Transcript for Figure 1.6, Social Construction

Hi. I’m Kim Puttman. I’m a sociologist and author at Oregon Coast Community College.

Hi. I’m Liz Pearce. I teach in human development and family sciences at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon.

These videos are being made for Open Oregon Educational Resources.

Rain is a fact of life. The storms roaring in from the ocean soak the forests and the yards. The brisk wind scours our beaches and our hearts. The gentle rain on the vineyards grows our grapes and brings us peace. This rain is real, but our experience of rain is socially constructed. That’s what we’re here to talk about today.

Social construction is a term introduced by Austrian-born American sociologist and Protestant theologian Peter Berger and American-Austrian sociologist Thomas Luckmann in 1966. These men wrote a book called “The Social Construction of Reality.” In it, they assert that our social world is constructed in the daily habits and patterns that people repeat regularly. Social constructions are shared understandings that are jointly accepted by large numbers of people in society or social groups. How we make sense of our world depends on shared social agreements. These agreements can change over time, and even when the agreements are made up, they are real in their consequences.

Let’s look at our example of rain to make sense of this. Clearly, if you go outside when it’s raining, you will get wet. Rain is physically real. However, even our language around rain is socially constructed. The word “rain” and the raindrops themselves don’t look at all alike. Also, our behavior in the rain is socially constructed. People in Chicago and people in Oregon deal with rain differently. In a very informal poll, the writers from “The Oregonian” asked people how often they use an umbrella. 66% of them said never. When they were asked why, most of the people said it was because they wanted their hands free. 8% of the people said they wouldn’t use them because they would be embarrassed. What? People get wet because they are embarrassed? Here we see social construction in action. Real Oregonians don’t use umbrellas, so if you want to be a real Oregonian, you follow the habit. The conversation in Chicago is really different. It’s not whether you use an umbrella, it’s how you find one that will actually work.

What else is socially constructed? Symbols are socially constructed. Symbols are gestures or objects that have meanings associated with them that are recognized by people who share a culture. One common symbol is a flag. In the US, when we use the symbol of the flag, we understand the cloth and colors to represent the United States. When we see pictures of people using the symbol of the flag to protest, it brings up emotions. We associate the cloth and colors with our country deeply, yet there are different socially constructed meanings related to the flag. Some believe that the flag is so important that it should only be displayed and treated in very respectful ways. Others believe that the flag is so important that burning it is the ultimate form of protest. Although we share the social construction of the symbol, not all of us share the same interpretation.

Another common symbol is money. We agree that this piece of paper can be exchanged for things that are worth a dollar, and as a society, we share this agreement. If you tried to convince a car salesperson that you could actually buy a car with this dollar, you wouldn’t get very far. Even something as common as color can be socially constructed. Think for a moment about what colors you associate with girls and women, and what colors you associate with boys and men. Many people in the US are likely to say blue for boys and pink for girls. Did you know that this designation is socially constructed? For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication “Earnshaw’s Infants Department” said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”

Right now, in our society, it seems like if you think of a color for a boy — in a binary system, if you think of a color for boys, it would be blue, and a color for girls would be pink. And as you can see, we are not fitting into that social construction. And lots of people don’t, but, still, it’s the way that social construction exists right now.

And more recently, pink is being reclaimed as a color for men. The men’s magazine “GQ” declared in 2013 that “real men wear pink.”

Our behavior is also socially constructed. We see this when we look at who uses masks or face coverings. Before the Covid 19 pandemic, it was rare to see people in the United States using masks. However, this behavior has been present in Asia since 2002 with the advent of the SARS epidemic. Mask wearing during the pandemic was also more common in countries with a high degree of social trust. It will be interesting to see how this behavioral norm changes as the pandemic comes to an end. Another behavior that may seem universal but that is actually socially constructed is kissing. When you think of who kisses whom, the first image is the Hollywood movie version of the sexy embrace between a woman and man. However this version is not the only way that kissing is socially constructed. We might also expect that parents and children kiss within the context of the family. In some cultures, even strangers kiss. In Latin America and France, the air kiss to the cheek is common, even when you don’t know the person that well. In New Zealand, the Maoris share the hongi, a greeting in which they touch foreheads and breath together. This greeting acknowledges their interdependent connection with each other. The most famous interracial kiss on TV happened on Star Trek in 1968, only a year after the Supreme Court ruled that interracial marriage must be legalized in every state in the United States. In the times of Covid 19, we found that the kiss was quickly replaced by the ever-common elbow bump, and our understanding about who can kiss each other continues to evolve.

Even social categories that we might think of biological are socially constructed. When you consider gender, you may think that gender itself is fixed, that it’s the same as sex assigned at birth, that society consists of women and men with specific physical characteristics and associated gender roles. However, social scientists assert that gender is socially constructed also. People identify as nonbinary, neither male nor female, and transgender, expressing a gender other than sex assigned at birth, as well as male or female. In addition, how we do gender changes over time. Consider for a moment how what we wear signals our gender. Who traditionally wears pants? Who traditionally wears dresses or skirts? These norms are challenged in different cultures and in different times. In Scotland, the kilt is part of the national dress for men. Hillary Clinton was considered unfeminine when she wore pantsuits. And Billy Porter wears elegant gowns all over town.

Finally, even though language, symbols, and behaviors are socially constructed, they are real in their consequences. This will be discussed in other videos, but here are two examples. Your gender significantly predicts your access to wealth. Women and nonbinary people are more likely to be poor, and there is a consistent gender pay gap all around the world.

In the United States, the first time that married women could own their own property occurred in 1848 in New York State. Perhaps more surprisingly, until the mid-1970s, women could not get credit without having a male cosigner, usually their husband or their father. And women are still often charged with higher interest rates than men.

Women and nonbinary people are more likely to be poor, and there is a consistent gender pay gap all around the world. In the United States, the first time that married women could own their own property occurred in 1848 in New York State. Perhaps more surprisingly, until the mid-1970s, women could not get credit without having a male cosigner, usually their husband or their father. And women are still often charged with higher interest rates than men.

In a second example, some people believe that race is based on biological categories. However, scientists know that how we define race changes over time and place. In 1790, the US census used free white males, free white females, all other free persons, and slaves as racial categories. In 1970, the US census added a separate question related to being of Hispanic ethnicity. In 2020, the US census changed to allow people to select more than one race to describe their racial identification.

The social construction of race also continues to be hotly contested. For example, Barack Obama is known as our first Black president. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was a successful Black Kenyan economist, and his mother, Ann Dunham, was an accomplished White American anthropologist. While he was running for president, some people said he wasn’t Black enough, while others said he wasn’t White enough. And beyond this exceptional example, scholars and people of color know that race matters.

Now we see that social constructions are shared understandings between groups of people. Social constructions can change over time or location, and they are real in their consequences. Because we create social constructions in our everyday interactions, we have hope for change. The next time you enjoy a walk in the rain, with or without your umbrella, think about it. [ Music ]

Attribution

Transcript for “Social Construction ” by Elizabeth Pearce, Kimberly Puttman, and Colin Stapp, Open Oregon Educational Resources, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

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Transcript for Figure 2.1, Social Identities

Hi. I’m Kim Puttman. I’m a sociologist and author at Oregon Coast Community College.

Hi, I’m Liz Pearce. I teach in human development and family sciences at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon. These videos are being made for Open Oregon Educational Resources.

In this video, we will focus on the social characteristics or social identities that we all possess as part of identity. We will clarify the distinctions between race, ethnicity, and culture, and between sex, gender, and sexuality. We will also discuss intersectionality and identity.

Before we get to the social characteristics, let’s take a brief look at the other main aspects of identity. The inner ring of the wheel explores internal characteristics. Internal characteristics include your values, beliefs, commitments, motivations, and personality characteristics. I have unique motivations and beliefs. I am motivated to make a difference in the world for the better. I believe that we can make the United States a more equitable place.

I am motivated to create communities of respect and belonging. I believe that the personal is the political, changing the world through my everyday interactions.

Let’s look at the outer ring of the identity wheel, roles and relationships. My identity also includes the roles I play and the relationships I have. For example, I would describe myself this way. I’m a teacher. I’m a mother. I’m a hiker.

I am also a teacher. I am a writer and an activist, an interfaith minister, a wife, and most recently a grandmother and great aunt.

Now let’s look at those social characteristics in the middle ring. Your social identity includes all of who you are. It is the combination of your social identities or the intersections of these characteristics. Many of us identify with a couple aspects of our social identity more strongly than others. Although we define our own identities, the ways that others perceive our identities shape us as well. How we see ourselves is important. We are complicated and we can’t be reduced to just one characteristic. We aren’t just gay or male or Muslim or that person in the wheelchair. We live in the intersection of all of our identities.

Let’s review a little bit for you. We have body size, whether bigger or smaller than is typical or considered typical, age, religion, the first language you learn to speak, geography, your physical location, both whether you live in a rural, suburban, or urban setting, as well as what part of the country or world you live in. Nationality, whether you identify with a country you were born in, the country your parents are born in, or the country in which you reside. Socioeconomic status, SES, sometimes called social class, but SES refers to your income, your career status, and your education level all together. Health, the robustness or vulnerability of your physical or mental health. Ability, whether you see yourself as disabled or able-bodied or as more people are saying temporarily-abled, which describes the reality that most of us will experience some form of disability in our lives. And neuro-diversity, whether the way you think and learn is considered to be typical or if and how it diverges in some way.

You might have noticed that a few social identities in this wheel were skipped. We will look at these next because they are highly related to one another, overlap with each other, and sometimes are confused.

Let’s provide a little bit more of an explanation about sex, gender or gender identity, and sexuality and how they relate to one another. The basic definition of sex is based on biology. Typically, that means that sex assigned at birth and might be seen as the best guess based on a baby’s physical characteristics at birth. Gender identity is the way we socially express our sex identification. Some theorists say that people do gender in their everyday interactions. Stereotypical feminine characteristics include wearing dresses and high heels or speaking more softly. Stereotypical masculine characteristics include taking up more space or talking more. However, gender expression goes beyond female and male. People are exploring new ways of expressing their gender and new language to label it.

Cisgender means that you express your gender in the way that reflects your sex assigned at birth in the way that society typically expects you to. Transgender refers to identifying with a gender other than the one assigned to you at birth. Gender nonconformity rejects the binary system of gender and sees it as more of a continuum. You may not know other language that helps you or others define gender identity. Sexuality is about your sexual orientation. It’s not just who you have sex with but who you’re attracted to, who you have feelings for, what your capacities and interests are related to sexuality. There are many ways of identifying yourself authentically and labels for that experience.

LGBTQIA plus is a common acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersexual, and asexual and more. This acronym mixes gender identity and sexual identity. And while it contains some of the identity options around sexuality, there are new ones emerging all the time. Heterosexual or straight, are the most common terms for people who are attracted to opposite sex partners. Labels for sexuality continue to evolve. Even if we describe the most recent term for sexuality here, it will have changed by the time you see this video. What is the most recent label you have heard of?

Now let’s look at the relationships between race, ethnicity, and culture. Just as a reminder, race is a social construction, a construction that is based on physical characteristics. It still divides people into groups and it affects how people are treated. Race is a social identity.

When we talk about ethnicity, we mean a social group that shares language and behavior and often shares a geography or ancestry. Some people identify as Irish even if they don’t live in Ireland. Although their race is most commonly White, their ethnicity might be Irish if they share Irish culture, identify as Catholic or Protestant, celebrate Irish holidays, or, in some cases, speak Gaelic. In fact, more Irish people live outside of Ireland than within that country. Similarly, Hispanic or Latinx is an ethnicity not a race because people who identify as Hispanic or Latinx can be of any race. However, people in this group are often from South and Central America and speak Spanish or Portuguese. They share customs and experiences. Sometimes people confuse ethnicity and culture. Irish and Hispanic or Latinx people have their own distinct cultures. However, the concept of culture is much broader than that. Culture is shared beliefs, values, and practices which are socially transmitted. Culture focuses more on behaviors and interactions that are shared and learned through socialization. A culture can be shared not only through ethnicity but through religion, geographic location, or any community or social group.

All of these are social characteristics or social identities. Every person has all of these identities, but we typically identify more and less strongly with a few of them. Our identities contain overlapping privileges and oppressions known as intersectionality. Intersectionality is defined as overlapping social identities which produce unique inequities that influence the lives of people and groups. Kimberly Crenshaw created the term intersectionality to clarify the experience of Black women. They were excluded from the experience of women, which traditionally included White women. They were excluded from the experiences of Black, which traditionally included Black men. Instead, they had their own unique relationship with power and privilege as Black women. This initial specific definition of intersectionality is now being more widely applied to many constellations of identities which experience oppression.

We all have overlapping identities that contribute to our unique selves, but not all of us have intersectional identities. If you have several identities that typically face discrimination or oppression, you have an intersectional social identity. Our intersectional identities contribute to how much privilege we experience and how much oppression we experience. For example, I identify as a cisgendered woman who is gay. Both of these identities have less privilege than the identities of being male and heterosexual. So those are intersectional for me. I am also part of more privileged identities being White and middle class. I may not notice that I have a race and a class because I am part of the typical or more privileged group. But I’m more aware of being gay and being a woman and the discrimination that can come with each of these identities.

Similarly, I am White, middle class, and educated. However, I am also Buddhist, queer, and female. I actively resist the oppression I experience as a non-Christian, woman-loving woman. It is more challenging to notice the privilege I experience as White, middle class, and educated. These privileges helped me to thrive despite oppression.

Social identity is an essential way that we experience the world. Take some time to consider the overlapping identities that contribute to your overall unique identity and experience with the world. Consider the ways that intersectionality affects others, especially those that have different social identities than you have. Understanding social identities is a way to better understand yourself and the world around you.

Attribution

Transcript for “Social Identities Video” by Elizabeth Pearce, Kimberly Puttman and Colin Stapp, Open Oregon Educational Resources, is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

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Transcript for Figure 2.22, Eliminating microaggressions

The formal definition of a microaggression is listed behind me. Simply put, microaggressions are insults that are rooted in stereotypes, and they’re directed at someone because of their membership within a marginalized group. Now, because they are rooted in stereotype, they limit a person’s ability to see people as individuals.

In 1970, Dr. Chester Middlebrook Pierce, a professor at Harvard, coined the term “microaggressions” to describe insults and dismissive behavior he witnessed Black people enduring. But now the term has been expanded to include offensive comments and behaviors directed at anyone in a marginalized group, including but not limited to women, people of color, people with disabilities, and people who are older.

So, one of the things about microaggressions is that they’re very prevalent in society, and I could do a full day’s discussion about that. I actually developed a training that I share with companies to help them address offensive comments in their workplace. We’re just going to go through a couple of examples here today. But it’s important to note that we all have biases, and anyone can be guilty of making a microaggression or being subjected to one.

So, why does it matter? Well, for some people, just being themselves can be a revolutionary act because their very being is challenging stereotypes of who and what they should be. Microaggressions wound people. If we were to compare it to getting a paper cut, one paper cut is manageable, but paper cuts all over your body is something quite different. It’s this accumulation of offensive comments in social and professional settings that begins to take a toll on a person’s spirit.

Microaggressions can be an amorphous concept, but it’s my hope through the examples I’m going to provide for you that I can provide a more definitive understanding. Microaggressions regarding disability are prevalent. For example, making comments like “I’m so OCD about my files” or “I can’t read today; I’m so dyslexic” when someone does not actually have dyslexia or OCD can be perceived as a microaggression. These phrases are examples of ableist language and trivialize something that is quite serious for some.

For historical context, I want to discuss what happened when the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed in 1990. The ADA makes it illegal in employment to discriminate against someone because of a mental or physical disability. It also guarantees access to buildings and public and private transportation. Shortly before the Act was passed, several disability activists came to DC and climbed the 83 steps outside the Capitol building. They met at the base of the stairs, got out of their wheelchairs, took off their crutches and any kind of assistive walking devices, and crawled or dragged themselves up all 83 steps. I like to share this story because it’s a good reminder of the historical exclusion that people with disabilities have had to face.

Microaggressions regarding race are also very plentiful. Some people might be surprised to know that professing colorblindness can actually be a form of microaggression. Examples would be “I don’t see color,” “I was raised to treat everyone the same,” “I work in a diverse environment,” or “I was in the Peace Corps.” It’s important to note that mere proximity to people of color does not make someone woke or automatically knowledgeable about social justice issues. These comments actually deny the existence of people of color’s experiences in the world.

The last microaggression that I want to talk about is the phrase “that’s so ghetto.” Saturday Night Live has done a sketch about this phrase, and it’s tossed around in the workplace and in professional settings. But this phrase can be very offensive to people. I’m going to provide some historical context as to why.

The word “ghetto” is an Italian word used in 1516 to describe an area in the city where Jewish people are living in Venice. Then in 1899, the word was used to describe where minority groups were living in the city, often low-income areas. From a U.S. perspective, the word has been associated with Black and Brown people who live in low-income areas. Essentially, we’re talking about a place in the city where people are regulated because of poverty, disenfranchisement, and reasons that point to systemic racism. When people use the phrase “that’s ghetto,” it’s a way of making fun of someone or something, and for the reasons I just shared, it’s not funny.

Now that I’ve given you a couple of examples of what a microaggression is, I want to give you a couple of tools to avoid making these kinds of comments in the workplace. The first tool or tip is pretty simple: pause before you ask someone a personal question in the workplace. Pause before you compare someone to something or someone else. Pause before describing someone’s personality, and when you’re pausing, think to yourself: What could potentially be the impact of what I’m about to say to someone? Not just my intention but the possible impact it could have on that person.

The next thing to think about is whether the comment is necessary and whether it promotes a growth mindset, because your number one priority at work should be productivity. Research is also crucial. Many words in American English are slang, so before adding a new word to your vocabulary, do a quick Google search to ensure that what you’re saying is not offensive.

So, as I leave here this afternoon, I hope you leave with an understanding of inclusion and respect, but also with the concepts of kindness and human decency. Thinking before you speak is a form of kindness, and treating people the way you want to be treated is one of the highest forms of kindness. Thank you. [Applause]

Attribution

Transcript for “Eliminating Microaggressions” by Tiffany Alvoid, TEDxOakland is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 3.1, Texas state rep. gives powerful testimony on the history of bathroom laws

I have been a member of this society during a period of time in the history of this state and in this country when we had separate but equal, and I remember those days. I remember bathrooms being white colored. I was living through an era not only in American history but also in Texas history. Bathrooms divided us then, and they divide us now. America has long recognized that separate but equal is not equal at all.

I can tell you, as an African American, how deeply I felt discriminated against because of the color of my skin and my ethnicity. Those of you probably don’t have those feelings because you have not had the privilege of walking in my shoes. But I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you never have to walk in those shoes—never, never.

I can also tell you that separate restrooms for transgender kids, which is what we would be discussing with this bill, are also based on fear. There is a case currently before the United States Supreme Court that highlights the history of how discrimination has been used to divide us. I would like to read to you, if you would be so kind, a little bit about that.

Not so long ago, bathroom facilities were designated as “colored only” and “white only.” A key lesson from that painful and ignoble era is that while white-only restroom barriers may have seemed like minor inconveniences or insignificant sources of embarrassment to some, they were, in fact, a source of profound indignity that inflicted deep and indelible harm on individuals of both races and on society at large.

This indisputable tradition of state and local governments trying to inject fear or hostility toward a disfavored group of people into laws requiring their physical separation from others should encourage this court to view with skepticism the rationales proffered by local officials here.

Attribution

Transcript for “Texas State Rep. Gives Powerful Testimony on the History of Bathroom Laws” © Washington Post is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 3.17, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw: What is Intersectional Feminism?

So, what is intersectional feminism and why is it important? Well, we’ve been talking about women and power against the backdrop of women’s political participation, and there’s so much excitement now that we have to really think about what we know about women and political participation historically. What are some of the lessons that we might learn from it?

Let’s think for a minute about the struggle for women’s political power right here in the United States. In about 15 to 20 years, we’re going to celebrate the centennial of women’s right to vote. Knowing as I do how we in America like to celebrate things as if anything that happened here was the greatest thing that ever happened in the world, I can imagine how excited everybody’s going to be. But here’s the question: Where do I, as an African American woman, get to celebrate my entry into the political community? In reality, I’ve got to wait another 40 years to celebrate because the situation was that giving blacks the right to vote did not empower black women, and giving women the right to vote did not empower women who were black. So, this, quite simply, is what I call structural intersectionality: the collision of two overlapping dynamics of oppression.

Patriarchy reared its head during the debate over the Fifteenth Amendment. It was “the Negro’s hour,” they said, but the “Negro’s hour” apparently meant that it was not “Negro women’s hour”; it was “Negro men’s hour.” So, what happened when the women’s hour came to vote some thirty years later? By that time, blacks had been so thoroughly disenfranchised that black women won nothing when women won the right to vote.

Now, you’re not going to read this story in our history books, and it certainly isn’t part of our political culture. We celebrate women’s enfranchisement and the women who led the struggle as though it’s an unabashed victory for women. The fact that a whole lot of women were left at the station falls from our consciousness, as does the racial strategy that the suffragettes followed to win the vote for women. In fact, one of the main arguments for women’s suffrage was that it would help shore up white supremacy. Women, it was argued, would be the helpmates to maintain the American way of life against lower-order citizens and all these immigrants. Adding millions of white women voters to the rolls would ensure that democracy would survive. It was not an accidental argument nor an isolated one.

Now, I don’t want this to be a one-sided critique because African American men weren’t any better on the question of whether black women should get the right to vote. Their basic sense was that they were better off left disenfranchised. With friends like these, need I say more?

So, what’s the moral of this story? Why is this important? You might say, “Come on, this is ancient history. What does it have to do with contemporary politics?” Well, let’s ask a couple of questions. What might have happened had enfranchisement truly been universal? If women’s power wasn’t seen and celebrated as white women’s power? If enfranchising the slaves had not been seen as enfranchising the men? If feminism had been seen early on as incorporating all women, black and immigrant, native and Asian? If anti-racism had been seen as incorporating all people of color, men as well as women? What might have happened, and where would our culture be now if the fight against patriarchy and the fight against white supremacy had not become alien to each other, and if the women who were subject to both had been centered rather than marginalized in these struggles? We can barely imagine how political life might be different in the here and now.

Attribution

Transcript for “Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw: What is Intersectional Feminism?” by Omega Institute for Holistics Studies is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 3.20, What Critical Race Theory Actually Is — and Isn’t

[Music]

It’s inconceivable that a white teacher would be teaching white children that they are evil because they’re white, but that’s what people think, even though it’s blatantly false. I don’t know if some of you guys have seen this critical race theory. It’s basically teaching kids to hate our country and to hate each other based on race.

[Music]

Critical race theory is an intellectual sort of field that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s among legal scholars and lawyers who were recognizing that racial disparity was persisting. The public pronouncements that all these laws on the books were race-neutral, and so these scholars recognized that something was wrong here and that they had to take a new critical approach to examining the law, to examining policies, to examining structures, which they recognized were the source of these continuing disparities and not what’s wrong with people.

And what are some misconceptions around critical race theory? Oh, there are many.

That critical race theorists argue that white people are inherently evil. That’s not true. That critical race theorists argue that everything and everyone is racist. That’s not true. Critical race theorists would be the first to say there are people battling and challenging racism, and those are the people we should learn from.

People imagine that critical race theory is widely taught in schools. It’s not even widely necessarily taught in law schools where it originated, where people wanted to be taught, let alone in elementary schools.

Another misnomer about critical race theory or even anti-racism is that it’s anti-white or racist, and I don’t think people realize that that is one of the oldest and most vile white supremacist talking points.

Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money. Critical race theory is not appropriate for our kids to learn and to have in our school systems. I think critical race theory is wrong, and I don’t think it should be taught in schools at all, and I don’t think we should fund any money to allow that to happen.

When we think of racial inequality in this country, I think it’s important for us to recognize that historically, we’ve been arguing over why that inequality exists, and the racist position has stated that inequality exists because there’s something inferior or superior about different racial groups, whether culturally, behaviorally, genetically. And the anti-racist position has largely stated that inequality is the result of policy and racist policy. So, therefore, the problem isn’t bad people; the problem is bad policy. And it’s important if we want to eliminate inequality to identify those bad policies and replace them with the types of policies that can create equity and justice for all.

Part of the challenge with discussing race and racism is people who argue racism no longer exists have one definition of racism that I’ve been trying to pin down for a while. They refuse to actually define it, and those of us who are documenting its persistence have a different definition. So fundamentally, in many ways, we’re arguing over definitions. And so when I engage with people in a constructive sense to really get them to understand race and racism, the first and most important step is definitions. That’s why “How to Be an Antiracist” is based and built and grounded in defining terms. And these aren’t defining terms out of thin air; we should be defining terms based on the evidence, based on scholarship, based on history, based on material reality.

[Music]

Attribution

Transcript for “What Critical Race Theory Actually Is — and Isn’t” by NowThis Newsis included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 4.1a, How trees talk to each other | Suzanne Simard

Imagine you’re walking through a forest. I’m guessing you’re thinking of a collection of trees, what we foresters call a stand, with their rugged stems and their beautiful crowns. Yes, trees are the foundation of forests, but a forest is much more than what you see, and today I want to change the way you think about forests.

You see, underground there is this other world, a world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate and allow the forest to behave as though it’s a single organism. It might remind you of a sort of intelligence. How do I know this? Here’s my story.

I grew up in the forests of British Columbia. I used to lay on the forest floor and stare up at the tree crowns. They were giants. My grandfather was a giant, too. He was a horse logger, and he used to selectively cut cedar poles from the inland rainforest. Grandpa taught me about the quiet and cohesive ways of the woods, and how my family was knit into it.

So I followed in grandpa’s footsteps. He and I had this curiosity about forests, and my first big “aha” moment was at the outhouse by our lake. Our poor dog Jigs had slipped and fallen into the pit. So grandpa ran up with his shovel to rescue the poor dog. He was down there, swimming in the muck. But as grandpa dug through that forest floor, I became fascinated with the roots, and under that, what I learned later was the white mycelium and under that the red and yellow mineral horizons.

Eventually, grandpa and I rescued the poor dog, but it was at that moment that I realized that that palette of roots and soil was really the foundation of the forest. And I wanted to know more. So I studied forestry. But soon I found myself working alongside the powerful people in charge of the commercial harvest. The extent of the clear-cutting was alarming, and I soon found myself conflicted by my part in it. Not only that, the spraying and hacking of the aspens and birches to make way for the more commercially valuable planted pines and firs was astounding. It seemed that nothing could stop this relentless industrial machine. So I went back to school, and I studied my other world.

You see, scientists had just discovered in the laboratory in vitro that one pine seedling root could transmit carbon to another pine seedling root. But this was in the laboratory, and I wondered, could this happen in real forests? I thought yes. Trees in real forests might also share information below ground. But this was really controversial, and some people thought I was crazy, and I had a really hard time getting research funding. But I persevered, and I eventually conducted some experiments deep in the forest, 25 years ago.

I grew 80 replicates of three species: paper birch, Douglas fir, and western red cedar. I figured the birch and the fir would be connected in a belowground web, but not the cedar. It was in its own other world. And I gathered my apparatus, and I had no money, so I had to do it on the cheap. So I went to Canadian Tire — (Laughter) and I bought some plastic bags and duct tape and shade cloth, a timer, a paper suit, a respirator. And then I borrowed some high-tech stuff from my university: a Geiger counter, a scintillation counter, a mass spectrometer, microscopes. And then I got some really dangerous stuff: syringes full of radioactive carbon-14 carbon dioxide gas and some high-pressure bottles of the stable isotope carbon-13 carbon dioxide gas. But I was legally permitted. (Laughter) Oh, and I forgot some stuff, important stuff: the bug spray, the bear spray, the filters for my respirator.

The first day of the experiment, we got out to our plot and a grizzly bear and her cub chased us off. And I had no bear spray. But you know, this is how forest research in Canada goes. (Laughter) So I came back the next day, and mama grizzly and her cub were gone. So this time, we really got started, and I pulled on my white paper suit, I put on my respirator, and then I put the plastic bags over my trees. I got my giant syringes, and I injected the bags with my tracer isotope carbon dioxide gases, first the birch. I injected carbon-14, the radioactive gas, into the bag of birch. And then for fir, I injected the stable isotope carbon-13 carbon dioxide gas. I used two isotopes because I was wondering whether there was two-way communication going on between these species. I got to the final bag, the 80th replicate, and all of a sudden mama grizzly showed up again. And she started to chase me, and I had my syringes above my head, and I was swatting the mosquitos, and I jumped into the truck, and I thought, “This is why people do lab studies.” (Laughter) I waited an hour. I figured it would take this long for the trees to suck up the CO2 through photosynthesis, turn it into sugars, send it down into their roots, and maybe, I hypothesized, shuttle that carbon belowground to their neighbors. After the hour was up, I rolled down my window, and I checked for mama grizzly. Oh good, she’s over there eating her huckleberries. So I got out of the truck and I got to work. I went to my first bag with the birch. I pulled the bag off. I ran my Geiger counter over its leaves. Kkhh! Perfect. The birch had taken up the radioactive gas. Then the moment of truth. I went over to the fir tree. I pulled off its bag. I ran the Geiger counter up its needles, and I heard the most beautiful sound. Kkhh! It was the sound of birch talking to fir, and birch was saying, “Hey, can I help you?” And fir was saying, “Yeah, can you send me some of your carbon? Because somebody threw a shade cloth over me.” I went up to cedar, and I ran the Geiger counter over its leaves, and as I suspected, silence. Cedar was in its own world. It was not connected into the web interlinking birch and fir. I was so excited, I ran from plot to plot and I checked all 80 replicates. The evidence was clear. The C-13 and C-14 was showing me that paper birch and Douglas fir were in a lively two-way conversation. It turns out at that time of the year, in the summer, that birch was sending more carbon to fir than fir was sending back to birch, especially when the fir was shaded. And then in later experiments, we found the opposite, that fir was sending more carbon to birch than birch was sending to fir, and this was because the fir was still growing while the birch was leafless. So it turns out the two species were interdependent, like yin and yang. And at that moment, everything came into focus for me. I knew I had found something big,something that would change the way we look at how trees interact in forests, from not just competitors but to cooperators. And I had found solid evidence of this massive belowground communications network, the other world. Now, I truly hoped and believed that my discovery would change how we practice forestry, from clear-cutting and herbiciding to more holistic and sustainable methods, methods that were less expensive and more practical.

What was I thinking? I’ll come back to that.

So how do we do science in complex systems like forests? Well, as forest scientists, we have to do our research in the forests, and that’s really tough, as I’ve shown you. And we have to be really good at running from bears. But mostly, we have to persevere in spite of all the stuff stacked against us. And we have to follow our intuition and our experiences and ask really good questions. And then we’ve got to gather our data and then go verify. For me, I’ve conducted and published hundreds of experiments in the forest. Some of my oldest experimental plantations are now over 30 years old. You can check them out. That’s how forest science works. So now I want to talk about the science.

How were paper birch and Douglas fir communicating? Well, it turns out they were conversing not only in the language of carbon but also nitrogen and phosphorus and water and defense signals and allelochemicals and hormones — information. And you know, I have to tell you, before me, scientists had thought that this belowground mutualistic symbiosis called a mycorrhiza was involved. Mycorrhiza literally means “fungus root.” You see their reproductive organs when you walk through the forest. They’re the mushrooms. The mushrooms, though, are just the tip of the iceberg, because coming out of those stems are fungal threads that form a mycelium, and that mycelium infects and colonizes the roots of all the trees and plants. And where the fungal cells interact with the root cells, there’s a trade of carbon for nutrients, and that fungus gets those nutrients by growing through the soil and coating every soil particle. The web is so dense that there can be hundreds of kilometers of mycelium under a single footstep. And not only that, that mycelium connects different individuals in the forest, individuals not only of the same species but between species, like birch and fir, and it works kind of like the Internet. You see, like all networks, mycorrhizal networks have nodes and links. We made this map by examining the short sequences of DNA of every tree and every fungal individual in a patch of Douglas fir forest. In this picture, the circles represent the Douglas fir, or the nodes, and the lines represent the interlinking fungal highways, or the links. The biggest, darkest nodes are the busiest nodes. We call those hub trees, or more fondly, mother trees, because it turns out that those hub trees nurture their young, the ones growing in the understory. And if you can see those yellow dots, those are the young seedlings that have established within the network of the old mother trees.

In a single forest, a mother tree can be connected to hundreds of other trees. And using our isotope tracers, we have found that mother trees will send their excess carbon through the mycorrhizal network to the understory seedlings, and we’ve associated this with increased seedling survival by four times. Now, we know we all favor our own children, and I wondered, could Douglas fir recognize its own kin, like mama grizzly and her cub? So we set about an experiment, and we grew mother trees with kin and stranger’s seedlings. And it turns out they do recognize their kin. Mother trees colonize their kin with bigger mycorrhizal networks. They send them more carbon below ground. They even reduce their own root competition to make elbow room for their kids. When mother trees are injured or dying, they also send messages of wisdom on to the next generation of seedlings. So we’ve used isotope tracing to trace carbon moving from an injured mother tree down her trunk into the mycorrhizal network and into her neighboring seedlings, not only carbon but also defense signals. And these two compounds have increased the resistance of those seedlings to future stresses. So trees talk. (Applause) Thank you. Through back-and-forth conversations, they increase the resilience of the whole community. It probably reminds you of our own social communities, and our families, well, at least some families. (Laughter) So let’s come back to the initial point.

Forests aren’t simply collections of trees, they’re complex systems with hubs and networks that overlap and connect trees and allow them to communicate, and they provide avenues for feedbacks and adaptation, and this makes the forest resilient. That’s because there are many hub trees and many overlapping networks. But they’re also vulnerable, vulnerable not only to natural disturbances like bark beetles that preferentially attack big old trees but high-grade logging and clear-cut logging. You see, you can take out one or two hub trees, but there comes a tipping point, because hub trees are not unlike rivets in an airplane. You can take out one or two, and the plane still flies, but you take out one too many, or maybe that one holding on the wings, and the whole system collapses. So now how are you thinking about forests? Differently? (Audience) Yes. Cool. I’m glad.

So, remember I said earlier that I hoped that my research, my discoveries would change the way we practice forestry. Well, I want to take a check on that 30 years later here in western Canada. This is about 100 kilometers to the west of us, just on the border of Banff National Park. That’s a lot of clear-cuts. It’s not so pristine. In 2014, the World Resources Institute reported that Canada in the past decade has had the highest forest disturbance rate of any country worldwide, and I bet you thought it was Brazil.

In Canada, it’s 3.6 percent per year. Now, by my estimation, that’s about four times the rate that is sustainable. Now, massive disturbance at this scale is known to affect hydrological cycles, degrade wildlife habitat, and emit greenhouse gases back into the atmosphere, which creates more disturbance and more tree diebacks. Not only that, we’re continuing to plant one or two species and weed out the aspens and birches. These simplified forests lack complexity, and they’re really vulnerable to infections and bugs. And as climate changes, this is creating a perfect storm for extreme events, like the massive mountain pine beetle outbreak that just swept across North America, or that megafire in the last couple months in Alberta.

So I want to come back to my final question: instead of weakening our forests, how can we reinforce them and help them deal with climate change? Well, you know, the great thing about forests as complex systems

is they have enormous capacity to self-heal. In our recent experiments, we found with patch-cutting and retention of hub trees and regeneration to a diversity of species and genes and genotypes that these mycorrhizal networks, they recover really rapidly. So with this in mind, I want to leave you with four simple solutions. And we can’t kid ourselves that these are too complicated to act on. First, we all need to get out in the forest. We need to reestablish local involvement in our own forests. You see, most of our forests now are managed using a one-size-fits-all approach, but good forest stewardship requires knowledge of local conditions. Second, we need to save our old-growth forests. These are the repositories of genes and mother trees and mycorrhizal networks. So this means less cutting. I don’t mean no cutting, but less cutting. And third, when we do cut, we need to save the legacies, the mother trees and networks, and the wood, the genes, so they can pass their wisdom onto the next generation of trees so they can withstand the future stresses coming down the road. We need to be conservationists. And finally, fourthly and finally, we need to regenerate our forests with a diversity of species and genotypes and structures by planting and allowing natural regeneration. We have to give Mother Nature the tools she needs to use her intelligence to self-heal. And we need to remember that forests aren’t just a bunch of trees competing with each other, they’re supercooperators.

So back to Jigs. Jigs’s fall into the outhouse showed me this other world, and it changed my view of forests. I hope today to have changed how you think about forests. Thank you. (Applause)

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Transcript for “How Trees Talk To Each Other” by Suzanne Simard, TED is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 4.1b, The Scientific Method

Why are some kids sad?

What makes the wind blow?

How do birds fly?

Our world is full of curious phenomena.

To find answers or solve problems, we can use a process, which was first acknowledged by the scientist and philosopher Ibn al-Haytham, in the 11th century. Also known as Alhazen, he is considered to be the father of optics and the scientific method. There are six steps to it:

1. Observe and Ask Questions:

Observation helps us formulate challenging questions that you will be able to test.

A good question converts the natural sense of wonder into a focused line of investigation.

For example, when is the best time to drive to school? Which food is my dog’s favorite?

If you observe that women smile more often than men, you might ask: why do women smile more often?

2. Research:

Find out if other people have asked the same or similar questions.

If you research online, use search terms like “study …”, “research …” or “meta-analysis …” – which is a summary of research for a specific topic.

Read as much about your particular subject to see what you can find out about.

For example, research happiness based on gender or study the science of smiling in different cultural contexts.

3. Formulate a Hypothesis:

A hypothesis is a theory that you can test to see if your prediction is right or wrong.

From your observation, you have noticed that women smile more often and that people who are smiling seem to be happy.

From your research, you know that there are different types of smiles, shy, genuine, and false.

In one paper you read that baby girls smile more often than baby boys.

Here is a hypothesis: Women smile more than men because they are happier than men.

4. Test Your Hypothesis:

When you test your hypothesis, you want to make sure to do this in a fair way and that the conditions are constant.

For this hypothesis, you can design a test where an interviewer talks with a set of men and women for 5 minutes each, counts how many times they smile, and then asks each one to rate their level of happiness.

To get a good sample of the population, you invite 300 women and 300 men.

However, you should consider potential biases or variables that could affect the results.

5. Analyze and Conclude:

Let’s assume that you designed a very careful experiment, controlling for as many variables as possible.

Now you can analyze the data to see if your hypothesis is correct or incorrect.

Depending on your findings, you may want to change your hypothesis or change the design of your testing.

Perhaps you have discovered an even more interesting question.

This stage of the scientific method can be repeated as many times as necessary until you find just the right hypothesis and test method to find accurate results.

6. Share the Results:

When you are satisfied that you have proven or disproven something important, report your results.

In science, it is important to detail your methods so that your peers can review your work, which is a critical step to getting published.

If your results are solid, your experiment can be repeated by other scientists.

Such reproducibility is a sign of good scientific work.

Failed results should also be reported.

Additional Considerations Before Publishing:

Any scientific theory is falsifiable, meaning it can be proven wrong. If your theory can’t possibly be proven wrong, then it’s not scientific.

Correlation is not causation. Be careful when interpreting your results and consider other variables.

Avoid selective windowing and present all relevant facts.

Let’s apply the Scientific Method to study your local currency. Maybe you have a hypothesis that we can test until we get solid, repeatable results to report. Please publish your findings in the comments below!

Attribution

Transcript for “The Scientific Method: Steps, Examples, Tips, and Exercise” by Jonas Koblin, Sprouts Schools, is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

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Transcript for Figure 4.7, Consider This with Robin Wall Kimmerer

Minutes 55:25-57:20

Question: Can I ask, how do you develop confidence in the names you’re using for beings?

Answer: If by “right names,” you’re thinking, “I need to have a book that tells me what the right name is,” as a botany professor, I admit that’s a lot of my work. These are the right names! But, in fact, that’s not how I teach my students anymore. When we’re walking through the woods, and they’re good botanist biologists, they want to know the names of everything, and I don’t tell them anymore because it’s almost like a kind of consumerism. I just want to know that name, and that’s all I need to know. So I thought, well, we can get to the name, but first let’s look at this being, let’s smell this being, let’s see who it’s friends with. Let’s see who they are. And you come up with the name for that being based on your observations. I love this exercise because it decenters this Western scientific authority to say that that pine is called “Pinus strobus,” and really that’s all you need to know. A white pine is Pinus strobus—-who cares? What are the medicines? How does it live? How long does it live? What does it sound like? That’s how you come to know a pine, not by slapping a Latin name onto it. Once you know the pine, and then you want to know more, to access the literature, the scientific literature, it’s good to know its scientific name because it opens the doors, of course, to more knowledge. But to me, forming a real relationship with that being by using your gifts of observation is the way to really know them. And so, no, I don’t think that folks ought to be saying, “Why, I don’t have the time to study a book and learn what the name of that plant is.”

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Transcript for “Consider This with Robin Wall Kimmerer” by Oregon Humanities is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 4.14, Participatory Action Research

Participatory action research is highly valuable for organizations to consider because it enables communities to collaboratively build with each other, engage in healing and transformative work, and conduct research simultaneously. Furthermore, it empowers the community by granting them control and decision-making authority over what is important, when it’s essential, how they wish to approach it, who should be involved, and how to utilize the data. This approach is distinct from academic research, which may have long-term effects but tends to be distant from immediate community impact.

Participatory action research directly influences the communities engaged in it, offering the ability to hold data and results in their hands. With findings readily available, communities can implement immediate changes and take proactive steps, eliminating the need to wait for external sources for results. It allows for real-time trend analysis and responses, fostering dynamic and timely community development.

Another strength of participatory action research is its capacity to redefine and control language. Unlike academic research that labels phenomena based on data accumulation, community-led research empowers communities to shape and control the conversation. This control over language and discourse enables communities to bring about positive change within their city, town, or organization by influencing the tone and direction of conversations and ideas.

One notable example of the profound impact of participatory action research is the work conducted by the Young Women’s Empowerment Project in 2009 and 2012. Their research highlighted the systemic problem of institutions turning away young people involved in the sex trade and denying them assistance. By initiating the “Bad Encounter Line,” they collected reports of such experiences, generating invaluable data that had never been accessible before. This data played a pivotal role in exposing the negligence of the United States in its treatment of people in the sex trade, as acknowledged by the United Nations. Furthermore, the study inspired other communities to undertake participatory action research and establish their encounter lines, expanding the reach of these impactful tools.

The research’s influence extended to the Board of Amnesty International, significantly contributing to their international policy decisions regarding the sex trade. Additionally, the study gained recognition in prominent publications, including the New York Times and National Public Radio, giving voice to young people involved in the sex trade, particularly youth of color, queer and trans individuals, and reaching a national audience. This unique experience demonstrates the profound impact of participatory action research that transcends the reach of traditional academic papers.

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Transcript for “Participatory Action Research” with Shirah Haasan by Vera Institute of Justice is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 5.1, How coronavirus lockdowns interrupted education systems worldwide

It’s the largest disruption of global education systems in history. When the pandemic first hit, around one and a half billion students around the world were sent home as schools closed their doors. Some have since reopened, but class isn’t in session for half of the world’s school children. The lucky ones were able to pursue their studies online, but for many, even in developed countries, that’s not an option. The world was already struggling to come to grips with educational inequality. Now, the United Nations warns the COVID crisis is making it worse, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable and threatening to wipe out decades of progress for this generation and possibly beyond.

At the height of the pandemic, schools in some 190 countries closed their doors. Many have since reopened, but the experience of lockdown heightened major inequalities in education, and even richer countries like Germany have struggled with the challenges of going digital. Pencils are sharpened, books are out, German students are back in the classrooms, but it seems not much of the digital learning put in place during lockdown has survived.

Here at the Fritz Castle School in Berlin, teacher Ryan Plougher says many of the challenges involved in digital learning remain. The foundational problems are still there. A lot of parents don’t understand technology, and a lot of families don’t have internet or digital technology at home, but the schools are much better prepared. So we are able to have clouds and messenger services and email that is all in accordance with data protection laws, which was not the case before. The corona crisis has made schools realize how much still needs to be done. In most classrooms, teachers and students still use analog tools and learning materials. To change that, the German government has put aside 5 billion euros to digitalize the classroom. Money desperately needed, says co-principal Oliver Schoenefeld.

When looking at his equipment, it is definitely the case that teachers and parents are investing their own private resources to digitalize the school. Of course, there have been initiatives by the state, but that always comes with a lot of bureaucracy, which we see now as well with the current fund. So, in the end, you have to make sure you take all that you can get. Until now, only one of over 1,200 students at this school has received a tablet financed by the state. Students are aware of how slowly things are moving and want to see change. There’s room for improvement in the digitalization of our school, to say the least. There’s not enough equipment for all students. It was not enough to make proper homeschooling possible, but some students think that they are now better prepared in case of another lockdown.

From Westminster, Illinois, at the beginning, it was new for all of us: the system, the computers, working at home. Now, I think that it would work better than the first time. But the ideal classroom that can switch effortlessly from the school to each student’s room remains a distant goal.

Let’s talk now to Professor Fernando Riemers. He’s the director of the Global Education Innovation Initiative at Harvard University.

Professor Riemers, thanks for joining us. You’ve said the current disruption to learning could cause the biggest educational setback in history. Could you expand on that for us?

Absolutely, I’m delighted to be with you. The current setback has to be set in the context of the fact that over the last seven decades, the world experienced the most remarkable silent revolution in the history of humanity as a result of the expansion of access to school, which went from including about one of two children in school 70 years ago to including just about everyone. Now, this pandemic, through three mechanisms, is going to create a major setback. The first mechanism is that because schools have had to create alternative ways of delivering education in a limited time with limited professional preparation to teachers, those mechanisms have not reached all students equally well. In addition, the kind of support that is available to students at home varies depending on the level of education of their parents and their socio-economic level. As a result, for the students who have not been reached effectively and who do not have adequate support at home, they are not learning and they are not engaging in school. What that means is that some of them are going to have a very hard time continuing their studies when the pandemic is over, and some of them are going to drop out altogether. In some cases, the hardship caused by the pandemic in some families has caused those children to begin to work to help their families survive. And finally, the third mechanism is that this pandemic is creating enormous financial burdens in some states, and as a result of that, there’s going to be less funding available for education. So, those three mechanisms are the ones that are going to cause major setbacks in how many children are able to return to school. We’re going to see many of them drop out, and we’re going to see that for many children, even those who continue, they’re going to be significant gaps in their knowledge that schools may or may not be able to help them recover. So, some huge challenges there.

Now, you’ve spoken to educators all over the world. What’s the most surprising thing you’ve heard from them?

That is correct. Over the last six months, I have been doing extensive research with colleagues at the OECD and at the World Bank. What has really surprised me the most are three things. Number one, the tremendous concern for education. The fact that education is seen at a time of pandemic when life is at stake has a very, very serious concern. And that speaks to a major cultural shift in humanity. If you think about the last pandemic of 1918, education was not one of the top three, was not even one of the top 10 concerns. And the fact that it is, it speaks very well about how we, as a global community, have internalized how important the development of the talent and skills of the next generation are. The second thing that has surprised me is the professionalism of many teachers who have demonstrated that to them, education is not just a job; it’s a live mission. And they have worked extremely hard to create alternative ways to continue to reach their students, sometimes with the support of their local governments, state governments, sometimes in the absence of that support. The third thing that has surprised me is the remarkable creativity and innovation that has resulted from collaboration, collaboration among teachers within schools, among schools, collaborations among organizations of civil society and teachers. I think that some of those innovations have been facilitated by the teachers who are connected to networks of people outside their jurisdictions, extensive communication that puts a teacher in touch with others in places far and away. That communication, extensive communication, has created the equivalent of a Medici effect. A Medici effect is a term used to refer to what happened in Florence several decades after the Italian pandemic when Lorenzo de Medici convened in that city a variety of artists and intellectuals and scientists like Leonardo da Vinci, like Michelangelo, like Machiavelli. Out of that convergence of great minds in a small place came the Renaissance. I think there is a potential that for some schools, this communication, this collaboration is going to really bring about some renaissance in some schools.

But sometimes, and on a hopeful note, there, Professor Fernando Riemers, thank you so much for speaking with us. It was a pleasure. Thank you very much for having me.

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Transcript for “How coronavirus lockdowns disrupted education systems worldwide” by DW News is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 5.3, Being a Deaf Student in a Mainstream School

Last week, I made a storytelling video talking about a thing that happened while I was in school, and in US History class. And then I said I would make a more generalized video about being in public school as a deaf student. So that’s what we’re gonna do today.

Subscribers were asking me on YouTube comments, on Twitter and Facebook, which by the way, links to everything will be down below. Just asking me if I went to a public school, and if I did, what exactly – what was it like, yada yada yada.

Yes, I did go to a public school, and it was a very interesting time. So we’ll backtrack a little bit. I had my first diagnosis, yes that’s the word, when I was 12, and I did not notice it. I was a child, why would I notice anything like that? But, uh –

My abuser, who is deaf, and I was born from, long story. My abuser who was deaf, that I was born from. Her friend, all of us were together in her friend’s house, because I was spending time with her daughter as well. She noticed that I just wasn’t replying to things, and her name is Ute, so we’ll call her Ute. So Ute was talking with a person, and said something like “You know, you’re deaf, obviously, and I’m just wondering, have you ever checked Rikki’s hearing? Because I notice when we try to, you know, call out her name, she doesn’t answer.”

So I got a hearing test, da da da, and I had already been in public school. I have always been in public school, from Kindergarten to seventh grade when that happened, and even after that, even after the audiologist said “Hey, your kid is very, very deaf in the right ear, and a little bit in the left ear,” I still went to a public school.

It was difficult. I would say it was much more difficult as the years went by because that’s when my hearing just got worse. And I would say that it got a lot worse, it was at its worst, sometime in the middle of high school, I would say.

This was both with social life and like actual school life, like grades and work. With friends, making friends was a little bit difficult. I did keep to a very small social circle, because they got me, and they weren’t really do anything to me. But when it came to making new friends, sometimes it was difficult just because it was like no, there’s no real understanding there. It was hard to, when you know, we’re having lunch or whatever, it’s very hard to get involved in a lot of the conversations because there’s so much happening at once.

There were occasionally times when if somebody was trying to get my attention, let’s say we’re at a school assembly or we’re walking down a hall, somebody going “Hey Rikki!” And I don’t pay attention, they’ll make fun of me, they’re like, not really like (laughs) but like crack a little bit of a joke and say “Gosh, what are you, deaf or something?” And I’m like “Yeah.” In fact, I remember one guy used to pull my hair when I wasn’t paying attention, so he would run up behind me and like pull my hair, because I just wasn’t turning around. Now I wish I could’ve probably kicked him in the shins for that, but… He was a little weird anyway, nobody was very comfortable around him, but anyway.

So sometimes that was difficult, and I remember if somebody was trying to talk to me, and I would always be like “What?” And then they would kind of crack jokes about that as well. A few of those kids were the bullies in school, so.

But the social life wasn’t really so difficult. It didn’t really make me feel embarrassed about anything so much. The real difficult part was the actual work part. I wasn’t put into any special ed classes or anything. I was still with regular teachers, regular classes. There was no deaf program in my school, as far as I could tell. If there was one, nobody told me about it and it was very, very secret. People keep their secrets well. I didn’t really get any special assistance. There just wasn’t any provided for me. Nobody ever talked to me about these things. My counselors never mentioned it, so when I would tell my teachers hey, we’ve got a problem, most of the time I was just sat in the front of the class, and we’d kind of hope for the best. Sometimes they would re-explain things to me, you know, help me out after everybody else is kinda like settled and doing their work.

The most difficult subjects were English. I think English was honestly the most difficult subject for me. Because there was a lot of reading things out loud, reading from books, so it was very difficult, say if I’m like in the middle of the class. Sometimes I was in the middle of the class, and people in front would be talking, and either side of me, left and right, behind me, and I was like okay, I could not hear what this person said, and I was constantly losing my place. And if you’re constantly losing your place, the teachers kinda get annoyed, because it’s like “You’re supposed to be paying attention!”

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Transcript for “Being Deaf in a Mainstream School” byRikki Poynter is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 5.7, What Is Neurodiversity?

What I mean by neurodiversity is that all brains are different. Growing up, I felt different from other people, and I sort of viewed myself as an outsider. Actually, that was okay; that was alright. I just, somewhere in my heart, accepted that I was different. I don’t think it made me feel very good or very well, but it was just who and what I was. The term neurodiversity actually came into being in the context of the autism disability movement, for want of a better expression, where people with autism were saying, “Actually, you shouldn’t see us as people having something wrong with us. We haven’t got a disease. We’re not broken; we are just different. We are towards the ends of a spectrum on which everybody is located.”

I just thought I was a bit of a freak, to be honest with you. You know, I was like, “Well, why can’t I cope with situations like family members or close friends? Why do I struggle in being around so many people?” It used to happen quite a lot in social situations. I would say that I was better on a one-to-one basis, but it would sort of impact me more when there were more than two people there. What I’m trying to talk about is that if you are significantly different from the average person, and if we think about the average person as being in the middle of the bell curve—you know what I mean by that, so most of us are in the middle section—of course, there are some of us who are towards the ends, aren’t there? Just as a matter of probability, that is bound to be the case. Because we probably exist on many, many, and may be millions of different dimensions, it’s likely that all of us, in some respects, are outliers rather than average people who are the ones who are described as normal.

I think one way I dealt with my difference, which I wasn’t aware of growing up, was I was very shy, and I feel quite emotional saying this, but I think I sort of isolated myself from other people. I’ve always had friends, but if I reflect on how it was, it wasn’t a very pleasant experience for me, especially when I was a lot younger. It was almost like I sort of had—it would happen—I can write now when I think of it, it’s like having an out-of-body experience. I sort of, and actually, maybe that is what happened, is that I used to sort of maybe dissociate or leave my body to deal with it because it was too stimulating for me.

The human world, of necessity, is created for the majority. That’s just practical sense. If you’re not, in certain respects, like the majority, if you’re a bit different, adapting to that world can be very difficult. Fitting into it can be very difficult. If you can’t sit still and you’re very distractible and you find it hard to attend to rather dull material, and if you struggle with learning to read and write, you’re going to find it very difficult to do well at school. That can have all sorts of consequences. If ADHD was something that was diagnosed when I was at school, I probably would have been diagnosed with that. The proof is in my school reports. It’s so interesting. I found them recently, and I’m so ashamed about them. I actually chucked them in. That’s a really sad thing. I always got really good grades, but it was my behavior, and it was just, “I can’t sit still,” and “I can’t stop talking.” So I was always in trouble at school. But it was like something that I couldn’t help, and I wasn’t aware of it at all. But that really, I think you can see with my emotion, it really dented my confidence because I was ten years old, having awful school reports, and my parents having to go in and being told that I was a disruptive person. As a child, you have no bad intentions, but you’re being told there’s something wrong with you. So that was really, really challenging for me.

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Transcript for “What is neurodiversity?” by TheCounseling Channel is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 6.2, Comic Book Profiles 10 Portland State University Students’ Struggles With Housing Instability

“So, I remember every year we’d be moving to a different school, different house, different apartment. When I was 15, my dad kicked me out. They were going through a rough time.”

PSU student Daniela Ortiz Mendez is one of 10 students featured in this Changing the Narrative comic book. Her family came to the United States from Mexico when she was young and struggled financially for years. The comic describes Daniela’s life living in 10 places between the ages of 3 and 17. When she got to college, the housing instability did not stop. When she tried to focus more on school, she ended up losing her job.

“No one knew what I was going through, ever. My teachers didn’t know, and even most recently, my clients didn’t know what losing this job meant for my housing instability. So it was beautiful that they were able to tell the story from then until now.”

Dr. Casey McKinney works in the Urban Studies and Planning department at PSU. She created the project to help inspire change in the way people think about housing instability. Dr. McKinney put out a call for students who had had these experiences. They were interviewed, and artists turned those stories into a comic book.

“People who became homeless because they were living in poverty as a child, or people who had an injury and lost work, and so were financially unable to find housing, or who were discriminated against when trying to find housing.”

A 2019 PSU study found that out of 3500 students, 44 percent had experienced housing instability that year. Daniela finally has her own apartment and stability. She says she wants to spread awareness about the issue.

“I went through a lot of emotional trauma based on how much I had to move, the places I had to live, the people I had to live with. It was a lot.”

Now, this comic can be found at Street Root vendors across the city. There’s also an exhibit that will showcase these stories at the downstairs gallery at Southwest Yam Hill Street on February 12 and 13.

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Transcript for “Comic Book Profiles 10 Portland State University Students’ Struggles With Housing Instability [Video]” by Bryant Clerkley, KGW8 is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 6.6, City of Roses or City of Homeless? Portland’s human tragedy

It’s part of Portland’s reputation and landscape everywhere you look, there are people living on or sidewalks and streets. The homeless crisis has now reached a breaking point.

This is KOIN News. 6 at 6 o’clock. I’m Jeff Gianola and I’m Elizabeth Dinh this week we’re taking an in-depth look at the issues plaguing our city from riots to skyrocketing crime. We ask, is Portland over, and tonight, Jeff, we look at this. You certainly have a long history of covering Portland’s homeless crisis. This is not in new issue nor is a new issue to, you know, I’ve covered it for decades now. In 2000, 19 Elizabeth, there were more than 4,000 people living on the streets in emergency shelters and transitional housing here in Portland since the pandemic began its obvious. Those numbers have grown. Bureaucratic red tape continues to get in the way of real solutions.

As a young reporter 35 years ago, I lived on the streets for a week documenting Portland’s homeless.

Who they were, where they were. Why were they there. What I didn’t know back then, what nobody could predict, Portland’s homeless problem would become Portland’s full-blown human tragedy. Hops. Are you doing okay. Pox over the years Portland has struggled and failed in getting people off the streets. Why. Look no further than the former jail site three years ago. People in agencies working with the homeless urged county commissioners to convert. The never used 500-bed facility into a shelter. Multnomah County leaders refused all those in favor die. Led by county chair Deborah, commissioners voted to sell the building to a private developer, rejecting any and all attempts to convert it into a homeless shelter. It’s too expensive. It’s too far from services. There’s no transportation, and land use policies don’t allow it. Deborah Cuff Henri was the one who didn’t allow it.

Developer and philanthropist Jordan Snakes are eventually bought the building, turning it into the By the Lakes Hope Center, a place where homeless men and women are turning their lives around, working and contributing back to the community. And I heard everything from well, it’s too far out, we don’t have transportation. That the Texas back in 2018, Greg Baker headed up Portland’s Blanche A House. He and other frontline homeless workers could understand the county’s decision ISO up with toys and economic development engine to address a major problem here. People who want to do it. They made all kinds of excuses excuses like it’s too far from services.

Homeless camped in tents and RVs now live within a stone’s throw of the building.

There’s no transportation. It donated a used bus to help out. It’s too expensive. Well, they rejected the Whopper tow site. That same year, county commissioners spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this building, a former strip club to house homeless families. It was unsanitary, there were structural problems, and part of the roof collapsed. The county had to relocate 100, 10 parents and children to other shelters.

That’s what upsets a lot of business people and people outside of government. They think that they’re wasting opportunities for political reasons. And that’s number good.

Homer Williams made his money as a developer. Now he’s dedicated his money and time to solving the homeless crisis. When the county turned down his plan to turn Want Know When We’ll Homeless Shelter, he came up with his own ambitious plan, Harbor of Hope, providing essential services to the homeless and stabilizing lives. Portland’s first-ever navigation center for the homeless, directing them to care, jobs, and eventual permanent housing one day. Harbor of Hope is based off this program in San Diego called Alpha Project. On my visit to San Diego three years ago, I toured a massive staging area where homeless can be registered, assessed, and evaluated with health and social services. People have 120 days. If they are everybody here is mandated to work with a case manager, housing navigator, residents. Hundreds of them also are given jobs, paid to clean up city streets, sidewalks, and roadways.

Imagine if Portland had adopted a similar program on a massive scale. We literally had hundreds and hundreds, 100s of people in tents, in tarp towns as as good roads. You know, living in squalor and filth. People ask me all the time, oh, God, why is this place so clean? Because now people have some hope when you’re out there in this water who gives a or put my trash up. For years, Portland has been reluctant to adopt successful homeless programs from other cities like San Diego, Austin, San Antonio.

But now things are changing.

We are being innovative. We’re listening to what other people are doing around the country, and we’re taking the best ideas. We’re putting into place right. Portland’s Harbor of Hope is small compared to the scale of San Diego’s transition center.

But Homer Williams wants to expand Harbor of Hope facilities all across the city. He has plans for managed homeless step between shelters and apartments where people can use common facilities like kitchens. The idea behind his innovative plans. Get people off the streets into the shelter. Now because the old Portland plan of focusing only on permanent housing is why we’re now facing a crisis. We cannot build our way out of this.

We are not efficient in building affordable housing for one. It takes way too long, takes way much money, and we don’t have the money to effectively build our way out of this.

We don’t have an. So we are interested only in things that can scale. By that I mean deal with the magnitude of the problem in big ways.

The mayor is a strong supporter of Harbor, of Hope and Williams. Other ambitious plans in 2018. He liked the idea of turning Want into a homeless shelter. So how did he feel when the county rejected the idea? This is a democracy, I am in a air form of government.

You know, I have 20% of the votes on the city council. And when it comes to issues like homelessness, it’s not just the city. It’s the county, it’s the metro government, it’s the state government. It’s also politics and lost opportunities. It’s a major reason Portland now faces a homeless disaster.

Recently, we asked county chair Deborah if she had to do it all over again, which she changed her mind on Want Know.

Kudos to Jordan Schnitzer into the folks at By the Lakes have been able to vision that building to something it wasn’t work for the county. It didn’t work for the county, but it’s working for the homeless men and women who now have a place to stay.

A bit of an outlier because I believe that we have an obligation to take resources today and have a FEMA-like response to getting as many people as quickly and humanely off the streets and into alternatives last fall. Voters in Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington counties approved a massive tax.

Indirectly of the homeless problem will be a 100 million dollars a year or more coming into the city of Portland through Multnomah County for the purpose of connecting people to mental health or substance abuse or other types of issues. So that, alongside our ongoing efforts to increase the amount of shelter space and alternatives to people living on the sidewalk or living in our public right of ways. All of those things are now in a position to come together and make a difference. Now it’s up to all of us to watch where our money goes in solving the homeless crisis. Make sure.

It’s being used effectively and not waste and hold our leaders accountable. Those are daughters or sons or locals or cousins or fall that today not just people, they do have meetings, and they belong to no one, no city has the magic key to solving the homeless problem, and what Portland has been doing for years hasn’t been working. Is Portland over? Not if we care, because when we stop caring.

It is over.

And you see the problem. You see the mayor embracing these new ideas. Yet he’s overruled by the county and others because as he said, it’s not really a democracy, it’s a democracy, but he doesn’t have the final say, right? There are many, many people who are impacted and can enact change in this.

We mentioned again, it’s worth saying this, you’ve covered this for decades. Do you sense that the many people you’ve interviewed, even those who are homeless that you’ve talked to for this piece, that there is a little bit of a sense that change may actually come. Well, there’s already an argument on the county’s plan to spend all that tax share. Nearing one of the commissioners went against the commission, said your plan right now isn’t doing enough to get people off the streets now, and the mayor agrees with her. So it’s all our responsibility because it’s our money to see how this money is spent during the next few years to see if they can get the people off the streets into some sort of housing now because that is the need. Yeah, thanks, Jeff. What we also want you to know, of course, this is a series. It’s all week long. And then coming up tomorrow at 6 o’clock, we take an in-depth look at Portland’s restaurant scene.

And this is something that I’ve looked into. And of course, the restaurant industry already difficult but also look at how it’s been hurt by this pandemic and just another layer here. Know that you can also go to KOIN.com right now to find out what experts are saying about how Portland’s houseless population is counted during a pandemic and what it could mean for the city and Multnomah County going forward. Then tune in next Monday at 07:00 PM for an hour-long special, Is Portland Over. If you missed our stories earlier on Portland’s reputation, the protests, even the crime rate, you can go to KOIN.com to watch those in-depth reports. We’re also getting lots of feedback from you on this series. Dave writes, the San Diego reference was spot on.

These leaders in Portland show no compassion, but instead have enabled the homeless. Art says Portland’s soul could revive and thrive again if she found a new model to resolve the national homeless crisis. Neither want tone or Harbor of Hope fill.

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Transcript for “City of Roses or City of Homeless? Portland’s human tragedy” by KOIN 6 is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 6.19, Oregon already has a climate refugee crisis

[Music]

This is where you used to live, yeah, right about 10 feet in from the road. When you look around, you know some of these houses seem fine, but other things are just completely gone. Yeah, that’s what amazes me, you know. Why’d it take five of us and leave Kenny and leave these two? You know, I couldn’t figure that out because the fire had a mind of its own. It was like a beast, eating, taking a bite here and a bite there.

Wanda Toomey was one of over twelve thousand Oregon residents who lost their homes in the Labor Day fires of 2020. Now, nearly a year after over a million acres burned, all that’s left in neighborhoods leveled by fire are empty overgrown lots.

What’s it like for you to stand here and look at this?

Well, I’m reminiscing a little bit, but you know, I can’t stay there. You know, I can’t stay in that thinking mode.

Last year’s catastrophic wildfire season claimed over 4,000 homes across Oregon, more than 40 times the number of houses lost in the prior five fire seasons combined. Nearly 2,500 of those homes were here in Jackson County, where the Almeda Fire ripped through a creekside forest, ravaging three towns in its path.

Project Turnkey

In October of last year, one month after the fires, the state legislature put aside 30 million dollars to house wildfire victims in hotels and motels through a program called Project Turnkey.

Yeah, this one has two beds, and I only have one. I don’t need two beds, but that’s all they had.

Eleven months later, Oregon is still using converted hotel rooms to house around 900 survivors from the 2020 fires while now battling its latest fire season.

Someone had told me that they were converting these motels into apartments, so I stopped by here one day and signed a piece of paper to be on the waiting list. How did you feel having a place to be? Well, it was great because I was sleeping in my truck.

Do you feel like you’re living in a hotel, like you’re living in a home?

No, oh no, a hotel. It’s not a home for me. Compared to what I had, it’s just a room to sleep in and take a shower.

If you hadn’t gotten this room, where would you be?

I’d probably still be sleeping in my truck.

[Music]

Nina and Kevin

Hi, yes.

Hi, Nina, are you? Nice to meet you too. This is Kiva. Hi, Kevin.

Do you mind if we come in?

No, no, no, come on in.

We have a mid-size refrigerator, a four-burner stove, and a sink, and that’s it.

Where were you living before the fires?

We were in a three-bedroom home on around 40 acres.

Wow, the home was 4,000 square feet.

Wow. It was a rental, and we were basically caregiving for the owner of the property.

Did you lose a lot in the fire?

I lost everything. There’s a picture of the house, and then there’s my fishing boat.

If you weren’t living here, where would you be?

We’d be living out of the back of my pickup, pretty much because there’s no rentals available. A room this size would be going for around a thousand dollars a month.

[Music]

Housing Crisis

Oregon was already in a housing crisis before the 2020 fires. The state was short 150,000 homes for what its population needed, a problem the fires only made worse.

[Music]

Recovery is centered around having a place to live, and we’ve got to find those places, and it takes time. Is there enough housing?

No, there’s not enough housing. There wasn’t enough housing before this disaster, and there’s not enough housing now.

Some of the wildfire survivors we spoke to have been in temporary housing now for almost a year, and we’re sitting here, and there’s fire raging in Oregon. The environment’s changing. What was normal a few years ago is not normal now, and we’re thinking hard about what we need to be able to do to respond to these challenges. Is there going to come a time when you tell people the best disaster preparedness is just not to live here?

I would never make that recommendation. Anywhere you move in the United States, you’re going to find a hazard.

Rebuilding

State officials say there’s enough funding to continue sheltering these wildfire survivors for the next two years. Meanwhile, local leaders are racing to rebuild, even in the face of an uncertain future.

So we’re on four acres in Talent, Oregon. What we’re doing now is laying in infrastructure for 53 RV sites here. We lost 700 dwellings, and that’s a third of our town. I mean, a third of our town burned down.

Are you afraid about coming fire seasons becoming more and more extreme?

There is climate chaos in Oregon, and the wildfire is a very in-your-face expression of what global warming is looking like for us. What it really looks like for me is, are we building and bringing folks back home to be sitting ducks for more of the same?

Are you?

Yeah, on some level, you know, but where do you go otherwise? There’s no place to go where we are not going to be faced with defending ourselves against climate change, and this is where we’re choosing to defend ourselves.

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Transcript for “Video: Oregon Already Has a Climate Refugee Crisis” by Vice News is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 6.21, Pandemic shows importance, effectiveness of Housing First programs

[Reporter] With temperatures dropping into the -30s in Saskatchewan, people who are homeless must desperately search for a spot to warm up. For some, the search is over. Every day, this housing support team makes its rounds, checking in on people who now have homes but are still getting used to it.

Stephen Ledoux lived on the streets for years. He broke his neck in a construction accident and began drinking heavily.

[Woman] Hello, how’s your morning? [Ledoux] Pretty good so far.

Housing First

[Reporter] Ledoux says he used to spend his days digging in dumpsters and drinking with friends, often getting arrested. Drunk in public, drunk and disorderly, just staggering around the city.

[Reporter] That all changed when he got accepted into the Housing First program three years ago. He says you can see the difference. Right here, a house. They found me a house as soon as I got into the program.

[Reporter] And then how has that changed your life? I haven’t been in trouble with the law, and I’m staying pretty sober now.

[Reporter] Over the past decade, Housing First programs have become common in Canadian cities.

What is Housing First

Touted for their simple premise. So it doesn’t matter if people are sober. It doesn’t matter if they have bad records of tenancy. Nothing matters as long as they are homeless and in need of supports. We put that in place first, and then you can work on everything else after.

[Reporter] Kendra Giles with Phoenix Residential Society runs the federally funded program in Regina. It has 30 clients. She says Housing First makes even more sense in a pandemic. You couldn’t get a more perfect setup given that everyone has their own safe place to call home. People can actually be in a safe place to isolate, and then we can bring the supports to them.

Alcohol Delivery

[Reporter] Her teams make more frequent visits now, delivering groceries, medication, and even alcohol. Depends on what they like, beer, vodka, whiskey, or wine. All safer than drinking mouthwash or hand sanitizer.

[Reporter] Phoenix received more money from Ottawa this past year to expand its managed alcohol program.

[Giles] We got your beers here. There you go.

[Man] Thank you.

[Giles] You’re welcome.

[Reporter] Three deliveries a day stop people from going to the bar or liquor store.

Caseworkers

57-year-old army veteran Rudy McQuaig waits for the Phoenix Team to arrive. They come and check my house, make sure I’m OK, so they’re very protective.

[Woman] Rudy, hello, how was your night? What’d you get up to? Just got your medication here.

[Reporter] Caseworkers helped him collect social assistance to pay rent and buy groceries.

[Woman] OK, you have a good day, OK?

[Reporter] A couple of clients have contracted the virus, and they get support to self-isolate. Overall, there have been fewer visits to the hospital emergency room, detox center, jail, and shelters, which can’t meet demand. COVID-19 outbreaks have temporarily shut some down, and physical distancing rules have cut capacity.

Jason Merkerty’s organization serves vulnerable people but due to the pandemic has to frequently turn them away. Pretty much every day where the temperature drops below -15, we have people begging us to let them in the building. It’s not just us, it’s every organization in the city that really is struggling to allow people in and maintain COVID protocols, and we’ve had people crying, we’ve had people quite upset.

But for Stephen Ledoux, his biggest challenge now is boredom. The more you sit around, the more you want to drink.

[Reporter] A Housing First social worker helped Ledoux get a cat who he named COVID to keep him company. I just mainly stay home.

[Reporter] And for that, Ledoux is proud of himself. When public health officials urge people to stay home, it’s something he can finally do.

Bonnie Allen, CBC News, Regina.

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Transcript for “Pandemic shows importance, effectiveness of Housing First programs” by CBC News: The National is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 7.1, Who Belongs? Family Stories of Immigration

In this video, we will examine the social problem of belonging through the stories of students whose families may resonate with yours. Before we begin, take a moment to reflect on your own family and how it has evolved over time. Your family might resemble some of the narratives we explore, or it could be distinctly different. Who belongs when it comes to your family?

While all families are unique, the traditional American family is often portrayed as the nuclear family—a household with two parents and their children. The idealized image is of a middle-class, heterosexual, married couple, typically white, owning a house, and perhaps even having a dog and a white picket fence. Many laws, policies, and practices assume this family structure. However, societal changes have led to a decline in the prevalence of nuclear families.

As illustrated by the graph, the percentage of children living in families with two parents in their first marriage has decreased from over 70% in the 1960s to about 45% in 2014. Alternative family structures, such as single-parent households, remarried parents, or cohabitating parents, have become more common.

The issue of belonging doesn’t arise from the changing forms of families; rather, it stems from the fact that not all families receive the support they need to thrive. Mixed-status families, comprising members with different citizenship or immigration statuses, face unique challenges. Some family members may be undocumented, living with the constant fear of deportation, while others may have DACA or asylum status.

LGBTQIA+ families also encounter hurdles, such as homophobia and prejudice. Approximately 3.7 million children in the United States have a parent who identifies as LGBTQIA+, and these families navigate judgment and rejection from both their families of origin and societal institutions.

The video presents personal stories to shed light on these issues. Kevin, for example, shares the challenges faced by his DACA recipient family member, highlighting the impact of xenophobia and racism. In another story, Omar, Kevin, and Julian discuss their journey as a same-sex couple, emphasizing the legal challenges and societal shifts that have redefined the concept of marriage.

Both individual and collective actions are showcased as families strive to thrive. The power of social movements is evident, particularly in the case of LGBTQIA+ and undocumented individuals who fight for their rights and social justice. Belonging, as explored in this video, is not just a personal matter; it is a social justice imperative.

By expanding our definition of family in laws, policies, practices, and everyday life, we contribute to creating a world where all families belong. The pursuit of belonging is synonymous with the pursuit of social justice.

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Transcript for “Who Belongs?: Family Stories of Immigration” by Kimberly Puttman, Kevin Acosta, Omar Ruiz Garcia and Samantha Kuk, Open Oregon Educational Resources, is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0.

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Transcript for Figure 7.16, Mixed Status Family

I was born in a small village called Loma Bonita, Oaxaca, Mexico. My mom knew that there was no opportunity for me in Mexico, so when I was four years old, we both decided to come to the U.S. My mom eventually gave birth to my two U.S.-born sisters. She had to quickly learn how to be a single mom and support herself. She was able to save enough money for the deposit on a small one-bedroom apartment in one of the toughest neighborhoods in Cincinnati at the time. So, she began organizing to try to make the community better and try to make the world that we were living in a little better.

When I started college, my sophomore year, I came upon the YES group (Youth Educating Society). The group was for undocumented youth, DACA recipients, members of a mixed-status family, or anyone who wanted to create a better world for immigrants.

My mom has instilled in all three of us a great love for this country, but we have understood how complicated that love is. My mom is undocumented, and at any moment of the day, she can be detained and deported. My sisters are also the ones who vote for the whole family. We can see the ongoing fear that they live with every day. As a DACA recipient, I also feel that many times I have to be the adult in the family. That doesn’t make us so different from a normal family. We still get on each other’s nerves, constantly fighting for which movie we get to pick during movie night. The special family moments of graduations, holidays are just normal, but legally, we have all these complications and scars.

My name is Esmeralda Tovar Mora. I’m 24 years old. I’m from Mexico City, Mexico, and I’ve been living in Hutchinson, Kansas, for about 22 years. I came to this country when I was just two years old. The United States is pretty much the only country I’ve ever known, and it is the place where I learned to speak my second language. My father had kind of acquired Spanglish at work. He actually recorded himself on those cassette tapes, and we would rehearse those before going to bed. I ended up being fluent in English by first grade.

I decided early on when I gained DACA and the ability to work that I wanted a job that helped others. I love working with the elderly. Geriatric patients are something I love, and I don’t have my grandparents here in this country, especially in a dementia Alzheimer’s unit. I know how many of them only wish that their families could visit them. Everyone deserves equity. Everyone is deserving of love and respect. Everyone’s mental health and well-being matters.

Part of it honestly is my daughter. It really is. I keep doing all of this for us to stay together so that she can create a life that she loves and is proud of.

I migrated to the United States when I was 12 years old. One of the things that we enjoy as a family: we do get together for birthdays to celebrate being another year together. This has been an ongoing tradition since we moved here, and it has been over 15 years now. I have two brothers, one sister, and over 12 nephews and nieces, so it’s a full house when they come over. We want to be able to teach my nephews and nieces the importance of family and staying together. That’s one of the things that I’m very thankful for: that I have my family around me because I would not be able to do what I’m doing without them. We are here to try our best for ourselves and for our families, and all we’re asking for, I feel, is that opportunity to keep on growing and keep on becoming the best version of ourselves.

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Transcript “Mixed Status Family” by Cities for Action is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 7.19, Tyler Ford Explains The History Behind the Word “Queer” | InQueery | them

From its humble beginnings in the sixteenth hundreds – it’s still controversial used today the word queer has always been well queer. Queer can mean something different to everyone who uses it, and we love it for its versatility and its resilience. So how much do you really know about the history of the word queer?

The Oxford History of Queer English Dictionary credits sixteenth-century Scottish people for coming up with the word queer in the fighting of Dunbar and Kennedy, a poetic war of words that involved accusations of sexual perversion or weakness. Picture a rap battle but in kilts. “Hey, here comes our own queer clerk,” one rogue battler tells another, but the guy’s not necessarily gay, just eccentric and suspicious.

The first person to use the word queer as a homophobic slur was John Sholto Douglas, the 9th Marquis of Queensberry, in 1894. His son Francis was the private secretary to Lord Rosebery, and the two were rumored to be carrying on a scandalous affair. After Francis died, his father wrote a letter to his younger son, Lord Alfred Douglas, denouncing snob queers like Roseberry and blaming the Lord for the elder son’s death. The thing is, Alfred himself was one of a claimed author and so-called first modern homosexual Oscar Wilde’s literary muses, and they wrote each other love letters for years. When Douglas found out about the affair, he made it his personal mission to take down Wilde, and it worked. Wilde was later arrested, eventually found guilty, and sentenced to two years of hard labor. Other crooked and bad became synonyms for queer for years, and the use of the word queer reached its height of popularity in the late 1920s as the term also became widely known in America.

But New York Stonewall Riots in 1969 marked the beginning of the gay rights movement in the US. From the start, members of the community called themselves queer as an act of defiance as they celebrated their right to love who they want even in the face of police violence. Yet that age of sexual liberation in the 1970s turned into tragedy in the 1980s. More than 16,000 Americans died of AIDS-related complications in just five years. The AIDS crisis sparked an era of activism in a time of grave crisis, and this had a large influence on young activists who took up the word queer as a Badge of Courage. This culminated in the founding of Queer Nation in 1990.

As AIDS continued to ravage the LGBTQ community, at New York Pride in 1990, they passed out queers read this: “Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public, to just be who we are.” For the first time, the world was hearing, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” The work of these queer activists inspired a shift in art, culture, and academia as institutions questioned the heterocentric norms of Western culture.

With the rise of the internet came digital queer communities and a new wave of LGBTQ activism. Bills like Prop 8 in California and the larger national fight for marriage equality moved a new generation of activists to organize and fight for equality. The Internet’s ability to connect people and spread information at a rapid pace cemented the term queer into a modern generation’s lexicon. Now, a wide range of LGBTQ people and other sexual minorities call themselves queer as a more expansive and expressive umbrella term for their sexualities and genders. Also, not everyone in the LGBTQ community loves the word queer. There are plenty of trans folks and older gays and lesbians who just don’t jive with the term. But as our movement evolves beyond just the L in the gene, our ever-growing acronym, the proliferation of the term has been seen by some as an overwhelmingly positive, reflecting a more inclusive approach to our politics and our community. We’re all stronger together and clearer than ever.

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Transcript for “Tyler Ford Explains The History Behind the Word ‘Queer’” by Tyler Ford is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 7.26, Understanding Bodily Autonomy – May Diversity Calendar by Diversity for Social Impact

Today, we’re going to talk about something important: bodily autonomy. Have you ever heard of it? If not, don’t worry; we’re here to explain what it is and why it plays a crucial role in fostering equality.

So what exactly is bodily autonomy? Simply put, bodily autonomy is the right to control what happens to our own bodies. This includes making decisions about our health, relationships, and even how we express ourselves.

You might be wondering, how does bodily autonomy contribute to fostering equality? Well, when everyone has the right to make decisions about their own bodies, it leads to a more equitable society where people’s rights are respected regardless of their gender, race, or background.

Let’s take a look at a few examples to better understand how bodily autonomy fosters equality.

Example one: Health Care and Reproductive Rights. In terms of health care, bodily autonomy means having the right to access information and make informed decisions about reproductive health, contraception, and family planning. When everyone has access to these resources, it helps to create a more equal society where people can make choices that are best for them and their families.

Example two: Consent Culture. Another example is consent culture, which emphasizes the importance of obtaining clear and enthusiastic consent before engaging in any physical or intimate activity. This promotes equality by ensuring that everyone’s boundaries are respected and that people can freely express their desires and limitations without fear of judgment or coercion.

Example three: Personal Expression and Appearance. Lastly, bodily autonomy allows people to express themselves through their appearance, such as clothing, hairstyles, or body modifications. By celebrating and respecting each person’s unique self-expression, we foster an environment where everyone can feel confident and valued regardless of their appearance.

Conclusion: So, as you can see, bodily autonomy plays a vital role in promoting equality and creating a more inclusive and respectful society. It’s essential for all of us to understand and advocate for our own bodily autonomy and that of others. By doing so, we can work together to create a world.

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Transcript for “Understanding Bodily Autonomy” by Diversity for Social Impact is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 7.30, UndocuQueer Manifesto

We demand the right to love and be loved by those who wish to love us. We are who we are; we are human and will not tolerate violence, conversion, or divisive forces against our queer and immigrant communities.

Let us be ourselves, our true selves. We have beautifully crafted our lives despite the challenges of being queer and undocumented. Despite always being asked to separate the queer from our undocumented stories, we have created a queer familia within our movement, because our survival depends on it.

Together we rise; we are Hoderia Familia – fabulous queers with a cause, fighting towards social justice. We are undoubtedly queers in solidarity, fighting towards social justice.

We need to acknowledge that our lives are ever-changing, and regardless of the opportunities that may arise, we must always be there to support one another, because our lives, spirits, and existence didn’t cross by accident.

Our love, our hortelia, and our transitions have traveled through mountains, rivers, deserts, and oceans and settled in the hearts of open minds. We are all fantastic with different names, cultures, desires, roads, and different life philosophies invested in working collectively towards the liberation of our suenos.

Where no more brothers and sisters die in the closet, we seek to bring an end to the violence within our communities and families. To end all racism, sexism, xenophobia, and poverty. We seek to transform ourselves as we walk hand in hand with our many communities.

If you believe in social justice, then what makes us different than you? We want to fight this war knowing our queer rights are immigrant rights. Don’t make us choose one; we are one. We want our voices to be heard without being judged. Our families are diverse and unique. We have undocumented unconditional lovers, loving, lovemaking, and love meant to be fluid, meant to be free of shaming.

Therefore, we need to acknowledge that “isms” exist in our communities. We are continuously transforming our communities and each other, not destroyed because of culture, sexuality, or color.

Somos Hotas Pottos – fabulous queers with a cause, fighting towards social justice.

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Transcript for Figure 8.1a, 36 Inches | Understanding the Jordan Cove Energy Project

That’s me, James, recovering apathetic millennial, admittedly complacent to most of the issues facing our world. And that’s my friend Ron; he’s from Oregon. One day Ron called me up about a pipeline project that was going to run through his backyard, called the Pacific Connector Pipeline. Ron said it was a big deal because he felt his property rights have been infringed, and that it was not just a use of eminent domain, topical politics, probably an excellent course, and happy recovery. So I was interested. I called up my friend Matt, we hopped on a plane, and started our journey.

Our journey began understanding the basics. Ron shared that the Pacific Connector Pipeline would begin at the California-Oregon border, where it would meet up with an existing pipeline bringing in fracked natural gas from the Rockies. From there, the 36-inch pipeline would run 230 miles through a combination of private property and public lands to the first-ever West Coast liquefied natural gas export facility. That facility in Coos Bay, Oregon, will receive between 1.1 and 1.6 billion cubic feet of gas per day, liquefied, and send it via ship to be sold in foreign markets. Altogether known as the Jordan Cove Energy Project, at first glance, it seems like not too bad a deal — about 150 permanent jobs, a big investment in Oregon’s infrastructure, and growth in the local economy. At least that’s what this industry-sponsored group is saying: “Our region is hurting, but the Pacific Connector Pipeline can boost our economy. It’s our turn for jobs, it’s our turn for better schools, it’s our turn for a brighter future. Jobs, schools, brighter future — sounds great.”

So why the opposition, or specifically, the outrage? Well, one quick search, and the headlines flood in: bad for our economy, destructive to the environment, risk to public safety, and back to my friend Ron’s concern — infringement on personal property rights. It gets confusing fast. Support for the project seems to be based on economics, so that’s where we started to dig deeper.

First, the issue of export. It does seem counterintuitive to the pervasive ideology of energy independence. Americans will not have to rely on any source of energy beyond our own. Not to mention that science and common sense have told us that the rule number one about fossil fuels is that they’re finite — save them, use them wisely. So why the shift? Why now is it okay to export our finite natural gas? Well, the gas companies say we have an oversupply, and that export will be a driver for the US economy. In fact, the Department of Energy has opened up the floodgates to hydraulic fracturing, more contentiously known as fracking, to draw this stuff up. As of 2013, there were 487,286 natural gas wells in the US, which is one for every six and a half square miles of the lower 48. The price for a thousand cubic feet of natural gas in the US is around $2.80, while the price for a thousand cubic feet of natural gas in Asia is over $12. So it’s clear why the industry is pushing towards export and an equalization in price.

But what about the economic downsides for the US? The side effects of LNG export, as documented by the US Energy Information Administration, could increase domestic gas prices anywhere from 10 percent to upwards of 20 percent. So opposition to export isn’t just coming from the obvious sources like environmentalists and the far left, but major US industry like Dow Chemical and Alcoa. In a company statement addressing Jordan Cove, Dow said, “US manufacturers are putting Americans back to work and creating high-paying jobs due to this new abundance of affordable natural gas. This is vastly preferable to sending our energy resources overseas and jobs overseas.” It’s also worth noting that the majority stakeholder in the Jordan Cove Energy Project is a company called Veresen, which is Canadian. So, a Canadian company, which no doubt will make significant profits and benefit shareholders, is exporting US gas, potentially raising US gas prices, and doing so under the umbrella of eminent domain.

Our next stop was with Ron’s friend Stacey, who with her husband purchased 357 acres in Myrtle Creek, Oregon, ten years ago. They rehabilitated the land, removing trash heaps, restoring diversity, and planting over 10,000 trees — the manifestation of the American dream.

“So, it goes a mile across our land, it cuts our place in half. Look how beautiful that is, look at the tree behind it, two oaks. This is gone once that pipeline goes in here. None of this exists anymore. There are so many magical, special places; it’s just sacred. How does it make me feel? It makes me feel very angry that the government and that these corporations have the right to come in and take our property, that they have the right to destroy our land when we say no.”

Stacey is not the only one prepared to fight for her property. Out of over 300 impacted landowners, the majority have yet to sign a lease, meaning eminent domain is likely. This is completely legal under Section 7 of the Natural Gas Act, as long as the project is deemed to be in the public benefit. So the question becomes, how can a project like this be deemed to be in the public benefit?

What about concerns over the environment? Simply put, they’re significant. Not only are there concerns regarding the clear-cutting of old-growth forest, intrusion onto publicly-owned BLM land, and risk to over 400 critical waterways, but there’s an introduction to the risk of pipeline failure. Not only is this a public health and safety concern, but it exposes a severely drought-stricken Southern Cascadia region to the risk of large-scale fire and ecosystem destruction. Some say these concerns are hyperbole, but examples of pipeline failure are hard to ignore, especially when the Williams Company, who’s overseeing this particular pipeline’s construction, has had nine significant spills, leaks, or ruptures in the recent past. It’s also a known fact that all pipelines leak, especially 230-mile-long pipelines, and that methane, which is a key component of natural gas, is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

But most surprising of all, the power plant facility, which will supply the energy needed to convert the gas into LNG, will eventually become the most polluting plant in the state of Oregon. So it’s proposed to build Oregon’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gas in our modern context of climate change — melting ice caps, rising sea levels, droughts, deadly storms, and our government’s pledge to reduce 25% of carbon emissions in ten years.

As Matt and I wrapped up our time in Southern Oregon, we headed back south to debrief with Ron’s friend Stacey. The resounding question we kept asking was, for what? Why are we building Oregon’s biggest greenhouse gas polluter? Why are we putting some of the most ecologically diverse and precious land at risk? Why are we seizing private land against owners’ will? And why are we supporting an increase in domestic gas prices beyond 150 jobs and tax revenue for whose county? There is no public benefit to this project. Pipelines are substantial long-term investments, locking stakeholders into, at a minimum, 20-year contracts. So regardless of whether the economics

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Transcript for Figure 8.1b, Rogue Climate, Klamath Co. landowners ‘excited’ as Jordan Cove project halts after years-long fight

**Femina Requests Removal of Authorizations from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission**

Femina filed a request to remove its authorizations from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission today. NBC 5’s Anthony Carter spoke to a landowner who would have had the pipeline go through her property against her will. He has our top story tonight.

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After more than a decade of legal battles and protests, Canadian pipeline corporation Pembina is pulling the plug on its controversial Jordan Cove project and pipeline. This is really exciting news. There are thousands of people across southern Oregon today who are celebrating. Local non-profit Rogue Climate is one of many that have been lobbying against the project.

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The company proposed to dig a 229-mile-long pipeline stretching from Malin and Klamath County through several more southern Oregon counties to Coos Bay. The gas would then be liquefied at Jordan Cove in Coos Bay before being exported to Asia. It would have become the largest source of climate pollution in the state of Oregon and would have harmed hundreds of rivers, including the Rogue.

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Though the project had its detractors, it also garnered plenty of supporters who pointed to big tax dollars and jobs the project and pipeline construction would bring in. Despite being granted federal approval in March of 2019, Pembina still needed the green light from the state, where it hit multiple environmental roadblocks. Then last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), now led by an appointee of President Joe Biden, indicated it was going to revisit the plan. The project, far from a certainty, was on shaky ground.

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Our communities demanded the state of Oregon deny permits for this project, and the state listened. Pembina said it had garnered more landowner support across southern Oregon for its pipeline in recent years. But some local residents were going to have their pipeline cut through their land against their will under eminent domain. That was one of the biggest concerns for landowner Deb Evans in Klamath Falls. She says she was excited to hear the news Wednesday after a long fight.

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“Just overwhelmed at how long this has been and how long we’ve waited for this day. My husband and I hugged each other, and it was pretty emotional,” Rose and Blue said the withdrawal only gives her group and others more confidence to continue fighting for what they believe in.

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“If any fossil fuel corporations decide to propose a similar project like Jordan Cove LNG, we will be here, and thousands of other people will be here to stop it,” NBC 5’s Anthony Carter reporting. Pembina has issued a statement regarding its decision. It says, in part, “We are thankful for the support from community members across southern Oregon and the Rockies Basin.” This is a story we have been continuing to follow for years now. You can read much more on our website, kobi5.com.

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Transcript for “Rogue Climate, Klamath Co. landowners ‘excited’ as Jordan Cove project halts after years-long fight” by KOBI-TV NBC5 is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 8.18, Gender inequality is showing up…in climate change

“I don’t know very much about this topic.”
“I’m not sure that I’ll be able to answer your questions, and I don’t know if I’ll be very helpful to you at all.”

I hear these words all the time. I’m a social scientist, and I study the social dimensions of climate change and climate-related disasters. That means that I spend a great deal of my time talking to people who have extremely important in-depth knowledge about climate events.

But I’m always surprised because when I first sit down to talk to these people, these are often the first words that they say to me. These people that I talk to most are not climate scientists or climatologists, although I do work with those experts as well.

But the experts that I talk to most are the invisible experts. They’re experts who are experts in the lived experience of climate change, of a climate extreme. They’re people who have seen their entire livelihoods threatened and sometimes even decimated by a single climate event.

The people, the experts that I talk to most are farm women. They’re farm women that live and work here in the Canadian prairies and around the world. They are experts who live on farms near towns that have names like Elbow, Ituna, and Carrot River. And if, like me, you’re from rural Saskatchewan, then you know all about these kinds of places.

So I grew up on a farm in rural Saskatchewan near a town named Calvington. And growing up, I spent my childhood doing things like going on walks, adventures through the bush with my dogs, and getting my legs all cut up from running through fields full of wheat stubble.

And like all farmers, my parents experienced dry years and droughts. They experienced extreme precipitation and flash floods that wiped out crops. But I was lucky because as a child, I was relatively sheltered from most of it. I do remember one year though. It was the drought, the severe drought that hit Saskatchewan in the late 1980s. And it was so dry that year that the soil in our yard was cracking, forming these large, gulfing cracks all around the yard. And I was just a little kid at the time, but my mom tells me, and I have a vague recollection of it, my mom tells me that I spent a lot of time that year with my little watering can, going around our yard and watering the cracks in the yard because I was afraid that those cracks were going to turn into earthquakes.

Twenty years later, I moved to a large city. I moved to Toronto as a young adult. And it was during my time living in a large city in a large urban space that I realized how often rural people and rural places, like the people and places that I knew growing up, get overlooked. And I learned how frequently their contributions, like their contributions to our food system, get ignored.

And I began to realize even further that amongst this whole ignored rural sphere of agricultural people and agricultural places, that farm women, specifically, are the invisible food producers. And their invisibility is a product of a culture that for a very long time has equated the word “farmer” with the image of a man.

And that’s why here in North America, especially when I say the word “farmer,” most people are very likely to envision someone who looks a lot like this:

(Image of a male farmer)

That’s why when I say the word “farmer,” most people are very unlikely to envision someone who looks like this or perhaps like this:

(Images of female farmers)

And that’s why when I sit down with farm women, farm women who make absolutely crucial contributions to our food system, farm women who play essential roles in Canadian agriculture, they tend to describe those crucial contributions, those essential roles, using words like “helper,” “supporter,” “employee,” and “hired man.”

This invisibility, this marginalization of women’s contributions to agriculture, exists around the world. In low-income countries, the countries of the global south, countries that we used to call the third world, women actually constitute the majority of agricultural producers. But they do this agricultural production on the smallest plots of land. They do it on the most marginal and the least productive plots of land. And they do it in some countries on land that they can’t even hold in their own names. And they do it without access to many of the economic and agricultural resources that we would consider to be essential for agriculture.

And so, in 2009, I began a research project where I wanted to begin to value the contributions of farm women, and I wanted to consult with farm women as experts in their fields. And so, I drove around the province of Saskatchewan, and I sat down in farm women’s kitchens, and we talked.

And we talked about things that are commonly associated with women. So, we talked, for example, about the fact that here in Canada and around the world, and especially in rural places, farm women and women in general continue to do an overwhelming majority of domestic work, of housekeeping work, of caregiving for children and for the elderly. And that these contributions are far less likely than other kinds of work, especially paid work, to be recognized and to be valued.

But we didn’t stop there. So, we didn’t stop talking at the things that are commonly associated with women. We went on, and we talked about the changing nature of rural societies. We talked about the industrialization of Canadian agriculture. We talked about changes in agricultural policy, and we talked about climate change.

And it’s through these conversations that I have come to know that climate change has gendered impacts. And it’s this connection, this often invisible connection between gender and climate change, a connection that’s often invisible just like farm women themselves are invisible, that I would like to share with you today.

And let’s start by talking a bit about climate change. What is climate change? There are, according to climate science (this is what climate science tells us), two types of climate change.

The first is natural climate cycles. So, these are the natural cycles of the climate that exist over decades, over centuries. These are natural cycles that have caused wet years and dry years, hot, cold, throughout our history on this planet. These are natural cycles that have caused us in the past to experience flooding and droughts.

But there’s a second type of climate change. And the second type of climate change is called anthropogenic climate change. And anthropogenic climate change means human-induced or human-caused climate change. And this means that our activities as humans on this planet are affecting the environment. It means that our production of fossil fuels, our burning of fossil fuels, our production of greenhouse gases, all of these things are interfering with that first type of climate change, the natural cycles.

And although here in Saskatchewan, our climate scientists expect that over the next few decades, our climate will be dominated by that first type, the natural cycles, we can expect that over the longer term, we here in Saskatchewan and in the Canadian prairies can expect to experience more severe precipitation and flash flooding. We can expect to experience longer, more protracted droughts and more extremes in general as that second type of climate change, that anthropogenic type, interacts with the natural cycles of the climate.

And we have to be prepared for this. And being prepared for this means acknowledging that not everybody is affected in the same way by climate change. It means acknowledging that although we here in the Canadian prairies may not start to feel the worst effects of climate change for some time yet, people around the world are living climate change right now. We have climate refugees. The residents of the Carteret Islands near Papua New Guinea have been evacuated from their islands. The Republic of the Maldives has been sounding the alarm on climate change for decades. And a few years ago, NASA scientists identified the Canadian prairies as a hotspot for future climatic change. So, we have to be ready.

And being ready for climate change means more than just the kind of technological fixes that we might talk about as adaptation. It means acknowledging that certain groups of people, just like the Carteret Islanders, are going to be more or less affected by climate change. And it means acknowledging and acknowledging that our existing forms of social inequality, so social inequality that exists along the lines of gender, race, socioeconomic class, all of the different ways that people in our society are either privileged or disadvantaged, means that those different groups of people will be affected differently by climate change. And we need to prepare for that as well.

So, when we begin to notice inequality and social inequality in climate change, that’s when we begin to notice, for example, that climate change has gendered impacts. And so, it’s when we begin to notice gender and climate change that we begin to notice that in the aftermath of almost any climate-related event around the world, rates of violence against women increase dramatically.

And it’s when we begin to notice climate, gender, and climate change that we begin to notice, for example, that in the case of many places around the world that are prone to floods and cyclones, that women are more likely to die as a result of those floods and cyclones than men. And the reason that women are often more likely to experience a climate event as fatal is because in some parts of the world, women and girls are not taught how to swim, and in some parts of the world, it’s considered inappropriate for a woman to leave her home during a disaster, especially if her clothes have become saturated with floodwater.

And it means acknowledging that in food shortages that are associated with droughts in many places around the world, women eat last. And this means that climate change has gendered impacts.

But gender is complex, just like climate change. And so, it’s important to look at specific examples, specific contexts of how this plays out. And so, we could take, for example, the case of Hurricane Mitch, which hit parts of Nicaragua and Honduras in 1998. And in the case of Hurricane Mitch, it was actually men that were more likely to die than women. And the reason for that is because gender does not equal women. Men experience gendered roles and gendered expectations as well. And in the case of Hurricane Mitch, men were expected to be heroes. It was men who were expected to be rescuers and to go rushing into the disaster when everybody else was trying to rush out.

And it’s when we take this complex gender lens and start to notice the gendered impacts of climate change that we see, in the same disaster, in the case of Hurricane Mitch, it was female-headed households, which around the world are more likely to be poor than any other kind of household, who had the most difficulty recovering. And that’s true in many cases of climate events around the world.

And we saw that in the case of Hurricane Mitch as well as many other climate extremes. We see that it’s women agricultural producers, farm women, who often have the most difficulty recovering their operations after a disaster. And the reason for that is because they lack access to basic resources to recover those operations. And so, this is what we begin to see when we see gender in climate change.

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Transcript for “Gender inequality is showing up… in climate change” by Amber Fletcher, TEDxRegina is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 9.1, 100 Days of Protest in Portland

“No justice, no peace. No justice, no peace.”

We’re at a time that we have never, ever been in our society before. America understands that our policing system is broken and that we need radical change. Portland, Oregon, of all places, still one of the whitest major places in our entire country, is at the center of the national imagination around the Black Lives Matter movement.

“George Floyd matters! Breonna Taylor matters!”

It must be something going on where all these white people are woke. And they’re feeling what Black people feel. George Floyd’s death represented police brutality. I am no one out there. I am a random person who saw George Floyd’s video and couldn’t sleep. There’s been a lot of narratives around peaceful/non-peaceful, violent/non-violent, and every protest is a voice of the unheard.

If you think to yourself, like looking at the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, ‘oh, I would have marched, I would have been at Selma,’ then you should be in the streets now because that’s what we’re doing. I can’t breathe! What? I can’t breathe! What? I can’t breathe! What? When you know, I saw the news about George Floyd, you know my first reaction was this is not the first time we’ve heard, ‘I can’t breathe.’ So I had no reason whatsoever to think that the reaction to George Floyd’s murder would be different than any other murder that’s happened in Portland or the United States since the birth of our country.

“What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now! And we stand with the grieving family of George.”

Clearly we were unprepared for the emotional combustion that took place.

The night people broke into this building, tried to set fires and people were out and really wanted to have their voices heard, standing up for racial justice and police reform and things of that nature.

It was wild to see the City of Portland and Portland Police Bureau’s reaction to the protests early on, curtailing and violating our constitutional rights.

“If you are in this crowd as a peaceful demonstrator and do not want to be subject to potential force, you have the opportunity to leave the area now.”

I first started coming to the protests when the marches were really big from Rev Hall, there were like thousands of people in the street then. It was really inspiring.

“George Floyd, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin. Patrick Kimmons, Kevin Matthews, Sandra Bland. Eric Garner.”

To see two weeks later in Portland and still have 5,000 or more people showing up on a nightly basis really gave me a sense of nostalgia.

“It’s time for you to rise up, exterminators. And claim what belongs to you. And in the voice of the old civil rights song: you can’t let nobody turn you around. We want justice! We want justice! We want justice! We want justice!:

It’s about progress and progress does not come easily, it’s going to take time. We’re here for the long haul. It’s not a short game. This is war. Make no mistake, this is war. Protest, riot. All of these things are voices of a community that has been let down, that has not been supported, that doesn’t feel heard.

I’m not someone who personally is going to go and burn down a building, but I can understand why somebody feels like they need to burn a building down. Our people have been the constant victims of brutality on the part of America’s racists and the government has found itself either unwilling or unable to do anything about it, so out of necessity we’ve reached a point now where our people must form self-defense units.

People that act like a revolution is built strictly off the backs of rioting don’t understand history. It’s Malcolm and Martin, it’s not just Malcolm. It always has been. So I need people to understand that there are multiple pillars underneath the house of this uprising. This isn’t a short process, this is always a long process if you look at the history of the civil rights movement; almost none of those many protests lasted any shorter than like three to seven months. When they boycotted the bus system, that was 381 days, you know?

I need people to understand that that kind of mental fortitude isn’t something most of us are used to having, because we’ve had such luxurious lifestyles. And so I’m trying to get them in the mental headspace of, your feet are going to hurt, you’re going to be tired, we’re not here to be comfortable or happy. Black people have been marching for centuries about equality, so when you have more white people woken up here, then it appears that yeah, people are going to notice.

‘I’m Major John Cloud of the Alabama state troopers. This is an unlawful march. You will not be allowed to continue.’

‘You should go back to your homes or return to your church.’

And Hosea Williams said, ‘Major, give us a moment to kneel and pray.’ And the major said, ‘Troopers advance!’

You saw these men putting on gas masks. They came toward us, beating us with nightsticks, trampling us with horses, and releasing the tear gas.

We saw our police go out and use excessive crowd control tactics. And we’re in the middle of a pandemic, a virus that literally attacks your respiratory system. And here we have police officers indiscriminately using tear gas against broad swaths of people, the vast majority of whom are not committing any form of vandalism whatsoever. We give people ample warnings before we use any force or any munitions, or things of that nature. The best way to protect yourself is to listen to those warnings, and disperse when we tell you to disperse.

For us, we don’t really want to be using munitions against community members. It’s just the violent acts, the acts that are criminal in nature, those are the ones that are problematic for us as a police organization. I completely support the goals and the aspirations of non-violent demonstrators who want to see racial justice and equity, who want to see meaningful engagement of the public in police reforms.

Unfortunately, the story has shifted and the focus of the conversation has, I think somewhat distractedly, become the question of nightly violence. What I mean by that specifically is on one hand the violence of those who are engaged in perpetrating violence and criminal destruction — we’ve seen that. And on the other hand, there’s also a legitimate question about police violence and police tactics.

Mayors and governors must establish an overwhelming law enforcement presence until the violence has been quelled. If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them. We want to have a dialogue to make sure that we keep this peaceful and safe for everybody. Conversations are not super effective when there is a whole group of people versus another person. It needs to be smaller. It needs to be maybe one on one.

The three sides of the perspective – I see this as being white, I see this as being Black, I see this as being a police officer. And all I see out of it is division. And there’s a point where we need to just have a conversation. It appalls me to hear Portland police characterize people as showing up to fight. Those shields were self-protection. Those hockey sticks were self-protection, right? Bicycle helmets, self-protection. Gas masks. I mean, what else do you do to protect yourself when you’re being brutalized by people who were sworn to protect and serve you.

We bring out this gear because unfortunately you have to have armor now to exercise your First Amendment rights in this city. That’s an incredibly sad state of affairs that you need to buy a gas mask and body armor and a shield. You know, we used to be able to come out dressed like I am but then they started tear-gassing crowds. And so people had to get respirators to try to protect themselves. And then they started shooting off concussion grenades and you start getting, like, kneepads and chest protection because that will hit you. Um, they started indiscriminately macing people. So now you need eye protection to go out. I do not like the tear gas. I think it’s ugly. It is not focused enough.

Person in crowd: What are you going to do about it? The city of Seattle today, late this afternoon, banned the use of tear gas for 30 days except in limited circumstances. We should do the same. Tomorrow my colleagues and I will be making announcements.

Crowd: Tonight!

LRAD: Disperse the area now. CS gas is being used. Disperse from the area.

I was going to a family member’s house. They were in the direction I was going, basically.

Reporter: You were in your car.

I didn’t think it was going to burn and hurt me this much. I mean, I just – my eyes are so red. Like, I’m just now breathing. It’s really, really sickening. I’m just now starting to feel a little bit better because I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe, I was hyperventilating and stuff like that and – Yeah, this is a whole lot. It’s very, very overwhelming.

“Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like! Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!”

What really brought this to the level of having an international human rights organization come to Portland really was the sending of the Federal officials.

These impact munitions, the class of rubber bullets, those are intended to be used from far away. They’re really supposed to be used if someone is being violent. It’s supposed to be used as a last resort. But the problem is here they’re being shot indiscriminately against peaceful protesters. They’re being used for dispersal. The medics were very scared that someone could die.

When the mayor of the largest city in a state are all saying exactly the same thing which is you’re not invited, you’re not wanted here, you’re not helping, we want you to leave and they get defensive and locked down and say, well, the only reason we’re here is because you’re not doing your job, that’s not a response, that’s not a genuine opportunity to sit down and listen. This is a waste of time, waste of resources and my biggest fear, honestly, is that somebody’s going to die.

The night of July 12th, we had marched to the PPA, which is the police union. And so, we had a line. One of the cops came up and shoved me with his baton a couple times and grabs my respirator, wrenches my head back and I don’t know what’s happening at this point. Then I feel it come off and then just wet all over my face and everything went black.

And they want us to stop. They’re trying everything they can to make us stop and so we can’t – we absolutely can’t stop. They can’t win with this. I’m from Memphis, Tennessee where Martin Luther King was killed so I’ve been an activist my whole life. The reason why Portland is such a mecca for Black Lives Matter right now is because there’s a majority of white people versus Black people. So, the world is kind of shocked.

We knew there was a need for a group and the moms are fulfilling their needs to help with the Black Lives Matter movement and be with this revolution.

“George Floyd! Say his name!”

That’s why I love Portland, right? So when you tear gas moms, what happens? Twice as many people show up the next night, right? And you tear gas them again, twice more people show up the next night, right? So what 45 thought he was doing, which was intimidation and fear that would stop people from protesting, clearly he hadn’t been in Portland before because Portlanders were not going to take that sitting down. We do this every night!

We had unnamed people from federal sources that were unnamed and they brutalized people. I mean, the amount of tear gas that they used on people – What I know is that what he does was very dangerous to our community.

Who do you protect? Who do you serve? Who do you protect?”

We’re telling them right now that we’re coming in very soon, the National Guard, a lot of people – a lot of very tough people and these are not people that just have to guard the courthouse and save it. These are people that are allowed to go forward and do what they have to do to clean out this beehive of terrorists. Black lives matter! Whose lives matter? Black lives matter! Whose lives matter? Black lives matter? Whose lives matter?

So the significance of the different nightly action locations, they’re for the most part, they’re precincts. So that’s where the police operate from. It’s – we’re coming to them at work. But the reason why we center Black lives is because in any form of oppression if you are Black, you are experiencing the worst form of that oppression. Say his name! George Floyd! Say his name! George Floyd! This is a riot. Disperse from the area now. Get your hands off her! Move onto the sidewalk now.

When I think of a stopping point for this for me personally I don’t see one until the Portland Police Bureau is no more. I’ve really been thinking more kind of long-term. I think a lot of the things that need to happen really circle around trust. I want to have an organization that serves the community. In order to have a really great police department, we need to invest and you need to train, look at ways to improve and those usually entail investment and additional money, not cuts.

For weeks I had been standing in front of the press and I’d been saying my biggest fear is that ultimately somebody is going to die. And somebody has. And I think it’s important for all us to now turn to the positive and work on ways that we can lift this community together. I think that it’s awful that it had to come to a point where somebody lost their life.

My goal after this is to make it so our country, this country, United States is left to our children in a way that they’re at peace with walking around, the laws are for us and everything is, you know, peaceful. People are hungry for this conversation. I’m here to tell you that life will never be normal again. Because what we had before was an unjust system. And I have no desire to rebuild a system that did not work for all our community members.

I’m very excited about building a more just, a more fair city. That’s where we’re headed.”

Attribution

Transcript for “100 Days of Protest in Portland” by The Oregonian is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 9.5, History of Policing in America | Throughline | NPR

**Hi, I’m Rund Abdelfatah.**

**And I’m Ramtin Arablouei.**

**ABDELFATAH:** We co-host NPR’s history podcast Throughline. To help give some historical context to the police killing of George Floyd, and so many other Black people in this country, this week we’re bringing you the deep history of policing in America.

**ARABLOUEI:** We wanted to understand how the relationship between police and the Black community had evolved to one so bloody and tragic.

**ABDELFATAH:** So we reached out to this historian:

*My name’s Khalil Gibran Muhammad. I teach at the Harvard Kennedy School.*

**ABDELFATAH:** In his book, “The Condemnation of Blackness,” Khalil lays out a historical argument for how Black people have been criminalized over the past 400 years in the U.S. And he does that by telling parallel narratives about the history of policing in the North and the South. These stories share one key feature: the use of brutal force to control Black Americans.

—

### Policing in America

**ARABLOUEI:** Policing in America started in the mid-1600s with the Boston Watch, essentially a neighborhood watch group. But some of the first police forces in the South were created to control enslaved Black people. They would come to be known as “slave patrols.” Almost all white men had to serve in these patrols.

**ABDELFATAH:** Their duties were written into law, like this slave patrol statute from Louisiana in 1835:

*Arrest any slave or slaves, whether with or without a permit, who may be caught in the woods or forest with any fire or torch, which slave or slaves thus arrested shall be subjected to corporal punishment, not exceeding 30 stripes.*

**MUHAMMAD:** So the tying together early on – the surveillance, the deputization essentially of all white men to be police officers – and then to dispense corporal punishment on the scene are all baked in from the very beginning.

**ARABLOUEI:** The Civil War eventually brought an end to slavery in America. But for most Black people in the South, it didn’t fundamentally change their lives.

**ABDELFATAH:** And by the early 20th Century, the KKK would emerge to enforce control over Black citizens in the South. And this pushed millions of Black citizens to flee to northern “progressive” cities, as part of what would become known as The Great Migration.

**MUHAMMAD:** police officers receive African American migrants in the same way that their white neighbors and community peers did, which is with contempt and hostility. When a white person throws a Molotov cocktail into a new Black homeowner on a street that had previously been all Irish or all Polish or all German, the police come and they arrest the Black family and defend the white mob. And this happens time and time, over and over again. They are policing the racial norms of white supremacy from the very beginning in the North.

**ABDELFATAH:** Black skin becomes equated with criminality.

*Khalil Gibran Muhammad*

**ARABLOUEI:** And according to Khalil Gibran Muhammad, the system hasn’t fundamentally changed since then. He says that pointing out the problem is clearly not sufficient to fix the system.

**MUHAMMAD:** Because the problem has been known for a century. The evidence has been presented for a century. The recommendations for change, for holding police officers accountable, for charging them with criminal offenses when they behave criminally. It’s a century of the same story playing out over and over again. It seems to me that’s what’s possible is recognizing that police officers and police agencies are incapable of fixing themselves. And so the question that has to be asked in the wake of George Floyd, and I think this question is being asked and answered by more white people than I’ve seen in my lifetime is: Do white people in America still want the police to protect their interests over the rights and dignity and lives of Black and, in too many cases, brown, indigenous and Asian populations in this country?

**ARABLOUEI:** Our whole country is waiting to hear the answer to that question. That was historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad. I’m Ramtin Arablouei.

**I’m Rund Abdelfatah.** You can listen to this full episode of NPR’s Throughline wherever you get your podcasts and at npr.org/throughline.

Attribution

Transcript for “History of Policing in America | Throughline” by NPR Podcasts is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 9.15, An interview with the founders of Black Lives Matter | Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi

**Mia Birdsong:** Why is Black Lives Matter important for the US right now and in the world?

**Patrisse Cullors:** Black Lives Matter is our call to action. It is a tool to reimagine a world where black people are free to exist, free to live. It is a tool for our allies to show up differently for us. I grew up in a neighborhood that was heavily policed. I witnessed my brothers and my siblings continuously stopped and frisked by law enforcement. I remember my home being raided. And one of my questions as a child was, why? Why us? Black Lives Matter offers answers to the why. It offers a new vision for young black girls around the world that we deserve to be fought for, that we deserve to call on local governments to show up for us.

**Opal Tometi:** And antiblack racism — (Applause) And antiblack racism is not only happening in the United States. It’s actually happening all across the globe. And what we need now more than ever is a human rights movement that challenges systemic racism in every single context. (Applause) We need this because the global reality is that black people are subject to all sorts of disparities in most of our most challenging issues of our day. I think about issues like climate change, and how six of the 10 worst impacted nations by climate change are actually on the continent of Africa. People are reeling from all sorts of unnatural disasters, displacing them from their ancestral homes and leaving them without a chance at making a decent living. We also see disasters like Hurricane Matthew, which recently wreaked havoc in many different nations but caused the most damage to Haiti. Haiti is the poorest country in this hemisphere, and its inhabitants are black people. And what we’re seeing in Haiti is that they were actually facing a number of challenges that even preceded this hurricane. They were reeling from the earthquake; they were reeling from cholera that was brought in by UN peacekeepers and still hasn’t been eradicated. This is unconscionable. And this would not happen if this nation didn’t have a population that was black, and we have to be real about that. But what’s most heartening right now is that despite these challenges, what we’re seeing is that there’s a network of Africans all across the continent who are rising up and fighting back and demanding climate justice. (Applause)

**Mia Birdsong:** So Alicia, you’ve said that when black people are free, everyone is free. Can you talk about what that means?

**Alicia Garza:** Sure. So I think race and racism is probably the most studied social, economic, and political phenomenon in this country, but it’s also the least understood. The reality is that race in the United States operates on a spectrum from black to white. Doesn’t mean that people who are in between don’t experience racism, but it means that the closer you are to white on that spectrum, the better off you are. And the closer to black that you are on that spectrum, the worse off you are. When we think about how we address problems in this country, we often start from a place of trickle-down justice. So using white folks as the control we say, well, if we make things better for white folks then everybody else is going to get free. But actually, it doesn’t work that way. We have to address problems at the root, and when you deal with what’s happening in black communities, it creates an effervescence, right? So a bubble up rather than a trickle down. Let me give an example. When we talk about the wage gap, we often say women make 78 cents to every dollar that a man makes. You all have heard that before. But those are the statistics for white women and white men. The reality is that black women make something like 64 cents to every 78 cents that white women make. When we talk about Latinas, it goes down to about 58 cents. If we were to talk about indigenous women, if we were to talk about trans women, it would even go further down. So again, if you deal with those who are the most impacted, everybody has an opportunity to benefit from that, rather than dealing with the folks who are not as impacted and expecting it to trickle down.

**Mia Birdsong:** I love the effervescence, bubbling up.

**Alicia Garza:** Effervescence — like champagne. (Laughter)

**Mia Birdsong:** Who doesn’t love a glass of champagne, right? Champagne and freedom, right? (Laughter) What more could we want, y’all? So you all have been doing this for a minute, and the last few years have been — well, I can’t even imagine, but I’m sure very transformative. And I know that you all have learned a lot about leadership. What do you want to share with these people about what you’ve learned about leadership? Patrisse, let’s start with you.

**Patrisse Cullors:** Yeah, we have to invest in black leadership. That’s what I’ve learned the most in the last few years. (Applause) What we’ve seen is thousands of black people showing up for our lives with very little infrastructure and very little support. I think our work as movement leaders isn’t just about our own visibility but rather how do we make the whole visible. How do we not just fight for our individual selves but fight for everybody? And I also think leadership looks like everybody in this audience showing up for black lives. It’s not just about coming and watching people on a stage, right? It’s about how do you become that leader — whether it’s in your workplace, whether it’s in your home — and believe that the movement for black lives isn’t just for us, but it’s for everybody. (Applause)

**Mia Birdsong:** What about you, Opal?

**Opal Tometi:** So I’ve been learning a great deal about interdependence. I’ve been learning about how to trust your team. I’ve come up with this new mantra after coming back from a three-month sabbatical, which is rare for black women to take who are in leadership, but I felt it was really important for my leadership and for my team to also practice stepping back as well as also sometimes stepping in. And what I learned in this process was that we need to acknowledge that different people contribute different strengths, and that in order for our entire team to flourish, we have to allow them to share and allow them to shine. And so during my sabbatical with the organization that I also work with, I saw our team rise up in my absence. They were able to launch new programs, fundraise. And when I came back, I had to give them a lot of gratitude and praise because they showed me that they truly had my back and that they truly had their own backs. You know, in this process of my sabbatical, I was really reminded of this Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu. I am because you are; you are because I am. And I realized that my own leadership and the contributions that I’m able to make is in large part due to the contributions that they make, right? And I have to acknowledge that, and I have to see that, and so my new mantra is

, “Keep calm and trust the team.” And also, “Keep calm and thank the team.”

**Mia Birdsong:** You know, one of the things I feel like I’ve heard in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement more than anywhere else is about being a leaderful movement, and that’s such a beautiful concept, and I think that something that women often bring to the conversation about leadership is really the collective piece. What about you, Alicia?

**Alicia Garza:** Yeah … How many of you heard that saying that leadership is lonely? I think that there is an element where leadership is lonely, but I also believe that it doesn’t have to be like that. And in order for us to get to that point, I think there’s a few things that we need to be doing. So one is we have to stop treating leaders like superheroes. We are ordinary people attempting to do extraordinary things, and so we need to be supported in that way. The other thing that I’ve learned about leadership is that there’s a difference between leadership and celebrities, right? And there’s a way in which we’ve been kind of transformed into celebrities rather than people who are trying to solve a problem. And the way that we treat celebrities is very fickle, right? We like them one day, we don’t like what they’re wearing the next day, and all of a sudden we have issues, right? So we need to stop deifying leaders so that more people will step into leadership. Lots of people are terrified to step into leadership because of how much scrutiny they receive and how brutal we are with leaders. And then the last thing that I’ve learned about leadership is that it’s really easy to be a leader when everybody likes you. But it’s hard to be a leader when you have to make hard choices and when you have to do what’s right, even though people are not going to like you for it. And so in that way, I think another way that we can support leaders is to struggle with us, but struggle with us politically, not personally. We can have disagreements without being disagreeable, but it’s important for us to sharpen each other, so that we all can rise.

**Mia Birdsong:** That’s beautiful, thank you. (Applause) So you all are doing work that forces you to face some brutal, painful realities on a daily basis. What gives you hope and inspires you in that context?

**Patrisse Cullors:** I am hopeful for black futures. And I say that because we live in a society that’s so obsessed with black death. We have images of our death on the TV screen, on our Twitter timelines, on our Facebook timelines, but what if instead we imagine black life? We imagine black people living and thriving. And that — that inspires me.

**Opal Tometi:** What inspires me these days are immigrants. Immigrants all over the world who are doing the best that they can to make a living, to survive and also to thrive. Right now there are over 244 million people who aren’t living in their country of origin. This is a 40 percent increase since the year 2000. So what this tells me is that the disparities across the globe are only getting worse. Yet there are people who are finding the strength and wherewithal to travel, to move, to eke out a better living for themselves and to provide for their families and their loved ones. And some of these people who are immigrants are also undocumented. They’re unauthorized. And they inspire me even more because although our society is telling them, you’re not wanted, you’re not needed here, and they’re highly vulnerable and subject to abuse, to wage theft, to exploitation and xenophobic attacks, many of them are also beginning to organize in their communities. And what I’m seeing is that there’s also an emerging network of black, undocumented people who are resisting the framework, and resisting the criminalization of their existence. And that to me is incredibly powerful and inspires me every single day.

**Mia Birdsong:** Thank you. Alicia?

**Alicia Garza:** So we know that young people are the present and the future, but what inspires me are older people who are becoming transformed in the service of this movement. We all know that as you get older, you get a little more entrenched in your ways. It’s happening to me, I know that’s right. But I’m so inspired when I see people who have a way that they do things, have a way that they think about the world, and they’re courageous enough to be open to listening to what the experiences are of so many of us who want to live in a world that’s just and want to live in a world that’s equitable. And I’m also inspired by the actions that I’m seeing older people taking in service of this movement. I’m inspired by seeing older people step into their own power and leadership and say, “I’m not passing a torch, I’m helping you light the fire.” (Applause)

**Mia Birdsong:** I love that — yes. So, in terms of action, I think it’s awesome to sit here and be able to listen to you all, and to have our minds open and shift, but that’s not going to get black people free. If you had one thing you would like this audience and the folks who are watching around the world to actually do, what would that be?

**Alicia Garza:** OK, two quick ones. One, call the White House. The water protectors are being forcibly removed from the camp that they have set up to defend what keeps us alive. And that is intricately related to black lives. So definitely call the White House and demand that they stop doing that. There are tanks and police officers arresting every single person there as we speak. (Applause)

**Alicia Garza:**The second thing that you can do is to join something. Be a part of something. There are groups, collectives—doesn’t have to be a non-profit, you know what I mean? But there are groups that are doing work in our communities right now to make sure that black lives matter so all lives matter. Get involved; don’t sit on your couch and tell people what you think they should be doing. Go do it with us.

**Mia Birdsong:**Do you guys want to add anything? That’s good? All right. So, and I think that joining something, like if you feel like there’s not something where you are, start it.

**Alicia Garza:**Start it.

**Mia Birdsong:**These conversations that we’re having, have those conversations with somebody else. And then instead of just letting it be a talk that you had, actually decide to start something.

**Opal Tometi:**That’s right.

**Mia Birdsong:**I mean, that’s what you all did. You started something, and look what’s happened. Thank you all so much for being here with us today.

**Opal Tometi:**Thank you. (Applause)

Attribution

Transcript for “An Interview with the Founders of Black Lives Matter” by TED is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 10.1a, Isaiah – Voices of Long COVID

I got COVID in October 2020, and three weeks later, I started having long-term problems. Before I got sick, I would dance a lot. I used to be able to dance all day, but now just getting up gives me chest pain. The best way I can describe it is pretty much having an elephant on your chest, and you have no way to move it, no way to relieve the pressure. It’s just there constantly.

I used to be a healthy and strong member of the Air Force, but now I struggle lifting anything over five pounds. I have a lot of nausea, dizziness, and a racing heart. And I can’t comprehend words at times. This has honestly been a very scary journey. How do I adjust my life for this?

I’m sharing my long COVID story because I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the best way to prevent long COVID.

[Music]

Attribution

Transcript for “Isaiah – Voices of Long COVID” by Resolve to Save Lives is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 10.1b, Inside a Long COVID Clinic: “I look normal, but my body is breaking down”

I’ve got loads of pain down here, but at the same time, I’m sort of like, I’m alive, you know?

Long COVID is a difficult post-viral syndrome that seems to have a number of underlying mechanisms and causes a really wide range of symptoms.

I can’t hold things, I can’t open things. Yeah, like, I look normal, but I feel like my body is totally breaking down inside.

Smell is more prominent now than it was four, five, six months ago. Just held her hand, tell how much I loved her.

How fatigued would you say your legs are? They are exhausted; it’s actually really upsetting.

You’re worried about if you’ll be able to go back to work, if I’ll be able to pick up my kids again and play with them normally.

Hello, thank you very much for coming, it’s lovely to see you. I’m Dr. Melissa Heightman, and I’m a consultant respiratory physician at UCLH. We’re in our post-COVID clinic where we see patients referred either by their GP with post-COVID complications or patients who’ve been discharged from our hospital after severe illness with COVID.

So I remember you had COVID back in October. In the beginning, I think I mentioned to you, I thought it was muscular because I’m normally quite active, and I’d been lying in bed for so long. Maybe about a fortnight or three weeks later, it was so bad I thought I was having a heart attack.

I can’t write, like, I tried to write a wedding anniversary card to my husband. It took me about 40 minutes, and I can’t hold things, I can’t open things. My parents are in Canada, I can’t hold my phone to FaceTime with them. – OK. I can’t rub my son’s back when I’m putting him to sleep.

And in your questionnaire, you also talked about fatigue, palpitations, muscle aches, joint aches, tummy pain, diarrhea. I think I ticked everything, sorry. Things have not been good, and that’s really familiar for us as post-COVID doctors that people have a large number of symptoms.

Hi Larry, do you want to come on in? Grab a seat. Thank you. Larry, I’m Charlotte, I’m one of the physiotherapists. We actually met a long time ago, didn’t we? When you were on the intensive care unit. It was indeed. It’s very nice to see you today. – Thank you. Now, how have you been since you went home? I’ve made reasonably steady progress since then, the only real issue I’ve got is the mobility one.

But even that considering when I was first transferred from Queen Square to St Pancras for the rehabilitation, I was having to be hoisted from bed to wheelchair, and I couldn’t even, I couldn’t stand up, and I couldn’t certainly move at all, you know, I couldn’t walk at all. I mean, when I’m walking, you know, sort of walk as if I’ve had a few, you know… So your balance is still a bit …? – Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which isn’t a great look at half past eight in the morning. I’m sure.

So probably one of the most surprising things to us was that we thought that the only patients who’d run into problems would be those who’d been admitted to the hospital. But that’s actually turned out to not be the case, and we’ve been learning, you know, as we go along about what are the right tests to do, what’s the right approach with therapists, with medicines.

You might want to take your coat off. OK, ready, steady, go. 20… 21 and stop. … and then they’ve all been quite different, one of them smelled like glue.

Hiya, yeah, come through. After you. First left. What’s amazing is, nearly a year since this all started, isn’t it? Yeah, absolutely. April last year, I just developed a cough, and bizarrely enough, I was just doing some gardening and I was planting some mint, and I couldn’t smell them. So I said to my wife, probably the shop sent me dodgy ones because I can’t smell them at all. It was very, very bizarre, it gradually got worse, got more tired, fatigued, lethargic; the cough got worse. Eventually ended up in casualty, recovered after about two weeks, maybe three weeks. Gradually started realizing that my smell is not back at all; what I’ve noticed recently is the sulfur burp taste, sort of burnt toast smell is more prominent now than it was four, five, six months ago.

I mean, I work in the medical profession, and I often, if I’m getting me in my clients I could smell body odor or their feet. I can’t smell it at all, which is advantageous in a way, sorry patients.

Good, so close your eyes. Can you smell it? – No. Can you smell this? No. – OK. A couple of them just remind me what the horrible smells like when I eat cucumber.

So we’re going to start at one end and then you’re going to walk all the way down the corridor, turn around, come back… The aim of the test is to walk as far as you can, so there’s many laps in six minutes so, therefore, go quite fast but I don’t want you running. Three, two, one, go. And stop where you are.

Right now, right at the very end when you stop, how would you rate your breathing, your breathlessness on that scale? Eight or nine. And what about your legs? How fatigued would you say your legs are? They are exhausted; it’s actually really upsetting. On that scale of zero to ten, so zero nothing, ten is the worst… Ten.

Like, I look normal, but I feel like my body is like totally breaking down inside and I know like, people would see other people walking this and think like, oh you know she can walk like she’s, you know, but for me, it’s not the same thing.

My wife was diagnosed with cancer on the January last year and then in around about the middle of March, I began to feel really unwell. All this happened in early April, and I knew nothing until the beginning of June when I regained consciousness. But then once I started to recover, I recovered very quickly speaking to my wife three or four times a day, I’ve made arrangements through and the consultancy was saying we can try and get you back to see her and then before that happened, she took a sudden turn for the worse, I spoke to the consultant at the National Hospital, he said leave it with me, they came back within half an hour, ‘we’re taking you back in the morning.’ Took me back to see her and I mean, they had to send a nurse as well to look after me because technically I was still very seriously ill. But I spent about two hours with her. The ambulance people just went all through and said take as long as you want and I just held her hand, spoke for about two hours, just talking nonsense, telling how much I loved her. It was a very best ethos in the national health service, it was almost almost like the reason why it was founded it was a demonstration of that and I’ll always be so grateful to everyone at Queen’s Square for what they’ve done, for the kindness and the compassion that they showed, it was incredible, it was incredible. And I’ll never forget that and my wife, she died the following morning, she died the next morning.

If I reflect back what we thought we would find at the beginning compared to what we’ve actually found now sort of we’re nearly a year down the line, it’s a real surprise. Typically the patients going home from the hospital if they get the right rehabilitation support are getting better and better as time goes on, whereas a patient with that long COVID pattern who may never have been into the hospital can actually have a much more difficult journey.

Thanks, guys, thank you. What I hope is going to get better going forward is that we’ll recognize it more quickly, get the right tests done earlier on and get the treatment strategies right earlier on because I think it really does make a difference to the longer-term outcome.

Attribution

Transcript for “Inside a Long Covid clinic: “I look normal, but my body is breaking down” by The Guardian is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 11.1, Coronavirus and addiction recovery

“I teach for a theatre, I also bartend, and I do stand-up comedy. All three of those are casualties of this pandemic, so I am now unemployed, and filling my time is necessary.”

In this isolation of the Coronavirus pandemic, all challenges are unique.

“I’m over 18 years clean and sober, so recovery for me isn’t just not using. It’s trying to get to meetings where you can get that support, and a lot of that support has been cut off because a lot of those meetings are not available anymore.”

For many struggling with addiction, in-person group meetings have long been a lifeline. Now as CDC warnings against large gatherings have forced many meetings to shut down, those in recovery are worried.

The isolation, the unemployment, all these things, it’s just more logs on that fire. It’s just one more reason to be like, “Eh, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”

“I work in a couple of fields where I’m around vice a lot, and that is not a dicey situation for me. You know, idle time where your mind can run away with you and start excusing things, that’s a little bit more dicey.”

“Yo!” – “What’s up?” – “How are you?” – “We are doing well.”

Peter Bergen is keeping in close touch with his cousin Jack Sandhaas. He’s also a recovering addict.

“There is a tremendous amount of uncertainty, and with that comes tremendous anxiety. And so when people are anxious, they’re looking to quell and calm that. People don’t like feeling uncomfortable in their skin. They look a relief, a release, a way to escape. “No one’s looking. No one’s looking for me. I don’t have to show up at work. I have way too much idle time. I can’t go to meetings.”

But Sandhaas says there are other ways to stay connected and find strength.

“If you’re an alcoholic who’s isolating, you need to pick up the phone. You need to become proactive. We got to be creative. Thank God we still have Internet access. Thank God we still have cellphones, you know? We’re not out of power. We’re not out of hope.” – “All right, man.”

“Yeah, just thinking of, like, who would I want to spend the end of the world with, like, you know?”

Rebecca Rush, Dustin David, and Mary Tobon have decided to self-quarantine together so they can keep meeting and help each other stay sober.

“It’s almost impossible to get sober by yourself. You need other people that have been through what you’ve been through, or else you’re just screwed.”

They’ve also been reaching out to others in recovering online and through social media.

“Being able to connect via Zoom, where they usually have, like, online conferences, and to shift that into, like, a recovery format has helped a lot, you know, to be able to see people in different places and feel, you know, more connected. If you want to be sober bad enough and you seek that connection, like, you’ll find it. Like, it’s there. And to be able to have the immediacy of social media and fortunate to live in a time where we can do that–There are a lot more resources now than there were 5 years ago, 10 years ago, you know, 50 years ago. So it’s actually the best time to be doing it, even if you can’t get out there and meet up with other people in person.”

“We’re in a season of Lent, which is a time to be reflective, a time to kind of pare things down, to make things simple as we anticipate and as we wait, but rarely do we have an opportunity to do it quite like this.”

At the Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington, D.C., worship services, choir practice, and preschool have all been canceled, but the church has decided to keep its door open to the recovery groups downstairs.

“We offer them cleaning supplies, hand sanitizer. We also encourage them to take their own precautions and procedures to stop the spread. If that meant not holding hands during Serenity Prayer, that meant sitting 6 feet apart or 10 feet apart, but we wanted to be able to offer the space to them. It is very heartbreaking that we aren’t able to meet physically as a community, but it would be, I feel, hope-breaking to mandate that a recovery group couldn’t meet as a group together, should they choose that for themselves. It does mean something to gather and to have hope and to have this devotion of loving neighbor and being a part of something bigger than yourself.”

“It’s hard. It’s not the same. There is something nice about sitting in a room and looking around and seeing all those people, you know? It’s kind of like a family, you know? We — We’ve all been there on some level or another, and we can just look around the room and, you know, we’re here. We’re getting better.”

It’s a process that has always been hard, Bergen says. The isolation of this new pandemic is another challenge.

“One day at a time. Especially now, like — It’s changing every day. Long-term, that’s harder to conceive. Let’s get through the day, and then, you know, tomorrow, we’ll try again.”

Attribution

Transcript for “Coronavirus and addiction recovery: Fighting isolation to stay sober” by The Washington Post is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 11.4, What Is the Drug War?

In 1986 when I was coming of age, Ronald Reagan doubled down on the War on Drugs that had been started by Richard Nixon in 1971. Drugs were bad, fried your brain. And drug dealers were monsters, the sole reason neighborhoods and major cities were failing. No one wanted to talk about Reaganomics and the ending of social safety nets, the defunding of schools, and the loss of jobs in cities across America. Young men like me who hustled became the sole villain and drug addicts lacked moral fortitude.

In the 1990s, incarceration rates in the U.S. blew up. Today we imprison more people than any other country in the world. China, Russia, Iran, Cuba–all countries we consider autocratic and repressive. Yeah, more than them. Judges’ hands were tied by “tough on crime” laws and they were forced to hand out mandatory life sentences for simple possession and low-level drug sales. My home state of New York started this with Rockefeller Laws. Then the Feds made distinctions between people who sold powder cocaine and crack cocaine, even though they were the same drug. Only difference is how you take it. And even though White people used and sold crack more than Black people, somehow it was Black people who went to prison. The media ignored actual data. To this day, crack is still talked about as a Black problem.

The NYPD raided our Brooklyn neighborhoods while Manhattan bankers openly used coke with impunity. The War on Drugs exploded the U.S. prison population disproportionately locking away Black and Latinos. Our prison population grew more than 900%. When the War on Drugs began in 1971, our prison population was 200,000. Today it is over 2 million.

Long after the crack era ended, we continued our war on drugs. There were more than 1.5 million drug arrests in 2014. More than 80% were for possession only. Almost half were for marijuana. People are finally talking about treating an addiction to harder drugs as a health crisis, but there’s no compassionate language about drug dealers. Unless, of course, we’re talking about places like Colorado, whose state economy got a huge boost by the above-ground marijuana industry. A few states south in Louisiana, they’re still handing out mandatory sentences to people who sell weed.

Despite a booming and celebrated $50 billion legal marijuana industry, most states still disproportionately hand out mandatory sentences to Black and Latinos with drug cases. If you’re entrepreneurial and live in one of the many states that are passing legalized laws, you may still face barriers to participating in the above ground economy. Venture capitalists migrate to these states to open multi-billion dollar operations, but former felons can’t open a dispensary. Lots of times those felonies were drug charges, caught by poor people who sold drugs for a living, but are now prohibited from participating in one of the fastest growing economies. Got it?

In states like New York, where holding marijuana is no longer grounds for arrest, police issue possession citations in Black and Latino neighborhoods at a far higher rate than other neighborhoods. Kids in Crown Heights are constantly stopped and ticketed for trees. Kids at dorms in Columbia, where rates of marijuana use are equal to or worse than those in the hood, are never targeted or ticketed. Rates of drug use are as high as they were when Nixon declared this so-called war in 1971. Forty-five years later, it’s time to rethink our policies and laws. The War on Drugs is an epic fail.

Attribution

Transcript for “What is the Drug War? With Jay-Z & Molly Crabapple” by Drug Policy Alliance is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 11.15, “Deaths of despair” are surging in white America

Our paper that came out in 2015 looked at the fact that, after a century of progress on mortality, toward the end of the 20th century mortality rates for white, non-Hispanics in the U.S. started to move in the wrong direction. And this put us at odds with other rich countries, it put us at odds with other English-speaking countries, where in middle age, mortality continues to fall at about two percent a year, and in America, that stopped happening.

We tried to dig deeper to find out what the heck is going on here, and what we’re finding is that for every successive birth cohort, so people born say in 1960, relative to the 1950, or 1980 relative to 1970, what we call “deaths of despair”- deaths from suicide, from drug overdose, from alcohol-related liver diseases, are on the upswing, and each successive birth cohort looks like they’re at higher risk.

There really is a decline of the American working class, which reached its hay day with the blue-collar aristocrats of the early 1970, with good union jobs, a job you could get where you got on the promotion line and you got a promotion every year and you, you know, you built a middle class life for yourself and your family and that gave a whole mode of existence, which was very important to people, and achieving that mode of existence has become harder and harder.

The popular press has been saying that this is a rural problem, or this is a problem in Appalachia, and indeed that is true, but by geography this is happening throughout the U.S. Mortality rates, overall, are rising in almost every state, New Jersey, New York, California being the only exceptions. So this is a problem in cities, it’s a problem in suburbs, it’s a problem in rural areas and the people who are really getting hammered are people with less education.

It’s almost as if now there are two Americas: one for people who went to college and one for people who didn’t, and it’s the people who didn’t go to college who are actually facing these larger mortality rates.

The opioid crisis in America, it certainly is an accelerant to what’s been going on. There are enough prescriptions written for heavy-duty painkillers now in America to feed every adult in America around the clock for a month.

This paper for Brookings has already filled my email box this morning with letters from people who wanted to tell us their stories about people they’ve lost to suicide, people they’ve lost to drugs, or their own fears about growing old and not having enough resources.

We’ve got a very vulnerable group here that’s been very badly hurt in lots of ways. These people in middle age, say from 50-54, 45-54, and when we’re talking about health and health insurance it’s very important to make sure these people are protected, and I think when people are thinking about health reform, which there’s a lot of discussion about health reform these days, they should certainly look at our paper and realize what is happening to these people already, and take that into account when they design new systems, so I think that’s very important.

Attribution

Transcript for “Deaths of Despair Are Surging’ in White America” by Brookings Institution is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 11.17, Transformation: The Alchemy of Harm Reduction

[Music]

Um, harm-reduction just on, on a fundamental level is just common sense. It’s about keeping people safe and you know if one that one accepts it, to some extent the preservation of life is perhaps the greatest value we live by and that the preservation of health is closely related to that harm reduction means it’s about keeping people safe and it especially applies to keeping people safe when they are drawn to, for one reason or another, engaging in risky behaviors. So harm reduction is bicycle helmets and motorcycle helmets, harm reduction is seatbelts, harm reduction is safer roads, harm reduction has clean needles rather than sharing, you know, needles that are no longer sterile. Harm reduction is naloxone for

people who may overdose, harm reduction is really anything that helps to reduce

the risk of activity that human beings engage in.

There’s something very powerful about saying, “I want to save your life. I don’t want to fix you.” Like, um, and just giving somebody a clean needle or something else that will just help them in what they want to do often opens the door for larger transformation because people start to feel more valued and feel more worthwhile and feel like, “Well, somebody thinks I deserve to live. Maybe I should investigate this more.” And you also see a lot of times people who do needle exchange or work in needle exchange programs are in recovery themselves. So the people who show up for service, if they’re like, “Well, how did you quit?” and that opens the door. So there’s many different ways that it can be a very, very powerful way to help people and even if they never get into recovery, a lot of times people who become engaged in needle exchange will dramatically reduce the harm around their addictions

because they feel more valued and because they have the tools that they need to protect themselves.

Well, this is our syringe exchange. This is kind of how it starts. So people will come in here, they’ll grab a bag and they’ll take whatever they need from here. Up here, safer sex supplies and down here, safer injection plugs. You have the gauze, the cotton, two different types

of cookers, lots of different types of condoms, also flavored lube. And regularly out here, we have a lot of just kind of information, some of it that we make, like mainly our safer injection guide, but also other resources that other people can access from other places, other community partners, stuff about the actual drugs that people are using. So it’s kind of like a catch-all for a lot of stuff in here. Most people will come right through our doors and come straight in here to access orange exchange services, and they’ll show us their syringe exchange card with their code on it. This is a blank one, and if they have dirty syringes, though, and end up in here and if they’re used syringes, they have lots of them in a box or in a safe sharps container, they’ll end up right in here in this basket. So mostly people will come in and ask for whatever type of syringes they need, and the person who’s working in here, either a volunteer or intern, sometimes I’m in here, and they will get these. These are the most common syringes we have, CCS, so we usually give these out two at a time. Some other syringes that people enjoy the blue tips and here the tips used to be blue, now they’re orange, but people like to pop the cap off of them and so they can fill it with other stuff and then some of the other syringes we have are the three CCS and these are mostly for people who are utilizing intramuscular shots. So if you’re shooting steroids or you’re shooting methadone or any corner, sort of like hormones, a little easier for our transplant so these are big amongst our population.

All the services are free of charge and anonymous. Some of the other things that we give out are hygiene supplies and so it makes a difference to tell someone, “Hey, it’s a good idea to safe–safely inject, clean the wound, pretty clearly swipe alcohol in the right way, do all of that stuff that we teach people,” but not have a place to shower or brush your teeth or things like that, so they give out basic necessities: soaps, combs, tampons, active antibacterial wipes, things like that, other stuff that we give out outside of just safer injection.

Attribution

Transcript for “Transformation: The Alchemy of Harm Reduction” by Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 11.19, A Small-Town Plague: A New Approach to Opioid Addiction

“When I first realized that I needed help, I had no one to turn to. Being in a small town, once you’re known for being an addict, it’s always going to be a label for you.”

The opioid crisis is killing tens of thousands every single year. This is not an Appalachian problem, this is a contagion. It is spreading. It’s like a plague.

**CADS Program**

“I’m Nikki King. I’m from the CADS program in Ripley County, Indiana.

We’re located in the Ripley County Courthouse, which is in Versailles.

We are an eight-month program. So it’s pretty intense. It includes an intensive outpatient program. So that is nine hours of therapy a week. We also do individual therapy. We do family therapy. We do dietetic consults. We do peer recovery coaching.

We don’t really believe in substance use as a disease in and of itself.

It’s usually the symptom of a lot of different things that are happening with that person.

Be it trauma or mental illness or systemic failures of the safety net in rural communities.

So we look at, how do you address all of that at once?”

“Thank you, thank you.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I go all over the country helping people do this.

So I would love to help you guys if you need me.

**Ripley County**

Ripley County is very close-knit.

Everybody knows each other.

It’s a slower pace.

When I first moved here five years ago, there was so much of, “Well, we had that one overdose, but that doesn’t happen here.”

And then it happened more and it happened more and it happened more, and now people are just starting to get to the panic.

It’s one of the first times that you have a rural community hospital pairing up with a criminal justice organization and saying, “How do we actually work together on even footing?”

And I think that makes CADS really special. You don’t see that anywhere else.

We have our strong suits. We have our quirks. And when you put us together, we amplify each other’s quirks and amplify each other’s strong suits. Which is why it’s successful.

But at the same time, that’s why it’s always a challenge.

**All right, our treatment updates.**

Let’s talk about our most recent client who just got released from D.O.C. We pulled together all the people who represent different resources in our community, and we point them at the patients and say, “Here’s what they need, how are we going to make it happen?” And we don’t leave the room until it does.

Alright, let’s look at our phase three.

I know that we’re pretty backed up right now on new appointments with Dr. Dull, so it might be an extended wait before we can get a new patient in with him. We are looking at extending his time.

Before we had CADS, people would just get arrested and they’d be sent to probation and probation would try to find some kind of treatment, but it wasn’t there. And so they’d end up right back where they started. Then, the cycle repeats itself over and over and over

until they die.

**Peer to Recovery**

Now that we do have treatment, it’s created a new way.

Kenny was one of the first people who came out of the program. Believe it or not, he was kind of quiet.

“The first time I used, it was the most euphoric, like, rush I had ever felt in my life, and I knew then that I was not gonna stop. There was a lot of stuff that probably played into it. Like, family problems, anxiety, depression. Well, like, ’cause after I quit doing drugs and stuff, I got on this big nutritious kick and we make hella smoothies and shit now. A lot of smoothies. I didn’t have friends or family to fall back on. Everyone was just fed up with me, and then I got arrested on top of that. My probation officer said that I needed to be into this program regardless of whether I wanted to or not.”

“In Ripley County, there is still a real stigma around drug abuse. I feel like so many of these problems are super fixable and I get really frustrated that nobody else sees that. I get really frustrated that nobody else is willing to try. I get away with some of my feistiness for being Appalachian. If you’ve been around Appalachians a lot, it’s just expected. We get fired up easy.

“I think people know that Eastern Kentucky was pretty much ground zero for the opioid epidemic. It was hard to grow up and watch Disney Channel shows where you have these suburban kids who live these fantastic lives and you feel like it’s a fantasy. By the time that I was 12, at one of my friend’s birthday parties, I found her mom passed out. I don’t think there’s anybody in any rural community in the country that hasn’t lost someone.”

“Alright, so this is just peers in recovery helping peers in recovery, man. We get together, we help each other. And it’s just how we get better.”

“There’s actually four people with us tonight in phase three of CADS and they graduate March 11th. So, pretty awesome.”

“I guess one of my biggest regrets through my addiction would be not being a parent. Putting dope, men, money, careless, reckless actions before my kids. I have to live with that. So I was one of them functioning addicts that never thought it was a problem, right? The people that disconnect themselves or stop reaching out, they relapse, they go to institutions, or they die. Seeing those successes, seeing people who come in at the end of the program and they’re alive, they’re healthy, they’re having dreams.”

“We are Versailles, Indiana. We are living proof.”

“Those moments are super cool. You kind of start to see these glimpses of a future. So, for the CADS participants so far, we have achieved one year and six months where nobody has died. Now, I just need it to be the whole county, and then I need it to be the state, and then I need it to be the country.”

“I am a manager at McDonald’s. I get there at, like, 2:40 a.m.”

“Gosh, it snowed a lot.”

“After, like, a lot of therapy and a lot of ups and a lot of downs, I’ve been sober for about a year and a half.”

“It’s like fuckin’ Alaska out here. It’s gonna be a good day.”

“I never really thought that I would be in a situation like this. I thought I was just gonna be like my dad and just bum out for the rest of my life. But I didn’t. I’m back.”

Attribution

Transcript for “A Small-Town Plague: A New Approach to Opioid Addiction” by The Atlantic is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 12.1, Rosalind’s Story: Living with Serious Mental Illness and Alcoholism

[Music]

My name is Rosalind Evans. I was born in 1959, and I was born in Los Angeles, California. My mom married my stepdad, and it was a lot of turmoil because it was such an abusive home living with my stepfather. I would go to school, and I would think, dang, what if I call and my mom’s dead? You know, in my mind, I’m always thinking he’s going to kill her one day. He’s going to hit her. He’s going to kill her, and I wasn’t able to really concentrate in school or anything. I was told I was a problem child.

When I was 12, my mom had me admitted into mental health inpatient because I tried to slash my wrists in a restroom because the fighting was going on in the house. I was told I was bipolar. I really didn’t understand what was meant. My mom didn’t really follow up on it. My people didn’t believe in that. They didn’t believe in this mental illness stuff. I’d get the medicine, throw it away, go back with my normal life. And then I found alcohol. That became my medicine. It started off as fun because I could get up and dance and I could fit in a crowd, and you know, but it slowly turned into nightmares.

[Music]

It’s a bad combination, bipolar alcoholism. I am a miracle. I am lucky to be alive because when I don’t take my meds and when I drink, I can wind up anywhere. I can wind up in anybody’s house, you know? I have put myself in very dangerous situations. When you’re homeless and you don’t have anywhere to live and you’re mentally ill, and it’s hard to find proper treatment, I felt like a person’s just a piece of trash, just being thrown away and kicked out of hospitals. They give you some medication, and you’re sent on your way with nowhere to go, nobody to turn to that understands you. The breakthrough for me was when I got housing.

[Music]

I work for Riverside University Health System Behavioral Health, and the program I work for is called Hope. And Hope’s goal and mission and vision are to support those who are living on the streets and help them get from the street into housing, connect them with services, and to help them get self-sufficient.

So they’re going to give you a prescription, and we’re going to take it to the farm Friday. Yeah, I was assigned a case manager, a therapist, a psychiatrist, a substance abuse counselor, a team that came together to give me support, and I didn’t have that for years. There’s a whole continuum of care that’s happening. I’ve known Rosalind about a year now. I’m her peer support specialist. I’m also her case manager. On-site at her apartment complex, there is transparency between myself and the rest of the treatment team. And if I recognize that there’s an issue or a concern about what Rosalind is going through one day, I will immediately reach out and let them know that she needs some further support.

And there are people that stomp on you and they want, you’ve been busted in the head, you’ve been raped, you, these are the kind of things that could put you down to make you say, what am I trying to do? Nothing, you know, what am I trying to prove? I’ve been this way all these years. I might as well stay this way. When I relapse emotionally, I would stop taking my medicine. And once I stopped taking my medicine, then comes the drink, forget the medicine, it’s all alcohol. My mom is dead. I don’t have any brothers and sisters. I’m an only child. My children are all in another state. I did not raise them. So my caregiver steps in and encouraged me, “Rosalind, did you take your medicine today?”

When I get on those lows, “Rosalind, you know you have a doctor’s appointment. It’s important that you see the doctor.” That’s played an important role in my life. Relapse is part of recovery sometimes, but it has to be looked at as more of a bump in the road. It’s very important to have continuity. There needs to be a confidence on her side that there will still be that support that she needs. And I think that that’s vital, that there’s a safety net for her and she doesn’t have to go back to the streets, no matter what.

When I see Rosalind, she’s like the picture of the recovery model because she just picks up and keeps going. And that gives me hope. I have made a lot of mistakes, but thank God I’m not a mistake. I want my children to know that I love them very, very dearly and I believe that they’re at an age now that they understand that their mom is diagnosed with a mental illness as well as an addiction of alcohol. My diagnosis is bipolar disorder. It’s a chemical imbalance in the brain. I’m not in denial anymore, and it’s led me to where I’m at now. It’s a lifelong thing. It’s not something you get your medicine and, okay, I don’t need to see you no more for my life. I will stay in treatment.

Attribution

Transcript for “Rosalind’s Story: Living with Serious Mental Illness and Alcoholism ” by California Health Care Foundation is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 12.10, #TerpsTalk: Intersection of Race and Mental Health

Hi, I’m Dr. Michelle Garvin, Director of Clinical and Sports Psychology at the University of Maryland. Maryland Athletics is excited to host the Terps Talk series to provide education, increase conversation, and reduce stigma related to mental health.

Today we’re here with Dr. Carlton Green to discuss the intersection of race and mental health. Dr. Green, could you please take a minute to introduce yourself?

Sure, thank you for having me, Michelle. I’m Dr. Carlton Green. I am a licensed psychologist here in the state of Maryland, and at the University of Maryland, I serve as the Director of Diversity Training in Education in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Prior to being in this role, I was a staff psychologist in the counseling center for about five years.

Wonderful, we’re so excited to have you here with us this morning. We’ll just jump right into it. The first question we have for you is, thinking about the so many different identities that we have that intersect and influence our mental health and well-being, one of the things we’re wondering about today is the intersection between race and mental health. Could you talk for a little bit about how these two interact with one another and particularly how mental health outcomes may differ for minority populations?

Sure. It becomes really important for us to think about race as a social construct. Here in the United States, we often think about it as being really biologically based, but what we know from research is that there is nothing actually biological about race. We have created these racial groupings, and there are ways across history that some people have been moved into one racial group to make that racial group more powerful or to make it larger, but what I guess the emphasis here is that we are talking about really socially constructed groups, right?

When we think about race here in America, especially when it comes to mental health, what we know is that people of color are disproportionately affected by mental health in ways that result in negative outcomes, and there’s a lot of research about health disparities or mental health disparities that really get us to this. And some of those pieces could really look like when you think about the rates of depression, rates of depression for black folks and for Hispanic folks are much lower than they are for white people, but yet what we know is that depression is more persistent in black and Latino populations.

We also really think about people who identify as being more than one race, so multiracial or biracial people, they have a tendency to also report higher levels of mental health illness. We also know that American or Native Americans, indigenous people, have higher rates of alcohol and substance abuse as it applies to them. And then one of the other pieces that when we throw race into this conversation, we also know that white people generally die by suicide at higher rates than other populations, right? So there’s a way that race really affects all of us in this conversation, and the health disparities literature helps us to really understand how it is that we are being disproportionately affected according to the racial categories that we’ve been assigned or we assigned ourselves to.

So it sounds like it really is a pretty complex interaction; it’s not something that we can just look at and say this one population is impacted in this way. There’s a lot of different things to consider as we’re talking about this.

Yeah, I think that, you know, another way to think about what it is that you’re describing when it comes to the disparities is that one in five Americans will end up being diagnosed with the mental health illness according to the American Psychiatric Association, right? We know that white people constitute the largest group of Americans here in the United States, but we also know according to some statistics that came out from the American Psychiatric Association a few years ago is that only about 19% of white people might actually be diagnosed with a mental illness whereas about 20% of the Native American population might be diagnosed with a mental illness, and we think of Native Americans certainly as not being as large society-wise as white folks are, right? So you see there are even disparities in mental health diagnoses, and then what we also know is that it’s much more likely that people of color – black, indigenous, Latino folks, Asian folks – are less likely to actually get treatment than white folks are, right? So that’s another way that that the disparities play out, right?

And I wonder if you could speak a little bit more toward that… thinking about how people of color are less likely to seek treatment or get treatment. Can you tell us a little bit about what you think might underlie that?

Yeah, I mean there are so many pieces here, right, that factor into this. One of the things that I think is a little bit controversial to talk about sometimes is that we like to talk about race being one of the barriers when in fact what it is that racism is one of the barriers, right? It’s about the disproportionate treatment that people receive and when I’m talking about racism, especially on our campus, I use Dr. Camara Jones’s definition where she says that racism is a system that structures opportunity often in favor of white people and it also places more value on the bodies and the beliefs and the values of white people, right? And so there are ways that we think about racism being baked into the mental health system.

If you think about who are mental health providers disproportionately, they are going to be white folks, right? If you think about the training that we receive as mental health professionals, most of what we talk about really applies to white, middle-class, heterosexual, cisgender populations. When we’re getting trained we don’t often have real substantive conversations about treating people of color in mental health training right and then you have things like that that are really systemic in nature… well let me back up and say this, right: What I really want to emphasize there is that whiteness is so predominant in our mental health training that we don’t actually make room for talking about people of color or we don’t make room for talking about how whiteness and racism is actually impacting the mental health of people of color, right?

And I imagine one of the things that might lead to is even if people of color are able to access the resources it leads to maybe an inappropriate, an incorrect fit, or treatment that might not benefit them as much as it could.

Exactly which is where I was going to go to the next part right, so the data really bears out that more often than not people of color leave therapy earlier than white people do and a lot of the thinking around that is because of how racism might show up, and unintentionally for a lot of white therapists, but it shows up nonetheless, right? What we also know is that there’s a lot of systemic issues around this, right, the lack of insurance or even either people being under-insured.

We know that also a few years ago with probably even some people on our own campus in the psychology department or in the psychology program have produced some research that says that white clinicians or clinicians when they receive a call from potential clients they are less likely to call the client back to connect with them if they perceive that the client might be might be black, right? Based upon sort of like the tone of their voice or their name that they leave on the answering service for the clinician versus they’re much more likely to call back a client if they perceive that that person could be white right? So like there’s insurance or even either people being under-insured.

We know that also a few years ago with probably even some people on our own campus in the psychology department or in the psychology program have produced some research that says that white clinicians or clinicians when they receive a call from potential clients they are less likely to call the client back to connect with them if they perceive that the client might be might be black, right? Based upon sort of like the tone of their voice or their name that they leave on the answering service for the clinician versus they’re much more likely to call back a client if they perceive that that person could be white right? So like there’s insurance issues but they’re also just access issues that have a lot to do with the, with the clinicians, with clinicians ourselves, right?

If you think about just the lack of diversity among mental health providers I’ve already kind of touched on that you are getting into this issue of sort of like competent providers whether or not people actually have the confidence to address race or racial issues in treatment and what we know at least this is a part of what my research was on from my dissertation what we know is that for a lot of people of color, race is a really significant issue in our lives right? It is something that is personally meaningful to us. It provides us with a lot of pride when we experience difficulties in the world. There are ways that we rely on our racial backgrounds, our racial heritage, as a source of being able to get through different struggles right?

And so when you show up to therapy as your whole self you may want to talk about race or you may want to talk about racism…what we know is that a lot of therapists, especially white therapists, don’t receive the training to be able to learn how to talk about racism without sort of, like, shutting down or getting really personal or getting defensive. In the context of therapy what that has led to is probably a real mistrust in health service provisions, whether that is in medical settings or in mental health settings, people of color know that there’s a possibility that they could show up somewhere and a person won’t be able to talk about race well, right, and so it leads to mistrust.

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Transcript for “#TERPSTALK: Intersection of Race and Mental Health” by Maryland Athletics is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 12.12, Teen Intersectionality Series: Mental Health & Gender

Hi, my name is Dylan Reed, and I’m from Vancouver, Canada. The term I identify most with right now is gender fluid non-binary, and what this means is I know I don’t identify as either a boy or a girl, but my gender identity and expression often shifts without hitting either binary.

**Who am I**

My pronouns are they, them, theirs, and I’m a first-year art student at Emily Carr. I’m studying at Emily Carr to refine my art skills to become a tattoo artist. I’ve been out as non-binary for about a year and a half now, and I’m here today to talk about intersectionality.

For those of us who have never heard the word before, intersectionality is the interconnected nature of social categorizations like race, class, and gender overlapping in an individual group and creating an imbalance in the systems of power and oppression.

Intersectionality occurs in my life when talking about my gender and how it related to my mental illness. About a year ago, I was hospitalized for hearing voices, hallucinating, and experiencing delusions. When I was in the hospital, I was assigned a psychiatrist who attempted to and successfully convinced my parents that my gender identity was a side effect of my mental illness.

In today’s society, many people still believe that there are only two genders, that you can only be a boy or a girl. So having my gender questioned and dismissed was something I was used to at that point. When my psychiatrist challenged my gender, it was the first time I thought of my being trans as something that could be cured or something that was wrong with me, and it created a lot of self-doubt in myself and a lot of isolation and loneliness.

After I left the hospital, my care was transferred, and I was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and other specified dissociative disorder dash one.

**Mental Health**

A lot of those diagnoses sound really scary, and they were at first, but they were also weirdly validating because, for the first time in my life, I could explain why I felt so displaced, why all of my emotions didn’t make sense to me, and why I was always experiencing things that other people weren’t.

For me, my mental illness isn’t something that is a handicap to me; it’s not something that needs to be cured in my mind. It’s what makes me, me. It’s how my brain works, and just because it’s different from somebody else’s doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong.

It took me a while to get to the place that I’m at right now, and honestly, the biggest thing that helped me was a sense of community. I never would have been able to come out, and I never would have been able to have discovered anything about my gender identity if I hadn’t met my best friend. He took me to groups, he introduced me to people, and I was able to comfortably explore what it meant to be transgender and what it meant to be non-binary.

When people are questioning or figuring out parts of their identity, a sense of community is huge; it was huge for me, and it is huge for many people I know because nothing can be more crushing and damaging than that sense of isolation.

While I was lucky enough to easily find a community where I could explore my gender and my gender expression, I wasn’t so fortunate to find that community that I could relate to about my mental diagnosis. It wasn’t until I was on Facebook and I heard this spoken word poem that I really felt a connection to someone else in that aspect of my life. It was the first time that someone has adequately explained what it’s sort of like to be in my brain, and to me, it was incredible, and that had never happened to me before in my entire life.

**Outro**

So the reason I made this video is that when Gender Spectrum told me about their project, I couldn’t wait for the opportunity to do for others what others had done for me. No one should feel alone when it comes to stuff like gender and mental illness because both are equally hard and both, I think, rely on a strong sense of community. Because there are 7 billion people on this earth, and we are all unique but we’re all interconnected.

So wherever you are in your life right now, you are not alone. I hope you check out the rest of the website because there are amazing resources on here. Gender Spectrum is run by a bunch of amazing people, and I hope you enjoyed this video, and I’ll see you next time.

Attribution

Transcript for “Teen Intersectionality Series: Mental Health & Gender” by Gender Spectrum is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 13.2, Dying of Coronavirus: A Family’s Painful Goodbye

It’s Thursday morning, and we’re at the North Shore University Hospital, just across the border from Queens on Long Island. I’m Sheri Fink. I’m a correspondent at The New York Times, and I’ve been reporting on the coronavirus pandemic.

“Hello.”

“Hello.”

This is a tiny little office in the intensive care unit.

“I just want you to tell us a little bit about her.”

And what’s happening in this office right now is that a doctor and a social worker, Dr. Eric Gottesman and social worker Elisa Vicari, they’re connecting on a conference call with the family of a patient. Her name is Carmen Evelia Toro. She is the beloved matriarch of a family that stretches across South America and North America. They don’t have a lot of hope for her to recover from this very severe lung damage that she suffered from the coronavirus. And they want to talk with the family about what to do next.

“And it’s not like her lungs have collapsed. They’re just very stiff, kind of like an old sponge that won’t work anymore. We are trying right now a last-ditch effort to give her some high-dose steroids to see if we can get her lungs any less stiff. If they don’t work, there’s nothing else really that we can do to help her.”

Because of the coronavirus and the risk of contagion, family members aren’t being allowed in the intensive care unit. And so Elisa Vicari is going into Ms. Toro’s room and then she’s connecting with Ms. Toro’s family so that they can actually see their loved one. And they’re wondering if maybe this is goodbye because they don’t know how long she’ll live.

Ms. Toro’s family is scattered across the U.S. and in Colombia. With the pandemic, there’s no way that they can fly to come together and they want to be there for her. The only local family member of Ms. Toro is her granddaughter, Marcela Rendón.

It’s Friday evening and she and her husband are at the kitchen table, and they have Ms. Toro’s well-worn Bible next to them. The whole family is connected on the Zoom app. They’re reading Scripture. They’re singing. They’re praying. Ms. Toro is still receiving the steroids, and the family doesn’t know yet whether or not they have worked.

It’s Sunday morning, and Marcela and her husband are in the parking lot of the North Shore University Hospital. Unfortunately, news came in that the steroids had not had an effect. The doctors, the medical team are going to remove the ventilator that has been supporting Ms. Toro’s life.

“She doesn’t want her to suffer. That’s her concern.”

“No, no, she’s not going to — so she’s not going to suffer, and we already gave her some medications already before we take the tube out to make her comfortable.”

“Is everybody on Zoom already?”

“Yes.”

It is the first time that she’s going to get to see her grandma. She dropped her off four weeks ago, and that was the last that she got to see her. She’s there to be with her grandmother. She’s the one who has to take on this responsibility to be the person at the bedside. And as she’s walking into the room, there’s a part of her that knows the likely outcome, and there’s a part of her that has a deep faith that somehow it won’t happen.

Attribution

Transcript for “Dying of Coronavirus: A Family’s Painful Goodbye” by The New York Times

is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 13.21, A New Vision for Death and Dying

The paradox of 21st-century dying:

What happens after you die is changing. You could become a firework, or even have your ashes scattered in space. You could choose to come back to nature with a woodland burial. Maybe you know what you want after you die, but how about before then? Death and dying are much more complicated. These are issues that are going to affect all of us, and at the moment, the way we’re dealing with them is leading to increased suffering. People are having treatments they don’t wish to have, families are not involved, conversations are had too late, people are not getting pain relief, people are dying alone. These are real urgent issues that are happening now.

When we talk about caring for people who are dying, this is more about life rather than about that one moment of actual death. We’ll say wise things, like ‘we’ll cross the bridge when we come to it,’ but this is not an easy bridge to cross.

Dying in the 21st century is a story of paradox. Some of us are over-treated in hospitals as family and community are pushed to the margins; others are left to face death all alone. Most discussions are centered around high-income countries. The suffering in low- and low-middle-income countries is simply invisible.

“It’s tough even for me. Her whole body is in pain.”

We now can do better.

In Kerala, India, state reforms alongside a compassionate communities model in Kerala, engagement with families, and thousands of volunteers are pioneering a model of compassionate communities, changing how people live and die.

“She’s saying she’s much better.”

This is whom we saw last evening look so amazingly and so happily different. It was kind of everything I hoped I would find somewhere, and it was amazing actually finding it because they really were creating this whole new model of care, changing the way people cared, the way people died, the way people thought about death and dying.

Across the world, groups are challenging norms and rules about caring for people at the end of life, and bold new models of compassionate community action are emerging. What inspires me is knowing it can go right. It doesn’t happen by accident, but when I see it happening in living rooms, in bedrooms, in care homes, in hospitals all around the world, it’s really inspiring because although it doesn’t take away the sadness and the loss that is so significant, it does take away the stress, the anxiety, the fear that so often just compounds these times. Allowing the community to come in, explaining to them, answering all their questions and sometimes being questioned, it means giving up some of my power as a doctor. Engage them as partners.

The Lancet Commission on the Value of Death convened experts in health and social care, philosophy, economics, and theology, working with community activists to set out the principles of a realistic utopia: a new vision of how death and dying should be. What we’re talking about in the commission is whole systems change. It interfaces with healthcare systems, with the law, with policy, with education, all of those. Death and dying are social issues, and at the moment, we’re trying to solve them with a medical lens, and that’s what needs to change. We need to talk about what we want for ourselves when we die and what choices we want for society. If we want vaccination done across the country, we have a vaccination drive. Maybe we need to have conversation drives in every country. If we talk about this openly, confront the issue, we will be able to avoid a lot of needless suffering. Needless treatment.

I have prepared my advance directive. I’ve indicated that in the context of an incurable illness, I should not be subjected to inappropriate life-prolonging treatment, partly because that will only be suffering for me, partly because I will be isolated and separate from my family, but also because out of loyalty to me, my family may destroy themselves with that needless treatment. That’s a precious time when I should have been receiving a kiss on my cheek from my grandchild. It can be a time of healing also.

We can learn lessons about death from many different cultures–

“What does it mean for you?”

–and from the innovators who are showing us new possibilities for the future of death and dying. You only get one chance to do this. I heard a lot of people say I wish I knew what they would have wanted. The conversation ahead of time is actually something you can give to those around you and the gift that they can give back to you. Death is not just a physiological event, an endpoint; it’s so much more than that. The realistic utopia starts with each of us facing this. Bringing life back to death. It’s about leaving a legacy, talking about those we miss and finding a way through all the sadness to show up for those whose time is short.

Let me clarify that we were not really talking only about death; we were talking about life.

“What holds meaning in your life for you?”

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Transcript for “A New Vision for Death and Dying” by The Lancet is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 13.4, Right-to-die movement finds new life beyond Oregon

Like millions of Americans, Oregonian Pam Wald was riveted by the video of Britney Maynard, a 29-year-old woman suffering from brain cancer who moved here last year to end her own life.

“I looked at that video. I studied–especially the last time I saw that video, I don’t think I left her eyes.”

Maynard lived in California, but relocated to take advantage of Oregon’s “Death with Dignity” law that permits what advocates call “physician-assisted dying,” but is more commonly known as “physician-assisted suicide.”

“I will die upstairs, in the bedroom that I share with my husband, um, with my mother and husband by my side…”

Maynard, who ended her own life in November, was featured in a media campaign by a group called Compassion & Choices. Twenty years earlier, its predecessor group played a key role in advocating for Oregon’s first-in-the-nation right-to-die bill. In 1994, Pam Wald considered herself of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act.

“You voted for it, but you never thought, ‘This has to do with me.’”

“No, no. It-it-it was kind of like, out of compassion, the idea that, someone gets in this situation, they deserve a right, you know, to choose. You know, it’s important for us to choose the way we live our lives, and how we die.”

“But then you found yourself in this situation.”

“Yes.”

“Where now the story’s about you.”

“Yeah.”

“This is my husband.”

In 2011, Pam’s husband of 43 years, Ben Wald, discovered an earlier bout of cancer had returned. Soon after, the disease began taking a lethal toll. Pam and daughter Bonnie watched as the once-robust Ben rapidly lost weight. As the cancer spread to his bones, the pain became intolerable.

“Ben woke me up in the middle of the night, and he said, ‘Pam, we’ve gotta talk. Um, I don’t wanna keep–I’m dying, Pam. Um, I’ve had a good life with you and Bonnie, and I really don’t wanna keep living like this. I wanna explore Oregon’s death with dignity law.’”

Under Oregon’s law, a doctor must determine that a patient has six months or fewer to live. The physician can write a life-ending prescription only if a second doctor signs on, and both agree the patient is of sound mind. The patient must request the drugs again 15 days after the initial request, but once the patient has it, the doctor’s role is over. Since the law went into effect in 1997, over 1300 people have received life-ending prescriptions, but just 859 have actually taken them and died. Others died sooner, and some changed their minds.

As Ben’s health deteriorated, he and Pam sought help from Compassion & Choices, the group that supported Brittany Maynard. In 2012, the group connected them with two doctors, who signed off on Ben’s wishes.

“Monday Ben got the order for the prescription, so it meant we could go pick it up on Wednesday, and I thought, then we would have it, and then we would just kinda see–I thought I would have more time with him. But he said to me, ‘Pam, I want to take it on Friday that week.’”

Portland physician Bill Toffler also followed the case of Brittany Maynard. Brittany’s story struck a chord with him, too. Toffler’s wife of 40 years was diagnosed with cancer in 2009.

“We were blessed with five years after the diagnosis was made, and she died just four and a half months ago.”

For Dr. Toffler and his wife, assisted suicide was never an option. He leads a group, Physicians for Compassionate Care Education Foundation, that opposes prescribing lethal drugs to terminal patients.

“Every day we lived with an awareness that we had a limited amount of time, in a way that I never perceived before I had a wife with that clear diagnosis. And I hope that my patients realize that I value them as a doctor, no matter how disabled they are, no matter how sick they are, that their life still has meaning and value, and I wanna reflect that, even when they don’t see it themselves.”

But what about the fear and the pain that can surround dying? Why not help, I asked Dr. Toffler, if a patient asks?

“It is a very scary time, and at that time I want to come around that person, I wanna walk alongside them, I wanna be the best doctor I can be, I’m called to be more of a doctor than ever. I’m not supposed to be the person who helps her to kill herself. That’s all too easy.”

In a policy opinion, the American Medical Association says, “Physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer,” and some religious groups, most notably the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have strongly opposed the practice.

Attribution

Transcript for “Right to Die Movement Finds New Life” by PBS NewsHour is included under fair use.

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Transcript for Figure 14.1, Surviving Disaster

“You know, kind of walk me through you guys’s story.”

“Okay.”

“You know, a little bit.”

“Um, so, Guy and I, Guy saw some flames, and so we called–um, yeah, actually, it was 911, to report this. We called a couple of times because it really seemed like it might be a problem. Then we got a phone call, and luckily it came into my work phone. It did not come in on my personal phone. And so I had my work phone next to me, and if I would not have woken up and heard that, then it would have been a problem. And so we had to get out right away, and I think that happened to other people.”

“My name is Bethany Grace Howe, and I am the executive director of Echo Mountain Fire Relief. Echo Mountain Fire Relief was actually started by a volunteer fireman who was working the fire, also a resident of the Otis area. And, knowing how these things unfolded, he, literally within days of the fire starting, under a week, started a nonprofit. Just sent out the paperwork and got it up and going.”

“We decided to just get a travel trailer. And I got the last spot at KOA. That was–there was nowhere else. Everybody, you know, who even had a travel trailer, maybe somewhere else, but there were no places left.”

Many had lived in manufactured houses and had little or no insurance.

“We’re not getting any insurance money for this. Even those of us who were insured are only getting 5,000 bucks, and that’s, that basically covers your ash and your asbestos. That’s it, nothing else.”

“They made changes to their home and their insurance wasn’t updated, or, other people, were, ‘yeah, I’m fully insured, I have replacement cost insurance, I got it all covered.’ What people don’t realize is, that’s replacement cost on the day of the fire. As everybody knows, everything’s gotten more expensive. So there are people that thought they were fully insured, and they are still coming out with 20 to 30 percent, 40 percent losses, because the cost of everything went through the ceiling.”

“So we had a budget, which means we had to use all of our insurance money to replace our home, and that’s it. So all of the other, my gardening, outbuildings, you know, just everything that we built–my greenhouse, the outdoor kitchen. So these things we can rebuild at some point, but the home is what was most important to us. Getting to spend time in a disaster, not just thinking about ourselves, but looking at what’s happening in our neighborhood, and having more resources coming in, that’s part of our decision. The people who are gonna need it the most will be in that open space with beds and things. We were able to be somewhere more comfortable and not take up space for someone who doesn’t have any other choices.”

“If you were sitting across the table from a survivor, and a lot of our team does that, you know, we’re in Kentucky with tornado survivors and stuff, what would you tell them–let’s say we’re a week past it?”

“I would probably tell them that this is an unimaginable situation, and it is a situation. And wondering about, what do you have within yourself that tells you that you can get through this, or, you know, with lots of support?”

“The vast majority of other people: insured, uninsured, wealthy, not wealthy, renters, homeowners–they all eventually reached a point where it was, ‘for me to get back to my life, I need help.’”

“Toasters, tents, and therapy resources are all things that survivors of the Echo Mountain Complex Fire can find at Salmon River Grange in Otis. While following up on the community’s response after the fire, KOIN6 News found out about the Grange and the support it’s giving. People who lost their homes in the fire can visit the Grange and take whatever they need.”

“–Team helping properties that look like this, look a little more like this.”

“That cleanup put on by the Cascade Relief Team.”

“When leaders of Reach Out Worldwide in Cascade Relief Team learned of the damage, they knew they needed to step in.”

“People don’t wanna wait on, you know, the government to come in and help them out, or the county or city to help them out. That could be a 12-18 month process with FEMA.”

“But what’s happening with this response to the fire is the most important part of looking at preparedness. What went well and what didn’t? And, in my opinion as an employee of the county public health, and someone who survived this, the county was very lacking in response.”

“Where would you say the number one place you felt the lacking was?”

“Um, knowing what to do.”

“I think when the fires hit, Oregon didn’t really have policies, and I don’t think they’d thought about this much. And, you know, I have more insider information on the government than I should, and what I would say is, is that there is a feeling that this state got caught with its pants down, and that we were not ready. And we weren’t, but at the same time, how could we have been?”

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“Surviving Disaster” by Marc Brooks and Samanthan Kuk, Open Oregon Educational Resources is all rights reserved and included with permission.

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[Page 817 – does not use a Figure & not sure where to link] Transcript, Age Doesn’t Define You: Global Campaign to Combat Ageism

“So, what’s this all about again?

[Laughter]

I’m too old for this.

You just want me to say what people say about me.

Weird question, I guess.

My teacher says you’ll grow out of it; it’s just a phase. It was never a phase. I never grew out of it.

I guess I’m too reckless; I don’t know.

People like to talk very loudly to me.

They say I don’t think things through.

‘You’re looking still good for your age.’

I’ll figure it out when I’m older.

‘You’re having a senior moment.’

When the focus is on my age, life seems to get a little bit harder. It feels like I’m not given a chance; I need to keep up or get out of the way.

I lack experience or have too much experience.

I’m baggage, only weighing people down.

Looking at my age like it is a disease.

Where I work, no one takes me seriously.

It makes me feel powerless, and it hurts. When people see only my age.

[Music]

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Transcript for Age doesn’t define you – Global Campaign to Combat Ageism – #AWorld4AllAges by World Health Organization (WHO) is included under the fair use.

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