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The Abstract
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> By Stephanie DiCapua Getman, Arnold Ventures
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I've been simmering this week, for a host of reasons. I'm frustrated by the agonizing choices parents of unvaccinated children continue to face as the Delta variant rages, especially after learning the young child of my (vaccinated) friends is sick with COVID-19. I'm angry about the lack of support in some corners for the Capitol officers who gave shattering testimony about the physical and mental wounds suffered during and since the Jan. 6 insurrection. I'm still fuming at the reckless driver who slammed into my car, with three children in the backseat, at high speed on a Houston freeway and then fled the scene. (Everyone is OK, thank goodness.)
And I am increasingly bewildered that we can’t seem to talk about anything — even the GOAT gymnast Simone Biles — without viewing it through a partisan lens.
My husband says I need to channel my anger into something more productive, or it will destroy me.
So I was grateful this week when my colleague Steven Scarborough offered some perspective. He reminded me that despite the bad news, there is genuinely historic progress happening all around us and a lot of reasons to feel hopeful. He even gave me some examples. I am going to share some of that good news with you.
I know there is more. I’d love to hear what is making you feel optimistic. Email me at communications@arnoldventures.org.
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'Banks Won't Even Talk to Us'
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By Steven Scarborough, Communications Manager
New research from the Rand Institute shows that nearly 140,000 business owners were initially disqualified from accessing PPP loans during the pandemic because they had a felony record. These numbers are just one example of the myriad difficulties that people with a criminal record encounter in starting and running a business.
Why It Matters: Many justice-involved people decide to start small businesses because many companies won’t hire them — roughly 3.8 percent of all small-business owners have a criminal record. The collateral consequences that come with that record hamper these entrepreneurs’ ability to start and grow their businesses. "Banks won’t even talk to us," says Minneapolis resident K.B. Brown, who started a print shop using a second mortgage on his home.
What's Next: State legislatures across the country are increasingly focused on removing the legal barriers that prevent people with a record from reintegrating into society. In just the first six months of this year, states have passed over 100 bills aimed at reducing the collateral consequences that people involved with the justice system face. AV continues to work with our partners to continue repealing these legal barriers. We are also supporting the development of a policy framework by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center that would encourage government agencies to support small business owners with a record, rather than disqualifying them based on their conviction history.
Read the story >
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The Perils of Too Much Choice
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By Rhiannon Meyers Collette, Communications Manager
Ask anyone with a chronic illness and they'll tell you: Navigating the U.S. health care system is excessively challenging. For the more than 12 million people who are low-income and elderly or disabled, these challenges are magnified by the fragmentation of the two distinct programs that cover them: Medicare and Medicaid.
What’s Happening: Integrating care is a solution to addressing this fragmentation, but only 1 in 10 dual-eligible individuals is enrolled in a fully integrated care plan. AV grantee ATI Advisory says the sheer breadth of options can be overwhelming. "There are 82,155 Medicare Advantage plans available when you include each unique plan and county combination across the nation," writes Allison Rizer of ATI. "Read that again: 82,155."
Why It Matters: Care coordination is essential to ensure better health outcomes for people who qualify for Medicare and Medicaid. Dual-eligible beneficiaries need a trusted source to help them navigate the complexity of these systems and their health conditions. The federal government, states, and health plans all have a responsibility to improve their integrated care programs and the consumer experience of duals enrolled in those plans.
Read the story >
Related: Check out the 10 areas for improvement needed now.
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Reefer Madness
and Data-Free Delusions
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By Evan Mintz, Communications Manager
Somehow reefer madness returned.
This week a couple of cable news talking heads speculated as to whether legal marijuana was the driving cause behind a spike in gun violence in Washington D.C. “A direct connection between the violence and pot usage,” as one host put it.
And what was their source of this bizarre and inaccurate claim? A one-off comment by the D.C. police chief about anecdotes of gun crimes centered on illegal selling operations.
You might be tempted to laugh at the absurdity. No, marijuana isn’t causing violent crime. But this kind of fact-free media speculation is no joke. The increase in gun violence across the United States requires a serious, dedicated response. People are senselessly dying in cities big and small, Democratic and Republican. The last thing we need is national media blaming convenient scapegoats while actual causes (and potential solutions) go ignored.
Unfortunately, this isn’t just an issue in Washington. New York’s bail reform spurred a cottage industry of headline writers stoking evidence-free fears that the new rules were causing a crime wave.
“But rhetoric is not fact, and the facts are clear: Bail reform is not responsible for the rise in gun violence,” Jullian Harris-Calvin, director of the Greater Justice New York program at the Vera Institute of Justice, wrote in the New York Daily News this week.
As she points out in her oped, “Judges continued to set bail in nearly 75% of gun possession cases. And when released, people charged with gun possession were rearrested at lower rates than people charged with other offenses.”
That’s what the data shows.
The data also shows that community-centered violence interruption and public health interventions can be effective at preventing and reducing crime — sometimes even better than traditional policing.
Political leaders and members of the media need to start demanding evidence and data when they hear wild claims about the causes of and solutions to gun violence. Without this objective information, effective policy becomes elusive and productive debate becomes impossible.
Related: The Black Wall Street Journal explains why perpetuating an “us versus them” mentality between police and the community ignores the root causes of gun violence.
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The newly launched site Inquest is a “decarceral brainstorm” for sharing ideas about how to end mass incarceration. My first read was this account from Joel Castón, the first incarcerated person elected to public office in Washington, D.C. He talks about his run for office, changing the narrative, and how the merging of economics and politics can begin us on a path toward ending mass incarceration. “Enfranchisement of one of us proves that you can enfranchise all of us.”
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Marc Levin makes a conservative case for bail reform in Texas, arguing that it is possible to advance public safety while ensuring individual liberty, in this Houston Chronicle op-ed.
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The Washington Post Editorial Board urges Pr esident Biden to use his clemency powers to ensure thousands of people sent to home confinement amid the pandemic “are not needlessly and cruelly reimprisoned.”
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Pennsylvania lawmakers are renewing their effort to expand compassionate prison releases so the elderly and ill don’t have to die behind bars, The Morning Call reports.
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“The epidemic of gunfire in the nation’s capital finally got the world’s attention last week, only because of where the latest shots were fired: first outside the Washington Nationals’ baseball stadium on July 17, sending fans and players ducking for cover, and then not far from one of downtown’s most fancy-schmancy restaurants on Thursday night.” What about the other 40,302 gunshots, The Washington Post asks?
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A frontline medical worker contracted COVID-19 while helping treat patients at the start of the pandemic. She was then saddled with close to $1 million in medical bills, TheGrio reports.
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Bill of the Month: Cyclist Phil Gaimon’s Olympic dreams were cut short by a bicycle crash — and then came the $200,000 in medical bills. “Gaimon collided with three health system dangers in this physically and financially painful crash: an out-of-state emergency, out-of-network care and gold-plated prices from both hospitals that treated him,” Kaiser Health News writes.
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Community Health Systems sold off dozens of its hospitals, but continued suing patients for medical debt — a practice even the hospitals’ new owners eschewed. “It threatens the public trust in our community institutions,” Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins tells NPR. “And medical institutions are supposed to be above those games.”
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Ranked-choice voting boosted voter turnout in the New York City primary, as well as the diversity of those participating, while saving money, the Bronx Times reports.
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Filter Mag interviews Maia Szalavitz, author of “Undoing Drugs: The Untold Story of Harm Reduction and the Future of Addiction,” who first encountered harm reduction in a very personal way — one that saved her life. “We have the worst overdose crisis in the history of the United States,” she says. “And we are not dealing with it well, because we haven’t learned the lessons of harm reduction.”
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Payouts to charities from donor-advised funds are worse than previously thought, with more generous funds providing cover for funds that give little or nothing, Inside Philanthropy reports.
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The Education Department plans to review an accrediting agency that approved a college with suspected ties to sex trafficking, USA Today reports.
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“Racially Charged: America’s Misdemeanor Problem,” a sobering 30-minute documentary from Brave New Films streaming on YouTube that draws a clear through line from the Black Codes of the Reconstruction era to our modern-day system of criminal justice. The film uses an effective split-screen format to compare first-person accounts of those charged under Black Codes (voiced by actor Mahershala Ali) with case studies from today, while expert talking heads put context around the use of misdemeanors as a form of social control and profiteering that unjustly target people of color. “In the misdemeanor system, there is no act too small that the state cannot render a crime,” says Harvard Law professor Alexandra Natapoff. The filmmakers show how these so-called minor infractions — jaywalking, not wearing a seatbelt, having a broken taillight — are anything but minor for those whose lives are turned upside down by the cascading effects of the legal system. What’s more grievous is how misdemeanors have become the “gateway for police violence and murder.” The deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Philando Castille, Freddie Gray, George Floyd, and many more all began with a police interaction over a misdemeanor. A warning: Scenes recalling these police interactions and deaths at the end of the film are difficult to watch.
Related: Some states have stopped police from arresting people for misdemeanor offenses. Data scientist Samuel Sinyangwe writes in FiveThirtyEight that this approach appears to have helped reduce the number of shootings by police — not made violent crime worse.
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Aug. 18-20: The free, virtual 20th Annual State Criminal Justice Network Conference includes a panel on the “Year in Police Reform,” with AV’s VP of Criminal Justice Walter Katz, DeRay McKesson, co-founder of Campaign Zero, and Kami Chavis, professor of law and director of the criminal justice program at Wake Forest University School of Law. It’s moderated by ACLU’s Paige Fernandez. Learn more and register here.
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Some Final Inspiration:
Olympics Edition
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- Simone Biles’ hometown stands proudly behind her. Houston should probably throw her the biggest welcome-home parade ever. “Let’s make sure she knows how much we appreciate her, and not simply because she’s the greatest gymnast of all time. We get that part of her story. Everyone does. But here in Houston, we know she’s about more than that.”
- Also, if you are feeling the urge to be critical of Biles, I suggest consulting this decision tree first.
- Get to know Suni Lee, the first Hmong American to compete in the Olympics, who defended Team USA's title by winning gold in the women's individual all-around gymnastics final. She has an inspiring back story of her own: This short video on her path to Tokyo is worth a watch.
- I love this heartwarming roundup of the best viral moments happening on the Olympic sidelines.
- COVID has added a beautiful new tradition to the games: Athletes on the podium are helping each other don their medals, NPR reports. This is just wholesome.
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Stephanie
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Stephanie DiCapua Getman develops and executes Arnold Ventures' digital communications strategy with a focus on multimedia storytelling and audience engagement and oversees daily editorial operations and design.
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