Civics 5/7

Tuesday, May 7, 2024

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(Photo by Aaron Nesheim via Sahan Journal) 

After removal of Muslim activist, Minn. state agency puts genocide education work group on hold: During March of last year, Minnesota Representative Frank Horstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, introduced a bill to the House Education Policy Committee urging that the Holocaust and other genocidal events throughout the world and in Minnesota be taught in the state's social studies curriculum. The bill received support from groups like the Jewish Community Relations Council, as well as members of the House Education Policy Committee who cited a rise in antisemitism as a reason for the measure's importance. Sahan Journal also featured this testimony from a 99-year-old Holocaust survivor at a hearing regarding the bill: "Not only all students, but everybody — everybody in Minnesota educated — should have a knowledge of the dangers of mass murder, that mass murder can happen." 

But world events since the bill’s passage last spring – particularly the war in Gaza, where more than 34,000 people have been killed – have led to the term ‘genocide’ becoming politically supercharged in recent months.Now, the Minnesota Department of Education’s genocide education working group, which aims to provide teachers with the confidence and resources they would need to teach students about the Holocaust and other genocides, is on pause after removing the only Muslim person from the group just weeks after they were admitted. Read more here.

A new road threatens to displace a 'safe haven' for New Orleans' Black youth: Grow Dat Youth Farm has brought fellowship, employment and consistency to hundreds of Black children and youth in New Orleans for the past 13 years, and is potentially Louisiana's only youth farm primarily focused on people of color. 

“Our goal is to have young people leaving this space feeling powerful, feeling like leaders, feeling like they can see an issue and solve it," Jonshell Johnson-Whitten, a farmer and education coordinator at Grow Dat, told Capital B.  Now, those who have found a sanctuary at the farm could lose the space to a plan to run a road right through it. This story of potential displacement – in a city that has already lost a third of its Black population since 2000 – is one many marginalized communities are familiar with, and the potential loss of the youth farm to a multimillion dollar revitalization project is a microcosm of a broader national trend. In its story, Capital B spotlights the voices of the young people who are fighting for their beloved cultural and educational space. Read more here.

Health insurance ghost networks make it nearly impossible for LGBTQIA+ people to find care: Ghost insurance health networks occur when insurance providers list inaccurate listings of healthcare providers, making it challenging for patients to locate reliable and available doctors. This challenge in an already complex system often forces patients, in many cases, to pay out of pocket for services they believed were covered by their insurance. And for LGBTQIA+ people who struggle to find in-network care due to unique health needs such as gender-affirming surgery and finding a doctor who is accepting of their sexual and/or gender identity, navigating these networks is especially difficult. 

Prism spoke with a genderqueer San Francisco Bay Area resident who shared their experience navigating ghost health networks while recovering from surgery last year. They said they did not want to disclose their gender identity to providers who would also ignore their chosen name and instead use their legal one.“It got to a point where if I wasn’t crying when I was on the phone call with them, they would not take me seriously,” they told Prism. The outlet highlights legislation in states like California, which would address ghost networks through requiring a plan or insurer to audit and delete inaccurate listings from its directories annually. Read more here.

Voter apathy is real. Here’s how Black organizers are tackling it: The lack of civic education and broken promises from elected officials has some Black organizers concerned about voter apathy leading up to November’s general elections. Capital B spoke with the founder of the nonprofit organization 1 Vote Counts, Michelle Mardenborough, who recently spoke to high school students in Pennsylvania — a key battleground state — who said they weren’t interested in voting and weren’t sure whether their votes matter. And in an election year like no other, many organizers like Mardenborough are ramping up their efforts to address apathy and engage voters.They’re working to listen deeply to Black voters’ concerns and to help them connect the dots between those concerns and the people seeking office at all levels of government. "So, what we’re doing is this: validating how folks are feeling, and also making sure that they know that some of the people responsible for how they’re feeling will be on the ballot in November," Jovita Lee, the program director of the nonprofit coalition the North Carolina Black Alliance, told Capital B. Read more here.