"Students help ex-inmates start their own businesses" by Kelly Field The Hechinger Report, July 11, 2020
NEWTON — Standing before a roomful of CEOs, angel investors and foundation representatives at Boston College Law School late last year, Carlos Omar Montes pitched his idea for a mobile barbershop.
Omar’s Barbershop, he told the audience, would fill a niche in the grooming market, offering the “old-fashioned experience” of hot lather and warm towels to men who are confined to group homes and nursing facilities.
“Omar’s will connect people to the happiest time in their lives, bringing them freedom, convenience and happiness,” said Montes, dressed in a vest and tie for his presentation.
A year and a half earlier, Montes, now 31, had been an inmate at the South Bay House of Correction in Boston. He served almost eight years in all, there and elsewhere, for possession of drugs and a firearm. Now he was in a lecture hall on the pastoral suburban campus of Boston College Law School, for the final day of an entrepreneurship boot camp that paired former inmates with law student mentors.
Covid-19 would arrive a few weeks later. Still, Montes spent the lockdown positioning himself to move forward with his business as soon as reopening allowed — amid a recession that otherwise would have made it considerably harder for him to get any other kind of job.
The idea of bringing higher education inside prisons got considerable momentum in the years leading up to the pandemic, becoming the subject of books, documentaries and extensive media coverage, but if ex-inmates weren’t getting hired before coronavirus, they are unlikely to be in the front of the line now that millions of Americans are unemployed, no matter how much education they received.
At least they have the Globe as a bu$ine$$ agent over law-abiding citizens who ran legitimate businesses that were destroyed by the lockdowns he is used to, and what will you do when the mobile tyranny shows up at your doorstep?
I'm also wondering where all that so-called coverage was as we were allegedly immersed in systemic racism for so long. The overly Black prison population was getting higher education introduced into it while the school systems in this state and country where neglected and avenues of looting by authorities?
What's wrong with that picture, reader?
The stigma against candidates with criminal records is so strong that, even with the skills they may have learned behind bars, many find it easier to start a business than get hired by one, said Marc Howard, a professor of government and law who helped start Georgetown University’s Pivot entrepreneurship program last year.
“There’s this scarlet letter F, for felony, that’s on everything you do, that affects how people look at you and judge you,” Howard said.
Is what, how $uce$$ful you are in bu$ine$$ as the entire $y$tem has been demoli$hed by the very people benefiting from $hutdowns and con$olidating wealth?
Project Entrepreneur at BC, launched last year, is one of a small number of similar efforts that take place both inside prisons and on college campuses and attempt to provide inmates and ex-inmates with the skills, confidence and contacts they need to start their own businesses. They also aim to open traditional students’ eyes to the stigmas and systematic barriers to employment former prisoners like Omar face.
I'm not saying such programs should not exist; however, with the economic carnage in the wake of COVID your average citizen who has lost their lifelong dream is of no concern.
Research shows that former inmates who work are less likely to return to prison than those who don’t, yet many struggle to find jobs. Federal and state laws bar people with criminal records from certain careers, such as teaching, social work, or even, in some states, jobs in animal control or funeral homes, and many employers are wary of hiring ex-convicts. According to one widely cited study, a criminal record reduces the likelihood of a callback or job offer by nearly 50 percent.
The result: More than a quarter of formerly incarcerated people are unemployed, and nearly half are re-arrested within eight years of their release.....
We all know the pri$on $y$tem is a revolving door, and the article makes some good points regarding what is ostensibly rehabilitation and not punishment; however, given the COVID era we appear to be entering, this article is incongruous.
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The front-page feature is even more surreal:
Black voices challenge a white suburban school district to do better
Part of the national reckoning amid the Great Divide.
(below fold)
"In the United States, mass protests have sped a reckoning with our own monuments to colonial power, but their fate is far from determined. History being in constant overdrive, it’s easy to forget that it started almost three years ago, when the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., spurred Southern governments to start chipping away at monuments to slavers and Confederates. The movement is no longer confined to the South....."
Some are as solid as a rock, but you will no longer learn about them:
"Fear and anger as teachers feel pressure to return to class" by Dana Goldstein and Eliza Shapiro New York Times, July 11, 2020
Many of the nation’s 3.5 million teachers found themselves feeling under siege this week as pressure from the White House, pediatricians, and some parents to get back to physical classrooms intensified — even as the coronavirus rages across much of the country.
Like they are Palestinians!
On Friday, the teachers union in Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest district, demanded full-time remote learning when the academic year begins on Aug. 18, and called President Trump’s push to reopen schools part of a “dangerous, anti-science agenda that puts the lives of our members, our students and our families at risk.”
He is actually trying to save your jobs because if this goes on much longer you are all out of work.
Teachers say crucial questions about how schools will stay clean, keep students physically distanced, and prevent further spread of the virus have not been answered, and they feel that their own lives, and those of the family members they come home to, are at stake.
If so, RETIRE!
Let the YOUNG TAKE OVER so the fatality rates will be minimal and all that wickedness will wash away.
Do parents not understand what is going on when they put their children in the hands of such monsters?
“I want to serve the students, but it’s hard to say you’re going to sacrifice all of the teachers, paraprofessionals, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers,” said Hannah Wysong, a teacher at the Esperanza Community School in Tempe, Ariz., where virus cases are increasing.
That I believe!
School systems struggling to meet the financial and logistical challenges of reopening safely will need to carefully weigh teachers’ concerns. A wave of leave requests, early retirements, or resignations driven by health fears could imperil efforts to reach students learning both in physical classrooms and online.
That's exactly what the monsters in charge want.
On social media, teachers across the country promoted the slogan #14daysnonewcases, with some pledging to refuse to enter classrooms until the coronavirus transmission rate in their counties falls, essentially, to zero.
Start doing the math, kids, because the way the pre$$ narrative is going you will never get there. Keep dividing.
Now, educators are using some of the same organizing tactics they employed in walkouts over issues of pay and funding in recent years to demand that schools remain closed, at least in the short term. It’s a stance that could potentially be divisive, with some district surveys suggesting that more than half of parents would like their children to return to classrooms.
They never learn!
Adding to the confusion, optional guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in May set out ambitious safety precautions for schools, but the president, and many local school system leaders, have suggested they do not need to be strictly followed, alarming teachers.
Fire drill!
Many doctors, education experts, parents, and policy makers have argued that the social and academic costs of school closures on children need to be weighed alongside the risks of the virus itself.
The consequences to child development never makes it through the pre$$ fear porn, and it's too late now anyway. They have scarred an entire generation for Bill Gates to more easily manipulate as in-school instruction is over; otherwise, the virus disappears like Trump says so we now know it will never go away and will only get worse as the sick bastards, per plan, release worse bioweapons in the months to come. We know this per their own documents.
The heated national debate about how and whether to bring students back to classrooms plays upon all the anxieties of the teaching profession. The comparison between teachers and other essential workers currently laboring outside their homes rankles some educators. They note that they are paid much less than doctors — the average salary nationwide for teachers is about $60,000 per year — but are more highly educated than delivery people, restaurant workers, or most staffers in child care centers, many of whom are already back at work.
I hate to keep commenting after every paragraph; however, the ivory tower elitism and political pontilliousness is offensive in the extreme.
They think they are going to win sympathy by crapping on parents and complain about our national heroes in the age of COVID?
No wonder they get no re$pect!
Btw, where are those many back at work as states retreat from reopening?
Now, as teachers listen to a national conversation about reopening schools that many believe elevates the needs of the economy and working parents above the concerns of the classroom work force, many are fearful and angry. They point out that so far Congress has dedicated less than 1 percent of federal pandemic stimulus funds to public schools stretching to meet the costs of reopening safely.
Congre$$ didn't take care of the $chools?
WTF?
Notice they are not even teachers or educators?
They are now a "classroom work force" that won't be around much longer.
The message to teachers, said Christina Setzer, a preschool educator in Sacramento, is, “Yes, you guys are really important and essential and kids and parents need you, but sorry, we don’t have the money.”
She is just figuring that out?
How childi$h!
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They should be thankful they are not teaching in China:
"To ‘protect young minds,’ Hong Kong moves to overhaul schools" by Amy Qin and Tiffany May New York Times, July 11, 2020
Starting this fall, schools in Hong Kong will display colorful new government-issued posters declaring that “freedom comes with responsibilities.” Administrators may now call the police if anyone insults the Chinese national anthem on campus.
You can take a knee here, but the rest is the same. The American government and pre$$ is promoting the “freedom comes with responsibilities” meme as well in the age of COVID.
Students as young as kindergartners will be taught about a new national security law that gives the authorities the power to squelch opposition to Beijing with heavy prison sentences.
Are you paying attention, Republicans?
That's what awaits you in 2021 if you don't get off the damn stick.
After months of antigovernment protests in Hong Kong, China’s ruling Communist Party is reaching into the semiautonomous territory to overhaul an education system that it sees as having given rise to a generation of rebellious youth. The sweeping law Beijing imposed earlier this month also targets Hong Kong’s students, who have been a galvanizing force behind the protests.
As an American, I feel like I'm looking into a damn mirror!
Carrie Lam, the city’s Beijing-backed leader, said at a forum Saturday that the arrests of more than 3,000 children and teenagers at protests had exposed how the city’s campuses had been penetrated by forces hostile to the local and central governments.
Lam said the schools’ textbooks, classroom teaching, and students’ extracurricular activities reflected negative news media reporting about China and the “wanton discrediting of the government and police.” Educating students about the new law, she said, would help them become more law-abiding.
The party’s goal for the territory is clear: to foster a new generation of loyal and patriotic Hong Kong youth. It is a strategy of ideological control that it has wielded to great effect in the mainland, but could rapidly erode Hong Kong’s reputation for academic freedom.
What the hell do you think has been going on here since May, Americans?
We got society-destroying marxists in the streets!
“Young kids will be brought up to understand and believe that without the Chinese Communist Party, they have no future, that anything they have is because of the party,” said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
That would be the Democrat Party!
Over the last year, images of students in neatly pressed school uniforms joining hands to form human chains have become among the most evocative symbols of the protest movement, but campuses have also been the site of some of the movement’s most violent scenes, such as at Polytechnic University, where protesters and police officers faced off in a prolonged fight with rubber bullets, firebombs, and bows and arrows in November.
If nothing else, the Chinese know how to squelch that shit.
Now, in forcing through the security law, Beijing has signaled that it has seen enough.....
Me, too.
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The new school year starts in September, and a veteran teacher said the monthslong investigation felt like “psychological torture,” and feared the law would stifle young minds with kids unable to “think critically when they grow up.”
One parent rightly asks, “what are the teachers afraid of?”
Language barriers?
"Business leaders urge Trump to leave DACA alone after court ruling" by Maggie Haberman New York Times, July 11, 2020
A group of business leaders urged President Trump on Saturday to leave in place a program affecting roughly 800,000 young immigrants who are shielded from deportation, saying it would disrupt the economy and impact the battle against the coronavirus.
The economy has already been disrupted, but I know where they can find work.
The letter, from members of the Coalition for the American Dream, an alliance of business and industry leaders, comes after the Supreme Court ruled last month that the Trump administration improperly wound down the Obama-era program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, a finding that was made on procedural grounds. The signers included executives with Amazon, General Motors, Hilton Worldwide, Target, Apple, Google, and Facebook, as well as groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and almost every sector of the manufacturing industry.
You think he will stand up to them?
He doesn't stand up to anybody. It's all huckster showmanship and carnival barkerism.
“As large American employers and employer organizations, we strongly urge you to leave the DACA program in place,” members of the group wrote about the program, which applies to people who were brought to the United States as children. “DACA recipients have been critical members of our workforce, industries, and communities for years now, and they have abided by the laws and regulations of our country in order to maintain their DACA status.”
The letter added, “We ask that you . . . refrain from taking any additional administrative actions that would negatively impact the DACA program.”
Trump has suggested he would try again to rescind the program, which he has alternately praised and criticized.
Get back to me when he actually does it.
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Of course, that's when the lawsuits start:
Mass. colleges ask immigration authorities to allow international students to stay
They will feel right at home in Bo$ton:
"Boston is the third most ‘intensely gentrified’ city in the United States, study says" by Deanna Pan Globe Staff, July 10, 2020
Boston is the third most “intensely gentrified” city in the United States, according to a new report, behind only San Francisco, which topped the study rankings, and Denver.
Researchers from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an economic justice nonprofit in Washington, D.C., examined more than 72,000 census tracts, or neighborhoods, across 940 metro areas, for signs of gentrification between 2013 and 2017. During that period, they identified 20 metro areas where half of all gentrifying neighborhoods nationally were concentrated. The San Francisco-Oakland metro area led the list, with the highest proportion of gentrifying neighborhoods, followed by Denver, Boston, Miami, and New Orleans.
To meet the criteria for gentrification in this study, the neighborhoods must have experienced dramatic increases in median home values, household income, and college educational attainment.
“For the most part, most cities ... saw very little or no gentrification,” said Jason Richardson, the report’s coauthor and director of research and evaluation at the NCRC, which used data from the US Census and American Community Survey. “What was much more common was widespread disinvestment, where areas were languishing without very much lending activity or other forms of investment, so incomes and home values were chronically low.”
Only 13 percent of the neighborhoods researchers evaluated were “eligible for gentrification,” meaning they ranked in the bottom 40th percentile in median household income and home values. An even smaller fraction of those eligible neighborhoods, about 9.8 percent, had indications of gentrifying.
In Boston, gentrification occurred in huge swaths of the city from 2013 to 2017, including in Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain, Fenway-Kenmore, Roxbury, East Boston, Hyde Park, and pockets of South Boston and Dorchester, most notably along the Interstate 93 corridor.
“Generally speaking ... when you see gentrification, it goes hand in hand with displacement, where low to moderate-income families, especially renters, are often pushed out and they have to move to other low-income areas,” Richardson said. “That’s the kind of the threat that we see is that those families are generally not going to get the benefits that come along with economic revitalization.”
Why did Palestine once again come to mind?
The report notes that Black and Latino residents disproportionately bear the brunt of gentrification.
Richardson said rent control and measures that preserve public and affordable housing can help ensure low-income residents are not displaced from neighborhoods experiencing renewed economic development.
“Otherwise what you end up doing is going into a neighborhood of low-income people, and forcing them to deal with rising rents or move, both which are costs they can barely afford,” he said, “and then you’re replacing them with wealthier, usually whiter people.”
The study also compared gentrifying neighborhoods with Opportunity Zones, economically distressed rural and urban communities where business investments may qualify for preferential tax treatment under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.....
Can "blame" Trump for that last thing, and how ironic is it that the same pre$$ that is supporting a Communist takeover under the cover of COVID while hypocritically highlighting inequality in their own city?
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