Lead from leaded petrol persists in London air despite '90s ban

IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON

Research News

 

Lead levels in London's atmosphere have dropped drastically since lead additives in petrol were phased out, and currently meet UK air quality targets. However despite this drop, airborne particles in London are still highly lead-enriched compared to natural background levels, according to new Imperial research published today in PNAS.

The study found that up to 40 per cent of lead in airborne particles today comes from the legacy of leaded petrol. The researchers say this highlights the long-term persistence of contaminants introduced by human activities in the environment.

Lead author of the study Dr Eléonore Resongles, who carried out the work at Imperial's Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: "Petrol-derived lead deposited decades ago remains an important pollutant in London. Despite the leaded petrol ban, historically combusted lead is still present in London's air more than 20 years later."

The researchers compared the chemical and isotopic composition of particulate matter in the air with samples of road dust and urban soil, which confirmed the role of the resuspension of dust contaminated from leaded petrol in lead's persistence in London today.

They explained that lead from leaded petrol once settled in the environment and is steadily re-suspended into the air through wind and vehicle movement, providing a constant background level and remobilisation mechanism.

They say this also highlights a potential hazard that warrants further investigation into its effects on Londoners' health as, despite air quality targets, there is no 'safe' threshold for lead in humans.

Dr Resongles added: "Long-term low-level exposure to lead can adversely affect health and, while we don't yet know the health implications of our findings, they suggest that leaded petrol might still be providing low level exposure which can have detrimental effects on health."

Lead's legacy

Lead has historically been used in a variety of ways, from petrol, batteries, alloys and solders to piping and paint in homes and buildings - and until 1999, leaded petrol remained the primary source of lead emissions in the UK atmosphere. The use of lead in petrol has ceased in most countries worldwide because of evidence that exposure to lead causes neurodevelopmental problems in children and cardiovascular, kidney, and reproductive problems in adults.

The study, which included researchers from French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development and Princeton University in collaboration with University of Birmingham, German Meteorological Service, and King Abdulaziz University, measured the concentrations of lead and its isotopic composition in two London locations between 2014 and 2018, before comparing them with previous data from the 1960s, '70s, '90s, and 2010.

The researchers took eighteen samples of airborne particles at street level in Marylebone in the summer of 2018, and 20 samples on a 24-metre-high rooftop at Imperial's South Kensington campus between 2014 and 2018.

By comparing with historical data the isotopic composition of air particles in London, they found that lead sources have remained unchanged over the past decade. They also found that the isotope composition of the air particles was similar to the signature of soils and road dust, leading them to suggest that resuspension of lead-containing dust, perhaps with wind and vehicle movement, is now an important source of lead.

In the 1980s, annual average airborne lead concentrations in central London dropped from 500-600 ng/m3 of air to around 300 ng/m3, before dropping further to around 20 ng/m3 in 2000. The researchers in this study measured lead concentrations of 8 ng/m3 of air on average during the summer 2018 at Marylebone road.

Senior author Professor Dominik Weiss, also of Imperial's Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said: "We used to have a lot of lead circulating in the air, but it dropped dramatically when leaded petrol was phased out at the turn of the millennium. However, the evolution of isotope composition since then suggests that lead in the air, soil and dust persists at background levels, and this could turn out to be a concern for health.

"Our findings highlight the need for an in depth study of blood lead levels in the population as was done recently in the US. Legacy lead deposited pre-1999 is significantly contributing to the overall lead burden, so we must try to reduce further the amount of lead we are releasing today if we want to offset legacy metals.

"The findings from the London study are in line with results from similar studies we conducted in Sao Paolo, Brazil and raise questions about long-term lead contamination in other megacities worldwide."

The researchers say that if these current levels prove harmful, then measures should be taken to target the sources of the lead in soil and on roads.

Possible measures to lower lead levels include covering contaminated urban soils with fresh soil, which has been effective in reducing children's blood lead levels in New Orleans. Dr Resongles said: "Atmospheric lead has reached a baseline in London which is difficult to push down further with present policy measures. More research is needed to identify the effect of present air concentrations - even if they meet data air quality targets - on human health, and to find the best way to rid London of lead's legacy for good."

###

This research was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 grant, Imperial College London, and the European Commission.

PRO NUKE PWR SOCIALIST
If we want to fight the climate crisis, we must embrace nuclear power


Bhaskar Sunkara
Mon, June 21, 2021

Photograph: Seth Wenig/AP

On 30 April, the Indian Point nuclear power plant 30 miles north of New York City was shut down. For decades the facility provided the overwhelming majority of the city’s carbon-free electricity as well as good union jobs for almost a thousand people. Federal regulators had deemed the plant perfectly safe.

Related: Earth is trapping ‘unprecedented’ amount of heat, Nasa says

New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, a key figure behind the move, said that the shuttering of Indian Point brought us “a big step closer to achieving our aggressive clean energy goals”. It’s hard to reconcile that optimism with the data that’s recently come out. The first full month without the plant has seen a 46% increase in the average carbon intensity of statewide electric generation compared to when Indian Point was fully operational. New York replaced clean energy from Indian Point with fossil fuel sources like natural gas.


It’s a nightmare we should have seen coming. In Germany, nuclear power formed around a third of the country’s power generation in 2000, when a Green party-spearheaded campaign managed to secure the gradual closure of plants, citing health and safety concerns. Last year, that share fell to 11%, with all remaining stations scheduled to close by next year. A recent paper found that the last two decades of phased nuclear closures led to an increase in CO2 emissions of 36.3 megatons a year - with the increased air pollution potentially killing 1,100 people annually.

Like New York, Germany coupled its transition away from nuclear power with a pledge to spend more aggressively on renewables. Yet the country’s first plant closures meant carbon emissions actually increased, as the production gap was immediately filled through the construction of new coal plants. Similarly, in New York the gap will be filled in part by the construction of three new gas plants. For the Germans, investment in renewables did eventually pay dividends, but it largely replaced the old nuclear plants’ output rather than reducing existing fossil fuel consumption. The carbon intensity of German electricity is higher than the EU average.

However, even a more aggressive investment in renewable energy wouldn’t have solved Germany’s problem. There are just a handful of large economies that have already mostly decarbonized their grids; all of them have a foundation of nuclear or hydroelectricity (or both), and then to greater or lesser degrees add renewables like wind and solar on top. This is because nuclear and hydro are able to provide electricity whenever we need it. These “firm” sources of clean electricity do not need to wait for the sun to shine or the wind to blow to power the ventilators in our hospitals. Batteries and other forms of energy storage are great, and we need much more funding of research and development to make them even better, but until huge technological leaps occur, sustainables are hindered by the need for cooperative weather.

Elsewhere around the world, even where we’ve been investing in renewable technology, without nuclear or the right geography that allows hydroelectricity, we’ve had no choice but to rely on fossil fuels to fill the gap.

So why, given the stakes of global warming, is there still so much hostility to nuclear power?


There are some legitimate concerns about nuclear waste, but the public perception is driven by outdated information

Some of the paranoia is no doubt rooted in cold war-era associations of peaceful nuclear power with dangerous nuclear weaponry. We can and should separate these two, just like we are able to separate nuclear bombs from nuclear medicine. And we should also push back against popular narratives around Chernobyl and other disasters that simply aren’t replicable with modern technology. Advanced reactors and many existing ones are designed with passive safety systems – they don’t need active intervention by humans or a computer to deactivate in case of emergencies. Instead these plants use natural forces such as gravity to disable them, while maintaining active monitoring as a backup. As the science journalist Leigh Phillips puts it, “it is no more physically possible for them to melt down than it is for balls to spontaneously roll up hills.”

There are some legitimate concerns about nuclear waste, but the public perception is driven by outdated information. The amount of waste produced by plants has been reduced dramatically, and most of what remains can be recycled to generate more electricity. These worries are not particularly unique to nuclear, either. Renewable energy produces waste of its own – solar, for example, requires heavy metals like cadmium, lead and arsenic, which unlike nuclear waste don’t lose their toxicity over time. As an article in Science points out: “Current electric vehicle batteries are really not designed to be recycled” and could pose public health problems as battery cells decay in landfills.

Other objections to nuclear power, like its reliance on mining, are also not unique to nuclear. Renewables require destructive extraction to unearth lithium and other critical minerals. The answer to those concerns is simple: we should demand environmental and labor regulations from the state and defend good working conditions as our primary consideration. But opposing socially necessary extraction as a matter of principle simply isn’t compatible with wanting to live in a world that can meet basic human needs.

I’m not alone in expressing these sentiments. Beyond just preserving existing nuclear facilities, Americans’ support for constructing new plants is now at 50%, markedly higher than in years past. On the political left, in particular, where opposition to nuclear first catalyzed decades ago, there seems to be a shift underway. After initial hesitation, Alexander Ocasio-Cortez has said her Green New Deal leaves the door open for nuclear power. More unabashed was the backing from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Bolivia’s eco-socialist former president Evo Morales.

Nuclear is an idea whose time came and seemed to have passed, but may indeed have a future. For those of us looking for a solution to climate change, the least we can ask is that no plants like Indian Power close until we have a clean, dependable and scalable alternative already in place.


Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin magazine and a Guardian US columnist. He is the author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequality

Chemicals, pipelines destroying Black communities today. And poor of color are dying.

The Rev. William J. Barber II
Mon, June 21, 2021, 7:34 AM·3 min read

Along the Mississippi River in Louisiana, land where Black people were once enslaved on plantations is now being poisoned by petrochemical plants that have given the place a new name: Cancer Alley. In the fall of 2019, Robert Taylor told a Poor People’s Campaign gathering there about the toll of watching his family and neighbors die. Taylor’s daughter has a rare disease that her doctor told her she had a 1 in 5 million chance of contracting. She has since learned that three other neighbors are dying of the same disease.

Robert Taylor talks about his family struggles with chemical poisoning. His daughter contracted a rare disease, and so did her neighbors.

Four hundred miles north in Memphis, Tennessee, Black residents invited the Poor People’s Campaign to support their organizing to stop the Byhalia Pipeline. The proposed crude oil pipeline would repeat the systemic racism of the 1970s urban renewal by running the line through Memphis’ African American communities. In this place where Ida B. Wells once challenged the lies used to justify lynching, Black Memphians are again resisting lies that would harm their community.

More than 150 years after slavery was abolished in the United States, descendants of enslaved Americans continue to challenge systemic racism because they experience the ongoing impact of America’s original sin on the very land where it first occurred.


But slavery’s legacy doesn't stop in those communities.

Neighborhoods of color across the country are hit by industrial waste and air pollution and deprived of green spaces at significantly higher rates than white communities. Poverty, redlining (a practice that segregated housing) and the overwhelming lack of diversity in the environmental space keep the cycle of pollution and community destruction concentrated in Black America.

In fact, whites in America experience 17% less air pollution than they cause. Black people experience 56% more than their consumption causes, according to a 2019 study.

Follow the family lines of the Great Migration to Chicago, Illinois, and Flint, Michigan, and you find African American communities where families can buy unleaded gas but not unleaded water. There, too, welfare-rights unions have joined the Poor People’s Campaign because their members work two and three jobs but still cannot afford a decent home for their families. In recent weeks, our partners on the Southeast side of Chicago won a struggle to keep a processing plant from moving from predominantly white Lincoln Park into their neighborhood.

The Poor People’s Campaign has joined with grassroots movements across the USA to highlight the 140 million Americans who are poor or low-income in the richest nation in the history of the world.

While poverty touches every race, creed and culture, 60% of African Americans are poor or low-income (compared with 33% of white Americans) because the promise of 40 acres and a mule was never fulfilled for the formerly enslaved. Whether you live in St. James Parish, Louisiana, or Flint, Michigan, the nation’s failure to pay reparations continues to echo through the African American community.

Black people have been denied the fruit of our labor through Jim Crow laws, convict leasing and the redlining and urban renewal that have destroyed Black neighborhoods.

Today’s racial wealth gap is clear evidence that reparations are needed.

For generations, an economic system built by white male property owners has consolidated more and more wealth in the hands of a few, leading to income inequality that hurts people of every race.

A tax on that accumulated wealth to repay the descendants of the people who have been systematically abused by this economy would do more than render justice too long denied. It would give Black Americans the opportunity to demonstrate how wealth can be invested in ways that benefit the whole and help us imagine a world where no one needs to live in poverty.

The Rev. William J. Barber II is the president of Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Chemicals, pipelines killing Black communities. Poor of color dying.

Nearly a quarter of young Americans believe the Holocaust didn’t happen or has been exaggerated


Gustaf Kilander

THE INDEPENDENT
Mon, June 21, 2021

A picture taken in April 1945 depicts Auschwitz concentration camp gate, with the inscription ARBEIT MACHT FREI; Work Makes You Free.

One in 10 young Americans believes that the Holocaust never happened, while 23 per cent think it’s a myth or that the number of those killed has been exaggerated.

In a 50-state survey of Americans aged between 18 and 39, 12 per cent said they had never heard, or thought they had never heard, the word “Holocaust” before.

Some younger Americans appear to have bought into conspiracy theories being shared on social media and some can’t name a single concentration camp.


Almost half of the survey respondents, 49 per cent, said they had seen Holocaust denial and distortion content on social media, with 11 per cent saying they thought Jews, not the Nazis, were responsible for the Holocaust. That number goes up to 19 per cent in New York state.

New York has the highest share, just over nine per cent, of the US Jewish population, with almost 1.8 million people identifying as Jewish in the state.

More than a third of respondents, 36 per cent, thought fewer than two million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and 63 per cent were unaware that the actual number of Jews killed was six million.

Almost half, 48 per cent, couldn’t name a single one of the 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos in Europe during the Holocaust.

While most of the killings took place between 1941 and 1945, the persecution of Jews started much earlier, with the first concentration camp, Dachau outside Munich, being built in 1933, initially intended to hold political prisoners.

Only six per cent of respondents said they were familiar with the Dachau camp.

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany commissioned the survey. The president of the organisation, Gideon Taylor, said in a statement: “The results are both shocking and saddening, and they underscore why we must act now while Holocaust survivors are still with us to voice their stories.”

“We need to understand why we aren’t doing better in educating a younger generation about the Holocaust and the lessons of the past,” Mr Taylor added. “This needs to serve as a wake-up call to us all, and as a road map of where government officials need to act.”

To establish where in the country lack of knowledge was the biggest issue, the survey was done state by state with a “knowledge score” being devised to measure awareness.

The score was calculated by taking the percentage of respondents who had heard of the Holocaust and could name at least one concentration camp, death camp, or ghetto, and was aware that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.

Arkansas came at the bottom of the list, with fewer than two in 10 – some 17 per cent – of Millennials and Gen Z individuals meeting the knowledge criteria. Mississippi at 18 per cent and Florida at 20 per cent also came in the bottom three.

Wisconsin was at the top of the list with 42 per cent, Minnesota at 37 per cent and Massachusetts at 35 per cent made up the rest of the top three.

Holocaust denial is thriving on social media, with a study from August last year showing that Facebook’s algorithm was “actively” pushing this kind of content.

Facebook spokesperson Dani Lever told USA Today in January: “We’ve made major progress in fighting Holocaust denial on Facebook by implementing a new policy prohibiting it and enforcing against these hateful lies in every country around the world.”

“It is clear that we must fight this distortion of history and do all we can to ensure that the social media giants stop allowing this harmful content on their platforms,” the executive vice president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Greg Schneider, said in a statement.

‘These stories are important’: Durham memorial to honor people NC plantation enslaved.






Charlie Innis
Mon, June 21, 2021

Ricky Hart grazed the crevices in the chimney’s rough, red bricks with his fingertips.

The small indentations were left by enslaved Black people who lived in the Stagville Plantation, a historic site roughly 10 miles north of downtown Durham.

To mold and fire bricks, and to build a chimney that has lasted over 150 years, you had to be skilled, Hart said.


“That’s significant. They let you know, that’s been there for a very, very long time,” he said.

Hart spoke beside the Holman slave quarters in Horton Grove, where four houses built for enslaved families before the Civil War remain standing, including the home where his ancestors once lived.

At the Stagville Plantation, at least 900 enslaved people worked against their will for the Bennehan-Cameron family. At over 30,000 acres of land, it was one of the largest plantations in North Carolina.

Now, a group of residents are planning a memorial in downtown Durham to honor those once enslaved at the Stagville Plantation.

Among the Stagville Memorial Project’s organizers and supporters are descendants of enslaved families, including Hart and community members in Braggtown, and Vanessa Hines, a former member of the city’s Racial Equity Task Force.

The memorial would go in front of the old Durham County courthouse at 200 E. Main St., near where protesters tore down a Confederate statue in 2017.

The artist selection and design process could begin this winter, according to the project’s tentative timeline.
Stagville Memorial Project

Hines proposed the public art project to the Durham County Board of Commissioners this month.

Organizers want to expand who gets included in the story of Durham’s beginnings, raise awareness about the Historic Stagville site, and bring its descendants together for a common purpose, she said.

It’s also for people who aren’t from Durham, but know they are descended from enslaved people in other parts of the country, she said.

“It’s for people like me to have a place to go to in the town that I’m living in to remember my own ancestors, and to think about them and to think about the legacy that I am living, and how I am showing up for them in my daily life,” she said. “I think that it can speak to people in the African diaspora in that way.”

“And then it’s also for white people,” she added. “To have something that is out there that is inviting them also to ponder how these legacies are still showing up.”

The East Main Street location is a short walk away from the county jail and the new Durham County Courthouse.

Since the summer of 2019, Hines has met with residents of the Braggtown community south of the former plantation to talk about the memorial project in coffee shops, people’s homes, and in Zoom conferences during the pandemic. They hope to design, install, and unveil the memorial by Juneteenth next year, according to the project’s proposal. The estimated budget is $237,000.

The county commissioners expressed unanimous support for the project.

“There are so many Black people that don’t even remember their history, because of the way in which we were brought to this country,” Commissioners Chair Brenda Howerton said during a meeting with Hines.

“I think about the movie that I’ve been watching, ‘Tulsa,’ and what happened there,” she added. “So, it’s a hard history, but it is our history.”
Memory and oral history

Georie Bryant’s great, great grandfather Will Holman was enslaved on the Stagville plantation. After emancipation, Holman’s son and his wife were prominent tobacco farmers in the area, Bryant said.

He said the key part of a memorial is in the word: memory.

“I think it’s super important that we do remember, as cities are being overturned in many places across the country right now, the individuals who lay the groundwork for those places to be,” said Bryant, a community organizer and chef. “Especially when you’re talking about places where African Americans could feel safe in the South.”

“That’s not by happenstance, a lot of people fought very hard for that to even be a reality,” he added.

Standing in front of his ancestors’ former home at the Historic Stagville site, Hart remembered a time when his father showed him the plantation.

“And we’d sit on the porch and he would smoke his pipe, and he’d sit there and tell me, he says, ‘Son, look out as far as you can see. All of that was tobacco.’

“You go on the western part of it, on this side,” he continued. “That was corn and other stuff, vegetables.”

Hart pointed to a short stump in front of the house that was partly concealed by grass. His father told him it had been a large tree that was over 100 years old. His great aunt had told his father about the tree, Hart said.

“They let him know that, ‘Hey, it was some slaves that was hung from that tree,’” he said. “’And they was not permitted to take them down.’”
Survival and resistance

That so much of the Stagville plantation’s architecture still stands is a testament to the expertise of the enslaved people who built it, Hart said.

“Whether it was dealing with the livestock, whether it was butchering, curing the meat, planting, everybody had their skill set,” he said. “Just like it is today.”

Vera Cecelski, a historian and the site manager for Stagville, said skilled craftsmen and artisans were among the enslaved people on the plantation.

“One way that that helps shift our understanding of the institution of slavery is that it helps us understand the ways that families, like the families that owned this plantation, profited not just from the physical labor of enslaved people, but from the minds, the skills, expertise and knowledge of enslaved people,” she said.

Cecelski guides visitors on tours through the former plantation, where she shares individual stories about enslaved people, drawn from surviving records, and talks about the craftsmanship of the buildings.

The essence of their work, she said, is about engaging with how the history of slavery has been remembered, mis-remembered, and obscured since 1863, the year of the emancipation proclamation.

“That is history, that for a very long time as a nation, we have been refusing to look in the eyes, and to hold honestly and truthfully and fully and complexly with us,” she said.

All of the site’s programming strives to tell the stories of enslaved people through their perspectives. On a guided tour, visitors can step into different rooms in the Holman house and imagine the kinds of conversations families had about freedom and survival, she said.

“Those are places where people might have been strategizing together about how to resist,” she said. “How to sabotage work, how to fight back, how to escape from their houses for a few hours at night to trade, or barter, or pass information, or visit somebody they loved.”

Historic Stagville is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Call the site at 919-620-0120 to schedule a guided tour.

Shuttered NC plantation ‘whitewashed’ history, protesters say




Shuttered NC plantation ‘whitewashed’ history, protesters say

Joe Marusak
Sun, June 20, 2021

Despite the closed gate at Historic Latta Plantation on Saturday, Karla Jensen, Christian Cano, Isabella Patterson and Richard Lu joined a few dozen other Carolinians to denounce the way the living history museum promoted a since-canceled Juneteenth event.

“There’s been a lot of history erasure, and we’re here to point out that history involves all colors,” Patterson, a 19-year-old UNC-Chapel Hill student, told The Charlotte Observer.

Patterson held a placard that read, “Hands off our History.”

Saturday was Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Latta Plantation event canceled

Controversy surrounded Historic Latta Plantation this month over the site’s planned event, pegged to Juneteenth. The event’s promotional material promised to tell the story of “white refugees” and defeated Confederate soldiers. Latta Plantation’s manager later defended the event and said his intent was never to glorify white supremacy or slavery.

“To tell the story of these freedmen would be pointless if the stories of others were not included. Many of you may not like this but, their lives were intertwined, the stories of massa, the Confederate soldiers, the overseer, the displaced white families,” said Ian Campbell in the June 12 statement, which has since been blocked from view as Latta Plantation’s website has been made private.

He went on to say, “I, Ian Campbell, as an American man of African descent and the new site manager at Historic Latta Plantation, will lift the veil of ignorance.”

NC plantation: No apology, slams mayor and other critics of Juneteenth event promo

But the event description didn’t acknowledge the significance of June 19 and called those who were enslaved “former bondsmen,” without any mention of the 250 years Black people were forced into slavery in the United States. Instead, it inaccurately minimized an unnamed slaveowner to an “overseer” and referred to him as “massa,” the Observer previously reported.

On Thursday, Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation officials said the plantation was closed until further notice.

Park and Recreation Director W. Lee Jones said his department will evaluate “the best path forward for Latta Plantation and its programming” over several months.

The department wants to ensure that the site is used “in an appropriate, forward-thinking manner,” Jones said.

Earlier in the week, Jones told county commissioners he was concerned about summer programs training children to be like “young Confederate soldiers” and “Southern belles.”

Jones also said the county wouldn’t renew its contract with plantation, which ends June 30.
Living history museum under scrutiny

Protesters on Saturday said more change is needed at the living history museum and farm that offers year-round educational and school programs.

Stephanie Gardner, a 48-year-old from Charlotte who participated in Saturday’s protest, called the plantation’s literature “a Confederate whitewash.”

“My concern is, (the plantation grounds on Sample Road) should be held sacred for the Black descendants of those who were enslaved here, or those closest to them,” she said.

Cano, a 54-year-old who grew up in Texas and lives in Charlotte, held a “Latinx for Black Lives” poster.

“It’s important that we stand up to this,” he said. “When we stay silent, injustices happen.”

Kari Giles, who is white, drove from Fort Mill.

“Stop! White Washing Black History,” her placard read.

“This is not a day for me to celebrate,” the 44-year-old said, “but how I can support my Black neighbors.”
‘Time we showed them respect’

Karla Jensen, 70, of Charlotte, said what the plantation did “was just morally wrong.”

She held a placard that said: “Listen to Black Voices.”

“This country was built on the backs of Black people,” Jensen said. “It’s time we showed them the respect they deserve.”
Activist led protest

Civil rights activist Kass Ottley, founder/CEO of Seeking Justice Charlotte, planned Saturday’s peaceful protest when the plantation’s Juneteenth event was still a go for that night.

She said it was important to still show up, and put word out on social media.

The gathering in part celebrated how public reaction led to the cancellation of the plantation event, Ottley said.

“We’re out here celebrating,” she said. “We shut down the event.”

The protest also highlighted how more needs to be done at the plantation, she said, for example, inclusion of Black people on the board of Latta Place Inc., the nonprofit whose mission is to preserve the circa-1800s plantation.

“We need to stay on top of the county commissioners and the city, so we have a voice at the table,” she said.

The plantation, for instance, needs to tell the stories of “the slaves who worked here in bondage,” Ottley said.

“At some point, we’ve got to take a stand,” she said. “How are we telling the generations about racism and coming together if we’re lying about it?"

IMPROVES STUDENT GRADES

Critical race theory sparks activism in students

Jerusha Osberg Conner, Professor of Education, Villanova University
Mon, June 21, 2021

Youth organizers tend to outperform their peers in school.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Critical race theory – an academic framework that holds that racism is embedded in society – has become the subject of an intense debate about how issues of race should or shouldn’t be taught in schools.

Largely missing in the debate is evidence of how exposure to critical race theory actually affects students.

As a researcher who specializes in youth activism, I have conducted research on and with youth organizing groups in which critical race theory is a core component of the political education. Eighty-two percent of youth organizing groups regularly offer political education, which involves a critical examination of social issues, usually through workshops and group discussions.

My research – along with that of other scholars – points to three important outcomes for young people who are taught critical race theory as part of youth organizing.

1. Ignites passion

A little Black girl on a street holds a sign that reads 'Power to my people!!'

First, research shows that learning to apply a critical race theoretical perspective and think critically about society do not fuel a sense of divisiveness among youth, as some politicians have suggested.

Instead, I have found that doing so can ignite passion in youths to work collaboratively to bring about social change aimed at equity.

In my research, I have observed that when youth organizers learn how power and privilege are reproduced from one generation to the next through racialized policies like redlining or discrimination in housing, funding school districts on the basis of property taxes, which favors wealthier school districts, and tracking students into different academic levels, they often become inspired to take action to redress unfair conditions.

Many of the low-income youth organizers of color I have studied come to realize that most of their struggles in life are not their fault. They develop hope that reform is possible, if only policymakers and the public embrace more equitable policies. And so they set to work devising and advocating for such policies.

In one youth organizing group colleagues and I have studied, students teach one another a model called “the spiral of oppression.”

This framework helps young people understand how societal oppression of groups of people, such as racial minorities, spirals as individuals from those groups internalize oppression and begin to act on the negative stereotypes they have internalized. These actions, in turn, lead to further oppression, such as greater police surveillance, supervision and state violence as the spiral continues.

Across years, participants repeatedly told me how empowering it was to learn this framework. It helped them to make sense of what they saw happening in their communities. More significantly, it prompted them to consider how they could disrupt the spiral, both individually and collectively. Rather than seeing themselves through the binary lens of victim or oppressor, they adopted identities as change agents, committed to institutional and societal reform.

2. Improves academics

Second, research shows youth organizers become more academically successful in school as they progress through organizing.

For example, in one study, I found that two-thirds of the actively involved youth organizers in Philadelphia’s lowest-performing schools significantly improved their grade-point averages.

Similarly, other scholars have found that youth organizers are more likely than their peers to report that they received mostly A and B grades in high school, and they go on to attend four-year colleges at higher rates. Ironically, research shows that while youth organizing helps young people become more aware of inequities within and across schools, it can also make them less alienated in school and more committed to academics.

3. Lifelong benefits

Third, the benefits of being exposed to critical theory through youth organizing do not end in high school or college. My research has shown that formative experiences in youth organizing can shape the choices individuals make in their professional and civic lives as adults.

Alumni explain how the values and dispositions cultivated in organizing led them not only to adopt pro-social careers as, for example, educators or counselors, but also to find ways to continue to participate constructively in the civic life of their communities as young adults.

Other researchers have turned up similar results. In one large-scale study in California, researchers found that as adults, former youth organizers are far more likely than their peers to have volunteered, worked on an issue affecting their community, participated in civic organizations and registered to vote. These results raise the question: Could such outcomes become more widespread if schools adopted some of the principles and curricular frameworks of youth organizing, including critical race theory?

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As the debate over critical race theory and its place in schools rages on, it is important that the discourse be grounded in evidence.

Studies of youth organizing show that when taught well, the analytical tools of critical race theory can support valuable long-term educational, professional, civic and political outcomes.

These outcomes are most pronounced for low-income youth of color. When politicians advance legislation to block the use of critical race theory in schools, they may actually be blocking an important means of fostering outcomes that would make America’s democracy more robust and vibrant than it would otherwise be.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Jerusha Osberg Conner, Villanova University.

Read more:

Summer reading: 5 books for young people that deal with race


3 things schools should teach about America’s history of white supremacy

Jerusha Osberg Conner has re.ceived funding from the Surdna Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the New Ventures Fund, and the League of Conservation Voters

Educators face fines, harassment over critical race theory



Russell Contreras
AXIOS
Sun, June 20, 2021, 5:00 AM


Elementary school teachers, administrators and college professors are facing fines, physical threats, and fear of firing because of an organized push from the right to remove classroom discussions of systemic racism.

Why it matters: Moves to ban critical race theory are raising free speech concerns amid an absence of consistent parameters about what teachings are in or out of bounds.

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Driving the news: So far, 21 states have introduced proposals to limit lessons about racism and history.


The Alabama State Department of Education recently announced it would seek to prohibit critical race theory in public schools.


The Kansas Board of Regents recently asked its six universities — including the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, and Wichita State University — to produce a list of courses that include critical race theory, following pressure from a Republican state senator.


Iowa State's provost decided not to sign off on the new university diversity requirement, pending a review of how the state's new ban on critical race theory would impact that requirement.


A task force looking into claims of critical race theory “indoctrination" in Idaho schools is seeking records from the Boise School District— a move critics say is aimed at intimidating teachers.

Educators say they have been subjected to harassment at school board meetings, and college professor candidates have been asked about their views on critical race theory in job interviews.

The intrigue: Citizens for Renewing America, a group led by a White House budget director under former President Trump, offers activists model legislation to craft bans in their states.


It says that equity, intersectionality, social justice, and "woke" terms are racist ideas and falsely claims that critical race theory teaches that "one race or sex is superior to another race or sex."


The proposal also calls for firing educators who continue to teach about systemic racism.

Reality check: Critical race theory, a concept developed in the 1970s, holds that racism is ingrained in our society and comes from how the nation formed.


It says that policies and practices in areas from law to education to banking contribute to persistent racial inequalities and are designed to conserve white supremacy.

What they're saying: "The Alabama State Board of Education believes the United States of America is not an inherently racist country, and that the state of Alabama is not an inherently racist state,” according to a draft resolution by the board to ban critical race theory.

Yes, but: Alabama, a former state in the Confederacy, was home to some of the most violent episodes of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s.


Four Black girls were killed in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, and civil rights activist John Lewis, who would go on to make his mark as member of Congress until his death last year, was severely beaten in Selma.

The bottom line: Educators and writers of color say banning critical race theory is really an attempt to sugarcoat U.S. history.


"The current infrastructure of oppression was built on silence, and built on willful ignorance and built on a purposeful erasing of history," Baratunde Thurston, How To Citizen podcast host and author of How to Be Black, told Axios.


"I think this is such a deliberate tactic at erasing our history...the history of black and Hispanic folks. This has always been a tactic of white supremacy," said Edgar Villanueva, author of Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance.


Educators say they fear they might not be able to discuss Juneteenth -- even after President Biden signed a bill last week making the day a national holiday.

Don't forget: After 21 American prisoners of war refused to be repatriated to the U.S. following the Korean War, states in the 1950s began requiring U.S. history in public schools to fight future "brainwashing" by Communist countries.


The U.S. history and social studies classes in the Cold War era were taught to reinforce nationalism and romanticize Founding Fathers while downplaying slavery and the extermination of Native Americans.

'We'll all be dead by June': Jared Kushner lashed out at a health official after hearing about mask shipments, according to a new book

Oma Seddiq
Mon, June 21, 2021

Jared Kushner. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Kushner reportedly grew so frustrated about mask shipments last year that he threw a pen at the wall.

"You f---ing moron," Kushner reportedly said to a health official. "We'll all be dead by June."

The Washington Post said the scene was detailed in a forthcoming book by two Post reporters.

Jared Kushner lashed out at a public-health official when he learned in late March 2020 that millions of masks wouldn't arrive in the US until June, a forthcoming book says, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

"You f---ing moron," Kushner reportedly said to Robert Kadlec, then an assistant secretary of health and human services, who had purchased 600 million masks as coronavirus infections spiked across the country. "We'll all be dead by June."

The Post said the scene was described in "Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History," a book by its reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta set to be published later this month.

Kushner grew so frustrated that he threw his pen at the wall, the book says, according to the report. At the time, he had taken on greater responsibilities as senior advisor to President Donald Trump, playing an influential role in the White House's COVID-19 response.

The Post reported that the book detailed many more chaotic moments of the Trump administration's coronavirus response, including a time when another Trump aide blew up at Kadlec.

Upset at the administration's rollout of the antiviral treatment remdesivir, Mark Meadows, then the White House chief of staff, reportedly shouted at Kadlec in a phone call, "I'm going to fire your a-- if you can't fix this!"

The reporters wrote that the handling of the pandemic had turned the Trump administration into "a toxic environment in which no matter where you turned, someone was ready to rip your head off or threatening to fire you," according to The Post.

The book is also said to describe an instance in February 2020 when Trump asked officials in the Situation Room whether people with COVID-19 could be sent to Guantánamo Bay.

"Don't we have an island that we own?" Trump reportedly said. "What about Guantánamo?" The idea shocked the officials, who dismissed it, the book reportedly says.

‘Testing is killing me!’ Trump feared Covid

numbers would doom his re-election, new

book claims

Nathan Place
Mon, June 21, 2021

Then-US President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign rally at the BOK Center, 20 June, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Getty Images)

While president, Donald Trump reportedly yelled at aides to shut down testing for Covid-19 in the United States, fearing the growing number of infections and deaths due to the virus would cost him his re-election.

“Testing is killing me!” he allegedly yelled at Alex Azar, who was secretary of Health and Human Services at the time. “I’m going to lose the election because of testing! What idiot had the federal government do testing?”

The tantrum is just one of many chronicled in an upcoming book, Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History, by Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta. On Monday, the Post published excerpts of the book, which chronicles the United States’ early, bungled handling of the virus.


According to the authors, Mr Azar was baffled by the former president’s outburst.

“Uh, do you mean Jared?” he allegedly replied. Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, had just taken over the national testing strategy.

Mr Trump evidently thought the whole effort was a mistake. In conversations with his aides, he appears to have been more bothered by the Covid statistics themselves – which he called “my numbers” – than on the actual illnesses and deaths they represented.

“This was gross incompetence to let CDC develop a test,” the former president reportedly told Mr Azar.

Meanwhile, members of the coronavirus task force fought with each other for dominance, aides blocked Mr Trump from firing staffers he didn’t like, and efforts to distribute masks and medicines faltered. The overall result, the book says, was a slow and “rudderless” response to the crisis.

In another disturbing episode, Mr Trump allegedly floated the idea of quarantining Covid-positive Americans at the same naval base in Guantanamo Bay where terrorism suspects are held.

According to the book, the suggestion came up during a Situation Room meeting in February 2020. At the time, most of the world’s Covid-19 cases were still outside the United States, and White House officials were debating what to do with Americans who had been infected abroad. Some suggested bringing them back into the country to receive treatment at US hospitals.

Donald Trump, reportedly, had another idea.

“Don’t we have an island that we own?” the former president allegedly asked. “What about Guantanamo?”

White House officials reportedly put the kibosh on the idea – even after Mr Trump suggested it a second time.

The Independent has reached out to Mr Trump’s company for comment, but has not yet heard back.

Exclusive: Matt Hancock kept Boris Johnson in dark over Covid vaccines success

Edward Malnick

THE TELEGRAPH

Sat, June 19, 2021

Michael Gove and Matt Hancock during the UEFA Euro 2020 match between England and Scotland at Wembley on Friday - Eamonn McCormack/UEFA via Getty Images

Matt Hancock failed to tell Boris Johnson about a major Public Health England (PHE) study showing the effectiveness of vaccines against the Indian or delta variant during a key meeting to decide whether to extend Covid restrictions, The Telegraph can disclose.

The Telegraph understands that the Health Secretary had known about the PHE data three days before the "quad" of four senior ministers, led by the Prime Minister, met last Sunday to decide whether to postpone the planned June 21 reopening until July 19.

However, multiple sources familiar with the meeting said it was not raised by Mr Hancock or discussed at all during the course of the talks.

The data was also not included in briefing papers given to Mr Johnson, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor and Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, in advance of the meeting.

The bombshell disclosure raises the possibility that the quad could have opted to press ahead with lifting the restrictions on Monday if they had been aware of the study, which showed that both the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines were more effective at preventing hospitalisation with the variant than they were against previous strains.


It comes after it emerged last week that Mr Johnson had called Mr Hancock "hopeless" over his handling of the pandemic last year.

On Saturday night, senior Tories asked whether the Health Secretary had "bounced" the Prime Minister into extending the current measures.

The disclosure will fuel calls for the measures to be lifted on July 5 – the halfway point before July 19 at which Mr Johnson said the Government could decide to lift them early.

One Cabinet minister insisted there must now be a "political decision" to allow businesses to operate fully again due to concerns about severe harm being done to the economy with relatively "little benefit".

On Saturday night Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Covid Recovery Group of Conservative MPs, said: "Either Matt Hancock thought this data was insignificant or he thought it should be withheld from the Prime Minister and other key ministers.

"Either way, the mind boggles at what conversation must now be necessary with the Prime Minister, and I feel confident it will be a matter of interest to my colleagues on the relevant select committees. If Matt Hancock was deliberately withholding relevant information, what was he trying to gain? Was the Prime Minister bounced?"

A Department of Health spokesman denied that Mr Hancock "bounced" the Prime Minister.

Senior ministers were said to be furious with how the decision-making process was handled. Sources close to members of the "quad" also said they were not provided with the usual explanations that accompany modelling by Sage scientists presented at the meeting, which showed that a June 21 reopening would lead to a large resurgence in hospital admissions.

A source close to the "quad" said: "They were presented with the [Sage] data without the assumptions that it was based on." Members of the quad were said to be "very annoyed". The claim was denied by other Government sources.

The Telegraph understands that Mr Hancock was briefed on the overall findings of the data on Thursday June 10, before PHE went on to send its written analysis to the Health Secretary on Saturday June 12.

On the Saturday, Mr Johnson hosted a brief virtual meeting of the quad from the G7 summit on Cornwall, ahead of the longer meeting following his return to Downing Street the next day.

However, the first notification that Number 10 received of the results was in an email to aides at around 3pm on Sunday June 13, shortly before the meeting that evening at which ministers decided to extend the restrictions.

Sources with the talks said an email sent so close to the meeting did not amount to a meaningful attempt to inform Mr Johnson of the data.

Mr Baker added: "To send an email so late in the day is an act of opposition. It's the sort of thing we do to Labour MPs before appearing in their constituencies to campaign. It's not what a Health Secretary should do to a Prime Minister."

A Government source insisted that "equivalent data" to the PHE study was shown to the quad. The "equivalent" data was said to have been drawn up by Sage's Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) and to have included similar figures to the PHE's findings on the efficacy of the vaccines.

The source said: "When the decision was made to delay, ministers knew that the vaccines work. That is why we are buying more time to get more jabs in arms."

But the PHE data, which was only made public on Monday evening after Mr Johnson announced the delay, was based on an analysis of 14,019 cases of the delta variant as recent as June 4, looking at emergency hospital admissions in England.

It was described by PHE as "hugely important findings" which "confirm that the vaccines offer significant protection against hospitalisation from the delta variant".

Real world data showed that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was 94 per cent effective against hospital admission from the variant after one dose, rising to 96 per cent after two jabs. The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine was found to be 71 per cent effective against hospital admission after one dose, rising to 92 per cent after two jabs.

The data showed that both vaccines are more effective at preventing hospitalisation against the variant than they had been against previous types.

Meanwhile, separate analysis by The Telegraph shows that hospital admissions in regions with the highest outbreaks of the delta variant are rising at a third of the pace of last September, while a third of hospitals in England have no Covid patients at all.

Mr Hancock also told MPs this week that people who catch the virus are now spending 20 per cent less time in hospital beds, with the average stay being cut from 10 to eight days.

A Government source said: "The reason we need more time is because of the increased transmissibility of the delta variant, not because of vaccine escape."

A Department of Health spokesman said any suggestion that Mr Hancock "bounced" Mr Johnson was "categorically untrue". He added: "Information which was provided by PHE was shared across Government before the meeting. Analysis and work on the scientific paper continued over the weekend before it was published as soon as it was ready on Monday."

Analysis: Idaho awash in enough cash to address a lot of issues — or start a lot of fights

Maybe the 2022 Legislature will decide to pay for full-day kindergarten.



Kevin Richert
Fri, June 18, 2021
This story originally published June 17 at IdahoEdNews.org.

Maybe the 2022 Legislature will decide to pay for full-day kindergarten.

Or maybe not.


But if lawmakers say no, money won’t be an excuse.

Idaho’s ever-growing budget surplus is trending toward a record-shattering and mind-boggling $800 million. The big reason: Individual income tax collections are ahead of forecasts by a whopping $452.2 million. We’ll know the exact surplus sometime after June 30, when the state closes the books on the 2020-21 budget year.

Regardless, the state is awash in enough cash to address a lot of issues — or start a lot of fights.

Which is where all-day kindergarten enters the picture.

Most school districts and charter schools already offer a full day of kindergarten, but that means they have to come up with a way to pay for it. The state only covers the costs of half-day kindergarten.

The idea of state-funded full-day kindergarten is not a new one. In 2019, Gov. Brad Little’s education task force recommended funding full-day kindergarten. The Idaho School Boards Association has supported the idea for several years. In March, Republican Sen. Carl Crabtree of Grangeville and Rep. Judy Boyle of Midvale unveiled a full-day kindergarten bill.

And on Wednesday, the State Board of Education endorsed full-day kindergarten. If Little goes along with the unanimous recommendation from his State Board, the issue will come up again at the board’s August meeting.

Little is talking in general terms about what he wants to do with the surplus. In a news release last week, he pledged to “advocate for even more tax relief and strategic investments in key areas, with education topping the priority list.” Little’s staff didn’t respond to a request for details.

However, it would be shocking if Little didn’t join the push for full-day kindergarten.

Early reading has been Little’s top education priority — and maybe even his highest policy priority, period. Full-day kindergarten fits right in with Little’s goal of getting children reading by third grade.

There’s plenty of money to pay for full-day kindergarten — the Crabtree-Boyle bill pegged the cost at a maximum of $42.1 million per year. And while supporters will argue for the benefits of full-day kindergarten, and talk about building pre-reading skills and social skills, they can also make a bottom-line case. They can say state funding would provide stability, allowing districts to move the kindergarten costs off of one- or two-year supplemental property tax levies. They can also argue for equity, since state funding would get schools out of the business of charging for full-day kindergarten.

“Having to charge tuition creates access barriers,” said Quinn Perry, the ISBA’s policy and government affairs director.

Of course, there would be pushback from critics, and from one of the Statehouse’s usual suspects.

Reliably enough, the Idaho Freedom Foundation ripped full-day kindergarten earlier this week, saying the idea would yield negligible benefits that would disappear by third grade, while limiting parental choice.

“Idaho’s kids need a proven reform like school choice instead of proven failures like full-day kindergarten,” the foundation’s Anna Miller wrote Tuesday.

Sounds like another debate pitting the foundation against, more or less, every education stakeholder group in the state. Why should the 2022 legislative session be any different than 2021?

But a big surplus is kind of like a budgetary Rorschach test. Anybody can look at it and see the solution to a longstanding problem.

Rod Gramer hasn’t had time to poll his Idaho Business for Education members about the surplus. But he believes the statewide group of business leaders would support full-day kindergarten and a big push for early education. The Legislature rejected a $6 million-a-year federal early education grant this year, largely at the Freedom Foundation’s urging, but Gramer hopes 2022 would be a historic year for pre-K and kindergarten alike. “In my book, they’re the most important things we can do to improve student outcomes in Idaho.”

In addition to all-day kindergarten, the ISBA would like to see some surplus dollars go into school classified staff salaries. School districts are facing their own version of the labor shortage, when classroom paraprofessionals, bus drivers and cafeteria staff can make more money elsewhere in the labor market. “We’re losing employees too, and it’s not just educators,” Perry said.

While noting the momentum behind full-day kindergarten, state superintendent Sherri Ybarra says she’d like to see the state restore several budget line items — for classroom technology, teacher training, IT staffing and content and curriculum. She also wants help for distracts and charters, which are backfilling staffing at a cost of more than $200 million a year, putting pressure on local property taxes.


Wendy Horman, an Idaho Falls Republican who sits on the budget-writing Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, clicked off several ideas for surplus dollars. The state could fund grants and scholarships for public and private school students, an idea she pushed unsuccessfully in 2021. The state could finally shift to an enrollment-based funding formula, providing money to districts that would otherwise lose money during the transition. Or lawmakers could upgrade the State Department of Education’s data management system. “It’s not very splashy, but I think it’s essential to (classroom) improvement to have accurate, real-time data.”

A surplus of money has a way of generating a surplus of ideas. So a robust budget year often has a way of translating into a rough legislative session. “Sometimes it’s harder when you have money than when you don’t have money,” Gramer said.

The Legislature is just coming off a record-setting 122-day slog of a session. A record-setting budget surplus — which just happens to coincide with an election year — could make for another long winter (and spring) around the Statehouse.