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How Did These Students Get The City To Change The Name Of Douglass Park? They Built Collective Power And Didn't Back Down

Pascal Sabino

September 22, 2020 |

Block Club Chicago |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Chicago, Illinois

Chicago students organized and, for the first time, convinced the city to rename a park in honor of Frederick and Anna Murray Douglass. The former Douglas Park was named after a Civil War era Illinois senator who advocated to expand slavery, and whose wife owned slaves. Not daunted by the city’s bureaucracy, the students canvassed in their community and gathered over 10,000 signatures for a petition to change the park’s name. The campaign, which began in 2017, was much harder and longer than the students anticipated, but by forming a coalition and continuing to speak out they persevered.

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How teachers are bringing lessons from the racial justice uprisings into the classroom

Deanna Pan

September 21, 2020 |

The Boston Globe |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Boston, Massachusetts

Teachers across Massachusetts are finding ways to incorporate antiracist practices into their curriculum. An English teacher at Newton High School is replacing required reading materials produced by white male authors with texts from authors like Sandra Cisneros, Langston Hughes and other authors of color. A physics teacher at Brookline High School is sharing more stories about scientists of color and teaching students about "naming conventions in scientific laws and theorems rooted in European colonization."

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Texas Teacher Takes Her Students On A Road Trip Through U.S. History — Remotely

Emma Talkoff Emily Alfin Johnson

September 11, 2020 |

NPR |

Multi-Media |

Under 800 Words

Response Location: United States

Students taking AP U.S. History at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas, may have been limited in their ability to attend in-person classes, but their teacher decided to supplement their lessons by taking on a 15-day virtual road trip across the U.S. to see the places often mentioned in their textbooks. Cathy Cluck traveled as far as the east coast to show students historic sites like Jamestown, Gettysburg, the Lincoln Memorial, and many others.

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The Warsaw Ghetto Can Teach The World How To Beat Back An Outbreak

Fran Kritz

September 02, 2020 |

NPR |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Poland, Warsaw

In the 1940s, typhus spread throughout the community living within the Warsaw ghetto, but cases dramatically decreased in the winter of 1941. While some researchers remain unsure why, others point towards a change in behavior that included increasing hygiene and nutrition practices and introducing social distancing.

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Can Greek Tragedy Get Us Through the Pandemic?

Elif Batuman

September 01, 2020 |

The New Yorker |

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Over 3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Theater of War Productions performs Greek tragedies, using the themes to encourage dialogue and healing from modern community traumas. Beginning with military audiences, participants were asked to discuss the themes in relation to their experiences in the military or as a military spouse. They have since expanded to include other problems, such as gun and police violence. Recently, actors read Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King” in their first virtual Zoom performance to about 15,000 people. Themes of leadership during a plague, “fake news,” and conspiracies resonated with audiences during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Lawmakers want to revive FDR's Depression-era "tree army" to help boost rural economies

Jason Nark

August 31, 2020 |

The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia Media Network) |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a New Deal program to build outdoor recreation facilities, creating thousands of jobs during the Great Depression and building iconic state parks. Delaware programs, like the Senior Corps that enlists the help of people over 55, encourage civic engagement modeled after the CCC. Pennsylvania's Outdoor Corps hires young people to restore public lands over the summer. Congress introduced bills to revive CCC-like initiatives that could support rural economies hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, but environmental funding is not a priority of the current administration.

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The Forgotten Stones That Still Inspire Turks to Help Their Neighbors

Jennifer Hattam

August 24, 2020 |

Atlas Obscura |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Turkey, Istanbul

Building on a history of anonymous charity, a mosque in northern Istanbul started a pop-up communal food bank to help those most impacted by the pandemic. The initiative is one of several mutual aid efforts underway in the municipality, with each paying homage to the nation's historical use of a charity stone - a place where "people who had money would leave some on top of the stone, and those who didn’t would take some, according to their need."

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Here's a radical idea that will change policing, transform prisons and reduce crime: treat criminals like human beings

Rutger Bregman

July 31, 2020 |

The Correspondent |

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Over 3000 Words

Response Location: Norway

Comparing Norway's and the United States' approaches to prisons and policing puts the lie to the American notion that being tough and unrelentingly punitive effectively addresses crime. In Norway, even people imprisoned for violent crimes, in maximum-security prisons, are treated with respect and kindness, with privileges that would be unthinkable in most American prisons. The results are telling: Norway's recidivism rate, the lowest in the world, is less than one-third of the U.S. rate. While prison costs are far higher per capita, the ultimate costs in lower crime make the Norwegian approach affordable.

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The Warsaw Ghetto beat an epidemic. Scientists say they know how.

Eva Botkin-Kowacki

July 24, 2020 |

The Christian Science Monitor |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: Poland

In 1941 it was predicted that the Warsaw Ghetto would be overwhelmed with typhus cases due to the overcrowding of inmates, but instead this "oppressed community" established a series of health measures that largely kept the caseload much lower than expected. Although the community was arguably more behaviorally motivated to implement strict and aggressive measures due to the conditions they were living under, the case study indicates that "sheltering in place, promoting and enforcing hygiene, and practicing social distancing," does matter when containing a pandemic.

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How Bears Ears Activists Advanced Navajo Voting Rights in Utah

Ross Coyle

July 10, 2020 |

Bitterroot |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Navajo Nation, United States, Utah

In 2016, court ordered redistricting gave Navajo nation residents in San Juan County fairer representation and required in-person polling locations and translation assistance. Shortly after, the Bear Ears National Monument was reduced by 85% by the Trump administration, which motivated a huge get-out-the-vote campaign among Navajo people. With the help of nonprofits, 1,600 Navajo nation members updated their voter information or registered for the first time. This helped elect the first Navajo-majority commission in the county in 2018, which gave Native Americans a political voice they haven't had before.

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