Lacayo is one of the 4.5 million people on probation or parole on any given day in the U.S., almost twice as many people as are currently incarcerated. Community supervision is often thought of as a positive alternative to incarceration. But for many, the strict requirements and intense surveillance turn it into “a secondary form of incarceration,” says Amy Sings in the Timber, an attorney and executive director of the Montana Innocence Project. The consequences for not adhering to the conditions of parole are harsh: A quarter of state prison admissions nationwide are a result of technical violations such as failing a drug test or missing a meeting with a probation or parole officer. “In many instances, in our client populations, there are survival tactics that are criminalized,” reflects Sings in the Timber.

The issue is acute in rural states such as Montana, and disproportionately impacts tribal communities. Native Americans account for 6.5 percent of Montana’s population, but represent 20 percent of the population in men’s prisons and 34 percent of the population in women’s prisons. An ACLU report found that between 2010 and 2017, 81 percent of Native Americans in Montana who were reincarcerated while on probation were charged with a technical violation, not a new crime.

Technical violations send people back to prison because of a lack of support

Complying with requirements of probation or parole can be a high-stakes experience and the system is not set up to help people navigate the complicated network of needs post-release. The threat of punishment makes some fearful to reach out for help, said Lacayo, who is now a community organizer. “[Probation or parole officers] could easily make your life even harder, so it’s very hard to say how you feel,” Lacayo reflected.

There are also a number of practical barriers.

Many conditions of probation or parole require transportation, and in Montana, people may have to drive over an hour on rural highways to reach the nearest probation and parole office. “To be able to even access your supervisor can be impossible in some instances,” says Sings in the Timber.  These long trips are frequent, especially since the Montana Department of Corrections does not accept most urinalysis and drug testing, evaluations, or treatment programs that take place on reservations. Some tribes, like the Fort Peck Reservation in eastern Montana, have a memorandum of understanding with the state that allows tribal members to utilize the tribe’s probation and parole resources to fulfil state requirements. However, this is not a state-wide standard.

Housing is another common requirement of probation and parole, and Montana has 23 housing-related collateral consequence laws that restrict or ban certain forms of housing for formerly incarcerated people with certain convictions. Even pre-release centers — transitional facilities where formerly incarcerated people live under supervision — can be challenging to access, though they are meant to be a stepping stone to independent housing. All pre-release centers in Montana are in urban areas; none are located on reservations. Lacayo also  notes that they are not always designed to be a supportive transitional environment. “When I got to pre-release, one of the directors said ‘Just so you know, I’m not here to be your friend,’” he says. “They have absolute power over you. That’s a very scary thought.” At the time Lacayo lived there, it cost $14 per day. Montanans earn between just 16 cents and $1.25 per hour for employment while incarcerated.

Montana also has 189 employment-related collateral consequences, including bans on many jobs that require occupational licensing, such as commercial truck driving and selling real estate. (One in four jobs in America requires such licensing.) Some of these consequences are mandatory and lifelong, while others are at the discretion of the employer and time limited. Reservations have a separate set of laws, with their own restrictions. Some, including the Fort Peck Reservation, ban anyone with a felony from working for the tribal government, which is often the largest employer in the area. It can be a confusing system to navigate. “The number of employment opportunities are far and few between,” says Sings in the Timber.

Reentry is also expensive. Costs associated with probation and parole — such as mandatory drug tests, restitution, or GPS monitoring — can quickly add up. Compliance Monitoring Services, one of the companies Montana courts use for surveillance, charges up to $360 per month for GPS bracelets, plus a $50 installation fee. If someone can’t afford rent or other fees of probation and parole, the Department of Corrections can garnish their wages, tax refunds, or a tribal member’s per capita payment.

Reentry supports reduce technical violations and recidivism

Social support can be particularly hard to come by as a formerly incarcerated person. A common condition of probation or parole is that you are not allowed to associate with other formerly incarcerated people — especially challenging in small communities or if family members are formerly incarcerated.

Returning to a reservation presents a separate set of barriers. As sovereign nations, reservations do not fall under the jurisdiction of the state. This means that people on probation or parole cannot legally return to their home reservations without extradition waivers, which allowing the state to extradite someone from tribal jurisdiction if a violation occurs. Not all reservations have extradition waiver agreements, however. The Fort Peck Reservation in eastern Montana does, while the Crow Reservation in central Montana does not. Without an extradition waiver, people cannot live on a reservation until they have completed their probation or parole, which may be years.

“It’s almost impossible for [people on probation or parole] without their support system,” reflected Fort Peck Chief Judge Stacie Four Star. “But we see that a lot.” Four Star is pushing for standard memorandums of understanding and extradition agreements statewide, but these ideas have gained little traction.

Recent policy efforts to increase support for formerly incarcerated Native Americans have been unsuccessful. Two bills were introduced in 2019, which would have created a grant program for culturally-based reentry programs and revised an existing reentry housing grant program to require that a certain percentage of funding was allocated to programs serving Native Americans. Neither bill passed. There has been more success with tribal-led programs. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Holistic Defender Program, for example, assists clients to find employment, housing, healthcare, obtain a drivers license, and connects people with mentors, such as tribal elders, to provide cultural support.

The pandemic has expedited the need for improved reentry support. In spring 2020, Indigenous and Latinx activists in Montana, including Lacayo, organized a campaign called Let Them Come Home to advocate for an end to arrests for technical violations, temporarily waive probation and parole requirements, and reduce the number of people in Montana jails and prisons. Despite their efforts, Montana actually released fewer people from prison in 2020 than they did in 2019.

Without meaningful reentry support, technical violations will likely continue and people will continue to be re-incarcerated. “How can you jump through all these hoops and follow the rules if you don’t know where your next meal is coming from or where you can sleep safely?” reflected Sings in the Timber. “We need to take a look at technical violations not as someone willfully doing wrong, but as a strong sign that there is support that is needed.”

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In Minnesota, between 27-54 Indigenous women and girls were missing in a given month between 2012 and 2020, according to the task force report that led to the office’s creation. The task force found that Indigenous people comprised 1 percent of the state’s population, but Indigenous women made up 8 percent of all murdered women. Thirty-four percent of Indigenous and Native women experience a sexual assault in their lifetime and nearly double that experience some kind of violent assault, according to the National Congress of American Indians. Research shows that the majority of this violence is committed by white men, yet on reservations — where Native women are ten times more likely to be murdered — tribal governments don’t have the power to investigate most crimes committed by white perpetrators.

The Minnesota task force found the roots of the MMIWR epidemic are racialized and gender-based violence sanctioned by a series of social-legal patterns: forcible removal of Indigenous children and separation of families; creation of a predatory and racist child welfare system; laws that prohibited Indigenous people from engaging with cultural or religious ceremony; retribution for speaking tribal languages; creation of the social-psychological myth that Indigenous women and girls exist to serve white men’s sexual needs; and the use of police and surveillance agencies to criminalize and intimidate Native peoples, among others.

Minnesota’s MMIWR office, the first dedicated and permanent site to address this systemic violence, was proposed by state Senator Mary Kunesh, whose mother was an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The office will collect and track data, review open and cold cases, draft relevant legislation, maintain communications with tribal governments, and coordinate with other state departments, among other mandates. Most importantly, Kunesh says, the office will be “led by Indigenous women and girls, especially those who have lived those experiences with violence and exploitation.” Ultimately, she says, “we really want to find ways for … survivors, our relatives, our communities, and even the perpetrators to heal and to understand what this is all about, and making sure that it’s culturally responsive and definitely a community led effort.”

This is a crisis. But the Minnesota office exists in a place of contradiction: If violence against Indigenous women and relatives is a product of federal and state government operations, then how and why would a government office be able to address it? 

The MMIWR office is expected to work with state, local, and tribal police to formalize reporting and investigative operations where processes are currently failing. For instance, the task force’s final report found that in many cases, police failed to follow the state’s Missing Persons Act, which demands that a report be filed promptly when Native women go missing. Often, there’s also a lack of communication between investigative teams and families or even a failure to identify the race or ethnicity of a recovered body. But that’s only when reports are filed.

A broad distrust in law enforcement keeps families from reporting instances of violence or providing details to police that might help locate victims, survivors, and perpetrators more easily. Mox Alvarnaz, a Kanaka Maoli and the outreach coordinator at the research organization Sovereign Bodies Institute explained: “It is important that we’re there in the room … you don’t want people or powerful entities who have in the past made dangerous and violent decisions against your community to be doing that in your name without you there.” Rebuilding trust is a central goal of the office, given that accurate reporting data is what will allow state agencies to develop solutions.

Kunesh acknowledges that the office won’t be able to address all of the underlying conditions of violence. For example, while the task force cited extractive industries and “man camps” — temporary housing sites for pipeline workers — as facilitators of sexual and gendered violence, there’s no clear demand of the newly formed office related to them. However, there is a movement at work to demand legislators recognize climate violence as part of and related to gender-based and sexual violence. “I don’t know that at the state level [the office] has any kind of power to address the extraction industry,” Kunesh said. “We would love to make that the priority, but even if it’s not stated, it is certainly one of the one of the efforts that we will continue to address.”

There’s also a limit on what the state can do by itself. The U.S. government has repeatedly chosen not to intervene and abate easily addressed conditions that trap Native people in violence. Strengthening tribal sovereignty, for instance, can allow tribal governments and police to investigate crimes on reservations and hold non-Native offenders accountable. There’s also growing awareness of the ways Native women are punished by the criminal legal system for surviving violence, as in the case of a 27-year-old Colville woman named Maddesyn George.

“The biggest problem is just that nobody knows this stuff,” Kunesh said of her non-Native colleagues in the legislature who were surprised to learn how high the incidence of violence is for Indigenous women and relatives. “As we’re sort of peeling off the layers, I feel like our agencies, the government, our tribes, are all looking for ways to address these historic inequities and traumas.”

This left me with my trusty headlamp, my speculum, and sperm donated by an old friend from growing up — a gay man who also planned to love my baby. In what was becoming our own weird tradition, I cooked him dinner and then left to walk my dog while he ejaculated into a red plastic solo cup. After my friend let himself out of my apartment, I began “washing” the sample he left on my bathroom counter, a procedure that separates the sperm from the semen surrounding it, using a $60 centrifuge I purchased from a science supply store.

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I tried to inseminate at least twice per menstrual cycle, and it became so routine that my friend once accidentally blurted out that he needed to go jerk off at my place when a coworker asked why he wasn’t staying late for a team dinner. It was pure queer magic. I became pregnant after nearly a year of this.

My pregnancy, sadly, ended in stillbirth, for reasons totally unrelated to how I became pregnant (I contracted cytomegalovirus, a common virus that causes mild cold-like symptoms in adults but can be lethal for a fetus). Like many relationships that are tested by stillbirth and grief, my friend and I are no longer close. Certainly not close enough to resume trading a home-cooked meal for a party cup of semen.

Adoption was actually my first choice for parenting, but it is not friendly to low-income people. It often costs $20,00 to $40,000 or more for private domestic adoptions, and fostering or adopting through the deeply flawed child welfare system involves an extensive assessment process that costs around $900 to $3,000. Though grants and other forms of financial assistance are often available for the assessment itself, it’s likely that evaluators would count my poverty, my small apartment, my queerness, my disability, my background and beliefs as a radical activist, and even my sweet old pit bull as strikes against me. So for me to be a parent — for me to get to experience the sweetness of morning cuddles, the endless questions and challenges, the beautiful and mundane care work of guiding new life across a dying world — pregnancy is my best option.

However, without the ready access to fresh sperm that my friend provided, getting pregnant again will be expensive as hell. In addition to purchasing the sperm itself, which often retails for more than $850 a vial, there are storage fees ($350 per year), shipping fees ($180), and fees for viewing donor profiles ($50 for three months). All for a single attempt at insemination.

And it usually doesn’t stop at just one vial: Even for people in their 20s and early 30s, when it is generally easier to conceive, IUI has a success rate of less than 20 percent per attempt, and typically needs to be tried multiple times. In fact, in one study, only 24 percent of people had a live birth after 3 cycles of IUI, even when they attempted two IUIs per menstrual cycle. And while the birth rate rises with more IUI attempts, so does the cost.

In other words, even assuming the bare minimum cost for each IUI attempt, three attempts at IUI could cost $3,490, for a one-in-four chance of becoming pregnant.

And that’s just the sperm. Conception-related health care is also expensive, with costs for IUI in a clinic ranging from $250 to $4000 per attempt. Fertility specialists recommend moving to in vitro fertilization (IVF), which begins at $12,000 to $15,000, after three unsuccessful IUI cycles. Insurance companies, however, often demand that prospective LGBTQ parents “prove” their infertility by paying out of pocket for six or more in-clinic IUIs before providing insurance coverage for IVF (self-insemination doesn’t count towards this total). This means that, even with insurance, queer people might have to spend over $30,000 ($6,580 on sperm and another $24,000 on clinic fees) before their insurance begins to cover fertility care. (Straight, cisgender couples, in contrast, typically receive coverage if they report having unprotected sex for 6 months to a year.) For people who rely on surrogacy, the costs often start at six figures in the U.S.

These costs are obviously not an option for low-income people. So, we either don’t have kids or we get creative. Hence the duct tape.

Studies show that queer people want children at the same rate as straight people, but our access to parenthood is limited by our statistically lower incomes and, for those of us who don’t produce it, the price of sperm. The high cost of fertility treatments like IUI is often significantly, disproportionally burdensome for queer people, who are more likely than our cishet counterparts to live in poverty, especially if we are people of color, trans, gender nonconforming, or women.

Queer people like me are also more likely to have or acquire disabilities — in my case a brain injury from police brutality. Disabled people are almost twice as likely to experience poverty, with even higher poverty rates among disabled women, gender minorities, LGBTQ folks, and people of color. People who receive certain disability benefits can lose them if they ever amass assets worth more than $2000, which prevents disabled people from saving up for sperm, pregnancy, or parenting.

Sperm banking is a big business, with profits reported at almost 4.8 billion globally. Sperm banks are just one facet of the rapidly growing — and incredibly profitable — fertility industry, valued at 8 billion dollars in the U.S. alone. This industry is prone to predatory behavior, and increasingly controlled by venture capitalists.

Regulation might help with this, especially if it was designed to explicitly protect queer families and other oppressed groups. In addition, there is no reason to require people to undergo psychological evaluations (another expense) nor get a physician’s permission to purchase and receive sperm, though many sperm banks and clinics do.

Currently, just one state (New York) extends fertility coverage to people on Medicaid, the largest insurer of people living in poverty; fertility coverage for people on Medicaid must be extended nation-wide. Further, only 19 states mandate that private insurance companies cover any kind of fertility-related services. As described above, insurance industry policies often result in queer people having to pay dramatically more for care than straight couples.

A recent lawsuit against Aetna Health claimed this disparity constitutes a violation of Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, which bans insurance companies and health care entities from discriminating on the basis of sex. Though Aetna updated their policy within days of the lawsuit, Section 1557 should continue to be applied to ensure equitable treatment of LGBTQ health care consumers, including when it comes to building our families. I also want more legislation, such as the law recently enacted in Illinois, designed to prevent queer parents from having to pay more than our cishet counterparts to access fertility treatment.

Until we have equitable policies that protect us, queer people will care for each other, including helping each other build families. I started teaching friends and neighbors in my local queer community how to wash sperm and perform IUIs on themselves and their partners, usually in exchange for beer and pizza. Many of my friends were using known donors for the same reasons I had: cost. Even folks who were using sperm banks often wanted to do their own IUIs to save money after the outrageous amount they had spent acquiring each precious vial of semen.

I still dream of parenting, but it seems more and more out of reach as I approach 40 and my credit card debt gets worse, not better. I know I’d be a good parent, in that I would love my child hard, with the same drive that had me taping a mirror to my bathtub and processing semen in a centrifuge meant for high school chemistry classrooms. What stops me is not doubt, or even exhaustion, but the cost of being beautifully queer in a world that privileges heterosexuality.

“I was given a stack of papers, and I remember on a couple pieces of paper the words were blurry, this is how much copying was going on. They just said, ‘it’s a normal consent form; if something happens to you and the baby, if the baby’s heart stops beating or yours, do you want us to save you?’ Of course I do, so I signed the form, a bunch of forms.”

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Brewington said she was later told those papers included the consent forms that gave her providers permission to drug test her and her child. She said she never saw such consent plainly stated, even when she checked for it after the fact.

Drug testing pregnant and postnatal people and their infants without the patient’s informed consent is a common practice in the United States — but only among certain demographics. Several studies have found that Black women in particular are subjected to prenatal drug testing at higher rates than women in other racial and ethnic demographics, but do not have higher rates of positives. A study published in the February 2004 issue of Child Abuse & Neglect also found several other factors unrelated to drug use that led to higher testing rates, including single motherhood, tobacco use, a history of preterm labor, and a history of child services involvement, among others.

“I provided care in Black and brown communities, so [drug testing pregnant and postnatal patients] was routine, and it wasn’t until I got out and saw the difference in the way care was provided in communities that…were wealthier that it became clear that this is not routine, this is not what everybody does,” said Jamila Perritt, an OB-GYN in Washington, D.C., and the president and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health. Perritt also recounted that when she was pregnant, she was not drug tested despite being one of the more commonly-tested demographics (Perritt is a Black woman), which she attributed to her status as a physician.

Now activists are fighting back, saying the practice is rooted in racism and classism, and that it denies patients crucial agency over their care.

“Is our consent truly informed? It can’t be in those reams of paper that people are signing,” said Perritt. “What does it mean if we as physicians say informed consent is one of our core values? …Who would think you’re signing a form that could result in such severe consequences? The truth is that it is a violation of trust to not take the time to name that [drug testing consent is included] and its consequences.”

As Brewington’s case demonstrates, those consequences can be devastating. After her newborn son tested positive for opiates and cocaine, which Brewington admits to using once during the last term of her pregnancy, New York child services placed him into foster care. Although her two older children were out of the state at the time on a vacation with their father, child services ordered her to bring them back and placed them into foster care as well. They are home with their mother now, but Brewington is still fighting to regain custody of her son, who was awarded to his father.

“The medical profession, health profession, that is still one of the top three referrants [to child services],” said Jeyanthi Rajaraman, a parental defense attorney at Legal Services of New Jersey. Rajaraman added: “I’ve asked [at hospitals] when do you drug test and when do you not, and the information that comes out is that ‘if mom shows up and we’ve never seen her and she didn’t do a hospital tour and says she’s had no prenatal care and she’s by herself.’ What I really think they are also saying is Black and poor or no medical insurance because that is the majority of our clients who face and experience drug testing.”

Because child removal data is self-reported by the agencies, which do not track how many removals occur due to hospital drug tests, it is difficult to gauge how often these tests lead to severe consequences on a national level. One report by Movement for Family Power estimates that in 2017, in the Bronx borough of New York City alone, 60 babies under one month of age were removed because of maternal substance use. The United States child services system acknowledges that Black and Indigenous children are markedly overrepresented when it comes to system involvement; between 2000 and 2011, one in nine Black children and one in seven Native American children had been removed from their parents’ care, versus one in 17 white children.

Infants who do experience side effects due to in utero substance exposure, which can occur from both prescribed and non-prescribed substances, fare better when they are able to have close maternal contact. Removing newborns from parents like Brewington because of substance use — a common result of pre- and postnatal drug testing — can decrease feelings of bonding and the parenting sense of competence, and has been linked to some infant cognitive and memory impairment in animal studies. It also leads to decreased ability to breastfeed, which normally helps reduce symptoms of withdrawal in substance-exposed newborns and provides some protection against illnesses, including COVID-19.

Rajaraman noted that she often encounters medical professionals who recognize this reality but are shockingly unaware of how their call impacts the family. “I’ve had many doctors say to me that by calling [child services] they don’t know the baby would be taken, they say ‘I was calling because I thought it would help get mom into [a] program, I would never recommend separation.’”

In 2021, New York State attempted but failed to pass a law that would ban drug testing of pregnant and postnatal people and their newborns without informed consent or a legitimate medical necessity.  Activists are planning to push the bill again during the 2022 legislative session. Should it pass, it would require that written consent be obtained at the time of testing and delivered to the patient in a manner that is clear and understandable. It must also include a statement that the testing is voluntary. Activists in Washington State also considered pursuing similar legislation, but decided to table the movement for the time being. Should New York succeed in passing the informed consent bill in 2022, it could pave the way for other states to take necessary action to protect pregnant and parenting people and their infants from non-consensual drug testing.

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A recent nationwide study found almost 28 percent of households with pets experienced barriers to veterinary care, with finances being the most common reason. In low-income households, the researchers found, financial and housing insecurity can increase the risks that animals will not receive the care they need. Sociologist Arnold Arluke, author of Underdogs: Pets, People and Poverty estimates that 66 percent of pets in poverty have never seen a vet at all.

The “why” behind those numbers is complex. Of course, money is the primary problem. Veterinary care is expensive. A majority of practitioners work in for-profit clinics, consolidation in the industry has increased emphasis on profit margins, and vet prices have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation. That has checkups starting at $50, dental cleaning going for $70-$400, and blood work and x-rays at $80-$250. If a dog breaks a leg or eats a sock, surgery costs begin at four figures.

High prices aren’t necessarily about greed. Michael Blackwell, a former Deputy Director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the FDA, is the chair of the Access to Veterinary Care Coalition (AVCC) that was formed in 2016 to study this very problem. Veterinary training, he said, teaches vets to practice a “gold standard” of care, which means running every possible diagnostic test and pursuing every treatment option, even when a client’s budget is limited. (Many pet owners don’t know they can decline a recommended procedure, such as blood work, and even fewer are willing to decline care for fear of looking heartless.)

Some private vets offer struggling clients discounts, added Jeremy Prupas, DVM, Chief Veterinarian for the City of Los Angeles, but they themselves carry an average of $150,000 in student loan debt, so they simply “can’t carry the immense existing need on their own.” Telling clients you can’t help them because they have no money is one of the leading causes of burnout in the veterinary profession, according to Prupas. Pet insurance might help defray costs but requires monthly premiums and comes with such a complicated array of deductibles, co-pays, caps, and exclusions that one how-to guide recommends hiring an attorney to review the policy. Credit cards designed for medical care financing, if one can qualify, can carry punishing interest rates as high as 26.99 percent.

Equally critical is a long-term failure on the part of the animal welfare movement to consider, much less prioritize, the needs of low-income pet owners. Since the 1990s, the rescue/humane world has poured vast amounts of funding and energy into cutting shelter euthanasia through adoption, but far less into helping those without money take care of the pets they have. “If you can’t afford an animal,” the thinking went, “then you shouldn’t have one.”

“Until recently, we focused on shelter-centric challenges,” acknowledged Amanda Arrington, senior director of the Humane Society of the United States’s Pets for Life Program, which assists low-income pet owners. “There was a lot of judgment and making determinations on who was or wasn’t deserving of support and resources that was influenced by what I think a lot of society is influenced by, which is classism and racism. We conflated a lack of financial means and access with how much someone loves their pet or desires to care for it.”

In fact, owners can be punished because they can’t afford veterinary care — “most humane neglect cases stem from an inability to get care for a pet,” said Prupas. In Michigan, for example, failing to provide an animal with adequate care, including medical attention, is a misdemeanor that can carry 93 days in jail and/or a fine of up to $1,000. With a second violation, it becomes a felony.

What exists for pet owners in poverty is a patchwork of low-cost care options, ranging from local efforts — such as Emancipet in Texas and the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society — to well-funded national enterprises such as Pets for Life, which operates in several dozen cities. The great majority, however, offer only basic services like sterilization, vaccination, and flea treatments. “We are not a full-service veterinary clinic and do not treat sick or injured pets,” warns one low-cost option on its website. Another suggests that needy people travel, since “vets in smaller towns may charge lower fees,” or start a GoFundMe. As a result, many types of care are largely unavailable: emergency care (by some estimates one in three pets will have an emergency need each year), management of chronic conditions such as diabetes or kidney disease, medication, dental care (dental disease affects perhaps 80 percent of older dogs), and the mercy of humane euthanasia (which can run $50-$300).

The final piece of the care gap is a practical and cultural disconnect. Because many economically challenged neighborhoods are “vet deserts,” with few if any practitioners, it’s not easy to find care, and reaching it can require wrangling an unhappy animal over distance and/or arranging private transportation. Keeping an appointment at an office with weekday-only business hours or a once a month clinic can mean losing a day’s pay. Paperwork raises the fear of immigration status inquiries. The veterinary profession also remains one of the country’s whitest: Just as people who feel alienated or unwelcome don’t utilize human health care options, pointed out Arluke, they don’t utilize care for their pets.

The result has been suffering: most directly for animals that remain untreated, die from what vets call “economic euthanasia” (putting an animal down because treatment costs too much), or end up in shelters. Fear of a looming vet bill, and the mistaken belief that all shelter animals receive medical care, is a prime cause of owner surrender.

But people pay, too.

Some sick animals can infect their humans. Roundworms, for example, can pass through contact with pet feces and cause lung, heart, and eye problems. Blackwell reports meeting an optometrist who practices in a low-income Florida community who has seen increasing numbers of children with roundworm larvae in their eyes.

The psychic toll is just as real. Families in poverty who love their pets and for whom “they offer an emotional core and possibly one of the only sources of joy” face “mental and emotional” devastation from the unimaginable choice of weighing that love against potential financial ruin, said Blackwell. Professor Katja M. Guenther, author of The Lives and Deaths of Shelter Animals, called the rupture of an animal-human bond “a kind of community violence” in a 2021 webinar.

Change seems increasingly possible. Covid-19 and the country’s recent racial and economic reckoning has prompted humane organizations to examine their assumptions and biases about who has the “right” to a pet’s love, and, said Arrington, there’s increasing recognition that “racial and economic injustice really impacts animal welfare.” Meanwhile, AlignCare, a new program out of Michael Blackwell’s Program for Pet Health Equity, is trying to create a national model of something like Medicaid for domestic animals. Under the program, families already found to be struggling (because they participate in SNAP or a similar program) and who ask for help at a shelter or veterinary clinic will be signed up and paired with a veterinary social worker or support coordinator. They’ll then be directed to a veterinarian who has agreed to offer preventative, dental, and even critical care, for a reduced fee; AlignCare will pay 80 percent of the cost. After three years of pilot programs in 10 disparate communities, it’s taking on its biggest challenge yet, Los Angeles, where one in five people live in poverty.

AlignCare won’t offer “gold standard” care, instead emphasizing preventative, incremental, and cost-saving measures (such as offering telehealth appointments and limiting diagnostics that won’t change treatment options) when possible. But it will expand the human safety net to include the animals most of us now consider part of our families. And while the effort is currently funded by grants from Maddie’s Fund, the Duffield Foundation, and Petsmart Charities, Blackwell’s goal is “community ownership:” The combined involvement of local vets, city animal services departments, social service agencies, rescue and community organizations, pet food and product manufacturers, and affluent pet owner-donors can make the model self-sustaining.

There is no perfect solution for low-income pet owners who need help accessing veterinary care. But growing awareness of the problem is a big step forward. “What we call ‘animal welfare’ is changing,” said Lori Weise, whose nonprofit, Downtown Dog Rescue, runs the Pet Support Space. “The distorted belief that ‘those people’ don’t care about their pets has never been true. People can’t afford care. Sometimes they don’t even know what’s out there; they themselves have never been in a hospital. As more people are brought into the system, we’ll see the first generation to get proper veterinary care.”

The FCC launched the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program (EBBP) in May 2021 to help low-income Americans pay for internet access and internet-connected devices. Congress earmarked $3.2 billion in the Consolidated Appropriations Act (passed in late December 2020) to pay for the program, which provides a monthly subsidy of $50 ($75 for participants living on Tribal lands) to help pay for internet access, plus a one-time device discount of up to $100. It is open to people living below 135 percent of the poverty line, participants in safety net programs such as SNAP or Medicaid, those who experienced “substantial” income loss, and certain other eligible groups.

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The program is designed to help bridge the digital divide during the pandemic, and it has helped millions of American households cover the cost of getting connected. However, red tape, technical challenges, and limited Internet Service Provider (ISP) participation have created barriers for some of the people who may need it the most.

“I thought if I could get the [internet access] subsidy then I’d upgrade to a higher level since we were both working from home and my daughter was going to school virtually at that time,” said Gwynn Stewart, a Community Development Educator at Ohio State University Extension, Noble County. Stewart learned about the EBBP subsidy from her daughter’s school and tried to sign up, but her provider, GMN Broadband, said they were too small to participate. “This, again, is another way Appalachian residents are being left behind.”

It likely won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has ever applied for a government program that the EBBP, like many federal programs, involves its fair share of red tape and hoops to jump through. Navigating the process can be especially tough for people who don’t have access to a computer with reliable internet access — the very issue that the benefit is trying to solve.

Some participating ISPs have set up an application portal on their website. Households like Stewart’s, who either don’t have an ISP that provides that option or who don’t have an ISP at all, must first enroll in the program and then obtain service from a participating ISP.

The barriers don’t end there.

“Applying over the phone has a long hold time,” said Lauren Cotter of Community Tech Network, a nonprofit with locations in Austin and San Francisco. “For online applications, older adults with limited digital skills face humongous technical challenges when they have to create email accounts, create EBBP online accounts, prepare eligible supporting documents — which may involve taking selfies and snapshots of documents — and upload them for their applications.”

“Some ISPs do try to make it easy but even so it’s a challenge because it’s a multistep process,” said Juliet Fink Yates, digital inclusion manager in the Office of Innovation & Technology for the City of Philadelphia. “You often have to first go to the EBBP website and fill out the form, which of course may be a hurdle if you don’t have internet. Then you have to go apply with a provider and if you don’t already have one, you have to know which is the best provider for you. It can be tough to figure out which provider is your best option, and then which plan is the best. Once you do all of that and start the application for EBBP, it often still involves a few phone calls and some back and forth over the phone to get it all set up.”

The regulations and bureaucracy are a potential obstacle not only for applicants, but also for internet service providers – and in some cases may be preventing them from participating.

Samantha Musgrave is the director of Project Waves, a small ISP in Baltimore City that has connected more than 400 households to free internet service since May 2020. Musgrave said Project Waves elected not to participate in the EBBP or its Maryland counterpart, the MEBBP, for a few reasons, among them “the significant requirements related to FCC licensing for participating providers in the program, as well as the limitations on reimbursable costs allowed by the program.”

ISP participation aside, Musgrave said many people who could benefit from the EBBP may not even know the program exists and notes an ironic aspect to the informational efforts. Because the program is primarily being promoted online, people who don’t already have internet access may not be hearing about it. As for enrollment, Cotter says some simple tweaks — such as eliminating an email address as a mandatory application requirement — could make a big difference in making it easier.

That’s why outreach efforts by “digital navigators” and organizations that serve vulnerable populations are so important. Residents of Philadelphia were fortunate to have a network of helpers available to assist them. Last year, the city launched a Digital Navigators program that placed tech savvy specialists in several Philadelphia organizations that work with low-income residents and vulnerable populations. Throughout the pandemic, these specialists have assisted city residents with tasks such as filling out online forms or arranging telehealth visits — as well as helping people find access to low-cost internet and get signed up for it.

“They’ve really become experts in helping people sign up. They have become familiar with the process and the challenges involved and have also become really good advocates for the people,” said Yates.

In addition to broader outreach efforts, Musgrave said the government could also have a much greater — and long-lasting — impact by providing long-term connectivity solutions for households without existing internet service. In infrastructure-poor communities, from rural America to historically redlined neighborhoods like Baltimore’s Cherry Hill, residents don’t just need help paying for internet service. They need that service to be available in the first place.

Roughly 21 million Americans lack access to broadband internet, according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In the state of Pennsylvania alone, for example, more than 800,000 households do not have access to broadband connectivity. The real picture is likely much worse: Numerous experts and researchers have found fault with the FCC’s data, which relies on ISPs to supply their own information. There are also questions about what qualifies as “broadband” at all. Research by The Center for Rural Pennsylvania found that median speeds across most areas of the state do not even meet the FCC’s criteria to qualify as broadband.

“The program is not inherently designed as a pathway to establish new internet connectivity to those who need it most,” Musgrave said.

President Biden’s Build Back Better calls for a significant investment to support and expand broadband infrastructure, but it’s unknown at this point how much (if any) of that envisioned funding will survive intact in the final legislation. Currently, the Senate infrastructure bill, which could come up for a vote in the House as early as today, provides for $65 billion in broadband investment, including $14 billion dedicated to a benefit of $30 a month in the form of the Affordable Connectivity Fund. Meanwhile, as of October 2021, 6.3 million households were enrolled in the EBB program. The FCC says it has tried to provide as many options as possible for people who want to participate, but $2.5 billion in funds remains unspent.

When Brown and her son met for the second time, the baby cried and did not immediately warm to his mother. Brown said she initially thought “he does not like me,” before conceding that, in reality, “he did not know me.”

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Until this summer, incarcerated people who gave birth in Minnesota had a maximum of 72 hours with their newborns before they were separated. (The length of time depended on the type of birth.) In many other states, the parent and child have as little as 24 hours. As Alysia Santo wrote in PBS Frontline, “giving birth means saying goodbye.”

But recently, stories such as Brown’s and the advocacy of organizations such as the Minnesota Prison Doula Project — an initiative that provides pregnancy and parenting support to incarcerated people in Minnesota — have driven a major policy change. As of August 2021, people who are serving a prison sentence in the state will no longer be separated from their newborns after giving birth.

The Healthy Start Act, which was signed into law by Governor Tim Walz in May, allows the Department of Corrections to place incarcerated pregnant or postpartum parents into community alternatives. These include halfway houses or residential treatment facilities where parents can access treatment for the duration of their pregnancy and bond with their newborns for up to one year after giving birth.

The bill is the next step in a broader push toward improving prenatal and postpartum care for people in prison nationwide. Thirty-two states have passed restrictions on pregnant shackling, seven states have ended solitary confinement for pregnant people, and a few localities have increased the budget for prenatal care. While there are nine prison nurseries in other states across the country that allow children to stay with their parents, the Healthy Start Act is first-of-its-kind legislation because it permits postpartum people to bond with their newborns outside of prison.

According to Safia Khan, Director of Government and External Relations at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, about half of all pregnant people who enter a Minnesota prison will leave while still pregnant. Among the other half that give birth in prison, the majority reach their release dates within six months after giving birth.

Kahn emphasized that while “the separation period is often temporary and short, it is hugely disruptive to bonding and hugely traumatizing for the mother and for the child.” The importance of parent-infant bonding for the early development of newborns and the mental and physical health of postpartum people has been well documented. It impacts everything from the development of connections between brain cells fundamental to learning to the ability to build loving, trusting relationships later in life.

The new law is particularly important for Native American communities: Despite making up only 1.4 percent of the state’s overall population, 34 percent of the people who were pregnant in Minnesota prisons between 2013 and 2020 were Native American. The bill’s passage is due in part to the leadership of Native American elected officials in the state. State Representative Jamie Becker-Finn and Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan both championed the legislation. During the discussion of the Healthy Start Act before it passed in the state legislature, Representative Becker-Finn said the legislation represents “an incredible opportunity to disrupt cycles of trauma.”

“At first, it was a difficult transition” when Jennifer initially reunited with Elijah. But “since then, our bond has grown so much,” she said, as she has been able to witness some of his milestones, including crawling and walking.

While Jennifer was in prison, she would often find herself wondering what her son looked like. Now, she can detail the mundanities that come with a shared bond: the types of food he likes (watermelon) and dislikes (tomatoes); the sound of his laugh; and his quickness to smile.

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Though the lawsuit is ongoing, city workers started installing “no oversize parking” signs on nearly all of the city’s streets in August, at a cost of $1 million, severely limiting places where recreational vehicle residents could park in Mountain View. It is just one city among dozens taking action to remove RVs and those who live in them through such bans.

“There were more people against us than for us,” Janet Stevens, 63, a plaintiff named in the lawsuit, said of the November election. “[But] it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with street safety.” For Stevens, who has watched the city change as more tech company employees have moved in, the fight around housing affordability and the RV ban comes down to Nimbyism and “a lack of support and true understanding of who [vehicle dwellers] are to start with.”

The lawsuit underscores Stevens’ analysis. “[Mountain View] is in the heart of Silicon Valley where, in recent years, an economic stratification has yielded significant wealth for some, but skyrocketing housing prices for all,” the complaint read. “As a result, many of Mountain View’s long-time residents have been priced out of the housing market and forced to live in [RVs] parked on the City’s streets.” Most of those living in recreational vehicles, like Stevens, grew up in Mountain View, lived in the city as adults, and rely on city services to survive. Stevens is undergoing treatment for breast cancer, and has chronic fatigue syndrome and high blood pressure. In addition to her friends and neighbors, Stevens’ medical team and support group are located in Mountain View. “If I was to leave here I don’t know. [I’d be in] deep, deep trouble being able to find doctors that were understanding and willing to support my treatment for my diseases that have multiple realms of symptomatology,” Stevens said.

Proponents of the ban say it’s not so much the recreational vehicle residency itself, but the eyesore of the oversize vehicles, the waste disposal on city streets, and the lack of regulation. Advocates for equitable housing policy counter by saying Measure C is a proxy ban on poor people: a targeted attack on the city’s residents who can’t afford the increasing rent prices in one of the most expensive regions in the country. While the median household income in Mountain View has doubled in the past twenty years, income inequality in the Silicon Valley has ballooned, growing at twice the state and national rate. Almost 20 percent of the region’s households have no savings. For many, the area rent — now $2,500 per month — is impossible to afford.

“It’s getting worse and worse,” said Nantiya Ruan, a professor of law at the University of Denver. “Inequity and that imbalance of power just means that people become more and more disadvantaged and pushed out of communities and don’t have a voice in government and everything else that stems from that.”

According to Ruan, this leaves wealthy residents with even more authority. “There is a lot of power for communities to regulate how their space is used,” she explains. “And so, what municipalities are doing is making it hostile for those who need to sleep in their car or sleep in their RV by doing all sorts of different zoning code laws.”

The history of targeting and discriminating against undesired community members is baked into the American legal framework. Redlining is the most well-known example of this. In addition to the federally sanctioned segregation that kept Black people from building wealth in well-to-do neighborhoods, so-called “sundown town” laws forbade non-white people from remaining within city limits after the sun set. Oregon banned Black people, and some municipalities required Native, Japanese, and Jewish people to leave by 6:30 each evening. California also maintained an “anti-Okie” law, which banned unemployed people and migrant workers from entering the state in 1937.

Ruan argues these policies live on in the network of bans on RV residency, though — unlike discriminatory laws of the 20th century — vehicle laws don’t explicitly target poor people. Even if they did, given that there’s no constitutional protection for economic status, Ruan says, making these laws difficult to challenge in court. These laws are “really about focusing on keeping people out of public space and therefore out of [public] consciousness,” Ruan said. “[The laws] keep them from being visible, right? [Politicians think] nobody wants to see visible poverty.”

Mountain View isn’t the only city instituting laws on vehicle residency. Los Angeles instituted its own ban against parking for “habitation purposes” in 2017, affecting the then-total of 7,000 homeless people living in their cars. Neighboring suburbs of Los Angeles, such as Culver City, Santa Monica, and Malibu all have bans on sleeping in one’s car overnight. This April, Carlsbad city officials updated their city codes to include a ban on camping within city limits as well as parking oversize vehicles overnight on city streets. Those who want to park their vehicles within city limits overnight are now required to obtain a 24-hour permit and are restricted to acquiring six permits per month. In August, city council members in Flagstaff, Ariz., voted to keep a law on the books that bans camping — including vehicle camping — at the dismay of locals who have been pushed out of their homes by increased housing prices and wildfire. Following the approval of an ordinance that requires residents to move their vehicles every three days, the city of Eugene, Ore., is considering its own parking ban in “industrial commercial areas.” And in Lacey, Wash., plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit against the city for effectively banning RVs and those who live in them by way of a city ordinance that limits the number of hours a vehicle can be parked on the street.

In lieu of providing housing, some cities are creating “safe parking” programs with dedicated spaces like church parking lots where vehicle residents can park overnight. Mountain View has one such program, and plays host to a third of all safe parking lots in Santa Clara County, but there aren’t enough spots for every person who needs one. Moreover, Stevens says she applied three times for a safe parking spot but never heard back. Even if she had been approved, she doubts she would have accepted, given the lot’s restrictions.

Katie Calhoun, a PhD student at the University of Denver who studied the efficacy of the Colorado Safe Parking Initiative, says it’s common for safe parking programs to have restrictions, such as prohibiting the consumption of alcohol. Designated safe parking lots did make residents feel safer in Denver, though the average duration of stay in the safe lot was three months, after which just under half of vehicle residents continued to live in their car.

The City of Mountain View could address the claims of public safety concerns by establishing a waste disposal site where residents can easily access it and pushing for more safe lots. And, of course, the city could stop exacerbating the housing crisis by, among other things, not approving the destruction of rent-controlled apartments. For those who aren’t able to access a safe lot in cities with vehicle residency bans, there aren’t many alternatives aside from risking a police encounter, potential arrest, or moving to a town that doesn’t have a ban on the books.

As for that eventuality, Stevens says, “There is no preparation for that. Except for maybe, you know, driving around looking for a town where they’ll accept me to live.”

Number of kids returning to school this year: 48.1 million, all receiving free meals.

Number of people housed with the help of federal rental assistance: 10.4 million, 23 percent of whom are disabled.

Number of workers who lost their unemployment benefits on Labor Day: more than 8 million.

To help people, we have to know how many people are in need, how many people receive benefits, and what the gap is between those two numbers. For the past 15 years, the American Community Survey (ACS), conducted annually by the Census Bureau, has been one source of such data. But the pandemic made that data collection impossible.

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The American Community Survey tracks how Americans are doing on a granular level annually, not just once a decade: It measures the highest level of education people have completed, how many people experience poverty each year, and how people commute to work. Any community with at least 65,000 people has ACS data that anyone can view. That data is used to allocate resources for more than 130 programs, many of which fight poverty, including SNAP, Head Start, Section 8 vouchers, Unemployment Insurance, and the Census itself.

The Census Bureau collects the majority of its information through Internet, telephone, and mail-in surveys, then follows up with some of the people who do not respond with phone calls and in-person visits. But in 2020, the stay at home orders at the beginning of the pandemic interrupted the data collection process. Mail operations were canceled for April, May, and June of 2020, as were in-person interviews. So, while the Census did still get some respondents, it was not able to collect sufficient data among key groups who tend to be less responsive: People with lower incomes, lower educational attainment, and those who do not own their own homes. As a result, they decided they couldn’t offer their usual ACS data release.

The people we are missing data on are the exact group of people TalkPoverty focuses on: The same people who were hit hardest by the pandemic, and for whom accurate data is most important in developing a response.  The American Community Survey is how we know, for example, the number of people who have health insurance, what their household income is (and how much of it depends on public benefits), and how many people have dipped below the poverty line by state and congressional district. That’s especially important because it lets us track geographic inequities over time.

The Census will still be able to provide useful data from a related Census product, the Current Population Survey. That data, released September 14^th, will include national poverty rates, health insurance coverage data, and income data that lets us calculate the gender wage gap. We’ll have a broad sense of how Americans were faring overall in 2020, and how effective federal aid programs such as expanded Unemployment Insurance and SNAP were over the year. However, there will not be any state or local breakdowns of that data. So, while we will have the official annual poverty estimates, we will not have detailed data that would show if certain groups of people, such as Black women in Michigan or Latinas in Texas, were more likely to experience poverty in 2020.

Later this fall, the Census is releasing what it’s calling “experimental” ACS data on “a limited number of data tables for limited geographies.” It’s unclear right now what exactly that means – we do not know which data points or locations it will cover. It is unclear how the many agencies that rely on this data to calculate necessary funding for benefits will be doing their math, even as we need data more than ever to reflect changed economic circumstances for millions of Americans. What data there is will provide us with important information about a year when so many communities that rely on the safety net were in turmoil — from grocery store clerks to elementary school kids.

He didn’t laugh. He didn’t rationalize why it was necessary to send me so far away, even though there were plenty of prisons on this side of the state. He didn’t tell me that the mental health of my daughters wasn’t worth protecting. I might as well have been invisible, he was so dismissive of my distress, as he said, “Your file says you’re incarcerated for armed robbery, Mr. Moore. Tell me, did you rob old people, too?”

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My ten-year-old daughter is not doing well in school. Remote learning due to COVID-19 restrictions has failed to hold her attention, and she’s teetering dangerously close to having to repeat the fourth grade. I’ve been there. One year, I was only passed with an “incomplete” because I’d caused enough trouble that the school wanted me out as quickly as possible. I’m pretty sure I could help my little girl if I was around, but I’m not. I haven’t held her since she was four, because for the past seven years, I’ve been the property of Washington’s Department of Corrections (DOC).

Even before the pandemic, trying to arrange a visit was a nightmare. Her mother would have to go to the DOC’s webpage and fill out the tedious application. She would have to submit one for herself as well (minors aren’t permitted to visit their incarcerated parents without a guardian — or somebody approved by their guardian — present). That means she would also have to request to be removed from her incarcerated cousin’s visiting list, since an individual can only be on one prisoner’s list at a time in Washington state. That process alone would take three months to accomplish.

She would have to scan a copy of a completed and notarized consent form and send it along with the application. She would have to do that part at somebody else’s house, as she doesn’t have a scanner of her own. She and I didn’t exactly part on good terms, and this is a lot of work and embarrassment to endure, so she made a deal with my daughter: Get your grades up, and you can visit your dad.

My 16-year-old wants to be a journalist when she grows up, and she’s growing up fast. Her mother is poor and I’m not much help from prison. So my teenager, sensing she’s going to need savings for impending adulthood, works at a pizza shop rather than focusing on her education. I’ve offered to help her start getting published in order to build a portfolio that could potentially earn her a scholarship someday, but she’s too preoccupied with work and high school to even go through the process, let alone think about her long-term future.

Then there’s my young ones on the opposite side of the world, in London. Visiting has always been available to them, but the expense does not permit their traveling so far to see me. A flight for one is costly enough without having to multiply it by four.

Before COVID lockdowns, prisoners could receive visits three days a week. Bulky guards would march between tables with their chests out, watching for any physical contact beyond the touch of a hand between the parents. No touching shoulders. No brushing faces. No kisses or hugs, beyond a brief embrace and peck at the beginning and end of the visit. The tables were placed so close together that free movement for children was not always an option. There was a small play area with toys and video games, but it wasn’t designed for parents wishing to spend time with their spouses as well as their kids.

As soon as COVID-19 began to reach American prisons, it got much worse. Guards weren’t mandated to wear masks until the outbreak they’d introduced into our home led to a riot. Though the vaccine is finally available to anybody who wants it, some guards are refusing to take it. Meanwhile, visits — along with all religious, educational, and self-help programming — were canceled.

More than a year after Governor Inslee declared a state of emergency, visitation finally reopened. Initially, visits were permitted once a month, for an hour at a time, for two people. I heard from my neighbors that the visit was non-contact through a plexiglass box with holes drilled about knee high. Visitors had to sit on chairs, and they bent their waists like they were about to dive as they yelled to be heard above the chatter. Children under 16 were not allowed to attend.

On August 15, 18 months after the pandemic hit the United States, three hour contact visitation for up to three guests finally resumed. The age restriction was lifted, and families all over the state breathed a sigh of relief.

I expected complaints to still fill the air as, after all, visitation would still not be what it had been. Masks were now necessary, and meals could no longer be shared. I guess most of us were just so relieved to have contact visits again that we accepted what we felt would do us and our children some good.

Upon reflection, we know that so many holidays and birthdays have passed and although it’s been a long time since we’ve seen the faces of our young, we haven’t forgotten them. Despite DOC’s actions, we are more eager than ever to see them again. It’s been too long.

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For years, employers had access to a labor force where workers were so desperate that they’d take any job offer. The combination of poverty-level minimum wages, historically low unionization rates, at-will employment, worker misclassification, a battered safety net, a lack of paid time off or employer-sponsored benefits, and a host of other policies and practices have firmly tilted the scales toward employers, allowing for pervasive exploitation and abuse, particularly for the nearly 3 in 4 Americans living paycheck to paycheck even before the pandemic.

The situation is more dire after a job loss. Recently laid-off workers are likely to have almost no safety cushion — more than half of consumers had $3,000 or less in their checking and savings accounts combined in 2019. They may also have no access to unemployment benefits — just 28 percent of eligible unemployed workers in 2019 actually received benefits. That makes workers desperate for any job, no matter how terrible, that can help them scrape by. During a recession with mass layoffs, when millions are facing that same desperation, businesses have all the power to offer unsafe jobs in places like crowded meatpacking plants and bustling restaurant kitchens to overqualified applicants with meager compensation, unless the government intervenes.

Unemployment insurance, especially the enhanced benefits during the pandemic, gives workers breathing room. The benefits aren’t enough for people to live large — even with the extra $300 a week, unemployment benefits will fall noticeably short for a modest family budget in every county in the country. Benefits just let workers be slightly less desperate, alleviating the pressure to take unsafe jobs — many of which are especially dangerous during a pandemic — that pay poverty wages. Instead, they can hold out a bit longer for better-paying jobs that match their skills, education, experience, and interests.

One dishwasher, Jeremy, told journalist Eion Higgins that “the stimulus and unemployment benefits have definitely helped me be more picky about what jobs I’ll take since I don’t have to take anything I can get in order to cover rent and groceries.” Another, Alan, reported that “I have a degree in forestry and since I’m currently relatively financially secure I can take more time to find a job in the field that I actually want to work in.” A third, Owen, said “I left because having some time off to think and plan helped focus my desire to be paid better and treated better… I expect to make at least double and finally have nights and weekends off. Hopefully I’ll be treated with a little more dignity but I know that’s not always the case.”

This is very different than saying unemployment benefits are discouraging work in general. Studies of unemployment insurance have shown that laid-off workers who receive benefits search harder for jobs, receive better paying offers, and take roles that better match their education level. Specifically during the pandemic, several studies have looked at the $600 enhanced benefits and found that they had little to no effect on employment or job search. It’s hard to see how the current $300 boost would be any different.

Despite what many businesses, commentators, and lawmakers are trying to claim, the data is continuing to prove that unemployment insurance isn’t standing in the way of hiring. Though overall job growth in April was disappointing, the leisure and hospitality sector — where most of the cries of labor shortage from employers are coming from — actually accelerated job growth with 206,000 new hires in March and 366,000 in April. In total, 430,000 people joined the labor force (meaning they weren’t searching for work before but now are), but that growth came entirely from men while women actually left the labor force on net in April, suggesting that this has more to do with a continued lack of child care. States with higher unemployment benefit levels, as well as low-wage sectors where benefits are more often higher than previous income, have actually seen faster job growth, indicating that unemployment insurance isn’t the cause of slow hiring.

In reality, few workers even had access to unemployment insurance in the first place. From April 2020 to January 2021, only 18 percent of unemployed people had received unemployment benefits in the last two weeks at any one time. It’s been even worse for Black (13 percent) and Asian (11 percent) workers and those without a college degree (12 percent), all of whom are overrepresented in low-wage industries like leisure and hospitality. Undocumented immigrants are also totally excluded from unemployment insurance, yet they are 10 percent of restaurant workers nationwide and almost 40 percent in cities like New York and Los Angeles. We saw the consequences of this early in the pandemic when meatpacking plants convinced the government to declare them essential, allowing them to call their employees back into work and leading to large COVID outbreaks among their workforces, disproportionately made up of immigrants and people of color, and in communities where the plants are located.

Even so, employers have managed to complain loudly enough about the possibility that they may have lost a hint of power that sympathetic legislators are rushing to accommodate them. As of mid-May, in 16 states and counting, Republican governors had announced their plans to block all of their residents from receiving their rightful federal unemployment benefits, citing anecdotes of businesses struggling to hire at their current wages as justification. Ending those benefits before the jobs are there and while millions are still losing their jobs each month will take billions of dollars — over $10 billion from almost 2 million unemployed workers by one estimate — out of the economy in those states, even if some of those people cut off find work, and will effectively slow the recovery through decreased spending.

If there was a labor shortage, employers have common sense options to make themselves more competitive: They could raise wages to livable levels, as many businesses have found success doing, or pressure their lawmaker friends to support vaccination efforts and fund safe and affordable child care. Instead, some businesses are relying on half measures, such as offering one-time signing bonuses specifically because they know those are insignificant when compared to what a worker would earn long-term from permanently higher wages. Many others are simply pushing the same narrative they have fallen back on for more than a century — through the New Deal, the Great Society, welfare reform, and the Great Recession — by claiming workers who dare demand more are lazy and ungrateful. It’s not a coincidence that the same people shouting to end unemployment benefits now are also opposing the Raise the Wage Act, the PRO Act, and other measures that might materially improve the lives and build the power of workers.

This power struggle has made its way to the president’s desk. In a White House speech on Monday, President Biden said, “Anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits.” (Emphasis added.) Now the government has to decide who gets to define “suitable.” Businesses would like it to mean the pre-COVID status quo: low wages, inconsistent hours, minimal (if any) benefits, and limited protections. Workers want it to mean that jobs are safe and offer a decent quality of life — including livable wages, manageable hours, and accommodations for caregiving and quality of life.

The Biden administration has taken some positive steps in defining a good job for federal contractors, setting a $15 minimum wage, raising standards, and strengthening anti-discrimination protections. It’s vital that the administration continue to support all workers in the face of overwhelming employer power. There’s no shortage of ways to do so: They can push to improve the unemployment insurance system through federalization or establishing minimum standards and automatic stabilizers, like those proposed in the Wyden-Bennet reform bill; pass the Raise the Wage Act to raise the minimum wage to $15 and eliminate subminimum wages; implement better regulations and enforcement to prevent wage theft, overtime abuse, misclassification, and OSHA safety violations, among other abuses; pass the PRO Act to ensure workers can exercise their right to come together in unions; and so much more.

We can’t continue to give employers all the power in the labor market. President Biden and other lawmakers must make it clear that now is the time to stand with workers and give them some say in their own working conditions and livelihoods.

Kofi Assabil, a member of the class of 2020 from University of Colorado Boulder, knows the grim job market all too well. Assabil started his job search in January 2020, months prior to his graduation. But when the pandemic reached the United States and everything went remote, he started to worry. “I realized that things were going to be harder. I was going on LinkedIn and Indeed…calling a few connections every two weeks to see if they had any opportunities,” but “even with internships, it was tough.” Along with several of his roommates, Assabil opted to wait out the labor market crunch in graduate school instead.

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The most recent estimates from Georgetown University indicate that approximately 70 percent of college students work part or full-time during their studies, suggesting 30 percent of new grads — up to 1.2 million recent college students — may be ineligible for unemployment once they graduate, unless they have proof of a rescinded job offer.

As a result, this generation of college graduates is struggling to find work. Coupled with a lack of government support and mounting student debt, personal financial conditions are proving difficult for many. According to the most recent data, among the 69 percent of college students that took out loans in 2019, the average debt upon graduation was $29,900, although numbers are higher for students of color. While Congress placed a temporary moratorium on payments for federal loans, there is still $137 billion in outstanding private student loan debt that is unaffected by the moratorium. Those bills are coming due, whether recent grads are ready for them or not. For the 22 percent of college undergraduates who are also parents, the financial burden is only heightened by the need to care for dependents.

The combination of insufficient economic opportunity and inaccessible unemployment benefits could have serious long-term implications. Elaine Weiss, an analyst from the National Academy of Social Insurance, believes that this will push new college graduates into lower paying jobs, since they cannot afford to wait for an offer that provides a higher wage.

According to a UCLA study, individuals who graduate college during a recession can expect between 10 to 20 percent lower lifetime earnings compared with their peers. According to the Federal Reserve, 40.3 percent of recent college graduates are underemployed. Further, this effect has become more amplified over time, as successive graduating classes experience higher and higher post-college unemployment rates.

One potential solution for new grads is a jobseekers’ allowance that could support them while they look for work. The allowance, which could partially replace foregone wages, would allow recipients to support themselves while they continue to look for work. Australia has a similar program dedicated specifically to providing financial assistance to youth and student job seekers with monthly benefit levels ranging from $1,153 to $1,924, depending on financial and family circumstances. While it’s no windfall, a benefit of that size would help cover a large portion of living expenses for many Americans. Other countries, such as Sweden, provide $1,101 per month, while also providing public child care and a child allowance for any families with children under the age of 16.

The results of these stronger unemployment programs have been well documented. One study from Georgetown University found that during the Great Recession, the enhanced unemployment insurance increased workers’ wages by 2.6 percent, with greater benefits for women, people of color, and people with lower educational attainment. This suggests that unemployment insurance programs help facilitate the job search process, allowing workers more time to find a job aligned with their skills.

With another college class soon to graduate into a still-weak labor market, the imperative of stronger unemployment insurance only becomes more important. While the passage of the American Rescue Plan is welcome news for the American economy, the bill failed to include unemployment protections specifically targeted at recent college graduates. The U.S. should take note of the work done by other nations to provide adequate financial stability for recent graduates as they enter the labor market. History tells us that the failure to do so will have lifelong impacts for college graduates.

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In November, Florida joined a long list of cities and states that have increased their minimum wage above the federal level of $7.25. Sixty-one percent of Floridians voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a move that will bring more than 1 million residents out of poverty. However, the amendment left out a crucial group: the state’s 2 million independent contractors, who don’t fall under federal minimum wage regulations. For decades, Florida’s lack of protections for these workers has led to widespread misclassification and wage theft. Even as the state passes some of its most progressive wage legislation in decades, its exploitative independent contractor system threatens to undermine its endeavors and points to broader weak spots nationally.

Around 10 percent of the state’s population, or 2 million people, work as independent contractors — 40 percent more than the national average. Under the independent contractor framework, employers aren’t required to meet Fair Labor Standards Act requirements for minimum wage or unemployment insurance, or provide benefits. This is appealing to employers — benefits account for up to 30 percent of a worker’s salary, so employers can cut costs by reclassifying their workers as independent contractors. Offloading payroll taxes, which employers aren’t required to pay on behalf of contractors, save employers an additional 8 percent.

In theory, an independent contractor is paid for performing a specific role or completing a project. The payer can only determine the result of the project, not when or how a contractor completes the work. But because labelling workers as independent contractors saves employers so much money, workers are occasionally “misclassified,” or classified as independent contractors when they should be an employee.

While exact numbers of how many workers are misclassified are difficult to obtain, studies are very clear about misclassification’s results: Contractors in several low-wage industries earn less than their salaried peers. In construction, a field particularly prone to misclassification, independent contractors can make half as much as their counterparts on payroll.

Floridians are uniquely vulnerable to employment misclassification. Florida’s service-dependent economy has made it a particularly easy target for gig work companies, according to Alexis Davis, an analyst at the Florida Policy Institute. Roughly 1.3 million of Florida’s independent contractors are “employed” by gig work companies. Gig workers in Florida also belong to some of the state’s most at-risk groups. These workers are disproportionately people of color and 1 out of every 3 is an immigrant. Seniors, attracted by the flexibility and the need to augment their Social Security payments, also make up a large part of the state’s gig workers.

Sherri Wheeler Cliburn, 56, has been driving for Instacart since the delivery app launched in Sarasota four years ago. Like many gig workers, she was attracted to the flexible schedule and good pay that the app initially offered, which allowed her to spend time on tour with her son, who is a musician. But as the app grew in popularity, Instacart began to lower payouts across the board, forcing workers to rely on customers’ tips. And although Instacart sets a default tip for orders, Cliburn says customers will often file fake complaints to get out of paying tips, or even paying for the order at all. This leads to workers getting deactivated from the platform while the company sorts out the case.

“It could take anywhere from five to eight weeks for somebody from Instacart to get back with you,” says Cliburn. “Meanwhile, you’re deactivated. You’ve lost your income.”

Several other workers gave similar accounts to TalkPoverty from working with Uber, Lyft, and other gig platforms. While they appreciate the autonomy that the independent contractor framework grants them, when pay disputes emerge, they find themselves powerless in the face of the companies they work for. Ben E., who drives for Uber in the Tampa area, says that there were multiple occasions where Uber docked his pay without explanation, leading to a long process of negotiations with the company. Uber has not responded to a request for comment as of publication.

State law makes these abuses particularly hard to fight. Normally, a state’s Department of Labor would provide protection from misclassification and other labor abuses for workers, and handle concerns like minimum wage complaints. However, Florida’s Department of Labor was dismantled in the early 2000s by then-Governor Jeb Bush. Today, Florida is one of seven states with no minimum wage investigators.

In 2017, following a $750,000 lobbying campaign by Uber, the state legislature passed a bill that set a statewide regulations for ride-hailing apps. While the bill included limited regulations on insurance, its main goal was to preempt local legislation in Miami-Dade that would have put rideshare apps on the same regulatory field as taxi services. The bill also included provisions that doubled down on classifying drivers as independent contractors.

Cliburn felt this first-hand when she tried to file a complaint about Instacart’s delays and pay reductions, though she didn’t have misclassification in mind. She contacted the state, which told her that she would have to provide a slew of paperwork that proved her case. As Cliburn struggled to navigate through the process, it became apparent that the state had little incentive to assist her and that they viewed her complaint as a burden to be avoided. Cliburn says she struggled to get in contact with the state and that, when she did, they provided little-to-no support for filing her request. “Eventually I just said, screw it, because they don’t care here. I know other states do care about their workers but in Florida, they just don’t care,” Cliburn says.

While the future of federal minimum wage legislation remains uncertain, it’s clear that the current framework fails to address the needs of the large and growing gig worker contingent. That’s not to say there isn’t hope for this next challenge in worker rights. Several states and cities, including New York and Illinois, have passed additional protections for gig workers. In Seattle, drivers working for ride-hailing apps are now eligible for the city’s minimum wage and dispute resolution protections. And California’s landmark AB 5 would have reclassified many of the state’s gig workers as employees, giving them access to minimum wage regulations and unemployment. While the gains made by the law were undone by a ballot measure funded by Uber and other gig apps, the framework created by the bill could serve as a basis for similar legislation on a federal level.

What’s more, the Biden administration has also signaled that it is willing to take a tougher stance on misclassification, suggesting that meaningful change may be within sight.

Usually, people associate predatory lending with payday loans. And it’s common knowledge exactly how awful payday loans are: 12 million people — 84 percent of whom have family income under $40,000 — are subject to annual percentage rates (APRs) around 400 percent to borrow just a few hundred dollars. These rates trap borrowers in long debt cycles of constant loan renewals. The typical payday loan consumer will spend almost 200 days — more than half the year — in debt, and two-thirds will renew at least seven times, meaning they ultimately pay more in interest and fees than the original amount they borrowed.

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Recently, however, there’s been a significant shift from payday loans to slightly bigger, slightly longer term installment loans. While payday loans are mostly under $500 with two-week terms, installment loans generally range from $500 to $2,000 (though they can reach $10,000 or higher) and offer terms of 6 months to 2 years or longer, with APRs around 100 percent to 200 percent. This shift happened quickly: One of the biggest predatory lenders, Enova International, made 98 percent of its revenue in 2009 from payday loans, but in 2019 only 10 percent came from payday loans compared to 43 percent from installment loans. Although the interest rates are slightly lower than payday loans, and consumers have longer to repay them, installment loans are actually more likely to trap people in dangerous debt cycles because they target the same low-income people but require a much bigger principal to be paid back.

There has been bipartisan legislation to curtail both types of predatory lending. Congress enacted the Military Lending Act in 2006 and expanded it in 2015 to protect service members — 44 percent of whom received a payday loan in 2017, compared to 7 percent of the total population. The bill capped rates on most consumer loans at 36 percent APR for active duty members, their spouses, and their dependents. Meanwhile, 18 states and DC, red and blue alike, have strong rate caps on payday loans that are extremely popular. (Illinois’s House of Representatives actually approved their payday rate cap unanimously, and Nebraska passed theirs with 83 percent ballot approval.) In addition, the vast majority of states have rate caps on at least some installment loans. Forty-five states and D.C. set interest for $500 6-month loans at a median APR of 38.5 percent; 42 states and D.C. set interest caps on $2,000 2-year loans at a median APR of 32 percent.

Predatory lenders want to circumvent these state laws to charge obscene interest rates on Americans everywhere, and the Trump administration was more than happy to draft a new rule that makes that possible. The rent-a-bank rule works as follows: The consumer applies for a loan with the non-bank “fake lender” like Ace Cash Express or OppLoans, which processes that application and sends it to an actual bank. The bank sends money to the consumer and then sells the loan back to the fake lender in exchange for some of the profit. Finally, the consumer pays back their loan to the non-bank lender. The consumer only ever interacts with the “fake lender,” but since the bank technically originated the loan and isn’t subject to the same state interest rate restrictions as non-bank lenders, the fake lender doesn’t have to abide by the rate cap anymore either.

Predatory lenders have been trying to use this rent-a-bank scheme to evade fake lender and anti-usury laws as far back as the early 1800s, but courts and federal regulators have always found it to be illegal. Until the Trump administration reversed course and implemented the new rent-a-bank rule. Now, 42 states and DC currently have at least one predatory lender using a rent-a-bank scheme, and another five have high-cost installment lenders that lend directly to consumers.

The costs of this rule to individual people and families will be enormous. In a state like Iowa, where rates are capped at 36 percent for both $500 6-month loans and $2,000 2-year loans, a $500 6-month installment loan from Check ‘N Go that a borrower is able to fully pay after the first term would cost $90 in fees at the 36 percent APR.  But under the new rule, Check ‘N Go is able to charge 199 percent APR on the same loan, which would cost $497.50 just in fees. Similarly, a $2,000 2-year installment loan repaid after just one term would cost $1,440 in fees at a 36 percent APR but $7,960 in fees at 199 percent APR.

And this example is assuming that borrowers are able to pay off the loans when they’re due, instead of renewing them, which is much more common. After six renewals, that 2-year installment loan at a 199 percent APR will cost $47,760 in fees.

This isn’t just a hypothetical exercise. About 19 percent of the 53 million adults in the US with household incomes under $40,000 will take out a payday loan sometime during the year, and most will end up renewing so many times that they pay more in fees than the principal they originally borrowed. If that percent holds across the states, as many as 4 million adults every year will take out a payday loan in a state where anti-predatory lending laws are being undermined by the rent-a-bank rule.

To add insult to injury, while these non-bank lenders profit by preying on millions of desperate Americans, they’re also demanding special support from the government during the pandemic. When the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was created in March 2020 as part of the CARES Act, payday lenders and their ilk were initially excluded. The lenders threw a tantrum, suing the government for inclusion and convincing a number of lawmakers from both parties — who happen to have received 6 times more in campaign contributions from the payday industry than those not involved — to write a letter urging the Trump administration to provide them with PPP funds, which it ultimately did.

As of July 2020, at least 35 payday loan and debt collection companies and their subsidiaries had received between $9 billion and $23 billion in PPP loans. Meanwhile, they continued to charge low-income consumers 400 percent APR on short-term loans amidst a financial crisis. Some even had the audacity to market “COVID-19 Financial Relief” and “Emergency Funding Relief” loans at 800 percent APR early in the recession. One company, Opportunity Financial — which operated under the name OppLoans but recently rebranded as OppFi — lends directly in 10 states and uses a rent-a-bank scheme in 33 other states to lend at 160 percent APR. OppFi has received 46 complaints to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for their payday lending practices since 2011 and is currently being investigated for potentially violating the Military Lending Act, but last year they took a PPP loan of $6,354,000. Another predatory lender, CashCall, has received a staggering 565 complaints to the CFPB and was successfully sued in separate cases by the CFPB and DC for using a rent-a-bank scheme to charge illegally high interest rates, but still received a PPP loan of $788,600.

The good news is that there are some easy fixes to this problem. In an ideal world, we would have a national 36 percent rate cap that applies to everyone. At 36 percent APR, consumer loans would still be pretty costly but wouldn’t be at predatory usury levels. The bipartisan Veterans and Consumers Fair Credit Act introduced by Representatives Jesús “Chuy” Garcia (D-IL) and Glenn Grothman (R-WI) in November of 2019, and which is expected to be reintroduced this legislative session, would extend the Military Lending Act’s 36 percent cap to all consumers. This would be overwhelmingly popular with the American public, polling at 70 percent among all voters with no less than 60 percent support in any state and with a majority of those opposed saying that 36 percent is still too high. However, given the makeup of the Senate, this legislation is unlikely to pass, and certainly not quickly.

Waiting for a new comptroller of the currency to be appointed by President Biden and then issue a new rule reversing the rent-a-bank rule will also take some time and could face a threat from lawsuits in a very conservative federal judiciary. In the meantime, millions of low-income consumers will be robbed of billions of dollars in fees from exploitative interest rates.

The much faster and easier solution to the rent-a-bank problem is for Congress to simply use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overturn the rule. This option is time-limited, though; Congress has just 60 legislative days after a rule is implemented to pass CRA legislation. Thankfully, Representative Garcia (D-IL) and Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) took the first step on Thursday March 25 and introduced the necessary CRA legislation to repeal the rent-a-bank rule.

The resolution now needs to pass both the House and Senate and get signed by President Biden soon, likely sometime in May, to prevent millions of low-income people every year from being even further exploited and trapped in debt by predatory lenders.

Powerful floodwaters had destroyed a culvert running under the road, washing a 30-foot section of the highway away. Peterson, 60, drove straight into the ravine and was killed — one of two people to lose their lives there that night. Two other motorists were injured.

“We have other culverts like that that are going to be blown out if we get a bunch of rain,” warned Elliott Ward, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s emergency manager, from his office in Fort Yates. “(R)oads, bridges, culverts, lagoons, housing. Our infrastructure is shot,” said Ward. “A lot of our roads were built back in the ‘50s and ‘60s; they’re dilapidated and need replacing.”

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Tribe administrators on Standing Rock Reservation say having an array of departments and authorities — state, federal, and tribal — in charge of roads and transport infrastructure means that accessing funds to maintain highways and culverts is complicated and riven with bureaucracy. Most federal funding for roads and highways on reservation lands is provided through the Tribal Transportation Program (TTP), which authorized $505 million for 2020 and is co-administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Federal Highway Administration.

But reservations across the U.S. have a backlog of infrastructure projects, a delay referred to as “deferred maintenance.” Repairs were estimated at $390 million for 2018.

Indigenous communities are some of the poorest in the country. The per capita income in Standing Rock’s Sioux County stands at less than $16,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, while in Emmons County on the other side of the Missouri River, the figure is almost double that.

In Navajo Nation, home to around 175,000 people spread across New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona, three-quarters of the roads on the reservation are either dirt or gravel. In an area larger than the state of West Virginia, drainage systems are easily clogged by expanding and migrating sand dunes, making roads impassable during times of heavy rain or thawing. In 2015, ten days of school in the reservation’s San Juan County were canceled because road conditions made it unsafe to ferry students to and from their classrooms.

In South Dakota’s Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, not far from Standing Rock, federal funding for the community’s 310 miles of roads was just $2.2 million in 2019, one tenth of the estimated minimum needed to bring the roads into good repair. Road ploughing alone cost $600,000 that same year, when a combination of failing infrastructure and extreme weather led to a state of emergency being issued by tribal authorities on two occasions.

Dirt roads in poor condition are a growing problem in the era of climate change, with record-breaking late summer and early winter storms and snowfall that have made it even more difficult for residents to get around. In March 2019, a “bomb cyclone” storm flooded homes and businesses on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, home to some of the lowest life expectancy rates in the Western Hemisphere. With the ground underneath still frozen solid, rapidly rising temperatures that followed the snowstorm fueled a thaw and several-feet-high floodwaters left whole communities stranded for days.

For vulnerable minorities such as Native communities, the threat presented by the coronavirus has added to the worry. With Covid-19 cases rising in states across the Plains region, being able to safely drive to healthcare and emergency facilities is more critical than ever. Those drives can be long. In Navajo Nation, for example, 12 health care facilities cover 25,000 square miles of land. Early last summer, Navajo Nation reported a higher per capita number of Covid-19 cases than New York state, ground zero for the outbreak last spring. Meanwhile, lost with the passing of 1,152 members of Navajo Nation are generations of the same families and coveted oral histories.

The culvert under Highway 1806 into which Trudy Peterson’s car dived in the summer of 2019 wasn’t repaired because it fell into the “long-range projects and costs list” in the Tribe’s Long Range Transportation Plan for Standing Rock document, published in December 2018. It meant there wasn’t funding set aside to repair the culvert, estimated at costing $1.5 million, or it wasn’t considered high priority at the time. The shortfall facing Standing Rock, according to the Tribe’s director of transportation and planning, Ron His Horse Is Thunder, is down to Congress and the Federal Highway Administration not releasing enough funds. “We go to Congress every year,” he told the Associated Press in August 2019. “They just don’t give us enough money to take care of the issues.”

Nor could the tribe, says Elliott Ward, avail itself of funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to repair the highway, as it comes under BIA jurisdiction. The culvert that killed Trudy Peterson had been identified for replacement seven years before it was washed out, according to an internal document.

Recent months saw some efforts in Washington DC to help ease the crisis. In August 2020, then-Representative Deb Haaland (D-N.M.), now Secretary of the Interior Department — and the first Native American to hold a cabinet position — spoke of how the Invest in America and Moving Forward Acts would result in funding increases for the TTP. In November 2020, four senators including Elizabeth Warren introduced legislation that would send funds toward infrastructure improvement efforts, including traffic calming and pedestrian facilities on reservation lands. The bill would have seen the opening of a new program within the Department for Transportation with an annual budget of $25 million. It has not been reintroduced in the 117^th Congress.

But throwing money at the problem isn’t a catch-all solution. Interjurisdictional cooperation is key to determining how roads and road safety are managed in many reservations, says Kathy Quick, a co-author with Guillermo Narváez of a University of Minnesota study about improving roadway safety on reservations. “Matters of responsibility and authority — who has it and who may exercise it — are frequently in question and contested in most reservations,” she said.

“The boundaries of reservations and of tribes’ jurisdictions to formulate, implement, and enforce safety-related policies and plans are frequently questioned and contested by federal, state and local government authorities.”

For Trudy Peterson’s daughter, Jade Mound, those issues don’t compare to the raw pain of losing someone to poor road conditions. “I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what my family has gone through,” she told the Bismarck Tribune in September 2020, when Peterson’s and other families filed a claim against the BIA seeking monetary damages and better maintenance of roads.

“There is absolutely no reason that the BIA roads should be in the condition they’re in.”

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Fortunately, I knew my dad’s wishes from dozens of conversations: Spend as little on his death as possible, have him cremated without embalming, and spread his ashes at Ossipee Lake in New Hampshire where he spent every summer as a kid. I tried not to feel guilty as I turned down the options the funeral home director explained to me, picturing my dad’s blue eyes as he told me not to spend an extra dime on his death, his insistence that he wanted to keep this simple. I knew my mom’s funeral costs had been impossible for him to handle as a cab driver, and that her brother had paid for almost everything.

After a lengthy and transparent explanation of what was available, I was handed a breakdown sheet with itemized prices. In total, my dad’s cremation costs sat at around $3,700: $2,900 for professional services and basic cremation, $260 for a container to keep his ashes in, $84 for copies of the death certificate, $31 for a cremation permit, $260 for the crematory, and $200 for the medical examiner fee (which went up by 100 percent in Massachusetts in 2019). My wife and I put the cost on a credit card and went home, exhausted.

I grew up in the projects, and lived just above or at the poverty line for the first eighteen years of my life. My parents, like 40 percent of Americans, never had $400 in the bank for an emergency. When my dad received medical bills for things that MassHealth didn’t cover, he let them go to collections because we simply couldn’t afford to pay them. Just a few years ago, my wife and I were in a similar boat. If my father had died in 2016, neither of us would have had a single credit card with a high enough limit to pay for his cremation costs.

My dad’s death was the second expensive emergency we faced in 2020, a year where nearly ten months were spent in an unprecedented global pandemic. In May, we had to pay for our cat’s life-saving cystotomy. I remember how relieved I was when we paid off the credit card we used for her surgery about a month and a half after it happened.

About a week after my dad’s death when the shock wore off, I decided to start a fundraiser to cover the cost of my dad’s cremation. According to GoFundMe, 13 percent of its campaigns created in 2017 funded memorials, and a 2015 Funeral and Memorial Information Council study reported that 17 percent of adults between 20 and 39 solicited or donated money online for funeral-related arrangements. Sites dedicated specifically to funeral and memorial costs have launched, such as FuneralFund and Ever Loved. A 2019 survey from the National Funeral Directors Association showed that the cost of cremation had gone up 8.5 percent in the U.S. over the last five years, and the median cost of direct cremation is $2,495. The median price for a full funeral and burial in 2019 was $9,135, adding to the stress for the deceased’s next of kin. All of this is an even greater financial and emotional strain during a global pandemic, when many people have lost income and while low-income folks, people of color, and disabled people are dying at higher rates due to complications from COVID-19 compounded by racism, classism, and ableism in medical care.

Based on the 4.9 percent fee deducted from each donation at Fundly, I set my fundraiser at $5,000, hoping to raise enough to cover paying off the credit cards before any interest accrued plus a little extra to cover the cost of traveling to Ossipee for the weekend to spread my dad’s ashes once it’s safe to actually memorialize him.

As I shared my fundraiser on social media, I wondered if my dad’s wishes were simply because he didn’t believe much should be spent on death or because he understood that cremation and funeral costs can be pricey.

I thought of my dad, grieving my mom and unable to help pay for her funeral expenses, cutting back his hours at work because he had to take care of me full-time. I thought of him calling me the first time he qualified for a secured credit card after years of financial instability. I thought of my dad giving me and my wife a “mini honeymoon” weekend trip for our wedding because we couldn’t take enough time off to go on a full honeymoon right away, of him buying us dinner and champagne for our first anniversary, of the way he used to stop by and bring us desserts from an Italian bakery in Boston just because he could finally afford spontaneous gifts. My dad was financially secure for the last three years of his life, and he spent most of it in generous ways, helping residents at his sober home pay their rent and paying for aquarium memberships for the toddlers in our family.

Within two weeks, my fundraiser was fully funded, and we could pay off the credit card with zero interest. I almost cried when I saw the fundraiser total amount.

The fact that paying my dad’s cremation costs came down to luck and privilege isn’t lost on me. On average, only 22.4 percent of crowdfunding projects are successful and meet their goal, and 24 percent of Americans don’t have a credit card. There isn’t much support out there for young or low-income people shouldering the cost of a loved one’s end-of-life costs alone, aside from crowdfunding and asking for help from friends and family, if that’s even an option. Death — especially an unexpected, sudden loss — creates a seismic shift in your world, but it shouldn’t create an unmanageable financial burden.

At the time, however, home solar was something only the affluent could afford. A modest 5-kilowatt system would have topped $30,000 in 2011, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Within a few years, prices had fallen and solar companies were making aggressive sales pitches in her neighborhood. Still, the numbers didn’t work for Jones, who was a full-time student working as an educator in a women’s homeless shelter.

“I couldn’t lay down thousands of dollars for the panels,” she said. “I couldn’t get in the game with a big check.”

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Then one day, at a community event, she ran into representatives from Resonant Energy, a Boston-based solar developer that focuses on projects in low-income areas. Resonant’s staff understood both Jones’ passion for solar and her financial challenges. They introduced her to the Massachusetts Solar Loan, a program that financed residential solar projects, and offered lower-income borrowers fixed, below-market rates and forgiveness of 30 percent of the loan principal.

The solar panels on Jones’ home went up in October 2017 and she hasn’t had to pay an electric bill since the following April. Though her bill was less than $100 – lower than the state average of $126 – the savings have made it easy to afford her monthly solar loan payment of $127.

“When I got my solar panels I just felt like I won the lottery,” she said. “I found it to be very empowering.”

In Massachusetts, the average household spends 3 percent of its income on energy costs, while households with income between 30 percent and 60 percent of the area median — roughly between $32,000 and $64,000 for a family of three — spend 7 percent. For families living below the poverty line, this energy burden jumps to 21 percent.

Solar power could decrease those costs. For renters or homeowners who can’t install solar, community-shared solar — larger developments that sell power to multiple users — can help lower the cost of energy by a few hundred dollars each year. For homeowners who install their own systems, the savings will generally pay off the price in around five or six years. After that, all future savings are pure financial benefit.

These savings could make a meaningful difference to households that routinely have to choose between paying bills and buying medication or fresh food. Nationwide, more than 20 percent of households reported foregoing food or other necessities to pay an energy bill in 2015, the latest year for which data is available from the Energy Information Administration.

So far, however, low-income solar has gotten too little traction for the effects to be realized at any scale, supporters say. These initiatives are undermined by their failure to understand the cultural, historical, and financial realities in the communities they seek to serve, a dynamic Massachusetts is grappling with right now.

The state’s solar targets and policies are widely considered some of the most ambitious in the country. The Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target program, or SMART, recently expanded to provide incentives for 3,200 megawatts of solar development, a number that could power more than 300,000 average households. This expansion will more than double the state’s installed solar capacity.

The program pays the owners of solar generation units — anyone from private homeowners with a few panels on their roofs to large-sale solar farms — a set rate per kilowatt-hour of energy produced. The base rate depends on size and location, and increases slightly when the project includes features the state wishes to encourage, such as reclaiming a polluted site or serving low-income customers. The original base rates ranged from 15.6 cents to 35.8 cents, though they have, by design, dropped as more projects have signed up for the incentive.

Though the program includes incentives to encourage developments in low-income neighborhoods, there has been little progress toward this goal since SMART launched in November 2018: Just 4.7 percent of the capacity approved by the program as of late November 2020 has been for low-income projects. According to Ben Underwood, co-founder of Resonant Energy, that’s partially because the incentive doesn’t offer enough money to attract developers, whose main goal is to make a profit: It’s much more lucrative to build solar generation units on open land. At the federal level, a renewable energy tax credit can lower the net cost of a solar installation, but doesn’t make it easier for lower-income consumers to afford the upfront price.

However, the barriers go beyond the purely financial. “A lot of states focus on the monetary barriers,” said Nathan Phelps, regulatory director for clean energy advocacy group Vote Solar. “That doesn’t actually address all of the underlying issues.”

One major stumbling block is the current requirement that low-income solar customers buying energy from community shared systems — the main way renters or homeowners with unsuitable roofs access renewable energy — sign a contract. With a contract on their financial report, it may be more difficult for them to secure a car loan or other needed credit, Phelps said. The decision to go solar therefore becomes another hard choice, rather than an obvious financial boost.

In these communities, there is also often an ingrained distrust of salespeople peddling energy deals. For many years, competitive power suppliers preyed on low-income and minority neighborhoods in the state, promising low electricity prices and hiding expensive loopholes in the fine print. Low-income households often lost hundreds of dollars a year, to the tune of $57 million from 2015 to 2018, reports by state attorney general Maura Healey found. Today, many members of these communities are understandably wary when outsiders show up offering contracts for energy savings.

Environmental justice and clean energy activists are lobbying to change the system, allowing a simplified, no-contract form of payment that will avoid these concerns. So far, the state’s Department of Energy and the Environment, which oversees SMART, has not committed to such a change. Some in the industry, however, say there are hopeful signs that the state will soon start allowing smaller projects to go ahead without contracts.

Looking ahead, environmental justice advocates want more people from low-income and environmental justice communities actively engaged in the conversation next time the rules come up for revision.

“We need to provide benefits to people who live in environmental justice communities, then engage them to help us write the next policy,” Underwood said. “There’s something inherently democratic about solar and it is very important for us in crafting policy to make the most of that potential every step of the way.”

On August 4, 2019, he and his father Derrick Fudge were at a bar in Dayton’s Oregon District. They were taking a break after weeks of reconstruction work on Green’s house, which had been damaged by a severe tornado two months prior. When a gunman appeared out of an alleyway and started shooting, Green and his father got as close to the ground as they could.

“I kept telling him to get up, we got to go,” he recalled. But Mr. Fudge died in his son’s arms that night, one of nine people murdered by a gunman who managed to fire off more than 40 shots in less than 30 seconds.

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Green says he lost more than his father; he lost a dear friend. On top of that came the financial cost of both burying his father, which ran into thousands of dollars.

All U.S. states and territories have a crime victim compensation program that reimburses victims of crime for related costs, funded by a mix of fines, forfeited bail, and other fees. The funds help with funeral costs, counseling, loss of work earnings, and other expenses. However, each state maintains its own eligibility criteria. In Ohio, Fudge was not deemed a “qualifying victim.”

In March 2011, eight-and-a-half years before his death, Fudge pled guilty to a drug trafficking offense and was sentenced to a three-month home monitoring period and three years of probation. Ohio’s victim compensation program denies aid for individuals who’ve been involved in certain felony offenses within ten years, essentially barring people who have paid for the victim compensation program from benefitting from it.

When Green’s application for his father was denied, he was livid.

“It’s like [the shooter] is winning both ways — he’s taken our family members and then you’ve got to worry about how to pay for burying them,” he says. “My dad shouldn’t be held accountable for his own death.”

Six other states — Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Rhode Island — also have laws denying compensation to victims of crimes who are involved in prior or ongoing felony offenses, or are engaged in felonious activity at the time of their victimization. An average of 36 percent of claims in those states are denied as a result, leaving victims or their surviving family members to pay out of pocket. Green says in his case some costs were partly offset by donations and his own health insurance, but much of it he paid himself.

Green isn’t the only one facing this issue.

Alayna Young was shot in her left leg in the same attack that killed Green’s father in Dayton last year. She was in the hospital when she found out her health insurance had lapsed four days before. “I immediately heard the cash registers in my head,” she said, and left the hospital the same day. After missing almost six weeks of work due to her injury, she was also denied compensation from the state. Young had been taking prescription Adderall, and her claim was refused due to a blood test showing the presence of amphetamines in her system.

More than a year later, with fragments of the bullet still in her leg, Young still owes close to $80,000 in medical fees. “I might have to file bankruptcy; that’s not something I want to do but I don’t see any other way,” she said.

“When people are victimized, we should aim to provide them with the services they need to heal and be safe, period,” said John Maki, the author of a 2019 paper detailing Illinois’ experience with crime victim compensation issues. Across the country, there are a wide variety of barriers preventing victims from receiving the support they need, ranging from denials due to drug tests to issues with the aid application process. The result is a patchwork of aid that varies by state: In Montana, nine in ten victims receive aid in an average of 60 days, but in West Virginia, only three in ten applicants get support and decisions can take as long as 210 days.

Maki said recent times have seen a push for possible change. “A growing number of states have begun to reexamine their crime victim compensation program, looking for ways to remove barriers to services. That’s not only the right thing to do for victims, but it’s also smart and cost-effective public safety policy.” Ohio is among them, and in November the state senate approved a bill reducing the disqualification period for those with a prior conviction, increasing compensation to survivors who require counseling, and no longer punishing victims in possession of drugs at the time of the crime.

But for some survivors, the exhaustion and trauma of the last year is still exacting a major toll.

“A letter came and said I could appeal (the compensation denial),” said Green, “but who’s really thinking about that? I’m still in the process of grieving. I said, ‘to hell with it.’”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Young. “There was a lot of back and forth and I already wasn’t in a great state of mind to really deal with any of this,” she said. “It’s like getting kicked while you’re down.”

“If you’re like me, and you’re on food stamps or you’re low income, a lot of the way that you survive is, you have to know which stores to go to and what to buy where, and that option has now been taken away in the era of COVID. Anything that could help and provide food would be a huge boon,” Fox says.

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Jersey City’s poverty rate is 18 percent — that’s more than 47,000 people out of a population of around 265,549 (by comparison, the national average hovers at around 10.4 percent). About 32 percent of those living below the poverty line — around 14,751 people — are African American; another 17,000 people who identify as Hispanic live in poverty.

Google Maps’ distribution of grocery stores throughout Jersey City shows at least 160 places to buy food, many of which are concentrated around the busy, densely populated Journal Square, McGinley Square, and West Side neighborhoods. In areas like South Jersey City’s Greenville, where 53 percent of the population is African American, and Bergen-Lafayette, where that number jumps to 62 percent, the choices thin out considerably, especially if you don’t have access to a car.

That startling lack of food access was the impetus for a new initiative: In partnership with AeroFarms and the World Economic Forum, 10 vertical farms located in senior centers, schools, public housing complexes, and municipal buildings were slated to begin opening at the end of 2020. The pandemic slowed the project’s progress, but Stacey Flanagan, head of the Jersey City department of health and human services, still expects “the first two farms to be ready by the end of [March 2021].”

The farms will grow 19,000 pounds of leafy greens such as kale and arugula annually. Flanagan says the program’s initial rollout focuses on providing nutrient-dense greens to residents, with a wider variety of produce in the future.

The greens will be distributed to the public for free — all that’s required is that the participants register for the program. The three-year contract with AeroFarms will cost Jersey City $1 million — half of the money will go toward building the farms, while the other half will be dedicated to maintenance once the farms open.

On the surface, the program seems like it will be an asset to a city plagued by food inequality issues. Fox tells me that, as a high-risk person during the pandemic, she’s shopping at outdoor farmers markets much more often, despite the expense. She feels that any produce that would supplement her SNAP benefits would be a blessing — especially if the city could find a way to deliver her allotment.

Still, some Jersey City residents are skeptical.

There was immediate backlash to the implication in initial press releases announcing the initiative that participants would be required to take nutritional classes or even attend health screenings. That raised immediate concerns about participant privacy, as well as concerns that it could be condescending to users.

“If there’s a signup table with one person sitting in the corner saying, get a health screening here, that could benefit people who maybe don’t have the ability, or don’t have the time to go to a doctor, but we need to understand how the city is going to use [that data] and where that data is going to be stored and, and how it might potentially be shared,” says Leslie, a Jersey City resident of 13 years  who asked that her last name not be used.

Flanagan told me that residents will not be required to participate in any outside programs in exchange for their allotment of free produce. Instead, there might be what she calls a “point of education,” at the pick-up location, where participants might receive a recipe for a smoothie along with their produce, or an offer to check their cholesterol, through the city’s partnership with Quest Diagnostics. She added that every aspect of the program involving data collection will be conducted by a “city or medical professional,” and that it will be kept “completely confidential as per HIPPA laws.”

Tatiana Smith, a single mother, doula, and founder of the Westside Community Fridge, says she has to travel to other parts of the city for food but she’s still decidedly unenthusiastic about the vertical farming program. She says that the city should drop the education portion altogether, because it feels disconnected from the needs of many low-income communities.

“What would be engaging is to take a community member and have them come in and talk about a recipe from their culture and pass it on. But not to give out random recipes. People already know how to cook,” she says. In fact, nearby community gardens all over New Jersey and New York frequently host community potlucks —  some specifically aimed at the neighborhood’s international community —  in which residents are invited to share a favorite dish, meet each other, exchange recipes, seeds, and vegetables, and ultimately build bonds of closeness between neighbors.

Smith is still undecided if she’ll be signing up for the program herself. If she does, she says she’d ask city officials why they never consulted directly with community members about whether or not they even wanted a program like this.

“It’s typical of these types of initiatives that want to help but don’t bother to tap in into what the community is doing and how they live,” she says. “There is this idea that black and brown people seem to not care about their health, but black people have had a long history of food justice work, and now [the city is] saying, ‘We’re gonna introduce healthy eating to you.’ We’ve been eating like this for a long time, but because of systematic racism, low income people have had to resort to poor quality food.”

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Yet, despite Congress’ concern about the welfare of thoroughbred horses, they have all but ignored the plight of the frontline backstretch workers who are responsible for their training and care. They have spent months facing down coronavirus with little financial or public health support. Backstretch workers are predominantly immigrant workers from Latin America and the Caribbean. Many live on-site with other workers, often crammed two to a room with the kitchen and bathrooms shared communally. Yet, many of the workers who care for these prized animals subsist on low wages despite the fact that in New York State alone, where the famous Belmont Park is located, the thoroughbred industry generates more than $2 billion in annual revenue. And when COVID-19 arrived, they weren’t ready.

Since immigrating from Chile in 2002, Caroline Klicey has spent most of her time in America working at Belmont. As a hot-walker, every morning she would take thoroughbred racehorses out for morning walks to stretch out their tense muscles before a race. The work is challenging and the pay is low but, in addition to her husband’s income, the $450 she earns a week is sufficient enough to raise her four children comfortably.

The track is also more than just a place of work; it has become her community. Most of Klicey’s friends are also backstretch workers, she met her husband at the track, and her children frequently spend time at the track after school and on weekends. Prior to the pandemic, she found it hard to imagine a life away from the backstretch.

“Everyone who works here is like a family. We treat each other well. In the morning everyone greets you with a smile. It’s a beautiful thing to work there.”

Yet, when the pandemic forced New York to temporarily shut down live racing last March, many backstretch workers like Klicey, who took great comfort in their “recession-proof” jobs, suddenly found themselves out of work and on food pantry lines.

“Early on it was really difficult for us. My husband was laid off for a few months and I had to stay home with my kids. We lived off our savings but getting food was difficult, but thank god for the food pantry, we got through it.”

As the pandemic spread like wildfire throughout the New York City metro area, Belmont’s backstretch community proved to be a ticking time bomb. About 800 people are employed at Belmont’s backstretch, with nearly 600 workers living in dormitories on the property, where the cramped quarters created the perfect environment for the virus to propagate. At the peak of the virus, between March and April, 100 backstretch workers were infected.

In response, The New York Racing Association (NYRA) suspended all racing at all New York State tracks in March until it was able to contain the virus. Joe Appelbaum, President of The New York Thoroughbred Horsemen Association (NYTHA), an organization representing horse owners and trainers, found himself with the unprecedented challenge of mitigating a possible public health catastrophe as well as maintaining animal welfare.

“We were presented with a very difficult challenge because it’s not like college dorms where they just shut the doors and send everyone home,” he said. “These are these guys’ homes or their permanent residences might be in Mexico or Guatemala. Plus you had a horse that needed to be cared for.”

Although racing was temporarily suspended, some backstretch workers continued to be employed, as care for the animals was deemed an essential service. But with no races scheduled, workers like Klicey who prepared horses for races were left without work altogether. For those who were still employed, many had subsidized their wages with second jobs at the track, such as concessions. With live racing suspended, and many unable to collect economic recovery payments due to their immigration status, those workers were forced to find other means of supporting themselves.

Karen Chavez, the General Manager of NY Race Track Chaplaincy, which provides services for the backstretch community, saw a sharp spike in need of their services. Chavez saw the toll the pandemic was taking, firsthand.

“When racing was temporarily canceled, financially it was tough for many of the families,” she said. “We saw a lot of men and women with panic attacks and anxiety disorders. Our food pantry services grew from 60 families to 360 families in just a couple of weeks.”

Since last April, NYRA has been able to rein in the virus, with no new cases currently among backstretch workers. Still, they are not taking any chances.

“NYRA is following all New York State Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control guidance regarding social distancing,” said Patrick McKenna, Director of Communications for NYRA. “Facial coverings are mandatory for anyone on the property.”

With the virus under control for the most part, in June, racing resumed throughout New York State, albeit without crowds in the grandstands. In turn, horseracing saw a minor resurgence in popularity. As the pandemic initially brought most professional sports to a halt, with many players such as in the NBA choosing to opt-out, horseracing was able to fill the void. On the first five days racing resumed, Belmont handled $76,264,891 in online wagers, an 84 percent increase from last year. On its opening day in June, Belmont’s handle of $10,972,254 set an opening day record, topping the previous record of $10.7 million from 2010.

Still, with the money rolling in, the army of immigrant, low wage backstretch workers continued to labor behind the scenes with little public recognition. As owners enjoyed federal tax breaks and the horses benefited from increased safety regulations, workers continued to endure low wages, occupational hazards, and wage theft, without the added benefit of hazard pay. However, many are reluctant to work anywhere else. Despite its flaws, the backstretch offers an opportunity for a close-knit immigrant workforce who have few other options; like five million other essential workers, many are undocumented.

Caroline Klicey proudly describes the intimate connections workers have formed with one another in the backstretch. When one worker falls sick, others will bring them soup. When one needs to borrow money, another will be quick to help. Marriages, christenings, and Quinceañeras are performed regularly amongst the stables full of horses. With workers hailing from Central and South America, on the backstretch they form a vibrant mosaic of cultures, creating its own unique cultural identity. Admittedly, Klicey acknowledges that the pandemic has brought with it challenges she had never foreseen, but she’s adamant that because of the culture of self-reliance fostered at the backstretch, they were able to get through it.

“At the backstretch, we always take care of our own.”

My husband, on the other hand, was never referred to as an addict, even though he was actually being accused of using one more illicit substance than me — methamphetamine in addition to heroin. It may be hard to understand why something like this matters. After all, don’t people use the word “addict” all the time?

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There is an ongoing debate among the addiction treatment and harm reduction communities about which terms should be used when referring to drug use and addiction, and in what settings. In 2017, the Associated Press Stylebook updated their recommendations for reporting on addiction and drug use to exclude potentially stigmatizing terms such as “addict,” “alcoholic,” and “drug abuser,” except in the form of direct quotes. Instead, they recommend using person-first language, such as “person with a substance use disorder” or “people who are addicted to opioids.” These changes aligned with updates to the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, as well as recommendations by the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Others followed suit: a 2018 update to the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s blog specified that they no longer use terms such as “addict” or “substance abuser” (though the institute’s name remains unchanged), and in 2020 dictionary.com updated their website to replace all uses of the word “addict” as a noun with terminology such as “person with an addiction” or “habitual user.” They also updated their definition of the word “addict” to note that some might consider it offensive, and added a lengthy sensitivity note explaining: “addiction is the complicated result of genetic predisposition intersecting with dysfunctional behavior, neurochemical modification, environmental factors, and social influences,” and that many members of the treatment and recovery communities advocate against its use.

Controversy around terms such as “addict,” “alcoholic,” and “substance abuse” has been boiling for years. Many members of the medical, recovery, and harm reduction communities are happy to see changes like this implemented. For example, Olivia Pennelle, founder of Liv’s Recovery Kitchen and a journalist in long-term addiction recovery who covered the language debate for The Fix in 2018, said the dictionary.com changes are “important,” adding: “Only 10 percent of people [with a substance use disorder] get access to treatment…[and] a major factor is stigma. If we can do anything to change that, we should.”

On the other hand, Amy Dresner, also a journalist in long-term addiction recovery who authored an autobiography titled My Fair Junkie: A Memoir of Getting Dirty and Staying Clean, said she considers the use of language such as “junkie” and “addict” to be empowering when reclaimed as self-identifiers. And she says terms such as “person with a substance use disorder” fail to “convey the horror” of what she experienced during her active addiction.

“All that PC language feels like putting lipstick on a pig and hiding it more…[the changed terminology] sounds better, it sounds like you have empathy but does it really change somebody’s opinion?” she asked.

Recent research backs the moves by dictionary.com and the Associated Press. A series of studies published in the Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence in 2018 found that several terms, including the word “addict,” were associated with negative social perceptions. It also found that these terms produced negative biases significant enough to impact people’s access to healthcare; for example, both treatment professionals and members of the general public were more inclined to recommend incarceration or other punitive measures to those labeled an “addict” or “substance abuser” while a “person with a substance use disorder” was more likely to be deemed in need of medical care.

Robert Ashford, the lead researcher in the language studies, explained a potential cause in a story I wrote for Filter Mag. “[Language is] the primary way we communicate…The cliché ‘words have power’ is the truth.” Regarding language employed in court settings specifically, he added: “It’s not that those [terms such as ‘person with substance use disorder’] are inherently positive; it’s that they are less negative than the pejorative terms that have been created over time. These things have a really strong emotional reaction to most people. We don’t need to do [courtroom actors] any favors by…using language that has come to mean something biased.”

“How you speak about the person you’re representing is how other people will see them and so using the correct language is extremely important,” added Dinah Ortiz, a harm reduction-oriented parent advocate located in New York City. “Language is like a stepping stone, then comes the harder stuff, but it starts with language…if we don’t care about calling a person a ‘junkie,’ a ‘dope fiend,’ a ‘crackhead,’ then we don’t care about that person.”

In my Florida State child services case, my husband and I both received the same charges — neglect and imminent risk of harm — and we both had our parental rights terminated in early 2020. On paper, we shared the same nightmare outcome at the end of a case riddled with misrepresentations of fact, blatant bias, and government overreach at its darkest. But there was a palpable difference in the courtroom between his treatment and mine. While my every word was interrogated with suspicion — I was never even counted as having income despite clearly being able to pay my bills and child support — my husband was rarely questioned. I was criticized for circumstances he and I shared, such as not having a car and relying on his parents for rides to our supervised visits, while he usually escaped mention.

At the disposition for our initial trial, when the judge determined that our daughters were unsafe in our care and should remain with their paternal grandparents while we completed a slew of tasks to try to regain custody, the judge cited as her reasons for issuing these charges against me: “The mother is an extraordinarily educated and gifted individual. You have a gift for language, both oral and written. Unfortunately, the Court finds that you could probably sell ice to an Eskimo.”

Although she issued the same charges against my husband, the judge stated that she “found the father’s testimony essentially credible before this Court,” and mentioned that he acknowledged having a “substance abuse history,” something I likewise acknowledged about myself (though I clarified it as a substance use disorder, as per the DSM IV and V).

While it is impossible to pinpoint my classification as an “addict” versus my husband’s as a “person who uses heroin and meth” as the reason for our differences in courtroom treatment, it can’t be ignored that this experience aligns near perfectly with the outcomes of Ashford’s experiments.

And, as explained by Sheila Vakharia, a former social worker and the current deputy director of the Department of Research and Academic Engagement for the Drug Policy Alliance: “When you refer to someone as an ‘addict,’ and you make salient one person’s single relationship with a drug or several drugs, what happens is you then start to see that person through that lens of that one characteristic or trait, and it can make it hard to see the complexity of a person’s identity.”

Still, it’s hard to know how much, if at all, my case would have changed if I’d not been labeled an “addict” at the outset. Would my daughters be home today? Or would I merely have had a slightly more comfortable courtroom hanging?

President Trump describes the opportunity zone program as a prime example of how his administration has helped African Americans. This June, Trump claimed that since 2017 “countless jobs and $100 billion of new investment, not government investment, have poured into 9,000 of our most distressed neighborhoods anywhere in the country.” Opportunity zones have also been talked up by the few prominent African American Trump allies, including Sen. Tim Scott (one of the bill’s original co-sponsors) and HUD Secretary Ben Carson. Scott called opportunity zones “the first new, major effort to tackle poverty in a generation.”

Yet the program has been troubled since the beginning. Governors were permitted to select their state’s opportunity zones, with few criteria: 95 percent of the zones had to have a 20 percent poverty rate or a median income that is 80 percent or less of the metro area’s median income. Governors could also designate five percent of the zones in areas that are not low income. That latitude resulted in developments ranging from luxury apartment buildings to a ”superyacht” club being designated as eligible for opportunity zone tax breaks. Reporting from the New York Times, ProPublica and other news outlets revealed that friends and relatives of the president — including son-in-law Jared Kushner — stood to benefit from the opportunity zone tax break, and Treasury is already conducting a corruption investigation.

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Governors looking to tout the success of opportunity zones in their state had incentives to pick areas with development projects already planned or underway — such as areas adjacent to or including a college or university. Adam Looney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, found 33 opportunity zones in areas where 85 percent or more of the population are enrolled in college. The zones meet the low-income threshold, but that’s because students don’t typically earn much while taking classes.

Designating these areas as opportunity zones because of students’ lack of income is a cynical use of an antipoverty program. Universities have been creating pockets of wealth near their campuses for decades, driving up rents without benefitting the long term residents who will remain long after each class graduates.

In West Philadelphia, for instance, real estate investment in areas near universities has already changed the face of the historically African American neighborhood. West Philly is home to the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. The University of Pennsylvania lured professors and students to the area with tactics that ranged from installing streetlights to offering low-interest loans to encourage faculty to buy in the area, and even created a new public elementary school to offer an option for an elite education in the neighborhood. Their tactics were so successful that the average selling price of a home rose from $78,500 in 1995 to half a million dollars by 2018. Drexel is now borrowing directly from Penn’s playbook, including building a new public middle school.

Drexel is just one of the 33 universities mentioned in the Brookings report. In the opportunity zone that includes Drexel, the poverty rate is 66 percent and 88 percent of residents are enrolled in college full time. Those statistics are reflected in college towns selected as opportunity zones across the country. The University of Southern California, surrounded by a historically low-income area of Los Angeles, is located in an opportunity zone with a poverty rate of 88 percent. A whopping 99 percent of residents, however, are full time college students. College students at small private universities (such as Liberty College) and behemoth public institutions alike (such as Texas A&M) are making their towns and neighborhoods eligible for a designation intended to help areas that have struggled with generational poverty.

Mantua and Drexel’s campus are in the same opportunity zone. A $43 million project dubbed the Village Square on Haverford got the go-ahead from the city in late 2019. It will bring 166 new apartments and townhomes to the opportunity zone in Mantua, with 80 units flagged as “workforce housing” with their selling price capped $230,000. That’s significantly higher than Philadelphia’s average home sale price of $188,000, and well out of reach for Mantua residents, whose income is less than half of the city’s median. The development will include 32 rental units of affordable housing, though there has been no word as yet about what definition of affordable the developers will use. The new development is located just a few blocks away from an off-campus housing complex marketed to students at Penn and Drexel.

Mantua residents have organized to have a say in how their neighborhood changes. They settled on a push to rezone most of the neighborhood as single-family housing, which they intended to prevent developers from buying up blocks of Mantua and converting the area into student housing for Drexel. They were successful, but the rezoning may not pay off in the long term. “It’s really a conundrum for the community to be in,” Wright said. “Multifamily [zoning] could potentially create naturally occurring affordable housing in the neighborhood because you can have apartments that might be available to lower-income or moderate-income people.” Focusing on protecting single-family homes means fewer available rentals — and higher rents.

That’s a problem, because people in the rental market may be the most vulnerable to changes in the housing market, according to sociologist Susan Clampet-Lundquist, professor at Philadelphia’s St. Joseph’s University and University City resident. Overall, changing neighborhoods are a mixed bag for longtime residents. The changes do bring more amenities to the area. The Village Square on Haverford, for instance, will include a supermarket and a coffee shop. Homeowners will likely see the values of their property go up. But the story is different for renters. When people leave a rental, they are unlikely to find another unit at a similar monthly cost and may have to leave the neighborhood, a process of indirect displacement.

“To me, the most important part is indirect displacement, a reduction in affordable housing,” said Clampet-Lundquist. “That creates the demographic change that you end up seeing.”

Mantua residents aren’t necessarily opposed to college students in the neighborhood, Wright said. They don’t begrudge the developers now showing up because they will turn a profit. They just want to make sure they can stay in their homes and enjoy the benefits of those changes, too.

Politicians ranging from Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez to Joe Biden have proposed changes to opportunity zones, from defunding the program (AOC) to reforming it (Biden). Biden’s reform plans don’t include specific housing protections for people in opportunity zones such as Mantua. And existing local and federal programs could help with this particular problem, including rent control, Section 8 housing vouchers, and assistance programs for long-term residents that subsidize the inevitable rise in property taxes, Clampet-Lundquist said.

Using these programs to help in cities where opportunity zones meet skyrocketing real estate prices could limit the damage to low-income areas. So would an acknowledgment that incentives designed to maximize return on investment for the wealthy may not be the best way to address poverty.

“We’re really holding on with raw knuckles,” says Jasmine Henderson, a child care organizer with Ohio Organizing Collaborative. “Ninety percent of working adults in the state of Ohio are working parents. If we lose child care, we pretty much can guarantee that we’re going to lose probably a large number of our workforce in Ohio.”

Nationwide, more than 42 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds have faced a negative career impact due to child care issues, personally or in their household. That burden is falling harder on women: In September, 865,000 women left the U.S. workforce, compared to 216,000 men. Millennial mothers in straight couples are three times as likely as Millennial fathers to name child care closures as the main reason they are unable to work.

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The longer it takes for Congress to fund child care in a pandemic relief package, the worse the crisis becomes. As more programs close permanently, millions will be forced to leave the workforce, prolonging the recession and likely resulting in increased racial, geographic, gender, and educational inequities. “It’s about to get worse if we don’t infuse money into child care,” says Henderson.

Multiple bills have been introduced, but each one has stalled in the Senate. In early July, the House passed the Heroes Act, which included $7 billion in funding for the child care industry. It never got off the ground in the Senate, with both the White House and Senate Republicans criticizing it as too liberal. In late July, the House passed the Child Care is Essential Act, (S. 3874/ H.R. 7027), which would provide the $50 billion actually needed to stabilize the industry. While House members have urged Congress to include the act in any upcoming stimulus package, Senate Republicans continue to denounce House-proposed stimulus packages as too costly. October 1, the House passed an updated version of the Heroes Act, designating $57 billion in total for child care stabilization and to subsidize child care costs for families. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is refusing to bring it to a vote.

Before the pandemic, the child care crisis was slowly gaining attention as policymakers built the case for a publicly-funded child care system to replace the underfunded patchwork that exists today. In 2017 and 2019, Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Bobby Scott introduced the Child Care for Working Families Act, (S.568/H.R.1364), which would provide low-income families with free child care, limit what middle-income families pay, build more centers, and support livable wages for early educators. During the 2020 primaries, several Democratic candidates made child care the centerpiece of their campaigns, from Elizabeth Warren’s universal child care plan to Kirsten Gillibrand’s Family Bill of Rights.

The pandemic has turned the demand for reform into a rallying cry for parents, providers, and advocates, with countless articles and prominent figures demanding a better system. If lawmakers do not address the now-deepened crisis, it is unlikely that they will remain favorable with their constituents, especially those belonging to younger generations. The Center for American Progress [Editor’s Note: TalkPoverty is a project of the Center for American Progress] found that 72 percent of young voters want Congress to provide funds to child care providers who are facing financial ruin during the pandemic.

Even after this immediate crisis is resolved, a long-term solution to rising child care cost will remain an essential issue. Survey data from Next100 and GenForward reveal Millennials and Gen Zers named the cost of child care — alongside student loan debt and lack of affordable housing — as a key factor affecting Millennial and Gen Z decisions to have children.

This is at least in part due to how poorly the current system serves many populations. Pre-pandemic, Black, Latinx and Indigenous families were paying larger percentages of their paychecks to afford limited child care options, and were more likely to experience job disruptions due to problems with child care. Furthermore, the child care crisis was already disproportionately affecting children with disabilities; and, pre-pandemic 60 percent of rural families were living in child care deserts.

“Let’s be clear,” Henderson states, “if you’re in the fight for racial justice and equity, [child care] is your fight…when we talk about the cycle of poverty and the intimacy it has with racism, sexism, et cetera, we are absolutely talking about [child care].” Whether politicians are courting younger generations or not, stabilizing child care and funding it properly is key to gaining greater support from racial and economic justice movements.

That extends to supporting early educators. The child care industry is 93 percent women, early educators are 2.5 times more likely than the overall workforce to be Black women and Latinx women, and 1 in 5 early educators is an immigrant. Early educators only earn a median of $11.65 per hour, with Black early educators earning an average of 78 cents less per hour than white early educators. More than half of all early educators live in families that rely on public income supports, such as food stamps. Even pre-pandemic, Henderson says, “Providers were already tired. Most of the parents were already overworked.”

As early educators and families continue to do everything they can to care for children in the face of this crisis, it cannot be underscored enough that lawmakers need to intervene urgently and substantially with federal funding. If they don’t, this crisis will only escalate.

As of now, providers meeting pandemic public health requirements are facing an average of 47 percent cost increases — costs too high for providers to shoulder alone and even higher than what most families already cannot afford. A National Association for the Education of Young Children July survey of nearly 5,000 child care providers revealed that without support from Congress, two out of every five respondents — and half of child care businesses that are minority-owned — are certain that they will close permanently. A U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation survey found that approximately one in five working parents remain uncertain if they will be in a position to return to their pre-pandemic work situation due to a lack of child care.

With the industry on the brink of collapse, and the economy struggling to restart without it, the time to delay is gone. Henderson made the stakes clear: “Now, there’s this urgency to survive.”

This November, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, which will decide whether foster and adoption placement agencies have the right to use their religious beliefs as an excuse not to comply with nondiscrimination protections.

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In 2018, the Philadelphia Department of Human Services (DHS), the city’s child services department, stopped referring prospective foster and adoptive parents to Catholic Social Services for certification and oversight after a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer revealed that the agency was actively discriminating against gay and lesbian couples for religious reasons. When Catholic Social Services refused to change their stance on licensing queer foster parents, the city allowed their foster certification contract to lapse; the subsequent lawsuit, which is now pending before the Supreme Court, claims that the city violated their religious freedoms by ending their contract for this reason.

Barrett has expressed a number of beliefs in her public life that suggest bias against the LGBTQ community. She was a signatory on a letter to the Catholic leadership expressing commitment toward “the significance of sexual difference and the complementarity of men and women…and on marriage and family founded on the indissoluble commitment of a man and a woman.” She described the application of Title IX protections to transgender people as a “strain,” and has openly opposed marriage equality. She was also faculty for the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, which is run by a law firm whose executive director recently argued for reestablishing criminal penalties for consensual queer sex.

Fulton is not the only way in which LGBTQ rights within the foster system have been questioned this year. An executive order issued by President Trump in late June, titled “Strengthening the Child Welfare System for America’s Children,” does not directly address the upcoming Supreme Court case, but it does seek to solidify the rights of faith-based organizations to work in the child services field, and to clearly solidify their First Amendment rights to engage in this work — the very argument up for debate with the Supreme Court.

The order states: “This guidance shall also make clear that faith-based organizations are eligible for partnerships under title IV–E of the Act (42 U.S.C. 670 et seq.), on an equal basis, consistent with the First Amendment to the Constitution.” It is this same brand of messaging that has surfaced repeatedly in Barrett’s opinions related to LGBTQ rights, and on the rights of the Catholic Church to exact its views on society at large.

“It’s really critical and important to note…the language used,” said Alexandra Citrin, senior associate at the Center for the Study of Social Policy. “The language in the Executive Order might appear harmless, but what we’ve seen from this Administration is consistent undermining of certain communities including those who are LGBTQ+, Black, immigrant, etc. and prioritizing who they believe should be foster and adoptive parents. We are likely going to see guidance that emphasizes partnerships for faith-based organizations — including those that use federal dollars to discriminate.”

That creates anxiety for LGBTQ families, who have only recently gained the right to foster and adopt. It was not until 1997 that the first state in the country, New Jersey, officially allowed same-sex couples to adopt statewide. Florida was the last state to overturn its anti-gay adoption policies in 2010.

“The concerns that LGBT adults have about whether or not they’re going to be discriminated against have not gone away,” said Stephanie Haynes, executive director of Philadelphia Family Pride, which is a co-appellee in the Catholic Social Services case. “You can imagine families in same-sex couples would decide not to become foster parents at all because of the risk of being turned away, not only because they do not want to subject themselves to that but also for families with kids already, they would involve their kids in discussions about the possibility of having foster kids in the home, and want to protect their kids from that possible discrimination from the foster care process.”

LGBTQ foster and adoptive parents are not the only queer group who face discrimination in the foster system, though they have received the most attention and study in the field. LGBTQ youth, for example, remain overrepresented in the child welfare system, and are at heightened risk for homelessness. And one study of low-income Black mothers found that those who identified as lesbian or bisexual were 4.19 times more likely to lose custody of their children than heterosexual Black women, a population already subject to racial disproportionality within the system.

Nancy Polikoff, a professor of Law Emerita at American University Washington College of Law, said that discrimination “can be obvious, as in not recognizing who the child’s family members are, but it can also be more subtle.” She cited a case in Kansas in which a lesbian mother was told by her case worker, who was employed by the faith-based agency St. Francis Community Services, that she needed to be “fixed” so that she would not spread her queerness to her child. Ultimately, her parental rights were terminated. While her orientation was not cited as the reason that her children were removed from her home, interactions between her and the case worker indicate that it likely played a role.

Similar concerns exist for transgender children. “We have had a number of cases where parents who have, in particular, trans children end up having their child removed because they are supporting their children’s gender identity,” said Cathy Sakimura, family law director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case. “We recently had a case where a very low income mother lost all of her children; they were all removed because one of her children was gender non-conforming…There really wasn’t anything else other than some vague allegation about the home being dirty, and all of the testimony — everything that was presented — was all about the child and whether the child was given feminine clothing.”

“There are great faith-based organizations that partner with child welfare agencies and do it well; the problem is there are some faith-based organizations that discriminate…against what foster parents they will license, which can limit who can be licensed – for example, if there is only one licensing agency in the community, an aunt might not be able to be licensed to care for their niece if the agency doesn’t agree with her identity. And, it also raises into question how these are supporting the diverse identities of youth in foster care,” said Citrin.

If Barrett’s confirmation is successful, her placement could tip the Supreme Court in the direction of anti-LGBTQ policymaking. The ruling on Fulton v. City of Philadelphia will undoubtedly have dire impacts on children caught up in the foster system, but a broad enough decision could also open the doors for discrimination in any social service setting that contracts with agencies that cite their religion as an excuse to discriminate, including homeless shelters and food banks. It is impossible to predict how Barrett will vote on the case; however, several of her past actions showcase clear bias.

The case is currently pending before the Supreme Court, and arguments are set to begin just after Election Day. In the meantime, Catholic Social Services is still contracted with Philadelphia DHS to conduct case management for system-involved families of origin.

It was explicitly enacted in an attempt to keep poor women, and particularly poor Black women, from having more children. “What this does is give welfare recipients a choice,” Wayne R. Bryant, the former New Jersey Democratic Assembly majority leader who came up with the policy, said in 1992. “They either can have additional children and work to pay the added costs, or they can decide not to have any more children.” He later bragged that the policy had led to an “astounding” drop in the birthrate among women on welfare. In advocating for the family cap, he described “123 blocks where there are no legitimate males” in his city of Camden, by which he meant “men who can rightfully take their place in that community,” thanks to the fact that welfare has taught “all the wrong values.” The family cap, meanwhile, “reinforced the ideas of self-responsibility and investment in the future.”

It’s a “terribly racist and classist and misogynistic policy,” said Jessica Bartholow, policy advocate at the Western Center on Law & Poverty. “It’s a poor baby penalty.”

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But the policy quickly spread nationally after New Jersey enacted it. Republicans even included a pledge to “discourage illegitimacy and teen pregnancy by…denying increased [benefits] for additional children while on welfare” in their 1994 Contract for America, the precursor for welfare reform. The language never made it into the final version, but 22 states took the initiative to create family caps anyway.

As of September 30, New Jersey is no longer one of them.

“It’s huge. [New Jersey] is the mothership of the family cap rule,” Bartholow said. “It’s a beautiful day when the place that started it all can…reconcile what it’s done.” She noted that her state of California, which got rid of its cap in 2016, had originally followed New Jersey’s lead in creating one in the first place. “You have to wonder, what if [New Jersey] had never done it?” she said. “Would we have had it, would other states have had it?”

Despite Bryant’s early data, research in the decades since shows welfare family caps don’t work. There is no evidence that family caps influence how many children poor families have. It’s not even true that poor families receiving government benefits have huge families. In 1990, only 10 percent of households receiving cash benefits had more than three children. Today, they have an average of 1.8 children, the same as the average for the country as a whole. “The idea behind the law has been really debunked,” said Renee Koubiadis, executive director of the Anti-Poverty Network of New Jersey.

What family caps actually do is deprive families of the extra cash they need to cover expenses that aren’t covered by other programs, such as diapers, baby wipes, and car seats. This just increases their poverty. Koubiadis has heard stories, she said, of parents who only had one extra diaper for their baby for an entire day, and others who couldn’t go to work because they couldn’t afford the number of diapers required to send their children to daycare. Now a family of three that had a child excluded from extra benefits thanks to the cap stands to see an extra $134 a month, according to calculations by Brittany L. Holom, senior policy analyst at New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP).

The campaign to repeal the state’s cap launched in 2016 with a report from NJPP that found that more than 20,000 children had been denied assistance since the cap was enacted in 1992. “Those are 20,000 children who, in the eyes of the program, essentially didn’t exist,” Holom noted. Even in 2018, the cap lowered benefits for 1,235 families. It also disproportionately impacts families of color: About 80 percent of the state’s children on welfare are Black and Hispanic.

The 2016 analysis “really helped highlight those issues for legislators who hadn’t thought about this law…since it was enacted in 1992,” Koubiadis said.

The report was released just months before California repealed its family cap, and coincided with other state campaigns, such as in Massachusetts. As advocates in New Jersey fought to repeal their family cap, the movement gained support from religious groups who were concerned about the impact the policy has on children. Ron Haskins, a prominent Republican architect of welfare reform, has since said he would be “hesitant” to support a family cap today because it “creates hardships for families.”

But even with a growing movement, New Jersey’s repeal hit roadblock after roadblock. Legislation sailed through the state legislature, but Republican Governor Chris Christie vetoed it twice.

Then the state elected Democratic Governor Phil Murphy in 2018. In New Jersey’s last two budgets, the welfare cap was effectively eradicated when lawmakers included extra money to pay families the missing benefits for their additional children. Still, the cap itself remained on the books, meaning that lawmakers would have had to keep including that money each year to keep it from denying families money.

The coronavirus crisis, however, focused attention on the need to get rid of the cap once and for all. “There was a focus on other issues in the last couple of years, up until the pandemic,” Koubiadis said. But “with the exacerbation of these inequities, and certainly racial inequalities, legislators as a whole recognized that this was the moment to repeal this.” With the law no longer on the books, the extra assistance for poor families will be automatically included in each year’s budget.

“The tide certainly has been turning, especially in the last five to ten years,” Koubiadis said. “Other states certainly should take a look at repealing this law as well.” Holom noted this is particularly true for other nearby states, such as Connecticut, that still have a cap now that New Jersey and Massachusetts have done away with theirs.

The fact that “it has been undone in the place where it began will spread across the country and inspire the remaining states,” Bartholow said, “to finally end their use of this very flawed intervention.” She’s heard from people who are interested in doing the same in Tennessee and Virginia.

Perhaps, she suggested, Congress could even consider legislating it out of existence, barring states from having this policy at all. Congress might even go so far as to reconsider the other parts of the current welfare program that similarly punish poor people who need assistance, such as time limits that kick them off after a certain number of years, work requirements that deny benefits unless someone completes frequent paperwork proving they are either working or looking for a job, and pursuing children’s parents for child support money to pay back the benefits.

“These are really disgusting ways to think about a safety net,” Bartholow said. “I hope it can also inspire people to think about what else we have [done] wrong.”

My mom couldn’t drive due to her visual impairment, so I only had three transportation options: We could pay more than $100 for an hour-long taxi ride to the hospital, I could wait in the ER for a day or two until they could get a hospital shuttle van, or I could take an ambulance. I grew up in the projects, so my understanding of ambulances was that they came when something really bad happened — when someone was stabbed in a fight, when my neighbor across the street was injured by her abusive husband, when an elderly neighbor had a heart attack, when someone called 9-1-1 on a mentally ill person for shouting at birds. I didn’t want to ride in one, especially not alone.

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We eventually decided on the ambulance, even though the idea terrified me, because I was also afraid of staying in the ER overnight or being in the hospital any longer than necessary. The EMTs didn’t use the siren and I pretended I was just in the back of my Poppy’s old truck, which he used to let me ride in if we were only going to the Melrose public pool down the street.

This wasn’t the first time that I had to make a difficult decision because we didn’t have a family car, nor was it the last. I coordinated my SAT testing schedule with friends so that I could drive with them to the test site, and if I wanted to participate in after-school activities I had to pick the ones that ended before the last round of buses left. I walked a mile and a half to pick up new books from the library and drop off the ones I had finished. I made sure every doctor and therapist I went to was within walking distance or on a public transportation route.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, living without a car isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s a public health risk. The CDC is recommending that people drive alone as much as possible, but more than 10.5 million households in this country don’t have a personal vehicle. Many people who don’t have cars are already part of a marginalized group: They’re poor (households with an annual income of less than $25,000 are nearly nine times as likely to have no personal vehicles), disabled (only 65 percent of disabled people drive compared to 88 percent of non-disabled people), or people of color (14 percent of POC households don’t have a vehicle compared to 6 per cent of white households and immigrants across races are even less likely to have a car). Car access is also limited in very urban or very rural areas (54 percent of households in New York City don’t own a car, and more than 1 million people in rural areas don’t have cars).

The transportation options that exist for people without cars were already imperfect — they’re time consuming, don’t cover many areas, and can be inaccessible and unsafe for disabled people and people of color — but they’re even more challenging in a pandemic. Taking public transportation is a risk right now, as is taking a cab or a ride share service like Uber or Lyft (if that’s even an option, since it’s become more difficult to find a ride). At the same time, budgets for public transit across the country have been cut and service has been reduced, making it increasingly risky and difficult for those who do need these services to use them safely and effectively. This combination directly impacts people who don’t have cars, especially people at a high risk of complications from COVID-19 — disabled people and others with underlying and chronic health conditions.

While the pandemic has made many businesses and medical facilities nimble and creative, many have decided to be ‘innovative’ by going drive-through only. Drive-through food, movies, concerts, religious confessionals, haunted houses, even drive-through COVID-19 testing. They all provide convenient opportunities for people who own their own vehicles who want to get out of their homes, but they widen the inequality gap for those who don’t have cars.

Drive-through services are often very literal. One night in my early twenties, I was staying with friends and we found ourselves hungry at 10 p.m. It was close to the end of our biweekly paychecks, and like most broke people, they’d run out of food in the kitchen. The only places open were drive throughs, so we tried to convince the staff at a drive thru to let us order and pay from the window even though we didn’t have a car. Not having a car was a dealbreaker. They said they legally couldn’t serve us or they’d lose their jobs. (While there doesn’t seem to be a specific law addressing this in Massachusetts, in 2016 in Louisiana a blind man sued McDonald’s for not providing him drive-through service when he walked up to the window.) We’d all worked service jobs, so we understood, but we also went to bed hungry.

I’ve had dozens of moments like that throughout my life: Turning down an internship in college because I had no way to get myself there, choosing not to go to the doctor’s because I felt too sick to walk but not sick enough to call an ambulance, asking a friend to help me print out a school assignment because I wouldn’t have enough time to walk to the library to print it myself, calling my best friend to come pick me up when I threw up in the bathroom at work because I had no other way to get home, not applying to jobs because they weren’t on public transit routes and were too far to walk to.

I can’t help but wonder what my mom and I would do if this pandemic happened during my childhood. We’d be facing the same choices millions of Americans have to make now: Do I take an Uber to get to the COVID-19 testing center? Should I cancel my follow-up appointment if I have to get on a bus to get there? Is it safer to take a cab with a stranger or ask for a ride from my neighbor who’s an essential worker? How much will it cost if I call an ambulance to get to the hospital downtown because I’m nervous about taking the train?

No one should have to live this way, especially during a global pandemic.

The results show the enormity of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on family economic situations across the country, and the extent to which so many people have been left without the help they need.

Nearly half of American adults lost household income, and millions still haven’t gotten benefits

Since the start of economic shutdowns in March, about 113 million adults (46 percent of the population) experienced a loss of employment income for themselves or a member of their household. That fell harder on lower income households: More than half (52 percent) of households making under $35,000 lost employment income, as opposed to 31 percent of households making more than $200,000. And, just as systemic racism in the health care system means that people of color are disproportionately likely to contract and face complications from COVID-19, people of color are also more likely to bear the economic brunt of the pandemic. More than half of people who described themselves as Black, Hispanic or Latino, or two or more races or other races lost income, and 47 percent of Asian adults lost income. White adults were less likely to lose income — only 41 percent did.

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About 50 million adults have applied for unemployment benefits in less than six months, compared to about 37 million in 18 months during the Great Recession. What’s worse, almost 12 million people who applied for benefits have not received any. Poorer homes that were already living paycheck-to-paycheck were least likely to receive support: One third of households with incomes under $25,000 that applied for unemployment insurance haven’t received benefits. And, once again, people of color were less likely to receive the unemployment benefits they applied for: 30 percent of Black adults and 31 percent of adults of two or more races or other races who filed for unemployment insurance haven’t gotten their benefits. In comparison, 24 percent of Hispanic or Latino adults, 22 percent of white adults, and 20 percent of Asian adults also haven’t received any unemployment benefits.

Teleworking has been correlated with good health and high wealth

In addition to the mass layoffs and furloughs, the increase in telework has been the other major shift in the employment landscape: About 86 million adults now live in a home where at least one person shifted from in-person to telework.

There was a strong correlation between reports of good to excellent health and having shifted to working from home, with 47 percent of those in excellent health saying someone in their household made the switch to telework. In contrast, only 18 percent of people reporting poor health said that members of their household were able to make that same change.

This shift to telework has also proven beneficial primarily for those with higher incomes. Just 14 percent of homes making under $35,000 per year had an adult who was able to move at least partially to telework, compared to 72 percent for households bringing in more than $200,000.

Without additional support, more than half of the country is struggling to pay household expenses

All of this economic disruption, and the government’s inability to reach everyone with the aid they need, has left a lot people struggling to pay for everyday things. More than half of American adults — 134 million, or 56 percent of the population— said they had at least a little difficulty paying for usual household expenses in the last week. Homes with children were also much more likely to report spending difficulty: 64 percent compared to 50 percent of those without kids. Households that lost income were twice as likely to have used food stamps (SNAP) and more than three times as likely to have borrowed money from friends or family to cover usual spending needs in the last week.

All of this data points to one thing: People need help. Previous household pulse surveys, when Americans still had access to the $600 boost to unemployment benefits, already showed hardship increased significantly (inability to pay rent and food insecurity, particularly among families with children, were reaching dangerous proportions).

Now that the $600 boost has expired, there is no place in the country where a typical family can live on unemployment insurance alone. Tens of millions of people across the nation still need help getting through the coronavirus crisis. Congress must, at the very least, extend the $600 boost to unemployment insurance to quickly get substantial help to those who need it most in this crisis, and ensure that people are getting the benefits for which they’re eligible.

SNAP provides a monthly supplement to low- and no-income residents to purchase groceries. In 2018, the average SNAP recipient received about $127 per month in benefits. The endeavor, operated by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), is the largest federal nutrition program in the United States. Last year, SNAP fed 38 million Americans, the vast majority of whom are children, the elderly, and disabled adults.

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USDA launched the online SNAP pilot in April 2019 in New York  — a state with more than 2.6 million residents enrolled in the federal nutrition safety net program — with three retailers: Amazon, Walmart, and ShopRite. Although rollout to other states wasn’t planned to begin until after the two-year test pilot, by March 2020, administrators faced pressure to fast-track implementation nationwide to allow SNAP recipients a safer, socially distanced way of shopping during the pandemic.

With its recent expansion to 44 states (including the District of Columbia), USDA says online SNAP is now accessible to more than 90 percent of users — or around 34 million people — who rely on the social safety net program each year. Another three states were approved to participate and are in the process of implementing the program for their eligible populations.

According to the federal agency, since online SNAP’s widespread implementation due to COVID-19, usership has increased. A spokesperson from USDA noted via written request that in March 2020, close to 35,000 SNAP households shopped online. By June, more than 800,000 households were participating. While that is a dramatic increase, it is only 4 percent of the households receiving SNAP.

Despite recognition of the program’s importance in the face of the pandemic, users, food security advocates, and legislators have raised flags. Experts like Ed Bolen, senior policy analyst at the Washington D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that though extensive research on the impact of online SNAP is yet to be conducted, anecdotally his organization has heard from a number of users about issues with learning about, accessing, and fully utilizing the online purchasing and delivery resource. Additionally, users must navigate order minimums and delivery fees as the USDA prohibits the use of SNAP funding for these costs.

Bolen points to the lack of information available on the program in communities with high SNAP eligibility as one factor for potentially low participation rates. Generally, when a state is added, a press release follows with pick-up by local media. However, the trickle down to users has been spotty depending on state-level implementation and the communication resources at their disposal.

In Massachusetts, food advocate and SNAP user Diane Sullivan said the state generally does a good job keeping in touch with participants about SNAP and has even implemented new ways of doing so during the pandemic, such as texting. However, with the struggle to keep up with a constant flux of changing policy and a growing participant list, Sullivan added that she didn’t recall receiving a text from the state about the online option when it became available in late May.

In addition to finding out about online shopping, sometimes it’s hard to find the foods users want. Joanne referenced the hour and a half she recently spent compiling a cart of only 12 items eligible for the electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards issued to participants. “Looking at Amazon,” Joanne said about one of the program’s two approved retailers in her state, “if you put ‘EBT’ in their search line, you have to go down seven rows before you find something that I consider whole food. Generally, what I find is that most of the things on here are processed food, which are not useful to me.”

Joanne said she prefers to spend her SNAP dollars — which amount to the minimum monthly benefit of $16 per month — in person at stores and farmers’ markets that not only sell whole foods more to her liking, but where she can benefit from EBT matching programs that double her benefits when they are spent at qualifying markets.

Amazon and Walmart currently dominate online SNAP as the only shopping option in 38 of the 44 states approved to participate. The CBPP’s Bolen explained that the lack of diversity in retailers may be discouraging uptake. “Having only those options might not mean a lot if you don’t live near a Walmart and you’ve never thought of Amazon as a place to buy your groceries,” he explained. For this reason, in July, U.S. Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin of Illinois introduced a bill in the Senate appealing for the expansion of retailers participating in the program.

Additionally, low-income Americans are more likely to lack the technological resources to access the internet. Data from the Pew Research Center shows that 29 percent of adults with household incomes below $30,000 per year do not own a smartphone, 44 percent do not have broadband internet, and 46 percent lack a computer. The Center notes that in nearly all households with incomes over $100,000 per year, these resources are consistently available.

From her lens on the ground, Sullivan said the online option is “on the right track” but it needs amending to ensure challenges facing recipients are addressed with their concerns in mind, not the bottom lines of the billion-dollar corporations currently benefitting from the economic stimulus.

“You have to engage people with lived experience in the process of designing these programs and implementing them,” Sullivan says. “We are on the ground and have information on when these systems work or when they don’t. We need to be brought into conversations around solutions in a more meaningful way.”

Then COVID-19 happened, and everything was canceled.

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Now, Sylvia’s more afraid of the impact of prolonged isolation than of contracting coronavirus. “I’m feeling disconnected. I’m feeling higher levels of depression and anxiety,” she said. “And I don’t feel that there’s anyone to listen to me or understand my needs.”

LGBTQ people, especially those who are low-income and from communities of color, are incarcerated at a disproportionately high rate. They’re also more vulnerable to sexual and physical violence, and mistreatment.

Sylvia said she regularly experiences transphobia: Her birth certificate was legally changed to reflect her female gender, yet she is housed at a male facility and said corrections officers call her by her birth name. It took her nearly 11 months to get permission to wear barrettes. She spends most of her time, COVID-19 or not, by herself. Department of Corrections communications director Janelle Guthrie did not respond to any of Sylvia’s direct claims, but did point to an updated policy on treatment of transgender prisoners.

Around the country, COVID-19 cases are rising in prisons and jails as incarcerated people continue to have little outside contact. “A worry that’s widespread among all sorts of organizations is that less access to the facility means less oversight and accountability,” said Biff Chaplow, director of the Portland-based organization Beyond These Walls.

The organization connects LGBTQ incarcerated people in Oregon and Washington with pen pals and facilitates programs like the Transgender Leadership Academy, believing “there’s a Marsha P. Johnson sitting in prison right now.” When they paused their programming at three facilities, Chaplow immediately pivoted to create a prepaid crisis line. The goal is to provide emotional support to incarcerated people in the Pacific Northwest no matter how they identify, and to advocate for them. Every two weeks Chaplow sends a report to a coalition of partner organizations, including ACLU of Oregon, working to keep incarcerated people safe.

Other COVID-19 crisis lines for incarcerated people exist, also limited to state or local areas, for instance in California and Texas. So in Portland, 19 trained community volunteers take turns answering one iPhone that gets passed around door-to-door in a Ziploc bag, complete with Lysol wipes. “A lot of prisoners are surprised that somebody is answering the phone because they’re used to contacting organizations and being totally ignored,” said Chaplow. Given the limitation of one phone, however, volunteers sometimes miss calls.

Chaplow first got the word out about the crisis line to incarcerated people in their network through snail mail. He expected a low interest and response rate, underestimating how much incarcerated people needed to talk. Opening the crisis line to all has uncovered widespread fear in response to how prisons and jails are addressing the pandemic.

Volunteers ask incarcerated people whether they’re experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, what precautions their facility is taking, and if they need referrals. They can choose to remain anonymous, although most don’t. Asking “what’s your biggest concern?” has gotten people talking the most. Answers vary, but common themes have emerged: inability to physically distance, inconsistent mask wearing, and not being given information about the pandemic.

Out of 369 calls so far, some of which are from repeat callers, more than a quarter have been about not reporting COVID-19 symptoms out of fear of having to quarantine in solitary confinement. Solitary, or “the hole,” has a long legacy of being dehumanizing and causing psychological harm. It’s a familiar issue for Beyond These Walls. Often, solitary is used in the name of “safety” for LGBTQ incarcerated people who are subjected to violence and harassment by other prisoners. It’s also a way for staff to curtail sexual intimacy. A 2015 report by the prison abolitionist organization, Black and Pink, found that 85 percent of the 1,200 LGBTQ incarcerated people surveyed spent time in solitary — a stigmatizing practice for an already-stigmatized population at higher risk for mental health issues.

Carlee Roberts, a formerly incarcerated transgender activist and board member for Beyond These Walls, was sentenced as a teenager. Back then, she identified as a “loud, flamboyant queer” male and said solitary was a tactic to keep her in line.

“Not only was solitary used as a tool in the moment to punish me, but for a long time it worked my sense of self… that I was this horrible person who maybe should hide who they are as a person,” she said. “Even to this day, a lot of this stuff has stuck with me.”

Now, using solitary units to separate sick, incarcerated people during COVID-19 has become common practice, affecting more than LGBTQ incarcerated people. David Cloud, research director at Amend, a nonprofit that works to transform correctional culture, explained: “Part of the reason I think it’s used is the physical realities of having a vastly overcrowded, understaffed, overburdened, problematic prison system. These are corrections officials and public safety agencies performing the work of what should be a public health response.”

Amend created guidelines to help correctional facilities distinguish between solitary confinement, quarantine, and ethical medical isolation — the last of which includes sanitary conditions, access to amenities, contact with loved ones, and more. Cloud can’t say, however, how widely those suggestions have been implemented.

James Moffatt, a 56-year-old incarcerated man at Santiam Correctional Institution, said he was one of the first to test positive for COVID-19 in Oregon’s prison system at the end of March. It started with a violent cough, then a fever and chills that shook him like a “washing machine on spin cycle.” After transferring to the infirmary at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility and spending nearly three weeks there, the rest of his quarantine was spent in solitary confinement at maximum security prison Oregon State Penitentiary (OSP).

For Moffatt, who has underlying health conditions and experiences post-traumatic stress disorder, solitary was the worst part. His cell at OSP, he recalled, had fluorescent lights on most of the time and paint peeling off the walls. He slept on a concrete slab without a pillow. Drinking water came from a rusty faucet, and the smell of bleach made it hard to breathe. He had extremely limited access to media or the outside world — he wasn’t allowed to call family much, even though his mom is dying of lung cancer. Officers would yell at him to stop whining.

“Mentally, it was the most draining thing that I’ve ever experienced,” he said. “I kept saying to them, ‘I’m being punished for being sick.’ And they said, ‘Well, we realize you’re in DSU [disciplinary segregation unit], but you’re not being punished.’ And I said, ‘Well, if I’m being treated exactly the same as somebody that’s here on a disciplinary measure, then how is it not punishment?’”

Other incarcerated people said they underwent similar treatment. Oregon Department of Corrections communications manager Jennifer Black said they’re now “making every effort to provide activities to keep [incarcerated people] busy and basic comforts while keeping them safe.” The message that “medical quarantine is not punishment” is also displayed on Santiam’s television for all to see.

Moffatt, whose cough lingers, said he still has conversations with fellow incarcerated people who won’t report symptoms out of fear of going to the hole. He recently called the Beyond These Walls crisis line as a last-ditch effort to implement change and said sharing his story has been vital to his mental health. He was referred to the ACLU of Oregon but when faced with the choice of calling their legal numbers for nine cents per minute or buying toothpaste, his basic needs come first.

Criminal justice reform advocates agree that releasing incarcerated people is the most beneficial thing that can be done right now, although the challenge is balancing the urgency of the pandemic with a slow bureaucratic process.

While incarcerated people wait, the crisis line remains open.

“It’s a safety tool that’s saying to prison staff, ‘Hey, this is a way for folks to communicate with the outside world and let people know what’s going on,’” Roberts said. “Just because we’re not allowed inside doesn’t mean we’re not still watching.”

Officers from the Gainesville Police Department and Florida Department of Corrections announced over a loudspeaker that residents had six hours to vacate before demolition of the camp, in defiance of the Center for Disease Control’s recommendation to leave encampments intact during COVID-19. Florida’s state public health website provides no guidance on protecting people experiencing homelessness from COVID-19. Moultrie left with just one change of clothes.

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When the 37-year-old set up camp in November of last year, she made strong connections with others who lived there, people at higher risk of contracting illnesses even before COVID-19. Since the eviction, she’s been worried about their safety.

“I lost my community, and it’s hard to know if my friends are alright,” Moultrie said. “I can’t pay to keep my phone on all the time and neither can they. I’m so angry at what happened […] I worry about my former neighbors who probably don’t have a place to stay now. At our camp, many of them had houseplants and pets, it was nice. We weren’t a typical community, but we were still a community.”

She holds a handwritten list with her lost friend’s phone numbers as we speak outside of her current homeless shelter, GRACE Marketplace. GRACE, formerly Gainesville Correctional Institution, was converted to a secular shelter in 2014. The shelter does ‘bed checks’ to make sure residents are in their rooms three times a night, which Moultrie is not used to after living freely in her camp.

“If you’re not there for bed checks two nights in a row, they kick you out,” Moultrie said, “You have to be on the street until you’re allowed back in.”

The camp was established in November of last year, after other options had failed. GRACE was at full capacity, so people started camping around the edges of the shelter’s property, which the campers and GRACE called “Dignity Village.” At its peak, the camp was home to around 220 people.

They camped there so they could use GRACE’s hygiene services and other resources. When the City of Gainesville ordered Dignity Village to shut down in January, Moultrie and about 50 others set up a new camp in the woods nearby, on Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) property. FDOC officers were upset by their presence, and asked Gainesville PD to threaten the campers with trespassing charges if they refused to leave.

Many camp members left between March and May, for fear of arrest. Moultrie and the last 20 residents were evicted on May 14th by the Gainesville PD and officers from the FDOC.

According to a 2019 survey, there are an estimated 752 homeless people in Gainesville’s Alachua County, 191 of whom were in shelters. GRACE currently has the ability to house 141 people. Their capacity has been reduced by 25 percent to reduce risk of spreading COVID-19. Those who can’t make it in are often waiting outside of the facility, hoping for a chance at a roof over their heads.

“I think the big question raised by this eviction is, if they can’t be in these places, then where can they be?” asked Kirsten Anderson, litigation director at Southern Legal Counsel. “GRACE doesn’t have enough space for everyone, and you’re going to see more situations like this because people have to exist somewhere. But it’s often criminalized.”

Shelter access is particularly important during the current pandemic.

CDC guidelines specifically state: “If individual housing options are not available, allow people who are living unsheltered or in encampments to remain where they are.” This is a precautionary measure meant to control the spread of COVID-19.

“Clearing encampments can cause people to disperse throughout the community and break connections with service providers,” the guidelines say. “This increases the potential for infectious disease spread.”

A Southern Legal Counsel press release says that the CDC also encourages federal aid from FEMA and the CARES Act to be used for emergency housing, but that Gainesville officials have not secured housing for the people they are displacing.

Requests for comment were made to the Gainesville PD and FDOC. Shelby Taylor, City of Gainesville Communications Director responded in their stead.

“The Gainesville Police Department has worked compassionately with representatives from GRACE Marketplace over several months to transition people experiencing homelessness into a more stable housing environment,” Taylor said. “But GPD serves to protect the rights and property of all property owners in the city of Gainesville. In May, at the request of FDOC officials, GPD was asked to notify people camping on the property that they were trespassing.”

Taylor went on to say that the eviction effort was coordinated with representatives at GRACE.

“It would be safe to say that the capacity of all the shelters in Gainesville is about half of the homeless population,” said GRACE Executive Director Jon DeCarmine. “For all of the narrative that people are safer at home, it does not make sense to evict anybody in the middle of a pandemic.”

However, DeCarmine confirmed that GRACE worked with Gainesville PD and FDOC to evict Moultrie and other campers from the nearby encampment, claiming that it was done out of fear for residents’ safety after an incident involving a drunk driver nearly hitting people in their tents.

DeCarmine said GRACE offered beds and services to those who were displaced. However, Moultrie said she was only offered a bed at GRACE after she went to the local university’s newspaper, The Alligator, about the eviction. She claimed her fellow campers did not get beds, and said she feels lonely and constantly under surveillance at GRACE.

She still hopes to see her friends again, but doesn’t know if it will ever happen. In the meantime, she’s working on forming a nonprofit that helps fellow homeless people by providing food, first aid equipment and the basic necessities of life. She recently got accepted to Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville to study Public Health. She’s going to stay at GRACE for as long as she can. While it’s not her ideal situation, she knows that it’s hard to survive without shelter during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“People aren’t asking for much,” Moultrie said. “Just three meals a day and suitable shelter. This city, any city, should provide that to everyone during a time like this.”

Meanwhile, COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the country. Public health officials recommend isolation, social distancing, and frequent hand-washing to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. They certainly don’t recommend inhalation of chemical agents like tear gas and pepper spray, which are being used liberally against protestors. Protestors put in jail and incarcerated people held in prisons are not given options to isolate or maintain recommended hygiene practices to protect themselves from coronavirus.

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Mutual aid — people coming together to meet basic needs that aren’t being met by our current government or other systems — is a critical part of the response to the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many other Black people. It can include money, time, or resources, and is a political act of solidarity amongst individuals and communities, rather than charity. People on the outside are coordinating rapid-response bail funds; providing jail support to find out where arrested protestors are taken, arranging bail if applicable, and waiting for their release; and fundraising for injured protestors. Monetary support like GoFundMe fundraisers to pay for medical bills, safe houses, and other forms of care are “a way to be there for our people, to build community, and to ensure that people are cared for,” according to Micah Herskind, an Atlanta-based organizer and writer. “I think jail support is another way to live out the abolitionist truth that ‘we got us.’ It’s also saying that there’s a role for everyone in the struggle — some will be in the streets, some will be doing support from home, some will be at the jail to welcome those who are released.”

According to abolitionist Mariame Kaba, “Mutual aid is not new […] It’s basic survival work that relies on the fact that human beings are interdependent.” She pointed to this chart created by Dean Spade as a way to show the important differences between mutual aid and charity, including the fact that mutual aid is an effort to flatten hierarchies without expectation of anything received in return. According to Spade, where charities and NGOs have high costs to operate and must follow government regulations, mutual aid is volunteer-powered, resisting the government’s efforts to “regulate or shut down activities.” K, a Black nonbinary organizer in Brooklyn, echoed this: “Mutual aid is so effective because it works outside of the bureaucracy of the nonprofit industrial complex. People have more control and autonomy over how aid is distributed and used, and also because mutual aid contains a political education component, longer-term relationships are built.” When it comes to mobilizing resources to support detained protestors, it also means having the speed to respond with the urgency the situation demands.

Mutual aid, however, extends beyond short-term, urgent needs. Many protestors and organizers realize that the murders of Black people at the hands of the police are just one part of a very violent system and many of those working to help protestors normally support incarcerated people. Incarceration is another violent — and often deadly — form of oppression for Black and brown people, and as with the protests, K notes, coronavirus has complicated the response.

Due to stay at home orders, mailing checks and visiting the post office have to be done “strategically” and loved ones can’t visit their family or friends in prison. Even when mail can be sent out, K said “prisons are limiting people’s access to mail and lying about it.” Morale is low on the inside, where some people “are being forced to stay inside their cells for 23 hours a day.” People on the outside are struggling with lost jobs and access to resources, but “with the help of our comrades on the inside,” K said they are doing their best. Amani Sawari, the statewide coordinator of the Michigan Prisoner Rehabilitation Credit Act, knows this well. Sawari is fundraising to help incarcerated people access prevention products like hand soap and disinfectant, putting money in people’s commissaries to get around Michigan Department of Corrections’ very restricted mailing. Sawari said it is integral “that the community step up in order to provide these materials to people in prison.” In New York, Survived and Punished NY and the Inside/Outside Soap Brigade similarly began a combined grassroots fundraising effort to send commissary money to incarcerated people while continuing decarceration efforts. They stress the importance of direct monetary aid because of the mail, movement, and other restrictions due to COVID-19.

In addition to bail out funds for protestors, a COVID-19 Bail Out Fund has been organized to get people out of New York City jails if they cannot afford to pay bail. Many people held in jails haven’t even been convicted of a crime, but are trapped inside because bail can often be unaffordable. In fact, the vast majority of people in jails — nearly 500,000 people — are held there in pre-trial detention. Release Aging People in Prison’s Melissa Tanis points out there are a large number of people who could be released immediately, regardless of innocence. Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC) Co-Founder and Executive Director, Gina Womack, explains they are advocating releasing youth from detention, where outbreaks have unfortunately already begun. Womack stresses that “[D]uring a crisis, the facilities could be put on lockdown. In the aftermath of Katrina, when prison staff couldn’t get to work, youth went without food and sanitation for days.” If a similar situation arose due to COVID-19, the results would be inhumane and devastating to incarcerated youth.

Rapid-response mutual aid is necessary for the survival of incarcerated people, and taking to the streets to prevent further incarceration and police violence remains of the utmost importance. That said, while the ultimate goal is decarceration, it’s heartening to see the swift action of organizers in response to crises. Faced with unprecedented challenges during both a global pandemic and a national movement, “communities are coming together to act where the government refuses to,” according to K.

The vote is the culmination of a 17-year fight to be granted the same right to organize that is available to their counterparts in 11 other states, including Washington and Oregon to the north. The fight started long before Miren Algorri, a family child care provider in San Diego, opened her family child care center. When Algorri first immigrated to the United States from Mexico, she became an assistant to her mother, who ran her own family child care. Algorri watched the children her mother cared for while her mother went to organizing meetings.

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Algorri took up the mantle when she got her license to operate her own child care. In the more than two decades that she’s run her business, she hasn’t been able to take a single hour of paid sick leave. “That’s inhumane, that is criminal,” she said in an interview. She only has health insurance because she’s on someone else’s plan; when she was younger and a single mother, she had no coverage and paid hundreds of dollars to cover her daughter’s medical issues. “I cried myself to sleep countless nights,” she said.

She still can’t afford to offer health insurance to the assistants who now work for her. For providers like Algorri, who accept children whose parents pay for care with state subsidies, the rates are set by the state. With what the state pays her for caring for an infant, she’s barely making $4 an hour. But she needs to pay her assistants at least minimum wage. “They deserve way more than the minimum wage, because they’re shaping the future of California,” she said. But in order to compensate them adequately, that means that many months, after her other expenses, she doesn’t have enough money to pay herself a salary. So, she goes without.

It’s a common theme among family child care operators in California. In a 2019 survey, the top challenge providers said they faced was low wages, followed by receiving few benefits. Nearly one in five that had closed said it was because of the lack of benefits. Nationally, child care workers make on average less than $24,000 a year.

“Being underpaid, underrepresented, overworked is not something that I wish upon anybody,” she said. “We deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. That’s what the union means.”

The union vote result was announced on an emotional Zoom call on Monday, and in reaction child care providers across the state took themselves off mute to cheer and clap. “This election is historic,” said Zoila Carolina Toma, a child care provider in Los Angeles, on the call, with a classroom chalkboard and shelves full of supplies in her background. “Together we are unstoppable.”

“I cannot find the words to describe how I’m doing,” Algorri said. “I have been crying, I have been laughing… I’m overwhelmed with joy because I know that wonderful things are coming for us.”

Even before Monday’s vote, 2,500 child care workers in the state had joined SEIU without having the formal right to organize and bargain. Then, in September, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill finally granting providers who receive state subsidies the ability to form a union. “I’m so proud to be a little bit a part of your journey,” Newsom said in a pre-recorded video played on the Zoom call. “You had the moral authority, and…now we have the formal authority enshrined in this historic vote.”

The vote, however, is only the start. “Today the real fight begins,” Algorri said. Now that they voted to unionize, they’ll be able to bargain directly with the state for improvements in the child care system. As they negotiate their first contract, their priorities will be ensuring a livable wage for providers, good health insurance, and a retirement plan. Nancy Harvey, a child care provider of 16 years, said on the Zoom call, “We don’t want to be 78 years old still trying to lead circle time.” They also want to ensure professional development and training.

The child care provider workforce in California is overwhelmingly female and 74 percent people of color, according to the union. “This is not just a victory for union rights and economic justice,” Lee Saunders, president of AFSCME International, said on the Zoom call. “It’s a movement led by women of color. Your win today is an important step toward gender justice and racial justice.”

They also care for many children of color, and as part of their negotiations plan to push the government to expand access to child care. The vision of the union includes “excellent early education for all in California regardless of what you look like, where you come from, where you live, regardless of ability, regardless of language,” said Max Arias, executive director of SEIU Local 99.

All of these things are even more necessary in the middle of the pandemic. Across the country, more than 70 percent of child care providers say they’re incurring substantial new costs for staff, cleaning, and personal protective equipment to operate safely. But they have little wiggle room to cover those expenses. Over 40 percent said they had to close in May. Two out of five say they will have to shutter permanently unless they receive public assistance.

Many of the union members are already sick with COVID-19, some even hospitalized and intubated, according to union leaders who were on the Zoom call. Algorri has kept her doors open throughout the crisis to care for the children of essential workers, even as many of her families lost their jobs and had to keep their children home. She’s had to implement new procedures — such as asking parents to bring their own pens for sign in and having the children change into a child care-specific set of shoes — and spend a lot more on personal protective equipment and extra cleaning supplies. She wants a contract that will ensure providers keep getting paid if they close due to the coronavirus crisis, and will offer them extra support to keep their doors open.

“We’re not asking. We’re going to demand,” Toma noted. “It’s time to demand what we deserve, what our families deserve, what the people in California deserve.”

“I know wonderful things are coming our way,” Algorri said. “I’m just excited.”

Every year, 150 young people age out of the foster care system in California’s Santa Clara County. Statewide, 90 percent of foster youth don’t have a source of income when they leave state care, and between rent, school, clothing, food, and other living expenses, surviving in the Bay Area as a foster youth in transition is difficult.

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The average cost of rent in San Jose, located in the southern part of the county, is $2,790. Up to 50 percent of foster youth experience homelessness when they leave state care, and in Santa Clara County alone, nearly 50 percent of those under the age of 25 who lack access to shelter had spent some time in the foster care system. Statewide, nearly 50 percent of foster youth are chronically absent from school, 60 percent of foster youth in transition don’t have a high school diploma, and most don’t go on to obtain a college degree. As a result, many higher-paying jobs are not accessible.

A new pilot program put forth by the county’s Board of Supervisors aims to make life easier for young people like Hart by providing the country’s first universal basic income for foster youth in transition. A universal basic income has been shown to increase educational attainment, health care coverage, and provide access to healthier food for all people, but results are especially pronounced for people who are low-income.

For a 12-month period that started in June 2020, eligible young adults will receive $1,000 every month, no strings attached. The program is designed for young adults aged 21 to 24 — an age range at which many become ineligible for other social safety net programs — and eligibility is based on a number of factors, with higher priority given to 24-year-olds. Young adults must have been dependents of Santa Clara County between the ages of 16 and 21, and must currently live in the county.

For 23-year-old Bayleen Solorio, the UBI payments she’ll receive through the county will help her address her number one issue: housing. Before the onset of the pandemic, she was “tight on cash,” and now that businesses are closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, she’s working one shift per week at her job. The UBI is coming at the right time, but it still might not be enough to last through this economic downturn.

Solorio said the UBI program will offer her “that extra cushion I [need] to afford to pay off my debts.” The program “is going to help me a lot with financial struggles,” she said, and potentially address years of inadequate financial support. Solorio says that her main emotional struggle now is navigating her depression, and the UBI will make it easier for her to manage daily life.

For most, if not all, of the 72 young people enrolled in the program, the UBI isn’t just a guarantee of income, but a pathway to continue school and an opportunity to step back and think more broadly about their lives, rather than just focusing on the day-to-day. Santa Clara County Supervisor Cindy Chavez said that county staff will check in with the recipients every three months to offer financial guidance that they may not have received elsewhere.

Chavez explained that the UBI program was born out of a long-held belief that young people in the “custodial care” of the county community should be cared for as if they were her own — or any parent’s in the area. It’s not an unreasonable approach to early adulthood: 70 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds nationwide are supported financially by their parents, which is its own informal basic income program that keeps young adults afloat while they find their footing.

“Foster children don’t have networks and support systems that can help them launch,” Chavez said, noting that she has long been invested in the wellbeing of her constituents from a “justice” perspective. “When you’re making investments in justice, you’re launching human beings to reach their highest capacity,” she says. As she sees it, providing a UBI isn’t about charity.

This “justice” framework addresses more than the need for financial support: It speaks to the multi-layered challenges that await foster youth in transition when they age out of the state-run system. States largely get to shape policy including when young people “age out” and what financial and social services are made available to them. For instance, in California, some former foster youth are eligible for educational assistance. Most of these funds have an age limit and aren’t necessarily calibrated with the rising cost of living. What’s universal, however, is the way that the foster youth system disconnects young people from their home communities, suffers from chronic underfunding, and doesn’t address emotional and mental needs of foster youth prior to the onset of illnesses.

Chavez is aware of the UBI’s shortcomings, mainly that a fixed income for a certain period of time can’t solve all of the problems with the foster care system. Still, it may keep youth in transition financially solvent while they work out for themselves what adult life looks like. “This small amount of money offers a little bit of [protection]” Chavez said, “For our foster programming this is a new area, that our success or failure of the Board [is measured] as guardians of our children.”

In addition to providing financial guidance to the youth, county staff will conduct routine interviews with recipients of the basic income to evaluate its efficacy. Chavez hopes that the program inspires action in other counties around California and potentially in other states.

“Being in the foster care system did one thing and one thing only: It helped me become codependent,” Hart says. But initiatives like this one could actually allow Hart to build economic independence. “With programs like these, I’m able to actually be comfortable somewhere.”

Julissa Pineda, 22, has lived in the building, Richman Towers, with her mother and two brothers for three years. In March, shortly after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a state of emergency in the city, Pineda was laid off from her job as a restaurant server. Almost immediately, Pineda, who is the main earner in her family, knew she would not be able to afford her rent without borrowing heavily: The family pays $1,950 per month for their two-bedroom apartment. “Sometimes we need to buy a couple things,” she said. “It is necessary to have money.”

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Other families, some of whom have called the building home for nearly 30 years, were in similar positions, Pineda said. Many worked paycheck to paycheck in the service industry, and after they lost their jobs, had no idea how they could continue to make rent. Along with other families in her building, Pineda began organizing residents to lobby its landlord for rent forgiveness. But five months into a pandemic that has killed more than 550 people in D.C., neither their public pressure nor private lobbying has been successful.

Pineda says that some of those families — including her own — have resorted to increasingly precarious ways to pay rent, including borrowing money from friends and high-interest lenders, or in the case of other Richman Towers residents, by slapping the balance on a credit card.

Renters in D.C. and around the country are struggling to make their way in a city that’s been flattened by the one-two punch of a pandemic and recession. Even in times of relative regional prosperity, D.C. is a difficult city to live in: It consistently ranks as having one of the most expensive rental markets in the country, as well as one of the nation’s highest rates of income inequality, with the top fifth of earners making about 29 times more than the bottom fifth.

So it’s no surprise that renters are underwater. By mid-June, more than 116,000 people — a figure equal to nearly one in every six people who live in the capitol — had filed for unemployment in D.C. By the end of the first week of June, the percentage of people in D.C. who were able to pay all or part of their rent dropped three points from the same period last year, according to data collected by property management software company RealPage, to under 83 percent, one of the highest drops in the country.

As the effects of historic mass layoffs begin to throttle the economy — and renters’ wallets — rental data indicate that more people than ever are relying on their credit cards to make rent. Those who are able, anyway: 8 percent of people in D.C. are unbanked, and 27 percent don’t have access to a line of credit.

“The concern we have is that these effects would snowball. That [renters] would use these alternative methods to pay rent, and then that high interest becomes a vehicle for more debt to incur,” Cashauna Hill, executive director of the Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center, testified during a June 10 hearing before the House Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development, and Insurance. “There is a very real risk of people being forced into homelessness because they’re being forced to find alternative methods to cover their rent costs.”

Two widely used rental management software companies, Entrata and MRI, used data from around the country to report spikes in credit card rent payments of up to 7 percent compared to spring of last year. Other initial studies indicate that up to 18 percent of families using their credit cards to make rent have done so for two months in a row. Meanwhile, housing policy experts are beginning to warn lawmakers about the long-term implications of the practice. “Of course the question then becomes, on down the road, how will they pay those credit cards off?” Andrew Aurand, vice president of research at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said of lower-income renters. “It’s troubling. It’s concerning.”

Still, in D.C., some local officials are actually encouraging renters to take on this debt. On June 8, the city’s local trial court created an online payment system that suggests people going through eviction proceedings pay the rent they owe with e-checks and credit or debit cards, with processing fees that cost as much as 2.5 percent of the total transaction.  In an emailed statement to TalkPoverty, a spokesperson for D.C. Superior Court said “It is not required that funds be paid online. As the [court’s] June notice indicates, tenants can continue to pay their landlord.” But while paying rent on a card isn’t mandatory, the mere availability of the offer puts pressure on already cost-burdened residents.

“There are transactional costs associated with all of these different things, but having a 2.5 percent transactional cost to pay for rent is very high,” Harrison said. “And it’s just something that, if you don’t have a lot of income, it’s not something you can budget for.” It’s not uncommon for landlords to try and evict tenants over unpaid bills as small as $25 or $50, or about as much as the extra credit card processing fees they’re faced with paying now.

Visa, meanwhile, reported a 7 percent increase in its quarterly revenue — more than $400 million — since this time last year.

This January, that was threatened when she received a letter stating that her benefits would be cancelled if she did not fulfill a 20-hour-a-week work requirement.  When I first met with Ortiz, she stated that “I would have to make major cuts to the food that I get” if she lost her SNAP benefits.

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This letter came at the same time that the United States Department of Agriculture finalized the Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents (ABAWDs) rule in December 2019. “Able-bodied adults” — defined as not receiving SSI or SSDI, without children, or who are not the caretaker for an adult — are required to work or volunteer 20 hours a week, or participate in an approved workplace training program, in order to maintain their SNAP benefits. Previously, states had been able to apply for waivers to ease those requirements, but the new rule would take that flexibility away and cost up to 700,000 people their benefits.

The ABAWDs rule is not the only restriction on eligibility requirements for SNAP — according to a spokesperson at the Illinois Department of Human Services, students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate programs “more than half-time” are not eligible for the program without a special exemption. Additional restrictions ban SNAP benefits for people who are undocumented, have a drug felony, or have more than $2,250 in assets. Some of these restrictions are established by states, and may vary.

In theory, a social worker like Crystal should be uniquely positioned to navigate this bureaucracy. However, social workers who use SNAP can have just as difficult of a time understanding the requirements to keep their benefits as the clients they assist. Crystal said that in class discussions about policy changes around SNAP eligibility, there wasn’t always an understanding that students were current or former SNAP recipients who were personally affected by these changes. She also said some professors would broadly mention that resources were available if students needed additional support, but specific resources were not mentioned in course materials. “I would like to see acknowledgement from the school…because if we’re not talking about it, we can’t come together,” she said, adding that this lack of discussion means students are “struggling silently.”

Even with her understanding of the SNAP requirements, Ortiz ultimately lost benefits for two months. To get them reinstated, she set up multiple meetings and phone calls with the Illinois Department of Human Services, which included taking public transit in the middle of a pandemic, waiting outside since the office was only admitting one person at a time, offering to translate for another person in line because another staffer was not available, and then meeting with a caseworker and manager to advocate for herself. The root of the issue, it seems, was her unpaid internship — she was under the impression that it counted as work, but her caseworker believed it did not since it was for class credit.

Crystal’s experience highlights the many different restrictions that already existed in the SNAP ruling even before the proposed expansion of the ABAWD requirement, and how challenging it is trying to parse conflicting information from multiple agencies. But still, even in the midst of the coronavirus, many of the restrictions hold.

Currently, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act only partially suspends the ABAWD rule: If recipients are offered a slot in a designated workfare program, they must participate in the program in order to maintain benefits. A representative from the Illinois Department of Human Services stated that all ABAWD requirements, including the requirements in FFCRA, and eligibility requirements for students receiving SNAP, are suspended until a month after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lifts the Public Health Emergency declaration. Navigating these mixed messages from different agencies can be frustrating for a social worker, but can be downright impossible for the average person unfamiliar with public benefits agencies. A page on the IDHS website states that current SNAP recipients will receive the maximum benefit starting the week of April 6.

The framing around these reversals in policy is focused on maintaining food access “during a public health emergency.” However, not having enough food to eat was already a public health emergency before COVID-19, as demonstrated by the patchwork of food pantries and soup kitchens that had challenges meeting the needs of the communities they serve. As we work to ensure that everyone has enough to eat during the immediate crisis of COVID-19, we can’t lose sight of that basic fact. If the USDA and state agencies can recognize how devastating a lack of food is during COVID-19, to the point where they suspend restrictions on one of their most aggressively means-tested programs, then they should be able to recognize this when there isn’t a pandemic magnifying the hunger crisis that existed before it.

Legal services organizations and law firms that provide free or reduced fee representation often work closely with other service providers to secure transportation, food, housing, clothes, and other necessities. But legal organizations can’t typically pay for those things directly, thanks to an obscure rule that exists in many states. They can cover filing fees and some required medical exams, but cannot pay for many of the basic things that would prevent clients from getting to court for their cases.

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“Human services often have client emergency funds, so it seems like a false distinction that legal services can’t do that,” said Amy Barasch, executive director of Her Justice, an organization focused on representation for women living in poverty. “If you can’t come to court because you don’t have enough money to pay for child care while you are coming to court, that’s going to be an access issue.”

The problem lies with the American Bar Association’s Model Rule 1.8(e), which prohibits lawyers from loaning or giving clients money for anything not directly tied to litigation. At least 11 states, including Louisiana, Alabama, California, and Minnesota, have made efforts to loosen their own versions of Rule 1.8(e) so certain lawyers, mostly those working pro bono or in legal services for low-income clients, can pay on behalf of clients for things that fall outside direct litigation costs.

New York is the latest state to alter Rule1.8(e) in favor of providing aid to poor clients. Changes proposed by a committee at the New York City Bar were approved by the Administrative Board of New York courts on June 18. The push to refine Rule 1.8(e) began two years ago, but was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying state of emergency. In March, the bar modified their ask to request an immediate “humanitarian exception” to the rule for the duration of the coronavirus crisis.

The economic fallout from the pandemic may have pushed the courts to take action on the proposal. The modified rule will allow some lawyers to offer “humanitarian assistance to their clients in dire need,” according to the news advisory released by the New York State Unified Court System.

“New Yorkers are experiencing severe financial consequences as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic,” writes a previous letter from two New York City Bar committees to members of New York State’s Supreme Court. “Lawyers throughout the state have answered the call to provide pro bono assistance to those dealing with the repercussions of the pandemic.”

Indigent clients — those living in poverty who cannot afford to pay a lawyer nor court-related fees — have always needed more than volunteer lawyers are currently able to provide. Now, with job losses ballooning, more clients could enter that indigent category, and it’s likely that more people will be seeking pro bono services for eviction. The amended rule means that pro bono lawyers across New York preparing to take on cases caused or exacerbated by the pandemic now have one more resource open to them.

“Legal aid programs intersect with so many of these issues, unemployment, increased family violence, family separation or unification, eviction, foreclosure, debt problems, elder abuse. And all the things that come from a dip in the economy,” said Don Saunders, vice president of policy at the National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA).

The coronavirus pandemic, like natural disasters of the past, has had a catastrophic effect on human lives and human systems. “It’s kind of like what happens after a hurricane, after you have immediate first responders, then a host of legal needs come up. We’re worried about housing, homelessness, food and nutrition and healthcare. These are all issues that people have legal rights around.”

These issues are especially pressing for people of color. The pandemic is infecting and killing New York’s residents of color at higher rates than white people, and the inequities will likely continue through the disease’s aftermath. Assistance from lawyers could also help clients who are ineligible for state supports, including undocumented people who are excluded from the stimulus and unemployment benefits. Hamra Ahmad, Her Justice’s director of legal services expects that clients who could benefit the most are those who are undocumented, minors, and/or victims of human trafficking.

Andrew Kent, Fordham Law professor and the primary author of the bar’s report, explained that clients in a financial bind will sometimes settle claims for less than they deserve. For example, “say there is someone who’s been beat up in jail at Rikers Island. If that client is getting pro bono legal help for their case, and let’s suppose that they have a good claim which might be expected to get decent money, maybe $20,000 or $40,000.”

“But if the city or the state comes to them and says we can give you a check for $2,000 today and that person has rent due, or needs costly medical treatment, or their kid needs diapers or whatever it is, that smaller amount of money might be attractive,” said Kent. If a client can’t manage their living expenses through the long court process, they may forgo a higher amount of damages in the end.

“The challenge of getting out of poverty is that everything you’re supposed to do to get out of poverty ends up costing money,” said Barasch. Good pro bono representation is a proven way to better one’s financial situation for the long term, and yet the minimum amount of participation required from clients can still be too expensive. Providing assistance to stabilize clients throughout the process could alleviate some pains and strengthen the possibility of a life-changing result.

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Generally, in non-coronavirus times, undocumented immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits from the federal government, and the current social safety nets of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, SNAP (food stamps), and unemployment benefits don’t usually cover them. The pandemic has exacerbated the lack of governmental support and income inequality — undocumented people don’t work jobs that can be done from home, which has either left them entirely without income during the shutdown (as is the case with restaurant workers) or put them at much higher risk of coming into contact with the coronavirus (since undocumented people are disproportionately likely to be essential workers in fields with poor protections, like farmwork or meatpacking).

That means undocumented people are facing a particularly brutal choice: Either continue to work during a pandemic or lose out on money to purchase food and other necessary resources. Vera Parra, communications director and organizer with Cosecha, a grassroots movement that advocates for undocumented people, explained it like this: “There’s a choice that families are having to make between dying of hunger or dying of coronavirus.”

Now grassroots organizations and local leaders are scrambling to build a financial safety net that will help undocumented folks feed and house themselves during the pandemic because — as long as Mitch McConnell refuses to address the issue — no federal institutional support is coming.

The San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium, a collective of over 50 organizations, has begun to create a safety net where there previously was none. Demand is high: bills still need to be paid even if there’s no way to pay them. Serrano said the consortium received over 4,000 applications for its $500 grants, and so far they have been able to award 200 of those applications. While local community members and elected officials have offered supplies and some financial support, Serrano said that “Donations are definitely one of our biggest needs: there is more need than there is funding.”

The Cosecha fund is hoping to find some support by redistributing stimulus checks. There are a number of people who received CARES Act checks but do not urgently need the funds, either because they have not lost out on work or they would be eligible for unemployment benefits if they do lose their jobs in the future. The Cosecha fund for undocumented residents is asking individuals who are able to donate their stimulus check, either the full amount or a portion of it, to undocumented folks. Their social media campaign raised $1 million in their first round of fundraising, and they’re currently in the process of redistributing the funds to thousands of families.

Since the economy will likely continue to struggle for months, if not years, many undocumented people will continue to be reliant on donations, advocacy, and organizing to stay afloat. Parra said moving forward will require pushing the state and other governing bodies to make more funds available and “demand to be included” in future economic relief packages. Carolina Martin Ramos, the director of programs and advocacy at Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland, California, said given the fact that the labor of undocumented folks and people of color helped to create and sustain the state’s wealth, the lack of adequate and well-funded support networks is, “just more evidence that we really treat some people as disposable and less deserving or less important.”

“It’s really hard,” said Autumn Gonzalez, an organizer with Norcal Resist, an immigrant rights organization located in the Bay Area. Because the fund relies mainly on community support and they don’t have any grant funding, “We’re going to see people evicted [and] enter that cycle of homelessness,” Gonzalez said of the worst-case scenario. “Going down that road would be a nightmare for so many thousands of families.”

Moving forward, Gonzalez said Norcal Resist will apply for grant funding, though it’s a competitive process. Other than that, they’re hoping to reach out to other folks in the area who might be sympathetic to the cause; “it’s definitely a constant worry for us.” And even as businesses start to reopen and life enters a new normal, back rent and lost wages will continue to be a concern.

Like the Norcal Resist fund, which has been supported by the local community, Serrano says that San Diego community members have stepped up. Sustaining that progress will be difficult, she said, but those with the capacity to keep donating, like private companies, should. Ramos sees a potential solution in couching mutual aid and grassroots funding work with local political advocacy. Centro Legal has been working with the City of Oakland and officials from Alameda County to negotiate a stipend for their fund and map out what rent forgiveness (as a long-term solution to housing insecurity) might look like.

Either way, Gonzalez said, “We all keep pushing because we see that there’s a need that’s not being addressed anywhere else. We know that we have to keep doing the work.”

The leasing office at Villas Antonio Apartments in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., which is owned by Western National Property Management, a development company that owns more than 160 properties, called her four times asking her to sign a 120-day rent payment deferment agreement. Simpson refused, explaining that she does not know when she will return to work and that she can’t be evicted under current California law. Simpson said the manager replied, “We can’t evict you — yet.”

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Deferment agreements like the one presented to Simpson are commonly used by landlords and property managers when tenants are unable to pay rent. These agreements enter tenants into legally binding contracts to pay their rent owed within the number of days designated by their landlord. In Simpson’s case, if she were to sign her contract and find herself unable to pay when the California eviction moratorium expires on July 28^th, her property owners could file an unlawful detainer case against her, which would forcibly remove her from the property and place an eviction on her record. The property owners would also have the option of suing Simpson for the amount of rent owed.

Representatives at Villas Antonio Apartments and at WNPM’s headquarters did not reply to requests for comment on the deferment agreements they are issuing to Simpson and other tenants.

Before COVID-19, these agreements were used by renters who had fallen on hard times, such as being in between jobs. With a deferment, renters could delay paying rent until they were back on their feet. But in the midst of a massive economic depression, with unemployment at over 13 percent and an estimated 21 million unemployed Americans in May, many people won’t have a steady income for months. This can leave those who sign such agreements vulnerable to eviction as the economy remains unstable for the foreseeable future.

“I’m usually ok with payment deferment agreements like the one in her (Simpson’s) case,” said Joseph Tobener, tenant lawyer and partner at Tobener Ravenscroft LLP in San Francisco. “But in a crisis situation like this, tenants shouldn’t feel forced to sign anything their landlord gives them, and they shouldn’t have an eviction on their record. Tenants have the leverage here.”

Irene Bassett also refused to sign a payment deferment plan in April. On April 20^th, her landlord issued Irene and her husband a “pay or quit” notice at their Hawthorne, Calif., apartment, which threatened them with eviction filings in three days if they refused to pay rent. Bassett responded that eviction paperwork currently cannot be filed due to pandemic emergency laws.

“A few days ago we received another letter from our landlords saying they still expect rent,” Bassett said. “Expecting rent from me in a time like this is immoral. If I have to choose between food and rent, I choose food.”

Bassett reached out to the Eviction Defense Network (EDN), where a team of lawyers like Elena Popp offer pro bono legal help to tenants in need. Popp said the three-day notice is becoming more popular with landlords.

“Some tenants see a notice like that and panic. Especially if they’re like so many Americans who have trouble accessing legal help, they leave out of fear,” Popp said. “And the court is sending false and misleading notices to tenants, notices that violate the State Judicial Council’s orders.”

Maria del Socorro Serrano received such a notice from the Los Angeles Superior Court on April 17^th, which notified her and her husband Jose Garcia that they were being evicted and had five days to respond to the court. They turned to EDN for legal assistance, and are now receiving support for their case.

“I got overwhelmed. We are already under so much pressure because my husband and I lost our jobs in March,” Serrano said. “My heart dropped to the floor.”

EDN and Popp are receiving more requests for assistance than ever, while preparing for what Popp says will be a “tsunami of evictions” when emergency protections are lifted in California. Tenant unions are also trying to keep up with renters who need assistance.

“It’s hard to keep track of the amount of renters that have reached out to us about pressure that’s being put on them to do things against their best interest,” said Jane Demian, caseworker for the Los Angeles Tenants Union. “The landlords should be approaching their lender about mortgage relief during this crisis, instead of this backlash against tenants.”

Without tenant unions and lawyer groups such as EDN, renters who find themselves in dire economic situations are often without resources to help them navigate agreements with landlords. The lawyer operated website Avvo says tenant lawyer fees typically range from $200-$500 an hour. With 58 percent of Americans having less than $1,000 in savings, hiring a lawyer is not an option for most people.

The pressure tactics by landlords can take a toll on the health of their tenants. At the beginning of April, Simpson started suffering from panic attacks. She made it through by talking out her situation with her family and friends, but is still living with the effects. As the eviction moratorium expiration date of July 28^th draws closer, she wonders what her living situation will be like in the coming months.

“It’s so upsetting. My landlords might have to wait on some money, but I could end up homeless if I have an eviction on my record,” Simpson said. “It feels like I’m stuck yelling at a wall.”

This article was supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.

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The rider is named after Jessica Grubb, a Michigan woman who died at age 30 after being prescribed oxycodone for postoperative pain while only a few months into recovery from a seven-year heroin addiction. The Protecting Jessica Grubb’s Legacy Act was sponsored by Democratic Senator Joe Manchin III and Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, both from West Virginia, one of the states hit hardest in recent years by an influx of illicitly manufactured fentanyl. Currently, under 42 CFR Part 2, patients engaged in substance use disorder treatment programs that fall under federal purview — which essentially includes any program that utilizes opioid agonist pharmacotherapy like methadone and buprenorphine — must provide informed consent each and every time their records are shared. So when a patient authorizes a methadone program to share medication information with their primary care doctor, that provider can’t disclose the information to a specialist unless the patient signs a new, specific consent. When the act goes into effect in 2021, patients will only have to provide consent once. After that, their records can be re-shared in perpetuity by any health care entity who receives them.

The changes reflect the way privacy and consent are handled for most of health care. The act is effectively changing records disclosure consent rules to match those of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), except that it still preserves the initial consent required by 42 CFR Part 2.

Despite popular belief, HIPAA allows health care workers to share patient records without their consent for a number of reasons related to health care operations. “HIPAA is not a [patient] privacy protection. It’s actually an authorization to share your info as broadly as a health care payor believes they need to share it, which I will tell you is very broad,” explained Danielle Tarino, president and CEO of Young People In Recovery, who previously worked at the Department of Health and Human Services and, while there, drafted the 2017 revisions to 42 CFR Part 2.

Now, instead of special protections for patients undergoing addiction treatment, these programs will have the same privacy standards as all of health care.

The fight for privacy rights has divided key players in the addiction treatment community, many of whom are otherwise aligned. Proponents of the changes include the National Council of Behavioral Health, the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Shatterproof, and several other prominent treatment and health care voices. Those who oppose it, a group that includes the National Alliance for Medication Assisted Recovery, Legal Action Center, Young People In Recovery, and Faces and Voices In Recovery, have successfully thwarted similar proposals in the past.

“It’s just really disappointing to see that bill go through when the political will was, year after year after year, it’s not going to pass because people don’t want it to pass,” said Tarino.

Those who favor the changes say that not only will this make it easier for health care providers to share patient records, it will also allow these programs to be used in the electronic health records programs that are currently designed to meet HIPAA standards. Senators Manchin and Caputo argued that this kind of care coordination would prevent patients like Jessica Grubb from being “thrown back into the nightmare of addiction,” and insinuated that these privacy changes could have prevented Grubb’s death by ensuring all of her caregivers were informed about her addiction history. “There’s emergency glass that could be broken if someone was not able to disclose,” countered Talbott. “The notion Part 2 could cause what happened to Jessica Grubb to happen is outrageous…She disclosed [her addiction status], as most people do with their treatment providers.”

“42 CFR Part 2 said ‘if you go to treatment, we will give you the security and confidence to work on your issues,’” said Westley Clark, Dean’s Executive Professor in the Department of Psychology at Santa Clara University and the former director of the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT) within SAMHSA. “Why would I go to treatment if they are going to blab my business all over town? We have a conundrum: We want people to go to treatment, but we are going to discourage people from seeking treatment by telling them ‘your privacy is irrelevant.’”

Part of what made these protections so strong was the re-disclosure rule eliminated by the Jessica Grubb’s Legacy Act. If a patient signed a consent so that their treatment provider could share pertinent care records with their insurance — a requirement in order to have insurance pay for treatment — then those records could only be shared with the insurance provider. Now, a patient’s insurance can re-disclose those records in perpetuity for a number of reasons, including for the vague and effectively ubiquitous use of “health care operations.” This likewise applies to anyone to whom a patient has granted consent.

The language of the new law explicitly states that patients have the right to revoke consent at any time. The problem is that patients must know they need to do this, and also, once records have been shared widely enough, it becomes virtually impossible to communicate and enforce that revocation. Privacy proponents worry that this re-disclosure license will deter patients from seeking treatment, and could lead to harm for those who decide to engage anyway.

“Some insurers have discriminated against substance use disorder patients, and substance use disorder patients have not gotten life insurance or other key insurance like that because they found out,” said Deborah Reid, senior health policy attorney with Legal Action Center, emphasizing the fact that discrimination against substance use disorder patients is not a thing of the past, but a very real problem her office deals with regularly. She argued that lessening privacy regulations for these patients is likely to increase the problem. Other examples of potential bad case scenarios resulting from the relaxed consent rules that she and her co-worker Jacqueline Setz provided were child custody cases, information spread through small town communities, and law enforcement gaining access to the records.

The new law includes anti-discrimination language, which proponents like Shatterproof say is a big win. “Certainly the illegal nature of using drugs should never be a barrier to someone accessing emergency help or medical care when they need it. That’s something we should hopefully all be working toward. This legislation is consistent with existing federal protections around the treatment of addiction,” said Kevin Roy, chief public policy officer at Shatterproof. Currently, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) covers discrimination against substances use disorder patients — but only if they are not currently using illegal substances. If a patient is engaged with treatment but struggling to maintain total abstinence or does not seek total abstinence as a goal, they are not protected against discrimination by the ADA. But opponents say that the new anti-discrimination language won’t be enough to offset the dangers caused by allowing this sensitive information to move more freely. “It’s in there, you can’t discriminate, but if you do — who’s gonna be able to enforce that? With no patient first right of action, patients can’t stand up for themselves unless they have resources to retain counsel and sue in civil court,” said Talbott, adding, “even the parts that sound good, upon further reflection and digging, seem to be paper tigers.”

Although those who have been involved in the fight for years were disappointed that these changes were slipped through alongside the unrelated coronavirus stimulus bill, they say the fight isn’t totally over yet.

“We still have initial consent…it didn’t remove the complete foundation of Part 2, but it will be a different struggle now,” said Talbott, explaining some early-stage strategies NAMA-R and other groups are discussing in order to ensure addiction patients can still have robust privacy protections in the future.

Then, with a note of sadness, he added: “The 10 year battle to preserve privacy protections in Part 2 is over.”

“These are people’s lives we are talking about,” summarized Tarino. “There are very deep implications to people losing rights and privileges because of their participation in something that was supposed to help them.”

After acquiring TimeWarner Cable in 2016, Spectrum began an attempt to replace its union health insurance and pension plans with a company-run 401(k) pension account and health plan. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 objected to the plan as “substandard,” preferring to hold on to its existing pension plan, which for decades has been run by an independent board of trustees. Union officials feared that if they gave Spectrum control of their pension fund and health care, they would forfeit any leverage they had in future negotiations. With families to support, workers like Papon couldn’t afford to lose everything they worked so hard for.

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“The strike caught everyone by surprise but my main concern at the time was maintaining our medical and our pension. That was our main goal and something that Spectrum definitely wanted to eliminate. If they wanted to take that away, we had no other choice but to go on strike.”

What Papon and his fellow IBEW Local 3 members couldn’t anticipate was that more than three years later, they would be part of one of the longest strikes in American history. As the strike dragged on, developing into a bitter war of attrition between Charter Communications — which is the largest provider of cable TV, internet, and telephone service in New York State as well as the second-largest cable provider in the country — and Local 3, workers like Papon struggled to make ends meet.

To make up for his lost income, Papon took a job on construction sites, starting at the bottom of the trade union ladder. Despite taking another job, things didn’t become easier. He fought his bank’s attempt to foreclose on his home and his wife and daughter were diagnosed with lupus. His wife became so ill that she is currently awaiting a lung transplant. With legal and medical bills piling up, he quickly saw his life savings evaporate.

“I had to deplete my 401k completely in order to survive and to maintain my family,” said Papon. “That hurts. After so many years you have built this savings and this cushion so you could be able to retire later on. Now all of sudden you have this money gone which is pretty sad. Definitely it has affected me mentally.”

As if being on strike hasn’t been hard enough, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced Papon’s family deeper into crisis. With all non-essential construction suspended, Papon has found himself unemployed and without health insurance for the first time in his life.

“With the COVID, my wife and daughter can’t afford to get sick because they don’t have an immune system. So I’m really unsure on what to do.”

Papon is not alone. Troy Walcott, a 20-year Spectrum veteran and a union shop steward, has been one of the strike’s most visible leaders. With many striking workers moving on, Walcott has been desperately attempting to keep the strike’s momentum alive. But amidst a full-blown  pandemic, it has felt like an arduous battle.

“Whatever people are going through before the pandemic, now times are harder for them. So it has been like that for us for basically three years. We have scraped by, barely having enough to hold on to keep going, at the bottom of the barrel, but now we get kicked in the teeth again through this pandemic.”

For his part, Walcott was forced to drive for Uber to sustain himself. Yet, without any health insurance, he can’t afford to put his life on the line and continue driving.

“Between working for Uber and pulling from my savings that has been enough to get by. Now with the pandemic it’s all savings. I know eventually it gets to the point where the balance I’m in will fall through. I’m playing on borrowed time and I can’t really do anything except keep fighting and hoping we get help from somewhere.”

Supporters of the striking workers, such as New York City Council Member Barry S. Grodenchik, are dumbfounded that, after three years, Spectrum has still refused to reach an agreement with Local 3 over their pension fund and healthcare plan, even during the COVID-19 crisis.

“I grew up across the street from the union hall, so I go way back with the union and many of the people that are unfortunately caught up with this,” said Grodenchik. “It’s very, very hard to see this at this time, especially during the pandemic. They have been trying to sustain a strike for over a three-year period of time which is quite unusual to say the least.”

Instead of negotiating with Local 3, Spectrum has hired an army of contract workers to replace the striking workers and has launched a bid to decertify the union. Voting for decertification should be led by workers who choose to either abolish a union or replace it with a different one. Local 3 contends that the vote is being pushed by replacement workers at the behest of Spectrum. In 2019, Local 3 lodged a complaint against Spectrum with the National Labor Relations Board, currently stacked with anti-labor Trump appointees, for unfair labor practices. The case has yet to be resolved. As of publication, Spectrum could not be reached for comment.

Congress, however, has signaled some support for organized labor. This past February, the House passed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, one of the strongest pieces of labor legislation passed in years. The act would strengthen workers’ ability to form unions by introducing penalties against businesses that block workers from forming unions. It would also require companies like Spectrum to bargain in good faith with unions as well as protect workers’ rights to strike. Unfortunately, the act is unlikely to pass in the Repulican controlled Senate.

At the local level, many New York City officials are vowing to revoke Spectrum’s municipal franchise agreement with the city, which is up for renewal in July, if the company fails to reach a settlement with the union. The agreement gives Spectrum the privilege to provide cable, internet, and other tech services to residents across the city for a fee. Across the country, cable operators pay nearly $3 billion annually in franchise fees to state and local governments. Barry Grodenchik, who sits on the New York City Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises, has been one of the most vocal in his opposition to Spectrum.

“I stated publicly that I cannot vote to extend their franchise agreement because of how they treat their workers. There are 1,800 families in New York City that have been shown the door. That’s a lot of people.”

Even New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio has signaled his support for the striking workers. “Workers deserve a fair contract, and this Administration strongly supports the striking workers,” said Laura Feyer, Deputy Press Secretary for the Mayor. “Like all cable franchise agreements, Spectrum’s is governed by federal law, which has strict guidelines regarding when a franchise can and cannot be renewed.”

Yet, some of the strikers are skeptical. “Many elected officials have stated that they will not vote to renew Spectrum’s franchise agreement, which has to be done as a stance against a company that is blatantly union busting in a union town,” says Walcott. “But the problem is, even after the vote, the cable company is going to lawyer up and just going to fight the city for years without a franchise agreement. So they don’t really give a shit.”

For David Papon, with all his struggles, he has lost what little faith he had in the company.  “After all the years I put into the company I feel abandoned. This company pretty much has nobody’s back. It’s a money company and we are just a number to them.”

When your grocery budget is entirely reliant on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), your mom’s Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), and other assistance programs designed for low-income disabled single parents and their disabled children, you have to be very specific about what you buy. It’s easy to spend your entire food budget before the month is over and find that toward the end of the month, you’re hungrily eating cheap cereal and off-brand white bread for every meal.

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Recently, Democratic Senators Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a bill with Senator Bernie Sanders that would expand the SNAP benefit. The bill would increase the baseline for SNAP benefits by roughly 30 percent and expand benefits to those living in U.S. territories. Currently, the Families First Act is temporarily increasing SNAP benefits for households that haven’t been receiving the maximum benefit, and many states are allowing customers to purchase SNAP-eligible items online, a move that makes grocery shopping during a pandemic safer for low-income elderly, disabled, and high-risk individuals. A permanent increase to SNAP benefits and expanded delivery options would make a significant difference in the lives of many SNAP recipients, giving them the ability to purchase more food each month and making it easier for people to shop even if they can’t physically go to a grocery store.

The maximum SNAP benefit for a household of two in Massachusetts, where I live, is currently $355 per month. A 30 percent increase to that would be $106.50, bringing the total to $461.50 per month. That would mean SNAP recipients could almost afford the average cost of groceries ($489.16 per month in Boston, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, though the average monthly spend on food overall is $805.58 once you include takeout and restaurants). Although many families don’t receive the maximum SNAP benefit — in Massachusetts the average monthly household benefit is only $210, or $1.36 per person per meal — the proposed increase in SNAP benefits would at least bring low-income and poor Bostonians closer to being able to afford a full months’ worth of food.

I know how it feels to be able to expand your food budget, even by a little. I remember the first time my dad, who took over raising me after my mom died, had a particularly good month driving the cab. This was before the 2008 recession, and his specialty was driving kids with busy working parents to and from school. We had an unexpected, albeit small, increase to our food budget. I no longer had to survive on $1 Celeste frozen pizzas. I could get a few higher-cost pizzas, like DiGiorno. I was allowed to get inexpensive sushi at the Stop & Shop seafood counter twice a month, and we bought lobsters when they were on sale for $4.99 a pound. We kept the house stocked with sodas and Little Debbie snacks for when my friends came over.

I could actually tell my new high school friends we’d feed them instead of asking them to come over “after dinner,” and we spent one New Year’s Eve trekking through a blizzard to get takeout Chinese food from the best restaurant in the city. I felt rich enough to try crab rangoon, which I’d always assumed I wouldn’t like — when you’re poor, you don’t take risks spending your limited money on food you’re unsure about and may have to throw away. The crab and cream cheese tasted like the freedom of choice and exploration, and I’ve loved them ever since. Then the recession and the rise of Uber and Lyft made it harder for taxi drivers to make money. We went back to eating cereal when we ran out of food money. I got part-time jobs and saved my birthday and holiday money to help my dad pay for groceries.

When I went to college, my food budget slowly started to increase again. It wasn’t much, but I went from being truly poor to just being broke. I’ve always defined the difference by how often the threats of eviction, running out of food, or having the electricity or heat turned off crossed my mind at any given moment. If I had enough money that those things were just background noise, I was broke. If I had so little money that I couldn’t help my dad pay down the electric bill so the power company wouldn’t turn off the lights. I was poor.

Being broke meant I could sometimes save enough money to take my girlfriend (now my wife) on a sushi date, if we kept the meal inexpensive or it was a special occasion. It meant splitting pizza delivery with my friends on Saturday nights, after we’d all had a few cheap vodka cocktails and were sitting around the dorm room laughing at weird memes. Broke was being able to get something else out of the freezer if I’d overcooked my chicken nuggets to a burnt crisp, instead of laying on my bed devastated because I’d ruined my chance to eat.

A few years ago, after my wife and I both got full-time jobs and were no longer relying on the modest budgets of grad students, we first noticed the difference at the grocery store. We were no longer poor or broke; we could get fresh salmon for dinner instead of frozen. We never had to put things back if we were over-budget, we could just have an honest conversation in the car afterward about whether we wanted to cut back the next time. I didn’t even cry when our zucchini went bad the day before we were planning to cook it, even though the child in me — the one who still remembers eating a free pizza lunch at the park with my mom on the August day that she died — was determined not to let it happen again.

That’s how a 30 percent SNAP expansion could change your life. It gets you from poor to broke. From hungry to offering to split your Caesar salad and brownie with another broke friend in the school cafeteria. It’s the bare minimum a person needs to be able to spend their days without low-level anxiety about how they’re going to survive. In the richest country in the world, the bare minimum shouldn’t be too much to ask for. We all deserve to get freshly baked muffins from the grocery store bakery every once in a while, and take the small risk of trying crab rangoon for the first time.

Placerville resident and Rural County Representatives of California (RCRC) CFO and COO Lisa McCargar understands this problem all too well. Her organization advocates for broadband access, water rights, and other infrastructure resources on behalf of thirty-seven rural California counties. Now, facing the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of RCRC’s work has never been more apparent to McCargar. With nearly all of the businesses on Placerville’s Main Street closed, she worries rural communities may not have equal access to federal government aid programs that have been touted as crucial to propping up small businesses.

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Although Congress allocated more than $650 billion to lend to small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that is being administered by the Small Business Administration (SBA), accessing an approved lending institution in communities like Placerville is easier said than done. Only 31 percent of the community banks chartered since 1986 remain in the rural financial sector. This has led to a significant challenge in accessing financial services, especially now. “Everyone was flocking to Citi and Bank of America to the point that they couldn’t handle it. It ended up that you needed to be a customer with an outstanding loan or at least an account,” McCargar noted.

Steve Frisch, CEO of the Sierra Business Council, is dealing with the same problem. His group, which advocates for the business community in the mountain region of California, has helped more than 500 small businesses apply for the loan program. Despite their assistance, he estimates that only 10 percent received funding. “If you already had a strong relationship with a bank and your bank was approved to lend, then you got funded. If not, you were out of luck,” Frisch said. This is partly the result of inadequate funding to smaller community banks, who despite providing capital to nearly 1.5 million small businesses in 2018, received 16 percent of second-round PPP funding.

In addition, the quick roll out of the program was a major learning curve for smaller lending institutions. Banks “got the guidelines at 3:00 p.m. and the program opened at 10:00 a.m. the next morning,” Frisch noted. This isn’t to say community banks weren’t able to process any applications. However, community banks reported that the system locked up because of the mass uploads by larger lending institutions. As a result, they had to manually enter applicant information, a process which is reported to take up to an hour.

It is worth noting that businesses owned by historically underrepresented ethnicities have been particularly impacted by these barriers. “COVID-19 exacerbated all pre-existing inequalities” Tara Lynn Gray, the CEO of the Fresno Black Chamber of Commerce said. Her group, which provides technical support to business owners of color, has helped 40 businesses through one-on-one sessions and nearly 330 businesses through webinars. “Not one business got funded in the first round, while seven got funded in the second round” she said.

Research from the Center for Responsible Lending backs this up. Their recently released report notes that banks tend to lend to larger businesses with greater payrolls. Even though businesses owned by people of color employ 7.2 million individuals, the report estimates that 95 percent of Black-owned businesses, 91 percent of Latino-owned businesses, 91 percent of Hawaiian- or Pacific Islander-owned businesses, and 75 percent of Asian American-owned businesses may stand little chance of receiving a loan because of these access issues.

Aside from the difficulty of getting a loan, no one knows how long funding will be available. To date, $669 billion has been allocated to SBA loans. That’s 19.11 percent of last year’s federal tax revenue. And with an estimated 70 percent of all small businesses applying for the program, there aren’t nearly enough funds to go around. Data from COVID Loan Tracker suggests that denial rates are as high as 90 percent, but the denial rate is likely higher in rural communities where there are fewer eligible banking institutions. McCargar and Frisch both noted that there was a lack of capital in these communities, even before the crisis. Many business owners have little more than their homes — or if they are lucky, personal savings — to rely on.

This sort of liquidity crisis has significant implications. During the last downturn and subsequent recovery, regions that had greater access to capital were able to reduce the number of layoffs and in turn, preserve the skill of their labor force. Areas that lacked access to financial resources experienced severe wage atrophy and decreased output.

Not surprisingly, it tended to be rural areas that were hardest hit by this  capital disparity. The results are still obvious today. California’s three most rural counties, Alpine, Mariposa, and Trinity, have seen far slower income growth since the Great Recession began, compared to the state’s three most urban counties of Alameda, Orange, and San Francisco. Nationwide, there are 0.2 percent fewer jobs in non-metropolitan areas since 2007, and labor force participation is over 7 points lower than in metropolitan areas.

The last decade’s decline is largely the result of decades worth of underinvestment in any concerted rural economic development strategy. Now, COVID-19 is stress testing the deteriorating financial and economic infrastructure of these communities. Already, they have lost 14 percent of bank branches in the past ten years, 43 percent more than their urban counterparts. Last year, 1 in 4 rural small businesses cited capital access as one of the biggest barriers to successfully running their business. With so many communities yet to recover from the Great Recession, the shock of COVID-19 only hurts that much more.

While the government’s efforts to prop up small business are a step forward from the last recovery efforts, there still needs to be a conscious attempt to address rural-centric financial issues. Not only did communities like Placerville have less capital going into the COVID-19 pandemic, they now face additional barriers to accessing the government programs intended to help them. No plan to help America can work without supporting financial services to our rural neighbors.

In the last few years, Lowery-Hart has risen to prominence on the basis of his rousing call to remake higher education to serve today’s typical college student: not an 18-year-old in a dorm but a mother with two part-time jobs and a pile of bills.

When the coronavirus pandemic shut down this college of roughly 10,000 students, Lowery-Hart moved his family photos and a stack of books to a circular welcome desk in the student commons. There, he greets students who don’t have a computer or reliable internet at home. He takes their temperature, asks about possible exposure to the coronavirus, and then, if they pass the screening, allows them to use a computer lab, with social distancing and constant cleaning.

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I spoke to Lowery-Hart last week to explore what students in poverty are facing during the pandemic, and how colleges are trying to help.

Marcella Bombardieri: The Texas Panhandle has become a hotspot for the coronavirus. How is that affecting the college?

Russell Lowery-Hart: We’ve had a huge explosion of COVID in our community, through the meatpacking plants that now can’t close [according to an order from President Trump]. So there’s all kinds of politics that I don’t want to be involved in, I just care about the people that we’re trying to serve and the neighbors that we live with.

How many Amarillo College students work in the meatpacking plants?

We don’t have firm numbers. What I have are emails from students saying, “I tested positive, and I need help, because I can’t study for my tests and I can’t work.” We’re trying to provide emergency aid and academic support while we’re worrying about their health.

Why did you keep one campus building open for students to use computers and get other types of help in person?

We had to protect our employees and our students, but we knew students that needed a computer [or lacked internet service]. It was really important to me that they had access to a computer, and that COVID not take their future away from them and force them to drop classes.

What are you hearing from the students who come in?

I’ve had a lot of people, they’ve lost their job, and they’re needing to apply for college. A lot of those students [have] heartbreaking stories. They were at Amarillo College, and they got a good job. So they stopped out, and took out loans that they didn’t repay that have gone into collection. And now the job they left all that for is gone. And they know that we’re the solution to their future, but they’re in this trap.

So we’re trying to create payment plans or find resources that can absolve the government money they owe, so they can access money to pay for school and living. It’s just a game of whack-a-mole in so many ways. Solving one need identifies seven other things that they’re needing.

We have students coming in because their internet went down. Or they’re really struggling with their class and they want to drop it, and I’m trying to talk them out of doing that — or talk them into doing that — depending on what’s best for them. All while taking their temperature with our thermal camera and having them bathe in sanitizer.

I talked to one student who had four or five kids at home, all between fourth grade and tenth grade. They’re all on one computer. The student is trying to do her job and her learning on the computer. And her husband’s trying to do his job on the computer. She burst into tears out of guilt that she was trying to escape her house.

Many of your students were poor before the pandemic. Do you have a sense of how much more hunger and housing insecurity your students are experiencing now?

I don’t have numbers on it, Marcella, because we made a decision that we’re not going to check for IDs and track. If you had a need, you got help. We’ve had community members come in and get bags of food. We’ve had a lot of students come in and get bags of food. We’ve gone through a lot of diapers and wipes and formula, and food items, and hygiene items. We’re not limiting the number of bags.

One of our students came in one day, sobbing. Her mother lost her job the week before, she’s got a [teenage relative] living in her house, and they’re all trying to survive now on [one] disability check. I tried to give her two bags of food. And she’s like, “I need to give one of these back. I know there are people that have greater needs than I do.”

It’s one of the things that I worry about with our students. It’s not a pride issue, it’s that they always think someone else needs it more than they do, when we have enough to help everyone.

Have you seen basic needs insecurity among Amarillo College staff, or adjunct instructors, in the past or since this crisis hit?

[Lowery-Hart got choked up as he answered.] I think it existed before, but I don’t know that I had to see it like I see it now. [One of our staff] has taken two bags of food home with her. If we hadn’t lifted the restrictions, I don’t think she would have ever asked for it. It’s one of the reasons why, with our CARES Act funds, we’re creating an emergency aid system not just for our students, but also for our employees.

You have criticized the CARES Act for prioritizing full-time students over part-time students in the formula that determines the funds available to each college. How can we better support community colleges and today’s students?

If you want to make stimulus money have the biggest impact with the lowest level of investment, it’s community colleges. The CARES Act is helpful. I don’t want to complain about the help that we’re going to be able to give students. But that money is also going to support for-profit colleges and universities that have huge endowments.

If you look at what we could give in emergency aid to our students [from CARES], you’re looking at $250 per student. And that’s not going manage a crisis for our students.

You have been through painful state budget cuts before. What’s going to happen when the state budget crashes?

We know the cycle, right? When there’s a crisis, our budgets get cut. And then, 12 to 18 months after the crisis, our enrollment increases as we’re getting funding cuts.

You’ve told me before that it’s not enough to train students for Amarillo’s job market, when many jobs aren’t high-quality. So you want to create better jobs in Amarillo, for example in technology fields like film visual effects. Now the economy is in shambles, so what does that look like?

That’s the question that I’ve lost sleep over. We were preparing for what was going to happen when [driverless trucking means] truckers no longer drive through your community and need your hotels and your restaurants. Well, that was a seven-year-away reality that happened overnight.

We are having conversations about, maybe you can’t graduate from Amarillo College without coding skills or baseline technology skills. That’s going to be a heavy lift for us.

What else do you lose sleep over?

I’m worried about the financial health of my community that was perilous to begin with. There was a huge economic disparity, and now I’m starting to see the Lexuses needing food pantries. The reality of living paycheck to paycheck — even if you had a healthy paycheck — if you’ve lost the paycheck, it doesn’t matter what car you drive. You’re in need.

This interview was condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

San Francisco enacted a citywide shelter-in-place order on March 17. Prior to the lockdown, Moss was seeing her three children twice a week in supervised settings like the public library or a designated visitation center. Now, she can only see her children through a screen.

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In response to the pandemic, child welfare agencies around the nation have been limiting or completely cutting off in-person visitation between children and their parents, leaving many families wondering when they will be in the same room again. It’s not just the immediate emotional consequences at stake: the extended time apart is bound to weaken some parents’ reunification cases. Experts are concerned it will lead to permanent dissolution of families unlucky enough to have open cases during the pandemic.

Although people unfamiliar with child protective services might believe the term refers to a unified national agency, “CPS” is actually an informal moniker that references a network of individual agencies run at state and jurisdictional levels under a variety of names, which are held together by a loose set of federal guidelines and a complex web of federal and state funding sources.

In some states, like New York and California, there have been no official statewide orders cutting off all in-person visitation; instead agencies have been directed to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. But those on the ground say this is still leaving many parents without a voice in the decision-making process.

Despite state-level guidance that visits take place whenever possible in New York, for example, “in individual cases we are seeing visits being curtailed…you might have a foster mother who has a vulnerability to COVID so she doesn’t want the children in her care going home for the weekends with their parents and coming back,” said Emma Ketteringham, managing attorney for the family defense practice with the Bronx Defenders.

In other states, like Idaho and Illinois, all in-person supervised visitations have been suspended. A few states, like Louisiana, continue to legally allow in-person supervised visitations, but are closing their buildings to the public and directing employees to work from home, which means supervised visitations, which often take place in these buildings and require staff to be physically present, cannot practically take place. While agencies appear to be allowing remote visitation when possible, for some — like parents with newborns and toddlers or children with developmental delays — remote visits just don’t work. In other cases, the parents, foster families, or agencies themselves might not be equipped with the technology necessary to facilitate remote visits.

Even in cases where these factors don’t apply, video communication is a meager replacement for face-to-face contact between a parent and a child, interrupting crucial bonding and raising the possibility of increased anxiety and depression in both parties, according to Richard Pittman, deputy public defender at the Louisiana Public Defender Board. Pittman expressed particular concern that parents might become so dejected by the loss of substantive contact with their children, as well as the loss of therapeutic services and mandatory classes that has gone hand-in-hand with the curtailed visits in many locations, that they might disengage altogether from the case. “Any progress they’ve made healing from the trauma of the initial removal is going to be reversed through all of this,” said Pittman.

Moss’ youngest child turned one shortly before the lockdown but had been in Texas with his foster mom on his birthday. Moss has still not been able to celebrate with him in person, and she’s terrified that she is now also going to miss his first steps.

“[He] had a long hard time learning to sit up and crawl. Luckily before this [lockdown] happened I got to see him to crawl and sit up. Now he’s on the verge of standing up on his own and I should be there for that. [His foster mom] is experiencing all this stuff that I should experience…I think it’s just going to break me if I don’t see my son walking,” she said. Moss also noted that her son has struggled with a recurring bronchial cough, which is particularly stressful during the pandemic, but she is barred from even texting his caregivers to inquire about his health without the social worker’s permission.

In child welfare cases, the consequences go further than feelings. Under the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), agencies are required to file for termination of parental rights when a child has been living in a non-relative out-of-home placement for 15 of the past 22 months. Some states have shortened that timeline to be as few as 12 months. Although parent attorneys should have a good case for requesting an extension — ASFA allows for consideration of mitigating circumstances and it’s hard to think of a better one than a pandemic — those extensions are neither guaranteed nor infinite. And once a termination petition is filed, bonding between parent and child is a crucial determining factor.

The factors that are used to determine whether or not it is in a child’s best interest to keep them permanently separated from their parent vary somewhat by state, but typically revolve around the ASFA timeline, the parent’s completion of court-ordered services like drug treatment and parenting classes, and the bond between parent and child, which is often measured by the frequency and quality of their visits.

“An agency can say ‘we understand the reason there weren’t visits is because of the coronavirus, but at this point it’s been x many months in foster care and they haven’t made progress and it would hurt the kids to go home now,’” said Amy Mulzer, a family defense appellate attorney in New York and an Elie Hirschfeld Family Defense Fellow at the NYU School of Law Family Defense Clinic.

Shayna, a Native American mother who lives in Wisconsin and asked that her real name not be printed in this story, has two children out-of-home in two different counties. Her youngest child has been on an adoption track, which means Shayna is fighting an uphill battle to have him returned home rather than having her parental rights terminated and her child forcibly adopted to his current caregivers. For her, the issue of bonding is not an abstract future hypothetical; it’s a very real factor she must now find a way to prove without being able to interact with her three-year-old in person.

“It seems like they are using the coronavirus as a reason to keep my son from me because they know the court date is coming up, which is not good because they don’t have observations on me from now to then,” she said. Her son’s foster placement had been in pre-adoptive status, but she was recently able to get her case placed back on a dual track, which means adoption and reunification are both on the table for the next six months. For her, visits could literally make or break her reunification case — but she says the social worker is refusing to use an approved family member as a supervisor in order to continue visits, even though that is technically allowed. “They are not utilizing any other options, just using this coronavirus to stop and hold the visits. I think they should look at the bigger picture: this little boy needs to be back with his mom.”

Less restrictive alternatives exist. For example, Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Welfare reform, suggested moving visits to open spaces like parks when possible, and expediting the return of children who can safely be returned home. San Francisco recently issued an order requiring agencies to make efforts to supply families in need with the appropriate technology to engage in remote video visitation. It also directed agencies to analyze and identify cases in which children were nearing reunification, and to fast-track their return home when possible. Advocates in New York City say similar efforts are being made, though it is unclear (in both locations) exactly how many families are on track to actually receive these benefits. These directives also leave a host of other details unanswered, such as the minutiae of moving a child from one location to the next — suddenly far more complicated when having to also consider infection control.

The Children’s Bureau within the federal Department of Health and Human Services issued a letter in response to the pandemic that included suggestions to state agencies about how to handle a variety of topics, including parent-child visitation. The guidelines discourage courts from “issuing blanket court orders reducing or suspending family time,” and asks agencies and courts to “be mindful of the need for continued family time, especially in times of crisis and heightened anxiety.”

While these suggestions come from a credible source and can bolster arguments in favor of continued family visitations, without Congressional action or agency rulemaking, they are not actual orders. This leaves states and agencies the license to develop their own pandemic protocols.

“If a child can’t see their parents for months at a time, they start to believe maybe their parents don’t love them,” said Michelle Chan, a mother with prior child services involvement, and founder of California Rise, a Bay area child welfare activist group. “I really am worried about the deterioration of the parent-child bond. I feel it should be the most important thing.”

My great-aunt’s workplace hasn’t provided her with any protective gear, even though grocery workers are, as Vogue decreed, “the new first responders” under COVID-19. She had to purchase masks for herself off Groupon for $30, no small expense on her wages. She was excited about her recent COVID-19-induced raise from $11 an hour to $13 an hour, even though the store cut her hours so ultimately she’s making about the same amount.

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“Before I guess I didn’t take this all serious,” my aunt says. “But I am anxious now, because people just keep coming in here. They’re not listening to the stay at home order. People come in there, and they’re not wearing masks.”

My great-aunt has a felony record, so she’s limited in the work she’s able to get. She can’t quit her job, because she went through so much to get this one: working at the temp agency and being driven across state lines to work in factories, getting rides to local hotels to beg for housekeeping work, struggling to make enough to get out of her recovery housing. “I just couldn’t get a job,” she recalls.

Nearly three-fourths of people released from prison remain unemployed a year after their release, and a criminal record can halve the chances of a job callback or offer; those chances are worse for Black applicants than white applicants. Gender complicates it further: Because women often work in fields that require background checks, like retail and caregiving, they may have an even harder time finding employment. In many states, including Pennsylvania, state law bars people with criminal records from caregiving jobs.

Many parole deals include an offer of employment as a requirement of release, increasing the urgency of the job search. It took my great-aunt, who is white, a year to get her part-time job at the grocery store; she’s worked there ever since.

Despite the risks, her position at the grocery store is a blessing. Other re-entry-friendly fields like retail have faced massive layoffs — more than 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment since late March, with Pennsylvania hit particularly hard — leaving more people with records looking for jobs. Grocery stores, on the other hand, are desperate for employees. Since they are considered essential, grocery stores are among the few establishments open, making them the main place for people to purchase household goods.

As a result, grocery stores may be where formerly incarcerated people turn first for work, despite the dangers. My great-aunt says her friend’s son was released from a Philly prison a few weeks ago with no warning — presumably due to COVID-19 concerns, but they’re not sure — and showed up on her friend’s doorstep. After a few days, they were able to get him into a halfway house a few towns away. He got a job at a local grocery store a week later.

People with a history of incarceration tend to be pushed into dangerous jobs, like construction, maintenance, and factory lines, with wages below the poverty line. These are often the jobs that others see as menial work; right now, these are the jobs that are on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic, because they don’t allow for social distancing and provide essential services to protect us all.

After all, you need to get your groceries somewhere. And when you get them, my great-aunt will be there, in the deli section, slicing your cold cuts, at great risk to her health. “I’m a little nervous about going, but I don’t have a choice,” she admits. “I need my paycheck. I’m grateful I still have a job, I look at how many people are unemployed and I’m just grateful I have a job.”

I’m not alone: A 2018 study from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding found that one-third of Muslims in America are at or below the poverty line. In fact, Black Muslim households are more likely than any other racial group to earn less than $30,000 a year. Of course, Muslims are feeling the economic impacts of the coronavirus crisis, such as soaring unemployment. However, the pandemic is also changing how Muslims will practice their faith. This year, Muslims in the United States must adapt to a Ramadan under the shadow of the novel coronavirus.

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In early April, the Fiqh Council of North America, a body of Islamic scholars from the United States and Canada, wrote “masajids and Islamic centers shall strictly follow the health and state official guidelines for social gatherings and distancing.” These necessary guidelines mean Muslims will not have access to some of the usual spaces for community in Ramadan, including the masjid’s iftars. For Black Muslim hubs, like Philadelphia, where community leaders estimate the Muslim population to be at 150,000 to 200,000 — or 10 to 15 percent of the total population — a Ramadan under lockdown can have drastic impacts on the community.

In Philadelphia, five masjids are responding to the pandemic with Philly Iftar 2020 where volunteers will help deliver iftars. It is one way to ensure that those who normally rely on the masjid to provide iftar are able to still access that service. Qasim Rashad, Amir of the United Muslim Masjid (UMM), located ten blocks from Philadelphia’s City Hall, told TalkPoverty, “We do service a low-income population and we rely upon those who have greater resources to help us do that.”

Outside of Philadelphia, Muslims continue to worry about how their communities will fare. Aicha Belabbes, a Muslim living in Boston, shared that she was furloughed due to the pandemic and it has amplified some of her pre-existing concerns for her community.

“In Boston, there were iftars galore. If you needed food, there was always a place to go,” Belabbes told TalkPoverty. “Now, I think for students, for low-income people, for [essential workers like] delivery drivers, Uber drivers, there’s no longer those places of food. Ramadan served as an escape for so many people who had difficult relationships with their families and things like that and were able to find their safe spaces. Now, that’s no longer the case.”

Belabbes said pre-existing organizations who deliver food to Muslims have been “at capacity during the virus.” In addition, a food bank run out of a local Black masjid shut down after the imam showed COVID-like symptoms. Safiyah Cheatam, a Baltimore-based interdisciplinary artist, also told TalkPoverty that go-to gathering spots in her city are no longer viable. Many in Cheatam’s community rely on masjids or Muslim-owned establishments like Nailah’s Kitchen, a Senegalese restaurant, for iftar and she sees a need for relief like the mutual aid grants popular on social media.

Masjids are not the only ones taking on the issue of food access. In Buffalo, New York, Drea d’Nur, an artist and mother of five, founded healthy and halal food pantry Feed Buffalo in 2018. She was inspired by her own experiences using food pantries where there were no halal options and few healthy foods. d’Nur told TalkPoverty, “In the discussion of building healthy communities, we stand on the truth that no one should be exempt from healthy food access despite health conditions or spiritual practices. It was important to me that Muslims have a space that honors the halal standard and that all are served with love.”

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Feed Buffalo is now functioning as an emergency food relief center for at least four hours every day of the week. In addition, the pantry will hold its second annual Ramadan Healthy Food Giveaway, where d’Nur estimates that Feed Buffalo provides 200 healthy food bags to fasting families, and commits to preparing soups for at least 50 families using ingredients from local farmers once a week.

Support for low-income Muslims in Ramadan extends past food alone. For example, while some Muslims may be able to access community by congregating with their families (or whoever else they’re already social distancing with) in their homes, this isn’t an option for everybody. Both Belabbes and Cheatam raised concerns over reports of rising domestic violence rates during the pandemic. Home may not be a safe space or, like myself, you may live alone and be the only Muslim in your family. Rashad shared that the UMM is conscious of this and will continue making plans to look after the spiritual needs of its community. Rashad said, “We want to keep and maintain that spiritual connection because spiritual mental health is important. We want to maintain their connection to Allah and their connection to the masjid.”

Belabbes hopes that the larger Muslim community understands issues amplified by the pandemic will not disappear when it ends. Belabbes said, “I’ve seen a lot of people saying, ‘I’ve never had to do things virtually.’ But a lot of Muslims who are marginalized had to do things virtually for a long time. I would like there to be an understanding that in the eyes of Allah, everyone’s equal, and everybody deserves to be seen equally in the community.”

He would eventually learn that he had overdosed while using heroin, possibly laced with fentanyl, with a couple of guys who he met during his recent stint in jail. A few days later, Derbyshire woke up withdrawing and confused again. This time, he was in the bathroom of a Wal-Mart, and he had been revived by paramedics — which meant he had to run, because if the police took down his information, he would probably go right back to jail for violating the terms of his release.

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The two overdoses took place within days of each other in early April 2018, both less than two weeks after his release from Atlantic County Jail in New Jersey. Derbyshire, a 40-year-old tile setter with a history of opioid addiction, had been picked up for a bench warrant and a probation violation related to drug use.

He spent two months inside, during which he was involuntarily detoxed from opioids. He described the jail’s withdrawal protocol as two daily cups of a sports drink while being held on 23-hour lock down in a cell with two other men. Every other day or so, someone would check his vitals, and that was it. No methadone, no follow-up care after his release. And Derbyshire isn’t unique. In his case, he was not able to get methadone because he had not been incarcerated enough — one of many requirements at his facility’s program.

David Kelsey, the Atlantic County Jail warden, commented that “since its inception [the methadone treatment program] has provided services and referred to treatment eight hundred individuals.” In most other facilities, evidence-based treatment is not offered to anyone. But unlike Derbyshire, many of those who overdose after release don’t get up again.

As the nation struggles to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, jails and prisons are beginning to release groups of people who are deemed safe for community return. Detention facilities in the United States are notoriously overcrowded, making them transmission hotbeds should the virus find a way in. Already, staff and inmates have tested positive in facilities in Florida, New York, and other places around the nation. California recently announced plans to release 3,500 people from state prisons, and New York City has already released 900. Montgomery County, Alabama, released over 300 people. The majority of people being identified for early release are those who have been accused or charged with non-violent offenses, many of which involve drugs.

A study out of Washington State found that in the first two weeks post-release, the relative risk of fatal overdose among former inmates was 129 times higher than the general population. A longitudinal study out of North Carolina found the risk of fatal overdose was 40 times higher than the general population in the first two weeks after release; for heroin users specifically, the risk was 74 times higher. And a 2019 article published in the journal of Addiction Science and Clinical Practice named post-release opioid-related overdose the “leading cause of death among people released from jails or prisons.”

The reasons behind this dramatic rise in risk are complex. The most obvious factor is that when people are forcibly detoxed from opioids but not provided adequate treatment for the underlying addiction, they return to their communities with significantly decreased tolerance but no more tools to help them deal with cravings than they had when they went in.

“They’re not cured, they’re not treated, they’re not in recovery, they just haven’t been able to use,” said Lipi Roy, a clinical assistant professor at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and an internal medicine physician who specializes in addiction. “Whether [the period of incarceration] be three months or three years, it doesn’t matter … The brain doesn’t forget.”

But new research suggests it’s not just a matter of simple tolerance. The unique social, environmental, and psychological factors faced by people who were recently released from incarceration also contribute to the enormous elevation in overdose risk. Now more than ever, as community supports shutter or limit their services in response to the pandemic and people are urged to stay home, those being released from incarceration are entering a new world filled with more stress and less stability and support than ever before.

“Decarceration without re-entry support systems is only going to be a halfway measure,” said Sheila Vakharia, the deputy director of research and academic engagement at the Drug Policy Alliance. “You can’t let people walk out the doors and assume they will be safer outside than inside.”

“If you think of a person in this situation, they may not have a place to live or the same social networks as when they went in. They might be more worried than usual of being arrested so they may be more likely to inject in hidden places and alone and to rush the shot,” said Megan Reed, a PhD candidate at Drexel University’s school of public health and the principal investigator in an NIH funded study on overdose risk after release. “Very few of the harms we associate with drug use have to do with the drug itself or the actual drug impact on the body; it’s the conditions in which somebody is using.”

Incarceration is a highly destabilizing experience that carries a host of other potential negative outcomes. While incarcerated, people are at risk of losing employment, housing, and even custody of their children, especially during long periods of detainment. Furthermore, the stigma associated with arrest and incarceration, or simply the difficulty and expense of communicating with the outside world while behind bars, can disrupt important familial and social relationships, leaving people with a smaller and weakened support system upon release.

Reed also pointed out that many people who have criminal justice involvement enter the system at heightened risk of fatal overdose. For example, people experiencing homelessness are at both heightened risk of overdose and incarceration. Rates of HIV and mental illness — both independent risk factors for fatal overdose — are also high in detention facilities. Many of these are also thought to be risk factors for severe cases of COVID-19, adding an extra source of anxiety for vulnerable people during the outbreak.

This pre-arrest susceptibility combined with decreased tolerance and the stress and uncertainty that people are facing after they have been released from jail or prison creates a perfect storm of dangerous vulnerabilities. “You have concentrations of other overdose risk factors already inside, and the communities that people are returning to are the same communities that are most impacted in the first place,” said Reed.

Exacerbating all of this is a lack of access to the most effective treatments for addiction to opioids, methadone and buprenorphine. Both are opioid-agonist medicines that reduce craving and withdrawal by filling the same receptors as short-acting opioids like heroin, but without delivering a euphoric high in patients who are properly maintained. They are both approved by a slew of licensing bodies, including the World Health Organization, which has included them on the list of essential medicines because of their proven efficacy in treating opioid use disorder and reducing harmful consequences of use, such as fatal overdose. Unfortunately, the majority of detention facilities in the United States do not offer these medications to inmates who are not pregnant.

“Because most correctional facilities still don’t offer standard of care treatment for opioid use disorder with methadone or buprenorphine, people are released not on treatment back to the community. Unsurprisingly, recurrence rates for opioid use are high and because people’s tolerance is reduced their risk of overdose increases dramatically,” said Sarah Wakeman, medical director of the Substance Use Disorders Initiative at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard University.

The federal government recently loosened regulations around the prescribing of methadone and buprenorphine during the pandemic, but did not address access to people who are currently incarcerated.

Research has shown that maintaining people on medications for opioid use disorder while incarcerated and providing low-barrier referrals upon release will dramatically reduce the post-incarceration overdose rate. Wakeman and other experts also suggest dispensing naloxone, the drug that can reverse an opioid overdose, to people who are being released back into the community.

Spurred by lawsuits and activism, an increasing number of facilities are beginning to offer access to these medicines, but the majority of detention centers remain reticent. This is unlikely to change without a major shift in the way the criminal justice system views and handles drug use and addiction.

“Our justice system is the biggest houser of people with substance use disorders and mental health disorders in this country,” said Vakharia. “[But] they weren’t built for this…they were built to house the ‘bad guys’ in the most simple understanding of how that works and what that means. They were never built or staffed to think of the long term, nuanced needs of people with these multifaceted challenges.”

The spread of this coronavirus coincides with the greatest number of unsheltered residents living on the streets of San Francisco: about 8,000 adults, 71 percent of whom once had a permanent home in the city. Jacintho, the director of addiction medicine at HealthRight 360, a clinic that has provided comprehensive support to people experiencing homelessness for over 50 years, says health care practitioners who serve those experiencing homelessness are rushing to aid a population that has long been forgotten by the city.

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Physicians and other care providers say what’s notable about the city’s response in assisting the most vulnerable San Franciscans is that the strategies deployed during the emergency are exactly the tools city leaders had been dragging their feet on implementing, such as stopping police sweeps, working with hotels to set up housing, and making sure those experiencing homelessness have access to comprehensive preventative health care.

California’s Bay Area was one of the first regions in the country to institute a shelter-in-place order, which drew ire among advocates. At first, those experiencing homelessness were exempt from the order, and later were advised to “seek shelter.” How exactly were the tens of thousands of those suffering from homelessness supposed to follow the order? And, because sheltering in place is the centerpiece of the public health response to the pandemic, how do we provide everyone with the space and security to follow these recommendations?

These are exactly the kinds of questions that Margot Kushel, a physician at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, the city’s safety net hospital, thinks about. “There is no medicine as powerful as housing,” she says. “Homelessness is completely incompatible with health.” Housing stability has manifold impacts on those experiencing homelessness, and studies have shown that nearly 90 percent of recipients of organization-supported rehousing or rental assistance are housed in permanent homes a year after their initial transition.

Kushel, who has advised on what model policies should look like to help people make the transition from living on the streets to secure housing, says city medical teams are now conducting direct outreach to those living in unstable housing, like tents. Based on age and other medical vulnerabilities, physicians help those living on the streets understand what their options are for locating temporary shelter. Given that shelter is the first priority of physicians and policy makers, the epidemic has exposed how closely tied housing and health are.

Shelters, which typically offer clients housing for a set number of months, have relaxed some of these requirements and the city is working to make 6,555 hotel rooms available. But it’s work that has to be conducted carefully; the city can’t force someone to live in a room that’s not in their neighborhood or is located away from their community. “That’s a huge thing for the homeless population,” Jacintho says, “the shuffling of them to shelters.” This temporary housing is also the first step in seeking permanent housing solutions, not an ultimate solution.

Educating those seeking aid has made some of the everyday care work more complex. In pre-COVID times, Jacintho says, he would sit face to face with a client to go over their needs, symptoms, progress, and concerns, but now he’s communicating with them via a computer or a phone. Telemedicine might be a natural shift for someone who uses devices every day, but for those experiencing homelessness, Jacintho says it’s “definitely a shift for [his clients] culturally.”

The outbreak has meant a downturn in those coming into clinics, for others. Chuck Cloinger, the chief medical officer at St. James Infirmary, an occupational and health safety clinic for sex workers in the Bay Area, says that their mostly-volunteer team has focused on street support in order to aid clients.

Cloinger and his team are focused on making sure that essential health services that may not appear to be directly related to coronavirus management don’t fall through the cracks. Though they’re no longer conducting health screenings in their mobile clinic, the St. James Infirmary van goes out once a week to facilitate needle exchange and deliver other essential goods like hot foods and groceries.

At first, the spread of COVID-19 among unhoused residents was slower than those with shelter, but as of April 13 at least 90 people at a shelter in the city have tested positive. Unsheltered San Franciscans are already medically vulnerable, and with coronavirus testing still lagging far behind the necessary levels, the true number of impacted unsheltered residents is unknown.

If anything, Kushel hopes the recognition of homelessness as a public health crisis in and of itself — and one that can be remedied or even eradicated through systemic change — is a matter of what she calls “political will.”  Even though San Francisco voters passed Measure C in 2018, which would tax large companies to fund services for those experiencing homelessness, the money is still tied up in court. With early action from the San Francisco Department of Public Health and coordination with hotels to mitigate coronavirus as a public health concern, advocates may be right to wonder when it is that living on the streets without shelter will be seen as an issue of public concern as well.

The San Francisco Homeless Outreach Team was unable to respond to a request for comment.

They are considered “working poor,” a classification that simply means they are not paid enough. Many of these families are regulars at CANV, visiting the market-style food bank once a week. Before the coronavirus crisis began in earnest, the organization served about 30 to 40 of these workers and their families a day, three days a week.

Almost overnight, that number has tripled.

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Food banks, like unemployment numbers, act as a weathervane for determining the severity of our current crisis — and the crisis is severe. But they are not built to single-handedly tackle the increased demands these crises create.

As of the first week of April, 17 million Americans have applied for unemployment insurance, shattering a decades-old record and providing a clear look at the unprecedented scale of the current economic and health crisis. According to an early April estimate from the Economic Policy Institute, that number could reach 20 million by summer. Though the President signed a relief bill in late March that bolsters unemployment insurance and will issue direct cash payments to low and middle-income Americans and families with children, it will be months before most people receive that help — and undocumented families will never receive it at all.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which could help people immediately, received relatively little additional funding. Food banks will be, as always, left to pick up the slack.

Food banks in Napa, Contra Costa and Solano, and Humboldt counties all report higher demand than they’ve ever seen, topping last year’s record-setting wildfires. Food is harder to track down since hoarding has decimated supply chains and shelter in place orders have constricted the supply of volunteer workers, most of whom, staff say, are over 65 and more vulnerable to complications from the novel coronavirus. As a result, demand is up, supplies are strained, and the labor needed to distribute them is increasingly unavailable.

At Humboldt county’s main food bank location, nearby construction crews had to volunteer to help manage crowd control, freeing up the remaining regular volunteers and staff to develop and run a drive-thru model that reduced person-to-person contact. Contra Costa and Solano counties in the Bay Area are moving towards a home delivery-only system, but the labor-intensive delivery strategy is only possible with the support of the National Guard, which started providing 1,000 hours of service per week for the food bank at the end of March. Across the state, an increasing number of food banks were looking to do the same, seeking the Guard’s help with deliveries, crowd control, and assembling supplies.

But for many of the people relying on these resources, the sight of uniformed law enforcement is not necessarily a comforting one. Each food bank, regardless of location, noted the profound anxieties that uniformed law enforcement trigger in their Latinx and undocumented communities. In Napa County, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have terrorized the close-knit town. In one particularly traumatic instance, ICE apprehended a father at his child’s school after morning drop-off. To many, gathering as a community at a law enforcement-run food drive-thru feels like a bigger risk than their current desperate circumstances.

Food banks are not intended to be the first line of defense in the fight against hunger, but a place to turn to when other options like SNAP, WIC, free and reduced school meals, and unemployment insurance aren’t enough. When these programs are properly funded, they work. The last time America was on the brink of economic collapse, in 2009, the most successful policy in Congress’ $800 billion stimulus package was its SNAP expansion. For every $1 in additional funding, $1.74 was generated in economic output.

Because SNAP was mostly sidelined in the COVID-19 response, already-strained food banks are now left scrambling.

Each problem these California food banks face is exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, but the problems themselves are not new. Increased demand, dwindling supply, and a lack of capacity to meet their communities’ need has been their daily reality long before this crisis. The overwhelming need they’ve been forced to meet so far definitively shows how catastrophic this crisis already is. The federal government’s plodding and inadequate response to it shows why these communities were so precarious to begin with.

During that time some of us did push-ups, others laid on their cots and read, some used the time to write letters or look at their legal work; a few napped, and most of us did a mixture of them all until the jail unilaterally decided that it was safe for us to come back out.

Social isolation is the current fate of most people in this country, and we are all tussling with the dual stressors of our newfound isolation and fear of the virus. But the millions of people in jails throughout the U.S. who can’t afford bail are facing a form of isolation that’s much more severe. If you think it’s hard to share your apartment with your spouse, trying stepping into your bathroom for the next two weeks, along with hundreds of other people, all while a pandemic is preventing your family from being with you during this time of crisis. And that’s just to get your day in court.

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Even before the current crisis, states like Alaska, California, and New Jersey had taken the humane position of ending cash bail, so that those awaiting trial no longer have to pay up in order to leave jail while they wait to see if they are proven guilty or innocent. New York followed suit in January, but rolled back key bail reforms last week via a budget package.

Now that the country is battling coronavirus, it’s even more important to end cash bail. Jails are full of public health hazards: A large number of people share a small space, often with limited access to soap, so infectious diseases can spread rapidly. In addition, the prison population is aging quickly — the number of incarcerated people over 55 has ballooned by 400 percent since 1993 — increasing the risk of serious illness. Holding people before trial increases the likelihood that they’re exposed to the novel coronavirus, making them more likely to spread COVID-19 in the prison and after their release.

We’re already seeing this spread take place. As of April 6, more than 600 prisoners and staff members at Rikers Island have tested positive for COVID-19. Four staff members and one incarcerated person have died. Nearly 300 prisoners and staff have tested positive in Cook County, Illinois, and at least two two inmates have died of the virus in Louisiana. And while some cities, like Los Angeles, are responding by releasing, the Federal Bureau of Prisons has opted to place all 167,000 federal prisoners under lockdown. While the world is in search of a vaccine, the commonsense reaction would be to reduce places of contagion.

Still, some are opposed to bail reform, citing a jump in crime numbers from the first two months after New York ended the practice as evidence of the need to repeal bail legislation. Lawmakers in Alaska attempted to roll back their bail reform legislation after just a couple of months. Law enforcement and the bail bonds industry have mounted claims of an uptick in crime in the brief implementation of the new laws. Their underlying argument is that the world of criminals has been studying new bail laws and conspired to take advantage by committing more crimes while awaiting their day in court. Lies and fear cajole the public into believing that bail reform is criminal justice reform going too far. Even progressive Democrats backpeddled.

Less than six months is not enough to prove ending money bail causes any increase in crime.

New Jersey ended cash bail in 2017 and has seen major crime and pretrial populations fall by double-digit percentages. Offenses like robbery and homicide are down by 30 percent, and there were “6,000 fewer people incarcerated under criminal justice reform on October 3, 2018 compared to the same day in 2012.”

But now those statistics are backed with something: The tiniest shred of experience. The country has gone through self-imposed quarantines, governmental prohibitions on gatherings of groups larger than 10, and containment zones that could make it easier to understand the experience of incarceration even without studying those numbers.

Should innocent until proven guilty people, like you, be isolated in a cage?

Have we forgotten the motivation behind bail reform in America? A 16-year old child, Kalief Browder, committed suicide because of the trauma associated with his indigence. He spent two years in jail because he could not afford bail. Prison beat his soul physically and emotionally. The country was horrified. Jay-Z made a documentary about him. There was a collective awakening that the concept of money bail was an arcane law that penalized poor people who came into contact with the criminal legal system. Elected officials were championing the cause for bail reform. And yet for some reason, we stopped.

The inhumanity of the notion that bail reform will be rescinded, especially in the era of COVID-9, should compel us to question our civil society. We should want fewer people contained in the petri dish of incarceration in order to prevent the spread of the disease, and in order to prevent people who literally cannot escape their surroundings from being infected. There’s simply no reason to be holding people in cells where they could contract the disease simply because they are too poor to get out.

Humans are not viruses. And no segment of humanity should be considered dispensable, convicted or not. Ending money bail is efficient and humane and should be allowed more than a just a few months to prove its overall success.

Cities have all but shut down in response to public health advisories. Millions of people are working from home or other non-office locations in order to honor “social distancing,” leading to a surge in home deliveries for app-based workers like Instacart’s Shoppers, who are tasked with shopping and delivering customers’ groceries. Instacart itself reported that Shoppers have seen on average a 15 percent increase in basket sizes.

However, despite the heightened risk that Shoppers are facing by doing the work that is considered too dangerous for the general public, Shoppers say Instacart hasn’t made much of an effort to protect them from potential transmission or incentivized them to cease working despite the risks it poses.

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Instacart initially said it would give two weeks’ paid leave through April 8 to any Shopper who tested positive for the coronavirus, despite the fact that tests are rarely accessible . However, one Shopper TalkPoverty spoke to said that they didn’t know a single person who had received paid sick leave.

In response, Instacart Shoppers nationwide walked off the job March 30, their second strike in four months, and are refusing to return until their demands are met. Because gig workers like Instacart Shoppers work alone, they rarely have face-to-face contact with one another, highlighting how extraordinarily prepared they must be to conduct a large-scale labor action such as this.

In a Medium post announcing the strike, Instacart Shoppers working with labor organization Gig Workers Collective wrote that they were demanding an added $5 of hazard pay per order as well as provision of complimentary sanitation supplies such as cleansing wipes and hand sanitizer, paid time off for Shoppers with preexisting conditions that put them at high risk if they contracted coronavirus or whose doctors advised them to self-isolate, and an extension of these benefits beyond April 8.

“Instacart has turned this pandemic into a PR campaign, portraying itself the hero of families that are sheltered-in-place, isolated, or quarantined,” Gig Workers Collective wrote.

“Instacart has refused to act proactively in the interests of its Shoppers, customers, and public health, so we are forced to take matters into our own hands. We will not continue to work under these conditions. We will not risk our safety, our health, or our lives for a company that fails to adequately protect us, fails to adequately pay us, and fails to provide us with accessible benefits should we become sick.”

Instacart Shoppers can make as little as $7 for up to three orders or $5 for up to five deliveries only, due to the company’s opaque algorithm structure for compensation, and aren’t automatically entitled to employment benefits such as sick leave or health care due to their independent contractor status. Some have argued that they are being misclassified and should be termed employees. In a historic first, the CARES Act, which President Trump signed into law March 27, extended unemployment benefits to gig workers. However, because these benefits are taxpayer-subsidized, they relieve gig companies like Instacart of any legal obligation to provide employee benefits.

Matthew Telles, a veteran Shopper in the Chicago suburbs, said that while he makes himself available on the Instacart app to work for as many as 77 hours a week, the amount of time he actually spends working for Instacart has dwindled since fewer and fewer batches can actually cover his expenses.

“I work anywhere from about zero to eight hours a week for Instacart, and that’s [only] when they pay enough to obtain my secured services,” he said, adding that the pandemic has driven down wages even more.

He explained that since authorities began encouraging people to stay home, Instacart has essentially begun bundling three orders into one by combining multiple “orders” into one batch. That allows the company to elide per-order pricing, leading Shoppers to accept batches that may promise a large amount of money that decreases when they reach the actual register to check.

If a customer asks for, say, 20 unique items, Shoppers are guaranteed a base pay plus tip that’s a particular percentage of the entire order. However, because grocers are now limiting the quantity of particular items one can buy, such as toilet paper and wipes, Shoppers are forced to buy less of a particular item, allowing Instacart to pare down the guaranteed wage and tip for every item a Shopper can’t secure for a customer.

On top of that, Telles added, Instacart is capitalizing upon laid off workers’ desperate need to pay the bills by ramping up their operations. On March 23, Instacart CEO Apoorva Mehta announced plans to hire 300,000 new Shoppers in response to anticipated customer demand over the next few months.

“They’re not vetting who’s a Shopper now,” Telles said. “It’s pretty much — if you’re alive, you can be a Shopper.”

Vanessa Bain, a Silicon Valley-based Shopper and founder of Gig Workers Collective, agreed.

“It’s going to be a disaster if [Instacart] is successful in hiring 300,000 people,” she said. “Veteran Shoppers are breaking down. The last time I shopped, I had an anxiety attack. And that’s just speaking about veteran Shoppers who are used to the general stress of the job. I can’t imagine what it’s like for new people just getting their footing. It’s really uncharted territory, shopping during the middle of a pandemic. People aren’t respecting social distancing in grocery stores.”

Bain added that because she lives with multiple elderly people who are at high risk of contracting coronavirus, she hasn’t shopped since March 13.

Sarah Clarke, another Gig Workers Collective organizer, said Instacart was capitalizing upon the divide between its corporate employees, who are guaranteed benefits such as health insurance and remote work, and that of Shoppers, whom many cities and local governments consider “essential workers” but aren’t treating as such.

“Instacart knows there are workers who can afford to stay at home and shelter in place, and then there are workers who absolutely need the money and who will work under any conditions because they have to,” Clarke said. “But you can’t really fault someone who’s working while they’re sick if they absolutely need to [to pay their bills].”

Above all else, however, all three organizers TalkPoverty spoke to said that the strike was being conducted out of concern for Shoppers’ customers, who bear the brunt of the risks they say Instacart is forcing them to shoulder by not guaranteeing basic sick leave and protective equipment.

“If [Shoppers] get the virus, most likely we will pass it on to customers,” Clarke said. “Lots of Shoppers are living in fear because they’re terrified they’ll pass it on to customers.”

“We’re the people customers interface with,” Bain said. “Most people who have ordered [from Instacart] are doing so to comply with the shelter in place, and to mitigate the risk of spreading disease. It’s literally now a matter of public health and safety.”

“It’s reckless,” Telles stated, speaking for himself, not the strike organizers. “We’re out here risking our lives. If I were a state official, I’d bar Instacart from my state.”

Following the strike announcement, Instacart almost immediately updated its policies. In an email to TalkPoverty, the company said it had extended its paid leave through May 6 to anyone who had been ordered by a state, local, or public health official to self-isolate or quarantine, but made no mention of Shoppers’ demands for personal protective equipment (PPE) or added hazard pay. Instacart added on Sunday that it would allow customers to set their own default tip payment, but workers said it’s not enough: The company is still refusing hazard pay and expanded sick pay.

But it’s too little too late, Bain said.

“We all have the potential of becoming vectors. Everyone’s a stakeholder. The stakes are very different from normal working conditions. Nobody should be against the idea of workers having safety measures to keep their customers alive and themselves safe.”

Editor’s note: This post has been updated to clarify Instacart’s compensation structure for batch orders. 

He still has to go every single day to get his medication, without which he would go into weeks of painful opioid withdrawal. My husband is one of hundreds of thousands of people across the country who rely on medications like methadone and buprenorphine to curb addiction to opioids and stay out of withdrawal, and who are now wondering whether they are going to continue to have access during the novel coronavirus pandemic, or risk being exposed to the virus by visiting facilities daily.

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The short answer is yes, facilities that prescribe and dispense these medications are continuing to run, and patients should not lose access to medications for opioid use disorder during this crisis. Methadone and buprenorphine are classified by the World Health Organization as essential medicines, which means continued access to them should be a priority. Various government agencies have issued guidelines and legal exceptions to a number of rules and regulations that usually limit access to these medications, in the hope of reducing visits to clinics.

But, of course, there’s a longer and far more complex answer as well.

Although methadone and buprenorphine treat the same disorder in relatively similar ways, they are governed by vastly different sets of rules and regulations. “On the [buprenorphine] side, the minimum you tend to see prescribed is a week. It would be easy in that case to give those patients a two-week prescription or call in an extra script with a refill. On the [methadone] side, that’s where it gets hairy,” said Zac Talbott, president of the National Alliance for Medication Assisted Recovery (NAMA-R), who also has direct experience as a patient and running facilities that provide these medicines.

Buprenorphine can be prescribed by any doctor or advanced practice registered nurse who has taken an eight-hour waiver course. That means patients can access it in a number of settings including primary care, psychiatry, gynecology, or addiction treatment facilities. Methadone, on the other hand, can only be dispensed for addiction treatment from a licensed opioid treatment provider (OTP), commonly referred to as a methadone clinic. It is governed by a complex web of rules, regulations, and policies that come from federal agencies, state authorities, and individual clinic directors. Since methadone is a better option for people with higher tolerances to opioids, and doesn’t require patients to go into withdrawal before starting it, it’s essential that both medicines are available.

“There’s going to be a broad variety in the way OTPs respond,” said Talbott. “Patients need to realize this could vary from state to state because of state authorities.”

Across the nation, State Opioid Treatment Authorities, who make state-level decisions about medications for opioid use disorder, have been looking to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), for guidance on how they can respond to the novel coronavirus outbreak. This agency governs the rules around making medication available to be taken at home, instead of in a clinic (colloquially called “takehomes”), and many other methadone regulations at the federal level. Elinore F. McCance-Katz, the head of SAMHSA and the assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, told TalkPoverty by email that “SAMHSA/HHS are working in an ongoing manner with states and communities facing these issues. We have provided flexibilities to the states to help to assure that those on medications for opioid use disorders continue to get their medication. We have also been working to expand the ability to provide services by telehealth modalities wherever possible.”

Washington state, where the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 appeared in the United States, was the first state to receive the ability to dispense extended takehomes, lasting up to 14 days, to specified populations without first applying for individual permissions like providers must do normally.

“As of the 9th we have essentially put out seven different types of blanket takehome exception requests that programs can request per federal law to allow a large majority of individuals who are considered stable—and that’s determined at the discretion of each program medical director—to allow them to move beyond just daily or close to daily dosing,” said Jessica Blouse, of the Washington State Opioid Treatment Authority. “For buprenorphine there are no federal rules, so [those patients] can be moved to whatever level can be determined as safe.”

But that doesn’t mean all Washington patients will receive these benefits. Tanna, a patient who lives between the cities of Seattle and Tacoma, said she has not been offered any takehome doses. The reason, she was told, is because she has been with that provider just over three months, so she is still considered a new and therefore unstable patient—even though she transferred from another clinic where she had earned a month of takehomes.

She is also required to attend four hours of group therapy each month. Last week, her group had eight attendees and she did not notice any special precautions in place due to the virus.

“The only accommodation they’ve made [in the clinic] is at the dosing window there’s now hand sanitizer, the trash is moved a little bit, nurses wear gloves, and the [dosing] window screen is lowered,” she said.

On March 16, SAMHSA updated its guidelines specifying that all states with declared states of emergency could request blanket exceptions in order to provide stable patients with 28 days of takehome medication, and 14 days of takehome medication for patients considered less stable but still able to safely handle the extra medication. In states without a declared emergency status, each clinic is eligible to apply for similar exceptions for their patients.

The updated guidelines from SAMHSA allow states and providers greater flexibility to dispense takehome medication—but that does not mean that every clinic will utilize that flexibility to its fullest extent, nor that they will apply it to each patient.

“It may come down to the fact that patients will need to be given 14 day supplies,” said Mark Parrino, president of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence. “However it should be case by case …We want to let people quarantine to clearly stop the spread of the disease, [but] remember we are dealing with opioids. Opioids in the hands of unstable patients can be dangerous. We don’t want to flood the community with a lot of methadone in the hands of unstable patients who may not be able to deal with the fact that suddenly they have a two-week supply.”

“People who are least likely to get takehomes are people who are new to treatment and people who have unstable housing, unstable psychosocial situations, people who might be continuing to use other substances, people with underlying health concerns; things that mean they have instability in their life. I would argue they are the people who should get takehomes immediately,” said Keith Brown, a harm reduction advocate currently working at the county level in Schenectady, New York on the COVID-19 response. “This is going to get into the argument about which is more dangerous, giving people takehomes they might sell or whatever—but in a public health crisis, people are going to have to make determinations about what makes sense. Having a few hundred people come into a clinic every day is a transmission nightmare.”

It’s impossible to know what every single state and clinic will do with their expanded discretion. Reports coming in from patients and providers indicate the response is as varied as opinions on addiction.

Justine Waldman, the medical director of REACH, a harm reduction-based buprenorphine clinic in Ithaca, New York, has begun offering one and two month scripts to her buprenorphine patients, giving longer scripts to those who have a harder time getting in to the office or who have a history of missing appointments. Her emphasis is on access and patient health over surveillance. The caveat, she stressed, is that this is an entirely new situation that is evolving each day.

“We might decide tomorrow that the way we’re doing it now isn’t working. We are really having to come together and take it day by day,” she said.

Jana Burson, who is the medical director of an OTP in North Carolina, said that while her clinic is not giving most patients extended takehomes, they are utilizing measures to help keep the facility sanitized, and to enforce social distancing while patients are in the building. For example, the lobby chairs have been spaced to be at least six feet apart, and some counselors with smaller offices are moving individual counseling sessions to larger rooms. They are aggressively disinfecting chairs, door handles, countertops, and other shared surfaces.

Vanessa, a patient in North Carolina, reported that her clinic was not dispensing any extra takehomes. She normally receives takehomes for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, but was called in this Monday for a drug test and bottle check, a practice observed by some clinics in which they count patients’ takehome bottles. She described her clinic as “really business as usual” besides seeing staff taking patient temperatures. She noted that her temperature was not taken when she stopped by for the drug test. On Thursday morning she texted me an update that she was going to be given seven takehomes, but would have to pay for them out of pocket.

Stephanie, a patient in Pennsylvania, says she has continued to receive her regular six takehomes, but that group meetings and individual counseling sessions have been canceled until further notice. When she pressed for more information, her counselor replied that for the clinic to shut down “it would have to be the end of the world and there would be zombies,” but conceded that they were giving some extra takehomes to medically fragile patients.

Emily, who has hepatitis C, has not been offered any takehome doses by her Lexington, Ky., clinic, but reported that all patients are being stopped upon entering the building and questioned about potential symptoms. People who report feeling unwell are dosed from their cars, and only five patients are being allowed to enter the building at a time. Groups have been canceled, and individual counseling sessions are being done over the phone.

Samantha, a pregnant patient in Central Florida, reported that she was given 13 takehomes and had a doctor’s appointment canceled so she would not have to go in on an extra day.

In South Florida, my husband Ricardo still goes in for dosing every day, but told me his clinic was advising patients to be prepared to pay two weeks in advance should the need for two weeks of takehomes arise. For my husband, that means shelling out $224. For patients at other clinics, the price can vary in either direction, but not typically by much.

My husband’s experience highlights another concern facing patients on these medications. For some, extended scripts mean more money up front. Some methadone patients who pay out of pocket are only able to do so daily, relying on cash tips or weekly paychecks to pay for their medicine. Buprenorphine patients who are used to paying for one or two weeks at a time might not have additional funds for a month-long script. Patients whose medications are covered by grants or insurance sometimes have caps on the amount of doses that can be covered at one time, leaving them to pay out of pocket for extra doses. If they can’t pay, clinics are not required to dose them.

Because buprenorphine prescribing is not burdened with as many stringent regulations as methadone, it is easier for providers to adhere to social distancing recommendations while still keeping patients appropriately medicated. Many providers have reverted to telehealth. On March 17, the Secretary of Health and Human Services lifted restrictions on telemedicine practices that prevented Medicare patients from engaging by using cell phones in homes or shelters. On the same day, the Drug Enforcement Administration also waived requirements that patients starting on buprenorphine have an initial in-person visit, temporarily allowing new buprenorphine patients to engage via telemedicine from the start.

But even with these changes, economically disenfranchised patients may struggle to utilize telehealth options. “Not all of my patients have the right smartphones to do telehealth, or the minutes. When I asked them about doing telehealth, they said no way,” said Waldman.

Like Talbott stressed, the response to this crisis is going to vary between states and clinics, with wide discretion placed in the hands of prescribers and medical directors. It is a situation that is changing by the day, as states and counties continue to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 in their communities and how they wish to respond.

“I think my biggest duty right now is to reassure patients that they will not be abandoned,” said Burson.

Correction: An earlier version of this articles stated that all registered nurses were able to prescribe buprenorphine. Only advance practice registered nurses can prescribe that medication.

It began with a $90 citation. Willis, who is a construction worker, was living in her car with her baby and parked near the worksite, but often couldn’t move her car to avoid parking tickets due to the demands of the job. She could barely scrape together enough money to put $5 in the gas tank to get to work, much less pay for a $90 ticket. Between taking care of Tobias and trying to find stable housing, the ticket became the last thing on Willis’ mind. She told herself she’d pay for it when she could save up enough money.

Then she received a second ticket, and then a third, and a fourth. Over the next few months, she had multiple tickets and late fees that added up to hundreds of dollars she couldn’t afford to pay.

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One day, when she returned from work, her car — and all of her belongings — were gone. In San Francisco, accruing five or more unpaid parking tickets meant the car would be towed. If she wanted the old 1997 Lexus back, Willis would have to pay a $537 tow fee and all of her parking tickets. Willis didn’t have the money, and a few weeks later, the tow company auctioned off her four-wheeled home.

Willis’ story echoes that of the more than 1,200 homeless San Franciscans who live in their vehicles and face the threat of having their homes towed by the city. With shelter waitlists that are consistently more than 900 people long, vehicles are often homeless people’s last resort for some semblance of safety and shelter before sleeping directly on the streets.

Losing her car was the start of a downward spiral. Willis found herself constantly asking people she knew if she could stay with them, even for just a couple of nights. Some days it was with her godsister, other days a friend that she knew, but sometimes there was no one to take her in.

“When they took my car, I started trying to sleep on the bus or sleep on BART,” Willis recalls. “I didn’t go to sleep for days because I didn’t have anywhere to sleep.”

The instability led to depression, suicidal ideation, and the loss of her job from the mounting stress of street homelessness.

“It started a never-ending cycle of debt and poverty,” Willis says. “If I was able to keep the car, I would have been able to keep my job.”

The tows and parking citations are viewed as a tool to enforce parking regulations by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency; it wants to deter bad behavior, especially for more serious violations, such as blocking a handicapped zone.

However, for those who are unable to pay those tickets, the city’s form of debt collection for sometimes only a few hundred dollars means losing a family’s most valuable asset, their car— or home. According to a 2019 report by the Lawyers Committee of Civil Rights, 50 to 60 percent of vehicles towed for unpaid parking tickets or unpaid vehicle registration are sold by the tow company.

Tori Larson, an attorney working specifically on this issue, says, “I get calls from people every day who are living in their vehicles. When they get their cars towed, they have to start from zero. It’s a disproportionate punishment for an unpaid fine.”

In 2018, the group filed a lawsuit challenging San Francisco’s practice of towing cars for unpaid tickets. The case argues that the practice constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

San Francisco, which charges the highest tow fees in the country, discounts tow fees for low-income individuals to $238 dollars per tow. After the first four days in the storage yard, an additional $52 fee incurs each day. That’s not including payment for parking tickets or unpaid car registration that may have gotten the car towed in the first place. The money adds up fast and, for many, could total thousands of dollars. SFMTA tows almost 4,400 of these vehicles each year.

SFMTA has proposed lowering the tow fees to $100, but for low-income and homeless communities, “coming up with $100 is like coming up with a million dollars. People don’t have this money,” says Anne Stulhdreher, director of the Financial Justice Project, which works to reduce the disproportionate impact of fines and fees on low-income communities.

Many Americans would struggle with paying that fee. According to a 2018 report from the Federal Reserve, 40 percent of Americans would be unable to cover a $400 emergency expense, such as a car tow or parking citation.

Stuhldreher has been working with community groups to reduce the burden of towing and parking citations on low-income and homeless communities for the past several years. While she notes that this is an important first step, more needs to be done.

What’s more is that the City is actually losing money for enforcing its tow program. Overall, the City’s tow program loses $4.7 million annually with low-income tows representing about $1.4 million of the deficit. Each tow costs around $299 in city administrative labor and $275 to the tow company, Auto Return, which tows and stores the vehicles. It’s a lose-lose situation for both the city and for those most impacted by the tow fees.

Homeless advocates have long called for a moratorium on the towing of vehicles that people live in, but the significance of this demand has heightened in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. A set of guidelines to respond to the pandemic put forth by the Coalition on Homelessness urges the city to end towing, stating that “these individual accommodations make it possible for people to self-quarantine.”

The vehicles also present a form of stability that would allow people to keep in contact with health care workers, maintain their health, and securely store their belongings, including medical documentation and medication, the organization said.

Last November, San Francisco opened its first safe parking program in hopes of alleviating the struggles that those living in their vehicles face after almost a decade of advocacy from community organizations and vehicularly housed people. However, its 30-car program — which will be terminated at the end of this year — far from meets the need of the hundreds of homeless San Franciscans living in their cars.

Those living in their vehicles not only face the threat of losing their homes to towing, but are also subject to harassment from police. In San Francisco, as with many other cities across the country, vehicle inhabitation is illegal — and could lead to a fine of up to $1,000 or up to six months in jail. Although the penalty is rarely enforced, advocates say police use the threat of the law frequently to force people who are vehicularly housed to move from neighborhood to neighborhood.

“They flash lights on the car, hit your window with a flashlight, and tell you you have to move,” Willis says of the police that would come by late in the night while she tried to get a few hours of rest. There were few places where she could park at night without being towed, ticketed, or told to move. “I didn’t know where to park — I’d park by the water, but I was scared. I tried to park where there were multiple cars so I could be safer.”

MiQueesha is still homeless. She sleeps on friends and family’s couches when they’re able to let her stay there. She’s hoping to finish school at San Francisco City College in construction management, earn her real estate license, and have more time to spend with her son.

With the help of her son’s grandmother, Willis has been able to purchase another car that she’s working hard to pay off. This time of year, though, construction work is slow.

She says, “Hopefully, this one isn’t towed.”

On March 9, Cuomo announced a solution to one element of the supply problem in the wake of New York’s declared state of emergency: The state would start producing its own sanitizer, branded NYS Clean, to get around price gouging and supply issues. To start, 100,000 gallons a week will be distributed in government settings such as schools and prisons (more on that in a moment) as the state increases the speed of production. Cuomo even threatened to make the sanitizer available for commercial sale to counter price gougers, some of whom have already been fined for taking advantage of the public health emergency.

It’s the kind of bold statement designed to make a splash, but there’s little acknowledgement of who is responsible for making the product at speeds that allowed the state to ramp up production so quickly. The product is manufactured by Corcraft, which is the brand name for products produced by  the New York State prison system. “Employees” at Corcraft are incarcerated people making an average of $0.62 an hour.

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Corcraft and entities like it across the nation benefit from a literally captive workforce. 50,000 people are incarcerated in New York’s state prisons, and while not all of them work for Corcraft, many do, producing things like license plates, desks, textiles, janitorial supplies, and even eyeglasses. These products are in turn sold to government agencies, educational institutions, first responders, and select nonprofits by Corcraft as a “preferred source.” These entities have to “look to Corcraft first” as a supplier, even if they’re opposed to the use of incarcerated labor.

Across the nation, incarcerated workers generate billions in revenue for the prison system, making pennies on the dollar and in some cases nothing at all for their work. While some might consider it slavery, it’s entirely legal under the 13^th Amendment, which permits slavery or involuntary servitude “as punishment for a crime.” Nationwide, incarcerated people pave roads, maintain state parks, fight fires, grow crops, and manufacture scores of items.

Here’s a real bitter twist: According to Keri Blakinger and Beth Schwartzapfel at the Marshall Project, incarcerated people aren’t necessarily allowed to use hand sanitizer in jails and prisons. These workers are making a product they aren’t permitted to protect themselves with, even as conditions in jails and prisons can be extremely dirty, with even basic sanitation challenging. Sinks may be broken, sometimes no soap is provided so incarcerated people have to buy it from the commissary, and facilities are crowded.

This is already a dangerous combination for the spread of infectious diseases such as hepatitis a — which is spread through unwashed hands — and influenza. Many prisoners are also trying to manage chronic illnesses like diabetes and HIV, which can make them vulnerable to infection. The response to concerns about infectious disease may be to “quarantine” sick people in isolation, an unhealthy and dangerous approach to controlling infectious disease that comes with significant mental health effects.

As New York’s Department of Corrections implements COVID-19 policies such as screening visitors, it repeats public health recommendations for “all individuals within its facilities” —  wash frequently with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, use hand sanitizer when water is not available, keep your hands away from your face, and stay home when you are sick — all of which may be, to put it mildly, a challenge for incarcerated individuals.

Incarcerated people are commonly called upon to take personal safety risks for those who are not in jail or prison, as in the case of firefighters across the West who work alongside professionals in better gear, knowing that their training may not be transferrable to jobs on the outside thanks to their criminal records. Still, asking people to whip up 75 percent alcohol hand sanitizer for the health and safety of civilians while they’re struggling for scraps of soap in the midst of a public health emergency is truly a new low.

Access to tools to prevent the spread of disease and to protect people who are particularly susceptible to COVID-19 — such as those living in institutions like jails and prisons — is vital. There’s ample guidance from experts on highly effective ways to protect ourselves, but people in carceral settings can’t access the basic things required, such as sanitation supplies and tissues so they can cover their mouths and noses when they sneeze or cough.

If there’s an outbreak in a prison setting (something that may be inevitable in a confined, unhealthy, unsanitary environment), it will be because of the refusal to make changes to the rules in order to allow people to protect themselves.

I developed a severe case which turned into bacterial pneumonia; although otherwise fit and healthy, I have asthma, which makes me especially susceptible to respiratory illnesses. I spent Valentine’s Day flat on my back, wheezing and struggling to breathe while the antibiotics worked their magic.

Say what you will about azithromycin; it sure does kill bacteria good.

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I work as a server, and I almost certainly contracted the flu from my workplace; prior to becoming sick, I served multiple customers who told me they were ill, which means exposure to their breath, used plates, napkins and cutlery, and surfaces they have touched. Moreover, several of my coworkers were ill with the same symptoms on the last shift I worked before becoming sick.

If you are worried about infection from COVID-19, you should be less concerned about hoarding masks and hand sanitizer (which you really shouldn’t be doing) and more concerned about the ways that poverty, a lack of access to health care, and general class inequality in North America could contribute to spreading it.

In Canada, where I live, servers are usually paid at or slightly below provincial minimum wage, and in the USA it’s often less than the already abysmal minimum wage. Most food service workers — servers, like myself, as well as cooks, bussers, and a vast variety of other folks working for an hourly wage — do not get paid sick days, which means taking time off even when you are pretty much dying costs you money.

Money you probably don’t have, which means you come into work sick.

For me, this was the first time in my 15-year career in the service industry that I have ever called in sick for multiple, back to back shifts. Tips are variable, but I estimate my three days off cost me about $350, plus $100 worth of medication. That doesn’t include the cost of my emergency room visit, which an uninsured American would also have to pay for.

I’m really lucky that I work with good people and have a kind boss, who helped me cover my shifts; in many restaurants, the culture is not so forgiving, and calling in sick with anything less than a brain aneurysm is a sign of weakness. You’ve “screwed everyone over” by not coming in and making someone else work a double or else work shorthanded. In many other restaurants  I’ve worked in, you may find yourself missing shifts you would usually work on the next schedule — a “punishment” for the selfish act of allowing a virus to infiltrate your body and replicate within your cells, you lazy prick.

The main reason I was able to take a couple sick days this time around — regardless of the fact that I had to, since I couldn’t actually get out of bed — was that I have another job where I’m self-employed. In short, I had some extra money and could afford to not go to work and sweat and sneeze and cough all over people, food, and objects.

Not only does this mean I didn’t infect other people — COVID-19, incidentally, is primarily spread through respiratory droplets in the air, and by person to person contact — but I recovered faster because I got the medical care and rest I needed, which means I returned to work more quickly. Better for me, better for my boss, better for the health of everyone.

By contrast, as I recently tweeted about, this isn’t the first time I’ve had pneumonia; in 2013, I had walking pneumonia for two weeks, during which I worked the majority of the time handling food in close proximity to customers. I didn’t do that because I’m a selfish jerk unaware or unconcerned about the health of others, I did so because I wouldn’t make my rent if I took time off and because I was working in a place where I was afraid of what would happen if I called in.

Not only was I sick much longer in that case — and therefore capable of infecting others for a longer period of time — it took me months to fully recover, which had further economic impacts for me. I would have been a better worker, infected fewer people, and been less of a strain on the health system had someone just given me a goddamn paid sick day; it would have been cheaper and better for literally everyone in my community.

In 2017, 130 people were sickened by an outbreak of norovirus — a highly contagious gastrointestinal illness — which was directly linked to Chipotle’s management policies around sick workers. It’s not just about the policy, though; even if workers had been “allowed” to call in sick and supported by management to do so, they’re going to come into work if missing that shift means no gas in their car, or their kid doesn’t get lunch tomorrow, or it’s ramen for dinner every single day for the next week.

When you economically punish people for getting sick, more people are going to get sick.

All signs point to COVID-19 being a genuine pandemic that we should all be concerned about and thinking about — which means we need to care not only for ourselves, but for others. If you care about your health, care about how the people around you live and are treated in their everyday lives.

Viruses don’t care how much money their host makes, but how much money their host makes, and how we treat working-class people when they get sick, may impact how many opportunities COVID-19 has to spread.

My job was to keep people out of jail, but I couldn’t control what kept bringing my clients back into the courtroom.

A common example was a young mother, caught with pills and charged with a felony for possession with intent to sell; loses her job because she couldn’t afford the bail set at $1,500; pleads guilty to the felony in return for probation so she can get out of jail; fails the drug tests on probation and ends up with the felony on her record; loses her driver’s license because of unpaid court costs and fines; and then her children because she cannot afford to provide them with food, clothing, and shelter.

I saw that every week: Someone who entered the courtroom an addict and exited a criminal. According to the North Carolina Second Chance Alliance, more than 2 million people in the state have criminal records, 90 percent of large employers ask about that history, and more than 1,000 different laws in the state deny rights and privileges due to convictions.

And like in many states, it’s difficult to expunge those convictions because of long waiting periods and narrow rules of eligibility, which makes it hard for a person to find a decent job or stable housing, or obtain the education they want. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in 2014 the United States went without an estimated $78 to $87 billion in gross domestic product because of people who were unable to reenter society and participate in the workforce due to their criminal background. And that’s devastating for communities that were hardest hit by the opioid epidemic.

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My hometown in the foothills of North Carolina was once the home of some of the largest manufacturing businesses, including the American Furniture Company. But slowly those jobs left town and went to China, or were lost to automation. From the year 2000, when that company finally closed, to 2014, my county experienced the second worst decline of median income in the United States: from $47,992 to $33,398.

And that’s when the pills came in. Doctors overprescribed Oxycontin, Vicodin, and Percocet to people who were in pain and out of work. Many got hooked and some sold the painkillers on a black market out of their medicine cabinet. In 2007, the county experienced the third highest overdose rate in the country.

Because of a lack of funding at the state level, there’s no public defender’s office. So when I came home to work as a lawyer, I took appointed cases to supplement what I brought into our firm as a young criminal defense attorney. That meant representing as many as 15 clients a day and sometimes as many as 50 in a week. We’d be lucky to meet for more than a few minutes at a time to go over the facts before trial or to run through a plea offer while standing next to a bailiff in one of the holding cells behind the courtroom.

For every case disposed, I’d get appointed to another. Drugs were an underlying factor in almost every fact pattern.

My county wasn’t unique. The same forces of globalization and automation were devastating towns all across the country. But we didn’t discuss what was happening in those terms, and we didn’t learn about these deaths of despair by reading about them in The Atlantic. The stories were personal. It wasn’t uncommon to walk into the courtroom and see the faces of childhood friends, a young man from church, or even a next-door neighbor.

There’s a stereotype that the opioid crisis affects only middle-aged white men, but addiction doesn’t discriminate by age, race, or education level. Where there is discrimination, though, is in access to treatment. If you were from a rich household, or had a strong support system, your family could afford to send you to rehabilitation for as long as it took, up to a couple of years if need be. For everyone else, recovery options were limited and usually led back to the courtroom. (In North Carolina, programs like the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant spend more than $44 million per year on recovery services, but without Medicaid expansion, many in recovery are still on their own and unable to afford inpatient treatment.)

What happened in my town happened before, in the 1970s and the 1980s, when cities hollowed out and the response to a crack epidemic was mass incarceration. Now, because of organizers and advocates in those communities, the urban incarceration rate has declined in recent years. But because of the opioid crisis, since 2013, the incarceration rate in rural America has risen by 26 percent.

Today there is legislation in North Carolina called the Second Chance Act that would expand eligibility for record expungement. Hopefully, lawmakers will get that bill passed soon. What I saw in an Appalachian courtroom wasn’t because my hometown was full of bad people. It was because the factories closed and we treated poverty and addiction by locking up the victims.

“What’s wrong?” my friend asked.

“I think I just chipped my tooth.”

My other friend waved her hand at me. “Just go to the dentist.”

It wasn’t an unreasonable suggestion, but I didn’t have medical insurance, let alone dental: a whopping 33.6 percent of US adults don’t have dental coverage.

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Not only did I not have dental insurance, but I hadn’t been to the dentist in more than a decade. My parents, who both had all their teeth pulled in their forties, had stopped taking me to the dentist when I was around ten. I assumed it was because of the cost. Even with dental insurance, most plans only cover one to two grand of dental work per year, with a deductible. This seems reasonable until you need something more than a cleaning, like a crown, which costs between $750 and $1200.

When I got back home, to the house that I lived in with six other people, I looked in the bathroom mirror and discovered a whole side of the tooth had come off, right down to the gum line. I didn’t want to get an infection, so I did a Google search for cheap dental care.

There was a college nearby with a teaching school, meaning that students worked on you while supervised. The only problem was that it required an initial interview and then a separate exam on a different day before they even started treatment. A car was a luxury that I couldn’t afford, and the trip to the dental school would take hours and multiple buses, not to mention unpaid time off of work.

The next best option was Superteeth, a dental clinic that advertised most basic dental services at $99. Fortunately, Superteeth was on a busy road easily accessible by one bus. A few days later, I headed to the clinic. It was hard to miss, as the outside of the building was covered with signs advertising cheap dentistry.

I walked in without an appointment and filled out some forms, crossing out the insurance section. After an hour, the dentist saw me and told me, without even doing an x-ray, that I needed a root canal.

“How much is that going to cost?”

“The procedure is between six and eight hundred dollars.”

Six hundred dollars was what I made in two weeks. I did not have that kind of money. Then she explained that it was just the cost of the root canal. I’d also need a crown, which would push the total past a thousand dollars and require multiple visits. I must have looked shocked, because she added that they could just pull the tooth for $99.

“Can I think about it and come back?” I asked.

“Sure, but don’t wait too long.”

For the next week, I smiled in front of mirrors and windows, trying to figure out if a missing tooth would be noticeable. The tooth was on my left side, third from the back. My biggest concern was how a missing tooth would affect my job prospects. In a list of common nonverbal mistakes made during job interviews, not smiling came in third, with 38 percent of hiring managers citing it as an issue. Smiling is hard when you’re self-conscious about your teeth. Sure, I could do a closed-mouth smile, but it doesn’t have the same effect on people.

In the end, I decided that I’d rather have a missing tooth that wasn’t too noticeable than a rotting tooth that could get infected and cause further, more expensive issues. Even if I could get my hands on a thousand dollars, I would have used it to pay down my credit card that was maxed out from college expenses instead.

When I got the courage to go back, the dentist asked for the $99 upfront. I wasn’t sure what to expect, since I’d never had a tooth pulled before. My friends all had their wisdom teeth pulled and they were all knocked out for the procedure. This was not the case for pulling other teeth.

The dentist shot up my gums to numb them. She then grabbed what seemed to me like regular pliers that you would find in a hardware store. I was awake as she clamped down on the tooth and used all her strength to yank it out.

I was expecting something more surgical and less brutal. I heard the tooth shatter and then the sounds of the dentist scraping the area.

“I think I got all the bone fragments out, but it’s hard to tell. You might have some bone fragments come through the gums in the next few weeks. You can just pull them out yourself or you can come back and we can do it.”

She didn’t mention if it would cost me or not to come back. I didn’t ask, because I knew I’d just go the DIY route. She told me not to drink from straws, as this could cause the blood clot to dislodge, and then sent me on my way without so much as a Tylenol.

I was planning to take the bus home but called my sister for a ride instead. I didn’t want to scare strangers with my bloody gauze and slack mouth. A day later, I was back at work, as I didn’t have vacation days and was now out $99.

I remembered the dentist telling me to “get back in for an exam soon.” She looked concerned. I was having pain in other teeth and was using copious amounts of Orajel to deal with it.

I landed a job with better pay and benefits a few months later. As soon as my dental insurance kicked in, I made an appointment. I had 16 cavities and had to get them filled four at a time over four sessions. As I’d just started work three months earlier, I still didn’t have the money to pay all the out-of-pocket costs and ended up putting some of the expenses on a high-interest credit card.

My dentist kept pushing me to get a dental implant. He warned me of gum loss that could disfigure my face. He also told me my teeth would shift to fill in the gap, causing my bite to change. He did a thorough job of scaring me, but I didn’t have the $2400 to cover the out-of-pocket costs.

A few years and a few raises later, I was able to get the dental implant. I had been experiencing TMJ jaw pain due to the shifting teeth that got so bad that I went to the dentist to make sure I didn’t have an infection.

Like getting the tooth pulled, I was awake for the whole implant procedure. The dentist drilled into my gums, placed a metal screw in the hole, and stitched my gums back up around it. It would be a couple of months before the gums were healed enough to place the fake tooth on top of the screw. Again, I was thankful that the tooth was in the back. A missing tooth was one thing, but a screw sticking out of the gums was quite another.

Years have gone by and the fake tooth still gives me issues. Because I waited too long, I lost a lot of gum tissue and the fake tooth doesn’t fill the space well. Food gets stuck underneath the tooth and when I run the floss all the way under, I sometimes cut the gums. This leads to bleeding, puffiness, and a few days of pain. Once, it led to an infection.

The implant troubles are a constant reminder of how lucky I was to find a job in time, before I — like my parents — lost all my natural teeth. Not everyone is as fortunate.

That small amount of money didn’t cover her bills and expenses. “So then I just ended up working more,” she explained. She would work six or even seven days a week just to try to make ends meet. “I would just go to sleep and then go to work and then go to sleep and go to work,” she said. She spent three years putting in those kinds of hours. “I felt totally exhausted, physically and mentally.”

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She eventually started working in a different salon in Manhattan where she made slightly more: $50-60 a day for the same hours. It still wasn’t enough to cover her bills. She had to eat “the most basic things,” always at home because she couldn’t afford to eat a meal out. She couldn’t buy herself anything, not even new clothes. “I couldn’t take care of my physical and mental health,” she said.

“You’re working so hard, but at the end of the week you still don’t have enough,” she added. “It makes it impossible to imagine a dignified life.”

Meanwhile, the salon owners never gave her and her coworkers information about how to protect their health and safety when working with chemicals everyday. Salon workers are routinely exposed to the “toxic trio” of formaldehyde, toluene, and dibutyl phthalate, common nail polish ingredients, as well as disinfectants such as alcohol. Exposure can lead to skin irritation and chronic conditions, allergies, and even reproductive problems.

Sefla didn’t realize that she had the right to more pay and better protection until she found the New York Nail Salon Workers Association, which organizes nail salon workers in the state around wages and working conditions. She’s now an organizer there.

“This wasn’t just something that was just happening to me,” she noted. For all of her compañeras in the industry, “This is the reality that we’re living.”

A new report backs her up. In a survey of about 100 nail salon workers in New York City and surrounding counties, the New York Nail Salon Workers Association found that 82 percent experienced wage theft. Employers are failing to pay the state’s tipped minimum wage, aren’t making up the difference when employees’ base wages and tips don’t add up to the full minimum wage, and don’t pay extra for overtime work. The hours are long: nearly two-thirds of nail salon employees say they work shifts that are at least 10 hours. But many aren’t paid time and a half for the extra hours they put in.

That wage theft is costing them, on average, more than $180 a week, or over $9,000 a year—steep sums for the majority immigrant female workers who survive off of little pay to begin with. More than 10 percent of respondents were losing more than $400 a week.

One source of the problem, the report finds, can be traced back to how little it costs to get a manicure in New York. Workers at salons that charge the lowest prices—$9 or less for a manicure—reported experiencing higher rates of wage theft and losing more money, while those at salons that charged at least $16 for a manicure kept more of the money they were due. “Low prices translate into illegal poverty wages,” the report states. But “as service prices increase, wage theft decreases.”

On top of the inadequate pay, the report also found that 86 percent of nail salon workers in New York City aren’t being given paid sick days, as is the law.

In 2015, a New York Times expose shone a light on the rampant mistreatment of nail salon employees in the city, who are often forced to work extremely long hours in harsh conditions for little pay. In its wake, the state implemented health and safety standards dealing with ventilation and protective equipment. It also now requires owners to take financial steps to ensure that workers can recover wages if it’s found they’re being underpaid and created a voluntary recognition process for those deploying best practices. But workers argue that even with some protections in place, they need stronger enforcement to get what they’re due. “While the legislation provided new protections for workers and regulations for employers, workers continue to organize to make those protections a reality,” the report notes.

“We still aren’t really seeing changes,” Sefla said. “We have established better laws, but we’re seeing that a lot of the owners are not complying with the new laws. So we haven’t seen the change that we’re looking for.”

In December, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced he would get phase out the tipped minimum wage for a group of workers that includes nail salon employees (although excluded restaurant and hospitality workers), meaning salon owners will be required to pay the full minimum wage regardless of how much customers tip. But as the report notes, many workers weren’t even being paid the lower tipped wage to begin with. So they’re demanding more legislative action.

“We need mechanisms for enforcing those established laws,” Sefla said. “There won’t be any change without consequences and accountability.”

The heart of their demand is that the state legislature pass the Nail Salon Accountability Act, which will be introduced later this month. The law would change the licensing process so that workers’ feedback would be incorporated into the renewal process and owners would have to get certification proving that they are complying with labor, health, and safety laws. It would also mandate training for owners and workers on those laws. “Compliance with the law must become part of the cost of doing business,” the report states.

There are other potential legislative fixes in the works as well. Members of the assembly are considering a bill that would criminalize wage theft. The New York City council is working on a bill that would give salon owners subsidies so they could add proper ventilation.

“Esos son básicos,” Sefla said: These are basic things. “Son derechos que tenemos aquí en este país.” These are rights we have here in this country.

“I love the dollar store,” she said.

As do most dollar store shoppers, according to at least one Morning Consult Brand Intelligence poll that recorded favorability ratings around 60 percent. Even as retail sales decline, the major dollar store brands — Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar (which was bought out by Dollar Tree in 2015 for $8.5 billion) — are experiencing rapid growth, with Dollar General and Dollar Tree adding upwards of 10,000 locations over the past decade and continued plans for expansion. The key to their success is a strategic focus on poverty: Deep discount retailers are uber-accessible to low-income consumers even when there’s a net negative economic benefit to shoppers and the community.

“The core of what dollar stores have done and really capitalized on is recognizing that there are people who really don’t have other options,” said Dr. Sriya Shrestha, who teaches at California State University Monterey Bay. Her work on the dollar store phenomenon, “Dollars to dimes: Disparity, uncertainty, and marketing to the poor at US dollar stores,” chronicles the dueling tensions of a capitalist entity that both aids and exploits the poor. “We know what dollar stores ultimately are: an attempt for a way for very wealthy people to capitalize on poverty.”

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Women with families who earn under $40,000 per year dominate the dollar store model. They purchase only what they can afford to buy now, in smaller packages that often cost more per unit than they would at big box retailers. “Our customer doesn’t buy until she absolutely has to — she’s that stretched,” noted one Dollar General executive, according to Dr. Shrestha’s research.

Clearly, the dollar store fills a need. Stagnant wages have kept purchasing power flat over the past 40 years, wage inequality has grown to levels not seen since the Great Depression, and the richest five percent of Americans own two-thirds of the country’s wealth. As the New York Times reported a few years ago, retail is now split into factions: luxury items and deep discounts, with nothing in between. Where dollar stores succeed — Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, the 99 Cent Store, and local mom and pop shops that follow the same model — is in giving low-income consumers the American Dream for a dollar a day.

Dollar stores attempt to create a sense of abundance, filling their stores with thousands of products placed on shelves that are below eye level. According to Dr. Shrestha’s research, companies will also engage in “downward brand extensions,” developing less expensive brand-name products specifically for dollar stores. When a consumer can walk out of a store having purchased a multitude of brand-name products, it presents them with a positive shopping experience and adds to their self-worth.

“I used to be embarrassed about the dollar store,” said Loretta Brown, “especially when I first became disabled and lost my job and was unemployed for a minute.”

Brown is a 53-year-old  with an ongoing affinity for her childhood home in South Philadelphia, which she calls “that diverse part of the city that we love.” She’s married with three grown step-children, and while her husband works, she no longer does, and has relied on Social Security Disability for the past 10 years.

“My attitude has changed over the years,” she continued. “I’m not embarrassed. I don’t care… I’m making a smarter financial decision when I shop at the dollar store for whatever I get there.”

Feeding America, one of the nation’s largest hunger-relief organizations, co-authored a report with Proctor & Gamble showing more than one-third of families struggled to afford essential household goods. According to the findings, many families will skip out on personal care rituals or substitute products when possible, such as using hand soap as dish detergent. School supplies have become more costly, too, with the Huntington Backpack Index noting that parents can now expect to spend anywhere from $1,000 to $1,600 per child per year depending on their grade level.

“I used to shop sales and just use store discount cards, but as time has gone on, I’ve learned how to clip coupons,” said Kristine, a former social worker who owns her home with her husband. “I will buy hygiene products since they have full-size name-brand items… toothpaste, body wash, shampoo, some medicine,” she continued, “also, cleaning supplies and some food items.”

Though individual consumers can find shopping at dollar stores rewarding, the impact on communities can be more complex. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit that works for sustainable community development, found that dollar stores contribute to the economic distress found in urban and rural communities. In 2018, the group put out a report finding dollar stores target low-income neighborhoods, especially Black neighborhoods, and drive out grocers and other healthy eating options. As a byproduct of these moves, local jobs have been eliminated as well.

Criticisms of the dollar store model have pushed local communities to fight back. Tulsa, Oklahoma, placed restrictions on the distance between dollar stores following a brief moratorium on new retail locations in 2017. Small towns in Kansas and Texas passed ordinances limiting the number of stores allowed within their limits.

But efforts to ban dollar stores and replace them with community-centric retailers have, at times, failed to gain traction. In Cleveland, for example, a local grocer received a $1 million subsidy to open up shop but, according to The Progressive, it struggled to find a customer base. Much of the nuance on this issue is lost in translation between reformers and the monied interests who stand to gain from tilting the conversation.

Moreover, as Dr. Shrestha said, in some ways, banning dollar stores misses the point.

“We need to make it so that people have the income so that they don’t have to rely on the dollar store for meeting their basic needs,” said Dr. Shrestha, explaining that wealth distribution, not market-based solutions, could help to eliminate poverty itself. “Eradicating the dollar store isn’t going to really solve that problem.”

Neither will a Whole Foods, Walmart, or local grocer that doesn’t meet the needs of low-income consumers in the here and now. Women-headed households are the primary consumers of deep discount retailers, according to Dr. Shrestha, and those households are disproportionately in poverty.

The real question she said is, “Are we okay with that?”

The bill seeks to make three major changes: It would define illicit drug use during pregnancy as child abuse regardless of actual harm to the infant; remove the state’s obligation to engage in family reunification efforts when a child was exposed to drugs; and significantly shorten the amount of time it takes to begin terminating parental rights.

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Although the bill’s stated purpose is the protection of infants, opponents say it does the exact opposite: Separating infants from their parents causes potentially irreversible trauma to a child’s brain. In addition, this type of bill deters pregnant drug users from seeking much-needed medical care for fear of punishment, and denies families the resources to heal from addiction and parent their children to their best capacities.

The North Carolina Urban Survivor’s Union, a harm reduction organization dedicated to protecting the rights of drug users in North Carolina, is doing everything they can to stop this bill from becoming law. They are reaching out to senators, gathering signatories on a letter of opposition (which I joined), and preparing to implore the governor to veto it, failing efforts to stop it from passing. To them and many other harm reduction and reproductive rights advocates, this bill represents a growing national trend to use fear-mongering as a basis for stripping pregnant people of crucial rights, even well beyond pregnancy.

Aly Peeler, advocacy coordinator for the North Carolina Urban Survivor’s Union, notes that although the bill is written to target drug users, it has the potential to affect a much larger population: “It opens the door for prosecuting people who can get pregnant for anything that can harm a fetus. What if you’re not exercising enough, what if you don’t have healthcare when we know that prenatal care is the biggest determinant of fetal health? We are really invested in stopping the bill.”

Allowing the state to define in utero substance exposure as child neglect would permit child services to remove newborn infants from their parents’ custody at birth. Should this pass, North Carolina would join 23 other states in defining prenatal substance exposure as civil child maltreatment. This has a ripple effect: A recent study from the RAND corporation discovered that areas with punitive policies toward drug use during pregnancy, such as conflating it with civil or criminal child maltreatment, saw higher rates of infant withdrawal. Patients who fear being punished for using drugs avoid medical care, whether that means continuing to use drugs instead of engaging in treatment, or avoiding prenatal care altogether.

It is a measure that invites a host of problems, including the traumatic interruption of the dyad between a birthing parent and newborn. Contact between newborns and the parent who birthed them is crucial during the first days of life; this is especially true for infants who experience withdrawal from substances they were exposed to during pregnancy, whether or not those substances were prescribed and taken as recommended. Nursing and skin-to-skin contact have been shown to reduce symptoms of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), or infant withdrawal.

Many hospitals around the country have begun to change their NAS protocols to be more inclusive of families, implementing “mother as medicine” approaches to treating withdrawal symptoms that have led to dramatic decreases in the amount of time infants diagnosed with NAS require medical intervention. The University of North Carolina Children’s Hospital-Chapel Hill recently implemented a new approach to treating NAS called “Eat, Sleep, Console,” which heavily integrates familial support as part of the treatment for infant opioid withdrawal. House Bill 918, however, would undermine that medicine by denying parents access to their newborns, potentially even while the baby is still in the hospital, despite the new protocol’s positive outcomes.

The absolutist attitude toward drug addiction appears to favor stigma over science. It states that in order for a substance exposure-based neglect charge to be substantiated, child services must be able to demonstrate that the parent is “unable to discharge parental responsibilities due to a history of chronic drug abuse.” This would allow a parent’s history of addiction to be weaponized against them, something which is generally not done with other medical conditions unless there is a similar element of stigma involved, such as that which is seen in some cases of intellectual or physical disabilities.

It also opens the door to using addiction treatment history as evidence of an inability to parent. Addiction is defined as a chronic relapsing disorder. It is not uncommon for patients to attend more than one treatment program before achieving long-term remission, or to require long-term medication management with methadone or buprenorphine in the case of opioid addiction. When these histories become confused with the definition of parental fitness, it labels people with substance use disorders as undeserving to parent simply because of their condition.

In an interview for a story published by The Appeal, obstetrician and addiction medicine physician Mishka Terplan described recovery as “finding community connection, purpose, and meaning…Motherhood fits right into that, and yet we have this system that has labeled certain people and populations as being less deserving of that than others, so we are going to even take that away from them, or make it yet another battle in a grossly unfair universe.”

Stating that child services is not required to engage in reunification efforts further codifies this dismissive attitude toward people with substance use disorders. Normally, when a child welfare department opens a case on a parent that involves the removal of a child from the home, the department is required to pursue reunification efforts before moving to forcibly adopt the child to another family.

This means that the department has an obligation to provide referrals and financial assistance for any services the parent is required to complete in order to regain custody. In cases that involve parental drug use, this typically means that the child welfare department must provide timely and appropriate referrals for addiction treatment, and often must also cover the costs of such treatment. But North Carolina’s new bill would remove this burden from the state in cases that involve “exposure to nonmedical substances in utero.”

“[A pregnant person with an untreated substance use disorder] can’t stop using [solely due to pregnancy] because that’s one of the defining features of having a use disorder, and people with a use disorder — they need treatment,” said Terplan, describing with eloquent simplicity the inherent injustice of removing a child due to parental drug addiction, then refusing to provide treatment.

Amber Khan, a senior staff attorney at National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), has helped oppose bills like this in the past, like a 2017 bill that made substance use during pregnancy civil child neglect in Kentucky and forced mothers to enroll in drug treatment within 90 days of giving birth or face termination of parental rights. Khan said these bills “are counter-intuitive and dangerous and based on misinformation. They certainly do not address a substance use disorder. If the concern is a parent’s substance use disorder, these bills create a punitive system but don’t increase funding for care.”

Finally, North Carolina’s bill also decreases the amount of time it takes to permanently separate parent and child by terminating parental rights, an act that has been dubbed the “civil death penalty.” Currently, federal legislation known as the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) requires states to file for termination of parental rights when a child has been in foster care for 15 of the past 22 months (it does not necessarily apply in situations of kinship care, when children are living with relatives). Some states have opted to shorten that time, and if HB 918 passes, North Carolina will join them. The bill will shorten the requirement to one year. It also gives foster parents the same rights as relatives, allowing them to petition for custody after only nine months.

“People don’t understand substance use,” said Louise Vincent, the executive director of the North Carolina Urban Survivor’s Union. “I find bills like this really manipulative…You start talking about pregnant women using drugs and people lose their mind. People don’t understand that love doesn’t cure addiction.”

Compounding all of this is the fact that these issues will not be faced by all populations equally. In North Carolina, for example, Black children comprise 33 percent of the foster care population, but only 23 percent of the state’s total population. This law would give the system further leeway to discriminate by race and class, issues already embedded into the child welfare system.

“We know that poor women and women of color are more likely to be suspected of drug use, so they’re more likely to be screened and more likely to be reported,” said Peeler. “The bill is really worrying partially because everyone really values trusting and confidentiality with their doctors and it wouldn’t afford that to people who can get pregnant.”

When legislation perpetuates the idea that addiction can be a chronic relapsing medical condition up until the point of pregnancy — when it becomes a moral failing and representative of a lack of appropriate maternal love — it fails to protect the community, which should be the basic function of the law. HB 918 and other similar laws defy science in favor of stigma and move the government one step closer to repealing reproductive agency in the United States. And, of course, it creates a new avenue for punishing drug users even while the criminal justice system finally, albeit slowly, begins to recognize that punitive measures are ineffective against addiction.

“This is certainly another part of the business as usual for the drug war,” emphasized Vincent.

On the spreadsheet, managers and shift leads made the same amount as new baristas. Some entries showed that many baristas worked for companies for years and still made the same amount as those just starting in their careers; the average wage of hourly employees hovered just above $10 an hour, regardless of their role. Over 200 baristas entered their wages into the spreadsheet, which was first reported on by the Philadelphia Inquirer and has inspired similar lists across the nation. Although the spreadsheet isn’t wholly scientific — information, like average tips, benefits, and if they receive federal aid, is self-reported — it does call into question if there’s a correlation between how much experience and knowledge a person has and their ability to move up in their careers and make more money. And in the coffee world, despite the fact that jokes about getting a “real job” run prevalent, a considerable amount of skill, technique, and practice are required just to make a beverage properly, let alone do it well.

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Service work has the potential to equalize. There aren’t a lot of jobs where almost everyone starts at the bottom, and the low barrier to entry means anyone can work their way up. Upward mobility can seem really clear in these types of roles — barista to shift lead to… — but where do these roles lead? If you’re making the same amount of money you were ten years ago, or if accepting a leadership position means you make less money because you lose tips, does the idea of upward mobility actually exist?

“I had been working in various capacities on the cafe side of things for nearly ten years when an opportunity to become a roaster came my way,” said Trevor Szewczyk, a roaster based in Philadelphia. He was working in Oakland when he started exploring positions outside of the cafe. “At the time, I was pretty ready to do something else, as it felt like I had been bumping my head on the ceiling of cafe management in the Bay Area.” He balanced two realities: a barista job that pays a lower hourly wage but collects tips at the end of the day, or a slightly higher wage without tips in a management position, which is a pretty common reality for most baristas.

After oscillating between both options, he decided to pursue a different coffee journey.

Szewczyk interviewed for an open position with a coffee company just outside of Oakland. He said the initial interview went well, and he expected to get an offer that was at least comparable to what he was making in his last position. “As I had been the shift lead for the cafe I was leaving at the time, I was making about $25 an hour — a base wage of $14 averaging $10 an hour in tips. So when the offer letter came I was a little taken aback that I was being offered $17 an hour.”

The position — an associate roaster for a local but large coffee company with multiple locations and wholesale accounts — seemed like a step up. However, Szewczyk never made close to the amount he was making as a shift lead, even though he was learning new skills. After a year and a half with the company, Szewczyk’s wage was bumped up to $18.50, but never matched what he was making at the cafe.

The promise of a career is what drives many to accept positions that, given a closer look, don’t actually deliver on what they promise: a stable life in their chosen field. And often, that means taking jobs that are underwhelming and financially not viable to escape the perceived bottom of the field.

“There have been a few instances where I have really been underwhelmed by promotion promises — the most recent was leaving my management role to go over to a different cafe where I was hired to do beverage development,” says Oodie Taliaferro, a barista working in Austin, Texas. “In that move I was also promised that I’d start at a higher rate than their starting rate…and after it was all said and done I started at the company’s minimum and my non-tipped hours in research and development were just that — full shifts with no tips and making only $10 an hour.”

Taliaferro left that job and did what a lot of baristas do after being let down by seemingly better job: they go back to being a barista. For many baristas attempting to “move up,” barista work often ends up being the best balance between responsibility and wages. Most management and behind-the-scenes jobs pay nominally more than a barista wage, and without tips, jobs with more responsibility are often not worth it. However, that means that there’s nowhere to go when you want to move further in your career.

Essentially, you’re stuck.

Mika Turberville is right in the middle of navigating that messy place — moving from a job that sounded like a step up in their career to working back on the floor.

“I initially took this job because I was working as an intermediate manager at a cafe and had been for several years with no prospects of upward mobility,” they said, even moving from Austin to New York to pursue a new opportunity within the same company. Turberville had ten years of experience, and when they landed the job, was surprised to learn that although their wages were technically higher, they didn’t cover the added cost of living in a city with higher expenses, let alone the fact that their position was technically a promotion.

“My pay as an intermediary manger in Austin was $13.50 an hour with tips, which is almost twice the minimum wage for that area…In New York, I used my savings to move for this job, they paid me $19 an hour, $4 more than the minimum for New York, and I don’t know if you’ve ever been here, but that’s not a living wage at all.”

Eventually, Turberville left, and has since returned to making drinks. “While I feel I have taken a step backwards a bit, I feel hopeful that I can continue to pursue a Q Grader certification [a coffee certification similar to a test a sommelier would have to take for wine] while working there and that they will support whatever next steps in coffee look like for me.” The Q grader certification is a three-day class followed by 17 coffee evaluation tests — the classes cost about $2,000 and people study for months, expecting to fail at least a few of the tests on their first try. Although it’s a helpful certification for roasters and green buyers to have, it’s rare that a coffee company would pay for this course for a barista.

Folks like Szewczyk and Turberville are still fighting to establish a career in coffee, but it’s common for people to walk away from the industry. “I left my last coffee job for a lot of reasons, one of which was not being paid appropriately for my work,” says Meghan-Annette Reida, a former barista working in Milwaukee. After years of being underpaid, Reida decided to leave coffee altogether. “I got a job in insurance; I’m the lowest paid staff member and I’m still paid twice what I was paid to run a coffee shop.”

On Twitter, Taliaiferro asked folks to detail their coffee journeys, charting the ups and downs of their own employment in coffee as an example. Their reason for asking echoes the experiences of a number of baristas: “Feeling like half a dozen lateral moves isn’t what I pictured for my career, but wondering if it’s more common than I think.” When your career is a series of seemingly similar jobs dressed up in titles like “manager” or “shift lead,” which are often codes for “no tips,” it can be difficult to see a clear pathway for baristas to pursue.

An opportunity to move away from barista work is tempting. Along with wage ceilings, service work is both mentally and physically exhausting, and baristas are often not making the same in tips as their other service colleagues are, so the drive to move off the floor and into roles with more responsibilities is enticing, and many baristas are led down a false pathway that often leaves them both stagnant and burnt out. Because of the way tips are ingrained into specific service settings and because coffee is often priced lower than similar food and beverage experiences, it’s much more lucrative to be a career waiter or bartender than it is a career barista.

Documents like the barista wage spreadsheet will hopefully give power to baristas to demand more from their employers. Baristas at Starbucks have already banded together to call for better wages and more predictable schedules after the company added a meditation app to its benefits package while slashing employee hours. If anything, it’s a cautionary tale to the pitfalls of trying to build a career in coffee — what should be an arrow pointing upward often ends up being a web of ups, downs, crashes, peaks, all together writing an uncertain future for many of our most vulnerable service industry members.

I’m no longer poor like I was growing up, and I generally have more meal options; even at my brokest moments in the last five years, I’ve been able to afford a basic meal at Panera Bread. I’ve since given up a lot of the poverty foods that I grew up with, mostly because I find other options tastier and, like many millennials, I’m more willing to spend my money on food than my parents were. When I first tried sushi in 2008, I loved it enough to work it into my shopping list occasionally despite the high price; I’d rather have one serving of sushi than eight Celeste pizzas for the same price. But I still drink at least two cans of Coca-Cola every day, and I’m not planning to stop anytime soon.

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Soda, like the other inexpensive foods that many poor people rely on, is frequently demonized. It’s often cited as a health risk for weight gain, which is a fatphobic tactic that ignores the fact that being overweight is not directly linked to health problems. And alternatives to soda that many people suggest, such as fruit juice, often contain the same amount of sugar and calories as soft drinks.

Still, these attitudes persist. Soda is taxed in over 35 countries and seven U.S. cities, and these taxes continue increasing; Washington, D.C. is currently considering raising taxes on sugary drinks. I’m often told by well-meaning friends and family about the amount of sugar and calories in the soda I drink.

After the second or third time I laugh off my soda habit by opening another can in the face of a dissenter, they usually get the picture and chalk it up to one of my quirks. I’m very privileged to be able to do that: I’m white, thin, and no longer live in poverty. When I was living on cereal and cinnamon toast, it was harder to rebuke people’s comments about what I ate; I had no choice. If I didn’t eat that one dollar chicken sandwich, I wasn’t going to eat dinner that night. If I let the sugary cereals expire, it was valuable money wasted. Growing up, I didn’t even have enough money to maintain a diet consisting of foods that don’t cause my disabilities to flare up, which I realized when I finally had the financial freedom to give up red meat in 2011 and stopped experiencing weekly stomach aches.

When you’re poor—especially if you’re also fat, disabled, a person of color, an immigrant, or from another marginalized background—the world feels entitled to share its opinion of every choice you make. What cell phone you use. How you pay your bills. How often you go to the dentist. What foods you put in your grocery cart, and how many of them you have to put back at the end of the trip because you’ve run out of money. Whether you pay for those groceries with SNAP.

Poor people have fewer choices; there are so many things I can do now that I couldn’t do when I was poor. I can spend a few dollars to rent my favorite movie on Amazon Prime, save up enough for a weekend trip to Maine with my best friends, take an Uber or Lyft when my body is in too much pain to walk ten minutes from the train station to my home, and eat sushi with my wife when one of us is craving it.

Every choice you make when you’re poor is more likely to be criticized by other people (“Why would you buy your sister a birthday gift when you can barely afford groceries?”). These choices also carry more weight: What if you decide to buy her that gift she really wants and then you’re stuck eating rice for weeks? It’s easy to judge poor people’s choices about what to eat and drink because these decisions are so visible, but sometimes getting a vanilla Coke with your Wendy’s chicken sandwich is the best choice you’ve been able to make that week. I remember sitting down with my dad to eat Pizza Hut, knowing he’d recently been injured in an accident at work and was having a hard time making enough to pay our bills. I ate pizza and watched Shameless with him, thinking this might be the last time we’d get to do this for a while if our cable and electricity were shut off. Maybe we could have kept the $10 (plus tip) we spent on pizza, but it wouldn’t have paid our bills. It wouldn’t have helped my dad, an independent contractor cab driver, figure out a way to work when he couldn’t physically drive.

Research shows that escaping poverty requires 20 years with nearly nothing going wrong. I haven’t reached that milestone yet, but I’m better off economically than my parents, a disabled mom on SSDI and a cab driver dad, were when I was a kid. My dad used to choose our meals based on what was on sale; I choose my meals based on what my wife and I are in the mood for. Do we want chicken or fish? Do we want fresh blueberries or frozen vegetables? I rarely eat fast food as a meal anymore (if I do eat it, it’s usually because I’ve been out drinking with my friends and it’s 2 a.m.). But I’m not planning to give up soda. As my wife’s aunt recently joked, I have a glass of Coke in the morning with my breakfast in lieu of coffee or tea.

Nothing tastes as comforting as freshly poured fountain soda with crushed ice. Maybe it’s the nostalgia from my childhood memories of drinking soda and eating pizza on the couch with my mom, who passed away in 2004, as we watched reruns of Seinfeld. Maybe it’s the satisfaction of thinking about haters clutching their pearls as I ingest what they would denounce as pure sugar and empty calories with my fresh salad.

Maybe there’s a kind of power in having enough money to choose any beverage, but still choosing the one that costs $1 any size at McDonald’s. I may not go through the drive-through often anymore, but I always know that it’s there waiting for me, like a crispy slice of cinnamon toast with my best friends on Saturday morning.

It wasn’t like it is today, where people get a debit card nearly indistinguishable from a Visa or Amex. Back then, we were given books of bright red or blue coupons, which were slightly smaller than dollar bills. You weren’t supposed to separate individual stamps from the booklet ahead of time, which meant that you had to stand at the cash register and count them out and sign each one, publicly. She was ashamed that we needed them, and so was I.

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Once, when I was in middle school, a kid dropped a red food stamp on the playground, and our gym teacher snatched it up and held it above his head, loudly calling, “Who dropped their food stamp? Can’t go to the store after school and buy yo mamma’s groceries if you don’t have her food stamps!”

No one took it. It wasn’t mine, but I thought about claiming it anyway. It was a dollar. It would buy fruit. You could get a pomegranate for a dollar at the store, and I was on a pomegranate kick.

It is easier to implement cruelty if you don’t think of those you’re being cruel to as good people. If you think of the cruelty as “tough-love” or as teaching people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, then you don’t see it as cruel at all. To the Trump administration, being poor is a character flaw. It is worthy of shame. A flaw for which they have no problem punishing people for, even children, the elderly, and the disabled.

The first time my family shopped with our food stamps, we bought grapes, Roman Meal bread, cheddar cheese, romaine lettuce instead of iceberg, peaches, and a lot of hamburger. And a lobster and a pound of butter and some lemons. The lobster was on sale since they tended to hang around the tank for a long time at the H-E-B in southeast San Antonio. I remember exactly what we bought, even 30 years later. We feasted that night. I remember cracking open the claw, startled at the creaminess of the flesh, dripping with butter and tart from lemon juice.

To be clear, we weren’t destitute. We were broke and lived off poor people food, like canned butter beans and potatoes stewed in milk and covered in ketchup, and Little Debbie Snack Cakes. My dad rarely paid child support and my mom was working and going to college full-time. We were in the same situation as millions of families now who use SNAP. Food stamps were a step-up to better nutrition, including the one-time lobster.

Most of the kids in my elementary school qualified for food stamps, so most of us also qualified for free or reduced breakfast and lunch. There were separate lines for kids who paid the reduced or free rate. Even knowing that we were all poor, there was still so much stigma and shame attached to using that checkout line. So much that rather than deal with it many of us used the change meant for lunch for vending machine snacks instead, or just didn’t eat. A generation of kids raised on Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and Snickers bars lunches. Eventually, the entire school district was allowed to serve everyone reduced or free lunch since such a large percentage of us qualified, and they removed the separate reduced/free lines. Suddenly there were a lot more kids in the cafeteria and fewer hanging out by the vending machines.

It’s easier to be cruel to someone who you’ve made feel ashamed. Shaming people others them. It creates a divide in their mind between themselves and poor people. It makes it easier to believe that poverty is the result of bad choices and decisions, not a capitalist system that’s out of control. This way, it could never happen to them. People who support SNAP cuts aren’t afraid of poor people, they’re afraid of BEING poor. When my coach was teasing us about food stamps, I imagine that it made him feel better somehow, to feel apart from all the poor kids. Especially since his salary made him food stamp eligible, too.

In my case, my mother graduated from college and went on to become a high school teacher. We moved from the neighborhood I grew up in to across town for a new start. I went to college at seventeen, then culinary school, then graduate school. I married, had a child, and became disabled. Neither of us have gone back on SNAP.

I am a success story because of public assistance, and I am no longer ashamed. Food stamps saved my family when I was young. They save families every single day.

“I would buy Flamin’ Hots with melted cheese and ground beef and that was like a whole damn meal. We would buy penny candy, lemon and strawberry cookies, snow cones. We would buy anything related to snacks or junk food now that would be a health hazard,” said Val, a Black South Side native who has lived in Chicago her entire life.

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A candy house is a business run by a homeowner who sells candy and snacks. But they were also a source of fun for children and income for women in areas of Chicago the media consistently portrays as violent, unhealthy, and poor, and that have suffered due to policies that hurt Black homeownership, exacerbate segregation, and affect food quality.

According to the Racial Justice Project, Black people have access to half as many grocery stores as whites. Many big grocery store chains avoid low-income spaces altogether.

But we had candy houses. They were symbolic to South Siders.

There are no longer as many as there used to be, though. Growing up, there was a candy house across from my elementary school, then called Myra Bradwell, on S. Burnham Ave. Whenever I had the money, my favorite things to purchase were sour candy balls, specifically the blue ones, and dill pickles. The store wasn’t always open, but when it was, there were always children purchasing candy and running to school. It’s gone now.

In 2006, while I was in high school, another candy house existed for about four months in the summer. I used my money from an after-school job and bought tons of candy and chips to eat each day. But that candy house also closed. I knocked on the door, and the woman simply said that she was no longer selling candy, and that was the end of that.

Traditionally, people on the South Side of Chicago purchased their candy from one wholesaler: L&P Foods, located on 7047 S. State St. And despite median Black household income in the ‘90s being just $21,420, money never seemed like a problem when children and candy were involved.  Depending on the candy house, a child could receive candy on credit, an adult would purchase candy for neighborhood children, or other children would purchase candy for their friends.

This was the case with Etholia, 33, a former Auburn Gresham resident, who with $10 in her pocket shared her wealth with other children. “It had to be third grade and I told everybody that they could get something, all my little friends. We spent that money up and I almost got in trouble. When I came home, they asked, ‘Where’s your [money]?’ I was like ‘Oh, I spent it at the candy store,’” she said.

When children and adults purchased candy for other children it was a way to look out for each other. Doing so built a community of trust and brought people together, because the same people buying candy were also looking out to make sure you didn’t get into trouble, that you made it to school, and that you felt safe. Purchasing candy for children was more than a kind act. It was built on a foundation of Black traditions of acceptance and care.

And the houses were about more than just community building. Economically, they were important to Black ownership, and Black women were the center of the business.

“As far as I knew [it was] women. I never knew any men running it. Also, their older kids too,” Val said. “It was clear that many of those women were much older, and they didn’t have the sort of income that we have now, so candy houses were a way for them to get extra money.” In Chicago in 2016, only 2 percent of businesses were Black-owned despite Black people being 17 percent of the population.

Not only did these businesses provide extra income for necessities, they provided women money without strings attached.

“[My grandmother] loves money. I admired the hustle in her and that was her way to make extra income, because my grandmother was a [stay at home mom]… so she never really had income of her own,” La’Shon, a fourth generation South Side native, said.

The young relatives of these women also received a benefit, because children of candy house owners received automatic “cool” points from their peers.

“It gave me some type of extra street cred because my house was the candy house. If your house was the candy house, it put you on another level because your house was the house,” La’Shon said.

There is no single reason why candy houses are no longer as widespread. But among them are candy house owners growing older and retiring, safety concerns in Chicago’s enclaves due to the small population of violent offenders, and the ease of internet shopping.

“We have different type of community now. A lot of people who were not a part of the community infiltrated the community and made [corner stores] that really were the antithesis to those candy stores,” Val said. “[Illinois] started cracking down on people having businesses in their home, so people would actually get in trouble for it.”

“I think now everybody doesn’t live by the code, which is ‘don’t snitch when it comes to that.’ People are scared of getting shut down,” Etholia said.

The rise of internet commerce has also played a role in making candy houses a thing of the past. “The internet,” La’Shon said. “It’s definitely the major reason. I couldn’t tell you where a candy house is today… and I can go on the internet and buy chews, Frooties, and all those unique candies that I couldn’t find anywhere else. I can go on the internet and buy it now.”

With so many changes in communities and technology, these Black-owned businesses may never see their former glory. However, what will never change was that they built community and long-lasting memories that bonded communities together.

“Just knowing that we grew up in a time where you had a community, you had people that you could go to, you had people you could talk to, you had places where you could get fresh air and run around and be silly and be a kid,” Val said. “And I don’t necessarily think that a lot of times we think about Black children being children and that was the moment we were not held to this inhumane standard. It makes me think how wonderful it was to at least have some form of childhood and think about happy experiences.”

But when cities and states take action to raise wages, they often ignore a pretty obvious problem: across most of the country, employers routinely skirt paying the minimum wage, overtime wages, or contractually promised wages, with little fear of facing consequences.

When the Broken Laws study surveyed 4,387 workers in 2008 across Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York in low-wage industries like hospitality and domestic care, they found that 44 percent had been paid less than the law required within the past year. In 2017, the Economic Policy Institute estimated that employers steal $15 billion annually from workers by paying less than the minimum wage.

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Two basic facts add up to create an environment where wage thieves operate with impunity. The first is that most wage thieves will never be caught. Workers often fear retaliation for speaking up or don’t have the resources they’d need to file a complaint or bring a lawsuit. And only a handful of local or state wage theft enforcement agencies have demonstrated an effective strategy for tracking down wage thieves, explaining why in places like Houston, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina, a typical year might only bring a single successful wage theft prosecution.

The second is that even when wage thieves are caught, our legal system protects business owners at the expense of workers: wealthy individuals and profitable companies get ample opportunity to claim they just don’t have the money to pay workers what they’re owed. A 15-state investigation by Politico found that workers who won their wage theft lawsuits only ultimately recovered 59 percent of the money that judges or juries had agreed they’d been owed. In New York City, ten delivery workers won a $700,000 wage theft ruling against the restaurant Indus Valley — although these workers started their complaint in 2008 and won their lawsuit before a federal judge in 2014, they say they’ve collected only about 15 percent of what they’re owed.

These are both solvable problems if we’re willing to change a legal and economic system that stacks the deck against working people.

Catching Wage Thieves In the Act

Workers know complaining about unpaid or underpaid hours can mean risking their jobs or getting shunted into a less favorable schedule. According to a 2019 report by the National Employment Law Project, 45 states lack one or more of the provisions of an effective anti-retaliation law.

Undocumented workers are especially vulnerable to retaliation. Speaking about undocumented workers in Houston, Texas, Josef Buenker, a private employment lawyer, said, “I can’t count the number of times workers have told us that that it’s an overt threat used against them, [when bosses say] ‘I’m going to report you to ICE, what are you going to do about it?’” He added, “We regularly meet with people who want to pursue their claim, but then they go home and think about it and decide not to because they’re concerned about their immigration status.” As long as the threat of deportation can be used against workers, wage theft will persist. Aggressive deportation policies undermine labor conditions for both immigrants and for their U.S.-born coworkers, whose bargaining power is undermined by their bosses’ ability to exploit those without papers.

The cost of going to court is another key consideration. Some workers are able to find free legal counsel from a local legal services agency, but these agencies are stretched thin, forced to choose between helping people in poverty avoid eviction, fight wrongful debt collection lawsuits, win wage theft cases, and gain protection from domestic violence. A worker making more than $15,000 per year is often totally ineligible for legal services aid.

Some legal aid organizations lack the funding to take on wage theft cases at all. In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, there are two organizations providing civil representation to low-income workers, the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy and Legal Aid of North Carolina, explained Ken Schorr, Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy’s executive director, and he noted that neither organization will represent low-income workers in court for wage theft cases. Schorr explained, “The majority of our funding is grant-based for particular areas.” He added, “We haven’t been able to find funding to do employment law based work such as wage claims.” Our country considers legal representation in civil cases a privilege, not a right — which means many low-wage workers can’t use the court system to hold their employers accountable.

That’s why, as Tallulah Knopp, a staff attorney at Boston’s Volunteer Lawyer Project, points out, it’s so important for states to have clear “fee-shifting” statutes: in many states, when a worker wins a wage theft lawsuit, the employer will have to pay their back wages, but not necessarily their legal fees. A strong “fee-shifting” statute, like Massachusetts’, sets a standard where, if a worker wins their case, their employer pays the legal fees, instead of the worker having to pay the lawyer out of their recovered damages. That encourages private lawyers to come to the table on behalf of workers, Knopp explains. In a state like Texas, where filing fees are $400, and many attorneys bill at $100 per hour or more, there’s no real way to get your wages back if you’re owed just $500. That’s why Knopp and Nick Wertsch, of Texas’ Workers Defense Project, both point to fee-shifting statutes as a critical part of fighting wage theft.

But Jennifer Lee, associate professor at Temple Law School, argues that relying on workers to come forward against their bosses can’t solve wage theft by itself, even in the presence of fee-shifting.

As Lee explains, the information barriers and risks for workers to report their own wage theft remain high, even when states try to protect workers from retaliation. “The number of workers who are suffering violations versus the number of people who come forward is miniscule,” says Lee.

After investigating 141 state and local anti-wage-theft laws, she concluded that we can’t rely on workers to file complaints or lawsuits: while a worker’s “private right of action” can be part of the solution, we also need strong wage theft enforcement agencies that don’t just react to workers’ complaints, but are on the lookout for abuse.

Funding is part of the problem in some cities and states, says Lee, but she also points to cities whose enforcement agencies are dramatically underutilized. Many agencies, Lee says, wait for workers to file complaints, rather than entering the community to inform workers of their rights, and to find bad actors.

The most promising approach, says Lee, is collaboration between government agencies and workers’ centers. Although workers in the industries susceptible to wage theft often aren’t unionized, many are organized through local worker’s centers like the Domestic Worker & Day Laborer Center of Chicago and Houston’s Fe y Justicia. “Agencies aren’t always in the best position to identify which workplaces have issues or to build trust with workers,” says Lee, adding that worker’s centers are often more embedded in the community. The cooperation of worker’s centers gathers useful information about labor conditions and can encourage more workers to come forward. Lee pointed to Seattle as an example of a city that has effectively partnered with local community groups — their Office of Labor Standards selected ten community organizations to receive $1 million contracts to provide education and outreach to workers. Reporting by the Philadelphia Enquirer found that, in 2018, Seattle’s Office of Labor Standards received 10 times the number of wage theft questions and complaints than Philadelphia received, a larger city that lacked such a strategy.

Making Them Pay the Bill 

But even once wage theft is brought to light, workers don’t always get paid. Across the country, nominally “successful” wage theft lawsuits often result in empty judgments: just because a judge or jury agreed that a worker experienced wage theft, it doesn’t always mean that the worker will be able to collect her back wages.

A report by the National Center for Law and Economic Justice found at least $125 million in unpaid wage theft judgments and orders within New York City alone. Carmela Huang, a supervising attorney at New York City’s Legal Aid Society, says “it’s just far too easy for employers to transfer their assets.” As an example, Huang explains, a restaurant owner faced with a high-dollar wage theft lawsuit will recruit a friend to create a new corporation and transfer the restaurant to the new corporation. That makes the original corporation facing the lawsuit nominally unable to pay its wage debts. “For more than a decade employer-side attorneys have been advising clients on how to hide their assets — it is definitely a part of the practice to advise clients on how to make themselves judgment-proof,” says Huang. That’s why the Legal Aid Society called on New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to sign the SWEAT Act, which would have allowed workers to place a lien on their employers’ assets while wage theft litigation was ongoing, stopping bad companies from using suspicious transfers to hide assets. Cuomo vetoed the SWEAT Act on January 2.

Our country arrests 1.5 million people for burglary and larceny per year — but workers facing stolen wages are routinely deprived of justice. Businesses can dial 911 and expect the cops to show up to arrest a shoplifter, while millions of Americans work for poverty wages, as victims of theft from their employers, with little hope of recourse. To end wage theft, we should lift the threat of deportation, guarantee workers access to the legal system, build strong wage theft enforcement agencies, and close the loopholes that allow employers to shirk responsibility to pay owed wages.

I have firsthand experience with one: Rhogam. Like 15 percent of the population, I lack the Rhesus factor in my blood, which means I have a negative blood type. If your partner has a positive blood type (or if their blood type is unknown), the fetus can inherit their factor, causing problems with the pregnancy. Pregnant people in this position can be given an injection of rho(D) immune globulin, such as Rhogam, to create antibodies that desensitize our physiological response if our blood comes into contact with the fetus’ blood, should it be Rhesus positive. Without the injection, it could be problematic for not only the health of the pregnant person and developing pregnancy, but the development of future pregnancies. Normally, Rhogam isn’t given during pregnancy until the 28th week, but abortion providers still routinely provide it at earlier gestations.

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I had the privilege of using insurance when I delivered my two children, including one through a cesarean section. Unexpected fees weren’t something I anticipated when I needed an abortion while living uninsured — and I live in Texas, where in 2017 a bill passed prohibiting insurance plans from providing coverage for abortion unless the pregnant person has a separate premium they’ve purchased specifically for abortion. And for most people, Medicaid won’t cover it, either. I learned I’d need to pay $100 because of my blood type, on top of $450 for a surgical abortion. My local abortion fund helped, but it wasn’t enough for me to afford Rhogam and sedation. So I experienced my surgical abortion completely aware, which wasn’t comfortable for me. Nor what I wanted, since medical settings give me anxiety.

Some clinics have taken measures to address the challenges of added fees. And abortion funds, such as the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, also provide financial assistance. Some abortion providers combine what would typically be additional costs with the price of the abortion, or try to be up front about these fees on their websites. But not everyone has access to the internet, or if they do, it isn’t always easy to find accurate information. Crisis pregnancy centers often use similar names to trick people, who may not realize they’re on a site that isn’t legitimate. So it isn’t unusual for us to learn — for the first time — that we have to pay hundreds of dollars upon visiting the clinic.

“We’ve had patients who choose our clinic specifically because we don’t charge for Rhogam,” one clinic told me. Other clinics may waive the fee for those who need help paying for it, when resources are available to do so. “We received a grant that allowed us to provide our patients with financial assistance for things, and at the time we decided to use it on Rhogam, so people wouldn’t have to miss their appointment over an unexpected thing,” another clinic said. “We recognize the hardship this creates for many people, especially when a lot of people have no idea what their blood type is to begin with.”

The extra cost of Rhogam increased the time one patient needed to pay back a loan they took out on their car in order to afford the procedure. “I had to travel to a different state because it was closer than the clinic where I lived. I had the money from a loan I took out already, but when I found out I’d need to pay $100 more because of my blood type — in addition to the barriers I was already facing — I realized I’d be stuck in this cycle of debt longer than I hoped for,” they said.

I also spoke with Desiree — whose name has been changed to protect her privacy. “I remember standing at the window and being told it would be an extra $100 because of my blood type. It had already taken me weeks to get the $400, and I needed an abortion a few days before rent was due. I had to step aside and really think about what this could mean for my living situation,” she said, since she’d already needed assistance from a local abortion fund.

Laurie Bertram Roberts, co-founder and executive director of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund, told TalkPoverty: “We hear from many callers that struggle more because of these extra costs. It’s already hard as it is to raise hundreds of dollars for the procedure, especially for our callers who are experiencing homelessness and other barriers related to accessing abortion.”

This issue also affects those who don’t have a negative blood type. “I wasn’t even Rh-negative, but the clinic I went to gives everyone Rhogam,” said another patient. She said the additional cost caused her to drive home on “fumes,” because she had to use her last $50 that was originally intended for gas after driving out of town for her abortion.

When it comes to the extra cost associated with Rhogam, fortunately, things are changing. In Contraception Journal, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) recognized last year that testing for the Rhesus factor in abortion care has become a barrier. They refer to Dutch guidelines, which say the injection is unnecessary for pregnancies less than eight weeks — and Sweden also recommends against the injection for early medical abortion.

NAF recently updated its recommendations regarding when Rhogam is required. They no longer recommend it for early abortions less than eight weeks, most of which are medical abortions and account for two thirds of the abortions performed in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute. Now, people with a negative blood type — who find out about their pregnancy early on — may have the ability to forego Rhogam at NAF-member clinics. Some experts say it isn’t necessary for a first pregnancy at all.

Dr. Alice Mark, NAF’s Medical Director, told TalkPoverty: “We know giving the Rhogam injection at 28 weeks decreases the risk of sensitization, but what we don’t know is that any intervention before that has any impact on the outcomes…The studies [on sensitization] use methods that are outdated, and we were doing this intervention without knowing whether or not it benefited patients.” They drew heavily on data from Europe, where not providing Rhogam early in gestation has “no appreciable impact.”

Dr. Mark stressed that some clinics may want to follow American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommendations to protect their patients, and that’s not wrong. “But because we’ve made this change, it’s been taken to ACOG to be discussed on their committees,” said Dr. Mark.

One clinic I spoke with told TalkPoverty that, “We’re going to follow the [NAF] recommendations, and we should be updating the guidelines in the next month. All of our physicians are really excited to follow these guidelines — there’s a lot of research on it. It’s an extra barrier for patients.” Patients are also growing more aware. “I didn’t need it because I’m less than eight weeks,” said one person I spoke with before her abortion.

This isn’t the fault of clinics. It is the result of the systemic issues related to extreme abortion restrictions. After all, paying for abortion could be a lot easier if there wasn’t a federal ban on public funding. Independent clinics perform the majority of abortions in the U.S., but they receive absolutely no support from our government. Use of state dollars for Medicaid reimbursements for abortions is highly restricted in Texas and a number of other states, so while some providers may combine these additional fees in the cost of the abortion, it’s inevitable not all would be able to in order to sustain the operation of the clinic. In eleven states, including Texas, most people can’t use their private health insurance for their abortion, either.

And with providers across the country facing closures due to medically unnecessary restrictions, accessing a clinic becomes less of a reality for many even without these additional costs. Next month, Missouri will give a final ruling in the case of the state’s only abortion provider shutting down. Six states currently have only one clinic, and Missouri could be the first with zero. In Texas, we have the most cities more than 100 miles away from an abortion clinic. For some of us, there is no choice: we’re forced to continue a pregnancy we don’t feel ready for.

Because even though we have a legal right to have an abortion, lawmakers continue to remind us that our right to choose means nothing if we can’t access it.

“I understand the sheer panic of not knowing what to do, and you want to get your kid off the street because you really honestly believe they’re going to die,” said Cochran. “But I had a thought that, you know, if my daughter gets arrested, she’s gonna have a record.”

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The concepts of “enabling,” “rock bottom,” and other punitive approaches toward addiction are mainstays of the 12 step programs that continue to dominate recovery culture despite a lack of scientific evidence backing their efficacy. It’s not uncommon for parents of people in the throes of addiction to feel compelled to call the police on their loved one, pray for their incarceration, or feel relief when their loved one gets locked up. Cochran still encounters the mentality frequently in “Moms for All Paths to Recovery,” an arm of her nonprofit “Heart of a Warrior Woman,” dedicated to disseminating the harm reduction tools and tenets she wished had been more available when she was desperate for ways to help her child.

“In that moment, [parents] say nothing else is working,” explained Cochran. “They need a reprieve and somehow they think no matter what anyone has told them, [their child’s incarceration] gives them a reprieve.”

Parents, however, are not the only people who uphold the myth that incarceration benefits people struggling with addiction. Many people in recovery credit incarceration with their turnaround. It’s not uncommon to hear people say they would never have stopped using if they hadn’t gotten locked up, or that detoxing felt psychologically easier in jail, where they knew they couldn’t get a hit. Amanda Mansur, a restaurant server and mother living in Massachusetts, told TalkPoverty over the phone that, in retrospect, being incarcerated was a “positive experience.”

“It taught me…about gratitude. You don’t realize how good you have it until you lose everything,” said Mansur.

But incarceration is highly traumatic and embedded with both short- and long-term negative consequences. In the long term, convictions, especially felonies, can follow people for years after their release from jail or prison. People with felony drug convictions face difficulties renting homes, gaining employment, and even accessing public benefits.

Most states no longer enforce a lifetime ban on public benefits like food assistance and cash benefits for families with children, but many still impose temporary bans or reinstatement requirements outside of their criminal sentence. That can mean drug testing, which is costly, invasive, and not always accurate; the more common, less expensive urine drug tests, for example, are prone to false positives, which can result from the use of over-the-counter medicines or even edible poppy seeds.

The negative consequences of incarceration are compounded for people of color. Members of Black and Latinx communities are more likely to be incarcerated for drugs, and one in nine Black children has an incarcerated parent, as opposed to one out of every 57 white children. One study conducted in New York City found that Black men with criminal backgrounds faced harsher employment discrimination than white men with similar convictions. One out of every 13 Black Americans will lose voting rights in their lifetime due to felony disenfranchisement. Over 250,000 immigrants have been deported as the result of drug charges since 2007, according to data compiled by the Drug Policy Alliance.

But all of these consequences hinge on the assumption that a person survives the ordeal of incarceration. For people who are addicted to drugs, survival is not guaranteed.

“Any time someone has to use drugs in a way that’s secret, that’s hidden, that’s rushed, that’s not around people, that’s not in a safe secure network where you can get help, you see increased harms,” said Kim Sue, the medical director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, who also performs clinical work at Rikers Island Correctional Facility and recently published a book titled “Getting Wrecked: Women, Incarceration, and the American Opioid Crisis,” that examines the use of methadone and buprenorphine within jails and prisons. Those harms can include increased rates of infections and diseases like HIV and Hep C that can result from sharing syringes and other equipment.

Those harms can also manifest as death due to withdrawal. Although opioid withdrawal is not conventionally considered fatal among otherwise healthy adults, a number of people have been found dead in cells across the country. In 2017, Mother Jones reported that although nobody is tracking how many of these deaths are taking place, 20 lawsuits were filed against United States correctional facilities between 2014 and 2016 in response to alleged opioid withdrawal-related deaths. Withdrawal-related dehydration is often cited as a primary factor in these deaths. In more than one of these cases, distressed inmates reported concerns for their life to family members over the phone, or begged staff for water and medical care in earshot of their cellmates. Surveillance cameras caught the excruciating withdrawal and death of a 32-year old Michigan man who was in addiction treatment when he was arrested and sentenced to 30 days in jail for failing to pay a driving ticket.

“If you’re doing a lot of vomiting or a lot of diarrhea…[that] can lead to different electrolyte disturbances which can affect cardiac function, leading to cardiac arrest,” explained Sue, who also noted that many times, medically untrained guards are the only people available to assist incarcerated people in withdrawal. She added that even when inmates are transferred to medical units, most facilities do not have doctors on site full time.

There is a growing awareness among criminal justice authorities that medications used to treat opioid use disorder, like methadone and buprenorphine, are essential for people struggling with opioid addiction. Often prompted by lawsuits, several facilities have begun inducting incoming inmates who are addicted to opioids, or allowing people already prescribed the medications to continue taking them. Regardless, the majority of facilities do not allow the use of these medications, except for people who are pregnant (even then, patients are typically tapered off after pregnancy, sometimes while still recovering from childbirth).

This means that most people who are incarcerated while addicted to opioids will undergo forcible detox. In some cases, even when people are given methadone or buprenorphine as a withdrawal aid or for maintenance while inside, they are not given adequate referrals on the outside. In some areas of the country, these medications are difficult to access or too expensive to pay for out of pocket. For people addicted to opioids, being forcibly detoxed without adequate access to evidence-based treatment like methadone or buprenorphine can be dangerous upon release because it leaves them at risk of relapse, but without their former tolerance. Opioid-addicted people who have been released from incarceration are at significantly heightened risk of overdose in their first several weeks back in the community.

Even in facilities where evidence-based treatment is offered, the risk of trauma remains ever-present. “[People who are incarcerated] get killed by staff, they get killed by other inmates…they get raped, they get sodomized,” said Dinah Ortiz, a vocal harm reductionist and parent advocate at a New York defense firm. “You don’t know how many rapes I saw, you don’t know how many women I saw sodomized during my little six months in Rikers.”

“If you’re the kind of person who needs to take a walk when you’re feeling stressed, you cannot do that [while incarcerated]. If you’re anxious around other people who are loud or fighting, you can’t avoid that. The environment is not therapeutic,” said Jonathan Giftos, who worked as the clinical director of substance use treatment for the Division of Correctional Health Services at Rikers Island. “A lot of the health side works hard to mitigate the harms of the environment, but you can only do so much.”

Even when formerly incarcerated people praise their experience behind bars, they also often share stories of trauma and relapse that didn’t end with jail or prison, but with evidence-based care that they accessed in the community. Mansur, for example, admitted that she relapsed shortly after her release, and continued using for three years before achieving sobriety with the help of a self-referred buprenorphine prescription. She detailed that she’s had difficulty renting apartments because of her conviction, which was for theft that she committed in order to pay for drugs. She’s also unable to work in the medical field or with vulnerable populations like children or the elderly, which she finds disappointing because she had studied psychology in college.

“Maybe if I had been introduced to medication-assisted treatment previously from going to jail, maybe that would have prevented [the need to be arrested],” Mansur stated, before acknowledging that her addiction became “much worse” after she was released from jail.

“If your [child] is out of control there are ways to go about [helping them] that do not involve incarceration,” advised Ortiz. “If you have that mentality that I prefer they be in jail, then that’s the mentality that they are going to have, too.”

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Like many of my cohorts, I was sold the line that higher education was the golden ticket to a successful life. Off I set at eighteen to Eastern Michigan University, sure of what I wanted and what I would do. But life being as it is, and plans going the way they often do, I didn’t graduate. I dropped out to have a baby, joined the Navy, was medically discharged, and left drifting without tangible purpose. This is at least in part due to my husband’s active duty status, taking us overseas. This is not unusual, as the same manifesto notes that as of 2017, 60 percent of non-traditional students are women. At least I had my Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, a college payment incentive offered for military enlistment after the 9/11 attacks, and since my life became more stable in my late 20s and early 30s, the time seemed right: I enrolled at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

As a disabled veteran and mother of a teenager, I knew some of the challenges awaiting me after admission. Being significantly older than my peers and being mistaken for a graduate student or instructor were odd blows to my self-esteem. There were numerous others I’d not considered. But as I sit here three weeks from graduating at the time of this writing, I’ve realized that I’ve succeeded despite higher education institutions failing to understand the needs of non-traditional students.

The university experience in the United States is designed to pipeline high school graduates through it and into the workplace as fast as possible, even with the reality that financial success is not necessarily waiting at the other end. Our campus is full of eye-catching signs encouraging undergraduate students to finish in four years, encouraging a fifteen-credit course load if you mean to finish within four years, instead of a full-time load of just twelve. Each syllabus reminds us that we should expect three hours of outside class work per week per credit hour. A fifteen-credit schedule alone starts with fifteen hours a week under instruction. If each class sticks to only that three hours per week outside of class, you’ve racked up forty-five hours of homework. Being a full-time student is more than full time. If your only responsibility is class, and you budget your time well, that may just be doable.

As a theatre major, like many other majors, it’s also not unheard of to have to fit in many outside-of-class activities. I study stage management and playwriting, and that requires me to run shows. I am lucky to have instructors who help me find alternate routes to these requirements, but not every department is this accommodating.

Class and homework are not always the only things people are balancing.

In addition to family duties and disability status, I’m an author, which is a demanding job that comes with irregular hours, most of them unpaid. My time is valuable. My work and financial circumstance allow me to put projects on pause, to the frustration of my ambition. But I still find it difficult to keep up with the amount of self-promotion being an author requires. I was asked to choose between my GPA and my income.

My share of the responsibilities of my home life doesn’t stop for my school day, not if we want things like packed lunches and clean underwear. Even with on-campus services like the Student Parents at Mānoa (SPAM), who help to fill in gaps in childcare, there are limitations. Families need fed. Meals need planned. Perpetual chores pile up each and every day, even if you did them the day before. My family is great about sharing chores, but they have school and jobs too. Of course, traditional students often have to deal with this, as a record number of young people currently live in a household with at least one other generation, which only further emphasizes the need for more support.

And commutes! My commute of twenty miles one way is over an hour. By the time I get home, with a mountain of homework or paperwork, those languishing piles of laundry and cat boxes in need of scooping make me want to cry. Plus, between commuting, family care, instruction time, homework, paid and unpaid non-school work, sleep must happen.

As a person living with chronic pain and mental illness, I often find the demands on my time challenging. My mobility is largely unaffected, which is good, since several of the buildings I frequent lack elevators for my second and third floor classes. With chronic pain often comes chronic fatigue, and while I can make it up and down all of those stairs, it takes its toll.

Managing disability and mental health requires appointments. Appointments take time out of home, work, rest, and class since they tend to be during standard business hours. Going to school for me means staying on my medications. Keeping that medication requires monthly appointments. Many classes penalize overall grades — some as much as one-third of a letter grade deduction — for missed instruction time. If you maintain attendance and miss appointments, health issues inevitably arise, requiring more missed class hours. My teenage child also has appointments, which my spouse and I must take turns with so neither of us miss too much work or school.

Most campuses now have disability services, like UH Mānoa’s Kōkua office. For many students, knowing what accommodations to ask for is daunting. What help can they offer for missed meds and bad traffic? Even if you know what to ask for, it needs to be documented by a qualifying medical professional, which is more outside-of-class time, and the hours per week are reaching untenable.

Universities could take great steps, including encouraging communication with instructors or eliminating graded attendance, in order to address some of these issues. Integrate more one-stop offices to help non-traditional students navigate enrollment and registration. Place non-traditional students on your student governments, boards of regents, and other organizations empowered to enact policy change. Create liaison positions for non-traditional students to direct their needs. Even small things, like eliminating assignments that are little more than busywork, can be an amazing reprieve.

Like I said, I’m in the final days. I would have to try to fail at this point, and even then it may not be enough to undo what I’ve accomplished. At the end of the term, many non-traditional and later-in-life students will graduate, but our successes are in spite of these circumstances. So, I guess that toilet is going to need to wait a few more weeks.

Like any curious 14-year-old, I asked, “Why they let you go?” She responded with an undertone of cynicism: “They said they need to downsize, so they let me go.”

“Mommy, what does downsize mean?”

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Since my overly expensive degree in Organizational Behavior from NYU, I’ve learned that not all downsizing is as bad as what happened to my mother.

According to the Harvard Business Review, proponents of downsizing argue that it is an effective strategy, with benefits such as increased performance and sales. Stepping out of Business 101 is decarceration, the downsizing of incarceration to reduce the scale and reach of the criminal justice system. It’s time to start now, especially as violent crime is down in most cities and lawmakers weigh the decriminalization of many offenses, such as drug possession/use and sex work.

Downsizing means police should not be mental health first responders. They need mental health treatment. They need help. Police officer suicides in 2018 were the highest ever, with 228 officers dying by suicide. Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, believes the 228 number “is undoubtedly underreported.” Probation and parole officers are not substance abuse counselors or employment specialists.

And all of this is okay because we don’t need them to be. They just need to get themselves healthy, and rightsizing should be an option. We already have proficient social workers, mental health professionals, substance abuse counselors, and employment specialists who are not utilized enough or funded appropriately.

The criminal justice system is a discordant machine of more than 55,000 criminal justice-related agencies nationwide inclusive of police, courts, district attorney offices, jails, prisons, parole and probation boards, and ecarceration. I’m sure I’ve missed a few here, but the point is that America’s criminal justice reform intoxication should include more than reducing the number of people in prisons or the amount of lockups closed: It should mean fewer institutions of incarceration, too.

Downsizing in this context means relieving some institutions of their duties and giving them a severance package that will allow them to take care of their own house.

Our tax dollars pay the bill of more than $270 billion to keep the criminal justice system intact. If the criminal justice system were a country, it would be 41st on the GDP tally of 186 countries. We — and I mean “we,” because “We, the People” allow for this profane, ineffective, and inefficient use of resources — currently have open-air incarceration, where about 4.5 million people live under some form of community supervision, alongside the 2.3 million people in prisons. We spend $29 billion on the federal law enforcement budget (#99 on the GDP tally). We have 70 million people in the U.S., not incarcerated, but living freeish with a criminal conviction.

Amid this display of laissez-faire governance, there is progress to soberly consider. Bail reform in several states is decreasing the debtor’s prison construct. Restorative justice models are sprouting up across the country, effectively decreasing exposure to all points of the criminal punishment system. Progressive judges like Victoria Pratt “sentenced” people who came before her court to write essays, instead of lockup. Law enforcement administrators from across the country have been meeting as Executives Transforming Parole & Probation (EXiT) to operationalize the downsizing of their reach and their caseloads. In their “Statement on the Future of Probation & Parole in the United States,” they assert: “As people who run or have run community supervision throughout the country and others concerned with mass supervision, we call for probation and parole to be substantially downsized, less punitive, and more hopeful, equitable and restorative.”

Several years ago, when I was a violence interrupter for the Cure Violence program in Brooklyn, New York, I spoke at an intimate convening of community residents, police, and elected officials. During my comments, I said my job is to figure out ways to put myself out of work. My work was to reduce shootings in the area of Brooklyn where the violence interrupter program operated. Even then, I understood that any person or institution engaged in intervention work should hope that their interventions are no longer needed. The criminal justice system is an operation of interventions ostensibly created to deal with violations of the societal contract. Because of the disproportionate use of these interventions on Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian Pacific Islander populations, we understand that we have a racialized system of control.

White supremacy aside for a moment (as if it is ever possible to put the ideology of white supremacy in timeout), the 55,000 agencies of the criminal punishment system, e.g., the courts, law enforcement, and community supervision, should keep a humbling view of themselves.  They should be working to put themselves out of business. They need to see downsizing as a means to community efficacy.

Since my mother’s untimely dismissal from her job, our family figured it out, like most working-class families. We pooled our resources together. My mother still has a few choice four-letter words in her Trinidadian accent to describe the process of being laid off. I assume the 55,000 criminal justice agencies will also have a vulgar reaction to real downsizing. But I am sure those of us in communities that are involuntarily cuffed to the criminal punishment system will also find a way to pool our resources together to create safe neighborhoods we all deserve.

“West of [interstate highway] 83 there is no viable business district, no economic engine or opportunities for young people,” says James Hamlin, the owner of a local bakery.

Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Avenue was once a thriving cultural center for the city’s Black population during the era of segregation. Famous artists like Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, and Duke Ellington all arrived in the city to play at Baltimore’s Royal Theater.

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But the venue was demolished in the 1970s, and today most of the businesses that thrived during the era of segregation have closed. Most people who know the area think of the drug trade portrayed in the popular HBO show The Wire, or of the 2015 protests that erupted after police killed a 25-year-old Black man named Freddie Gray. Further east on North Avenue, the paint is chipped off the storefronts and the nearby townhouses are boarded up. It’s impossible not to notice the history of economic neglect in these majority-Black neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, residents claim that the city only responds to service requests, calls to change streetlights, or pick up trash in areas of Baltimore where the majority of the population is white. Black neighborhoods, many of which are cut off from other parts of the city by highways and a lack of public transportation, are largely left to fend for themselves.

But an ambitious plan put forward by the President of Baltimore’s City Council, 35-year-old Brandon Scott, aims to change that by tasking government agencies with finding solutions to the deep structural racism that has plagued the city for decades.

In November last year, the city voted overwhelmingly in favor of establishing a permanent Equity Assistance Fund that would be used exclusively to support efforts that aim to reduce race, gender, and economic inequality. The charter amendment that establishes the fund is one of the first in the country that explicitly mentions structural and institutional racism. A separate bill also obligates each government agency to analyze how it can address structural inequalities and come up with an equity action plan.

Scott, who has been working in local government since he was just 27, said his personal experience growing up in Baltimore motivated him to address the city’s longstanding history of inequality.

“I lived in Lower Park Heights, so you have vacant homes, violence, of course, blight, lead paint in houses, and all of that stuff going on. And then right above me you had some of the most affluent areas in the city,” Scott said, describing a scenario that is typical for Baltimore City.

“The area right to the east of us, right across [highway] 83, is Roland Park, which is one of the most affluent neighborhoods. So when you grow up in the city and you are surrounded by what you see, and then you see the opposite not far away from you, it changes the way you look at the world,” Scott continued.

The differences between Baltimore’s neighborhoods even affect how long residents live. In Baltimore’s Greenmount East neighborhood, the average life expectancy is around 66 years. In Roland Park, in contrast, the average life expectancy is 84 years. The disparities mimic the difference in life expectancy between some of the world’s most and least developed countries.

This starkly unequal landscape was created largely through deliberate policies that aimed to separate the city’s white residents from the Black population. At the turn of the century, in 1910, Baltimore passed an extreme ordinance that prohibited Black and white populations from living in the same neighborhoods. Segregation allowed banks and the federal government to exclude majority-Black neighborhoods from their loan programs, making it nearly impossible for Black residents to become homeowners.

The 1910 ordinance didn’t last very long. The Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional in 1917. But many of the city’s residential neighborhoods remain segregated over a century later.

Researchers have described Baltimore as having an L-shaped corridor down the center of the city where the white population lives, and a majority-Black, butterfly-shaped area that surrounds either side of the city’s main artery. Today, predominantly white neighborhoods in Baltimore receive between two and four times as much capital investment as majority-Black neighborhoods, according to recent estimates.

With all of this in mind, advocates argue that only robust public policy like the kind proposed by Scott can address the problems caused by nearly a century of racist policies.

But one year after the city’s residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bills, the details are still nebulous. Agencies are currently working on their assessments and action plans, and the first agency budgets to be shaped through a lens of equity will be presented in the late spring and early summer.

Mara James, a legislative lead at Baltimore’s Bureau of the Budget and Management Research, noted that there is some concern about how to finance the Equity Assistance Fund.

“The legislation established the Fund but did not designate a funding source. At this point in time, no funding sources have been identified for the Fund,” James said. “We value the efforts of Council President Scott to put equity at the forefront of the City’s work, but our office is concerned about the impact that any dedicated fund may have on the City’s ability to respond to fiscal emergencies or large future costs and ensure we continue to provide core services to residents.”

One number often floated publicly is $15 million, or roughly 3 percent of the police department’s annual budget. But current Mayor Jack Young has also expressed some concern about where the extra money would come from and whether it would be possible to skim money from the police budget.

“The administration is not focused on that legislation. We’re focused on developing an equity framework,” James Bentley, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, said about the Equity Assistance Fund.

Bentley argues that the city doesn’t have the ability to finance the Fund because of a state-mandated policy that will require millions of dollars be invested into public schools over the next decade. But the mayor’s office wants to use data and statistics to find new ways to ensure that the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods get as much attention as the wealthier ones, he says.

“When you look at the data it clearly showed a discrepancy, that some areas get more attention to the detriment of others. Mayor Young wants us to use data to show where there are disparities,” Bentley said.

Young has also suggested that tax incentives could be used to attract business to parts of the city that lack economic investment. But some experts argue that purely economic policies may not be enough to achieve sustainable racial and economic justice.

“I wish there was one policy that would solve the history of a lack of investment or neighborhoods being where they are. Tax incentives alone can’t be the answer to structural racism,” said Leon Andrews, a director of the National League of Cities. “It can complement other things that you want to do, but if you just have tax incentives without thinking about the inequities and what that means for the neighborhood, you can repeat displacement and gentrification as we’ve seen in other neighborhoods. Tax benefits for what purpose? Who benefits?”

For many of the youth living around Pennsylvania Avenue, the government’s plans — mayor’s or council’s — mean little if they aren’t implemented.

“We have assets but we don’t have infrastructure,” says Hamlin, the local bakery owner. “The ideas are good but something has to happen.”

The predominantly Black River Parishes along the 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge are overrun with over 150 plants and refineries. This area was once dubbed Cancer Alley by residents and media because of the clusters of cancer patients in the area. Now residents are calling it Death Alley because of the significant amount of deaths by cancer and other illnesses among the residents who live near the industrial pollution.

“You put poison in the land, water and in the air, the result is sickness and death. The planned killing of any group is genocide,” Pat Bryant, the son of sharecroppers and a resident of New Orleans, said frankly. Bryant started Justice and Beyond in 2012 as a response to social and environmental injustice along the Louisiana parishes.

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After Emancipation, in 1863, many formerly enslaved Americans remained in the South, occupied fertile plots of land, and built themselves small shanties along the curvatures of the serpent-like Mississippi River, not far from the plantations that once enslaved them. These communities represented freedom and prosperity long fought for.

Descendants of enslaved Americans who, against all odds, made lives for themselves along the Mississippi have found themselves next door to refineries, chemical plants, and waste dumps in one of the most heavily polluted areas of the country. Cities like Morrisonville, Diamond, Mossville, Sunrise, and Revilletown, all founded by formerly enslaved Americans, have all been erased by environmental racism. Each town was devastated by the toxins emitted into the air, water, and soil surrounding their communities by multinational petrochemical companies like Shell and Georgia Gulf Corp. that inevitably seeped onto their land, into their homes, and poisoned their bodies. Those who didn’t fall ill and die were eventually bought out or moved.

The town of Morrisonville, founded in the late 1870s after the Civil War, was wiped off the map by the 1980s. “Morrisonville is one of the sad stories that had so much promise at the end of slavery and fell to such tough circumstances during Reconstruction. The people were able to make a living. They built houses. They educated their families when there was no public education for African Americans. And some of them were able to send their kids to college to build a better life,” Bryant told me.

Today, Dow Louisiana, the largest petrochemical company in the state, resides there, and the only thing left of the historic community of Morrisonville is the town cemetery and its more than 100 years of familial ties. The exploitation and genocide of Black Americans may look different in the 21st century, but there is no denying that racism, environmental and otherwise, plays a powerful role in the fates of these predominately Black Louisiana parishes, and much of America.

Every family along the River Parishes has lost droves of loved ones to cancer and other pollution-related ailments. Many have joined or created activist groups opposing large petrochemical companies, but their cries are being dismissed and pushed aside while people are getting sick and dying at alarming rates.

Resident Mary Hampton started Concerned Citizens of St. John as a result of the lack of action from public officials and the deadly effects of chloroprene coming from the Denka plant to the residents of St. John. In 2016, the EPA’s National Air Toxics Assessment revealed that residents living near the Denka Performance Elastomer plant were 800 times more likely to get cancer. Denka is the sole source of chloroprene in the United States. Since rule-making is such a long and strenuous process, the EPA does not prioritize compounds that are not present in more than one community.

“My father had prostate cancer, my two sisters-in-law died with breast cancer, my son-in-law died from bone cancer, my other brother died of bone cancer. So many members of my immediate family that I have lost,” Hampton said of Denka’s legacy in St. John. Her voice broke as she detailed many of those close to her who passed before their time and the children they left behind. “We just want a safe place to live, that’s all.”

According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity, in the Environmental Protection Agency’s “22-year history of processing environmental discrimination complaints, the office has never once made a formal finding of a Title VI (prohibits discrimination on the base of race, color, or national origin) violation.” Latinx Americans are exposed to 63 percent more pollution than they create and Black Americans are exposed to 56 percent, in comparison with white Americans, who are exposed to 17 percent less, according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. People of color contribute less to the overall effects of pollution but carry the bulk of the burden.

Stephanie Cooper, a 50-year-old teacher of 29 years, is Vice President of RISE St. James, an activist group fighting to block Formosa Plastics. Cooper’s family has lived in St. James Parish for four generations. Her father, Oliver Cooper Sr., purchased their land when she was just eight years old. During this same time, he challenged the status quo by running for St. James Councilman — a seat that he kept well into his 70s.

Now, Formosa plans to build a massive ethane cracker complex a mile from the local public school which would emit ethylene oxide, a toxic chemical that causes cancers like non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukemia, and breast cancer.

“We used to enjoy just sitting outside or with the screen door [open] but you can’t do that anymore. The door has to be closed,” Cooper explained. The pollution in the area is so bad that the beautiful garden her family once had is no longer possible and the critters have all but left. “We used to catch butterflies with butterfly nets and catch dragonflies on the fences, but you don’t see too much of that anymore. Now you’d be lucky if you see a pigeon.”

“If Formosa come in, that’s it,” Milton Cayette told me. Cayette’s great-great-grandfather bought 17 acres of land in the late 1800s, which Cayette tends to and lives on to this day. “They said that if anything would happen people would need to be at least a one-mile radius from the center of the plant. They built it 300 feet from my house and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

The Taiwanese Formosa Plastics Group was awarded The Black Planet Award in 2009, an award meant for companies creating the most ecological damage on a global level, by Ethecon Foundation. Ethecon cited “a continuing sequence of social and ecological foul play throughout the world.” In fact, one quarter of Taiwan’s greenhouse gas emissions could be tied back to FPG.

Yet, state and local officials offered FPG an estimated $1.5 billion in incentives to bring the chemical complex to St. James Parish, without disclosing any information to residents.

Ride any train in the city and you’re bound to see the signs — wallpapered across stations and on the insides of trains — warning passengers that they’re better off paying the $2.75 fare than the $100 fine, and directing them to use turnstiles to enter and exit the tunnels, as opposed to gates, which can easily be held open and passed through without paying. If you ride in the Bronx, Brooklyn, or Queens, you’re bound to see fare checks taking place, or to be subject to one yourself.

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Here’s how it happened to me: I approached one of the Metro Transit Authority (MTA) automated ticketing booths at LaGuardia Airport and purchased a fare card with something like 30 dollars on it. When I got on the bus, amidst a pretty typical New York crowd, I didn’t see anywhere to swipe my card. But people were cramming in behind me, so I shrugged it off. I could figure it out when I got off, or pay the same fare at the next stop, where I would have been using a receipt had this fare gone through. In any case, my money had transferred from my bank account over to the MTA — so good enough, right?

At the bus stop in Queens, we were greeted by two burly police officers in full cop regalia — guns and batons at hip, the whole show. There was no crowded shoving now; everyone stepped off single file, flashing a paper receipt to the cops before walking off. A paper receipt I didn’t have. I showed the officers my Metro card and explained the steps I’d taken to pay the MTA. One of them told me I had gone to the wrong machine. He pointed at the display of machines behind us. When I told him I used a machine like that, he replied that no I hadn’t, but the one that I used was almost the same. Almost the same, but not right. Then his partner demanded my ID card and fined me $100.

What happened to me in 2018 is part of a city-wide crackdown by the Metro Transit Authority (MTA) on fare evasion. The crackdown is supposedly aimed at preventing the MTA from hemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars they say are lost to people skipping fares. In 2018, the MTA reported that loss at $225 million, but the Office of the Inspector General thinks that was an undercount, and loss estimates for 2019 are closer to $300 million. While subway fare evasions are certainly a major contributor to these financial losses, it’s bus routes that are taking the biggest hit, including Select Service routes used to connect subway systems, like the one I was riding from the airport.

But as my experience illustrates, the crackdown behaves like a Kafka-esque authoritarian overreach. In the best circumstances, authorities fine people for giving money to the MTA through the wrong slot, or for just being unfamiliar with the local nuances of the payment system, which is especially absurd in a city with as much tourism as New York. In the worst light, the fare evasion crackdown targets the city’s most vulnerable populations, criminalizing poverty and giving New York police another excuse to fine and jail Black and Brown people.

The NYPD has been reticent to reveal racial and ethnic demographic information about who is being fined, even resulting in a lawsuit in 2018. But data now available show summonses are being disproportionately distributed to Black and Hispanic (their language) populations. In the second quarter of 2019, 15,280 summonses were issued. Of those, 6,110 were Black, and 5,154 were Hispanic. In contrast, only 2,586 were issued to passengers identified as white, even though non-Hispanic whites comprise nearly half of New York City’s population. 712 summonses were issued to people under the age of 18.

Tickets aren’t the only consequence of fare enforcement stops. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance announced in 2017 that his office would stop prosecuting for “theft of services” on public transportation. The decriminalization of fare evasion in New York led to a sharp decline in arrests related to fare evasion, which saw nearly 10,000 people jailed in 2016.

But as the recent high profile arrest of nineteen-year-old Adrian Napier shows, arrests are still happening — and mostly to Black men. People with outstanding warrants are at particularly high risk of being arrested. But bystanders have been posting recordings on social media of violent subway arrests of “unruly” fare beaters. Reports from around the city are also catching officers stationed around transportation stops making arrests for reasons like unauthorized sales of candy and sweets. In the second quarter of 2019, NYPD reported 682 arrests related to fare evasion. Of those, 414 were Black. Only 76 were white. Ten were minors. The overwhelming majority of people arrested were identified as male, indicating that the new campaign is functioning as yet another excuse for the NYPD to jail men with black and brown skin.

While all this has been going on in the name of saving money, use of public transportation in New York has taken a sharp decline. Subway rides had seen an increase until 2016, when ridership dropped slightly. After 2017, both buses and subways saw a dramatic slope in their ridership stats, with bus ridership dropping by 5.1 percent. In 2018, subway and bus ridership dropped by 2.1 and 4.4 percent, respectively.

Fare evasion is not unique to New York City, but not every city views it as a priority police matter. In Seattle, where I grew up, King County Metro launched a new Fare Violation Program. When I was living in Seattle, prior to the beginning of 2018, bus savvy Seattle residents knew that travels taking place in North Seattle through Downtown would probably not be interrupted by fare enforcement agents. Travel South toward the airport, and you’d need to show proof of payment. This was very much delineated by racial lines. Neighborhoods in North Seattle are divided into affluent sections and very poor areas, but all of them are mostly white. Gentrification has begun to reshape the city, but the South-end has historically been a mostly Black and Latino area. Fare enforcement agents usually began entering just before the International District, which houses a mostly Asian population and several low-income housing complexes. All in all, Seattle’s fare enforcement protocols appeared as racially biased as those in New York. Now, Seattle seems to be trying to correct some of these issues by scaling back punitive measures against fare beaters.

Previously, fare evasion could result in a $124 fine that was handled in civil court, although riders would usually receive one or two warnings before getting the fine. Now, fines are $50, and if paid within 90 days they will be further reduced to $25. Riders also have the option to pay that $25 toward their own ORCA card (Seattle’s kitschy transit card that, yes, does have an orca whale on it). They can also perform two hours of community service or enroll in one of the reduced fare programs offered by the city. The program that serves the largest population is ORCA Lift — which I am still enrolled in because enrollment lasts five years — and is available to all Seattle residents who meet their low-income requirements. Indigent riders also have the option to appeal the citation, which may be overturned based on “extenuating circumstances.”

Seattle’s 2019 program comes on the heels of a similar program rolled out in Portland, Oregon, in 2018. In 2018, a Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge ruled that random fare checks on TriMet, Portland’s public buses, were unconstitutional. The lawsuit, spearheaded by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), was incited by an incident involving Ana Del Rocio, one of the only Latina members of the David Douglas school board. She was arrested after refusing to supply identification, which is her right under state law. The ruling means that TriMet will no longer be able to perform random fare checks, similar to the kind I was subject to in New York City. TriMet also began offering community service and enrollment in reduced fare programs in lieu of paying fines, as well as tiered fines. Repeat offenders will receive increased fines or community service hours before being banned from services for 90 days.

Washington, D.C., recently decriminalized fare evasion and reduced the whopping $300 fine to $100. This was after the Washington Lawyer’s Committee released findings from a data analysis that discovered 91 percent of fare evasion citations were issued to Black riders, even though just under half the population of D.C. is Black. 46 percent of citations were issued to passengers under the age of 25, and one was only seven years old.

But the most radical change comes out of Kansas City, Missouri, which is now poised to offer free city-wide public buses. In December 2019, the city council unanimously voted to pass a resolution that will make public transportation free, once the next fiscal year budget is approved and designs are put in place. The measure, called Zero Fare Transit, is estimated to cost $8 million. This will make it the first major U.S. city to offer free city-wide public transportation in the 21^st century, though a few other cities experimented with it unsuccessfully in the 20^th century. The smaller city of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which has a population of approximately 60,000 and operates just 121 buses, has offered free public transit since 2002.

When I returned to New York in December 2019, the first thing I did was load my Metro Card. During a trip downtown to meet a friend for coffee, I swiped my card, but the turnstile wouldn’t budge. The machine directed me to swipe again at the same turnstile, but when I did — no budge. I continued to swipe my card and receive the same error message directing me to swipe again. Finally, exasperated, I moved on to another turnstile. This time it worked — but a swipe at the other turnstile had also been deducted.

Does that mean I can now send MTA a $100 summons?

“Finance it? What do you mean?” I looked at the box in my hand, which held a sterling silver and diamond ring I planned to give my girlfriend for Christmas in a few weeks. She was elsewhere in the mall with our friend Katie; we’d separated so we could buy each other gifts.

The associate explained that I could apply for financing and pay for the ring in installments, which were interest-free for the first 12 months. I had the slightly more than $300 that the ring cost in cash; it was one of the nicest rings in my budget. (All the white gold ones were too much money.) But if I financed it, which I hadn’t even considered as an option, I could afford to spend a little more on my other gifts and even save some for the new year. I could start putting away money for appliances I needed in my apartment or a used car to drive to an off-campus internship.

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I asked for an application and after a few minutes of processing, I was approved. I had started using my first credit card, a Discover Student card, only a few months prior, and it wasn’t maxed out yet, so I genuinely believed I could make the decision responsibly.

After I left the store, I met back up with my friend Krista, my shopping partner while I looked for my girlfriend’s gifts. “That was the most money I’ve ever spent on Macey,” I said, nervous and excited in equal measure. “I hope she loves it.”

I was too embarrassed to admit I’d opened a store credit card to pay for it; it seemed like something my college friends, who all came from middle-class families, would know better than to do. “Don’t spend money you don’t have” was a wise adage their parents shared when they taught them tips like paying for a car in cash. My dad taught me how to return items to Walmart without a receipt if we were running low on money between paychecks and needed an extra $20 for milk and bread.

A few weeks later, Macey and I spent our first Christmas Day together and I surprised her with the ring during a short, chilly walk. I didn’t tell her that I’d financed the ring or how many hours working in the reading and writing center on campus it would take to pay off. I didn’t say that I’d wanted to get her a white gold ring with a larger karat diamond. She’d also given me her priciest gift to date, a sterling silver replica Time Turner from the Harry Potter franchise I’d been obsessed with for years but couldn’t afford.

Instead, I said that I loved her and wanted to marry her someday, and asked her if she wanted the same thing. We both cried and she said yes, but the reality of ever having enough money to get married eluded even my colorful, wildly hopeful imagination. We both grew up with single parents with underpaying jobs who couldn’t foot the bill for our college education. We would graduate in a year and a half with student loan debt (and me with thousands of dollars in credit card debt just to buy necessities like books, snow boots, and groceries).

The diamond promise ring was an irresponsible romantic lifeline; I was betting on our future. Someday, I would pay off the ring. Someday, we could afford to get married. Someday, I would be able to spend more for white gold, Macey’s favorite. None of that felt true as I went home to my dad’s over winter break to collection notices and service shut off warnings; business was slow for a cab driver during the rise of Uber and Lyft and in the wake of the recession.

It took me about a year and a half to pay off the Belden Jewelers credit card, which I promptly closed. Eventually, I admitted to Macey that I’d taken out a loan to get her ring. She told me that she never wanted me to feel pressured to spend money on her or use a credit card to buy her presents, she just wanted to spend time with me. She told me she’d sometimes felt the same stress: That the cost of her gift reflected how much she loved me, and she worried about spending less on my gifts than I did on hers.

It’s easy to write-off the monetary value of holiday gifts or the importance of deals on Black Friday when you’re financially comfortable. When I was poor, that fact haunted me like an ever-present ghost in my relationships, which felt transactional to me even when my loved ones insisted they weren’t keeping track and were doing me favors out of love. That was easy for them to say, when I noticed it was always me who needed rides to the library to use their free printers or me who carefully calculated the cost of my meals and couldn’t afford to split the check evenly.

This year, Macey and I are celebrating our first holiday season as wives, three months after our wedding. In wedding planning, we were both clear: We wouldn’t let any insecurities or the grim hand of capitalism make us feel like we had to do anything we couldn’t or didn’t want to afford, and we didn’t go into debt to pay for any of it. Even if it meant we had to answer questions about why our reception was buffet style or why we didn’t have an open bar.

She and I are now the kind of financially comfortable I could only dream about my entire childhood, meaning we don’t have enough money to own a home and we still have mountains of student debt, but we pay all our bills on time each month and we can even afford to travel if we plan well. But as November crept closer, I still felt the pressure surrounding me just like it had when we were spending our first Christmas together. Didn’t my gifts have to be epic?

One day while Macey was at work (she commutes and I work from home), I sent her a text: What if we did a lowkey Christmas this year, just one gift and one book? We could save money to travel in 2020 and there are no physical gifts I really want.

It is an incredibly privileged position to be in, and I know that. When you have enough of a financial cushion to go on nice dates when one person gets promoted or to buy a new bookshelf as soon as you need it, holidays don’t have to be about prioritizing everything you need for the entire year. Macey and I got a lot of the home goods on our list this year between our wedding presents and a sponsored article I wrote for Bed Bath & Beyond that came with a couple thousand dollars worth of free store merchandise. We’re at a point where we have more than we can comfortably fit in our one-bedroom apartment.

But back when we were both poor or broke, Christmas could be the only time of year when we actually got big ticket items we needed, or pricey experience gifts like a couples’ massage. I once waited months to get a new purse in the hopes that Macey might get it for me in December, and another year, my Christmas gift from my dad was a fancy date for the two of us. We ate sushi at a restaurant with three dollar signs on Google, played games at Dave & Busters, and took professional photos together.

Macey texted back: That sounds good. It was harder than I expected to fight the urge to shower her with multiple expensive gifts after promising not to, especially when I came across a $1,500 moon necklace on Instagram (that I absolutely can’t afford but I know she’d love).

Our stockings this year will be filled with the promise of a two-week honeymoon in 2020 and love letters to each other. Capitalism tells me that isn’t enough, but I’m not listening.

Lately it’s gotten worse. A letter earlier this month made me feel suddenly lightheaded as my vision started to fade. As I sat on the floor, my mind raced through all of the potential bad news the envelope could contain for a disabled Supplemental Security Income recipient like myself.

Many more people could soon be in the same position, more often. A new proposal from the Social Security Administration would cut $2.6 billion dollars over the next decade from the two core programs it runs that comprise the disability safety net: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The cuts would start with letters — 2.6 million more of them.

A letter is the first notice a disabled recipient of SSDI or SSI gets that they’ve been selected by Social Security to undergo a “continuing disability review” (CDR). As the agency puts it, CDRs are used to “determine if disabled beneficiaries still meet the medical requirements for eligibility.” In other words, a CDR is a kind of “are you still disabled enough for SSI or SSDI” audit.

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After the audit, if Social Security believes a beneficiary’s medical condition has improved such that they no longer meet Social Security’s stringent criteria for disability, their benefits are terminated. It is now much easier for Social Security to say that a disabled person has medically improved thanks to a 2017 rule change that allows the agency to disregard medical evidence from a beneficiary’s own doctors. Benefits are also terminated if the disabled person does not respond to the CDR.

The Social Security Administration is proposing a dramatic ramp up in the number of CDRs it conducts, adding an additional 2.6 million of them over the next decade. And that’s not the only change Social Security wants to make to the CDR process.

When an applicant is approved for disability benefits, Social Security assigns them to a category that determines how often they must go through a CDR. If Social Security thinks a disabled person’s medical condition is expected to improve, they set a CDR for every 6 to 18 months. If it’s possible the medical condition will improve, they set a CDR for every three years. And if the person’s medical condition is not expected to improve, they set a CDR for every 5 to 7 years.

Social Security officials want to create a new category, “medical improvement likely,” that will get a CDR every two years. And they propose to move hundreds of thousands of people from less frequent CDR categories into the new category.

The vast majority of disabled people receiving SSDI and SSI are not represented by counsel through the CDR process. The maximum amount that SSI will provide to a disabled beneficiary is just 74 percent of the federal poverty level — currently $12,490 for an individual. As of November 2019, the average SSDI benefit was just $14,855 per year. Most SSDI and SSI beneficiaries simply do not have the money to hire someone to help them navigate the CDR process. Instead, they find themselves facing the byzantine, and all too often hostile, bureaucracy of the Social Security Administration on their own — something that I find daunting even with the benefit of a law degree.

Social Security is also proposing to focus the targeting of those CDRs on disabled children, people with certain medical conditions such as leukemia, and disabled older adults. Under the new rule, many disabled children would face a mandatory CDR at six years old and another mandatory CDR at 12 years old.

In both adults and children, the rule would change the category of certain mental health conditions including anxiety-related disorders, depressive, bipolar and related disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and impulse control disorders to a CDR every two years.

But Social Security has not provided estimates of how many disabled people from each of those groups will be impacted. In fact, Social Security hasn’t released any estimates of how many people will be impacted, period, only the number of CDRs it expects to undertake. (A single person could face multiple CDRs in that time period.)

Kathleen Romig, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, explained by email that “SSA provides no estimates of the number of people who would be affected. No number of people who will be subject to additional reviews. No number of people who will be terminated.”

Instead, Social Security just published the projected cuts of $2.6 billion. That leads Romig to believe the agency has data it isn’t releasing: “They DO have a number of program dollars saved — in fact, two numbers, one for SSDI and one for SSI. I think it stands to reason that SSA has estimated how many disability beneficiaries would be cut off and they are withholding it. I’ve never seen the estimated number of people left out of a proposed rule; it’s a vital piece of information.”

The rule is open for public comment on regulations.gov until January 31, 2020.

Earlier this year, Duarte contacted me after reading an op-ed I’d written about the widely used pesticide chlorpyrifos. I’d discovered that the likely reason for each of my three children’s brain malformations was due to my acute exposure, in 1989, to a flea “bomb” containing chlorpyrifos. Duarte believes his ADHD and impulsivity issues are the result of his chronic exposure to chlorpyrifos in his home, school and work environments.

Human and animal studies link chlorpyrifos exposure to structural damage to the brain, neurobehavioral deficits, asthma, diminished IQ, and a wide range of developmental disabilities in children. It has also been linked to heart disease, lung cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and the lowering of sperm counts in adults. Based on my investigative research, and interviews with Duarte along with dozens of other residents in the San Joaquin Valley, I’m left to draw the all-too-obvious conclusion that communities with a higher percentage of residents who are low income are at greater risk of being exposed to harmful pesticides and other environmental toxins. And the issue of race is an inextricable co-factor.

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Duarte’s alcoholic father abandoned the family when Duarte was nine, about the time his mother was diagnosed with leukemia. (Both pediatric and adult leukemias have also been linked to pesticide exposure.) Duarte, the third of four children, became the man of the house and remembers making meals for his sick mother and biking to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions for his mom and younger brother, who had severe asthma.

Both Duarte and his brother were diagnosed with ADHD by a school psychologist at Di Giorgio Elementary School. Duarte does not recall being provided treatment or support from the school, which likely speaks to Di Giorgio School District being highly under-resourced, given the district’s meager tax base. Like their home on Richardson Road, the school abuts an orchard where pesticides are routinely sprayed.

And if exposure at home and school weren’t enough, before leaving the family, the boys’ father was a fieldworker who would have likely brought home pesticide residue on his clothing and shoes. Duarte himself worked as a field hand as a teenager and also at a golf course collecting stray golf balls. (Chlorpyrifos is widely used in non-agricultural settings like golf courses and golf balls are commonly thought to be a source of pesticide residue.)

The EPA banned chlorpyrifos in household products in 2000. However, its use in agriculture was allowed to continue. It’s often small, rural, low-income communities of color that bear the cumulative impacts of pesticide exposure and environmental degradation.

Nowhere is this more evident than in communities like Arvin, located in Kern County at the southern tip of the San Joaquin Valley — the most productive agricultural region in the country. Millions of pounds of chlorpyrifos are used each year nationwide. In 2016, 1.1 million pounds were used in California; more than a quarter of that total was used in Kern County alone.

According to the 2010 Census — about the time Duarte would have been taking on the man-of-the-house role — Hispanic or Latinx persons made up 92.7 percent of Arvin residents. Arvin’s average per capita income in 2010 was $9,241, or only 19 percent of the U.S. average of $48,880 at the time. Today, the percentage of families living below the poverty line in Arvin is more than double the national average.

That low-income communities of color are disproportionately impacted by the health effects of chemical toxins such as chlorpyrifos is not news, nor is it an accident. People of color disproportionately hold the most physically demanding, unpleasant, and low-paying jobs. The roots of the problem trace back to the legacy of state-sanctioned racial segregation. For instance, communities with high Latinx representation such as Salinas, Visalia, Santa Rosa, and San Luis Obispo, California, rank among the lowest U.S. metropolitan areas in employment opportunity. Not only have low-income families and people of color been segregated according to residence and work, they’ve consequently been forced to play host to the worst kinds of environmental burdens.

Both of Angel Garcia’s parents worked the fields when he was growing up. He is now the head of the Coalition Advocating for Pesticide Safety. “If you drive through the Central Valley from town to town you will realize the proximity of these homes to the fields,” says Garcia. “You can speak to many community residents who will tell you ‘oh, it’s that time of the year where I have to close my windows, shut my door, not let the kids go outside.’ It’s almost normalized but I don’t want to say it’s normalized because I feel like it not normal. It’s just so common.”

Sacrifice zones are hot spots of chemical pollution where residents live or work immediately adjacent to heavily polluted industries or military bases. The Gulf Coast post-Deepwater Horizon, Cancer Alley in Lousiana, a Tesla plant built on a Superfund site in Buffalo, and polluted neighborhoods surrounding Houston’s shipping channel are but a handful of examples of locales where public officials have turned a blind eye to extreme environmental contamination in minority-dominated areas so that society at large can reap the rewards of a robust economy. This pattern of unequal protection constitutes environmental racism.

The San Joaquin Valley in general and Kern County in particular are examples of sacrifice zones. Here, the burden of the vibrant agricultural economy is carried by those predominantly-Latinx workers who pick and pack the fruits and vegetables that feed America. The health risks associated with these jobs and attendant living conditions have been well documented, but perhaps no more strikingly than by the CHARGE study conducted by UC Davis’ MIND Institute, and led by epidemiologist Irva Hertz-Picciotto, PhD.

Dr. Hertz-Picciotto and her team questioned mothers living in California about what their health was like before and during pregnancy, linking this information to another set of data that the state keeps, a pesticide-use reporting system. Their findings — that the incidence of developmental disability increases significantly in areas where pesticides are applied — bolster previous research and have dire implications for families working and living in agricultural communities near where pesticides are applied.

Garcia and others, such as Nayamin Martinez of the Central California Environmental Justice Network, have led recent caravans to Sacramento to lobby their state representatives and organized an environmental bus tour that highlighted hot spots and problem issues throughout the region. To their credit, the tour was attended by the newly appointed Cal EPA director, his director of the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR), and a lone local agriculture commissioner.

Garcia and Martinez’s organizations also advocate for larger pesticide-free buffer zones surrounding schools, an Amber Alert-like notification system that would notify residents of pesticide applications in their vicinity, and more sustainable agricultural practices. “We will never stop pushing for greater health protections for low-income people of color,” says Martinez, “but the fact of the matter remains that most of the jobs in this region are agricultural.” Martinez, Garcia, and others in the environmental justice movement recognize they must find a win-win roadmap for both the residents who depend on those jobs and the industry that provides them.

Their largest “victory” to date may provide just such a road map. In April, as a result of the overwhelming scientific evidence and intense lobbying from environmental justice groups, the California Environmental Protection Agency, flying in the face of the federal EPA’s example, directed the state’s DPR to begin the process of banning chlorpyrifos throughout the state. After initial resistance, the chemical industry gave up its fight over the ban, which is now expected to go into effect in early 2020. It is the first time in the history of California that a pesticide’s registration has been revoked. To sweeten the bitter pill that industry is being asked to swallow and to help farmers make the transition away from chlorpyrifos, the state is adding $5.7 million to fund research into safer and more sustainable alternatives.

As for Gabrial Duarte, he is currently awaiting trial at Laredo Pretrial Facility in Kern County on charges stemming from illegal gun possession. He has spent two and a half of the past five years in detention, first in juvenile detention, and currently while awaiting trial. After our first conversation at the prison in July, he asked to be seen by a mental health professional and has since been prescribed medication for his ADHD. He is also attending anger management classes.

“Before, I was a reckless renegade,” he told me over the phone. “Now, I think things through. I ask myself, ‘if I were to do this, how would you view it, how would they view it, and how would I view it’? It [the classes] has helped me to learn empathy.”

Minor League Baseball, known as MiLB, is the level where nearly every future big-league player is developed, making it a vital piece of the baseball hierarchy in America. Minor league teams not only feed the MLB teams with which they’re affiliated, they also create thousands of jobs for smaller baseball-friendly communities across the nation, such as Lowell, Massachusetts, or more remote, otherwise baseball-less locales such as Burlington, Vermont, or Keizer, Oregon.

Minor league teams are what truly allows the sport to be considered the “national pastime,” as it manages to make the game national.

So far, we’ve heard MLB’s reasoning for shrinking the minors, we’ve heard some Minor League teams respond, and we’ve even witnessed members of Congress get in on the discussion with a disapproving letter and a task force. But we haven’t heard from the players themselves. What do the players, who lack a seat at the table in all of these discussions, think of the potential loss of more than 1,000 jobs, of severing the connection between MLB and 42 communities, and of their desire for a fair wage being repaid with the loss of a quarter of their jobs?

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The initial reason for shrinking the minors, both in reporting by Baseball America and via MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, is “inadequate facilities.” Garrett Broshuis, a former minor league player with the Giants who is known for both his attempts to unionize MiLB players and his role as a lawyer representing players in a class-action lawsuit seeking unpaid wages, Senne v. MLB, believes this is an excuse “to try to push through a cost-saving measure.”

Broshuis is not alone in feeling this way. An active minor league player (who will remain anonymous to protect his identity) also believes the facilities could use a boost, but that shuttering teams isn’t the way to make it happen. “These MiLB teams are massively profitable in many cases for their owners, and they sink very little of that money back into facilities for players. There ought to be accountability for an organization to give back to the players that earn them their money,” he said.

In fact, players expecting to be paid for the value they create is the real reason behind MLB’s push; it’s using an effort by players to receive fair wages as an excuse to cut costs elsewhere and hurt smaller communities with minor league teams, all in the name of boosting profits a little bit.

In 2018, MLB successfully lobbied Congress to limit the pay of minor league players — who are paid by the major league teams themselves — to the federal minimum wage, and just 40 hours per week in-season. Even though players work more like 60-70 hours per week, they receive no overtime, and also are not paid for spring training, the postseason, or the offseason.

Understandably, there was backlash to MLB’s limiting minor-league salaries to as low as $290 for 40 hours of work, as the league’s lobbying to codify awful living and working conditions was brought to the attention of many fans who were otherwise unaware. So now, you have commissioner Manfred saying 42 teams need to be disaffiliated so that MLB teams can increase minor league pay for the remaining players, as if it’s an either/or proposition for an industry that rakes in $10 billion annually.

The reality is that paying every single minor league player an average of $50,000 per year would cost MLB teams $7.5 million. With $10 billion in revenue pouring in annually, that’s pocket change. It’s the salary of a single year of a good relief pitcher.

Kyle Johnson, another former minor leaguer, played with three of the teams on the disaffiliation list: the Orum Owlz, Burlington Bees, and Binghamton Rumble Ponies. He pointed out that the Toronto Blue Jays already increased pay for players at the lower levels, and haven’t gone broke in the process.

“The Blue Jays have shown that the model works: they’re not bankrupt, they’re not in trouble, and every single one of those guys in the Blue Jays’ organization is extremely thankful and not as stressed as I was every two weeks waiting for my paycheck when the $400 ran out,” he said. “The model can work, it can work at every single level MLB has right now.”

While the Jays’ decision to raise pay was an admirable one, by doubling player salaries they raised poverty-level wages to, well, slightly higher poverty-level wages. This is the kind of thing that happens when the players don’t have a seat at the table, and precisely why MLB is advocating for higher minor league pay now: The league can do it on its own terms, while squeezing the owners of Minor League Baseball teams for more money and concessions.

“That’s the root of the problem,” says Broshuis. “They’re talking about cutting 1,000 minor-league jobs here, and you’re talking about doing it without giving the players a voice at all. The players need a voice at the bargaining table, they need to be represented, and it’s quite unfortunate that they don’t have a voice right now. There are other examples out there of minor league players with representation, like minor league hockey has a union, and in truth those players are treated much better than MiLB players.”

Broshuis isn’t exaggerating about how much better Pro Hockey Player Association players are treated than Minor League Baseball ones: the average salary of a PHPA member in the American Hockey League — the National Hockey League’s Triple-A equivalent — is around $118,000, while the minimum is $50,000. The per diem, too, is about three times what MiLB’s players receive to feed themselves. The NHL does not pull in the kind of revenue MLB does — it has never cracked $5 billion as a league — and yet it has managed to survive while treating players like human beings.

Players are also concerned about what cutting off local communities from affiliated ball will do to the growth of the game. Johnson pointed out that staying with host families who were “super engaged with the teams” was a highlight for him. Broshuis pointed out that teams like his first aren’t located anywhere near other pro ball. “If you deprive those fans of baseball, they just aren’t going to go to a game. That’s a lot of kids that aren’t exposed to baseball games, and if you want to grow the game, and want your fan base to be young, then you would think you would want to continue to provide opportunities for kids to go to games like they do at the Salem-Keizer Volcanoes,” he said.

A study suggests 4 million fans would be cut off from pro baseball if MLB’s plan goes through. The divide between baseball-haves and the have-nots would mirror a rural/urban divide in America, too.

“On the fan side, cutting down on the minor league levels hurts every party involved. It cuts down fan bases across the country, it concentrates baseball in major cities, which hurts the nationwide appeal of the game,” said the active anonymous player. “For many people, it means they won’t get to see an affiliated baseball game live. It makes no sense for MLB teams to cut down on farm systems, in both the short and long term.”

MLB doesn’t care about any of this, though. And that’s a shame for the players, the fans, and for the future of professional baseball in America, too.

We sought refuge in bankruptcy’s lore of the American Dream, believing in the rhetoric of fresh starts and new beginnings. However, for millions of families, debt forgiveness isn’t enough. Without a sustainable income or other necessities such as adequate health care, a bankruptcy discharge can perpetuate the cycle of debt, opening the door to unique yet systemic forms of predatory lending.

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Bankruptcy can be a powerful tool for families seeking relief from dire financial straits. Sherry Hoban, executive director for the Consumer Bankruptcy Assistance Project in Philadelphia, explained that discharging consumer debts works to the benefit of everyone. “The more people are able to take advantage of this benefit and able to discharge some of their back steps, be financially stable going forward, they will then be able to participate in the economy again to the benefit of the community,” she said.

Dr. Deborah Thorne, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Idaho, worked with Elizabeth Warren as part of the Consumer Bankruptcy Project and has studied bankruptcies for the past 25 years.

“I do think more people should file, and they should file sooner,” Thorne told me. “What happens is when they wait, they extract their wealth in ways that they shouldn’t. People are taking out from their 401(k)’s. They might be borrowing money from family members.”

Thorne, along with her colleague Dr. Katherine Porter (now Congresswoman Katherine Porter of California’s 45th District), sought to discover what happens to families like mine after they file. It’s a critical area of research that’s often ignored.

The results were startling.

According to their research, a full 25 percent of debtors continue to find themselves in a financially unstable situation post-bankruptcy. New bills plague these families even as old debts disappear. Contrary to the stigma, credit misuse does not fuel the cycle of debt in the post-discharge landscape. Mortgages, rent, utilities, and car payments keep most families underwater.

Thorne’s research found that almost one-third of filers consider their financial situations to be unchanged or worse off since their bankruptcy discharge. Declining household income triggered by illness, job loss, or advanced age could nullify the new beginnings associated with bankruptcy. And as Thorne told me, any combination of the three would most likely make the process a waste of time.

“It stops the debt collectors from harassing you,” Thorne said. “You can get a little bit of sleep for a while, and then it starts over again.”

Her research is echoed in the work of the late Dr. Song Han and Dr. Geng Li of the Federal Reserve Board. They found that not only do bankruptcy filers continue to suffer from financial distress in the short and long term, but these households tend to accumulate less wealth over time than comparable nonfilers.

And contrary to conventional wisdom, Han and Li found that the lending industry is eager to extend credit to recent bankruptcy filers, often with predatory loans that continue the cycle of debt. On average, my wife and I receive 10 credit card offers per month, not including solicitations for auto loans, payday loans, and mortgage refinances.

They’re all low-limit, high-fee cards with interest rates that would be illegal in a more fair society. Even with the caveat of those terms and conditions, I found it curious that lenders would want our business, considering we recently chose to forego paying our debts.

“[Bankruptcy filers] depend on it to make it day-to-day,” Thorne said in reference to post-discharge credit. She stressed that people were using it for necessities and not frivolous luxury goods. “And so, if you know that those people are vulnerable, heck yeah, that’s who you’re going to offer credit to.”

Dr. Benjamin Keys of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, along with Han and Li, reviewed more than 200,000 credit card solicitations and linked them to borrower credit histories. He and his colleagues found that dependent on the boom-bust cycle of the economy, lenders are using bankruptcy records, not only credit scores, to tailor offers to consumers.

In hindsight, the reasoning is logical. Following the 2005 bankruptcy bill, which added cumbersome paperwork and financial costs to bankruptcy proceedings, the time allowed between chapter 7 filings was extended from six to eight years, though after a few ups and downs, filings returned to their 1990 levels by 2016. Recent filers are more likely to receive credit because they’re barred from filing for bankruptcy again for almost a decade.

“There are elements in which getting some access to credit can help to rebuild the credit score,” said Keys cautioning me not to apply a sinister motive to the practice. “That said, these cards can have very high fees and are very high cost for what they are, which is usually a low credit limit, and in many cases, they’re secured,” which means they require a security deposit from the customer.

Keys had the opportunity to inspect these mailings through a dataset provided by the company Mintel, a process he compared to participating in the Neilsen Television rating program. Mail offers for recent bankruptcy filers, he found, were quite different than typical credit card solicitations sent to the general population.

“It acknowledges that you’ve gone through bankruptcy right away and says we still want to make you a credit offer even though you’ve gone through bankruptcy,” he told me. “We were sort of struck by how specific that was and how finely tailored it was to this population.”

A mailing I received while writing this story came from The Bankruptcy Information and Re-Establishment Center, a Better Business Bureau accredited company, promising “you’re not getting the credit you deserve” and offering to pre-qualify me for a loan right now. “Re-establishing credit after bankruptcy is the only way to save money on future financing,” read the letter before noting in bold print, “you must make a new purchase after a bankruptcy in order to re-establish credit.”

“That’s capitalism,” as Thorne explained to me quite matter-of-factly at one point in our conversation.

This was the first of three SNAP-related rules introduced by the administration this year. If all three are finalized, they will have a cumulative effect of taking critical nutrition assistance from more than 3 million people.

The Trump administration’s attack on SNAP is nothing new; for decades, presidential administrations as well as members of Congress have been attempting to push people off SNAP, as seen under the Reagan administration, in 1990s welfare reform, and 2018’s farm bill. Selecting ABAWDs as a target was no coincidence; the policy is complicated and confusing, and though it has extremely high stakes for those affected, their voices are rarely heard.

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More than that, though, it’s a rule ripe for generating arguments about personal responsibility, hands up instead of hands out, and the “dignity of work.” This talking point made a return appearance in a press release from Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) and an op-ed from Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, who has apparently never labored under the oppressive eyes of a ruthless algorithm at an Amazon warehouse, or defended himself against violent customers attacking him over a McDonald’s counter.

Conservative policymakers rely on language like this to drive home the idea that programs like SNAP, along with housing vouchers, Medicaid, and other elements of the social safety net, are handouts encouraging dependence rather than part of the social contract. In cuts to programs like these, the argument is that without stricter guidelines, poor people will “lazily” rely on benefits.

This framing can also be seen in incidents like a flashy campaign to highlight corporate tax dodging that stigmatized public benefits, rather than focusing on the need for corporations to pay not only taxes, but fair wages.

Some may defensively and correctly note that many people subject to work requirements are already working; in 75 percent of SNAP households with someone who is subject to existing work requirements, for example, someone has worked and/or will work within a year of receiving SNAP. Furthermore, some people considered able-bodied for the purposes of SNAP are in fact disabled.

It’s also important to be aware that the overall quality of jobs in the United States has gone down. In some cities, as many as 62 percent of workers are employed in “low-wage” jobs. 30 percent of low-wage workers live at or below 150 percent of the poverty line. And while Perdue commented on Twitter that “there are currently more job openings than people to fill them,” getting a job in a nation with very low unemployment can actually be challenging, particularly for people with limited education or trade skills and obligations that may not show up on SNAP paperwork.

Ample evidence dating to the 1970s, when they were first implemented with then-food stamps, demonstrates work requirements are ineffective when it comes to meeting the stated goal of fostering independence; “work or starve,” as NY Mag put it, does not result in systemic change. While people subject to work requirements may experience a moderate uptick in employment, it fades over time, suggesting the effects are not lasting.

In some cases, people actually grew poorer over time; the current ABAWDs requirements have people working 80 hours a month, but accept volunteering and training programs in addition to work hours, which are not necessarily avenues to making enough money to survive. When participants are involved in voluntary, rather than mandatory, work and training programs, on the other hand, they’re much more likely to experience improvements.

Meanwhile, SNAP contributes about $1.70 to the economy for every dollar spent, and can help insulate workers from shocks like recession and job loss. These benefits are tremendous poverty-fighting tools. Making SNAP harder to get will make it difficult to get people onto SNAP quickly when unemployment starts to spike, hurting local economies in addition to making it hard for families to feed themselves.

SNAP is not the only program being targeted with work requirements. Multiple states have pushed for Medicaid work requirements, though thus far every one has backed down or faced a legal challenge. Programs such as SNAP and TANF, notably, already have work requirements, they just aren’t stringent enough in the eyes of some critics.

There’s no evidence to support punitive measures like these. They do not improve employment rates or fiscal independence. It’s important to acknowledge this, but not at the cost of the larger point: SNAP exists to bolster access to nutrition in the United States through a variety of means, whether allowing people to pick up what they need at the grocery store or certifying children for school lunch eligibility.

SNAP doesn’t just need to be defended; 62 percent of voters actually believe the extremely popular and effective program should be expanded. The United States should increase the availability and quality of benefits, and eliminate bizarre and restrictive limitations on the program, such as the ban on hot food. When people lack access to stoves or microwaves, refusing to allow them to buy hot foods is cruel, and undermines the USDA’s own goal to “do right and feed everyone.” And it should streamline SNAP benefits — something under attack with the USDA’s proposed rule around Standard Utility Allowances (SUAs), which would make it harder for people to get SNAP benefits when they need them.

The nation must change the way it talks about programs like SNAP; they aren’t something to be ashamed of, or evidence that someone has failed. They are instead evidence of a belief that everyone deserves access to a standard of living that meets their needs, freeing them to lead their best lives.

For Giving Tuesday, the media find no obvious villain: Donating to nonprofits — or, as Giving Tuesday calls it, doing good — counters the overindulgence of Black Friday. However, positioning Giving Tuesday as the antidote to Black Friday is erroneous because both days stem from the same monster: widening disparities in income and wealth.

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The vilification in Black Friday reporting casts shame upon the crowds that wreak havoc on stores in the name of snagging a deal. Take these headlines, for example: “What Turns Black Friday Shoppers Into Raging Hordes?” “The Human Costs of Black Friday, Explained by a Former Amazon Warehouse Manager.” “Why Black Friday Shopping Is Especially Dangerous in Tennessee – And How To Be Safe.”

However, the culprit behind Black Friday hysteria is more systemic than individualistic. Companies intentionally employ misleading tactics, such as creating a sense of faux scarcity and marking up the original price of products so the discount price seems better, to appeal to potential customers. The perception of limited temporality concerning the sales compounds this sense, strengthening the urgency and fear of missing out for many shoppers.

Meanwhile, stagnant wages, expensive health care, student loan debt, the racial wealth gap, and the gender wage gap, in addition to a host of other inequitable institutions, have left the average person in the United States in a state of financial precarity. Blaming these people for taking advantage of one of the few moments they may have to afford a new phone, kitchen appliance, or toy for their child not only ignores their victimization by the system, but fails to acknowledge that wealthier individuals actually spend more on Black Friday than do the people vilified in the day’s popular portrayals.

Giving Tuesday, which the 92nd Street Y and United Nations Foundation launched in 2012 as a Twitter hashtag, is the apparent salve to rampant consumerism. People can absolve their conscience of the post-splurge guilt and regret by donating money or volunteering time to a charitable cause. “When you give, you feel happier, more fulfilled, and empathetic,” wrote Asha Curran, Chief Innovation Officer and Director of the Belfer Center for Innovation and Social Impact at the 92nd Street Y, in 2017.

Centered at the core of Giving Tuesday is “the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and the world.” People give back, ushering “in the holidays’ charitable spirit” and powering a movement that has grown over the years and has the potential to raise half a billion dollars this year.

However, as “a day that encourages people to do good,” Giving Tuesday is not as inclusive as it states. The mean gift size during Giving Tuesday in 2018 was $105, an amount that is not insignificant for a cash-strapped individual. Those who are able to participate in Giving Tuesday, whether that be by donating money or volunteering time, are not representative of the marginalized communities in need of investment. In fact, charitable giving has increased for upper-income households while decreasing for middle- and lower-income households — a trend that tracks the expanding wealth gap.

While donations from individuals and organizations offer relief for nonprofits working in under-resourced communities, a funding system in which groups must vie for the limited goodwill of some benevolent donor does not address the roots of inequity, inequality, and injustice. Similar to how stores promote deals to bring in potential customers for Black Friday, nonprofits market their cause to potential donors for Giving Tuesday.

A quick look at Giving Tuesday pages shows how the campaign plays into this competitive dynamic as nonprofits are listed as products to be filtered and added to an online gift bag and on leaderboards showcasing the most successful fundraising hauls. Donations are transactional: $50 provides shelter for a night, $100 “provides one month of meals” to a sheltered family, $250 “provides a day of therapeutic child care services” for a sheltered child. Giving Tuesday puts a price tag on critical services for marginalized communities, and wealthy donors determine if the price is right.

Expanding inequality in income and wealth has resulted in a society in which the top 1 percent commands more money and political power than the bottom 50 percent. Bemoaning the greed of Black Friday while praising the altruism of Giving Tuesday ignores the structures that give life to both.

For the average person in the United States, uncertainty and instability dictate their experience; faulting them for perpetuating a splurge-heavy holiday season fails to recognize their existence at the mercy of low wages, staggering debt, privileged corporate interests, and more. Nonprofits and community organizations are in a similar position: When the government fails to support them, they become hostage to privatized benevolence.

Instead of congratulatory applause for donors on Giving Tuesday, let’s reevaluate the cruel cycle in which society denies marginalized communities access to comfort and opportunity, denigrates them for attempting to carve out access, expects nonprofits to compete for money that will assist the marginalized communities, and then thanks wealthy donors for their performative generosity.

In 2020, Allegheny will begin applying a similar algorithm to every family that gives birth in the county, with the goal of linking families in need to supportive services before a maltreatment case is opened. But some critics insist that it will be just another way for government to police the poor.

The new program is called “Hello Baby.” The plan is to eventually apply it across the county, but the January launch will begin in only a select few hospitals. Like the Allegheny Family Screening Tool, the Hello Baby algorithm analyzes family data to apply an individual family score.

Emily Putnam-Hornstein, who helped design both programs, told TalkPoverty that Hello Baby uses slightly different data than the child maltreatment algorithm, which was criticized for targeting poor families because much of the data used was available only for people who used public services.

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“This is a universal program,” explained Putnam-Hornstein. “In the [child services] model the county was being forced to make a decision after an allegation had been received; in this case we’re taking about more proactively using data … so we wanted that to be built around universally available data.”

But these exclusions don’t guarantee that the data will not end up targeting low-income families again. “They rely on data where the county has the potential to have records for every family,” said Richard Wexler, the executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. “The county acknowledges they will probably use data from [Child Protective Services], homeless services, and the criminal justice system, so yes, theoretically everyone can be in that, but we know who’s really going to be in it.”

An overview provided by the county online cites “birth records, child welfare records, homelessness, jail/juvenile probation records” as some of the “available service data” incorporated into the predictive risk algorithm, indicating that Wexler’s assessment was absolutely correct. Although that data is potentially available about anyone, several of these systems are known to disproportionately involve low-income people and people of color.

Putnam-Hornstein said via email that the Hello Baby process is “truly voluntary from start to finish.” A family can choose to drop-out of the program or discontinue services at any time.

The option to drop out will be presented at the hospital, when families are first told about the program. A second notification, and chance to opt-out, will then be made by postcard. If a family doesn’t respond to the postcard, they are automatically included in the next phase of the program, which involves running available data through the system to determine how much social support each family needs.

According to Putnam-Hornstein, scores will be generated about four to six weeks after birth for families that do not choose to opt out (or who are too busy to realize they want to). Once a family is scored, what happens next varies based on which of three tiers they fall into.

Under the “universal” tier, the most basic approach, families receive mail notifications about resources available throughout the county. Families grouped in the second, “family support,” tier will receive a visit from a community outreach provider and an invitation to join one of 28 Family Support Centers located around the city of Pittsburgh.

The “priority” tier engages families with a two-person team made up of a peer-support specialist and a social worker who will work closely with the families to identify their needs and partner them with appropriate providers. It is designed to be an individualized program that grants families access to the full range of support services available on a case-by-case basis. That could mean helping a parent navigate the complexities of applying for housing assistance or ensuring timely placement in a substance use treatment program. The county said in its promotional material — which was reinforced by Putnam-Hornstein over the phone and by email — that choosing not to engage with any aspect of the program will not lead to any kind of punitive action.

But parents who need supportive services still have reasons to fear intervention from child services. The reality is that any program putting families in contact with social service and medical providers means, by default, also putting those families at greater risk of being reported to child services by placing them in more frequent contact with mandated reporters.

A mandated reporter is someone who is legally required to report any suspicions of child maltreatment they encounter. The intention is to ensure timely detection of as much child abuse and neglect as possible, but data have not shown that an uptick in mandatory reporting equates to more child safety.

In Pennsylvania, nearly anyone who regularly interacts with children in a professional or semi-professional capacity is legally considered a mandated reporter. An unfortunate side-effect of the mandated reporter system is that even though a referral program like Hello Baby is not directly involved with child services, participating families will always be haunted by the possibility of coming under investigation.

Putnam-Hornstein assured that family’s scores will not be retained or shared with child services, even for families under investigation — but noted that “it is possible that child welfare workers could infer the level of risk if the family has voluntarily agreed to participate in Hello Baby Priority services and a child welfare worker learned that when gathering family history.”

It’s clear that the new program is not designed to get families involved with child services, although it is spearheaded by the Department of Human Services, which oversees the Office of Children, Youth, and Families that conducts child maltreatment investigations and responses. Rather, Hello Baby was created with the goal of offering a more equitable way to expedite service referrals for families with new children who need them.

“Universalizing the assessment of social needs at birth is the only way to avoid discrimination,” said Mishka Terplan, an obstetrician and addiction medicine physician, who was not talking specifically about the Hello Baby program. He observed that patients with obvious social needs, such as those suffering from acute addiction, were often screened and referred for other issues, like postpartum depression or housing assistance, while other parents’ needs were going undetected and unaddressed. “That seemed unfair,” he lamented. Terplan believes that universal screening programs would eliminate both the disparity between services rendered, and reduce the stigma attached to needing behavioral health treatment and other social supports.

Hello Baby’s creators hope that offering families these programs before there is a child maltreatment complaint can help keep them out of the system altogether. But by using imbalanced data points like child welfare history, homeless services, and county prison history to auto-generate scores, it assumes poverty as the main basis for family need. While poverty does generate certain needs, it is not the only indicator for the whole range of unique social supports that new parents require, such as mental health screening or child care assistance.

A system that continues to embed data that target the poor may only end up automating the social inequities that already exist, while placing vulnerable families under increased scrutiny by mandated reporters for the child welfare system — even if it intends to serve as a universal screening process that helps families avoid punitive interventions.

“As long as the system confuses poverty for neglect, any form of such screening is extremely dangerous,” said Wexler.

But her work is grueling and at times dangerous. Sometimes she isn’t paid for the work she does. Even when she is paid what she’s owed, it isn’t much and comes without any benefits.

She doesn’t get any paid time off; once when she had to stay home to care for her sick son, one of her employers got extremely angry with her. “I have to work when their kids are sick and they give me their viruses, but I can’t stay home when they give them to mine,” she noted.

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She’s experienced discrimination for speaking Spanish and being Latina, she said, including a client who told her they weren’t happy her son went to the same high school as their son. Years ago, she was even the victim of sexual abuse. Bosses have undressed in front of her and insinuated that they wanted to have sex with her. “I actually had to stop working, which was a financial hardship,” she said. “That kind of abuse impacts all parts of your life, including with your family … We bring the heaviness of these abuses home.”

But there wasn’t much that she could do about it. Domestic workers were the only type of worker excluded from Philadelphia’s antidiscrimination protections. “No habia una ley,” she said; there was no law protecting her or offering her recourse.

That will soon change. Since the middle of 2018, when the Pennsylvania Domestic Workers Alliance was formed, del Carmen and other domestic workers in her city have had one goal: Establishing a domestic workers bill of rights to include them in basic labor protections and even grant them powerful new ones. On October 31, that goal was achieved when the Philadelphia city council unanimously passed a bill establishing rights for the city’s 16,000 housekeepers and caregivers. It’s the 10^th such law in the country, joining those in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, Oregon, and Seattle.

Philadelphia’s bill of rights does three key things. First, it makes sure domestic workers are included in basic labor standards such as protection from racial, gender, age, national origin, and language discrimination, as well as the right to meal and rest breaks. It also goes above that floor to require that domestic workers be given legally binding written contracts in both English and their preferred language outlining job responsibilities, hours, and payment schedules. Employers also have to give domestic workers at least two weeks’ notice of termination, protect their privacy, and provide a notice of their rights.

But the third facet is the most radical: The city will create the country’s first-ever portable paid time off benefit system. The bill establishes a right to get paid time off for all workers, no matter how many employers they have. With that in place, it mirrors the city’s existing paid sick leave ordinance, which grants workers an hour of paid time off for every 40 they work.

Now, when a domestic worker puts in 40 hours across all of her jobs, she’ll be due an hour of paid time off, funded by prorated payments from each of her employers into a central benefit bank. Employers will have to contribute paid time off for any domestic workers they hire for five or more hours a month. The benefit bank will still be hers to claim even if she changes clients later on.The bank will be coordinated not by domestic workers themselves or even their employers, but through technology developed by a third-party vendor. The employers “don’t need to be talking to each other, and the worker doesn’t need to be coordinating between them either,” explained Nicole Kligerman, director of the Pennsylvania Domestic Workers Alliance.

“The 20^th century social safety net system is based on one person and one employer,” Kligerman noted. But many people now work in arrangements that don’t fit into that mold – working in the so-called “gig economy” or classified (and misclassified) as independent contractors –  which means they’re denied standard workplace benefits. Domestic workers hope their portable paid time off system can offer a new alternative.

Domestic workers are “the original gig economy workers,” Kligerman said, and they “can and always have led the way” on labor reform. But such a system could easily be imagined for other workers with more than one employer. “The implications are obviously really big,” she said. Ride share drivers, for example, are already looking into it. “We’re excited to be a guinea pig.”

Del Carmen was involved in lobbying for and crafting the bill of rights. “At times it was really difficult, some of [the council members] even ran away from us,” she said. But they kept showing up, week after week. “We fought as a team until we won.”

The feeling when the bill passed unanimously, including yes votes from the three Republicans on the city council? “Maravilloso,” she said. All of the provisions she and other domestic workers were fighting for made it into the final bill. “It really is complete,” she said. “And now other states can copy us.”

Had the bill of rights been in place 25 years ago, “my life would have been much easier,” del Carmen said. “I wouldn’t have shed so many tears for all of the things that happened to me.”

Del Carmen has already seen the impact of the newly passed bill of rights. All of her clients are working on creating a written contract. “I told them if I don’t sign a contract, I’m not going to work for them anymore,” she said.

She’s also very excited about finally getting some paid time off from work. “I’ve never had it,” she noted. “I’m just going to be at home enjoying my house. I’ve never been able to do that.”

These moves, in communities in which tech companies have extracted special tax treatment and other benefits for decades, are supposedly meant to increase “affordable” housing stock. But for many area workers, including those at tech companies, the new housing will remain out of reach.

Apple’s plan calls for $2.5 billion in spending, including $1 billion in an affordable housing investment fund and $1 billion in first-time buyer mortgage assistance. It is the most generous of recent rollouts. Facebook committed $1 billion to the construction of 20,000 units, use of land owned by the company, and construction of housing for “essential workers” like teachers and firefighters. Google similarly offered $1 billion, primarily in the form of land. Meanwhile, philanthropic ventures such as The Bay’s Future, driven by tech company executives, are also pledging to wade in to the fight for affordable housing in the Golden State.

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“It’s a good thing these companies stepped forward,” said Jeffrey Buchanan of Silicon Valley Rising, a coalition campaign that includes unions and local advocacy groups. “There’s a huge need for financing” of the type that these commitments will provide.

But the problem of housing in the region isn’t just one of money, he explained. It also involves policy, better wages, and responsibility on the part of companies rapidly building up their campuses without adding complementary housing to prevent displacement — and ensure their own workers are housed.

Research indicates California needs 3 million new housing units by 2025; the Bay Area alone needs at least 187,000 units across all income levels according to the most recent state projection. 41.5 percent of households in the Bay Area are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing. 25,000 workers a day endure “super-commutes” of more than 90 minutes as they struggle to get from affordable communities to work in Silicon Valley.

In its recent “Out of Reach” report, the National Low-Income Housing Coalition found that the Bay Area’s housing wage — the amount of money you need to afford a two-bedroom apartment — ranges from $41 to $91 per hour. Statewide, workers need to work 116 hours a week at minimum wage to afford housing.

Meanwhile, a deeper look at many of the tech companies’ proposals furnishes vague details, though much talk of “affordable housing.” Many of the plans explicitly state the intent to produce mixed-income housing, rather than 100 percent affordable developments, something developers argue is usually necessary to make a development viable, especially in areas with high construction costs.

The definition of “affordable housing” in the Bay Area may surprise those who aren’t California residents. Low-income housing, defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as 80 percent of the area’s median income of $136,800, is still $129,150 for a family of four, and households making $80,600 are considered “very low-income.” “Extremely low-income” is $48,350.

The percentage of set-asides for affordable units varies; Facebook recently pledged 225 of 1,500, or 15 percent, of a planned Menlo Park development’s units for “affordable” housing. Notably, inclusionary zoning requirements in some Bay Area cities, like San Francisco, already force developers to include a set number of affordable units or pay in-lieu fees, and developers also benefit from incentive programs for constructing affordable housing. Thanks to state and federal policy, noted Buchanan, these units will eventually expire, with pricing jumping up to market rate.

While housing affordability for those outside the tech industry who feel squeezed by mounting costs driven by high tech company income is a significant issue, it’s a problem within the industry too, where all tech workers are not created equal. For employees in technical roles — such as developers, site reliability engineers, and more — it’s possible to afford to buy or rent housing units. Likewise for those in high-level non-technical roles, including attorneys, marketing executives, and some managerial positions.

But for the workers in the non-technical pipeline, including assistants, operations personnel, researchers, and customer service representatives, there’s a tremendous pay disparity — one that is exacerbated for contract workers, who are becoming a growing part of the tech workforce because of their low cost and shielded liability. Those workers are sleeping in their cars in the parking lots of their employers because they cannot afford housing, cleaning toilets, cooking food, driving buses, and providing security at marginal pay. When they’re not at companies like Facebook and Google, some are taking up shifts elsewhere, driving for ride shares, and hustling to pay the rent.

The tech companies’ plans lean heavily in to the popular argument that the affordability crisis in the Bay Area is one of availability; building housing, at any price point, is supposed to relieve this pressure. Advocates across the state are also pushing for rollbacks of density restrictions that limit the height and number of units that can be built, and promoting the of accessory dwelling units — also known as in-laws or granny units — to rapidly increase access to housing. Buchanan notes a growing interest in the use of co-housing — community living that integrates public and private spaces in a planned development — as well as community land trusts, which steward land to promote affordable housing, retaining ownership of the land while encouraging affordable development that gives residents a stake in their homes.

Not all advocates are convinced that this approach, known as filtering or trickle-down housing, is effective. Some raise concerns about the risks of displacement and gentrification, describing this as “a problem of equity and access,” not simply a question of housing units by the numbers. “YIMBYs,” wrote a collective from the LA Tenants Union, referring to boosters who push for filtering, “do not support empowering and protecting tenants through policies like right to legal counsel, just-cause eviction, and rent control. They overwhelmingly ignore the possibility of increasing supply with public or social housing.”

The policy struggles over housing highlight that simply building more isn’t always an option, speaking to deeper systemic problems that make it hard for people to find safe, sanitary, affordable housing in their communities. And even if building more housing is possible, say community organizations, that’s only one part of the solution to a complex problem.

Companies like Facebook and Apple are pledging to collaborate closely in public-private partnerships with policy-forward solutions, while still implying that privatizing public services is the only way to fix them. As long as tech companies dodge taxes, accept handouts and incentives, and receive preferential treatment, while relying on large philanthropic gestures to distract from their business practices, it’s hard to determine how much they can truly contribute to local economies.

#PayUpHollywood is an initiative spearheaded by Writers Guild of America (WGA) board member (and former Hollywood assistant) Liz Alper and Dierdre Mangan, supported by a number of my IATSE 871 union sisters, including Amy Thurlow, Debbie Ezer, Jessica Kivnik, and Olga Lexell. The hashtag has sparked a discussion of the low pay and long hours that assistants have long endured as “paying their dues.”

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#PayUpHollywood has made a lot of noise on social media, exposing widespread workplace issues that plague Hollywood assistants. In addition to stagnant wages, assistants are discussing working unpaid holidays, being pressured not to report overtime, paying for staff lunch overages out of pocket, eating personal computer and software costs, struggling with student loan debt, a lack of sick leave, and other egregious workplace problems.

When you set about breaking into Hollywood, you usually take a job as a production assistant. From there, you specialize, becoming a wardrobe assistant, camera assistant, casting assistant, or, like me, a writers’ assistant. Behind every red-carpet gala, behind every award-winning close-up, behind every pulse-pounding action sequence, there is an army of us.

All have a couple things in common: We desperately want to make it in our chosen trades and we don’t make very much money. Television writers’ assistants make $14.57 an hour for a job that functionally requires a college degree. As Thurlow told Variety, “The issue really is that wages have been stagnant for so long that the gains we’ve made just aren’t enough in the face of cost-of-living increases.”

Writers’ assistants are the court stenographers of the TV world, responsible for capturing everything discussed on a daily basis and filtering it into notes that can become an outline that can become a television episode. Script coordinators are paid a couple bucks more ($16.63/hour) for the herculean task of ensuring that every version of every script is formatted correctly, typo free, and contains no names or brands that it shouldn’t.

If the writers’ assistant is the stenographer, the script coordinator is the on-call nurse. I say on-call because it is not unusual for them to be compelled to their computer at 3 a.m. after a new draft has been prepared on set in Toronto, Budapest, or Dubrovnik.

For decades, the expectation has been that people will toil away at these jobs for years as they build up the experience and connections necessary to become a writer. In theory, that may sound like a nice apprenticeship for a bright-eyed post-collegiate. In reality, this means that people in their late-twenties and thirties are making near minimum wage as they have children and put down roots in one of the most expensive cities in the world. A one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles costs an average of $1,360 per month.

These jobs require 60 hours a week or so for writers’ assistants and usually more for script coordinators. You are expected to develop your own writing in your spare time or you “must not really want it.” Many assistants work additional jobs, supplementing their income as Uber drivers and Starbucks baristas, along with 13 million other Americans.

Then there is the schmoozing that is required to rise up the ranks, which often involves a few craft cocktails a couple nights a week. After all, if you don’t have access to the influential alumni networks of Harvard or USC, you’ll have to cobble together your own group of allies if you ever want to make it in this town. Remember, it’s all about who you know.

While you’re at it, you might want to take some classes at UCB or UCLA Extension or enter your script into some contests to up your odds. That will cost you too. Oh, and have you thought about making a short film and submitting to festivals?

Women on #PayUpHollywood are discussing additional financial challenges they face in the chic world of Tinseltown. Thurlow told me: “I would also say needing to look cute and trendy, especially as a woman, is also a barrier. Everyone talks about how casual the industry is but there’s still a certain expectation. One job I had, my boss shamed me for using a tote bag instead of a proper work bag.

Breaking into Hollywood, it turns out, is very expensive.

There is a perception that this “dues paying” creates an environment where the hardest working and most talented rise to the top. The reality is that those who have the financial privilege to work a low wage job for years without being forced out by economic circumstances are more likely to get the elusive rewards. The  dirty open secret of Hollywood is that a lot of the survivors make it through the well-kept gates thanks to financial subsidies from their parents or well-off partners.

Caroline Hylton, a script coordinator, told me, “Most of the people who can afford to hang on are the ones whose parents are helping out, or footing the entire bill — and that’s rarely minorities, and certainly not anyone from a low-income background. Income inequality is where this problem starts. Diverse voices can’t all be the offspring of the privileged.”

Hollywood is set up to prevent the poor from breaking in. While Hollywood has been focusing on diversity fellowship initiatives (which, for what it’s worth, are great), the best way to change the look of white male Hollywood would be to remove the financial barriers to entry. Any study of poverty will tell you that it disproportionately impacts women and people of color.

One of the best ways to lower these financial barriers is unionization. For example, 75 percent of the members of my union — IATSE (The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) Local 871 — are women, but only 36 percent of staffed TV writers are women.

Not only do union members make more money than their non-union counterparts, but expanded benefits like health care can make the difference between keeping our head above water and drowning in debt. Writers’ assistants and script coordinators recently received some much needed relief. Last year, both crafts joined IATSE (The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) Local 871. Under our first contract, we won modest wage increases and many assistants got quality health care for the first time. More importantly, these assistants now have a safe space to discuss workplace issues and strategize improving working conditions.

Though 871 and other IATSE locals represent thousands of assistants in various departments, there are thousands more in need of union protection.

Of course, it is my hope that IATSE will organize every one of these workers, but American labor laws are stacked against workers who want to form a union. Corporations often stamp out unionization efforts through legal means — such as forcing workers to attend anti-union meetings with their boss — and even illegally firing workers for supporting a union. Moreover, Donald Trump’s appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — the agency that enforces U.S. labor laws — is making it harder for the workers to join together in unions and bargain for a fair contract.

High industry turnover makes organizing production assistants even more difficult since these workers jump on and off of productions, switch departments, get promotions, or simply leave the industry. But, hopefully, as more assistants unionize, we can fight for protections for the most vulnerable and precarious entertainment workers.

Though there is still a long way to go, we are making strides. The most valuable thing a union does is bring workers together. When we come together, workers see that what they’re experiencing isn’t specific to them. You aren’t a bad worker; you are in a bad system. You aren’t worthless; the system makes everyone feel that way. Once you get a taste of what solidarity looks like, you aren’t afraid to ask for more.

The expectation is that overworked and underpaid assistants will be adequately nourished by the promise of future success. But you can’t eat your dreams.

The NCAA’s Board of Governors is the main body charged with developing and overseeing the policies that regulate more than 460,000 student-athletes across 1,200 institutions. The board is comprised of 25 (mostly male) college and university presidents, athletic directors, and other professionals, such as former White House chief of staff Dennis McDonough and billionaire businessman Kenneth Chennault. While the board’s decisions often directly affect the lives of student-athletes, student-athletes do not have a say in the selection of board members or a vote in association-wide matters. As a result, they must depend entirely on individual board members having their best interests at heart. But evidence suggests that may not always be the case.

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Student-athletes work tirelessly to perform at the highest levels of athletic competition while simultaneously endeavoring to graduate on time and prepare for future careers. Their efforts generated more than $1 billion for the NCAA and its member institutions in the 2016-17 school year alone. But while many coaches and commissioners took home seven- and even eight-figure salaries, student-athletes did not receive a penny of compensation beyond their scholarships, which do not always cover the full expenses associated with attending college.

The exploitation of student-athletes also produces serious adverse health outcomes, including debilitating knee and ankle injuries and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease. Many student-athletes, especially Black student-athletes who are often concentrated in high-profile, revenue-generating sports, such as football and basketball, also struggle to graduate on time. It does not need to be this way.

In an ideal world, the NCAA would empower student-athletes to unionize and bargain collectively for safer working conditions, better health care benefits, improved academic and professional opportunities, and even compensation. But given the NCAA’s recent history of union busting and refusal to recognize student-athletes as employees, it appears unlikely that the organization would take such a step voluntarily. However, they can and should still provide student-athletes with a formal voice in their association-wide decision-making process by expanding the Board of Governors to include current student-athletes.

Reserving seats for student-athletes on the Board of Governors would guarantee the NCAA considers their concerns and perspectives at the highest levels of governance.

Expanding the Board of Governors is not unprecedented. In the wake of the 2017 NCAA corruption scandal, in which the federal government brought fraud and bribery charges against multiple college basketball coaches, the association added five independent voting members to its board to bolster public trust, increase the diversity of perspectives, and “help ensure the future health and well-being” of its student-athletes. These additions included Grant Hill, who played basketball at Duke 25 years ago and now owns the Atlanta Hawks.

Some could argue current student-athletes may have fresh ideas on how to ensure the health and wellbeing of student-athletes, but they were conspicuously absent from the list of new members.

Providing student-athletes with decision-making authority is not unprecedented. As recently as 2015, the NCAA yielded to pressure from student-athletes by providing them with limited voting powers on the divisional level. Today, they play an important role in Division I, Division II, and Division III governance, including decisions about championship administration, sport oversight, and strategic planning. Student-athletes also serve on several association-wide advisory committees. But they are excluded from the Board of Governors, which approves and monitors the NCAA’s budget, initiates and settles litigation, and establishes policies that affect the entire association.

The Board of Governors reluctantly took an important step towards ending rampant exploitation in college athletics when it voted to allow student-athletes to profit from their own name, image, or likeness. But the vote was long overdue and could easily have gone the other direction. This decision came in the wake of mounting public pressure, including statewide legislation in California and pending legislation in the U.S. congress. Student-athletes have a personal stake in association-wide matters. Their bodies, futures, and even their lives are on the line – they deserve a voice in the decision making process. It’s time to end their systematic disenfranchisement.

Some parents and members of the State Board of Education have expressed concerns about how the process puts up barriers for low-income families, families with limited transportation, and immigrant families that are already on high alert under the Trump administration.

In a Twitter thread, Julie Lawson, a parent of a third grader in the district and PTA president of her son’s school, described roadblocks in the volunteer clearance process. The TB test costs $60 and is not covered by insurance. The single location that offers fingerprinting services for the district is located downtown and is only open during normal business hours, when working parents may have to take time off to go. “All of this is a major access barrier for a parent who wants to chaperone their kid’s field trip,” she said.

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A traditional TB test takes 48 hours and requires two separate visits — one to take the test and the other to have results read. Lawson has spent a lot of time reminding parents of the cost, where to go, and how to coordinate and communicate with health care providers — some of whom don’t want to give the test to their patients without risk factors present.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends TB screening for those who have been in close contact with TB, those who have traveled to countries with a high prevalence of the disease, people who live or work in high risk settings, health care workers, and children who have been exposed to adults with TB. According to the CDC website, “TB tests are generally not needed for people with a low risk of infection with TB bacteria.”

So, why does DCPS require it for volunteers? Jessica Sutter, a member of the State Board of Education, who has fielded concerns from parents about the policy, and who asked the district directly, says she’s still unsure. She says the district told her that they were operating on a Department of Health directive that required proof of a negative TB test of all DCPS employees, volunteers, and contractors.

Further, Sutter says, the district told her that free TB tests were going to be provided at the Tuberculosis and Chest Clinic, a clinic that provides diagnostic and medical management of persons who have been diagnosed with or are suspected of having TB. But after visiting their website, which states that they do not perform routine TB screening, such as those for job or school admission, Sutter says that does not appear to be the case.

“At DC Public Schools (DCPS), the safety and security of our students is our top priority. Fingerprint-based FBI background checks are required by law, and as of this time, proof of a negative Tuberculosis (TB) test is required of all DCPS employees, volunteers, and contractors per guidance from the DC Department of Health,” said DCPS in a statement. “Balancing the safety, health and security of our students with the need to create a welcoming environment for all families in our school buildings as partners in their child’s success is critically important. DCPS is reviewing the TB and fingerprinting policy for parent volunteers to seek out opportunities to provide more flexibility and partnership with family members whenever possible.”

Different school districts around the country have different approaches to volunteer clearance. Some districts do require all of the same components as DCPS, but they also offer vouchers for free testing at local clinics or a tiered process, where the clearance requirements are commensurate with the level of involvement. Many districts require only a background check or a background check and fingerprinting.

School districts need a clear understanding of who is volunteering, of course, but without putting up barriers to family engagement. While Becky Reina, founding chair of the Ward 1 Education Council, a volunteer organization that advocates for public schools in the ward, describes the fingerprinting as easy, with a short wait, she’s quick to acknowledge that entering a government building that requires signing in with a government issued ID is something that could cause anxiety for some parents. “Given the hostile immigration environment parents are living with under the Trump administration, no amount of reassurance will satisfy much of D.C.’s immigrant community,” she said.

Emily Gasoi, a State Board of Education member, representing families in Ward 1, said the fingerprinting piece is driving a lot of the fear among some families. She first became aware of parental concerns about the DCPS policy through school and PTO meeting visits, where she repeatedly heard from constituents that the process, while onerous for everyone, presented a particular deterrent for families with insecure immigration statuses and those unable to afford the costs associated with the process.

“This is more than an inconvenience, it’s an equity issue,” said Gasoi. While Gasoi understands the need for a clearance process that keeps students safe, she suggests there could be more equitable ways of clearing volunteers and that the district consider different policies for different levels of volunteers.

For her part, Lawson spent dozens of hours coordinating with a handful of nearby schools to have a fingerprinting unit stationed in the schools’ neighborhood for a day. In order for the district to send the unit, though, a minimum number of applicants who had already completed the online background check and TB test had to sign up.

In the end, only 16 applicants out of 40 who initiated the process completed fingerprinting. While some parents said they completed the fingerprinting on their own time, Lawson said that for most, she couldn’t confirm an appointment because she never received a TB result.

The benefits of having a child’s primary caregiver involved at their school are numerous. Research shows family engagement results in improved student achievement, reduced absenteeism, and better grades, test scores, and behavior. Sutter says, “We absolutely want every child in the care of our schools to be kept safe, but whose responsibility is that, financially? And how do we make this accessible rather than burdensome in such a way that it will discourage especially low-income families from participating?”

This piece has been updated to add a statement from DCPS.

I learned this early on in my case, which began in April 2018. The services required for me to reunify with my daughters included trauma-based individual therapy, a psychological assessment, substance use treatment, and parenting classes. I remember going to the first of these, my psychological assessment, and spending 20 minutes in the office arguing over paperwork.

In order to complete the mandatory assessment, I had to sign a consent form that would allow the assessors to send their findings to child services. But when I asked what their “findings” included, it was not simply a diagnosis or treatment recommendations. Instead, it could be the full readout of the evaluation.

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Everything I said during this invasive and highly personal evaluation would be sent to my caseworker, his boss, the state attorney, the guardian ad litem and her attorney, my attorney, my husband’s attorney (and by proxy my husband), and the judge. Any time my caseworker was changed, which had happened once already and would happen two more times, the new stranger would also be privy to the contents of my psychological evaluation.

But the service was mandated. Without this evaluation, I was not allowed to engage in therapy, substance use treatment, or parenting classes. So I had to do it.

This is standard fare for families involved with the child welfare system. It focuses on the collection of parents’ information, and control over what those parents do and how they behave, not, as proponents of the system fervently claim, on ensuring the safety of children. Like probation and parole, child welfare involvement becomes one more way for the government to keep tabs on people.

As it would turn out, the report would not be a transcript of my evaluation. Rather, it was an interpretation, in which the evaluator handpicked which details to include. She described me as eccentrically dressed. (I had worn a floral dress and flats, but have visible tattoos and a facial piercing that can’t be removed.) She detailed that sometimes I answered questions right away, and sometimes I paused to answer them, which sounds normal enough but seemed sinister and awkward when inserted in the context of the psychological evaluation. She wrote that I suffered from insomnia, even though I’d repeatedly told her I was tired on that day specifically because I was worried about my husband, who had been hospitalized earlier that week. She generalized my history with drug use to make it appear that I had been addicted to heroin since I was a teenager, which is not the case.

In the end, the recommendations didn’t include anything besides the talk therapy I’d already been mandated to take — but the inclusion of all her other highly subjective details handed my opposition a slew of quotes they could use to describe me as eccentric, erratic, and ill-equipped to handle the daily realities of parenting.

It was an evaluation I had no choice but to attend, which should have been a doorway to resources and help for my PTSD. Instead, it served as an intelligence-gathering exercise for the people separating me from my two young daughters.

Other parents have experienced similar issues with the services that are supposedly in place to help them. Kim, a mother in Alabama who asked that her last name not be shared, has been involved with child services since January 2019. Kim’s case was triggered by her arrest when she failed to appear for a court date, but she says the crime she is accused of was actually committed by her abusive partner, who forced her to take the blame by threatening her life.

When her caseworker learned Kim was experiencing domestic violence, she told Kim to move into a shelter. Which she did, but only for about a month. She said the shelter had stringent rules, which included nightly curfews and that she report her whereabouts when she left the grounds.

Kim was never told by the shelter that this information was shared with her caseworker, but she figured it out when her caseworker suddenly knew details only the shelter had. “She knew my comings and goings there. Knew when I met with the therapist, left for work; all of it,” Kim said.

“The sheer fact and status of having a child places you in a situation where you can no longer openly and honestly express what’s happening in your life to mandated reporters because you’re facing family dissolution, or, at minimum, family surveillance,” said Erin Miles-Cloud, a former parent defense attorney in New York who is now the co-founder for Movement for Family Power, a parent advocacy group. Exactly who falls under the category “mandated reporter” varies by state, but they are typically frontline workers such as nurses, doctors, therapists, and teachers, who are required by law to report any suspicions of child maltreatment. She specifically cites shelters, hospitals, and schools as some of the “biggest offenders” when it comes to reporting parents who are seeking care to child services.

While speaking with me for a story I wrote for Filter Mag about the way child services targets parents who use drugs, a nurse named Tracy Longbreak told me about her experience with the “mandatory” aspect of mandated reporting. When a mother came into her emergency department with her baby while smelling of marijuana but appearing prepared, competent, and tidy, Longbreak was told by her superiors that she had to call in the report or risk her job.

Ultimately, the best she could do was include her perceptions of the mother in her report and hope that her positive remarks would offset the accusation of neglect via marijuana intoxication (which was not yet legal in the state of Oregon, but is now).

“In North Carolina, the mandatory reporting law is around any abuse that may have taken place by the caregiver,” said Julie Owens, a survivor of domestic violence who now consults with organizations around the country advocating better practices for people who have experienced violence in the home. “The protective parents who go into domestic violence shelters—primarily mothers—are not the abuser, but unfortunately they are reported as or regarded as abusers because they haven’t reported the abuse that their children have been experiencing, and they often end up being punished or deprived of their children as a result of this.”

Put together, this all means that service providers can be forced to act as eyes and ears for child services, even when they don’t want to. But more reports doesn’t equal more child safety. In Philadelphia, for example, mandated reporting laws were drastically expanded after the Penn State child sex abuse scandal. In an article published in Pediatrics in 2017, Mical Raz wrote that “there is no indication that the increase in reporting has improved the safety of Philadelphia’s children, and there is reason to believe it may detract.” Some of these detractions included increased hotline calls resulting in an overburdened system less able to make accurate safety assessments, and a heightened risk of family separation for low-income families. Later Raz noted that “fear of reporting may prevent families from seeking help, whereas assurance of confidentiality has been shown to increase help-seeking behaviors.”

The majority of substantiated maltreatment charges in the child welfare system are for neglect, which typically means issues like lack of food, child care, or weather-appropriate clothing – things that could be fixed with better social supports or a little more money. Creating a system that encourages families to seek help should be the goal for any agency in pursuit of children’s health and safety.

But forcing more and more providers and even laypeople to report on parents whether they want to or not achieves the exact opposite of that goal. Instead, it creates a cyclical, hypocritical system in which parents are afraid to seek assistance for fear of being punished because of the issue for which they need help, then punished for not seeking that help on their own. It also harbors distrust in therapeutic situations, which renders impossible any kind of genuine recovery.

The network of surveillance that child welfare-involved parents become trapped inside will continue to harm families like mine until it is lifted and parents are allowed to seek help and engage with services without simultaneously leaking the most intimate details of their lives.

This massacre, followed by subsequent relocation to Fort Humboldt, resulted in the death of nearly one half of the pre-contact Wiyot population — estimated at close to 2,000 people. Today, the tribe has returned to near its ancestral territory, after long legal fights to gain federal recognition, with close to 600 Wiyot people living locally.

Eureka’s return is believed to be the first time a local government has returned land to a tribe in the U.S. Eureka City Council member Kim Bergel described the return as “the right thing to do.”

Eureka’s actions are significant politically, spiritually, and also economically. While Duluwat Island is relatively small, returning the land takes the tiniest step towards rectifying the injustices that the United States has committed towards Wiyot peoples. It signifies a desire to help Wiyot peoples rebuild their community and nation after centuries of dispossession and genocide.

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From 1776 to 1887, the United States transferred nearly 1.5 billion acres of land into American control. Initially, this was done through treaty and executive order or through forcible removal of Indigenous peoples from their homelands, often putting them on reservations. While this made up the majority of land seizures, the seizure of land also included the 1887 Dawes Act, otherwise known as Allotment, which sought to individualize Indian land ownership, converting Indigenous peoples into models of homesteading farmers. The Act would cause Indigenous-controlled land to go from 138 million acres in 1887 to just 48 million acres by 1934.

The seizure of lands and territories and the creation of reservations is a significant reason why Indigenous communities have such concentrated poverty in the United States. Imagine being forced to move from the only home you have ever known to a place you have never been, with fewer resources to succeed there, and then being told that the lifestyle that has helped you prosper is “uncivilized,” and that to survive, you need to embrace a completely new worldview. Not exactly a model for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

For many, the taking of land coincided with an effort to eradicate Indigenous peoples in general. Peter Burnett, the first governor of California, remarked as such when he told the nascent legislature in 1851 “that a war of extermination will continue to be waged between races, until the Indian race becomes extinct.”

To exterminate a whole group means not just the physical killing of a community. It means the destruction of a worldview, a home. This extermination created Allotment. It created boarding schools that sought to “kill the Indian, and save the man.” It created Indian termination policy, which sought to terminate tribes, relocating and assimilating Indigenous peoples. All of these American policies created the conditions for the intense poverty that Indigenous peoples face today.

These processes of extermination have not resulted in the erasure of Indigenous peoples in the United States – far from it. They have altered the ways in which Indigenous peoples interact with the world, though. Cutcha Risling Baldy (Hupa/Yurok/Karuk), assistant professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University, notes two things in this regard: First, that the world that contemporary Indigenous peoples inhabit is a post-apocalyptic one. Second, that this post-apocalypse alters Indigenous peoples’ abilities to thrive socially, communally, politically, and economically. When your base mode of living for generations is mere survival, how can you imagine building anything beyond that?

The combination of both land seizure and eradication efforts has resulted in significant economic disparities for Indigenous peoples in the United States. The 2008 Census estimated that 30 percent of all American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) peoples were in poverty. This reached 40 percent for those living on a reservation. Comparatively, the total U.S. population recorded a poverty rate of 16 percent. According to a 2017 Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the AI/AN unemployment rate was 7.8 percent. Comparatively, the total U.S. rate hovered around 4.4 percent.

This is what makes the return of Duluwat Island to Wiyot peoples so important. It acknowledges past wrongs, understands how the original seizure of land harmed generations irreparably, and tries to rectify that in a culturally, spiritually, politically, and economically significant way. In giving back the land, instead of Wiyot Tribe buying the land back as has happened previously, Eureka took a step towards conciliation.

While the United States has often tried to find alternative methods of compensation for Indigenous land, the federal government would do well to follow the example of Eureka and the Wiyot Tribe. Just give the land back.

These numbers are staggering. When you consider the impact of childhood trauma — which tells us that kids who experience or witness abuse are more likely to develop a slew of physical and mental illnesses as adults — those numbers are infuriating. And baffling. Domestic violence can be hard to escape, especially for those who have been in the mire of it for years, but once kids become involved, shouldn’t that be enough motivation to leave?

It’s this question, and the assumed answer, which drives “failure to protect” laws in child welfare programs across the United States. Essentially, failure to protect laws charge a parent with not doing enough to shield their child from witnessing or experiencing abuse. Virtually every state pursues some form of failure to protect charges within the civil child welfare system. These laws are aimed at the non-abusive parent living in an abusive household. Usually, the parent has been subject to intimate partner violence. But the laws can also be used in households in which the child is the victim of one parent but not the other.

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While these laws were written with the intention of penalizing a parent who neglects the safety and/or well-being of their children, they all too often make unsafe environments even less safe by penalizing non-abusive parents living in an abusive household, and can become the basis for temporarily or permanently removing children from the home. They rarely leave room to consider the complexities of intimate partner violence, instead relying on assumptions and stereotypes that are incapable of capturing the nuanced reality of family bonds.

In January of 1999, Sharwline Nicholson decided to end her relationship with the father of her infant daughter. He lived in South Carolina, and had been crossing state lines each month to visit Nicholson and their daughter in New York. But when she ended the relationship, he responded with violence.

She called 911 and made arrangements with a friend for the care of her two children while she stayed overnight at the hospital. The next day, Nicholson was notified by the New York Administration of Children’s Services (ACS) that both of her children had been temporarily removed from her care on the basis that she had failed to protect them from witnessing the violence that had been inflicted upon her by her former partner. At the time, this was considered a form of neglect.

Nicholson would eventually win back custody of her children, but would be placed on a child maltreatment registry. This action kickstarted a lawsuit that would eventually lead the New York Court of Appeals to rule in 2004 that a parent’s inability to prevent a child from witnessing abuse could not be a sole factor for removing a child. Child welfare reform activists celebrated the decision.

“What Nicholson actually did was not just to change the attitude toward victims of domestic violence,” said David Lansner, a civil rights and family law attorney who represented the plaintiffs in the Nicholson case. “Neglect had to be shown as a serious matter; you had to show that … there was imminent danger of serious harm and not just the possibility of harm. … [Child services] and the court had to balance the harm that would result from removal against the risk of leaving the child at home, so you couldn’t just ‘take the safer course’ because removal was harmful to kids and shouldn’t be done unless it was really necessary.”

Unfortunately, New York is relatively unique in that respect; other states, lacking a case like Nicholson, still remove children for the possibility of harm that caseworkers and judges interpret by a parent’s “failure to protect” her children from being in a household where abuse takes place.

Erin Miles-Cloud, who formerly worked as a parent attorney in New York and is currently one of the co-founders of the advocacy group Movement for Family Power, explained the ways in which some of the better-resourced, urban systems can still fail families, even today. “Because New York has this middle ground of family shelters, ACS sees it as an unreasonable option to stay in a home where intimate partner violence is occurring,” she said.

What many people don’t realize is that — in New York City — parents who access a shelter as the result of domestic abuse will automatically be moved to a different borough, meaning a change in school district for their children, not to mention the loss of access to support networks, such as friends and family or trusted child care, lack of which can easily become another maltreatment charge. There’s also no guarantee as to what type of housing the family will receive or for how long. In some cases this could mean dormitory-style living for a year or longer, with no access to even a personal refrigerator.

But even the most comfortable, “home-like” shelters remain government-funded institutions — which means they come with restrictive rules, such as nightly curfews and rigid limits on how many days a parent can be away from the shelter, even to visit family. They are also a source of constant surveillance for the families housed inside. Miles-Clouds calls shelters and hospitals among the “largest offenders” when it comes to calling in new maltreatment reports, and notes that New York ACS often uses shelters as “second or third eyes on a family” when arguing a related case in court.

Because child welfare agencies self-report their data, and failure to protect  is not an independent maltreatment category in itself (these cases typically fall under the “neglect” umbrella), it is difficult to know exactly how many non-abusive parents end up being investigated because they were victims of abuse who sought help, or because their children reported being harmed by someone else in the household. But we do know that most states do not have even the mild protections enjoyed by families in New York. That means a child can be removed if the state convinces a judge they have been or will likely be psychologically harmed by witnessing the abuse.

Some states will also pursue criminal charges against victims of intimate partner violence who have children in the home. In six states – Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina and West Virginia – non-offending parents face potential life sentences for failure to protect charges, and in Texas the maximum penalty is 99 years. Last year, the Associated Press reported on the case of Tondalao Hall, a mother whose boyfriend was sentenced to two-years time served (meaning he had already completed his jail time while waiting to be sentenced) for beating her children, including a three-month-old infant. Hall, who was never accused of harming her kids, is currently serving 30 years in prison for not calling the authorities on her boyfriend.

Latagia Copeland-Tyronce, a parental rights advocate and the founder/executive director of the National African American Families First and Preservation Association who spoke to TalkPoverty about her experience, knows first-hand how devastating it can be to be accused of not protecting children from another person’s abuse. She first faced the traumatic confusion of a failure to protect charge in Toledo, Ohio, in 2013.

She was 26 years old and had been involved in an abusive relationship for 10 years. What she did not know, however, was that her daughters’ father was also sexually abusing her three eldest girls. When one of Copeland-Tyronce’s daughters finally disclosed the abuse to her sister, she promptly contacted child services.

Copeland-Tyronce immediately left her children’s father. She also cooperated with the criminal case that would ultimately land him a 30-year prison sentence. But this was not enough for Lucas County child protective services. They claimed she had known about the abuse and had failed to protect her children both from witnessing the violence perpetrated against her, and from the sexual abuse which they had experienced.

“My children never said that I knew anything or that I was involved in the abuse and I was never charged with a crime related to the case,” countered Copeland-Tyronce.

Less than a year after the initial removal, her parental rights were terminated and all six of her daughters were adopted to other families. When she gave birth to a son in 2014, by a different father and with stable housing in place, he was also removed from her custody.

“Because I had a [termination of parental rights] TPR, failure to protect, with my daughters. No other reason,” she said. At the time, the first TPR was still under appeal.

Candis Cassioppi, a mother based in Athens, Georgia, had her youngest child removed from her in the hospital after giving birth, she told TalkPoverty. The removal was prompted by an incident of assault by her child’s father perpetrated against her during her pregnancy.

Although she initially called the police and sought medical attention — causing those injuries to become part of her medical record — she ultimately declined to press charges or testify against her abuser. After her son’s birth, this incident became a reason to claim she was failing to protect her children from harm. Now, she is court-ordered to participate in a slew of activities, including domestic violence groups and parenting classes, in the hopes of regaining custody of her infant.

Like mandated reporting laws, which require certain professionals and institutions to report suspected child maltreatment, failure to protect laws and policies are in place, purportedly, to ensure that child maltreatment does not go unreported. “If a child dies in the home because there was a batterer who was so dangerous that the victim-partner couldn’t protect [the kids] … we’re still liable to make sure that the child stays safe,” explained Mary Nichols, a now-retired administrator at Los Angeles County’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), to the California Health Report in 2015.

But she also admitted in the same article that the laws are confusingly vague: “If you look up California Welfare and Institutions Code 300 and just read the definitions of ‘failure to protect,’ you can see how broad they are … [If] somebody would like to craft legislation to make it more workable, in terms of protections for domestic violence [victims], that would be great. It’s a pretty raw tool that we have.”

As the cases detailed in this article demonstrate, the reality of domestic abuse is far too complex to address with vague, generalized laws. Instead of protecting families, these blanket laws mean that parents who experience domestic violence may end up burdened by a fear of reprisal for reporting that violence. Take Cassioppi’s case, for example. Her baby was born healthy; had she not called the police and sought medical attention after being assaulted during her pregnancy, she likely would have walked out of the hospital with her newborn in arms. And Copeland-Tyronce now asserts that if she were to ever encounter intimate partner violence again, she would “not at all” feel safe calling the police for help.

Lansner said implementation and caseworker attitudes are major problems with the way domestic violence cases are handled within the child welfare system. “The caseworkers just don’t get it,” he said, adding, “the caseworker might go to the home, find the guy there in violation of a protection order and then remove the children instead of calling the police and having him arrested, which is what [the caseworker] should do.”

Parents who experience intimate partner violence also face a number of other complexities that caseworkers and judges don’t always take into consideration when charging these parents as culpable for traumatizing their kids by proxy. For example, one study found that 99 percent of domestic violence survivors had also been subject to economic abuse, a form of financial control that can leave them stranded without the resources necessary to secure independent housing or provide for their children’s basic needs. Because lack of appropriate shelter, clothing, and food also fall under the child services maltreatment category of “neglect,” this leaves many non-abusive partners trapped between the crosshairs of a failure to protect and a failure to provide charge. Either way, they’re ending up on the maltreatment registry for neglect.

By necessitating that caseworkers identify concrete harm toward a child before removing her from the home, New York has found a way to slightly balance a system designed to punish parents simply for being unfortunate enough to experience abuse. Although their system is far from perfect — as Miles-Cloud noted, it funnels parents into a less-than-ideal shelter system, and the law still does not address the caseworker bias that concerned Lansner — it provides a template which other states could use to begin the process of clarifying these laws.

Ideally, however, survivors of domestic violence should be met with compassion and provided with services that help their families heal and thrive intact. It seems, instead, that as long as failure to protect charges exist, the child welfare system will continue to promote a culture of secrecy surrounding intimate partner violence, thus validating the very abuse it claims to condemn.

“I was homeless, looking for a place to live, and trying to get into a drug treatment program,” Gomez told TalkPoverty. “I couldn’t afford to enroll at a volunteer center and do my hours.” Her struggle to fulfill the terms led her down a rabbit hole of unsympathetic judges, sexual harassment, and dangerous working conditions.

Several recent high-profile cases have put court-ordered community service like that Lopez experienced into the headlines. So has a University of California, Los Angeles study that took a close look at how community service is used in LA County, and the wildly disparate outcomes within the county’s court-ordered community service framework. Limited research on this subject is in circulation, but the information from Los Angeles suggests tracking and quantifying data around community service nationwide might yield important insights into a little-researched aspect of the legal system. As with other elements of the criminal legal system, class and race heavily mediate the kind of service people engage in and how many hours they are ordered to complete.

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The researchers found significant racial disparities, with Latinx and Black people being more likely to serve community service as a result of disparities in citations, arrests, and charging decisions. For example, in traffic cases that resulted in community service, which involve infractions like speeding and failing to stop, 81 percent of workers were Latinx, out of proportion with LA’s roughly 49 percent Latinx population, and 8 percent were Black.

They also found a high percentage of people who could not afford attorneys (78 percent) amongst those who performed community service, while 16 percent had limited English proficiency and needed translators in court. This paints a profile of a predominantly low-income population — 89 percent of those serving community service in the cohort they studied were low-income — of color, with substantial numbers of immigrants.

Around 100,000 people are sentenced to community service in LA County every year, serving the equivalent of 4,900 full-time, paid civilian jobs and 1,800 government jobs. The number of hours of labor this represents, and the significant cost savings for community service sites, is tremendous. Noah Zatz, a UCLA law professor and lead author, told TalkPoverty, “We were startled to see just how high the hours were for many people, people getting hundreds or even thousands of hours.”

The report argues this is a form of extractive labor that stacks on to existing “poverty penalties” in the criminal legal system, in addition to driving inequalities on work sites, where people completing community service work side-by-side with paid parties in everything from municipal animal shelters to for-profit nursing homes, but without the same benefits, protections, and wages.

Lopez recalled that at one placement, she was ordered to engage in unsafe activities like cleaning bathrooms with a mixture of bleach and ammonia. At another, she said she was forced to mop on her hands and knees in a kitchen surrounded by men who stared at her, but she had to “swallow that pill and push through” after the supervisor threatened to “throw out all my hours.”

“In addition to the direct displacement dynamic,” noted Zatz, referring to paid workers who might lose out on roles filled by community service, “the other dynamic at play is that these assignments function as a form of subsidy to nonprofits.” Government agencies also experience big savings through community service; over half of the cases the researchers looked at involved CalTrans, the state’s highway construction and maintenance agency.

Community service is sometimes represented to members of the public as a compassionate alternative to jail time and a way to “work off” court-imposed debts. In fact, it can create significant hardships. People may struggle to complete high numbers of hours on top of their paid jobs and other obligations, such as school and child care. When Lopez struggled to complete her service and asked for help, judges were unsympathetic; it ultimately took the help of an attorney with A New Way of Life, an advocacy organization that works with women leaving prison, to get the court to work with her. The court agreed to accept volunteer hours she served at organizations not on its officially sanctioned list, acknowledging her work with community advocacy organizations.

The researchers noted that disability can also be a factor; the study cites one disabled person who was sentenced to 60 hours of work they were unable to perform and ended up with 180 hours of “light” service. Zatz notes that people receive more credit for physically demanding work, which creates inherent inequalities for disabled people.

And some still owe court-imposed fines and fees that can’t be worked off by laboring on construction crews or organizing files at the sheriff’s office, with 86 percent of those involved in criminal cases making payments that averaged $323 on top of their service. That’s, of course, after they’ve paid the fee for placement at a community service work site recognized by the court.

Many members of the public may not be aware of the close ties between court-ordered community service and the mounting crisis of court fines and fees. Nearly every state has seen steep increases, many of which are established in rigid fee schedules that judges can’t change. In many cases, courts are offering community service as a way to “pay off” the very fines the court has imposed, though they could conduct ability-to-pay assessments to determine whether those fines are realistic. For some, the only way to resolve these debts is to work, providing free labor to participating sites.

The reliance upon free labor is troubling for the researchers. Whether people are engaged in community labor, which includes a physically demanding element like working on a road crew, or community service, like volunteering at a thrift store, they are treated as a cheap and disposable resource. Not only are they not paid for their time, they’re not provided with meaningful skills and a path to advancement, with very few people hired on by the agencies and organizations they work for. These organizations can also be choosy, indicating that they won’t work with people convicted of certain kinds of crimes, which makes it harder for them to complete court-ordered community service.

At a time when labor organizing is in resurgence, community service represents a largely unexplored aspect of the labor movement. Some participants in community service programs are working alongside union members who have fought for robust contracts that include fair pay and benefits as well as protected working conditions. Community service workers don’t benefit from those contracts and are in fact sometimes forced to sign waivers explicitly identifying them as volunteers and giving up certain workplace rights and protections.

Reforming court fines and fees to address the modern-day debtor’s prisons and coercive labor conditions across the United States is critical, as is coming up with alternatives to incarceration that do not involve exploitation. Community service as it exists now could also be reformed; people could be provided with job training, meaningful pay, and other supports to turn a court-ordered job into economic opportunity, something people like Lopez, who’s been sober three years and is currently pursuing a college education, could have benefited from.

Until then, members of the public may want to look twice at community service’s role in their neighborhoods.

That year, the city applied for a $1.34 million U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention grant that would have allowed the city to hire more health department staff focused on assisting the city’s ongoing efforts in preventing childhood lead poisoning. The grant would have funded city officials to test more young children for lead poisoning and collect better data that would allow them to identify the most at-risk kids.

Just months after applying, the city was denied. But the reason had nothing to do with public health. As the CDC explained, the 2010 U.S. Census counted Detroit’s population at 713,777, which was shy of the grant’s 750,000 minimum population requirement. The CDC said in a statement that it does not advance grant applications that don’t meet eligibility criteria requirements for further review.

The lost opportunity underscores the importance of having an accurate count of all people living in the United States during the constitutionally-mandated decennial Census. The count factors into how billions of federal dollars are distributed throughout the country. The number of people in your city can determine eligibility for resources needed to address lead, fix up roads, or improve schools.

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It is unclear whether Detroit’s 2010 population was undercounted by exactly 36,223 people, the number of residents by which the city fell short of the lead prevention grant’s threshold. But there is a lot of evidence that Detroit’s Census population in 2010 was less than the number of people actually living in the city, and it’s probable that it would have reached 750,000 with a more accurate count. Undercounts are typical for large cities with a large number of hard-to-count populations such as renters or immigrants.

In Detroit, only 64 percent of households responded to the Census, according to Victoria Kovari, the executive director of the city’s 2020 Census campaign. In total, about 220,000 people did not send in the forms. The Census Bureau was able to track down information about some of those households after workers spoke to residents at their doors, as well as landlords, neighbors, or even the mailman.

But, according to the Census Bureau, 26,585 people were never counted, and instead represented an estimated number of people living in uncounted units, which the federal agency calculated based on a formula that includes comparable household sizes for the specific neighborhood. It is likely that the Census Bureau was off on its estimates and that the actual number was higher.

The populations in Detroit that the Census was unable to collect any information for and forced to guess about include people living in gated communities or renters such as young people and small, low-income families living in multifamily apartment buildings, Kovari said.

Kovari said it was too tough to tell whether there was an undercount, but based on the high number of people that the Census Bureau had to make a guess about, the count was likely not accurate. “It’s clear that renters in multi-family housing were not counted,” Kovari said. “I would go as far as to say we did not get an accurate count in those areas.”

For a city like Detroit, which filed for municipal bankruptcy just six years ago, those federal funds that were denied because of a likely undercount could have been critical, said Lyke Thompson, director of Wayne State University’s Center for Urban Studies, who studies lead poisoning in Michigan.

While childhood lead poisoning in Detroit has improved in recent years, its rates still surpass those in nearby Flint. In 2016, city officials found that 8.8 percent of tested kids under the age of six were positive for lead poisoning, compared to 1.8 percent of kids in Genesee County, which encompasses Flint, according to the Detroit News. The elevated levels were higher in the city’s poorer neighborhoods, including one zip code that encompasses the Atkinson Avenue Historic District and Yates Park, in which 22 percent of 686 kids tested positive.

A lot of the city’s childhood lead poisoning problems stem from aging infrastructure that makes the water undrinkable and the city’s aging housing stock, often located in poorer neighborhoods, with lead paint-covered interior and exterior walls. Children in those neighborhoods are exposed to chippings and dust that come from the walls and breathe in exposed lead after nearby homes are demolished without following environmental remediation standards.

“$1.3 million would go a long way for [city officials] to get to the houses, to measure the blood levels in those houses and to provide case management and other services to those families. They simply lose that through this process,” Thompson said. “Detroit has some of the highest percentages of children with lead poisoning of any major city in the country so they really do need the support.”

Other cities likely experienced similar lost opportunities. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services relies on population data when distributing nearly $3 billion each year in funding and reimbursements of five of its grant programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a foster care program, an adoption assistance program, and a child care and development fund program, a 2018 report from George Washington University’s Institute of Public Policy found.

Those researchers identified 37 states that may have lost out on millions of dollars in federal funding in fiscal year 2015 if their populations were undercounted by 1 percent during the 2010 Census. This includes Texas by $291.9 million, Pennsylvania by $221.7 million, Florida by $177.8 million, Ohio by $139 million, Illinois by $122.2 million, and Michigan by $94.2 million.

In most cases, it is impossible to tell which communities may have lost out on federal funds because of a Census undercount due to the fact that there are many overlapping programs with different complex funding formulas that take into account statistics beyond population size, such as the age and income of an area, according to another recent report from George Washington University’s Institute of Public Policy.

But what is clear is that undercounts do occur throughout the United States, disproportionately impacting the black population.

According to the Census Bureau’s own 2014 analysis, nearly 1 million children — 4.6 percent of all kids under the age of five in the U.S. — were not represented in the 2010 count. Children who are Latinx or black were undercounted at higher rates than white children. Such undercounts are due to children who have complex living situations, such as splitting time living between parents who do not live together, or who come from families that are considered hard-to-count, such as those who live in high-poverty neighborhoods or rental housing, according to the website FiveThirtyEight.

“The undercount of children under age five in the decennial census, and in surveys like the American Community Survey (ACS), is real and growing,” the 2014 Census Bureau report read. “This is not a new problem and has been present in decennial censuses for many decades. The differential undercount of this population across geography and demographics makes this a larger problem for some racial and ethnic groups and some parts of the country.”

It is reasonable to conclude that Detroit’s undercount was larger than the national average. The city’s population of children under five is higher than the national average and, according to research conducted by the City University of New York, several of its neighborhoods are considered among the hardest to count in the country.

In fact, the city’s population meets the very definition of hard-to-count: Areas in which less than 73 percent of its residents responded to the bureau’s first attempt to reach them.

Hard-to-count communities often include young children, racial and ethnic minorities, non-English speakers, low-income people, people who are disabled, people who are experiencing homelessness, and people who do not live in traditional housing, according to Ron Jarmin, deputy director of the U.S. Census Bureau.

Detroit has a poverty rate of 37.9 percent, 85 percent of its population are considered ethnic minorities, more than 10 percent of its population uses a language other than English at home, and 20 percent of its population is disabled, according to Census Bureau data.

To complicate matters, one in five Detroiters is evicted each year, a problem which, according to Pulitzer Prize winning author Matthew Desmond, disproportionately impacts black women, which would also lead to an undercount.

Lastly, the 2008 economic recession, which crashed the city’s economy, may have also played a part, according to Kurt Metzger, a demographer and Michigan mayor who started the local data organization, Data Driven Detroit. In 2010, city leaders, he said, were trying to address Detroit’s high unemployment rate, foreclosure crisis, and plummeting housing values as residents were underwater on mortgages and land contracts, so they were not thinking about the Census.

Metzger expected an undercount, but the end result was much worse than he anticipated, he said.

“While I have no exact undercount in mind, I was floored when I heard the 2010 count. I knew there was going to be a significant pop loss even without an undercount, but was expecting something closer to 775,000,” Metzger said in an email.

“The undercount was the reason for not qualifying for the grant. Many Detroiters had no interest in being counted and the city never worked to convince them otherwise,” he added.

The Trump administration is going to make this bad situation worse. It tried to include a citizenship question in the Census, a move that would have caused an undercount of at least 9 million people, since non-citizens and households or families with non-citizen members would fear retribution from the government if they answered. The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could not include the question unless it changed its justification for adding it, which they claimed was to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.

The Trump administration shortly after dropped the question, but is still providing an inadequate supply of resources needed to ensure an accurate count. The NAACP filed a lawsuit last year against the Census Bureau and the Trump administration, claiming that their lack of preparedness for the 2020 Census violated the U.S. Constitution, since the government is required to conduct a full head count of everyone living in the country.

The civil rights organization claimed the Census Bureau was under-funded and under-prepared, hiring fewer people to knock on doors and count people that did not self-respond, and opening half the number of field offices throughout the country. Those cuts are being made while the Census Bureau rolls out, for the first time, an Internet-based survey response system.

There are widespread cybersecurity concerns related to allowing people to respond to the survey digitally, and such techniques could affect responses from communities with limited Internet access, which are often areas with a high population of people of color who are considered hard-to-count.

The Census Bureau in a statement defended its 2020 count efforts. According to the bureau, the agency is planning the most robust marketing and outreach plan in the agency’s history: It will spend $500 million on marketing, up from $376 million in 2010, advertise in “many different languages,” and is designing a “robust” outreach plan and hiring locally to engage with communities and reach hard-to-count populations.

The bureau also said that households in areas where Internet is unreliable will receive a paper questionnaire on the first mailing and all households that do not respond, regardless of the area, will receive a paper questionnaire on the fourth mailing. It added that people can respond in 12 different languages other than English over the phone or through the Internet, and enumerators will have 59 different non-English language guides among other ways of reaching out to non-English speakers.

But such threats to the accuracy of the count are real, according to Kelly Percival, a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice’s Democracy Program.

“The 2020 Census is facing a lot of threats. A lot we have seen in past Censuses and a lot is unique for 2020,” said Percival.

“These are having a snowball effect and they could lead to an undercount in certain communities,” Percival added. “This will translate into less political power and less funding for those that need it… I think it’s an attempt to politicize the census which is not what the census is about.”

A relatively small lead prevention grant can go a long way and help a lot of children. According to Detroit officials, the 2017 grant would have enabled the city to increase the number of children under six years old who are tested for lead by 20 percent, allowed the city to collect better data so it could identify higher-risk populations, improved lead exposure outreach and education for those higher-risk populations, and better identified kids who have been exposed so they could be connected with services. It would have also provided new training for public health professionals, the lead prevention workforce, and other stakeholders who are on the front lines of the fight.

Ask the city, though, and losing out on the grant was no big deal. While, “Federal dollars will certainly assist the Department in coordinating lead related activities,” the city is doing just fine addressing the problem without it, according to city spokesperson Tamekia Nixon.

“After we didn’t receive the 2017 grant, the Detroit Health Department pursued other funding streams to allow us to provide the same scope of service intended in the grant, albeit to a somewhat lesser degree. However, at this time we are not able to quantify the exact difference in numbers,” Nixon wrote in a statement.

Last week, the city received a $9.7 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to assess 120 housing units and address lead hazards in 450 homes throughout the city for low-income families with young children, among other functions.

However, the primary function of the grant is for lead abatement, not surveillance of lead poisoning, like the CDC grant would have provided, and it will not solve the issue, said Thompson. Federal funds for such prevention efforts is crucial, he said.

“It’s really hard for the Health Department to get to even a fraction of the houses and really work with the families and they lost support to do that,” Thompson said.

Members of Detroit’s Health Department spoke to TalkPoverty on background but referred questions to the city’s communications department before going on the record. The city’s communications department gave TalkPoverty basic information about its lead program after more than a week of requests, but gave vague answers about whether losing out on the CDC funds hurt the city’s lead prevention efforts in any way. At times, Nixon told TalkPoverty to “file a FOIA” (Freedom of Information Act request) for such information.

It is unclear why the city downplayed the importance of missing out on the federal grant. However, after being denied the CDC grant, the city’s former Health Department Executive Director, Joneigh Khaldun, in a July 10, 2017 appeal of the federal agency’s decision, characterized the federal funds as a “severe need.”

“Addressing lead exposure remains a critical need given the history of Detroit as a large industrial community and the subsequent ubiquity and permeation of lead in our neighborhoods,” Khaldun said.

As American cities like Detroit scrap for federal funding to address very important issues facing their communities and their residents, an accurate count in 2020 is crucial.

I was biking to treatment three to five days a week in the Florida heat, and had no other transportation, so I wasn’t able to come in for dosing after I came down with a fever and a deep, phlegmatic cough. But I called in, emailed, and texted each day that I missed a scheduled day of treatment. At no point was I warned of an impending discharge; my counselor simply wished me well, and suggested I go to urgent care if I felt I needed it.

When I returned to treatment the next week, though, I learned that my provider, Memorial Outpatient Behavioral Health, had assumed I was skipping to use drugs. They dumped me without even a few days’ supply of my prescribed buprenorphine, upon which my body was physically dependent; a referral elsewhere; or a solid reason.

This was in spite of my having an active prescription from my doctor and a future appointment with her. I could also no longer access the psychiatric medication I was prescribed through the same provider.

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All of a sudden, without warning, I lost all of my addiction and mental health care. As shocking as these events have been, they are not uncommon. In fact, they represent a dangerous status quo among opioid addiction treatment providers across the nation, one that defies all modern research on addiction treatment and leaves patients stranded.

“It’s an old school type of thinking which came out of how we’ve treated addiction in the past, which is that abstinence is the policy, which doesn’t make sense with a chronic relapsing disease,” said Justine Waldman, the medical director for REACH, a harm-reduction oriented health hub in Ithaca, New York. “With abstinence being the policy, once the patient isn’t able to follow the policy the patient isn’t able to be part of the practice.”

Keri Ballweber, a methadone patient and recovery specialist at Point to Point Kane County, remembers being dramatically dropped from care in 2012 by Family Guidance Center, a methadone provider in Aurora, Illinois with whom she had been a patient for roughly six and a half years. In the two years prior to her discharge, she had been gradually tapering her 160 mg dose with the goal of coming fully off methadone.

“As I got lower in my taper, it began getting harder and harder to deal with the symptoms [of withdrawal],” recalled Ballweber. “I asked them for help, but their only suggestion was to go slower. It did not seem as if there was a speed slow enough to not cause me discomfort.” Family Guidance Center declined to comment for this piece; Memorial Outpatient Behavioral Health said it does not comment on specific cases, but that “our goal is to partner with all our patients and help them heal and recover.”

Ballweber eventually turned to illegally purchased diazepam, a benzodiazepine usually prescribed for anxiety, insomnia, and seizure disorders. Mixing benzos and opioids can be dangerous, but when Ballweber disclosed the use to her counselor, she was not informed about this, nor given any harm reduction tips. She asked if she could be kicked out of the program if she continued to screen positive for the non-prescribed drug, and her counselor admitted that outcome was possible, but assured her that such a drastic action would only be taken much further down the line.

The next month, Ballweber was dismissed, and tapered from her dose within a week.

“I was very sick,” said Ballweber. “I couldn’t sleep, I was having panic attacks, muscle tremors, [and] restless leg syndrome.” Eventually, she began to experience hallucinations, which she believes were the result of sleep deprivation from the withdrawal. She was admitted to the hospital for psychosis and prescribed quetapine, an anti-psychotic medication, which helped her sleep. “I had absolutely no aftercare and cutting me off from the clinic [also] cut me off from counseling,” she said.

Ballweber also recalls seeing other patients discharged or punished with medication holds for talking back to their counselors or smoking too close to the buildings. Other MAT patients around the country have reported being dropped or threatened with dismissal for reasons such as relapsing, missing care for unavoidable reasons like being incarcerated, not attending group therapy sessions, smoking marijuana, or being unable to pay.

In my case, when the clinic refused to give me my prescribed medication, leaving me in opioid withdrawal and overcome by a sense of deep confusion and hopelessness, I did eventually use. It was a bad choice, I admit that — and I told my counselor immediately. But in many ways, the clinic itself had contributed to the outcome it had initially accused me of.

I think a part of me hoped that if I gave them what they expected — a positive toxicology screen — I would get what I needed: ongoing care. Instead, I was totally shut out and sent to navigate detoxing from both my opioid-based buprenorphine and my selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressant (also dependency-producing) at home, alone, with no medical supervision or follow-up care.

Both buprenorphine and methadone are approved by a slew of licensing bodies, including the World Health Organization, as the most effective treatments for reducing harmful symptoms of opioid addiction and opioid addiction-related deaths. Although any addiction treatment plan should be tailored to the individual patient’s needs and circumstances, these medications are designed for long-term or even lifelong use, said Mary Jeanne Kreek, senior attending physician at Rockefeller University’s addictive diseases lab and part of the team that first developed methadone as a treatment for addiction, whom I interviewed while researching a story for Filter Mag. No part of best practice includes suddenly dropping patients from care for any reason — but especially not for showing symptoms of the disorder for which they are seeking care.

“I’m afraid for any patient who has to get off MAT before they’re ready,” added Kreek.

For patients who relapse, Waldman confirmed the best practice is to “keep the patient on buprenorphine.”

At REACH, she noted, patients are not expected to adhere to an abstinence-only model of care. When patients continue to relapse, their practitioners sit down and ask the patients what they need and how they can help.

“There have only been two patients that I can think of who weren’t able to get care at REACH,” she said, “and they were displaying more violent behavior that just didn’t feel safe within our workplace.” She makes a point to add that REACH ensured those patients were placed with a more appropriate provider.

Losing access to medication also affected my ongoing child services case, switching it from a reunification track to one in which my children will be given up for adoption due to an assumption by my caseworkers and my judge that I am at fault for “failing” treatment. This doesn’t guarantee that I will permanently lose my two young daughters, but it makes it a much tougher battle to win. Now, I am no longer entitled to the little assistance I was receiving from my local child welfare agency in obtaining the services I need to reunify with my daughters. They are oriented toward settling my daughters into permanency with their grandparents.

When I told my counselor that this would happen if they dropped me from care, she responded that she thought I should get my daughters back, and was probably a great mother, but was not a dedicated enough patient.

One year later, in 2017, de Blasio had a change of heart, and decided that he would propose a plan to close Rikers within 10 years and build four new jails across the city in its place. Members of the #CloseRikers campaign, many of whom are formerly incarcerated, have supported the building of four new jails to replace Rikers, too.

Close one jail to build four new ones was the limit of their imagination. But it should not be the limit of imagination for people of color and especially people who spent as much as one day in jail.

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The move towards opening more humane jails and state of the art “jail centers” is happening all around the country, from Sioux City, Iowa, to Spokane, Washington, to Oahu, Hawai’i. But that’s just the latest euphemism in the history of prison reform. From plantations to convict lease gangs to penitentiaries to correctional facilities, we have a collective conditioning to center confinement, even when the numbers provide a different narrative.

Reductions in the New York City jail population because of bail reform and other policy changes has made the once unrealistic idea of closing Rikers one of political pragmatism. According to statistics provided by the New York Police Department, New York City’s overall crime rate is continuing a downward trend. In fact, the homicide rate is at the lowest since the 1950s.

There is no Batman with a neverending utility-belt of crime-fighting tools intimidating the city’s underworld. Community-based programs aimed at prevention and intervention are the Caped Crusader. Crime in New York City declined at the same time that policy shifts forced the NYPD to stop using stop and frisk as its main policing tool.

The imaginations of activists, most of whom spent time on Rikers, is now being actualized.

This next step should not include the construction of another cage. If you build it, you will fill it, and according to scholar, Angela Davis, “jails and prisons always become overcrowded.” America’s prisons are already running at 103.9 percent capacity. The ACLU has been suing the state of Hawai’i since 1984 for its prison overcrowding; prisons there are now at an average of 167 percent capacity.

Prisons and jails, especially in America, are direct descendants of slave plantations. Laureates such as Ava DuVernay and Michelle Alexander have plainly made the case for this nexus.  Convict-leasing gangs were created after formerly enslaved Africans fought for their freedom in the Civil War, which were the precursors to the modern-day penitentiaries and jails.

Speaking at the Smart on Crime Conference at John Jay College earlier this month, Darren Mack, a formerly incarcerated leader and member of #CloseRikers, said that a part of the plan to close Rikers and open four new jails is to have social service providers run the new facilities instead of the Department of Corrections. But replacing correctional staff with any other kind of a professional is a jail with lipstick. Los Angeles residents fought against similar cosmetic changes by winning the battle to halt the construction of $2.2 billion jail-like mental facility.

If advocates, especially those who have lived in jails, don’t use this moment to close jails, 20 or 30 years from now prison reformers will be thinking of ways to improve these same jail centers.  In 1979, the French philosopher, Michel Foucault, wrote on the subject of prison reform: “One should recall that the movement for reforming the prisons, for controlling their functioning is not a recent phenomenon. It does not even seem to have originated in a recognition of failure. Prison ‘reform’ is virtually contemporary with the prison itself: it constitutes, as it were, its program.”

Now, I appreciate that the voices of formerly incarcerated are loud and numerous on both sides of this debate. Homogeneity in any movement is a myth at worse and unrealistic at best.

So here we are. We are at a moment when we can push, prod, and perform the dreams of the abolitionists of old: freedom. The upcoming biopic of Harriet Tubman, already getting Oscar buzz, will hopefully remind us that her first goal and hurdle was to convince caged human-beings that they were not free; that a plantation with better amenities was still a plantation committed to the peculiar institution of trampling Black souls to build a greater America. Dr. Tubman, as I like to call her, left us a vital lesson to remember.

Better conditions of confinement, though a necessary touchpoint of our humanity, is not freedom. Building new jails in a moment when it is becoming vogue to reduce the prison population is a cognitive dissonance that will likely result in creative ways to suggest Black and Brown people belong in them. America always finds a way to imagine confinement for people of color. Look at how kids are caged at the Mexican-American border.

We, especially those of us committed to implementing solutions that eradicate the need for jails and prisons, should not limit our expertise and our imaginations to soluble solutions that create more cages to be filled.

We can Harriet this moment.

But for their son’s first few years of school, when Custen was working in Draper, Utah, attending the annual Individualized Education Program (IEP) meetings that laid out this plan could have threatened their job. To participate in meetings 40 miles away, “I would need to use PTO, and there would need to be space available in the schedule for me to leave,” they explained. “If someone else had already claimed time off that day before I had the chance to, then I wouldn’t be able to take the time off myself without receiving a strike for an absence, which would put my job security at risk.”

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Custen’s son receives his services in part through IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), which serves around 14 percent of public school students. IDEA guarantees a right to an IEP, which includes an evaluation of a student’s educational abilities and needs and provides a detailed plan for any support services, specialized instruction, or accommodations they may need due to a disability. These accommodations may include alternative assignments, permission to record a spoken lecture, large print textbooks, extended testing times, assistance with organizing a desk space, or access to speech-to-text software, among many others.

Parents can be crucial partners when it comes to selecting accommodations in an IEP, but Custen’s job was making it impossible to get a seat at the planning table. Meanwhile, Custen’s ex’s schedule allowed him to regularly attend — a disparity that led to family stress and communication gaps around their son’s education plan. Their son’s behavior was different when he was around his father than when he was around Custen, for example, in part because their ex struggled to accept that their son was neuroatypical.

“He would often go into meetings with unrealistically rose-tinted lenses on our son’s behavior and progress,” Custen explained. “He would skew his own perception of our son’s capabilities and milestones. For instance, he would do 90 percent of the work in getting him dressed while our son would do 10 percent of it (such as pulling up pants or sticking arms through sleeves once his shirt was already pulled on for him) and claim that our son was capable of dressing himself.” This led to confusion over what kind of assistance their son would actually need at school.

Custen’s frequent absences meant the services their son received were selected based solely on his behavior around his dad. “The fact that I was not present at these meetings meant that they were taking him for his word on our son’s at-home behavior,” Custen shared. In turn, “they would have to hear from me later and go through the process of editing notes and plans for the IEP. I can’t imagine that it was easy or comfortable for the team helping our son to be caught in the middle of such a back-and-forth between [me and] my ex either.”

Some parent advocates believe problems like Custen’s could be partly alleviated by a recent announcement from the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). The agency responded to a parent whose employer denied their request to take intermittent Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave to attend IEP meetings. The agency clarified that employees whose children have “serious health conditions” (those for which a patient receives either inpatient care or continuing care from a medical provider) requiring IEPs are able to take time off under the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to attend IEP meetings without losing their job or continued health insurance coverage.  FMLA allows eligible employees to take up to 12 workweeks of leave in a 12-month period for serious health conditions or to care for family members.

According to the decision, parents can use FMLA leave to attend IEP meetings because they involve medical decisions, discussions of children’s health and well-being with respect to those decisions, and the provision of proper physical and psychological care. Notably, the DOL also said a child’s doctor doesn’t have to be present in order for a parent to use FMLA time to attend their IEP meeting.

Amanda Morin, an education writer/author, parent advocate, and former teacher, knows many parents simply won’t be able to take advantage of the clarified policy, especially if they are low-income. Seasonally, intermittently, or self-employed parents are rarely eligible for FMLA, which is restricted to private employers with 50 or more employees working for them within 75 miles of a central worksite. Employees are only eligible if they’ve worked for at least 1,250 hours across the 12 months prior to the leave and have worked for their current eligible employer for a full year.

“Even parents who do have FMLA may not always be able to afford the time off if it will have to be unpaid,” she explained. Overall, around 59 percent of U.S. workers were covered by FMLA as of 2012. That number may have shifted downward since then due to the influx of freelance positions and the rise of the gig economy.

In many ways, this decision looks like a major move towards greater equity in education. Family members work schedules are often intimately connected to their children’s IEP meetings. For researcher, writer, and former teacher Mireya Vela, IEPs have always been a part of her life — and her job choices. Vela’s son, now 25, began his IEP at four years old after his speech delays and other developmental issues became apparent.

Vela tailored her work schedule, and even her choice of career, around her son’s educational and medical needs. “From the time my son was six to the time he graduated high school, I only worked part time. I couldn’t work longer than that,” Vela said. “I often had 2-3 jobs at the same time. But all my jobs worked around my need to drop everything and run to the school.” What’s more, Vela consistently advocated for meetings longer than the customary school-requested 45 minutes, and attended them flanked by a support team of clinicians and advocates — which often meant some rescheduling.

A parent’s ability to take FMLA time off for an IEP meeting will also depend on their child’s exact diagnosis and necessary support services. Morin said “it may also be challenging for parents of kids who don’t have a medical diagnosis, but have an IEP, because getting documentation of the need for leave isn’t as clear-cut.” There might be cases where a child is in clear need of services to help them with a disability or developmental delay, for example, but their family is uninsured or underinsured or can’t afford to see a high-level specialist. In other cases, a student might have to go through an extended period of testing or medical assessment before they receive a final medical diagnosis. Without a documented specific diagnosis, a parent may struggle to prove their eligibility for FMLA leave.

Still, Morin calls the ability to use FMLA intermittently for IEP meetings “a step in the right direction,” especially because not all eligible parents may have known that they could use time off for this purpose. “I’m pleased that it shines a light on the fact that an IEP meeting is tied into a child’s health and well-being,” she said. “I think, for parents who have not been able to leave work to get to meetings, knowing this is available, and feeling confident enough to bring it to an HR department to use the new policy, has the potential to be really empowering and increase family-school engagement.”

An equal, engaged dynamic between schools and families is critical, says Morin, because parents often understand their children more intimately. Parents also have more knowledge about how a student might learn or interact in different settings, which could impact the frequency or types of services they may need.

The DOL’s recent announcement marks a potential step forward in terms of recognizing IEPs as crucial to children’s well-being, health, and quality of life, rather than positioning them as optional “add-ons” to a one-size-fits-all public school education. For Brim Custen, family-school engagement was indeed the driving factor in their son’s well-being and educational progress at school. Later, when Custen began working as the communications coordinator for the Utah Pride Center, their new employer’s greater flexibility allowed for much more active participation in the development of their son’s IEP, and they saw a sea change after becoming more directly involved.

Initially, Custen’s inability to attend IEP meetings forced both families and school administrators to wade through red tape as they struggled to come to a full understanding of exactly what Custen’s son could and couldn’t do. “When he would move to a new classroom with new teachers, there would be some growing pains as they adjusted to the fact that I would seldom be present in person at these meetings,” explained Custen, “and I would end up having to disagree with my ex and provide different perspective after the fact through email or phone call.”

No longer mired in confusion, the team working with Custen’s son was able to communicate more clearly and flesh out a comprehensive plan to help him pay attention and regulate his emotions both in and out of class. “Thanks to there being an IEP in place and a team of teachers and therapists who understood his needs and worked within them, I’m proud to say that my son is doing vastly better in his behavior, self-control, and retention of information in school than we had anticipated he’d be able to,” Custen shared.

Despite hazardous conditions in the days before the Camp Fire became a conflagration, Pacific Gas and Electric company elected not to take advantage of one of the most aggressive and effective tools in its wildfire prevention arsenal: De-energization, also known as a public safety power shutoff (PSPS).

According to California’s Public Utilities Commission, in 2015, the last year for which data are available, utility lines accounted for just 8 percent of fires, but they burned 150,000 acres, more than all other causes combined. Many of the state’s lethal fires have been attributed to power equipment. Utilities may opt to de-energize their lines when a lethal combination of weather factors converge: It’s hot, dry, and extremely windy.

While utilities determine when to make the call in different ways, the National Weather Service red flag warning of increased fire risk is often a factor. More than 50 percent of Northern California alone is at “elevated” or “extreme” fire risk, putting hundreds of thousands of residents in the danger zone. California’s Public Utilities Commission is deep in the heart of rulemaking around the relatively new approach to wildfire prevention as the state also explores options like burying utility lines and more aggressive vegetation management for preventing utility-associated wildfires.

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But de-energization comes at a cost. When it occurs, customers can be without power for hours or days. Utilities are supposed to provide advance notice, but some customers say that’s not happening. Instead, they complain recent Pacific Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison shutoffs have occurred with insufficient notice and been accompanied with outdated, confusing information on estimated time of power restoration, including lags in translating outage information.

This is a particular concern for customers who are electricity-dependent. In any given outage block, there may be hundreds or thousands of customers who registered with the utility to indicate they rely on medical equipment to stay healthy, and, in some cases, to stay alive.

Known as “medical baseline customers,” they may require ventilators and similar life support equipment, while others have conditions that can become uncomfortable or dangerous without medical equipment and cooling systems, or have medications that must be refrigerated. In recognition of their increased energy needs, utilities provide them with an extra allotment of energy at the base pricing tier. Other customers may have similar electricity needs despite not being enrolled in the medical baseline program, for a variety of reasons.

Utilities are supposed to be proactive about providing early and frequent notice to medical baseline customers to ensure they’re aware of the possibility of an outage. Kari Gardner, Southern California Edison’s Senior Manager of Consumer Affairs, explained that Edison, like PG&E and other utilities, has a multi-step warning process including a two-day warning that an area is being monitored, a one-day notice, and, ideally, one to four hours of notice before an area is de-energized, though rapidly-changing weather conditions can make this challenging. The utility, she said, is always working on better ways to reach customers, with a particular focus on medical baseline customers; the utility sends out door knockers for notification if they can’t get through on the phone, for example.

Jill Jones, who lives in Sonoma County near the site of 2017’s infamous Tubbs Fire, an area primarily served by Pacific Gas and Electric, is not a medical baseline customer but does have a condition called hereditary angioedema type III, which causes sudden intense swelling, including of her airways. She needs air conditioning and a low-stress life to reduce the risk of swelling episodes, and she also relies on a very expensive medication that must be refrigerated. “As soon as the air conditioner stops, the clock… when I will have an attack starts ticking fast,” she said.

Her condition was foremost on her mind when warnings of a possible shutdown started swirling in late September. Jones tried to track information about de-energization events through the PG&E website as well as social media. “They did not respond to my pleadings for them to consistently post updates. Their website and its map were either not updated and had info only from the day or two previous,” she said, noting the utility’s social media was slightly more current, but that not everyone could access it. She turned into an information conduit for those with limited computer literacy struggling for access to current information.

Lack of clarity led her to pack up and leave to stay with family outside the threatened zone, fearing that her power might be cut. “I have had to set up an emergency ‘go bag’ with a plan and network of family ready to house and come get me should we experience a Public Safety Power Shutoff. We have had to set up my parents’ RV to be ready to both run AC and safely house my medications should we lose power,” she said.

This issue isn’t just access to accurate and current information in multiple common languages about the possibility and status of a de-energization, though. The state’s information site, with language borrowed by the utilities, includes planning that is not necessarily practical or accessible for all medical baseline customers or others who rely on electricity for survival. Planning ahead for customers with medical needs is expensive, and disabled people are at a much higher risk of poverty — 26.8 percent compared to 10.3 percent for nondisabled people. In rural areas like those prone to shutoffs due to worries about vegetation on utility lines, that risk is even more extreme.

Recommendations include suggestions to buy generators or backup batteries, which are costly, and not always safe or practical in apartments and some rental single-family homes. Customers are also advised to “stay with a friend,” for those who can travel and have friends with accessible homes outside the range of the de-energization. The utilities operate respite centers with power and cooling, but they’re only open during the day.

This is something Gardner says utilities recognize when making the call for a PSPS and developing resources for medical baseline customers who may be caught up in fire prevention efforts. Utilities and the state are both working on programs to increase the affordability and practicality of emergency planning. One of the new bills Newsom signed encourages utilities to provide more support; tools such as microgrids and backup batteries can help electricity-dependent customers and their larger communities.

“What needs to happen is a genuine consideration of the risks of keeping the system on versus the risks of shutting it off,” said Melissa Kasnitz, a disability rights attorney with the Center for Accessible Technology. “Right now, utilities are only focused on one side of that equation.”

Kasnitz noted that while ventilator users and others with devices that require electricity may come to mind, there are other implications for medical baseline customers. For example, like Jones, diabetics need to keep medication in the fridge. In a country where one in four diabetics reports rationing insulin due to cost, losing a supply could be devastating.

Similarly, people relying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could lose all their food in an outage, with no budget for buying more — and the utility isn’t liable for that loss. And, said Kasnitz, people who work low-wage jobs who miss work because their employers can’t open might have to reshuffle their finances, putting prescription medication behind food or other needs.

Those customers might not necessarily be registered as medical baseline customers, highlighting the ripple effect of these outages, though she is swift to note that wildfires are also tremendously disruptive and sometimes fatal.

The debate over de-energization pits competing public health interests against each other, and it also has stakes far beyond California’s borders. Utilities in other states may begin to consider de-energization as an option in dangerous wildfire conditions with climate change increasing hot, dry weather. Disability advocates hope that consideration includes better planning for electricity-dependent customers with limited means as California learns how to navigate its new landscape. That’s something Gardener says is on Edison’s mind: “I want our most vulnerable customers to know that we do recognize that there’s additional risks when outages occur.”

In the next couple of years, this stretch of northeastern Washington, D.C., will transform from a hole in the ground next to a church and down the road from a McDonald’s and a Sav-A-Lot into an Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, some luxury apartment buildings, and, rumor has it, a grocery store.

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And because the area has been designated an Opportunity Zone, investors will be able to reap hefty tax benefits for the money they put into these projects — which shows exactly how the Opportunity Zone program, created by the 2017 Trump tax cut law, has gone awry.

Opportunity Zones are intended to spur investment in low-income communities that aren’t traditionally targets for businessfolk or developers. In exchange for putting their money into areas usually starved of capital and leaving it there for a certain amount of time, investors will pay lower tax rates than they would otherwise. Leave an investment in an Opportunity Zone for 10 years, and the capital gains earned will be tax-free; returns to investors could be increased by up to 70 percent thanks to the program, according to one estimate.

More than 41,000 Census tracts nationwide were eligible to be designated as Opportunity Zones, and investors are already pushing for the upcoming 2020 Census to expand those areas.

On the surface, Washington D.C.’s Edgewood is a perfect fit. The poverty rate in the neighborhood is nearly 30 percent, and the median income is just $28,000, according to Census Bureau data, in a city where the median income is above $82,000.

But there are a couple of big problems. First, the developments that will receive tax benefits because of the Opportunity Zone were well underway before the bill creating Opportunity Zones even existed, thanks in part to a $24 million subsidy from the city itself. The lead development company, MRP, freely acknowledges that its project would have gone ahead without tax incentives.

“We were well underway, almost finalized with our development plans and our program and mix [before the Opportunity Zone designation],” John Begert, a vice-president at MRP, said at the project’s groundbreaking in July, according to WAMU. “We were able to take advantage of it, but it wasn’t an original thesis of the business plan and of the development.”

This is a problem endemic to both Opportunity Zones specifically and corporate tax incentives more broadly: They end up subsidizing companies for investments those companies would have made anyway. According to one study, up to 75 percent of tax incentives given to companies in order to locate somewhere specific actually had no bearing on that company’s decision.

All across D.C. the sort of development occurring in Edgewood has occurred without anything like an Opportunity Zone to incentivize it. A similar debate took place around the building of D.C.’s publicly-funded baseball stadium: Proponents like to point to the surrounding economic development as proof that the $750 million Nats Park was a good investment, but don’t really grapple with the fact that other neighborhoods across the breadth of D.C. developed in exactly the same way without a taxpayer-funded sports complex.

But there’s also another question worth asking: Even if the Opportunity Zone were driving actual investment in the neighborhood, would that investment help the people at whom it’s ostensibly aimed? Like much of D.C., Edgewood is gentrifying rapidly; it’s a historically black neighborhood with more and more white people (myself included) moving in and driving up real estate prices, as it’s one of the few pockets of the city where there is any chance of a young professional being able to purchase a house somewhat near the Metro system. For white households in the neighborhood, the poverty rate is 2 percent; for black households, it’s 31 percent, according to the Census.

Rent and home prices are inevitably on their way up; there are currently two homes within the Opportunity Zone that are on the market for around $950,000, per Redfin. This will all hurt current residents who can’t afford higher living expenses.

Those same residents threatened with displacement likely won’t be able to take advantage of the new housing being built either, because D.C.’s average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,550, and many so-called luxury buildings charge much more. Future jobs at the movie theater or other retailers likely won’t pay enough to cover that amount, and just 116 of a total 1,450 units in the Bryant Street development will be designated as affordable housing under the city’s Inclusionary Zoning program, which allows for units to be set aside for families making 50, 60, or 80 percent of the area’s median income.

The new development is meant to entice new people, not aid the ones already there.

Small businesses are under pressure due to the increasing property costs. Our local dry cleaner recently closed after the owners’ landlord refused to renew their lease. It will be replaced by a condo building. In order to make way for the new development, a Big Lots store, a couple of fast food joints, an H&R Block, and a kind of strange drum shop were also all forced to close.

There are no requirements that investors even track whether members of the community are benefiting from the money and amenities Opportunity Zones bring in. D.C. received a grant from a private foundation that will enable it to do at least some data collection, but the zone is already here and the grant was just announced this week. So, the cart is very much before the horse.

As city councilmember Brianne Nadeau wrote last year, “Unfortunately, the design of the program has some serious flaws, and will likely accelerate the patterns of displacement caused by runaway capital that we’ve already seen for decades, but on a federally-subsidized scale.” Indeed, the developer who receives a tax break that had nothing to do with the decision to invest in Edgewood undeniably benefits from the Opportunity Zone. But after that, it’s unclear who else comes out as a winner. There will almost inevitably be displacement, and nothing is being done to help the folks affected by it, particularly those who aren’t homeowners.

My neighborhood certainly isn’t the only one in D.C. where projects that were already planned, surrounded by blocks that were gentrifying all on their own, received Opportunity Zone designations. Nor is this a situation unique to the capital city. But it’s a particularly egregious example of how the rhetoric around a program meant to help economically disadvantaged communities doesn’t come close to matching the reality.

To sum it up, that my neighborhood is an Opportunity Zone is patently absurd.

During the course of his career, Scalia has denied the science behind repetitive stress injuries, prevented UPS drivers injured on the job from having the ability to form a class to sue, and — most outrageously — insisted that an employee at Ford Motor Company should soil themselves at work rather than be allowed the privacy to work from home.

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In the Ford case, Scalia defended the company against a claim that it had failed to accommodate a person with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. The plaintiff had requested telework as a reasonable accommodation, which the company refused and countered with an offer to move the employee’s cubicle closer to the restroom.

When the plaintiff explained that simply standing up could trigger a loss of bowel control, Scalia argued that they should have taken “self-help steps such as using Depends (a product specifically designed for incontinence) and bringing a change of clothes to the workplace.” In other words, when an employee asked for support, Scalia argued that she should wear a diaper and be ready to change her pants.

This is not just a case for me. It is personal. As a person who has lived with inflammatory bowel disease for 34 years, I have requested and received the accommodations cited in this case. It’s not unusual for me to need quick access to a bathroom four, six, or eight times during a workday. On the days when that number is higher, I take advantage of telework. On days when it’s lower, I come to the office confident that my disability will not keep me from the work I love. Not because I’m forced to wear Depends — which would put me at risk for complications from inflammation or infection — but because of laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act that protect my right to accommodations that work for me.

Scalia’s nomination has the potential to set back disability employment policy by decades. The Department of Labor has a critical role in driving policy on disability employment, helping make the workplace safer and more accessible, and helping move the needle away from subminimum wage employment.

It might be easy to dismiss this administration’s nomination of Scalia as just one more dangerous appointment competing for our attention. That’s not what I see here. What I see is a nominee who endangers every worker’s right to reasonable accommodations. Not just the 3 million Americans who live with bowel disease, but the more than 60 million Americans with disabilities who depend on the ADA to protect them from discrimination by employers.

“I just wanted a job that paid more,” Powell explained. First Premier offered him $16 an hour in base pay, which could rise with incentive pay to $18 to $20 an hour depending on Powell’s success in collecting debts.

In a country where middle-class wages are hard to come by without a college degree, the comparatively good pay of debt collection can be a big draw. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median hourly pay in 2018 for debt collectors was $17.32, a big step-up in pay from other lines of work such as retail sales ($12.75) or fast food ($10.89).

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71 million U.S. adults have fallen behind on a bill and now have debt in collections. According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, U.S. household debt is at an all-time high — and behind our system of easy credit are roughly 300,000 debt collectors, working for both lenders and 3rd-party collection agencies, whose job it is to recover money from American families.

These debt collectors may not match your expectations of slick-talking hucksters willing to do whatever it takes to get paid. Like many of the debtors they collect from, the collectors are often low-income themselves. While most have a high-school diploma or equivalent, some, like Powell, are teenagers. 69 percent of debt collectors are female.

At relatively low wages, debt collectors are expected to engage in what University of Brighton psychologist Carl Walker has called “mental warfare” in order to collect; the industry can leave behind scars for both the borrowers and the collectors. It’s a grueling job. In a 2016 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau survey, debt collection agencies with more than 250 employees reported an average turnover rate of 75 percent to 100 percent.

If you were born into the middle class, you’ve probably never heard of Powell’s former employer, First Premier, but it’s a major player in America’s system of subprime credit. At one point, it accounted for as much as 47 percent of all subprime credit card solicitations sent out in the United States, and now it’s the nation’s 12th biggest issuer of Mastercard credit cards.

First Premier credit cards often come with eye-popping fees. One, for example, has a $300 credit limit, a $95 one-time “program fee,” $75 in total monthly and annual fees in the first year, $120 in monthly and annual fees in all subsequent years, and a 36 percent APR. Those exorbitant prices draw in only those consumers with few other options for credit.

As Powell explained, if the borrower couldn’t pay on the spot, the collections agents at First Premier would ask for a “promise to pay.” There was folk wisdom about what different promises to pay meant: a $20 money order on the 3rd of the month meant the customer was on disability, and if it was coming on the first of the month, it meant the customer was a senior collecting Social Security. Getting a customer’s checking account credentials was ideal — it let First Premier automatically debit the customer’s bank account on the specified date — but debit and credit card payments, payments by Western Union, or money orders were all fair game as well. A lot of customers were surprised or angry about how much they owed.

The job “definitely broke you down,” said Powell. “At a certain point, you felt like you weren’t doing the right thing.” Powell “no-called, no-showed” — e.g. got fired after failing to show up to work — a little more than a year after he started. “The lion’s share [of customers] probably would have been better off if they had never opened the card,” he said.

When Chaz Fertal went in for his job interview at Checkmate in Phoenix, Arizona, in 2010, he was originally afraid he was getting duped in a Craigslist scam. Fertal showed up to an office that appeared deserted, with blacked-out windows, only to find out the building had been intentionally obscured; Checkmate was concerned that angry customers would try to track the debt collectors down. Fertal’s base pay at Checkmate was around $2,000 per month, but offered the possibility of big commission checks. Fertal says his biggest was around $4,400, meaning your pay could more than double if you were good at getting borrowers to make payments.

A current Checkmate employee confirmed over the phone that the company’s current interest rates in Arizona were as high as 180 percent per year. As Fertal explained, a customer wouldn’t actually have to make progress on paying down their debt for the Checkmate collector to earn his commission. If customers fell behind and went into collections, Fertal said he would earn commission whether he convinced them to pay the full balance or if he convinced the borrower to pay off outstanding interest while taking out a new loan. For the purposes of commission, taking on a new loan counted as “paying off” the old one.

Fertal said the incentive scheme encouraged agents to push borrowers into these loan “rollovers.” “You’d talk to a customer on the phone who after four or five months would still owe the whole amount” and they’d be outraged, Fertal said, when they realized the payments they’d made had done nothing to pay down their debt.

For Fertal, there was a clear day, he said, when he realized he didn’t want to work at Checkmate anymore. When Checkmate customers applied for loans, they typically gave Checkmate a bank account routing and account number, giving Checkmate the right to withdraw payments; if a customer went past due, the loan entered default, and, Fertal says, Checkmate would attempt to withdraw the whole outstanding loan balance from the customer’s checking account. If Checkmate wasn’t successful at withdrawing the full amount, they’d break the balance into smaller amounts and try again — Fertal said the company’s practice was to make three attempts per day, starting at 4:30 in the morning, just after any direct deposits would have landed in the borrower’s account overnight. The only way, Fertal says, a borrower could stop the process, was by making a promise to pay and providing a credit card number or debit card number to do so.

Fertal remembers one borrower well. Overnight, Fertal says, Checkmate had taken the woman’s “entire paycheck, I think it was a thousand dollars,” he says. “She had two or three kids. She told me, ‘I have nothing to feed my kids, our refrigerator is empty, they took everything.’ I went to the ACH department and they couldn’t reverse it. She told me, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, the only thing I can think of is killing myself’ — and I knew it wasn’t a lie, you could hear the loss in her voice. I remember telling her, ‘your kids need you more than anything right now, and that that’s not the answer.’ I was trying to see if there was anything we could do, even taking out a new loan, but she still had a balance on her existing loan.”

Fertal quit shortly after that phone call in 2011, and he said he still thinks about that woman and her family.

Fertal and Powell’s experiences show the toll subprime credit and debt collection industries take not only on their customers, but on the front-line agents as well. These debt collection jobs offer Americans a step up in financial security, in exchange for taking on the difficult role as intermediary between high-priced lenders and consumers in dire straits.

“The environment would just be toxic. You’d get a worse and worse impression of people,” said Fertal. “The reality is that you’re not talking with people who are in a great place in their life.”

Editor’s note: Trevor Powell asked that his name be changed for privacy.

This post has been edited to clarify Fertal’s commission earnings.

However, President Trump is not alone in targeting people with mental illness in the aftermath of gun violence instead of focusing on access to guns. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, among others, have done the same. If they’re successful, it will be another hard hit against marginalized communities during an administration when they are already under attack.

The American legal landscape is a complex web of laws that subject mentally ill people and those experiencing acute crisis or suicidality to surveillance and restrictions of their rights, which most notably includes the right of states to involuntarily commit a person with mental illness or to mandate outpatient treatment. Undergirding this legal framework is the presumption that people with mental illness are prone to violence (whether against themselves or others).

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This is sanism: The system of institutionalized oppression that systematically disadvantages people perceived or determined to be mentally ill, while granting privileges to those considered sane.

The legal link between violence and mental illness is so strong that the United States often uses institutionalization as part of the broader carceral system. Among the most glaring examples of this are the insanity defense, people who are deemed incompetent to stand trial, and sex offenders who are confined to mental institutions even after the completion of their criminal sentence.

Technically, people charged under these laws are not sent to prison. However, institutionalization functions as a form of medical incarceration; patients are not free to come and go, and are often confined in hospitals for a longer period than they would have been confined to jail or prison. In fact, the population of forensic patients in state psychiatric hospitals has grown so rapidly that many state institutions are at or beyond capacity, with some patients held for decades or even indefinitely.

The specific legal criteria for involuntary civil commitment vary across states, but most states rely on the dangerousness criterion. In theory, it assesses if a mentally ill person poses a threat of danger to themselves or others to determine whether to initiate civil commitment proceedings. However, states generally do not distinguish between the danger posed to oneself and the danger posed to others in determining the appropriate interventions. The law affirms that states, pursuant to their parens patriae power, or the authority to act as a guardian for those unable to act on their own behalf, have a substantial interest in subjecting people with mental illness to involuntary commitment to ensure their safety or their community’s safety.

So even when no crime has been committed, people can be medically incarcerated. In a country that guarantees a constitutional right to liberty and due process, that poses a serious problem.

Trump’s call for increased institutionalization, therefore, bears a striking similarity to the cruelty of his other policies: It capitalizes on widespread anxiety about community safety in order to justify expanding carceral control of “deviant” groups. People of color and other historically marginalized populations will bear the brunt of any such expansion. People of color are more likely to be found incompetent to stand trial, and Black people are three to four times more likely than white people to be diagnosed with psychotic disorders. Black and Native people are disproportionately impacted by institutionalization and are more likely to be mandated to receive involuntary outpatient treatment.

Much like the proposal the Trump administration is weighing today, previous policies meant to reduce gun violence ultimately increased surveillance and criminalization of people with psychiatric disabilities.  For example, 43 states currently require or authorize that people flagged by the state due to certain mental-health adjudications have their names reported to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Four more states require such collection in an in-state database, each of which place people who have been involuntarily committed on lists alongside those convicted of violent crimes to bar them from purchasing firearms. Following the shootings at Virginia Tech, mental health related reporting to NICS spiked by 700 percent in just under seven years.

This becomes increasingly important as a focus on suicide becomes a larger target in gun violence prevention. While politicians have previously been met with skepticism for pinning mass shootings on mental illness, they have found support when focusing on the danger that people with mental illness are presumed to pose to themselves. This allows politicians to dodge the issues underpinning mass gun violence, instead targeting a population of people with much less political capital (people with mental illness) rather than the main perpetrators of mass shootings (straight white men). In that sense, they are leveraging sanism to protect white supremacist patriarchy.

As a result, the focus on suicidality is likely to increase the number of people who are institutionalized, without decreasing the number of mass shootings.

The American mental health system is violent. People with mental illness, particularly people of color with mental illness, are increasingly subject to punitive coercive treatment instead of community-based models for healing and care. The national fixation on mental illness which inevitably follows mass shootings is harmful not only because it does nothing to curb gun violence, but because it is a pretext for entrenching and expanding oppression.

Each time gun violence and mental illness are discussed together, we ultimately reinforce the discriminatory assumptions which animate our laws and justify dehumanizing treatment and oppression of psychiatrically disabled people.

While searching us, one of the officers said, cynically, “It ain’t legal yet,” though the “it” was not found on us.

It was around 10 p.m. and I was too tired to assert my rights or to say that I was in a meeting with their commissioner earlier that week about NYPD’s plans to build community-police relations. We accepted the harassment, survived the interaction, and went to our respective homes to smoke our blunts in peace, like most white people who now claim Crown Heights as their home.

Police murders of unarmed people in America sprout from seemingly benign harassment like that which happened to me and my friend, a military veteran — like what happened to Eric Garner, who was strangled to death for bootlegging cigarettes.

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In August, California passed a law making it less legal for law enforcement to kill Black and Brown people such as Eric Garner. California’s recently passed Assembly Bill No. 392, described by some as one of the toughest standards in the nation for when law enforcement officers can kill, is progress. Known as the “Act to Save Lives,” the law removes barriers to prosecuting officers who unlawfully use lethal force. The new law also redefines when a peace officer’s use of deadly force is deemed justifiable, based on the totality of the circumstance.

The LAPD alone killed 172 people in 2017. This new law would presumably decrease that number because police will be able to use deadly force only when, based on the perspective of the officer, it is necessary in defense of human life.

Advocates such as Cat Brooks at the Anti Police-Terror Project are the architects of this new law, potentially setting a legal precedent to be replicated across the country.

Acknowledging the success of the efforts of these advocates can occur while we also question whether substantive progress has been made. Five years ago, more than 500 journalists, lawyers, medics, organizers, pastors, students, tech experts and videographers participated in what would be called the “freedom rides,” which were response to the murder of unarmed Mike Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

The group of freedom riders, along with the local residents of Ferguson, had a list of demands, including: “a decrease in law-enforcement spending at the local, state and federal levels and a reinvestment of that budgeted money into the black communities most devastated by poverty in order to create jobs, housing, and schools. This money should be redirected to those … departments charged with providing employment, housing, and educational services.”

California’s new law doesn’t address that concern.

Rightfully, the Act to Save Lives regulates policing with impunity. Police will no longer easily get away with the “I feared for my life” script; they will have to prove after the murder or assault that a “reasonable officer in the same situation would believe that a person has the ability…and intent to immediately cause death or serious bodily injury to the peace officer or another person.” All of this substantiation would be done after the hashtag for this person is created and goes viral.

What is still to be tackled is the oversaturated deployment of police into communities of color.

Which brings me back to Brooklyn. This fall in the East New York section of Brooklyn, less than a mile from where I was harassed, the NYPD is opening its first stand-alone community center — a $10 million investment by the City of New York.

Now, positive police-community relations are a plus for any community, but it is not where we need to invest $10 million dollars in a community where in 2015, the rate of preterm births, a key driver of infant death, is the fourth highest in the city; the teen birth rate is higher than the city average; and the rate of elementary school absenteeism is eighth-highest in the city.

Social welfare is not a function of police training, nor is it a part of their corporate culture. More importantly, policing as a practice has a foundationally biased perspective of poor Black and Brown communities, and that is a truth we all should be honest enough to sit with.

The step after this acknowledgement is changed behavior. Listening followed by action.

Over the past year or so, I have been in roundtable conversations with a diverse array of actors in the criminal legal system. Organizers, directly impacted people, loved ones of the impacted, along with academics, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, elected officials, social workers, historians, cops, prison guards, and wardens — basically all the cogs in an irreformable and irreparable old steam engine.

The convenings are a part of a project that Bruce Western of the Columbia University Justice Lab called the “Square One Project.” The home page provokes the following scenarios:

Imagine neighborhoods soaring in education instead of arrests.

Imagine community groups leading the effort to end violence in our towns and cities.

Imagine a response to crime that brings communities together instead of breaking them apart.

The next Square One roundtable convening will take place in Detroit in October, and I also wonder, “can police imagine a community that does not rely on them as a dominant resource?”

In communities such as East New York and Ferguson, police-community relations are one problem of many: High unemployment, negative prenatal outcomes, bad water, dilapidated and unaffordable housing, and the list can go on. More of a police presence is not a solution to any of the above.

Emory University Sociologist Abigail Sewell asserts that “part of the solution may be to reduce police contact in the first place.” With that reduction can come abundant and sustainable investments in community-based organizations and individuals of expertise who reside in the projects and hang on the street corners — the community writ large.

Regulating the justifications for police use of deadly force is a commendable step in the right direction. The leap that communities like East New York need, however, is an investment in reducing the social determinants that give law enforcement the excuse to have a suffocating presence there.

Black and Brown neighborhoods do not need more overseers, or more state of the art smaller jails. We are capable of thriving without emphasis on our perceived criminality, and we are capable of taking care of ourselves, just like those in places like Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, or Carrol Gardens, once we are provided with the tools to deal with the tentacles of American racism, such as poverty, the distribution of money, and overpolicing. The “Seven Neighborhoods Study” produced by formerly incarcerated people in the 1990s found that there was a “direct connection between low income, racially isolated, underserved communities…and encounters with law enforcement that result in prison or death.”

Only time will tell whether the Act to Save Lives will have a measurable positive impact on police interactions with Black and Brown people. That new NYPD community center will come as a win for those focused on building a new paradigm for police-community relations.

But the academic and practitioner in me still thinks about Malcolm X, who famously said, “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. They won’t even admit the knife is there.” I know that police harassment is an underlying and extralegal blade that can be wielded at any time in the name of progress.

Yes, it is less legal to be killed by police, but I still feel the knife.

Alex, a teacher in the Bay Area, says conditions in her school have been particularly bad this year; many buildings in the region are not designed for high heat, thanks to the historically temperate climate. Her classroom doesn’t have openable windows, so she uses a fan to try to suck air in from the cooler hallway, but it’s not enough.

“Students will ask to go to the bathroom more often just to get into the hallway where it’s cooler,” she told TalkPoverty. She said the heat makes students feel sluggish and unfocused, a problem particularly acute for young women in her class who struggle with body image, and stay tightly wrapped up even in high temperatures. “I also notice that I tend to run out of energy a lot faster on hot days.”

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Not ideal for a high school teacher trying to keep order in a classroom of 16-year-olds, even one who loves her job and is passionate about education.

This is a problem that’s only going to get worse due to the confluence of rising temperatures thanks to climate change — average temperatures in the U.S. could increase by as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 and have already risen several degrees since 1900 — and declining school funding. Schools that don’t overheat today are going to in the future.

Education budgets were cut deeply during the Great Recession and some states haven’t returned to their pre-Recession funding levels; capital spending across the country hasn’t recovered to pre-recession levels either. As a result, schools that urgently need temperature control updates along with other infrastructure improvements face an uphill struggle to increase their budgets.

Overheated classrooms aren’t just uncomfortable. They can actively inhibit health and learning. There’s a large body of evidence showing that air conditioning can improve student health and academic performance, and research as far back as 1984 on the effects of learning in a hot classroom.

A May 2018 paper found that a temperature increase of just one degree can reduce the amount learned over the course of the school year by 1 percent. The researchers estimate that around 30 percent of schools in the U.S. lack air conditioning, and that even within hot areas with widespread air conditioning penetration, kids in low-income schools are less likely to have access to have cooling at school.

They also argue systemic inequality can exacerbate this phenomenon among low-income students of color, who live in hotter regions and are more likely to attend schools without adequate temperature control.

Jisung Park, one of the researchers, said that, “What we’re finding is totally consistent with the last mile of the school desegregation movement not having been completed … the neighborhood-level disparities driven by residential wealth still very much hold true.”

Park, an environmental economist, is swift to note that simply installing air conditioning — itself a known contributor to climate change — is not the solution. Greening electric infrastructure, taxing carbon, and taking other measures to tackle climate change is key, he said.

So is investing in school infrastructure, including new buildings; maintenance to bring schools up to new standards; and retrofitting to help schools adapt, inside and out, to climate change. That must include rich and poor districts alike, or the inequalities they observe will perpetuate themselves.

An Oklahoma educator who works in a school with a high percentage of low-income black students sees the consequences of being housed in outdated school buildings without adequate resources firsthand. Her classroom can get up to 80 degrees, and it takes a noticeable toll on her students. “I’m trying,” overheated students will tell her. “I’m tired, it’s too hot in here.”

Her school actually has a climate control system, complete with thermostats in every classroom. But it is not well-maintained. It can take hours for the district to respond when teachers put in a request for help.

For one of her colleagues across the hall, that means suffocating in heat as high as 90 degrees until her class is relocated to a comparatively cooler spot. But, she says, in the state with some of the worst education funding in the country, there are so many things going wrong that overheated classrooms aren’t at the top of her list.

This isn’t just a problem indoors. It’s also an issue in the schoolyard. Schools serving low-income students tend to have less greenery, and that’s not just an aesthetic problem. Trees, shrubs, and other plants can help to control temperatures, including indoors, when they’re planted strategically to provide shade to a building’s hot spots.

The lack of shade also increases exposure to harmful UV radiation on the playground, setting kids up for future health inequalities. From the moment they walk into school for the first time, some students are set up for failure, with Park noting that access to greenery can improve temperature control, but also offer mental and physical health benefits.

Oklahoma is not the only state struggling with school infrastructure, from campus trees to sound roofs. Across the United States, kids are attending classes in outdated, poorly-maintained, inadequate, and sometimes unsafe buildings. Schools across the country are struggling with lead contamination. Environmental Protection Agency regulations govern schools that maintain their own water supplies, but not those using municipal water that may get contaminated on its way to the tap. Kids are overheating, and they can’t even drink the school’s water.

It will cost $200 billion nationwide to bring America’s schools into good condition.  But schools, especially low-income ones, face a funding crisis. They rely on property tax revenues alongside some state funding to fund capital improvements, pay teachers and staff, and cover the numerous other expenses associated with running a school. Wealthy districts have a larger tax base and more access to loans and bond issues, and consequently spend more; their students are more likely to attend class in appropriately-cooled classrooms, to drink from lead-free taps, and to have access to well-maintained amenities.

“Targeting school facility upgrades should be part of a long-overdue federal infrastructure bill,” said Park, “or an education reform package.” Modernizing, and installing, HVAC systems is not a trivial task. Failure to make these investments, however, will keep low-income children in the U.S. at a permanent, sweaty, disadvantage.

Editors’ note: By request, the teachers in this article have been anonymized.