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By SSIR Editors, Stanford Social Innovation Review, June 1, 2020 The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers has ignited protests and focused the national discourse on institutional racism and how to eradicate it. SSIR's editors have assembled a list of resources to help leaders of social change and activists trying to put an end to this intractable American scourge. Racism in the United States has been a longstanding crisis that the COVID-19 pandemic has cast into an even...

From Greater Good Magazine, June 3, 2020 Our mission at the Greater Good Science Center is to elevate the human potential for compassion. But that does not mean we deny or dismiss the human potential for violence, particularly toward marginalized or dehumanized groups. or centuries, African Americans and other communities of color have been subject to this physical and structural violence, denied their humanity and often their basic right to exist. That’s why we are gathering Greater Good...

Dr. Moira Szilagyi, a pediatrician and interim chief of General Pediatrics at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), has a couple of tried-and-true methods of breaking down communication barriers with teenage patients, and they’ve worked well during the COVID-19 pandemic. One way is prefacing any query about mental health by saying that many of her teen patients are having a tough time, so they don’t feel think they’re the only one. “That’s usually sufficient,” she said, but if it...

By Hannah Sherfinski, The Cap Times, June 1, 2020 For two months, our country has been enduring the effects of COVID-19. With over 1 million COVID-19 cases reported in the U.S. and over 30 million Americans filing for unemployment, many of us are panic-stricken about our future physical, mental, social and financial well-being. Worst of all, we must cope with these fears in isolation. These intense feelings of uncertainty and desolation may trigger the body’s instinctual fight, flight or...

By Dana Lambert, EdSource, June 1, 2020 California Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond’s voice broke as he recounted the last moments of George Floyd’s life as he lay dying on a Minneapolis street. “I am haunted by the sound of his voice, begging to breathe, begging for life and we must address that trauma head on,” Thurmond said during an address on Facebook Monday. “We must have hard conversations.” Floyd, an African American man, was asphyxiated by a white police officer...

By Katie Orr, KQED, June 3, 2020 Child care provider Pat Alexander has hung onto her in-home child care center during the COVID-19 pandemic, but just barely. Alexander was caring for 13 kids in her Elk Grove home in Sacramento County, but now she's down to three. So far, she's survived the hit to her income. But a proposed 10% cut to the amount of money the state gives her to care for children from low-income families would force her to re-evaluate her business. Gov. Gavin Newsom has...

By Sarah Bohn, Magnus Lofstrom and Lynette Ubois, Public Policy Institute of California, June 3, 2020 At no time in recent history have deep racial disparities in well-being appeared as obvious as they do today. The death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers last week is the latest in a long history of violence against African Americans in this country. At the same time, the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately affected Californians according to race. As glaring and...

Public health advisory concerning COVID-19 has been posted on the San Francisco Department of Public Health, Disease Prevention & Control Website at: https://www.sfcdcp.org/health-alerts-emergencies/health-alerts/ . Copied from advisory: SITUATIONAL UPDATE Emerging data indicates populations experiencing structural oppression bear a disproportionate burden of COVID-19 disease and death, have a higher prevalence of predisposing co-morbidities, and are more likely to experience conditions...

By Carolyn Jones, EdSource, June 1, 2020 After George Floyd, an African-American man, died last week in Minneapolis after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white police officer, protests and rage erupted throughout the U.S. On Monday, education leaders across California spoke out about systemic inequities and current crises facing young people. Here’s a summary: “It has been difficult for me to make sense of how a man can beg and plead for his life and still have his life...

Healthcare professionals are exhausted. And it doesn’t have to be this way. I’m a psychologist by training, and I study Intentional Community. Quite literally, community shaped by design, rather than by default or by drift. My experience is that in the fields of mental health and primary care, providers are asked, and heroically trying, to meet unmeetable needs – to single-handedly generate and deliver enough care, resources, support, and (yes) even love – to meet the needs of our patients...

By Celeste Fremon, WitnessLA, May 18, 2020 On May 14, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a plan to close the state’s youth correctional system, the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) — prison for kids. This unexpected announcement, which was a part of the May revision of the Governor’s budget released last Thursday, proposes to stop taking any more youth into the DJJ system starting January 1, 2021—diverting them instead back to their individual counties. Then, as young people gradually...

By Louis Freedberg, EdSource, May 28, 2020 Students should be encouraged but not required to use face coverings when California schools reopen for classroom instruction, according to a draft of “interim guidance” from the state obtained by EdSource. However, all staff should use face coverings, according to the document, which sources familiar with it say was drawn up by the California Dept. of Public Health in collaboration with the governor’s office. That is only one of the numerous issues...