instead, he said, it could be an active leader.

He hopes the next mayor will follow through on plans to elevate the arts in Cleveland. If he doesnt, he and others plan to hold the mayors feet to the fire.

Its one thing for a politician to say theyre going to do something, and its another to do it, he said. They need to put their money where their mouth is with real, substantive action.

Lee Chilcote is editor of The Land.

Here is the original post:

Cleveland arts and culture groups say next mayor should champion the arts - ideastream

The Charlotte Film Festival is back and in-person. The annual event runs through Sunday, Oct. 17, at Ayrsley Grand Cinema, featuring more than 100 films from independent filmmakers, some of them local.

Now in its 13th year, the festival was intentional about showcasing a diverse roster of LatinX, LGBT and Black filmmakers, programming director Taylor Montalto said.

The festival received more than 600 submissions, and 20 to 25 of the films selected are from Black filmmakers or Black focused.

Despite the festivals safety precautions masks will be required for all screenings Montalto said organizers expect attendance to be impacted by the pandemic.

Stay informed with news and events that impact Charlotte's Black communities.

However, she said, the show must go on, citing the importance of providing a platform for local filmmakers.

It is difficult to kind of bring it back, and to get people interested to support independent films, but were kind of hoping that this will be a way for people to get excited about something positive after the year that weve all had, Montalto said.

1. One Pint at a Time Reshaping The Future of Craft Beer in America.

Craft beer generates tens of billions of dollars annually for the US economy. Despite beers Egyptian and African heritage, these traditions have been mostly forgotten and are rarely found in American brewing culture. Today, Black-owned breweries make up less than 1% of the nearly 9,000 breweries in operation. Eager to shift the historical perception of who makes and drinks beer, Black brewers, brand owners and influencers across the country are reshaping the craft beer industry and the future of Americas favorite adult beverage.

Saturday, Oct. 16, 6:10 p.m. $12.

2. Social

Gary, whos been diagnosed with social anxiety, lives a lonely lifestyle suffering mild panic attacks. In a brash attempt to make a friend, he meets Alexis, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD). Through a series of events, together they attempt to find the one person who Gary has never had anxiety around Kayla, his high school girlfriend.

Sunday, Oct. 17, 4:50 p.m. $12

3. Remembering Willie Earle

This documentary short film looks at the tragic death of Willie Earle more than 70 years ago, when he was taken from a jail in Pickens, S.C., and murdered by a white mob. His childhood friend, AQ, remembers in a community that wants to forget.

Saturday, Oct. 16, 2:05 p.m. $12

4. Learning to Breathe

In 2014, the police killings of Eric Garner, John Crawford, Tamir Rice and Michael Brown led to protests all across the country. That year, in a short film for the New York Times, 10 young boys shared their challenges of growing up Black in America. It was seen by millions. Five years later, these boys are now young men, and in the wake of global uprisings and continued state-sanctioned violence against Black bodies, they are revisited.

Saturday, Oct. 16, 2:05 p.m. $12

5. Fight For Good

Buffalo Documentary Project, in collaboration with Community Health Center of Buffalo (CHCB), Inc., presents a 22-minute film exploring the centers work, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 disproportionately affects communities of color, highlighting the inequities of our healthcare system. In Fight for Good, a CHCB executive and two physicians all women of color are captured in an unguarded style, revealing both their personal motivations and their higher goals.

Saturday, Oct. 16, 2:05 p.m. $12

*Honorable Mention: The Conversation Remix: For Our Girls

A love letter from mothers to daughters, this film explores the stigmas Black girls face as they grow up within and outside their community. Through interviews, mothers share concerns with how they are shaping and impacting their daughters independence. The film acknowledges the sacred and, at times, tense, relationship that parent and child share as they face challenges and accept flaws.

Thursday, Oct. 14, 7:45 p.m. $12

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From Black stories to the migrant experience, Charlotte Film Festival highlights diversity - Q City Metro - Qcity metro

Those who lost homes in the East Troublesome fire are working to rebuild or find a new place to live. Others have moved away for good.

A thin metal sign hangs on the outside of a large log home in Grand County. It reads, Welcome to the Olsons, and is slightly twisted and bent. Its surface and color show a smoky gray patina from East Troublesomes flames.

Schelly Olson answers the door and gives a tour of her new house, which she and her husband bought after their previous home burned down nearby.

Olson points to a few other things that survived the fire a bracelet and watch. Her husbands class ring, now singed. Theres a vase in the bathroom that survived the flames. In the guest bedroom are a couple of small figurines which also made it through the fire.

Olson said everyone in her family is handling the trauma and grief differently.

I still don't feel OK, Olson said. It doesn't feel quite like home. I'm working through that. Definitely a lot of therapy.

Olson is familiar with fire. Shes assistant chief at Grand Fire Protection District No. 1. Part of her job is to talk to people who have had their lives derailed by wildfires.

The roles have flipped, and Olson is learning first-hand what life is like as a wildfire survivor. That struggle started when she returned to the neighborhood where she lived for more than 20 years.

It was decimated. It looked like a war zone, Olson said.

Their home was surrounded by the burn. Olson and her husband didnt want to rebuild. They couldnt see themselves living there anymore. It was just too much, she said.

The couple started to look for a new home away from Grand County. They considered areas from Evergreen to Glenwood Springs. But Olson eventually realized that she didnt want to leave her community entirely. Friends have been texting, full of anxiety and sadness, as the first anniversary of the fire approached.

Its really comforting to know that we're all right here and we can just drive over and see each other, Olson said.

Its also hard to be surrounded by the reminders of what happened last year, Olson said. The blackened trees and the remains of former homes. Revisiting her old neighborhood is still very difficult.

A friend and former neighbor of Olsons did decide to rebuild.

Matthew Reed-Tolonen is with a construction crew on the site where his home burned down in 2020. A brand new house has taken its place. The builders are finishing trim work and hanging doors.

Hopefully by Monday we have a kitchen, Reed-Tolonen said. He hopes to be moved in by Christmas, which has been the goal since his home burned down. Reed-Tolonen, his wife, and their daughter have been renting while they reconstruct their home and their lives.

Reed-Tolonen said the neighborhood, which has views of Rocky Mountain National Park, is still the families dream location. Much of what made it a community was neighbors like Schelly Olson, who have moved away.

They're still friends and they will be forever, Reed-Tolonen said. A lot of us went through something together, thatll keep us forever together regardless of where they live.

Reed-Tolonen credited the Grand County community, including local contractors, suppliers and business owners, for rallying to help homeowners rebuild quickly after East Troublesome. He said lumber yards and sawmills made sure he got materials before other customers because the owners knew the home he lost was his familys primary residence.

Reed-Tolonens new home has a little more fire protection than was lost in the fire. He said some of the improvements were intentional and some were not. Reed-Tolonens patio is now stamped concrete instead of wood a change thats cheaper and less likely to catch fire. The boards on his new deck are plastic.

Ultimately, it could definitely still burn, but it's gonna be a lot harder this time around, Reed-Tolonen said.

Reed-Tolonen said he was $300,000 underinsured. That was the case for many people, and its making it hard for Grand County residents to rebuild.

Theres a chalkboard in the window of Marjorie Cranstons art gallery in Grand Lake that still holds the words she wrote when she was finally allowed to return about a week after the fire. She was relieved to find everything inside was OK. She grabbed some chalk and wrote:

The fire took my home. It did not take my heart. The fire took my art. It did not burn my will to create. The fire consumed my comfort. It did not take my soul. It never destroyed my faith in God. Welcome to my studio, it remains.

When visitors come to Cranstons art gallery and see the message she wrote after the fire, they open up and talk about their own personal struggles.

It's been meaningful, I think, to people, to see that you can go through something and have hope, she said.

Cranstons art gallery has been on Grand Avenue for more than 20 years. Shes an impressionist who mostly works in pastel. After the fire, Cranstons paintings started focusing on scenes of regrowth and healing. She points to a landscape hanging on the wall that features blackened sticks and trees but centers on a patch of bright green grass in the foreground.

She said her relationship with the landscape has changed since the fire. She said painting now feels more emotional.

I think sometimes you just paint to paint, but now I don't. I want to paint with meaning, Cranston said. For a while, [my work] was a little bit darker. But I love color, and now I feel the colors coming back in a different way.

Cranston also decided to rebuild her home, but she too was underinsured. Cranston has had to be resourceful with her limited budget and has collected components for her new house piece by piece. She bought all of her light fixtures on eBay and other second-hand websites like Etsy and ordered discount siding and had it shipped in from another state to save money. Its been a challenge, but Cranston has accepted it because she wants to go home.

While some are rebuilding or buying new homes, the East Troublesome fire forced many residents out of Grand County permanently. Candace Cole now lives 100 miles away near Fort Collins. She said the decision to move was bittersweet but a fairly easy choice for her and her husband.

We moved [to Grand Lake] for the beautiful views and the beautiful trees. And we just kind of looked around and said, I just don't think we can come back, Cole said.

Cole said it was too expensive to rebuild, even with insurance. And many of the people that made her enjoy living in Grand County moved away after the fire. Cole now has a new house in a new neighborhood and a new town.

The East Troublesome Fire burned away something thats not material: her sense of community. She said thats going to be the hardest thing to rebuild. Cole, a Colorado native, said its heartbreaking to see how much communities like Grand County lose after wildfires which are likely to get bigger and hotter as the world gets warmer.

Climate change is real and we need to actually do something about it, Cole said. It's just very frustrating, because you see these fires and you see the drought. That's just normal. Its not stuff that we saw 15 or 20 years ago.

Read more from the original source:

A year after the East Troublesome wildfire, some residents work to rebuild homes and community while others move away for good - Colorado Public Radio

The UMass Chan Medical School will gather virtually on Thursday, Oct. 14, for its annual celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Hispanic Heritage Month began as a weeklong celebration in 1968 to highlight the achievements and contributions of Latinx people in the United States. It became a monthlong celebration in 1988 through the passing of a bill put forth by the Hispanic Congressional Caucus, led by U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres. Celebrated Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, it centers on the independence of several Latin American countries, including Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, with Mexico, Chile and Belizes independence celebrations falling a few days later.

Activists and academics alike are advocating to rename the celebration to include the term Latinx, to further gender inclusivity and to encompass the multiple ethnicities from which Latinx people come.

The monthlong heritage celebration is a time to pause and take note of the work that is yet to be done around the inclusion and representation of Latinx peoples. The Association of American Medical Colleges Diversity in Medicine report, which is generated every three years, noted in 2019 that only 5.4 percent of active physicians identified as Latinx. Socioeconomic factors such as lack of access to financial assistance for medical school and psychosocial factors such as lack of mentorship and representation impact these numbers.

Given that patients are more likely to see a doctor and schedule follow up appointments when they feel heard and seen, especially by medical practitioners who look like them, this figure is especially alarming during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The risk of infection, hospitalization and death caused by the virus is 2.3 times higher in Latinx communities, the highest of all communities of color, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

As Latinx people are projected to comprise the majority of the U.S. population by 2045, the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month and the concerns Latinx communities face are national concerns.

The historic gift that UMass Chan Medical School received from The Morningside Foundation, initiatives such as the Worcester Pipeline Collaborative and groups like SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) are intentional means to address such disparities.

On Thursday, Oct. 14, at noon, the UMass Chan Medical School community will join the nation in celebration of Esperanza: A Celebration of Hispanic Heritage and Hope. Participants will reflect on all the contributions Hispanics have made in the past and will continue to make in the future. Quinsigamond Community College President Luis Pedraja, PhD, will deliver the keynote. RSVP to celebrate the strides the community has made in the past and the hope they have for the future.

Read the original:

Hispanic Heritage Month a time to celebrate and take inclusive steps - UMass Medical School

Editor's note: This article appears in the September/October 2021 edition of HealthLeaders magazine.

Numerous hospitals and health systems have ramped up their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has shined a spotlight on the glaring health inequities in the country, and the social unrest during 2020.

Alongside of this, healthcare leaders have become increasingly aware of how important it is to have a diverse workforce and C-suite that represents different perspectives in the workplace and reflects the diverse patient populations that an organization serves.

Three healthcare executives share how their organizations have implemented initiatives to create a more diverse and inclusive space for their workforce and the community they serve, with results to prove it works.

RWJBarnabas Health, a comprehensive healthcare system in New Jersey, has been on its DEI journey for some time.

"One of the most exciting aspects of our journey to date has been the unwavering commitment and consistent progress we have made in advancing DEI strategies within our health system," Trina Parks, MHA, FACHE, executive vice president and chief corporate diversity and inclusion officer of RWJBarnabas Health, says.

The health system's corporate office of DEI was created in 2016. Its DEI team, which is led by Parks, has 11 diverse team members who focus on implementing systemwide DEI efforts.

"Since the inception, we have continued to harness a culture of inclusion and leverage the best of our employees to provide equitable and inclusive care to our patients and the communities we serve," Parks says. "As a DEI leader, and most importantly as a woman of color, I understand that this work can be uncomfortable."

Parks says this discomfort arises because the DEI team is addressing systemic racism and societal norms that have existed for centuries.

She adds, "It is also imperative for all employees, no matter the race, ethnicity, gender identity, or preferred spoken language, be seen and feel valued in every level of the organization. My job is to ensure that we can mitigate the risk of individuals feeling isolated or not enough."

Implementing diverse hiring practices

Following the tumultuous year of 2020, RWJBarnabas Health's CEO Barry H. Ostrowsky announced a systemwide initiative "Ending Racism, Together," which includes goals for patients, the workforce, communities, and operational processes "to identify and eliminate racism by modifying organizational structures, policies, practices, procedures and attitudes," Parks says.

"We ensure that these goals are communicated through partnerships with the system's DEI site leads in alignment with human resources leaders," she says. "We understand that we cannot accomplish change unless we adjust our lens; therefore, our DEI team has delivered and continues to deliver cultural competence and unconscious bias trainings to new and existing employees within our system."

As another best practice to promote a DEI culture among its employees, RWJBarnabas Health also requires that 50% of final leadership candidates, for director-level positions and above, are diverse in both race and ethnicity, she says. The health system also focuses on creating a workforce that represents the populations it serves.

In addition, Ostrowsky instituted an updated SBAR hiring practice (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) for the health system. This process ensures the promotion of DEI efforts in the workforce.

According to Parks, the SBAR process should include:

The SBAR process is used for vice presidentlevel and above leadership positions, and "it challenges the hiring manager to cast a wide net to ensure that the candidates are of a diverse pool," Parks says.

In addition to promoting race and ethnicity diversity in its hiring practices, the health system also focuses on sexual orientation and gender identity.

"We are proud to say that eight of our hospitals have been recognized as Leaders in LGBTQ Healthcare Equality by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Foundation," Parks says. "In addition to offering equitable policies and practices to our patients and visitors, this distinguished honor also contains inclusive practices for employees to identify with their current gender identity and preferred names and comprehensive benefits inclusive of gender-affirming surgeries and family planning resources."

Parks says that while diversity and equity work is important, diversity without inclusion is "ineffective and unsuccessful." To promote inclusion, the health system has over 30 affinity groups, which are employee-led groups or employee networks defined by shared characteristics and life experiences.

"In general, [these groups] provide support for our employees, foster career development, and contribute to cultural sensitivity in the work environment," Parks says.

RWJBarnabas Health measures its DEI successes quantitatively and qualitatively. "While success is measured through percentage changes in leadership demographics and the demographic makeup of employees, it is also measured in the respect and understanding of other cultures that we have seen at RWJBarnabas Health," she says. "It is also measured in having creativity and innovation, in which we continue to excel. In addition, our success is measured by less language barrier challenges faced by our patients and families, which we address through our impressive diverse workforce and best-in-class language interpretation and document translation services."

From 2017 to 2020, the health system saw a 21% increase in hiring women for leadership positions and a 6% increase in ethnic minority hiring, Parks says. Additionally, in 2020, 27% of internal promotions to assistant vice president and above identified as minorities, and 78% of those promoted were women.

'A marathon with an invisible finish line'

The challenges of incorporating DEI in an organization can be numerous, including the amount of work it takes to change thinking and culture.

"DEI execution continues to be a marathon with an invisible finish line," Parks says.

Creating and maintaining an environment where people are adapted to cultural humility is hard work, Parks says. "That often is a challenge because, as I like to mention, we are humans treating humans and, unfortunately, we don't always get it right. We all have unconscious and conscious biases that dictate our behaviors and responses."

The health system has a three-pronged approach to DEI for the workforce and the community; those prongs are awareness, exposure, and accountability to help the organization reach its destination. "Depending on the area of focus, [getting there] could be aquickrace, a carride, orlikemost times, anacross-the-country bus ride, which requires patience and a much slower-paced approach, requiring collaboration and coordination. No one can do it alone."

While implementing DEI practices can be a big investment for organizations, Parks asks, "What is the expense and liability of not having a DEI leader and service line?"

"DEI touches every part of the business, including employee optimization, safety, quality, customer experience, community relations and partnerships, procurement, and population health," she says. "The investment associated with being visible, accessible, and trusted to be proactive and reactive in real-time is priceless."

She adds that this remains imperative to business when providing healthcare in a state as diverse as New Jersey.

"New Jersey is the fourth most diverse state in the country only behind California, Texas, and Hawaii. Diversity is not something we talk about, it is how we live," Parks says.

Focusing on DEI efforts in the workforce is not a new undertaking for Luminis Health, a nonprofit community health system headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland.

"We've been on this deliberate and intentional journey since 2015," Victoria W. Bayless, CEO of Luminis Health, says. "At that time, we were signing on to the American Hospital Association's #123forEquity Pledge to Act."

The pledge aimed to eliminate healthcare disparities and called for hospitals to do four things, Bayless says:

Specifically related to the cultural competency training, Luminis Health's focus evolved to include cultural humility, listening, and learning, and evaluating the strengths the organization gains from its diverse leadership and workforce, according to Bayless.

The health system also focuses heavily on measurement success in its DEI initiatives for its workforce, she says. "Measurement was important in terms of the makeup of our boards, the makeup of our leadership team, [and] we put the Rooney Rule in place."

The Rooney Rule, originally a policy the National Football League put in place to require that team leagues interview and consider diverse candidates, has been adopted into hiring policies at numerous organizations, including hospitals and health systems.

Luminis Health measures DEI initiatives with dashboards that track hiring practices, promotions, disciplinary actions, aggregate diversity, and diversity of job classifications. A DEI scorecard was implemented in March 2018. By the end of June 2020, the diversity of Luminis Health's clinical professionals grew from 33% to 40%, the diversity of management grew to 26%, and the diversity of executive leadership grew from 14% to 17%. Diversity in new nurse hires also grew from 19% in March 2018 to 38% in June 2020.

Reflect the community you serve

Luminis Health found that to successfully create a diverse workforce, it had to implement DEI throughout the whole organization and its community. The health system's DEI efforts ramped up following the murder of George Floyd and the resulting social unrest in May 2020, Bayless says. This is where Luminis Health's focus on anti-racism "leveled up."

"We're certainly proud of the work we did and having won the Carolyn Boone Lewis Equity of Care Award [in 2019] from the American Hospital Association," she says. "But it wasn't enough."

In 2021, the governing board doubled down on its focus on DEI, and added anti-racism and social justice efforts, Bayless says, making its focus on DEAIJ (diversity, equity, anti-racism, inclusion, and justice).

"We need to be reflective of the community that we're serving. We need to be inclusive in our workforce," Bayless says. "When people see employees, nurses, doctors, techs, pharmacists, housekeepers, engineers, people who look like them and are from similar backgrounds, they feel more welcomed in organizations as patients."

The governing board has also created a Health Equity and Anti-Racism Task Force, or HEART Force, to address DEI in the workforce and in the community. The HEART Force, led by some of the health system's trustees, includes people in the community, the workforce (nonclinical staff), patient and family advisors, and medical staff, Bayless says. On June 11, the group rendered its set of recommendations to the governing board, she adds, which has 10 recommendations categorized under the following three focus areas:

The health system also hired Tamiko Stanley in 2017 as director and head of DEI. She was recently promoted to vice president and chief DEI officer, where she sits in human resources but "has a broad view of the organization, not just on the workforce side, but also facilitating and supporting the work in the clinical arena and patient care," Bayless says.

The healthcare organization also formed several business resource groups for various cultures and identities, Bayless says. That includes an LGBTQIA group, an African American group, and a Latino group, so that people in the organizations "have a group of colleagues where they can share and learn."

The health system also created voluntary forums for team members across the organization to share their own experiences about equity and justice, she says. This has included work around the books White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, which has created a safe space for staff to come together and communicate about difficult subjects, including personal dealings with racism.

Luminis Health also created a Coming to the Table chapter, where team members can "encourage dialogue and learning around the history around racism and discrimination, and that people can listen and learn from each other," Bayless says. "We were the first hospital health system in the country to form our own chapter of Coming to the Table," creating a more inclusive and communicative culture.

She adds that some of the conversations are "deeply personal experiences of people who have experienced discrimination and who have grown from it, or who many are continuing to suffer from it."

The organization also implemented a creative interactive theater group in addition to cultural competency training, where the group acts out scenarios that demonstrate real-life situations that have happened at Luminis Health where there's been discrimination or inappropriate use of language, Bayless says.

"[Following the presentations], we react to it, and we have a dialogue about the skit, whether it was a manager being insensitive, inappropriate use of language, somebody singled out, people applying stereotypes, making assumptions about people because of the way they look, talk, dress, etc. It's a little more interesting than just doing 'mandatory training,' [and] that's made it more lively," she says.

The organization has made significant investments in DEI throughout the system. "I don't have an exact figure for you, but it is a major investment," she says. "It gets woven into the organization, rather than it's a budget that sits discretely off to the side."

Vision 2030

Implementing DEAIJ into the health system's work has become a part of Luminis Health's DNA. "It's reflected in our values," Bayless says.

The health system crafted a new strategic mission for the next decade called Vision 2030, with a focus on community, wellness, and experience for the workforce and the patients they serve.

"The vision speaks to our mission, values, and what we want to be in the long term," she says. "That vision statement includes that Luminis Health will become a national model for health equity, anti-racism, inclusion, diversity, and justice."

Anne Arundel Medical Center and Doctors Community Medical Center merged in 2019, then rebranded in 2020 as Luminis Health to unify the organization. Since then, the healthcare system has acquired another hospital and opened a new mental health hospital, Bayless says.

"For Luminis Health, we have a collective set of values now that honor and respect the legacy organizations but also pull us together as a system," she says. "Those values are the acronym RISE, which stands for Respect, Inclusion, Service, and Excellence. It is important for us to be focused on that, that every voice matters, and that those set of values needs to drive the behaviors that we exhibit regularly."

The organization has also implemented specific goals in its annual operating plan for quality, community service, and workforce development, Bayless says. It will further infuse the goals with the elements of the HEART Force recommendations to ensure those recommendations receive action.

"We don't want to focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion as some side gig," she says. "It needs to be part and parcel of all the work that we're doing. [It's] infused in all of the work that we're doing. There are layers of goal setting and measurement that we've been deliberate about."

'Resist the resistance'

When it comes to implementing DEI initiatives into your own organization, Bayless says that an open mind is key.

"We changed our procedures and how we go about recruitment, and there was some resistance to that [because it's different]," she says. "Sometimes people just don't like change. They don't want their process to be slowed down by having to take these 'extra steps,' but in the long run, the benefit is greater diversity, more inclusiveness, the diversity of ideas, backgrounds, interests that come to the table and can make us a stronger organization."

Bayless adds that a trustee once told her, "You have to have the strength to resist the resistance."

When it comes to wanting to make steps in DEI, the whole organization must be committed, Bayless says. "It has to start at the top," she adds. That includes the CEO, the governing board, and the executive leadership.

"You have to be truly committed to it; you have to measure; you have to be willing to make the investment. You can't just say it's important but then not put any resources or time and attention to it. If it doesn't show up in your annual operating plan and you're not measuring it, you're not really doing it."

Highmark Health and Allegheny Health Network is a nonprofit integrated delivery network, headquartered in Pittsburgh, with a deep focus on workforce and community DEI initiatives.

"[DEI] goes directly to our mission, which is to ensure that people have a remarkable healthcare experience and they're free to be their best," says Robert James, JD, MBA, MHA, chief diversity and inclusion officer for Highmark Health.

According to James, research shows that diversity in a clinical care workforce improves health outcomes for the community it serves, which is why the payer-provider organization is building DEI best practices, including utilizing the Rooney Rule for interview panels; tracking metrics; and setting goals.

"We're looking at initiatives to stem turnover. We are adopting mentor and protg programs into our hiring process, all across the organization for almost all of our positions," he says. "Our goal is to reflect the customers, members, and our patients so that we can provide them with the best products, services, and experiences."

Having a diverse workforce brings new ideas and fresh perspectives into the workplace, he says. It also allows for innovation, which makes the organization a more competitive and valuable commodity to its customers.

Partnering with the community

As part of Highmark Health's DEI efforts, it is partnering with its community to create a diverse workforce pipeline for its own organization and other community organizations.

Earlier this year, Highmark Health announced it would commit $1.5 million to increase diverse leadership in Pittsburgh through The Advanced Leadership Institute (TALI Institute), a new nonprofit organization to help build pipelines for African Americans to executive leadership positions in and around Pittsburgh.

"It's part of our goal of aligning on corporate giving with our DEI initiatives. TALI is a program that was started by a former senior executive at Highmark, who saw disparity in the number of black senior executives in the city of Pittsburgh and decided to form an organization that would help mitigate that disparity," James says.

The executive then developed a training program associated with Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business "to train executives who were mid-level executives to prepare for senior and C-level executive roles in companies," he adds.

TALI has had three cohorts so far, James says, and about 80% of the participants have either received a promotion or have added significant higher-level assignments to their work responsibilities.

"At this point about 80 participants have graduated from cohorts in TALI. The $1.5 million goes to help ensure the institute will be around in the years to come and can continue to build a bench of ready mid-level executives to ascend to the senior levels, and now they've expanded to include a program for supervisors and managers as well," he says.

James adds that, "There's no program like it in the United States, and Highmark was there from the beginning as one of the anchor sponsors and has continued to be there as a sponsor at the highest levels to try to combat this disparity here in Pittsburgh."

Additionally, Highmark has implemented numerous other initiatives within the past year:

"Most companies maintain their DEI initiative under their HR department. DEI isn't embedded anywhere else in their organization," James says. "The way that we decided to structure ourselves is going to allow us to ensure that DEI is going to be a part of how we approach things [in all departments]."

The DEI team created an Enterprise Institute of Equitable Health, where they developed a six-pillar framework to address social justice, equity, and structural racism, as well as "the other '-isms' that exist, including sexism," James says.

The six-pillar framework includes the following action items:

Additionally, Highmark Health is bringing in an outside organization to survey the entire enterprise and obtain a sense of where the organization is on its DEI journey, James says. The health system will also conduct "inclusivity resets" where each workforce team unit will determine its members' sense of belonging and inclusion.

"Our goal is to ensure that each unit be able to have a sense for what would they like us to look like at the end of the day and in terms of that sense of belonging and sense of inclusion," he says. "We are hitting the reset button when it comes to inclusion across our enterprise, and we'll also ensure that each business unit has a champion that will train the rest of the team and they will engage in train-the-trainer unconscious bias training."

The workforce will also have opportunities to engage in book clubs and meetings related to DEI, where they will learn about structural racism and the data behind structural racism, so that they understand it exists and action can be taken to correct it, he says.

In addition to the TALI Institute, Highmark Health also developed other intentional pipeline programs to hire more diverse nursing and clinical care staff. The organization created a program called White Coats for Black Professionals with a grant, where the organization will pay back the loans for trainees, doctors, and nurses. Allegheny Health Network has also partnered with the Community College of Allegheny County to support nurses with diverse backgrounds. The organization also established a new partnership with Inroads, a 50-year-old pipeline organization, to help attract students and alumni from historically black colleges and universities, as well as Hispanic-serving institutions, he says.

[sub-subhed] 'No matter where you are in our enterprise, you're going to feel welcome'

James says, "You have to have buy-in from the top" when it comes to implementing DEI work into your organization. "Our CEO is our biggest champion on diversity, equity, and inclusion," he adds. "It's one of the top priorities of our company."

"Through the Enterprise Institute of Equitable Health, we are not just moving forward at the top, but we are embedding it across our enterprise at all different levels," James adds. "No matter where you are in our enterprise, you're going to feel welcome, a sense of belonging, and included in our company."

The organization's broad array of DEI initiatives in 2021 aim to ensure that DEI is in its DNA, he says.

"When I look at the successes we've had over the years, we've had successes with our veterans, our LGBTQ community, and for people with disabilities," he says.

Highmark Health has received awards from the Human Rights Campaign, including winning Best Places to Work for LGBTQ Equality for three consecutive years.

"Every company should have a degree of diversity at the table," he says.

Melanie Blackman is the strategy editor at HealthLeaders, an HCPro brand.

Photo credit: Pictured: Trina Parks, MHA, FACHE, is the executive vice president and chief corporate diversity and inclusion officer of RWJBarnabas Health. Photo by Christopher Lane/Getty Images.

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Create a Strong Workforce Through Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - HealthLeaders Media

Despite companies tremendous efforts to measure and affect positive influence on this statistic, the number has not fluctuated much during the last 20-some years of measurement. Many seasoned talent and organizational development practitioners bore witness to the shift from an attempt to capture employee satisfaction data in the early 2000s to the current, more enlightened approach of gauging team member engagement. Even with the focal shift that aligned with the G12 measures that tap more deeply into the emotional engagement factors, the needle has moved little during the last two decades.

Why is that? Could it be that organizations across the nation are living out a form of the definition of insanity? Most are familiar with this reference. Insanity is defined as the phenomenon where we continue to do the same things yet expect different results.

The traditional model for attempting to elevate organizational engagement has largely remained unchanged: hire people using traditional recruitment systems and processes and then tinker with the levers of team member engagement for individuals, teams, departments, and the entire organization after the people are selected, hired, oriented, onboarded, and prepared to perform in their assigned roles. Could it be that this tried-and-true model for talent acquisition is the culprit that is leading to our definition of insanity? Might we, in corporate society, who desire to see deeper team member engagement, have twisted the formula for attracting talented contributors to deliver upon the mission of our organizations?

For-profit entities need only look over the proverbial fence at their nonprofit and volunteer-supported organizations to see that maybe there is another way to approach individual and organizational engagement. Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) have been leveraging the time, talent, and treasures of dedicated volunteers to generate community impact for decades. NPOs drive mission attainment with a workforce that (at least a portion of which) is not monetarily compensated. Rob Jackson of Rob Jackson Consulting, an international thought leader in the practice of volunteer engagement, adds, Indeed, volunteers often outnumber paid employees by significant numbers in community impact organizations globally and are frequently, by design, the only people whose efforts directly deliver upon the mission.

What could be learned from our volunteer-supported sister organizations? What are they doing differently that compels unpaid team members to be deeply engaged in their work, their chosen cause, the beneficiaries, and the impact on their community? What is their secret formula that has led to decades of deep, sustained engagement and the resulting longevity that often accompanies the impassioned emotional connection of volunteer service?

Hear me out, corporate America. There is a lesson to be gleaned from the human behavior insights of our peer leaders of volunteer engagement.

High-performing volunteer-supported organizations have practiced a simple discipline that ideally occurs during the candidate attraction process. Before an arriving volunteer and an organization render a mutual commitment, the leader asks for the prospective volunteers needs, wants, desires, experience, skills, and passions. The leader seeks to discover the why of the volunteer before investing in the mutually beneficial relationship. Why does the leader take the additional time and effort to ask these questions? First, the leader must vet that the person is a strong fit for the culture and mission of the organization. Second, the leader will use the insight gained from the responses to these essential questions to align the individual with work that will feed their expressed passions in meaningful ways.

Cultural and missional fit? Check. Intrinsic motivations aligned with meaningful work? Check. Result? Sustained engagement in the organization and the work. The beneficiary? The volunteer, the organization, the mission, our nations communities. A simple equation yielding dramatically different organizational engagement results.

My book Engaging the Head, Heart, and Hands of a Volunteer calls this leadership move the flip. In a typical recruitment interaction, the focus of the interaction is to ensure that the candidate meets the needs of the for-profit organization. When engaging volunteers in the mission of a nonprofit organization, the methodology of attraction, in contrast, encourages the interviewer to flip the conversation to ensure the focus remains on meeting the needs of the individual. When this intentional practice leads to purposeful placement within the organization, organic engagement occurs.

The focus on engagement does not stop with the attraction process in community involvement organizations. Jackson, who also is a recognized volunteer engagement expert from the UK, continues, This alignment of intrinsic motivations with meaningful work is adjusted throughout the relationship the volunteer experiences with the NPO. As their interests, needs, wants, and wishes change over time, the adept leader seeks to understand these changes and readjust the fit so the volunteer, the organization, and the mission all continue to reap the benefits of truly engaged talent.

What could corporate entities learn from this flip methodology? What role may the elevation of candidate intrinsic motivation in the prehire conversation have on future sustained team-member engagement? In what ways could this simple flip transform the entire current corporate recruiting practice to yield future engagement data well above 36 percent?

This flip may be the impetus to break the cycle of engagement insanity of the last two decades. Intrinsic motivation matters. Passion matters. Fulfillment matters. The heart is at the center of the engagement equation.

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Working the Flip: What Leaders Can Learn About Engagement From Volunteer Orgs - ATD

Calling into question widespread perceptions of lower-income Americans and their level of political engagement, a new study released Friday detailed the high turnout among poor voters in the November 2020 electionsparticularly in battleground states which helped deliver victories for President Joe Biden and Democrats in the Senate and Housefollowing a concerted effort by campaigners to engage with low-income communities regarding the issues that mattered to them in the election.

Released by the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival (PPC:NCMR); the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice; and Repairers of the Breach, the study shows that of the 168 million Americans who cast ballots last year, 59 million, or 35%, had an estimated annual household income of less than $50,000, classifying them as poor or low-income.

According to the report, titled "Waking the Sleeping Giant: Low-Income Voters and the 2020 Elections" and written by Kairos Center policy director Shailly Gupta Barnes, those voters were among the Americans that the Poor People's Campaign reached out to last year when it held a non-partisan voter outreach drive across 16 states including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin.

The organization reached over 2.1 million voters, with campaigners speaking with them about "an agenda that includes living wages, healthcare, strong anti-poverty programs, voting rights, and policies that fully address injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, and the war economy," according to the report.

The Poor People's Campaign found "that the reason poor and low-income voters participate in elections at lower rates is not because they have no interest in politics, but because politics is not interested in them."

"They do not hear their needs and demands from candidates or feel that their votes matter," wrote Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People's Campaign, in the foreward to the report. "They are less likely to vote because of illness, disability, or transportation issues, not to mention the rise of voter suppression lawsall systemic barriers rather than individual failures."

"Intentional efforts to engage these voter" in the leadup to the 2020 election,contact the groups found, were key to turning out low-income voters in states where Biden's margin of victory was near or less than 3%, including:

"While the data cannot be used to claim that being contacted by PPC:NCMR was the only factor that drove them to vote, we can say that our efforts to directly reach out to low-income, infrequent voters improved their turnout rates in these states," the report reads.

The groups highlighted the case of Georgia, which was carried by Bidenmarking the first Democratic presidential victory in the southern state since 1992. Outreach by the Poor People's Campaign helped encourage more than 39,000 Georgians who didn't vote in 2016 to cast ballots last year"accounting for more than three times the final margin of victory for the presidential contest in the state."

The racial demographics of low-income voters in Georgia were fairly evenly split between Black and white low-income voters, with 1.9 million low-income white voters casting ballots last year and 1.6 million Black Georgians going to the polls. Another 164,000 low-income voters were classified as Hispanic.

In other states carried by Biden, white people made up a larger share of eligible lower-income voters reached by the PPCNCMR, including in Michigan, where 2.95 million out of 3.8 million poor voters were white; Pennsylvania, where three million of the state's 3.95 million eligible low-income voters were white; and Wisconsin, where 1.8 million out of 2.1 million low-income voters were white.

The statistics present "a challenge to the media-driven narrative that emerged out of 2016 and before, i.e., that white low-income voters are the de facto base of the Republican Party and delivered Donald Trump into the White House," wrote Gupta Barnes.

"While the narrative that white low-income voters are voting not only against their own interests, but also the interests of other racial segments of low-income voters, persisted through the 2020 elections, our analysis suggests something significantly different," the author added. "The findings suggest that, rather than writing white low-income voters off, it is possible to build coalitions of low-income voters across race around a political agenda that centers the issues they have in common."

Though the Poor People's Campaign made an intentional effort in 2020 to reach low-income voters, listen to their concerns, and urge them to turn out in the elections, the report notes that legislative action must be taken to turn last year's high turnout among poor Americans into a long-term reality.

"To realize the potential of the low-income electorate, our voting infrastructure must be expanded to encourage these voters to both register and vote," the report reads.

As Common Dreams has reported this year, the PPCNCMR has campaigned extensively to urge the passage of the For the People Act, which would outlaw partisan gerrymandering, expand early voting, establish a national automatic voter registration system, and take other steps to strengthen the country's election system.

"While mechanisms to increase registration are important for low-income voters, there is an even greater need for policies and legislation that increase their ability to cast a ballot and actually vote," wrote Gupta Barnes.

Additionally, the report says, Democrats must identifyand pass"an agenda that appeals to important concerns of low-income voters across race, that is, issues like raising hourly wages, stimulus payments, paid leave, housing, and healthcare."

"According to exit polls, 72% of Americans said they would prefer a government-run healthcare plan and more than 70% supported raising the minimum wage, including 62% of Republicans," the report reads. "In Florida, the $15/hour minimum wage referendum got more votes than either of the two presidential candidates."

The report comes as progressives in Congress are pushing back against corporate Democrats' claims that the Build Back Better Actthe spending package which would invest $3.5 trillion in climate action, child care, affordable housing, and other measures to help lower- and middle-income peopleis unaffordable.

As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, the Poor People's Campaign held a press conference on Capitol Hill this week to demand the legislation's passage.

The report, wrote Gupta Barnes, "underscores why the needs and concerns of low-income voters must be brought more fully into our political discourse, platforms, and campaignsand why candidates who are elected on these platforms must live up to their campaign promises."

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New study reveals the group that was crucial in toppling Trump in 2020 - Raw Story