'Like having a truck idling in your living room': the toxic cost of wood-fired heaters

WOOD BURNING HOME HEATING IS USED IN  THE AMERICAN PACIFIC NORTHWEST STATES

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Peter Irga, University of Technology Sydney; Brian Oliver, University of Technology Sydney, and Fraser R Torpy, University of Technology Sydney
Australians are accustomed to having fresh air, and our clean atmosphere is a source of pride for many.
Last summer’s bushfires, however, brought air quality to the public’s attention, as millions of Australians breathed some of the world’s worst quality air.
But there’s a lesser-known source of pollution causing billions of dollars worth of health costs every year: indoor wood-fired heaters.
This week, the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association endorsed calls to remove these heaters via a buyback or subsidy scheme. But will it work?

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Read more: How does poor air quality from bushfire smoke affect our health?

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Wood heater smoke is a huge pollution source

In winter, wood heater smoke is the single biggest air pollutant in New South Wales and the ACT. Similarly, in Victoria, wood smoke on cool winter days is responsible for most breaches of air quality standards.
Wood heater smoke is generated from both open fireplaces and wood-fired heaters. Wood-fired heaters are controlled-combustion, domestic heating appliances. In order to discharge emissions, they use a metal pipe called a flue, while open fireplaces use chimneys.
Around 10% of Australian households – roughly 900,000 homes – use wood as their main source of heating, according to the ABS.

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Read more: Bushfire smoke is everywhere in our cities. Here's exactly what you are inhaling

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Based on NSW guidelines, burning 10 kilograms of wood (an average day) in a modern, low-emitting wood heater can produce around 15 grams of “particulate matter”.
This is composed of tiny particles which can penetrate into the respiratory system, potentially causing lung and heart diseases. It is one of the most dangerous components of smoke, and a carrier for many of its cancer-causing chemicals.
By contrast, a truck travelling on congested urban roads can produce just 0.03 grams of particulate matter per kilometre travelled. A truck would therefore have to travel 500km in heavy traffic – roughly the distance from Melbourne to Mildura – to produce the same particulate matter emissions as one average day of using a wood heater.
So a wood-fired heater is like having a truck idling in your living room all day (albeit with the bulk of the emissions escaping via the chimney).

Smoke is toxic

The smoke from wood fires is very similar to that generated by bushfires, and is also detrimental to our health.
Australia’s wood-fired heaters are estimated to cause health costs of around A$3,800 per wood heater each year.
Given the roughly 900,000 wood heaters used as primary household heating sources in Australia, this could be as high as A$3.4 billion annually across the country.
One study published in May estimated 69 deaths, 86 hospital admissions, and 15 asthma emergency department visits in Tasmania were attributable to biomass smoke each year – the smoke which comes from burning wood, crops and manure. More than 74% of these impacts were attributed to wood heater smoke, with average associated yearly costs of A$293 million.
Another study modelled the effects of air pollution on over-45-year-olds in Sydney over seven years. It found chronic exposure to low levels of particulate matter was linked with an increased risk of death. Depending on the model used, it found between a 3-16% increased risk of dying occurred with each extra microgram (one millionth of a gram) of particulate matter per cubic metre of air.

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Read more: From face masks to air purifiers: what actually works to protect us from bushfire smoke?

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All of this assumes wood heater users follow the law and use clean, dry hardwood as fuel. Problems become far worse when treated wood is used as the fuel source.
Treated timber offcuts from construction or demolition activities are freely available and therefore continue to be used as fuel for wood heaters, against recommendations.
Much of this timber is treated with an antifungal chemical called copper chrome arsenate. Breathing the emissions when this wood is burned can increase incidents of liver, bladder, and lung cancers, and reduce the production of red and white blood cells, leading to fatigue, abnormal heart rhythm, and blood-vessel damage.
There is no safe level of indoor or outdoor air pollution. This is an ideal time to consider the hidden dangers associated with our “clean” air.

Wood heater smoke has been linked with increased hospitalisations and deaths from asthma. www.shutterstock.com

Change is difficult

Standard testing for new stoves is one way authorities try to reduce wood smoke emissions. Australian heaters must be designed to pass strict standards, however this system may not reflect the way heaters are actually operated in the home environment, because this varies so much between households.
For example, in New Zealand, testing on five heaters installed in people’s homes recorded particulate matter levels more than 15 times higher than their predicted average calculated during testing.
Banning wood stoves altogether is inequitable, as some people cannot afford any other source of heating, and many people employed in the wood-fire heater industry could lose their jobs. But changing economic incentives could work. An intervention method currently being proposed in Victoria is a wood stove buyback or subsidy scheme, which is now supported by the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association.
However, a similar rebate scheme did not have much impact in Canberra. Since November 2015, residents have been able to claim a subsidy of up to A$1,250 if they replace their wood heater with a ducted electric reverse cycle system. Just five households took up this rebate in the first six months. Meanwhile, 40,000-50,000 wood heaters are sold in Australia each year.
Another option is fines. Tasmanians can be fined A$1,680 if their chimney emits smoke which is visible for more than ten minutes. However, when these regulations were announced the laws were considered by many Tasmanians to be heavy-handed and the government was met with community resistance.

Many attempts at reducing the number of indoor wood heaters in Australia have been ineffective. www.shutterstock.com

A way forward?

In 2001, Launceston established several strategies to encourage use of electric heaters instead of wood heaters, including a grant of A$500 to those switching over.
Following this, wood heater prevalence fell from 66% to 30% of all households, corresponding to a 40% reduction in particulate air pollution during winter.
Education could also help. If people knew the concentrations of air pollutants in their homes, they might be motivated to change their wood burning behaviour. Often residents are unaware of the concentrations of smoke generated by their activity, with many considering opening a window reduces the level of wood smoke in their home. Controlling indoor pollution is difficult, especially if the major source of the pollution is outdoors – opening the window would actually let more pollution in.
We suggest that together with the proposed rebate schemes, one way forward could be to provide affordable access (through subsidies or otherwise) to air-quality sensors. At the lower end of the scale, prices range from A$100-500, with more accurate devices in the range of A$1,000-5,000.
Despite the expense, they can improve awareness of levels of air pollution among those with wood-fired heaters, and may provide the impetus for people to work together and change community perceptions around wood-burning appliances.

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Read more: How does bushfire smoke affect our health? 6 things you need to know

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This article is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas.
Peter Irga, Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Lecturer in Air and Noise Pollution, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney; Brian Oliver, Research Leader in Respiratory cellular and molecular biology at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research and Professor, Faculty of Science, University of Technology Sydney, and Fraser R Torpy, Director, Plants and Environmental Quality Research Group, University of Technology Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Girls score the same in maths and science as boys, but higher in arts – this may be why they are less likely to pick STEM careers

THE SEPARATION OF ART FROM SCIENCE WAS THE TRANSITION FROM ALCHEMY TO CHEMISTRY 

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Silvia Griselda, University of Melbourne and Rigissa Megalokonomou, The University of Queensland
Last month, the Australian Academy of Science published a report showing the COVID-19 pandemic would disproportionately affect women in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) disciplines.
The report noted before COVID-19, around 7,500 women were employed in STEM research fields in Australia in 2017, compared to around 18,400 men. The authors wrote:

The pandemic appears to be compounding pre-existing gender disparity; women are under-represented across the STEM workforce, and weighted in roles that are typically less senior and less secure. Job loss at a greater rate than for men is now an immediate threat for many women in Australia’s STEM workforce, potentially reversing equity gains of recent years.

Women are less likely to enrol in science and maths degrees than men. In Australia, only 35% of STEM university degrees are awarded to women. This figure has been stable over the past five years.
Some research in the 1990s suggested girls don’t study maths and science because they might not do as well as boys. But recent research shows girls score similarly or slightly higher than boys in maths and science.
So why don’t they choose these careers as often as men?
Our recently published study found while women perform at the same or higher level in maths and science as men, their performance in the humanities is markedly better. This may be the reason they’re choosing not to pursue STEM careers.

Girls just as good at maths and science

We wanted to see if there were gender differences in school performance when it came to science and maths and whether these affected students’ university applications.
Our study used data of more than 70,000 secondary school students in Greece over ten years.
We found girls’ scores in maths and science were around 4% higher than boys. But their scores in humanities subjects were around 13% higher.
We also found girls were 34% less likely to chose a STEM-related specialisation in their last years of high school.
These findings can be translated to Australia. According to the latest results from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), girls in Australia perform on a similar level to boys in maths and science, but at a much higher level in reading.
The difference between girls’ and boys’ performance in reading is 6% in Australia and 9% in Greece.
But when it comes to maths and science, there is not much of a difference between girls’ and boys’ performance in either country.

Female comparative advantage in STEM

Our study showed students decided which fields they want to specialise in by comparing their academic strengths and weaknesses between subjects and with their classmates.
Using our data, we compared the students’ grades in STEM and humanities subjects. If a student had a higher grade in STEM than reading and writing subjects, we defined this student as having a STEM advantage. If this STEM advantage was greater than one of the students’ classmates, this student had STEM as an academic strength.
Because boys were generally better in science and maths than humanities, they had a higher STEM advantage. As girls were only slightly better in science and maths than humanities, their STEM advantage was lower than that of boys.
In our data, we considered pairs of girls with identical grades in STEM and humanities subjects at the beginning of secondary schools, who were randomly assigned to different classrooms. We then observed their enrolment decisions one to three years later.
For instance, two girls with a similar performance in STEM and humanities (with same STEM advantage) were assigned to different classrooms.
One girl was assigned to a classroom where her classmates had a high STEM advantage (higher scores in STEM than humanities). The other girl was assigned to a classroom where her classmates had a similar performance in STEM and humanities subject (no STEM advantage).
Our findings showed these two girls, on average, even if they had identical grades in STEM and humanities, chose different fields of study at the end of secondary school. The former (whose peers had a STEM advantage) was less likely to choose a STEM-related field.
Our study showed these two girls with identical performance ended up choosing a different educational career, based on which classmates they sat with.
This explained up to 12% of the gender gap in STEM enrolment in tertiary education.
We did the same for boys. Analysing pairs of boys with identical grades but different classmates, we did not observe any difference in their enrolment decisions.

What can be done?

Our research indicates girls are more influenced by their success relative to their peers, whereas this does not hold for boys.
Our findings are in line with previous research that suggests girls are more influenced by negative grades than boys, especially in STEM, when making decisions about their future.
Our research suggests the teacher has an important role to play in recognising and encouraging individual academic strengths, independently of classmates or gender.
Previous research has shown teacher gender stereotypes regarding girls’ ability in STEM negatively affects the way girls see themselves.
Teachers can and must foster confidence in girls when it comes to science and maths subjects, even if they may be better at reading and writing.
Maths and science studies lead to occupations such as engineering, physics, data science and computer programming, which are in great demand and generally pay a high salary. So turning away from STEM may have a long lasting impact on girls’ life earnings.
Silvia Griselda, PhD student, University of Melbourne and Rigissa Megalokonomou, Lecturer in Economics, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Earth's rock-solid connections between Canada and Australia contain clues about the origin of life

Half Dome in California is constituted from granite, a relatively less dense type of rock. (Shutterstock)

Joshua Davies, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Jesse Reimink, Pennsylvania State University
The rocks at the surface of the modern Earth are broadly divided into two types: felsic and mafic. Felsic rocks are generally relatively low density — for a rock — and light in colour because they are made from whitish minerals rich in silicon and aluminium. Half Dome in California is made of granite that is a felsic rock. Mafic rocks, in contrast, are relatively high in density and dark in colour because they contain minerals rich in iron and magnesium; Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland is made of basalt, which is a mafic rock.
The difference in density between felsic and mafic rocks means that felsic rocks are more buoyant, and therefore sit at higher elevations above the Earth’s mantle (the layer inside the Earth between the crust and the core). For this reason, felsic rocks make up Earth’s continents whereas the lower elevation crust under the oceans is mafic.
The mechanisms that separated the rocks at Earth’s surface into these two groups may have also created the environment needed for life to flourish 4.3 billion years ago, very early in the history of Earth.

The Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland is an unusual rock formation comprising mafic rocks. (Shutterstock)

The separation into these two rock types is the result of plate tectonics: where the tectonic plates separate and move apart, the rocks below become depressurized, melt and fill in the gap between them, like the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The rock that fills the gap between the plates is mafic.
When one plate slides below another, fluids released from the lower plate cause melting in the mantle. These melts have to pass through the upper plate to reach the surface. On their way to the surface, they undergo a series of processes called fractional crystalization, which can change mafic melts into felsic melts.

Establishing timelines

When this separation happened is a matter of great debate in the Earth sciences because it may allow us to determine when the Earth became habitable for life. Many Earth scientists believe that the weathering of continental crust may have provided the nutrients for life to thrive; identifying when the first continents formed indicates when this may have occurred.
Earth scientists also debate whether plate tectonic processes in the past were the same as those occurring today, and whether they were even needed to form continental crust in the past. The first continental crust may have been formed through the interaction of oceanic crust and mantle plumes of heat coming from the Earth’s core. Another theory suggests that continental crust formed through meteorite bombardment.
The exact mechanism is important for understanding the history and evolution of Earth, and may help understand the processes that could be occurring on other planets.

Reviewing the records

Our recent study looked at the oldest geological material on Earth. The results suggest that Earth was already separating into these two rock types by 4.3 billion years ago — effectively since the beginning of the Earth’s geological record. Our data also gave intriguing insights into the tectonic processes that may have been occurring at that time.
The origin of continental crust is debated in part because the further back in time you go, the fewer rocks there are to study. Samples from the Acasta Gneiss Complex in northern Canada were found to be about four billion years old — the oldest known rocks on Earth. These Acasta Gneiss rocks are felsic and composed of tonalite-trondhjemite-granodiorite.
There are very few older samples from Earth, the most famous of which is the Jack Hills zircons. These are up to 4.3 billion years old, 300 million years older than the Acasta Gneiss. They are tiny grains of mineral zircon that have been eroded out of their parental rock (the rock in which they initially crystallized).
These zircons are found in much younger sediments in Australia, which means that it’s difficult to determine what kind of rocks these minerals originally came from, leaving open the question of whether there was continental crust during the earliest period of Earth’s history.

Continental connections

In our recent study, we compared all aspects of the chemistry of the zircon crystals from Acasta rocks to the Jack Hills zircons to see if they could have been formed in a similar environment.

A contrast-enhanced true colour satellite image (Landsat 5) of the Jack Hills in Western Australia. (Gretarsson), CC BY

We found that the two sets of zircon grains are chemically identical, suggesting that they formed from the same kinds of rocks and likely in the same kinds of tectonic settings. This means that the Earth may have started to create continental-type crust very soon after it formed.
The chemical composition of both suites of zircon crystals also suggest that they grew in magmas that originated at great depth in the Earth. Deep origins for magmas are a typical sign of subduction on the modern Earth.
We compared the amount of uranium in the crystals to the amount of ytterbium, a rare element. When a magma forms at great depth, the mineral garnet is often present, which gathers ytterbium. This means less ytterbium is taken up by zircon crystals, suggesting that a relative lack of ytterbium indicates that these magmas formed in deep environments.
The Jack Hills zircons are known to have crystallized at relatively low temperatures. We found that the temperatures from Acasta zircons matched exactly with the Jack Hills zircons, further indicating their similarity.

Finding the beginning

Ultimately, our results indicate that the tectonic processes occurring at the beginning of the geological record may not have been so different from the processes occurring afterwards. Evidence that things were not too different to modern Earth brings intriguing insights into the potential for the origin of life and the habitability of the early Earth, possibly confirming that life was present very early in Earth’s history.
This is a corrected version of a story originally published on June 17, 2020. The earlier story said 4.3 million years ago instead of 4.3 billion years ago.
Joshua Davies, Professor, Sciences de la Terre et de l'atmosphère, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and Jesse Reimink, Assistant Professor of Geosciences, Pennsylvania State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A short history of how Black women have been impacted by police violence — and what they're doing to combat it
Keisha N. Blain, The Conversation Jun 13, 2020

Balloons and a drawing for Breonna Taylor who would have turned 27, but was killed by police officers, hangs at the fence of Lafayette Square near the White House, to protest police brutality and racism, on June 7, 2020 in Washington, DC. JOSE LUIS MAGANA/AFP via Getty Images

In March, Breonna Taylor, an EMT in Kentucky, was killed by police officers.

There is a perception that Black women that have been shielded from police violence, but that is not true.

Black women have also been key voices in the struggle to end police brutality, from Fannie Lou Hamer to "Mothers of the Movement."

Just after midnight on March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed by police officers who raided her home.

The officers had entered her home without warning as part of a drug raid. The suspect they were seeking was not a resident of the home – and no drugs were ever found.

But when they came through the door unexpectedly, and in plain clothes, police officers were met with gunfire from Taylor's boyfriend, who was startled by the presence of intruders. In only a matter of minutes, Taylor was dead – shot eight times by police officers.

Although the majority of Black people killed by police in the United States are young men, Black women and girls are also vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence. The #SayHerName campaign has worked to bring greater awareness to this issue.

Police violence against Black women is marginalized in the public's understanding of American policing. There is a perception among many Americans that Black women are somehow shielded from the threat of police violence.

This perception could not further from the truth.

Breonna Taylor's story is reminiscent of countless others, and reflects a long-standing pattern: For decades, Black women have been targets of police violence and brutality.

And for decades, their stories have been sidelined in public discussions about policing. Many scholars point to misogyny to explain the continued marginalization of Black women in mainstream narratives on police violence. As Andrea Ritchie, one of the authors of the groundbreaking #SayHerName report, explains, "Women's experiences of policing and criminalization and resistance [have] become unworthy of historical study or mention, particularly when those writing our histories are also men."

Despite, or perhaps because of, their own vulnerability to state-sanctioned violence, Black women have been key voices in the struggle to end it.

Fannie Lou Hamer confronts police violence

Civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer was one of the most vocal activists against state-sanctioned violence.

Born in Ruleville, Mississippi, in 1917, Hamer was a sharecropper who joined the civil rights movement during the early 1960s.

After learning that she had the right to vote under the U.S. Constitution, Hamer became active in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, an interracial civil rights organization. The organization worked on the grassroots level to help Black residents in Mississippi register to vote at a time when only 5% of the state's 450,000 Black residents were registered.
In 1963, Hamer and a group of other activists were traveling back home after attending a voter's workshop in Charleston, South Carolina. They stopped at a restaurant in Winona, Mississippi, to grab a bite to eat.

The restaurant owners made it clear that Black people were not welcome. Hamer returned to the bus, but then reemerged when she noticed officers shoving her friends into police cars. An officer immediately seized Hamer and began kicking her.

Later at the police station, white officers continued to beat Hamer. As she later recalled, "They beat me till my body was hard, till I couldn't bend my fingers or get up when they told me to. That's how I got this blood clot in my left eye — the sight's nearly gone now. And my kidney was injured from the blows they gave me in the back."

Despite the fear of reprisals, Hamer told this story often. In 1964, at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, she recounted her story before a live, televised audience of millions.

In doing so, Hamer brought attention to the problem of police violence. Her efforts would pave the way for many other Black women activists who boldly confronted police violence and brutality by telling their stories — and the stories of their loved ones.

From lynch mob to violent police
During the 1980s, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry led a grassroots initiative in New York City to combat police violence in Black communities.

In 1984, Mary Bumper's 66-year-old mother, Eleanor Bumpurs, was shot and killed by New York City police while resisting eviction from her Bronx apartment. A year later, in June 1985, Veronica Perry's 17-year-old son, Edmund Perry, was shot and killed by a plainclothes police officer.

Both cases drew widespread media coverage and public outcry from Black leaders, who demanded tangible changes in policing.

United by their similar experiences, Mary Bumpers and Veronica Perry joined forces to combat police brutality in New York City — an epicenter of police violence and anti-brutality organizing. Transforming their grief into political action, both women politicized their roles as mothers and daughters to challenge police violence. They organized local demonstrations and pushed for legislation that would help to curb police violence in the city.

On Sept. 24, 1985, they were keynote speakers at the Memorial Baptist Church in Harlem. Both women delivered rousing speeches before an audience of community members and religious leaders.

"We will not stand for the KKK in blue uniforms … we will not stand for it," Veronica Perry insisted.

Her comments emphasized Black activists' recognition that the fight for Black rights was interconnected with the struggle against racist violence — whether at the hands of a lynch mob of ordinary citizens or at the hands of a police officer.




The struggle continues

In October 1986, Mary Bumpurs and Veronica Perry appeared together at a memorial service at the House of the Lord Church in Brooklyn. They were joined by several other Black women, including Carrie Stewart, the mother of graffiti artist Michael Stewart, who died in police custody in 1983.

Also joining them was Annie Brannon, whose 15-year-old son Randolph Evans was killed by New York police in 1976.

At the service, they lit candles in memory of their loved ones and called on community members to take seriously the escalating police violence in the city and across the nation. "We as a people have to stand together," Mary Bumpurs explained. "It takes each of us banding together," Veronica Perry added.

Today many remember the Eleanor Bumpurs and Edmund Perry cases. Fewer might recall these two women's grassroots organizing during the 1980s.


Their efforts, and the earlier work of Fannie Lou Hamer in Mississippi, offer a glimpse of the significant role Black women play in challenging police violence.

These women's political work continues today through the "Mothers of the Movement," a group of Black mothers whose sons and daughters have been killed while in police custody.

This group, which includes Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, are working tirelessly to push for legislation that would fundamentally change American policing.

In recent years, Fulton, along with Democratic Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, and Lesley McSpadden, the mother of Michael Brown, have run for public office. In the wake of recent protests, these women are calling for greater police accountability and joining the chorus of voices demanding the end of police killings of Black people in the United States.


Keisha N. Blain, Associate Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The history of how Black Americans were deprived of land ownership — and why it might be time to revisit Black commons

Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone,  The Conversation

Civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer created Freedom Farms, a cooperative model designed to deliver economic justice to the poorest Black farmers in the American South. GHI Vintage/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Following emancipation, there was no redistribution of land or reparations — and that has led to fundamental inequity in wealth, land, and power for Black Americans.
One way to redress this inequity could be through "Black commons," with both shared land and economic, cultural, and digital resources.

There is a long history of collective ownership in the United States, and today there are digital commons as well.

This could be an opportunity to look at the idea of collective Black action and land ownership beyond just the accumulation of wealth.

Underlying the recent unrest sweeping US cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land, and power that has circumscribed Black lives since the end of slavery in the US.

The "40 acres and a mule" promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor.
June 19 is celebrated by Black Americans as Juneteenth, marking the date in 1865 that former slaves were informed of their freedom, albeit two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Coming this year at a time of protest over the continued police killing of Black people, it provides an opportunity to look back at how Black Americans were deprived of land ownership and the economic power that it brings. An expanded concept of the "Black commons" — based on shared economic, cultural, and digital resources as well as land — could act as one means of redress. As professors in urban planning and landscape architecture, our research suggests that such a concept could be a part of undoing the racist legacy of chattel slavery by encouraging economic development and creating communal wealth.

Land grab

The proportion of the United States under Black ownership has actually shrunk over the last 100 years or so.

At their peak in 1910, African American farmers made up around 14% of all US farmers, owning 16 to 19 million acres of land. By 2012, Black Americans represented just 1.6% of the farming community, owning 3.6 million acres of land. Another study shows a 98% decline in Black farmers between 1920, and 1997. This contrasts sharply with an increase in acres owned by white farmers over the same period.

In a 1998 report, the US Department of Agriculture ascribed this decline to a long and "well-documented" history of discrimination against Black farmers, ranging from New Deal and USDA discriminatory practices dating from the 1930s to 1950s-era exclusion from legal, title and loan resources.

Discriminatory practices have also affected who owns property as well as land. In 2017, the racial homeownership gap was at its highest level for 50 years, with 79.1% of white Americans owning a home compared to 41.8% of Black Americans. This gap is even larger than it was when racist housing practices such as redlining, which denied Black residents mortgages to buy, or loans to renovate, property were legal.

The lack of ownership is crucial to understanding the crippling economic disparity that has hollowed out the Black middle class and continues to plague Black America — making it harder to accrue wealth and pass it on to future generations.

A 2017 report found that the median net worth for non-immigrant Black American households in the greater Boston region was just $8, but for whites it was $247,500. This was due to "general housing and lending discrimination through restrictive covenants, redlining and other lending practices."

Nationally, between 1983 and 2013, median Black household wealth decreased by 75% to $1,700 while median white household wealth increased 14% to $116,800.
Freedom farms

Land ownership today could look very different. The idea of collective ownership has a long history in the United States. Even during slavery, a piece of ground was granted by slave masters for enslaved African subsistence farming. The Jamaican social theorist Sylvia Wynter called this land "the plot."

Wynter has explained how that these parcels of land were transformed into communal areas where slaves could establish their own social order, sustain traditional African folklore and foodways — growing yams, cassava, and sweet potatoes. Plots were often called "yam grounds," so important was this staple food.


The connection between food, land, power, and cultural survival was subversive in its nature. By appropriating physical space to support collective growing practices within the brutal constraints of slavery, Black people also demonstrated the need for common, shared mental space to enable their survival and resistance. Herbalism, medicine, and midwifery, and other African American healing practices were seen as acts of resistance that were "intimately tied to religion and community," according to historian Sharla M. Fett.

With the end of slavery, these plots disappeared.

The principles of collective land ownership evolved in post-slavery Black America. It was central to civil rights organizer Fannie Lou Hamer's Freedom Farms, a cooperative model designed to deliver economic justice to the poorest Black farmers in the American South.

In Hamer's view, the fight for justice in the face of oppression required a measure of independence that could be achieved through owning land and providing resources for the community.

This idea of a Black commons as a means of economic empowerment formed a focus of W.E.B. DuBois' 1907 "Economic Co-operation Among Negro Americans." DuBois believed that the extreme segregation of the Jim Crow era made it necessary to ground economic empowerment in the cultural bonds between Black people and that this could be achieved through cooperative ownership.

Credit unions and co-ops

The accumulation of wealth was not the only desired consequence of a Black commons.

In 1967, social critic Harold Cruse argued for a "new institutionalism" that would create a "new dynamic synthesis of politics, economics, and culture." In his view, economic ventures needed to be grounded in the greater aspirations of Black communities — politically, culturally, and economically. This could be achieved through a Black commons.

As the political economist Jessica Gordon Nembhard has noted in reference to Black credit unions and mutual aid funds, "African Americans, as well as other people of color and low-income people, have benefited greatly from cooperative ownership and democratic economic participation throughout the nation's history."

The nonprofit Schumacher Center for a New Economics is working to rejuvenate the idea of Black commons. In a 2018 statement, the center proposed to adopt a community land trust structure "to serve as a national vehicle to amass purchased and gifted lands in a Black commons with the specific purpose of facilitating low-cost access for Black Americans hitherto without such access."

Meanwhile, shared equity housing schemes and community land trusts continue to grow, helping Black families own property, advance racial and economic justice, and mitigate displacement resulting from gentrification.
Digital commons

The disproportionate effects of the coronavirus pandemic and unrest over police brutality have highlighted deeply embedded structural racism. Organizations such as Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives are demonstrating a renewed vigor around collective action and a blueprint for how this can be achieved in a digital age. At the same time, Black Americans are also forging a cultural commons through events such as DJ D-Nice's Club Quarantine — a hugely popular online dance party. Club Quarantine's success indicates the potential for using online platforms to facilitate community building, pointing toward future economic cooperation.

That's what organizations like Urban Patch are trying to do. The nonprofit group uses crowdsourced funding to build community spaces in inner city areas of Indianapolis and encourage collective economic development that echoes the Black commons of years past.


The long history of racism in the United States has held back Black Americans for generations. But the current soul searching over this legacy is also an unrivaled opportunity to look again at the idea of collective Black action and ownership, using it to create a community and economy that goes beyond just ownership of land for wealth's sake.

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Julian Agyeman, Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University and Kofi Boone, Professor of Landscape Architecture, College of Design, North Carolina State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Trump appears to threaten protesters with harsh policing ahead of his controversial rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Mia Jankowicz

President Donald Trump tweeted Friday what appears to be a threat of harsh treatment for people who might protest in Oklahoma, where he has a campaign rally planned for the weekend. 

He warned "protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes" that they would find a "much different" scene to New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. 

Those Democratic-controlled cities have brokered a more cooperative stance between protesters and police as Black Lives Matter activism continues — though not without violent clashes.

Trump has repeatedly spoken harshly of protesters at his rallies. At a 2016 rally, he memorably praised authorities who treated protesters "very, very rough."

President Trump has tweeted to protesters and "lowlifes" ahead of hia Saturday rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, promising "a much different scene" to other hotspots of protest like New York, Seattle or Minneapolis.

"Any protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes who are going to Oklahoma please understand, you will not be treated like you have been in New York, Seattle, or Minneapolis. It will be a much different scene!" he wrote.
—Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 19, 2020

The tweet, though vague, appeared to be a threat of harsher policing than has been seen in those cities.

Trump has previously referred to himself as an "ally of peaceful protesters" in response to the protests at George Floyd's death. However, in the tweet he appeared to conflate protest — which is protected under the First Amendment — with looting and rioting.

Mayors in the cities he tweeted about have recently attempted to rein in their police forces and work cooperatively with protesters, although not after earlier violent clashes.

After tear gas was used in Seattle over the weekend of June 6, police have abandoned attempts to move protesters from the self-described "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone," a largely peaceful protest camp.

Seattle's Democratic mayor Jenny Durkan has defended the camp, in opposition to Trump's characterization of them as "terrorists" and his threats to send the military in to clear it.

New York and Minneapolis, both in Democratic-controlled states, have also taken measures to de-escalate encounters between police and protesters.

On Friday, New York's City Council approved a suite of police reforms, Politico reported. On June 8, Minneapolis' city council pledged to dismantle its police department.

Trump's tweet came on Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the freeing of Black slaves in the US.

Trump's rally — his first within the coronavirus pandemic — had originally been planned for Juneteenth but was moved back one day after widespread criticism.

The president has repeatedly romanticized harsh treatment of protesters, specifically at his rallies. During an appearance, also in Oklahoma, in 2016, Trump riffed on "the good old days" when authorities would treat protesters "very, very rough."


To cheers from the crowd, Trump noted that in the past "when they protested once, you know, they would not do it again so easily."

One of the highest-ranking Black women in the Trump administration resigns over Trump's response to racial injustice, saying it 'cut sharply against my core values and convictions'

Lauren Frias

Mary Elizabeth Taylor. US Department of State


Mary Elizabeth Taylor resigned from her post as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs in light of President Donald Trump's response to the rising racial tensions in the US.

Taylor, one of the highest-ranking Black officials in the Trump administration, submitted her resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, writing that her departure followed the "dictates of my conscience."

"Moments of upheaval can change you, shift the trajectory of your life, and mold your character," Taylor wrote in the letter, according to The Washington Post. "The President's comments and actions surrounding racial injustice and Black Americans cut sharply against my core values and convictions."

A lifelong Republican, Taylor had worked for the Trump administration since he took office in January 2017, and she previously worked with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Taylor's resignation appears to be the first high-profile departure prompted by Trump's response to demands to address police reform and racial inequality.

A senior State Department official resigned Thursday in light of President Donald Trump's response to racial injustice, The Washington Post reported.

Mary Elizabeth Taylor had served as assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs since Trump assumed office in January 2017. She was one of the highest-ranking Black officials in the Trump administration.

Taylor submitted her resignation letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, writing that her departure followed the "dictates of my conscience."

"Moments of upheaval can change you, shift the trajectory of your life, and mold your character," Taylor wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Post. "The President's comments and actions surrounding racial injustice and Black Americans cut sharply against my core values and convictions."

Taylor went on to say she was "deeply grateful" to Pompeo for "empowering me to lead this team and strategically advise you over these last two years."

"You have shown grace and respect in listening to my opinions, and your remarkable leadership has made me a better leader and team member," she wrote in the letter. "I appreciate that you understand my strong loyalty to my personal convictions and values, particularly in light of recent events."

Taylor's resignation appears to be the first high-profile departure prompted by Trump's response to demands to address police reform and racial inequality.

Black Lives Matter protests have erupted across the country since the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes.

While Trump called Floyd's death a "grave tragedy," the president has also name-dropped Floyd when touting the recovering economy and condemned protesters and their calls to defund police departments.

Earlier this month, Taylor wrote a message to her team at the State Department about Floyd's death, writing that her heart "is broken, in a way from which I've had to heal it countless times," The Post reported, which obtained the message as well.

"George Floyd's horrific murder and the recent deaths of other Black Americans have shaken our nation at its core," she wrote. "Every time we witness these heinous, murderous events, we are reminded that our country's wounds run deep and remain untreated."

"For our team members who are hurting right now, please know you are not alone," she said. "You are seen, recognized, heard, and supported. I am right here with you."

People who believe wild coronavirus conspiracy theories rely on YouTube for most of their information on the pandemic

Isobel Asher Hamilton
Reuters


Researchers at King's College London surveyed over 2,000 people in the UK to study how likely people are to believe conspiracy theories about the coronavirus.

People who got their news primarily from social media were more likely to believe conspiracy theories, and the researchers found consuming information on YouTube had the strongest correlation with believing them.

People who got their news from social media were also more likely to break quarantine and lockdown rules.
YouTube viewers are more likely to buy into weird conspiracy theories about the coronavirus than other people who get their news via social media.

That's according to a new report from researchers at King's College London delving into the public health risks posed by online conspiracy theories about the pandemic.

The peer-reviewed study was published in the journal Psychological Medicine and surveyed 2,254 people in the UK aged 16-70 in late May.

It asked respondents whether they believed a range of conspiracy theories to be true or false, including:

There is no hard evidence coronavirus exists.
Coronavirus is linked to 5G (a popular internet conspiracy).
The number of people dying from coronavirus has been deliberately hidden or exaggerated by authorities.

The study found that people who got their news primarily from social media were far more likely to believe conspiracy theories and to break lockdown rules.

"YouTube had the strongest association with conspiracy beliefs, followed by Facebook," the study's authors added.

Of the respondents who said they believe there is a link between COVID-19 and 5G, 60% said they get a lot of their information from YouTube.

People relying on social media for news also tended to break lockdown

France softens lockdown rules during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Reuters
The study also found that people breaking lockdown and quarantine measures are much more likely to be relying on social media for their news.

Respondents who said they'd gone to work or outside while showing coronavirus symptoms were three times more likely to get a "great deal" of their information from YouTube and Facebook.

Similarly people who said they don't follow the two-meter social distancing rules put in place by the government were twice as likely to get most of their information from YouTube and Facebook.

Although people who get their news from social media were more susceptible to conspiracy theories, the majority of respondents said they got most of their news from traditional outlets.

The physical danger posed by conspiracy theorists in the UK has already been in the press due to a series of arson attacks on cell phone towers, motivated by the belief that 5G mobile technology is spreading the coronavirus.

Some telecoms engineers reported finding razor blades and needles left as booby traps behind posters on telephone poles, and one engineer was reported to have been stabbed and hospitalized in April.

AHA! THE TRUTH COMES OUT
Trump says he thinks some Americans are wearing masks to show they disapprove of him and not as a preventive measure during the pandemic

IT'S ALL ABOUT HIM

Sonam Sheth 22 hours ago

President Donald Trump told The Wall Street Journal that he believes that some Americans are wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic to express their disapproval of him and not as a preventive measure.

The president also said his issue with masks was that people sometimes touch them, increasing the risk of infection.

He went on to say he thought that "testing is overrated," adding, "I created the greatest testing machine in history."

Trump also said, however, that more testing in the US had led to an increase in confirmed cases. "In many ways, it makes us look bad," he said.

President Donald Trump told The Wall Street Journal that he believes that some Americans are wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic not to protect others but simply to show that they disapprove of him.

Trump's interview with The Journal's Michael C. Bender was published on Thursday, a day after troubling accounts — contained in a bombshell book by John Bolton, his former national security adviser — emerged of Trump's handling of foreign affairs and competence.

Trump also told The Journal that his issue with masks was that people sometimes touch them, increasing the risk of infection.

"They put their finger on the mask, and they take them off, and then they start touching their eyes and touching their nose and their mouth," the president said. "And then they don't know how they caught it?"

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends "wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission."

Trump has repeatedly been photographed going to public events without a mask on.

Last month, he was seen touring a Ford manufacturing plant in Michigan without a mask despite being told by the state's attorney general that he had a "legal responsibility" to wear one. The president told reporters that he wore one behind the scenes but "didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it."

He was also criticized earlier in May for failing to wear a mask while visiting a Honeywell plant in Arizona. The Associated Press reported that the president didn't want to wear one because he was afraid that he'd look ridiculous and that it would harm his reelection chances.

The World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a pandemic in March. As of Thursday, nearly 8.4 million people around the world had been infected, and about 450,000 people had died.

The US had nearly 2.2 million confirmed cases and about 118,000 deaths.

Trump has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the US outbreak and blamed China, where the global outbreak originated late last year. He and his allies have also accused China and WHO of not acting quickly enough to contain the spread of the disease when it began to spread.

In April, the US intelligence community determined that China intentionally misrepresented statistics about the spread of the disease within its borders.

Bloomberg News, which first reported on the findings, described its sources as saying that the report's main conclusion was that China's public reporting of coronavirus cases was "intentionally incomplete."

Two officials told the outlet that it found that China's numbers were fake. China has denied that it concealed the extent of the initial outbreak.

"There's a chance it was intentional," Trump told The Journal.

The president later said he thought that "testing is overrated," adding, "I created the greatest testing machine in history."

He also said, however, that more testing in the US had led to an increase in confirmed cases. "In many ways, it makes us look bad," he said.

It isn't the first time Trump has made the claim. The president said last week during a roundtable event for seniors that "if we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, actually."

Several US states have reported spikes in confirmed cases as they've relaxed social-distancing guidelines and begun to reopen their economies.

New York, Washington, and California were initially hot spots in the US outbreak, but the states saw a gradual decline in new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths as their governors shut down their economies and imposed strict stay-at-home orders for nonessential employees.

Public-health experts have said that as states ease lockdown measures and reopen businesses, increases in confirmed cases will follow. They're also likely to be exacerbated because of nationwide protests against racism and police brutality in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in police custody on Memorial Day.

There have been significant increases in new infections in parts of the US over the past several weeks, particularly in the Sun Belt and the West.

According to NPR, Oklahoma has seen a more than 100% increase in new cases compared with two weeks ago; Trump is scheduled to hold his first rally since March in Tulsa on Saturday.

South Carolina, Arizona, Oregon, Florida, and Nevada have all seen increases of more than 100% compared with two weeks ago, while Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Texas, North Carolina, and Utah had increases of 30% to 90%.