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Friday, May 8, 2020

Closed Mosques Mean Many Are Going Without Food During Ramadan
By Vanessa Taylor
1 in 3 Muslim Americans are poor. Coronavirus has closed the places they break daily fasts during the holy month.

What Happens When a Grocery Store Job Is the Only One You Can Get?
by Lexi McMenamin
Job options are slim for formerly incarcerated people. In a pandemic, that puts them at risk.

Reentry Reforms Are More Critical Than Ever Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic
By Sarah Figgatt
From our partner, the Center for American Progress: In addition to granting early release orders, policymakers must reform U.S. reentry systems to ensure that justice-involved people benefit from relief measures and can access vital social support programs during the COVID-19 outbreak.

COVID-19 Doesn’t Care What’s in Your Record. We Shouldn’t Either.
Rebecca talks to Quintin Williams, a leading criminal justice reform organizer, about the need to move past the U.S.’s obsession with the “violent/nonviolent” dichotomy as we protect people behind bars from the spread of COVID-19 — plus the “second chances” response we need to ensure the 1 in 3 Americans with criminal records aren’t left behind.

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The Miseducation of COVID. Public universities offer opportunity and potential to low-income students, and the coronavirus is gutting them. LGBQT students are among those counting on public education, but sending them home increased the chances they wouldn't be able to complete their educations. Meanwhile, we had decades to address the steep digital divide but didn't, and low-income students are paying the price.

One Nation, Under Inequality. Millions of Americans are facing economic catastrophe because of the pandemic. American cities are being fundamentally reshaped in a moment that could lead to greater equity, or more entrenchment of divides. Those divides are on sharp display with the significant racial gap in coronavirus outcomes.

The Workers On the Bus. Exploitation of warehouse workers is making headlines and many of them are temp workers who get sent to dangerous job after dangerous job. The challenges workers face have been exemplified by the restaurant industry, where immigrant-owned businesses are underwater. Those workers also have to get to work somehow, and public transit drivers are dying on the job to drive them there.

Essential Workers Were Always Essential

Essential workers have been making cities tick for centuries, they're just more starkly visible now, as this feature shows. These workers are being spoken of as soldiers on the front lines, but they're not. This is not a war, and they are ordinary human beings who signed up to do important jobs, not die doing them.

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