Monday Mailing - April 20, 2020

Monday Mailing

Year 26 • Issue 32 20 April 2020 1.

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Oregon Schools Navigate Serving English Learners in a Distance Learning World (Katie McFall) COVID-19 Considerations Bring Confusion, Uncertainty to Northwest Family Farms (Katie McFall) Clean Energy Shed 106,000 US Jobs in March, Erasing a Year of Gains (Michael Hoch) What More States Allowing SNAP Recipients to Buy Food Online Means for Food Security Woman Turns Farm into Social-Distancing Dog Park How Technology Helps Preserve Endangered Indigenous Languages Park Closures Have Unequal Costs Extreme Wildfires Are Changing Western Forests How Infectious Disease Defined the American Bathroom RESOURCE – Resources Addressing COVID-19 with Racial Equity Lens (Erica Mooney) RESOURCE – COVID-19 Materials Developed for Tribal Use

1. Oregon Schools Navigate Serving English Learners in a

Distance Learning World

Umatilla fourth grader Gabe Gutierrez has been out of school for weeks now. He’s kept busy watching TV, reading and taking walks with his family, but he’s sad to be out of the classroom.

Quote of the Week:

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”

- Aesop

Oregon Fast Fact

Oregon has the only Scenic Bikeway program in the nation and a total of 17 Scenic Bikeways throughout the state.

“I just, I just miss it,” Gabe said.

Gabe is an English language learner who attends McNary Heights Elementary. At the dinner table recently, Gabe’s parents asked him what he missed most about school.

“Recess, math … technology,” he said.

These days, Gabe’s mother, Isis Ilias, said their dinner table has become an office, a school and a cafeteria.

In eastern Oregon’s Umatilla School District, distance learning started at the beginning of April. The district delivered laptops and paper packet lessons to students, and it stationed Wi-Fi-equipped buses in disconnected neighborhoods. Superintendent Heidi Sipe has hosted Facebook Live sessions to share information with families.

To access the full story, click here.

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2. COVID-19 Considerations Bring Confusion, Uncertainty to Northwest Family Farms The strawberries have just begun to bud at Liepold Farms, in Boring, Oregon.

If this were a normal year, brother and sister Jeff Liepold and Michelle Krummenacker would be tending the grounds and preparing for early May harvest, just as their parents and grandparents did before them. But as with many things in the era of COVID-19, this year is far from normal.

For the first time in this third-generation family farm, it’s not clear if the migrant workers who harvest strawberries each spring will be allowed to travel north from California to work the fields. And if those fieldworkers do arrive, Krummenacker said, the family does not know how it will sell its prized Hoods this year — or whether one of the farm’s biggest customers will still be buying its other Oregon-grown fruits.

To access the full story, click here.

3. Clean Energy Shed 106,000 US Jobs in March, Erasing a Year of Gains

From solar panel installers to electric vehicle factory workers, the clean energy sector lost more than 100,000 U.S. jobs in March as stringent measures to control the new coronavirus shut down manufacturing and halted plans for home and business upgrades.

The job loss estimates are based on an analysis of Department of Labor unemployment claims published on Wednesday by BW Research for clean energy business groups E2, the American Council on Renewable Energy and E4TheFuture.

They are a devastating blow to an industry that has logged more than 10% job growth in the last five years — a faster pace than the broader U.S. workforce. Yet they represent a small fraction of the jobs lost in the U.S. economy overall as 16.8 million people filed for unemployment benefits in the last three weeks.

To access the full story, click here.

4. What More States Allowing SNAP Recipients to Buy Food Online Means for Food Security

For Julia Miller, a single mother of two from Kansas City, Missouri, a recent trip to the grocery store required some unusual help from a friend.

Miller, who operates a housecleaning service that has been put on hold in recent weeks, vented frustration on social media about the fact that she’d need to take her kids with her to shop for groceries, despite potential exposure to the virus.

“I didn’t want to take them into the store,” she said of her two children, aged 4 and nearly 10.

However, because she relies on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)— formerly known as food stamps—to help feed her family, paying online wasn’t an option.

To access the full story, click here.

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5. Woman Turns Farm into Social-Distancing Dog Park

Robyn Brown’s three sons and their dog Gunnison were going stir crazy after several weeks of no school, no parks, and no end to the social-distancing in sight. Fortunately, their neighbor Dianne Neffendorf has plenty of room on her farm near Carver and let them come over to play.

Watching them, Neffendorf wondered why she couldn’t open it up to other people in a similar situation.

So that’s exactly what she did, posting in a community Facebook page that for $15 families could bring their dog out to run around for an hour in a fenced, 1/2 acre field ($5 per extra dog). They text her to reserve a time, pay via Venmo or PayPal, and then she sends them her address.

“I open the gate for them so nobody’s touching anything and I sanitize the table and chairs,” Neffendorf said. “It works out really well.”

To access the full story, click here.

6. How Technology Helps Preserve Endangered Indigenous Languages

Of the 537 federally recognized Native American tribes, only 139 of them still have speakers of their native language, and more than 90% of those languages are at risk of becoming extinct by 2050. Languages carry tribal knowledge, culture, humor, conversation styles, spirituality, and traditions. When language speakers decrease dramatically and parts of the language is lost, it must be “refashioned” into the new language using different words, sounds, and grammatical structures—if the transfer is even possible at all.

“Linguists’ work in communities when language shift is occurring shows that for the most part such refashioning, even when social identity is maintained, involves abrupt loss of tradition,” University of Texas professor of linguistics Anthony Woodbury writes. “More often, the cultural forms of the colonial power take over, transmitted often by television.”

In response to the threat of language loss, some Indigenous tribes are turning towards accessible technology to save and revitalize their languages.

To access the full story, click here.

7. Park Closures Have Unequal Costs

As the COVID-19 pandemic takes hold across the country, residents are called to practice public health measures in our parks and the outdoors. This includes practicing social distancing and avoiding outdoor recreation towns that cannot afford the risk of caring for infected visitors.

The message has been straightforward: Stay away from these towns and public lands; if you're irresponsible, we’ll close the trails and parks down. At the same time, suggestions and guidelines are offered on how we can still get outdoors safely: Stay close to home, engage with nearby nature, and hike in your neighborhood. These instructions are necessary, but they are based on the assumption that everyone has the privilege of outdoor access and will be affected the same when it is taken away.

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As the founder of Latino Outdoors, a Latinx-led organization that connects the diversity of Latinx communities with the outdoors, and someone who has spent years working to make the outdoors a more equitable space, I think it’s important to keep frameworks of equity and inclusion in mind, especially during times when inequalities are being amplified. If we don’t, we risk perpetuating existing inequities that have a real cost in terms of the health of communities of color as well as others who have historically lacked equitable access to the outdoors.

To access the full story, click here.

8. Extreme Wildfires Are Changing Western Forests

Wildfires across the West are becoming more severe. In California, for example, fires have gotten larger, and the annual amount of land burned increased more than fivefold, between 1972 and 2018. A wealth of research has shown that this proliferation of extreme blazes is due in part to climate change, which is creating hotter and drier conditions. Additionally, decades of aggressive fire suppression encouraged a buildup of dense undergrowth in forests, setting the stage for bigger and longer-lasting wildfires.

Western landscapes are struggling to adapt to these changes. Many ecological communities have evolved to withstand frequent, low-severity wildfires, which clear out dead litter on the forest floor, thereby allowing nutrients to reach the soil and stimulating new plant growth. But these immense fires make it harder for trees and other vegetation to grow back, causing landscapes to change.

To access the full story, click here.

9. How Infectious Disease Defined the American Bathroom

If Lloyd Alter were building a new house right now, he’d be sure to add one unusual feature: a bathroom sink in the front vestibule. “We're going to see a real resurgence of the vestibule, I think,” says Alter, a former architect and design historian who now teaches Sustainable Design at the Ryerson School of Interior Design. “This is a transition zone from the outside to the inside, where you take off your dirty stuff and you wash your hands before you go into the house.”

Alter predicted that disease-avoidance would rise to the fore of bathroom design a few years ago, when he observed the traumatizing effects of the 2003 SARS outbreak on Toronto, which killed 44 people. But home design in general — and bathroom design in particular — has long been influenced by infectious disease. This isn’t a linear narrative with clear causation, but rather a convergence of advancements in science, infrastructure, plumbing, sanitation and design trends. The modern bathroom developed alongside outbreaks of tuberculosis, cholera and influenza; its standard fixtures, wallcoverings, floorings, and finishes were implemented, in part, to promote health and hygiene in the home at a time of widespread public health concerns.

To access the full story, click here.

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10. RESOURCE – Resources Addressing COVID-19 with Racial Equity Lens

COVID-19 Racial Equity & Social Justice list includes information that we hope will help communities and activists as they work to understand and respond to the moment and for the long haul. Our COVID-19 Resources are arranged in categories to help you sift through the material: Analysis includes a range of resources that look at the big picture - how the pandemic may reshape the world, the existing disparities it highlights, and perspectives on the virus' impact on different communities and issue areas Resources and Tools includes tips and strategies for response, communication and framing, and addressing hate.

Healing and Community Care centers on how to care for ourselves and our people in this time, while continuing to center the needs and perspectives of the most vulnerable Organizing and Solidarity has resources on actions people are already taking to bring attention to issues that intersect with the virus' impact, including worker and migrant rights, needs of specific communities of color, and more Resource Building & Rapid Response – Includes lists of different funds currently available, guidance on resource building at this time and how foundations and donors need to be equitably responsive Virtual Work and Online Engagement focuses on how we can stay connected to each other and to racial equity action while social distancing List of Lists is a collection of resource lists shared by others that relate to equity, social justice and other areas in the context of the pandemic To access the resource, click here.

11. RESOURCE – COVID-19 Materials Developed for Tribal Use

Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health is producing materials related to COVID-19 for tribes to distribute. The following materials were produced and approved (as of April 8, 2020).

To access the resource, click here.

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