plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose 

Marijuana use high among adolescent, teen, young adult vapers, study finds

A high percentage of teens and young adults who vape use the devices for marijuana, according to a new study. Photo by sarahj1/Pixabay

Feb. 7 (UPI) -- More than one-third of adolescents and half of teens and young adults who vape use the devices for marijuana, a study published Monday by JAMA Pediatrics found.

About 35% of adolescents ages 12 to 14 years report vaping marijuana, compared with 51% of teens ages 15 to 17 years and 54% of young adults ages 18 to 24 years, the data showed.

One in four young adults ages 18 to 24 years reported using e-cigarettes, compared with 14% of those ages 15 to 17 years and 3% of those 12 to 14 years, the researchers said.

"Our findings suggest that many adolescents and young adults who use e-cigarettes are vaping cannabis," study co-author Ruoyan Sun told UPI in an email.

RELATEDCDC, FDA data find 2 million current teen e-cigarette users

"Vaping devices such as e-cigarettes, vaping pens, e-cigars and e-hookahs can be used to vape multiple substances, including nicotine, cannabis and opium," said Sun, an assistant professor of healthcare organization and policy at the University of Alabama-Birmingham.

Recent estimates suggest as many as one in five youths age 18 years and younger nationally use e-cigarettes.

Studies have found that young people who vape prefer flavored tobacco products, which led the Food and Drug Administration to order ban on the sale of these devices that took effect in February 2020.

RELATED Marijuana use in teen years may hinder brain development, study finds

However, although the flavored products were popular with young vapers, marijuana was preferred by many as well, according to Sun and her colleagues.

Based on their survey of 4,121 adolescents, teens and young adults ages 12 to 24 years, about one-third of those ages 12 to 14 years who use e-cigarettes for marijuana do so most or all of the time, the researchers said.

Just under 15% of marijuana vapers ages 15 to 17 years use the devices to consume the drug most or all of the time, the data showed.

RELATED Study: Youth vaping down, but 1 in 5 U.S. teens still using e-cigarettes

Roughly one in five vapers ages 18 to 24 years reported using the devices for marijuana most or all of the time, according to the researchers.

"We were surprised that more than half of young adults who were e-cigarette users reported cannabis vaping," Sun said.

"Furthermore, some of these e-cigarette users, about 10%, reported vaping cannabis every time they vaped," she said.

Most children have 'thirdhand' smoke exposure on hands, study finds


Young children are at risk for thirdhand smoke exposure through touching, according to a new study. 

Photo by cat6719/Pixabay


Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Nearly all young children have traces of nicotine on their hands, even those living in non-smoking households, a study published Monday by JAMA Network Open found.

Just over 97% of the more than 500 children age 11 years and younger in the study had evidence of nicotine, an ingredient of tobacco that works as a stimulant and is potentially addictive, the data showed.

This includes more than 95% of children in this age group living in non-smoking homes, the researchers said.

Children from lower-income families had significantly more nicotine on their hands than children from higher-income families, according to the researchers.

RELATED Study finds thirdhand smoke affects weight, blood cells

In addition, children of Black parents had higher amounts of nicotine on their hands than children of White or multiracial parents, they said.

"This study further highlights the importance of the quality of indoor environments," study co-author Georg Matt said in a press release.

"If you live in an environment where people smoke or used to smoke, you're going to be more exposed to thirdhand smoke than you were before," said Matt, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and director of the Thirdhand Smoke Resource Center.

RELATED Thirdhand smoke an under-recognized health threat

When young children touch the floor, tabletops, toys, clothes and other surfaces and then touch their mouths and faces, they are especially vulnerable to third-hand smoke, he and his colleagues said.

Thirdhand smoke refers to the chemical residue from tobacco smoke left behind in dust and on surfaces after someone smokes or vapes, they said.

Exposure to nicotine and other chemicals found in tobacco products through "thirdhand smoke" can increase the risk for cancer in children, according to Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg, Fla.

RELATED 'Thirdhand' smoke hurts infant lungs

For this study, Matt and his colleagues swabbed the hands of 504 children age 11 years and younger and analyzed traces of substances found on their hands.

Parental protections, such as home and car smoking bans, dramatically reduced the amount of nicotine detected on these children's hands, the data showed.

The researchers plan to continue analyzing other markers of third-hand smoke exposure and investigate health outcomes, they said.

They hope their research will further support stricter smoking bans and policies requiring real estate agents and landlords to disclose thirdhand smoke levels in homes.

"This is a wake-up call to protect vulnerable children and is an overlooked part of housing disparities," study co-author Penelope Quintana, a professor of public health at San Diego State, said in a press release.

Texas push to remove LGBTQ books spotlights partisanship on school boards

By Jeremy Schwartz, The Texas Tribune & ProPublica

Melanie Graft won a seat on the Granbury school board in Hood County, Texas, last fall after conducting a longstanding campaign to remove books with LGBTQ themes from libraries. 

Photo by Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune

LONG READ

Feb. 7 (UPI) -- Nearly seven years ago, Melanie Graft's 4-year-old daughter was in the children's section of her local North Texas library when she picked up a book about an LGBTQ pride parade. Within the colorful pages of the book, This Day in June, children and adults celebrate with rainbow flags and signs promoting equality and love over hate. Adults embrace and kiss one another.

Alarmed, Graft launched a campaign against the book and another about a boy who likes to wear dresses, suggesting that their presence in the library foisted inappropriate themes on unsuspecting children. By June 2015, the Hood County Library Advisory Board had received more than 50 complaints asking that the two books be removed from the shelves of the children's section. The board refused, saying the books did not promote homosexuality, as some complaints had suggested, and arguing that the library already required parents of young children to accompany them and check out materials. Librarian Courtney Kincaid called This Day in June a tool to teach respect and acceptance of the LGBTQ community, but she agreed to move it to the adult section. She kept My Princess Boy in the children's section.

Opponents of the books then turned to the entirely Republican Hood County Commissioners Court, which appoints members to the library advisory board. After an emotional three-hour meeting that July, commissioners declined to remove the books on the advice of the county's attorney, who concluded that such action could spur a lawsuit over unlawful censorship because of potential violations of state law and the U.S. Constitution.

Anger over that decision helped fuel a seven-year effort by far-right Christian conservatives in Hood County to seize control of elected offices and government boards from more traditional Republicans. They won spots on the commissioners court, grabbed seats on the library advisory board and, last year, launched a months-long campaign to oust Michele Carew, the county's independent elections administrator, accusing the Republican of harboring a secret liberal agenda.

In November, the group claimed a major victory after Graft won a seat on the school board in Granbury, the county seat. Also elected was Courtney Gore, the co-host of a local far-right Internet talk show who has railed against masks and vaccines and promoted Donald Trump's false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. On the campaign trail, the women promised to comb through educational materials for any signs of "indoctrination" in the form of books or lesson plans that they charged promote LGBTQ ideology or what they referred to as critical race theory, a university-level academic discipline based on the idea that racism is embedded in U.S. legal and other structures.

"When my daughter was 4 years old, my parental rights were taken away here at the public library in Hood County," Graft, who said on the campaign trail that her school-age children did not attend Granbury public schools, told attendees at a GOP forum before the election. "I stood up for my daughter then, and I'll stick up for our kids now."

The years-long journey in Hood County offers a window into the fiercely contentious debates over curriculum and library books that have cropped up across the state and country in recent months. Once-nonpartisan school board races are taking on a decidedly partisan tone, and administrators are now sounding like political operatives

Peter Coyl, a librarian who testified on behalf of the American Library Association in 2015 against removing the books, recalls thinking at the time that Hood County was an outlier because of how extensively the fight consumed the community. In retrospect, Coyl said, Hood County foreshadowed the larger battle that is playing out in school board races and over library books across the country.

"It was obvious that there was a portion of the community that was not happy with the outcome," said Coyl, who now leads a library in Sacramento. "But I think now we are in an era, a time where people aren't willing to have discourse or conversations about things. They want their way and they want to impose their view on anyone and everyone, because they feel that they're right."

The Granbury Independent School District elections last fall served as a litmus test of loyalty to the GOP's most conservative wing, which pushed candidates for nonpartisan posts to declare their party affiliation and to explain how they would actively push far-right initiatives.

"This was the first election where candidates felt the need to put 'conservative' or 'Republican' on their campaign signs and in their literature that they sent out," said Nancy Alana, a self-described conservative Republican who lost to Gore in November after serving on the school board since 2009. "And I have always shied away from that because I understood that the school board position was nonpolitical. And that was what I was trying to uphold."

A career educator who spent 30 years as a teacher and principal, Alana shares views similar to those of Graft and Gore on books and curriculum, but was pegged by some far-right Republican activists as too passive for their vision of a more uncompromising "new Granbury." Alana said she worried that the focus on culture-war battles over books and curriculum could distract leaders from important issues like overcrowding in the growing district.

Graft did not respond to requests for comment. Gore said in an email to ProPublica and The Texas Tribune that declaring party affiliation makes school board elections more transparent. She said that the board "​​more accurately reflects the population now."

"Any entity that taxes or oversees school curriculum is inherently partisan, whether people want to admit it or not," Gore said. "I proudly ran as a Conservative Republican and will never apologize for being one."

Challenges to books about sexual orientation and racial identity in Texas are the latest in a wave of divisive national political issues driving local campaigns. In October, Matt Krause, a Republican state representative from Fort Worth who was then running for attorney general, sparked national attention when he released a list of 850 books that he said should be investigated and potentially banned from school libraries. The majority of the titles dealt with LGBTQ themes, and some were targeted for merely including LGBTQ characters, according to an analysis by BookRiot.

Gov. Greg Abbott, facing a Republican primary challenge from two opponents running to his right on education issues, later ordered the Texas Education Agency to investigate the availability of "pornography" in public schools, a term that some politicians and district leaders have interpreted as a catchall for books on sexuality and sexual orientation. He urged criminal prosecutions under the state penal code of educators who make such material available.

At a January school board meeting, Granbury Superintendent Jeremy Glenn, who is appointed by the board, referenced Krause and Abbott in defense of the district's recent decision to remove more than 130 books that deal with race and sexual orientation from school libraries, pending a review.

The Granbury school board went a step further during its meeting Jan. 24. Led by Graft, the school board cleared the way for the district to strip any material deemed vulgar or unsuitable by administration and the board from its shelves without a committee review.

The next night, at Brazos Covenant Ministries church, Glenn assured attendees at a Republican Party gathering that school board members would act as gatekeepers against books and "woke" curriculum about sexual orientation and racial identity.

Speaking in partisan political language not common among school superintendents, Glenn pointed to decreasing margins of victory for Republican presidential candidates in the state, and warned local party leaders that "there are individuals out there that want to destroy what you believe."

"They don't believe in the same America that you and I grew up in, and that's just the truth," he said. "Our community has to decide whether or not we want to hold the line."

Old fight resurfaces

A week after the November election, Emily Schigut, a fifth-grade reading teacher and soccer coach, put her house on the market. She knew it was time to leave her job.

Schigut, who has family in Hood County, was teaching in Midland five years ago when the principal of STEAM Academy at Mambrino in Granbury reached out to her about an opening at its campus.

She recalls her excitement at coming to the district, which she said was a model of innovation. Now she worries that politics have taken hold in a way that makes it difficult for teachers to do their jobs. And as someone who identifies as queer, she is concerned about the message the district is sending to educators and students.

"It's absolutely terrifying," Schigut said in an interview. "All anyone has to do is listen to the words they've said. They aren't there for the kids. They are there for a political agenda. You watch all these things happening around the country, and in the blink of an eye, it was happening here.

"It's very sad because I 100% believed in this district. But I do not feel safe here any longer."

While the shift in tone at the school district felt sudden to Schigut, far-right Republicans had spent years working toward electing candidates to local political offices. Their efforts gained steam in the summer of 2015 amid outrage over two failed fights: one over the LGBTQ books and another when Hood County was required to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage. County Clerk Katie Lang initially refused to issue a marriage license to a gay couple.

Despite losing the debate over books, opponents claimed a major victory that year when Kincaid, Granbury's librarian, resigned. She said she could no longer endure harassment and bullying by the group, which she recalled had posted someone at the library's circulation desk every day to watch her.

"Even going out to lunch was a gamble because I didn't know if my food would be tainted in any way by someone who disagreed with my decision to keep the books. Whenever I would leave the library, be it during my lunch time or running an errand for work, I was followed," Kincaid told the American Library Association in 2017 after her resignation. Kincaid, who faced additional harassment following her departure from Hood County, declined an interview.

Graft became increasingly active in local politics, serving on the local library advisory board and as a Republican Party precinct chair. Her fight against the books made her popular in far-right circles, giving her a platform across the state.

During an interview with Doc Greene, a self-described conservative activist radio show host, at the 2016 state Republican convention in Dallas, Graft described the moment her daughter encountered This Day in June by Gayle Pitman.

"She picked it up, turned to the page and showed it to me, and I was appalled," Graft said. "There were political issues. Signs like love over hate, equal rights, things that a child certainly can't understand. And this book on the back binding was recommended for children ages 4 to 8."

She continued, "They have an agenda and an indoctrination for our children. It's not enough to tolerate. They want us to participate. And they want our children."

After Graft had finished, Greene said he was not a violent man, then added, "But something like this enrages me to such a degree that violence is not completely ruled out. Because when you go after the children, this is not the time to just stand by and talk about it."

Graft responded that she was not a proponent of violence, but Greene continued pressing.

"If you're not willing to kill for what you believe, you've already lost the war. Our children are worth saving," said Greene, who did not respond to requests for comment.

"I can't argue with that," Graft said. "I agree."

A month later, the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party near the library where Kincaid had relocated uploaded a video of Graft speaking at one of its meetings to YouTube.

"This is Courtney Kincaid. You need to know her name," Graft told the group as a screen flashed behind her. "We have to stand in the gap between the liberal left and our children. It only takes one liberal library with an agenda to steal the innocence of your child."

Two years later, one of Graft's allies in the fight against the books, Dave Eagle, a former Tea Party leader, was elected to the Hood County Commissioners Court. Eagle, who lost a bid for the school board in 2016, had vowed in a letter to the Hood County News the previous August that the Hood County Tea Party would "continue to reap political dividends" from the fights over same-sex marriage and LGBTQ books, as he complained about the local news organization's coverage.

Eagle, who claimed credit for Kincaid's departure, frequently sparred with members of the library's advisory board and worked to change the makeup of the panel. In 2019, the Hood County Republican Party issued a formal resolution calling for the board to be disbanded, claiming that it failed to represent the "moral character" of the community. County commissioners dissolved the board last year after political divisions had made it difficult for the board to get much accomplished.

"It has become a lightning rod," David Wells, the former library advisory board chair, said after the board disbanded. "It's lost its sense of purpose, of what it's there for. It's way beyond the purpose for which it is designed."

Eagle, who did not respond to a request for comment, also helped lead an effort last year that sought to abolish the elections administrator position held by Carew and transfer her duties to Lang, the county clerk, who has used social media to promote baseless allegations of widespread election fraud. Aside from saying that she would abide by the Constitution, Katie Lang has declined to discuss how she would approach elections management if given the role. Carew resigned in October. She is now running for office against Lang, an effort she said she undertook to prevent partisans from taking control of elections if commissioners decide to dissolve the independent election office.

Debates over national issues have left the ground fertile for takeovers in rural counties and small towns across Texas, provided local far-right activists can organize as they have in Hood County, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston.

"Local organizers can ride these national waves to power," Rottinghaus said. "With the right spark, I think that's a model they can replicate across the state."

Pitman, the author of This Day in June, one of the children's books targeted by Graft and Tea Party members in 2015, said the school board election in Hood County marks a worrisome escalation of rhetoric that previously seemed more isolated. "It just seems like there's been a shift in the political climate," Pitman said, adding that she never expected to see the massive wave of current book challenges.

"I think the most disturbing thing about this to me is that if you look historically at book challenges, for the most part, books were challenged because of the ideas that were in them," Pitman said. "And that, to me, is really disturbing because it's no longer about ideas or exchange of information or discourse, it's about marginalizing an entire community."

Reviewing 130 books

In January, administrators in the Granbury school district summoned its librarians to a meeting to review library offerings "based upon the Governor's criteria," according to emails obtained by a Granbury parent through the Texas Public Information Act and shared with ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

District officials immediately removed from the library shelves five books unrelated to LGBTQ themes by Abbi Glines, an author known for including explicit sex scenes that push the boundaries of young adult fiction. They also pulled about 130 other titles from school libraries, pending a review by a district committee composed of teachers, librarians and parents.

"​​Let's not misrepresent things. We're not taking Shakespeare or Hemingway off the shelves," Glenn said at a school board meeting last week in which he blasted opponents of the book removal effort. "And we're not going and grabbing every socially, culturally or religiously diverse book and pulling them. That's absurd. And the people that are saying that are gas-lighters, and it's designed to incite division."

Glenn made no mention of the dozens of LGBTQ-themed books that had been pulled from the shelves for further review. Of the 130 books temporarily removed, about 94, or 73%, feature LGBTQ characters or themes, according to a ProPublica and Tribune analysis of the popular book review site Goodreads.

Coyl said he is concerned that political candidates are increasingly using the issue of book censorship to win public office. "People need to be very vigilant and aware of it," he said. "It's a slippery slope. If we allow the restriction of one thing, it's very easy to slide into more suppression."

Experts say waves of backlash against LGBTQ communities often follow moments of cultural transformation. Schools have long been the battleground, dating at least to the 1970s, when anti-gay crusader Anita Bryant led a national movement to save children from gay adults.

But fed by social media, the same message today is spreading farther and faster than during past waves, experts said.

Vox Jo Hsu, an assistant professor of rhetoric and writing at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in the effect of public rhetoric on racial, gender and sexual minorities, said movements to censor LGBTQ books can leave young people feeling alone.

"I can't overstate the type of damage it does to create a culture of shame and silence around LGBTQ topics," Hsu said. "You are teaching them, from a young age, these false narratives about who they are that they will have to unlearn, and you're depriving them of resources and communities they will need to do so." Leaving a school district is not an option for all LGBTQ students or families, and children who are left behind when others depart will only become more isolated, Hsu said.

Last month, students in the Granbury district launched an online petition opposing the book removal effort. Within days, the petition had gathered more than 600 signatures. Students also spoke against the removal at last week's school board meeting.

"I don't think that little children should be shocked or disgusted by our identities," a queer senior at Granbury High School said at the meeting, warning that removing the books would send a dangerous message. "It's disgusting that, even in 2022, we still have to have these discussions about censorship."

Glenn saluted the students for speaking out, but then took aim at those who questioned the removal of the books.

"During my tenure, I have witnessed radicals come into our boardroom and go onto social media platforms to distort the truth, exaggerate issues and bad-mouth our trustees," Glenn said. "To those individuals, please know, like the little boys who cried wolf, you have lost all credibility to the majority in this community. We will not back down from you."

In an email, Gore applauded the book removals and said the district is not taking aim at LGBTQ students or community members. "All students at GISD are loved and cared for by the amazing staff and administration," she said. "With that, public schools are not the place for young people to express themselves sexually."

Near the end of the discussion, Graft made a motion to amend the district's policy on book removals, eliminating the requirement for campus-level committees that have determined whether concerns are merited.

The revised policy, which passed unanimously, will allow the district to remove books the administration and board deem "pervasively vulgar" or educationally unsuitable without going through the district's existing process. Before the change, books had to stay on shelves until a review was completed.

"This is going to align the policy so that in the event that we do have a book that is in our library that is vulgar and overtly sexual, it can be removed without review," said Tammy Clark, an assistant superintendent in the district.

Despite the policy change, district spokesman Jeff Meador said a committee will review the books, and most of them "will likely be returned to the library shelves."

Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression and education at nonprofit PEN America, which promotes literary culture and defends freedom of speech, said the Supreme Court has not settled the constitutionality of removing school library books without a review. Still, he said it's "highly concerning" that Hood County school board members "appear to have changed the policy just in order to appease the state lawmakers' list of books."

Friedman said that while there hasn't been a recent legal challenge related to the spate of book removals, districts could find themselves in legal jeopardy if it becomes clear that their motive was based on "hostility towards the views in those books."

Efforts to censor material usually fail, but the process can still be divisive and counterproductive, said Whitney Strub, a history professor at Rutgers University.

"I think history shows that these movements don't actually succeed, but they do a lot of damage and inflict a lot of destruction and harm along the way," Strub said. "And I absolutely think that's likely to be the case at the local level."

Seeking safety

The escalation of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric worries one Granbury mother of a 4-year-old, who asked that her name not be used as she fears retaliation because she is gay.

She recalled feeling reassured after county commissioners denied efforts to ban LGBTQ books from the local library in 2015 when she lived in a neighboring county. Although she didn't have a child at the time, she believed that the books provided an opportunity to teach children that having gay parents is normal.

On election night in 2021, she was shocked when Graft, who had led the fight against the books, won. It was then that she and her wife decided to send their son, who is entering kindergarten, to another district. "It makes me worried that someone like her would tell kids that it's not OK to be like that," she said.

The woman can tick off the incidents of hate she has experienced since moving to the county four years ago: the stranger at the grocery store who called her a "faggot," the senior citizen who threw his arms in the air in disgust and stormed off when he saw her kiss her fiancee goodbye.

She wanted school to be a safe space for her son, one that didn't vilify him for having two moms.

"I wouldn't put it past someone to physically harm me because I gave my fiancee a kiss," she said. "Seeing stuff like the school board election definitely opens my eyes. Even though this is a small town, and I know most of the people, and I grew up next door, when it comes to sexuality nobody's safe."

Disclosure: The University of Houston and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune. Read the original here.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

COVID-19 robs Olympic curlers of beloved social culture

By KRISTEN GELINEAU

1 of 10

John Morris, of Canada, throws a rock during the mixed doubles curling match against Britain at the Beijing Winter Olympics Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022, in Beijing. 

(AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

There is a photograph from the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics that captured curling fans’ hearts worldwide. In it, Canadian curler John Morris and American rival Matt Hamilton sit side by side, arms draped around each others’ shoulders, grinning faces inches apart, beer cans mid-clink.

It was a moment that perfectly captured the spirit of curling, a sport best known for its sweeping but perhaps best loved for its socializing. Yet it is a moment that will likely be impossible to repeat in the socially distanced world of the Beijing Games.

“One of the things I love about curling is being able to curl against my friends and then enjoy a weekend or a week around them, as well as playing cards and having a beer,” said Morris, who won the gold medal in mixed doubles in Pyeongchang and is hoping to do the same in Beijing. “That’s the best part of curling. On the ice is great, and that accomplishes my competitive drive, but the actual going to cool places, playing with and against your friends — that’s been really hard.”

Of all of COVID-19’s cruelties, the necessity of distance has caused particular angst throughout the curling community. This is a sport built around closeness, from the pregame handshakes between opponents, to the postgame drinking sessions, in which the winners typically buy the losers a round. That tradition, dubbed “broomstacking” for the original practice of opponents stacking their brooms in front of a fire after a game and sharing a drink, all but vanished after the coronavirus emerged.

Curling competitions were canceled. Ice rinks where the athletes trained were shut down. And curlers, like much of the world, were forced into isolation.

The Beijing Games are taking place inside an accommodation and transport bubble that is cut off from the rest of the city. The International Olympic Committee’s playbook warns athletes to stay at least 2 meters (6 feet) apart except during competition and to minimize any physical interactions “such as hugs, high-fives and handshakes” — common sights at curling matches. The stakes for slip-ups are huge; those who test positive are sent to quarantine and could miss their event altogether.

Bye-bye, broomstacking.

“All that’s gone away, and that’s a real challenge,” said Hugh Millikin, a vice president with the World Curling Federation. “You touch fists or elbows, but it’s just not the same and it doesn’t necessarily get you that connection with your opposition which is really the cornerstone of what curling’s about. I certainly have worries about how soon we can get back to it.”

On the ice, the coronavirus also forced changes, Millikin said. Training sessions were adjusted to limit the number of sweepers to one at a time, instead of the usual two. While curlers typically cluster around the house — the bullseye-shaped target at the end of the ice sheet — they had to stand apart. And some curling clubs required players to practice in masks, which is difficult given the vigorous sweeping and frequent shouting the game requires, Millikin said.

“When you’re sweeping pretty hard, you’re breathing pretty hard, too,” he said.

The closure of ice rinks forced many curlers to come up with creative training solutions. Two-time Canadian women’s curling champion Kerri Einarson practiced on a homemade rink on Lake Winnipeg, a throwback to curling’s conception 500 years ago on the frozen ponds of Scotland. Einarson’s father and a neighbor cleared a patch of ice on the lake’s surface and drilled in a chunk of wood to serve as a hack, the block that curlers push off from before gliding down the ice.

Pandemic-related store closures meant there was nowhere to buy paint, so they were unable to mark the ice with a target. Still, the experience proved cathartic for Einarson, who struggled with the lack of socializing.

“We couldn’t even celebrate wins with anyone after we were in the bubble,” she said. “It didn’t really feel like winning, which is tough. Even afterwards when you get home, you couldn’t even go and celebrate with your friends and family. It didn’t feel like curling at all.”

For the U.S. Olympic curling teams, the cancellation of crucial competitions was the biggest stressor, said Dean Gemmell, director of curling development at USA Curling. For long stretches, all they could do was practice, and even that was tough. Players from Minnesota and Wisconsin had to travel long distances to find open rinks, on top of juggling their jobs and families.

The teams engaged in scrimmages with each other, but those don’t prepare players for the Olympics the way real competitions do, Gemmell said.

“A big part is just learning how to control your emotions in events that matter,” he said.

Yet despite the yearning many curlers feel for their sport’s beer-sharing days of yore, curling’s social aspect is precisely what makes it so risky during a pandemic. A study last year by Canadian doctors who played in a curling tournament that suffered a COVID-19 outbreak found a key transmission route appeared to have occurred off the ice, at the curlers’ buffet lunches. Of the 18 teams participating, only one team avoided contracting the virus — and that was the team that shunned the lunches and other social events.

COVID-19 nearly derailed the dreams of Tahli Gill, a member of Australia’s first curling team to make it to the Olympics. On Sunday, the Australian Olympic Committee announced Gill and her teammate were being forced to withdraw after Gill, who had the coronavirus before the Games, returned a series of positive tests. But later in the day, the committee said the medical expert panel had determined Gill’s levels fell within an acceptable range, and the Australians were allowed to compete, going on to win their first game of the Olympics against Switzerland.

Before heading to Beijing, Gill said she and many other curlers were just grateful that some competitions were eventually able to go ahead but that the isolation had taken a toll.

“Curling is such a family,” she said. “It’s slowly getting back to the new normal, I guess. I don’t know if it will ever be the same again.”

___

More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

SMOKING WAS POPULAR WITH CURLERS OF A PAST GENERATION, BEER AND CIGS BOTH NAMED EXPORT

Report: Corporate climate pledges are weaker than they seem

By CATHY BUSSEWITZ

Trees grow on forest land adjacent to Mount Rainier National Park on Monday, Nov. 23, 2015, near Ashford, Wash. The land is part of a project of 520 acres on private timberland that allows a private nonprofit to sell "carbon credits" to individuals and companies who are hoping to offset their carbon footprints. According to a report by the NewClimate Institute released on Monday, Feb. 7, 2022, many of the world's largest companies are failing to take significant enough steps to meet their pledges to achieve zero net carbon emissions in the coming years.

 (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

NEW YORK (AP) — Many of the world’s largest companies are failing to take significant enough steps to meet their pledges to vastly reduce the impact of their greenhouse gas emissions in the decades ahead.

That’s the conclusion of a new report by the NewClimate Institute, an environmental organization that works to combat global warming. Its researchers, who examined the actions of 25 companies, concluded that many of them are misleading consumers by using accounting practices that make their environmental goals relatively meaningless or are excluding key parts of their businesses in their calculations.

The companies have pledged to make their emissions reductions or to offset their emissions through such techniques as planting carbon-capturing forests over self-imposed periods ranging from 2030 to 2050.

The authors chose to study corporate giants, including Amazon and Walmart, which made bold climate pledges and who, because of their size, are seen as especially influential. In recent years, large corporations have increasingly adopted pledges to significantly reduce their carbon footprints — a priority of growing importance to many of their customers, employees and investors.

NewClimate Institute concluded that even though many companies have pledged to reach net-zero emissions, the 25 companies they studied have collectively committed to reduce emissions by about 40% — not the 100% that people might be led to believe from the companies’ net-zero or carbon-neutral pledges.

“We were frankly surprised and disappointed at the overall integrity of the companies’ claims” said Thomas Day of NewClimate Institute, one of the study’s lead authors. “Their ambitious-sounding headline claims all-too-often lack real substance, which can mislead both consumers and the regulators that are core to guiding their strategic direction. Even companies that are doing relatively well exaggerate their actions.”

Among the 25 companies the researchers studied, 24 relied too heavily on carbon offsets, which are rife with problems, the report said. That’s because carbon offsets often rely on carbon removal ventures such as reforestation projects. These projects suck up carbon but are not ideal solutions because forests can be razed or destroyed by wildfires, re-releasing carbon into the air.

Most of the companies, the report said, presented vague information on the scale and potential impact of their emissions-reduction measures or might have exaggerated their use of renewable energy.

The report called Amazon’s goal of net-zero carbon by 2040 unsubstantiated. It said it was unclear whether Amazon’s goal referred solely to carbon dioxide emissions or to all greenhouse gases. The report also said it was not clear to what degree Amazon planned to reduce its own emissions, as opposed to buying carbon offset credits which rely on nature-based solutions.

In response, Amazon said it has been transparent about its investments in nature-based solutions, and disputed that its net-zero goals are based on offsets. The company said it’s on a path toward powering its operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025, five years ahead of its original target of 2030. It also highlighted other initiatives including deploying 100,000 electric delivery vehicles by 2030.

As an example of a misleading goal, the report said CVS Health could potentially achieve its 2030 emissions target with little effort because it compared that target with a base year that included extraordinarily high emissions.

A CVS spokeswoman responded that after the company’s merger with Aetna in late 2018, 2019 was the first full year of data the company could use as a baseline for the new combined entity.

“By 2030, we plan to reduce our environmental impact by more than 50%, including a reduction in our energy consumption and use of paper and plastic,” the company said.

The NewClimate report said that Nestle, among the companies with the lowest marks, had emissions-reduction plans that covered only portions of its business and that its net-zero targets relied upon carbon offsets. The company also provided little detail on the renewable electricity sources it was pursuing, it said.

Nestle responded that its emissions reduction targets do cover all its activities, that it’s reducing greenhouse gas emissions 50% by 2030 and that its factories and offices are switching to renewable electricity.

Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the school for environment and sustainability at the University of Michigan, who had no role in the NewClimate report, said: “Far too many companies are coming up short when it comes to meaningful decarbonization. Corporate decarbonization goals and plans for meeting them are generally far less compelling than needed for success in halting climate change.”

Some other outside experts suggested that the NewClimate report was too critical of carbon offsets.

“Forest-based offsets are challenging, but they can be real and important,” said Christopher Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. “A too-strong emphasis on decarbonization paths that don’t include offsets will slow overall progress and raise costs.”

The report did note some things it said the companies are doing well. Shipping company Maersk received the best ratings despite the challenges its industry faces in reducing emissions. The authors noted that Maersk is pursuing alternative fuels and has partnered with a renewable energy company to establish a factory for e-methanol. Maersk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Most of the companies studied, 15 of them, have outlined plans to reduce their “Scope 1” and “Scope 2” emissions, which are emissions released directly by the company or by its using electricity, the report said. But those companies didn’t address their “Scope 3” emissions; these include emissions released by suppliers or customers that use their products. Scope 3 emissions account for, on average, 87% of all emissions for the 25 companies studied, the group said.

The report commended Walmart, which pledged to be net-zero by 2040, for following good practice by committing to reduce its operational emissions to zero without the use of offsets and setting near-term goals for those reductions which include using 100% renewable energy by 2035. But Walmart was faulted for not including Scope 3 emissions. Walmart does have a voluntary program that guides its product suppliers to reduce emissions, and nearly a quarter of its suppliers have joined, the report said.

Walmart responded that it does have a goal to reduce or avoid one billion metric tons of Scope 3 emissions and that it reports its progress openly.

The report stressed that companies should take more responsibility to reduce Scope 3 emissions. Yet it can be challenging to track those emissions across supply chains, especially when working with smaller companies, said Maggie Peloso, a lawyer involved in climate change risk management and environmental litigation.

“It’s not always as easy as calling someone up and saying, ‘Hey, I want to know what your emissions were from the factory when you produced that 100 boxes of stuff that you sent to my stores and I sold them,’ ” Peloso said.

Among the suggestions for improvement that the NewClimate Institute offered were that companies focus on shorter-term emissions reduction targets for the next five to 10 years. It also suggested that companies set specific emissions-reduction targets with transparent accounting, instead of ambiguous net-zero goals.

If national governments created policies and regulations to meet the targets they have set, it would be far more effective, suggested John Reilly, who served as co-director of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT. “On the hopeful side, perhaps there is ongoing effort within companies to create rules, procedures, and strategies to achieve their ambitious targets,” he said.

Facebook Just Had Its Most Disappointing Quarter Ever. 

Mark Zuckerberg's Response Is the 1 Thing 

No Leader Should Ever Do

Don't blame your competition for your company's poor performance.


BY JASON ATEN, TECH COLUMNIST@JASONATEN
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Getty Images

Facebook (which now goes by the name Meta) had a very rough quarter. That's in contrast to most of its tech brethren. During a week in which Apple reported that it had the most profitable quarter of any company ever, and Google reported record numbers of its own, Facebook -- for the first time -- reported fewer daily active users. The number of overall users stayed mostly flat, but it's the measurement of how many people use the service on a regular basis that matters.

For the three months ended December 31, more people stopped using Facebook than signed up. That sent the company's stock tumbling as much as 25 percent, shaving $230 billion off its market cap. That's the most of any company, ever. The idea that the world's largest social-media company has finally started to shrink is a sort of "come to Jesus" moment for investors who somehow thought double-digit growth would last forever.

Facebook's primary challenge is that it has so saturated the market of people who might use its service, there's almost nowhere to grow. Well, except the metaverse, of course. That version of the immersive internet, imagined by Facebook's founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is likely still a decade away, at best.

For now, Facebook is shrinking. Really, that shouldn't come as much of a surprise, however. Sure, it's probably a shock that it's finally here, but it was inevitable that the company would stop growing. There are a finite number of human beings that are willing to sign up for its services, and it appears Facebook has finally reached that number.

That it made active user growth the measuring stick Wall Street would use to gauge its success is an issue entirely of its own making. For years, the line continued to grow up as it turned in massive growth in users. More users meant more ads, which meant more revenue, which meant more profits, which meant the stock kept going up.

Again, that's the business Facebook was selling as a success, until it wasn't. Now that it's not working, Facebook and its CEO spent a lot of time doing what no business should ever do -- blaming others.

It started on the call with analysts. Specifically, Mark Zuckerberg pointed at two tech rivals as the source of Facebook's problems: Apple and TikTok.

It's not the first time Facebook has complained about Apple's privacy changes in iOS 14.5. In late 2020, it took out full-page ads accusing Apple of harming small businesses and threatening the future of the free internet. Instead, Apple's changes simply require developers to request permission before their apps can track users.

That seems like common sense, but tracking users is the key to Facebook's business. Apple's change will cost the company as much as $10 billion in revenue in 2022, according to Facebook's estimates.

"With Apple's iOS changes and new regulation in Europe, there's a clear trend where less data is available to deliver personalized ads," Zuckerberg said. "But people still want to see relevant ads, and businesses still want to reach the right customers."

To be clear, it wasn't just Zuckerberg that pointed the finger outside the company.

"Like others in our industry, we've faced headwinds as a result of Apple's iOS changes," said Sheryl Sandburg, Facebook's COO. "Q4 was the first holiday season after Apple's iOS changes, which have had an impact on businesses of all sizes, especially small businesses who rely on digital advertising to grow. This will continue to be a factor in 2022."

As for TikTok, Facebook pointed out that younger users aren't signing up for Facebook, preferring to spend their time elsewhere.

"People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like
TikTok are growing very quickly," Zuckerberg said. "And this is why our focus on [Facebook's newest video product] Reels is so important over the long-term. As is our work to make sure that our apps are the best services out there for young adults."

Then, Zuckerberg repeated the same finger-pointing at an all-hands meeting on Thursday, which was first reported by Bloomberg. There, he again told employees that the company's focus was on Reels. The company first added the short-form video feature to Instagram (which is also owned by Meta), and later to Facebook. It's a direct copy from TikTok.

The thing is, you're never going to be a better version of your competition. If people are spending more time with your competition, they won't change just because you build a copy. It's not the first time Facebook has tried this -- it previously copied Stories from Snapchat -- and it didn't really work there either. So again, the company is trying to pivot.

Perhaps a better read is that Facebook is becoming less relevant. It's shrinking because fewer people want to use Facebook. It's becoming less relevant to users who choose to spend their time elsewhere, and to businesses who want to connect with those users. Ultimately, you don't become more relevant by pointing to your competitors and blaming them for your performance. That's the one thing no company -- or leader -- should ever do.

PART OF THE FACEBOOK PROBLEM

LEAVING

Peter Thiel leaving board of Facebook parent Meta


Billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel looks over the podium before the start of the second day session of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Tuesday, July 19, 2016. Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire and advisor to former President Donald Trump, is leaving the board of directors of Facebook parent company Meta, the company announced Monday, Feb. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire and advisor to former President Donald Trump, is leaving the board of directors of Facebook parent company Meta.

The company said Monday that Thiel will stay on until Meta’s next shareholder meeting later this year, where he will not stand for reelection.

Thiel joined Facebook’s board in 2005, a year after the company was founded and seven years before its made its debut on Wall Street. But he has been an increasingly polarizing figure among the company’s directors due to his conservative politics.

“Peter is truly an original thinker who you can bring your hardest problems and get unique suggestions,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. “He has served on our board for almost two decades, and we’ve always known that at some point he would devote his time to other interests.”

Meta Platforms Inc. did not say what Thiel planned to do after his director stint is over. But reports in The New York Times and Bloomberg, citing unnamed sources close to Thiel, said he wants to focus on influencing November’s midterm elections and support candidates who would further Trump’s agenda.

A representative for Thiel did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

In a statement, Thiel said “It has been a privilege to work with one of the great entrepreneurs of our time. Mark Zuckerberg’s intelligence, energy, and conscientiousness are tremendous.”

Peter Thiel leaving Meta board, will reportedly focus on pro-Trump advocacy

ByTheo Wayt
February 7, 2022 

Conservative tech mogul Peter Thiel is leaving the board of Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta after nearly two decades, the company said Monday.

The co-founder of PayPal and Palantir plans to leave Meta following its annual meeting in May, Meta said in a press release.

Thiel is stepping down to focus on advancing his pro-Trump political agenda in the 2022 campaign cycle, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal reported.

The tech founder — who has an estimated worth of $2.6 billion — became Facebook’s first outside investor in 2004 and joined the company’s board in 2005. His endorsement of Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention ruffled the feathers of some Facebook staffers

.

Peter Thiel’s support for Donald Trump ruffled the feathers of some Facebook staffers.

Bloomberg via Getty Images

In the press release confirming Thiel’s exit, Mark Zuckerberg lavished praise on the conservative mogul.

“Peter has been a valuable member of our board and I’m deeply grateful for everything he has done for our company,” Zuckerberg said. “Peter is truly an original thinker who you can bring your hardest problems and get unique suggestions.

Thiel likewise praised Zuckerberg for his “intelligence, energy, and conscientiousness.”

“His talents will serve Meta well as he leads the company into a new era,” Thiel said

Thiel is now reportedly expected to focus more of his time on conservative political causes, including senate bids by two of his proteges, Blake Masters and JD Vance, according to the WSJ report

.

Thiel plans to focus on pro-Trump advocacy, according to reports.

Getty Images

Masters and Vance are running the Republican Senate primaries in Arizona and Ohio, respectively. Thiel has spent millions of dollars supporting their candidacies and held fundraising dinners for both candidates.

“He thinks that the Republican Party can advance the Trump agenda and he wants to do what he can to support that,” a source close to Thiel told Bloomberg. “His focus will be on supporting Blake Masters, JD Vance and others who support the Trump agenda.”

Thiel spokesman Jeremiah Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Depression may make people more likely to believe COVID misinformation

They found that people with depression were 2.2 times more likely to endorse misinformation about the vaccines.

Maija Kappler,

Jan 24 2022

The results don't indicate that depression causes people to be susceptible to fake news. GETTY

Vaccine misinformation is one of the most pressing health issues of the present moment, continuing to threaten the effectiveness of measures aimed at ending the pandemic.

Experts have previously spoken about some of the reasons people might subscribe to vaccine misinformation. But a new study from the Massachusetts General Hospital may shed light on one underlying condition that might make people more vulnerable to that specific kind of incorrect information: depression.

“One of the notable things about depression is that it can cause people to see the world differently — sort of the opposite of rose-coloured glasses. That is, for some depressed people, the world appears as a particularly dark and dangerous place,” the study’s lead author Roy H. Perlis told the hospital’s news outlet .

“We wondered whether people seeing the world this way might also be more susceptible to believing misinformation about vaccines. If you already think the world is a dangerous place, you might be more inclined to believe that vaccines are dangerous — even though they are not.”

Researchers surveyed 15,464 American adults from across the country between May and July. In an online questionnaire, the participants answered questions that measured symptoms of depression followed by questions about COVID-vaccines.

They found that people with depression were 2.2 times more likely to endorse misinformation about the vaccines. And that had real-world consequences: people who agreed with at least one incorrect statement about vaccines were 2.7 times more likely to be vaccine-resistant, and half as likely as other respondents to be vaccinated.

Two months later, a small group of the original respondents — 2,809 this time — filled out another survey. They found that the people who had had depression the first time were twice as likely as other people to endorse even more vaccine misinformation than they had originally.

This finding indicated to researchers that people were more susceptible to misinformation after they had been depressed for a while.

“While we can’t conclude that depression caused this susceptibility, looking at a second wave of data at least told us that the depression came before  the misinformation,” Perlis said. “It wasn’t that misinformation was making people more depressed.”

However, the results don’t indicate that depression causes people to be susceptible to fake news, he said. “Our result suggests that, by addressing the extremely high levels of depression in this country during COVID, we might decrease people’s susceptibility to misinformation. Of course, we can only show an association—we can’t show that the depression causes​ the susceptibility, but it’s certainly suggestive that it might.”

The pandemic itself has had devastating effects on people’s mental health: the survey found that depression levels in the United States were at least three times higher than what they were before COVID. That lines up with what’s happening here, too: one in three Canadians is struggling with their mental health, according to an Angus Reid poll released Monday, Jan. 24. That’s a jump up from one in four Canadians who said the same in November, before the Omicron wave. More worrying, seven per cent said their mental health is terrible and they’re barely getting by — almost double the four per cent who said the same since October 2020. Poorer mental health has also been reported in people between the ages of 18 and 34, and people in lower-income households.

And the majority of Canadians — 66 per cent — say they feel that anxiety and depression have worsened in their friends and family since the pandemic started.

Maija Kappler is a reporter and editor at Healthing. You can reach her at mkappler@postmedia.com

Muscogee dismayed by nearly naked statue of Georgia ancestor

By MICHAEL WARREN

1 of 4

A statue depicting Chief Tomochichi, a Muscogee native who signed the 1733 Treaty of Savannah that launched the Georgia colony, pictured here on Dec. 20, 2021, in its temporary location outside Atlanta's Millennium Gate Museum. Plans for Atlanta's Peace Park include installing the statue atop a 110-foot high pedestal where it would tower over statues of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders. 

(AP Photo/Michael Warren)


ATLANTA (AP) — There’s a problem with putting someone on a pedestal: Exposed on all sides, a hero to some can be seen as a traitor to others.

Atlanta plans to install a statue of a Native American man atop a 110-foot (34-meter) column in its new Peace Park, where it will tower over statues of 17 civil rights icons, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Developer Rodney Mims Cook Jr. calls Chief Tomochichi “a co-founder of Georgia” who prevented massacres by warmly inviting British Gen. James Oglethorpe to colonize his people’s land in 1733.

“They became the closest of friends, initiating from the moment of Georgia’s founding a practice of diplomatic negotiation and cohabitation,” a narrator asserts in a video promoting the park. “Nearly three centuries later, Georgia’s tradition of peaceful coexistence continues to thrive.”

But Cook didn’t ask the Muscogee about their ancestor, and now that he’s unveiled the $300,000 bronze statue, historians say it’s all wrong. “Disrespectful” and “incredibly inappropriate” are some of the reactions three tribal historians shared with The Associated Press.

They say the nearly naked figure presents an offensive and historically inaccurate conception of Native Americans as primitive savages, and glorifies a heavily mythologized figure blamed by the Muscogee for initiating a century of ethnic cleansing. They also say that Atlanta is erasing them again, acting as if they vanished without a fight after handing over their land and heritage.

Even if Cook has the best intentions, there’s no excuse today for failing to work with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, whose 93,100 enrolled citizens constitute the fourth-largest federally recognized tribe, said Raelynn Butler. She directs their cultural preservation division. Norma Marshall, who teaches tribal history at the College of the Muscogee Nation; and Turner Hunt, who handles thousands of tribal-patrimony inquiries annually, joined her in a call from Okmulgee, Oklahoma.

The city council unanimously approved a plan in 2020 that would align Tomochichi with statues of the late Rep. John Lewis, Coretta Scott King and Rodney Mims Cook Sr., a white Republican legislator who stood out in Atlanta as a civil rights ally.

The statue recently unveiled at a temporary spot outside Cook’s Millennium Gate Museum portrays Tomochichi making a wide, welcoming gesture with his right hand while using his left to clutch a bear pelt that fails to cover his rear end.

“Can we put some clothes on the man, please?” Marshall said. “Is this the only statue that doesn’t have any clothing on?”

In reality, Tomochichi would have worn deerskin leggings and a long white shirt with a ceremonial belt and an elaborate bandolero bag, according to the Muscogee and other scholars. Muskogean-speaking tribes traded deer skins for European cloth, beads, guns and ammunition for a century before Oglethorpe arrived, they noted.

Cook said Tomochichi’s statue was based on a painting and a drawing from his 1734 trip to London to meet King George II. But according to Western Carolina University historian Andrew Denson, those images by artist Willem Verelst were propaganda. They were commissioned to convince potential British migrants that Native Americans were weak and uncivilized, said Denson, whose book “Monuments to Absence” explores how white people appropriated their cultural memory.

And while school texts promote a myth of peaceful coexistence, white settlers waged ruthless extermination campaigns to force them westward, said University of Georgia historian Claudio Saunt, who wrote “Unworthy Republic — The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory.”

Saunt called the statue a monstrosity. He said the Tomochichi’s gesturing right hand says to the colonists, “Here, come and take it.”

The Atlanta reality TV actor who modeled for the statue posted on Instagram that Cook had his DNA tested and found a Native American ancestor seven generations removed, and brought in a descendant of Pocahontas for approval before he posed in a loincloth.

Claiming Native American identity through DNA is another insult, the Muscogee said.

Cook said he tried in vain for years to discuss his “Georgia Peacemakers” plan with the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama. But Hunt said that group, which won federal recognition in 1984 and built a casino that displaced Muscogee graves, isn’t culturally, historically or linguistically related to the people who lived in present-day Georgia.

Cook said he’s eager to connect now that he knows the Muscogee are the ones to talk with, to see if they’ll participate in his vision and tell a fuller story.

“I’m glad to have the conversation because we need to talk about all this,” Cook said. “Let’s not tear down. Let’s just add the story and correct it.”

The council approved a historical oversight committee to ensure “accuracy and authenticity” when it authorized the mayor to enter into a lease agreement with Cook’s foundation. But Cook said then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms never signed it.

Everyone interviewed for this story said they’d welcome more education about what really happened with Native Americans in Georgia.

The Muscogee historians said Oglethorpe called Tomochichi a king to serve his colonial ambitions, but he was more like a small-town mayor. Banished by his people, he declared himself leader of the “Yamacraws,” fewer than 200 outcasts who sought refuge among the British. He lacked authority to give away land, and Butler said the Yamacraw people lived on only in the settlers’ imagination after his 1739 death.

Tomochichi also supplied colonizers with Native American slaves, and promised, in Article Six of the 1733 treaty, “to apprehend and secure any Negro or other slave which shall run away from any of the English Settlements” and return them for the price of one gun if alive, or a blanket if dead.

“Is he looking for the whole truth here? The fact that he was a slaver and ran slaves up to the colonies? That’s what the historical documents say,” Hunt said. But the Muscogee blame British traders who cheated Tomochichi’s people into debts they had to repay by forcing enemies into human bondage, setting off a 1715 war.

“You can’t hide from it. It was a part of history as part of colonization,” Hunt said. “And that’s what I blame — I blame colonization.”

US Black colleges alarmed by bomb threats, but undeterred

By CHEYANNE MUMPHREY and JEFF MARTIN

1 of 7

Firefighters and ambulance attendants remove a covered body from the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., after a deadly explosion detonated by members of the Ku Klux Klan during services on Sept. 15, 1963. Threats against Black institutions are deeply rooted in U.S. history and leaders say the history of violence against people of color should be passed on to new generations so the lessons of the past can be applied to the present. (AP Photo, File)


From her office in Birmingham, Alabama, DeJuana Thompson looks across the street and sees a daily reminder of terror. Her window overlooks the 16th Street Baptist Church, where a bomb in 1963 killed four young Black girls.

“Living in the era of bomb threats is not new to people of color,” said Thompson, president and CEO of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute.

Nearly six decades after that bombing by the Ku Klux Klan, the FBI is now investigating last week’s bomb threats against at least 17 historically Black colleges and universities across the U.S. Thompson said the threats underscore the need to teach new generations the history of violence targeting people of color so the lessons of the past can be applied to the present.

The FBI said the hate crimes probe involves more than 20 field offices and “is of the highest priority.” Investigators have identified at least five “persons of interest,” a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

In one of the cases, a caller claiming to be affiliated with the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division described a plot at Bethune-Cookman University in Florida involving seven bombs hidden in bags, Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari Young said.



University campuses are considered “soft targets,” but “they’re not as soft as they used to be,” said Robert McCrie, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Universities have traditionally been easily accessible to the public, but many hardened their security after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Now, picture IDs are needed to enter buildings on McCrie’s campus and others, he said.

Though no devices were found at the schools threatened last week, “people of color don’t have that privilege to think it’s not real,” said Lance Wheeler, director of exhibitions at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.

The bomb threats against Black institutions are deeply rooted in U.S. history. In Alabama, people used to call Birmingham “Bombingham” because of how many bombs and bomb threats occurred, Thompson said. Among the many victims: the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a civil rights leader whose home was damaged on Christmas Day in 1956 by 16 sticks of dynamite placed beneath his bedroom window. When a KKK member suggested he leave town, Shuttlesworth responded that “I wasn’t saved to run,” U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. told the House of Representatives after Shuttlesworth died in 2011.

“How we responded then is how we are responding now,” Thompson said. “We will not stand for these hate crimes, we will not stand for this intimidation, we shall not be moved.”

The Congressional Bipartisan HBCU Caucus’ statement on the latest bomb threats recalled 1969 racial segregation protests at North Carolina A&T that prompted an armed response by the National Guard and police. One student was killed, dozens injured and more than 300 people arrested as gunfire was exchanged from campus buildings. The protests followed the first sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter by four Black men, later known as the Greensboro Four.

“We know from history that in spite of external threats, HBCUs are resilient institutions that will persist through all forms of adversity,” the statement said.

Universities in Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, and other states targeted last week have resumed operations since the lockdowns. But many still worry about future threats and efforts to prosecute those responsible.

Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party and strategist for the Movement for Black Lives, said HBCUs and independent Black institutions are targeted because they represent independence and resilience for African Americans, which is a threat to a white supremacist ideology.

“The mere existence of Black schools, Black churches, Black political organizations and Black business are a threat,” he said. “We see upswings in these attacks as backlash to Black resistance, the exercising of independent Black political power, the influence of Black social movements.”

The attacks are “ways to try to put fear into communities that are trying to obtain freedom,” Wheeler said.

The impact of the Black vote this last election has been felt at the ballot box, such as Georgia flipping two Senate seats for Democrats including the election of Raphael Warnock as the first Black senator to represent the state. And the Black Lives Matter movement has led a national push for protests against police violence and injustice, including murder convictions for the men who killed Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and George Floyd in Minneapolis.

There is a “culture of fear of Black independence, of Black people building our own institutions, our own power and setting out our own direction politically, economically. There’s always efforts to suppress that, and I think that is what’s happening right now,” Mitchell said. “The best way to challenge these white supremacists and haters is by doubling down and investing in HBCUs long term and strengthening them as institutions.”

National Urban League President Marc Morial called the latest bomb threats “part of the poisonous tree of hate,” putting them in the same category as legislative proposals that would suppress the vote, the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, a spike in hate crimes and backlash against affirmative action.

“Terrorism is always about creating discord, creating unrest and fear — it’s about disrupting society,” said Warren Eller, who also teaches at John Jay.

Delaware State University President Tony Allen said students and community members shouldn’t let threats disrupt their spaces. Sharing in Thompson’s message, Allen wrote a letter to the university community shortly after a bomb threat on his campus.

“Here is what I say to these bullies, these fearmongers of our day: ‘We shall not be moved,’” he said.

___

Mumphrey reported from Phoenix. She is a member of The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/cheymumph. Martin reported from Atlanta. AP reporter Michael Balsamo in New York contributed.