Tagged With "George Floyd"
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Lawsuit challenges use of restraint, seclusion in California special education school [ EdSource]
our special education students and their parents or guardians filed a lawsuit last week against the state of California claiming they were emotionally and physically harmed when they were illegally put in restraint holds and secluded during behavioral interventions at their Concord school. The four students attended Floyd I. Marchus School , operated by the Contra Costa County Office of Education. The public school offers special education services and integrated counseling to 85 children...
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'A turning point': California education leaders speak out about racism and police brutality [edsource.org]
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...
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Emotional schools chief Tony Thurmond vows to address racism in public education [edsource.org]
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...
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The Struggle to Overcome Racism [ssir.org]
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...
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Racial Disparities Are Widespread in California [ppic.org]
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...
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Race Forward Statement - Justice Now [raceforward.org]
By Race Forward, June 2, 2020 In the days since four Minneapolis Police Department officers killed George Floyd, hundreds of demonstrations have broken out around the country. Race Forward stands in solidarity with the millions who have marched to demand justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and for those Black lives who have been taken prematurely by police brutality. We join their condemnation of all forms of racist violence, whether state or state-sanctioned or from...
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Racism Fuels Double Crisis: Police Violence and COVID-19 Disparities [chcf.org]
By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, June 8, 2020 Across the US, two public health crises — one new and one ages old — have merged into a devastating tandem. Systemic racism undergirds COVID-19 health disparities and the plague of police violence, both of which kill Black Americans at disproportionately high rates. As protesters have taken to the streets to march against police brutality and to remember George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other unarmed Black people who have...
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Opinion: More Than Ever, We Must Prioritize the Mental Health and Well-being of Children [stanfordchildrens.org]
By Rachel Velcoff and Steven Adelsheim, Stanford Children's Health, June 8, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed the lives of families across the country and left many adults feeling stressed, anxious, and struggling to cope. It has also put the mental health of our youngest and most vulnerable at risk. Now, three months into the pandemic, youth are experiencing further stress and trauma, as our country grapples with another profound crisis: the murder of George Floyd and the...
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I found my voice and I am going to use it
People are angry. Angry about institutional racism, angry about racial profiling, angry about police brutality, and angry about so many other displays of inequity that are happening in our country. People of color have always been marginalized in our society and people of all colors are finally saying enough is enough.
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George Floyd’s Death Is Killing Me (medium.com)
Like many of you, I have experienced the events of the past weeks with a profound sense of anguish. My heart goes out to the families of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. My heart breaks at the incomprehensible number who have been harmed by racist violence and by the inaction that has allowed those harms to take place. As a doctor and a policymaker, I often hear the question “what it is about black and brown people” that makes us more vulnerable to the virus? That question...
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Should police officers be in schools? California education leaders rethink school safety [edsource.org]
By Michael Burke, EdSource, June 11, 2020 A movement to reform California public school policing and drastically rethink school safety is quickly gaining momentum amid nationwide protests against police brutality following the killing of George Floyd. In Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco, administrators and school boards are under pressure from community groups who are renewing demands for police-free schools and calling on districts to instead hire more counselors and other...
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Statement on Behalf of The California Endowment on Race & Racism: Using Pain for Transformation [calendow.org]
From The California Endowment, June 2020 Pain. Grief. Rage. Outrage. Frustration. Hurt. Ironically, at around the time that George Floyd pleaded for air while a police officer’s knee was lodged into his neck, our Board of Directors was scheduled to have visited the Equal Justice Museum and the Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama – a trip postponed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Lynching exhibit was thoughtfully constructed as a powerful reminder of America’s terrible past and history of...
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Racism's Effect on Health, and the Heartbreak of Being a Black Parent Right Now: California's Surgeon General Speaks [kqed.org]
By KQED Science, KQED, June 14, 2020 The coronavirus pandemic and the recent killing of George Floyd have brought longstanding racial inequities into sharp focus. One of those disparities concerns the high rate of coronavirus transmission among people of color. To talk about the intersection of race and health, KQED's Brian Watt spoke last week with California Surgeon General Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who is known for her pioneering work on the role that childhood stress and trauma play on...
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Juneteenth California [LA Times]
Juneteenth is Friday, June 19. Read this brief history by the LA Times of the Juneteenth Celebration and description of recent celebrations in Los Angeles, celebrations that will be repeated throughout California this weekend.
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Resources to Support Children's Emotional Well-Being Amid Anti-Black Racism, Racial Violence and Trauma [childtrends.org]
By Dominique Parris, Victor St. John, Jessica Dym Bartlett, Child Trends, June 23, 2020 Most Black children in the United States encounter racism in their daily lives. Ongoing individual and collective psychological or physical injuries due to exposure and re-exposure to race-based adversity, discrimination, and stress, referred to as racial trauma , is harmful to children’s development and well-being. Events that may cause racial trauma include threats of harm and injury, hate speech,...
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Stolen Breaths [njem.org]
By Rachel R. Hardeman, Eduardo M. Medina, and Rhea W. Boyd, New England Journal of Medicine, June 10, 2020 In Minnesota, where black Americans account for 6% of the population but 14% of Covid-19 cases and 33% of Covid-19 deaths, George Floyd died at the hands of police. “Please — I can’t breathe.” He was a black man detained on suspicion of forgery, an alleged offense that was never litigated or even charged, but for which he received an extrajudicial death sentence. “Please — I can’t...
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Academic Medicine and Black Lives Matter Time for Deep Listening (NEJM)
By Clyde W. Yancy, MD, MSc 1 , JAMA. Published June 30, 2020. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.12532 E choes of “medicine as the noble profession” continue to resonate, now 35 years since my legendary Chair of Medicine imbued me with this guiding ethos. Nobility in medicine is not obsolete; the selflessness, courage, self-sacrifice, and altruism on gallant display in the response to COVID-19 reassures that at its core, this ethic of egalitarian service remains intact and deeply established in the DNA...
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What it means to defund the police -- and why journalists should follow the money [centerforhealthjournalism.org]
By Marc Philpart, Center for Health Journalism, July 1, 2020 The United States spends twice as much on policing and prisons as on social services. There’s a better way to keep communities healthy and safe, and people closest to the pain of police brutality are showing the way. In Oakland, California, with leadership from the Black Organizing Project, the school board passed the George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate the School Polic e Department . In Minneapolis, the majority of the city...
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A Resolution Denouncing Racism and White Supremacy, and Supporting Equity, Wellbeing and the Safety of Black People and #BlackLivesMatter
WHEREA S , since our nation ' s inception , institutional and structural racism and injustice , namely the ma li gnancy and toxicity that i s white suprem acy , ha ve led to deepening racial disparities across all sectors of society and have lasting negative consequences for our communities , cities , and nation , robbing countless lives and futures of people of color in the process ; and WHERE AS , hist o rically , when Black people have fought for a more democratic society , the lives of...
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Child Life specialists empower kids in hospitals, disasters and now the pandemic
In late May, Betsy Andersen’s 7-year-old son, Ezra, had a serious meltdown. He and his six-year-old sister Abby had been enjoying an online Zoom interaction with “Miss Eileen,” “Miss Savannah,” a couple of their colleagues, and a puppet. Betsy Andersen “I could see him trailing off and then he started crying,” says Andersen, who lives in Mundelein, Illinois. But before she swooped in, she heard Miss Eileen talking to him: “She was saying ‘Hey, I see you’re having some big emotions.” Speaking...
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2020 Census Update – We’re Making Progress, but Our Work is Not Done! [childrennow.org]
WE HAVE THREE MONTHS LEFT: LET’S ENSURE EVERYONE IS COUNTED! Since our last 2020 Census update, there have been some new developments we are pleased to share. In April, our California Census response rate was 54 percent, and as of July 27th, 2020 , it is 63.9% . That is a nearly 10-percent increase during a once-in-a-century pandemic – which is amazing progress! Let’s keep the momentum going and increase the self-response numbers through October 31, 2020. The California Complete Count –...
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In Stockton, a Powerful Program to Prevent Violence [nytimes.com]
By Betty Marquez Rosales, The New York Times, July 27, 2020 Julian Balderama’s daily mission, stated starkly, is to keep a dozen boys and young men in Stockton alive and out of jail. His official job title is “Neighborhood Change Associate” for a violence-prevention program called Advance Peace. But on the streets, Mr. Balderama is what is known as an “interrupter” — he defuses conflict. Through constant home visits, sometimes bearing takeout meals, he shows his 12 mentees how to steer clear...
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West Contra Costa Unified to rethink student safety after ending police contracts [edsource.org]
By Ali Tadayon, EdSource, August 5, 2020 West Contra Costa Unified is rethinking what it means to keep students safe after its school board voted in June to end contracts for campus police officers starting next school year. It’s a re-evaluation other California districts are making as well, following protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in May as well as students saying armed police officers make them feel less safe at school. Instead of relying as much on police,...
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Upcoming 4CA Webinar on 8/27/20: The Impacts of COVID-19 on California’s Children, Families, and Communities
The California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity (4CA) invites your participation in an upcoming 1.5 hour interactive webinar entitled “ The Impacts of COVID-19 on California’s Children, Families, and Communities ” on August 27, 2020, from 1:30 PM – 3:00 PST that will explore the economic impacts of COVID-19 and how it has affected, and continues to affect, California communities. Featuring a panel of experts, Dr. Flojaune Cofer, Public Health Advocates, All Children Thrive, California...
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Health advocates highlight extreme COVID burnout, stark inequities and strong call for action
Dr. Elisa Nicholas, a pediatrician and chief executive officer of TCC Family Health Clinics in Long Beach, California, relays an example of how the COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the lives of the clinics’ patients. Most had already been struggling financially prior to the pandemic. “Both the mother and father came down with coronavirus,” said Nicholas. “Their child was in on a telephone visit with one of our doctors. They did not have any way to get food. They had no money to pay for...
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California to ban chokeholds, independently review police shootings under newly signed laws (politico.com)
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed policing bills that ban chokeholds, allow the state Department of Justice to investigate police shootings and give counties more oversight of sheriff's departments. Impact: The signings represent a win for police reform advocates and Democrats who introduced a wave of bills after the May police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Still, the moment is bittersweet for these groups after some of the most aggressive proposals — including bills to...
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State and federal policy to foster California’s children to thrive—Reflecting on what the lessons of 2020 mean for 2021
Against the backdrop of the stresses and strains of the pandemic, the racial reckoning, the fires, a diverse group of advocates presented, questioned, speculated about where trauma-informed policy at the state and federal levels is headed going into 2021.
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Hope and Progress, No Matter What! — an ACEs Connection/Cambia Health Foundation “Better Normal”, Oct. 22, 2020
Now, more than ever, there is a need for a new kind of hope, one founded in science and demonstrable, replicable progress. That hope lies in the science of adverse childhood experiences and the remarkable results from people who have used this new understanding of human behavior to solve our most intractable problems.
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Hope and Progress, No Matter What! — an ACEs Connection/Cambia Health Foundation “Better Normal”, Oct. 22, 2020
The election is upon us. In two short weeks, we voters in this country decide who will lead us for the next four years. We have the opportunity to embrace — as a national priority — the tenets of understanding, nurturing and healing that underlie the science of adverse childhood experiences and move in a direction that embraces cultural and racial equity and anti-racism. Or not.
What is clear is that no matter what, the ACEs movement will continue.
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Ward Connerly: Anti:affirmative actio leader calls Proposition 16 effort to 'reshape' power in California [edsource.org]
By Thomas Peele, EdSource, October 28, 2020 Twenty-four years after he led efforts that banned affirmative action in California, former UC Regent Ward Connerly is dismissive of the idea that those efforts are his legacy. His legacy, he said recently, “is the legacy that was established back in 1776 when the structure of our society was outlined. When I came into this world, I inherited that. I don’t want to sound like I’m super patriotic, although I probably am.” His reference to the...
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How a Deadly Police Force Ruled a City [newyorker.com]
By Shane Bauer, The New Yorker, November 16, 2020 Three police officers in an unmarked pickup truck pulled into the parking lot of a Walgreens in Vallejo, California, responding to a call of looting in progress. It was just after midnight on June 2nd, and a group of people who had gathered around a smashed drive-through window quickly fled in two cars. Sean Monterrosa, a twenty-two-year-old from San Francisco, was left behind. As the police truck closed in on Monterrosa, Jarrett Tonn, a...
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Ventura County declares racism a.com] public health crisis [latimes.com]
By Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times, November 17, 2020 The Ventura County Board of Supervisors has unanimously approved a resolution declaring racism a public health crisis. Spurred by the recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery , Breonna Taylor and George Floyd — and by a nationwide history of discrimination and oppression against Black people, Indigenous people and other people of color — the resolution was the result of a months-long collaboration between county officials and community groups.
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Tapping virtual reality to help drive equity in healthcare [globalhealthsciences.ucsf.edu]
By Institute for Global Health Sciences, UCSF, February 10, 2021 In 2020, the unequal impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the state-sanctioned murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, laid bare the persistent disparities in access to quality health care, education, and opportunity facing Black, Latinx, Indigenous and other people of color. IGHS has undertaken a number of new projects to reduce the inequities in our own house and backyard and across the world. Today, we are...
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Racial Equity & Student Expression in Schools [aclunc.org]
From American Civil Liberties Union Northern California, January 20, 2021 Students have organized and led a remarkable number of movements for social change. In fact, many of the protests following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police were student-led. During the Civil Rights movement, Black students like the “Little Rock Nine,” put their lives on the line for equal justice at school. Schools in California and across the country continue to limit student expression and the...
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To heal a community, let its members be the agents of change
Recently, the United States reached a sobering milestone. The COVID-19 pandemic has killed more than 500,000 people, surpassing the number of US soldiers who died in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War combined. The pandemic has closed schools, turned urban areas into ghost towns, and caused massive job loss, long food lines, more homelessness, and isolation for many shuttered indoors in response to orders by public health officials. And 2020 also witnessed numerous instances of...
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A Better Normal Friday, March 26, 2021: PACEs and HOPE with Dr. Christina Bethell, Dr. Baraka Floyd, & Dr. Robert Sege
Please join us for our next installment of A Better Normal, our live webinar series in which we imagine and create our society as trauma-informed! You may have seen we changed our name recently from ACEs Connection to PACEs Connection. Please join us to learn all about the groundbreaking research of Positive Childhood Experiences and how this is going to transform the work we are all doing. Read a detailed blog about the science of PACEs and the research being done by our guest speakers by...
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Tackling Childhood Trauma During a Pandemic: Lessons from California's Largest Collaborative on ACEs Screening and Response [careinnovations.org]
By Diana Hembree, Center for Care Innovations, April 7, 2021 Last March, as we launched CALQIC, a statewide learning collaborative integrating screening and response for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) with the UCSF Center to Advance Trauma-Informed Care, the world was about to turn upside down. “We had no idea what was in store,” recalled Megan O’Brien, program director at the Center for Care Innovations (CCI). “Just the day before, the World Health Organization had declared COVID-19 a...
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PACEs Connection Reacts: The Derek Chauvin Trial Verdict & Police Brutality in the United States April 30th, 2021 12pm PT
Join us for our second episode in a new series called "PACEs Connection Reacts" where we will be viewing the world through a PACEs science and trauma-informed lens. For this PACEs Connection Reacts, join PACEs Connection's Race & Equity Workgroup as we react to the trial of Derek Chauvin , an American former police officer who was convicted of the murder of George Floyd. The murder of George Floyd, along with a string of other murders Black Americans in 2020 , spurred international...
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The right verdict
Many people woke up Tuesday morning worrying about the verdict a jury would deliver in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, and agonizing over the possibility that yet again justice would be denied. That we would even consider that justice might be denied in such an egregious case in which dozens of people witnessed first-hand the murder of Floyd, and millions more watched his tragic and needless death on video says so very much about the state of justice in this...
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HOPE Summit speakers show how positive childhood experiences offset adversity
The Rev. Darrell Armstrong, pastor of the historic Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, New Jersey, is an accomplished man. He graduated from Stanford University in public policy and went on to get his master’s degree in divinity studies at Princeton. As a former director in the New Jersey Department of Human Services, he was responsible for New Jersey’s statewide strategy for preventing child abuse and neglect. Armstrong has also worked as an entrepreneur, workshop facilitator, and radio host.
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PACEs Connection Reacts: The Derek Chauvin Trial Verdict & Police Brutality in the United States April 30th, 2021 12pm PT
Join us for our second episode in a new series called "PACEs Connection Reacts" where we will be viewing the world through a PACEs science and trauma-informed lens. For this PACEs Connection Reacts, join PACEs Connection's Race & Equity Workgroup as we react to the trial of Derek Chauvin , an American former police officer who was convicted of the murder of George Floyd. The murder of George Floyd, along with a string of other murders of Black Americans in 2020 , spurred international...
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Policing in schools: Redefining public safety to be supportive & healing, instead of punitive & criminalizing
A recent video , shared on the national news, shows a 16-year-old Florida student being slammed to the ground by a police officer working at her school. It’s one of many such incidents of school-based police violence against students captured in videos around the country. Some of the victims are as young as five years old. About 47% of U.S. schools employ armed police officers , known as school resource officers, who are there to keep students safe. But students who attend these schools...
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Nonprofit Helps Parents Talk to Their Children About Race [philanthropy.com]
By Alex Daniels , June 3, 2021, for the Chronicles of Philanthropy News about the police killing of George Floyd was everywhere. Officials at the Berkeley, Calif., school, where Perfecta Oxholm’s son attended kindergarten last year, decided not to talk directly about the death with the students. That didn’t stop the children from asking questions. Over the next year, an anti-racism group started by Oxholm delved into ways parents could answer those questions and discuss race with their...
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CALIFORNIA ACES ACADEMY - Session 11 with Robert Sege and Baraka Floyd | June 17 [avahealth.org]
Dr. Bob Sege returns with Dr. Baraka Floyd for Part 2: Balancing ACEs with HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) Thursday, June 17, 2021 | 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm (PT) In this second webinar on HOPE, the focus will move from the evidence and theory underlying the HOPE framework as we roll up our sleeves and dive into ideas for practice transformation. The session will include a review of HOPE, examples of how organizations are using the HOPE framework to improve care, and interactive...
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Think you know something about historical trauma? PACEs Connection's 'Historical Trauma in America' series promises to be an eye-opener
The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 unleashed hundreds of articles, books, podcasts, film and online documentaries. It’s not that the roots of racism and inequity in historical trauma hadn’t been known about or written about previous to his death (Frederick Douglas, James Baldwin, anyone?), but the pressures of hundreds of years of injustice began a near explosive untangling from the massive twisted and angry knot they’d formed over generations. It’s been like cutting through a gargantuan...
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HOPE Releases Anti-Racism Statement [positiveexperience.org/blog]
By The HOPE Team, 9/15/21, positiveexperience.org/blog Each person is an individual with essential human dignity. Our society, however, continues to struggle with persistent racism. Today, we have posted a new statement about how HOPE intends to infuse an understanding of race, racism, and anti-racism into our work. Beyond individual biases, systems perpetuate inequity via systemic racism, endangering the health of children and families of color . HOPE core faculty member Dr. Baraka Floyd...
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PACEs Connection needs bold funders who are in this for the long haul!!
So, what’s our ask? We have two: We’re looking for a few bold funders to support us with $3.2 million through this three-year transition.