Tag: Florida

These Gorgeous Fish Are Invading Florida’s Coasts. One Solution? Eat Them

Posted on by robbie

When Alli Candelmo went diving in Little Cayman in 2015, she carried with her a spear for hunting lionfish. As the invasive species program manager at Reef Environmental Education Fund, Candelmo has been stung by the venomous fish dozens of times.
Yet she keeps on working with the lionfish, as part of a larger effort by scientists, conservationists, wildlife managers, fishers and divers to eradicate the population. 
At first glance, it seems cruel to target such an unusual animal. The lionfish’s otherworldly, spiky beauty has made it a mainstay in aquariums around the world. But the fish, which likely traveled from the Indo-Pacific to Florida’s coast through the aquarium trade in the 1980s, has no natural predators in American waters and has thus colonized them at a terrifying rate. Lionfish are still found predominantly in Florida, but also along the coast in Texas, Louisiana, Georgia, the Carolinas and the Bahamas. They’ve also been spotted as far north as Rhode Island and as far south as Brazil. 
A female lionfish lays around two million eggs every year, so it’s easy to understand how the fish have spread up the coast. And they have seemingly bottomless appetites: lionfish are known to eat smaller, native species — 70 reef species have been found in lionfish stomachs. Without cleaner fish and small invertebrates to eat algae that grows on coral, the coral dies off. Similar, smaller fish are food for larger fish, like snapper and grouper. The lionfish can potentially dismantle entire underwater food webs — in some areas, lionfish have reduced native fish populations by nearly 65% — and in turn, put Florida’s and other states’ commercial fishing and tourism industries at risk.  
“There is direct predation and indirect competition with native species,” Alex Fogg, the marine resource coordinator for Okaloosa County, Florida, told NationSwell.
Most experts agree that we’ve reached a point where complete eradication isn’t likely. Instead, the task at hand is keeping lionfish populations in check so they don’t irreversibly impact the ecosystem. The way to do this involves not just one solution, but a wide variety of them, including consumption, lionfish “derbies,” traps and ecotourism.

Generally, in the fishing industry, the goal is to harvest as many fish as possible while maintaining a sustainable population. “In this case, we want to capture every single one of these bastards,” Fogg said.

“Granted, we are never going to be rid of lionfish, but they’ll certainly find their place in the ecosystem and the food web and hopefully not at the expense of a lot of our commercially and recreationally important species,” Fogg said.

A lionfish being measured, en route to a dinner plate near you.

Fried or Blackened?

The first solution: Eat them.
Lionfish are popping up on menus next to your fried grouper sandwiches and glazed salmon entrees. It’s a white fish similar to hog snapper or grouper. The spines are venomous, but once they are removed, the meat of the fish is delicious, fans say.
Over the last decade, public awareness around the invasive species has grown, and that’s created a market for lionfish. Whole Foods Market and Publix now purchase and sell the fish. Local restaurants across Florida serve it up in ceviche, blackened on a hoagie and rolled up in sushi. 
But the key is creating a higher demand outside of Florida, where consumers are often willing to pay a premium price for fish, said Rick O’Connor, the Escambia County extension agent at Florida Sea Grant. O’Connor suggests, no matter where you are, to ask your favorite seafood restaurant if they serve lionfish. If they keep hearing that demand, they might meet it. 
However, in many places, the demand is already there. Fishing lionfish hasn’t created full-time jobs, but it has created a supplemental income for plenty of divers and fishers. 
Generally, in the fishing industry, the goal is to harvest as many fish as possible while maintaining a sustainable population. “In this case, we want to capture every single one of these bastards,” Fogg said. 
If fishers reach a point where there are too few lionfish to hunt, then they will adapt. “I think a lot of them, and myself included, are [thinking] take advantage of it while it’s there,” he said. 
And people are. Currently, diving is the only method of capturing lionfish, which requires a lot of work. So researchers and fishers are looking at new ways to catch the fish.
“There’s a very high demand, and there’s certainly plenty of fish to meet that demand,” Fogg said. “But there’s not enough efficiency to remove enough fish to satisfy that demand.”

To Catch a Lionfish

Enter the lionfish trap. To meet the demand from the market, and to curb populations, researchers have created a lionfish-specific trap.“Traps are something that could potentially bring a whole lot more fish to the market,” Fogg said.
The goal of the trap is to minimize bycatch, a term referring to species caught unintentionally in traps, while maximizing lionfish entrapment. Another factor is making sure that if a fisher loses the buoy attached to the trap, the trap doesn’t continue to ghostfish, which is when an abandoned trap or net continues to catch and kill.
And so far, the trap’s been successful, said Fogg.
Bycatch is extremely low, and the way the trap is designed, the fish aren’t trapped until it’s pulled up from the water, eliminating the possibility of ghostfishing, said Fogg, who previously worked on trap research with Harris Holden, a graduate research fellow at the University of Florida. (Currently, this research is lead by Steve Gittings, a science coordinator for NOAA’s National Marine Sanctuary Program.)
Researchers are also working on undersea robots: one that finds, stuns and captures lionfish and another that vacuums them up.
Either way, the goal is to get them out of the water and onto our dinner plates.

Divers showcase their haul after a lionfish derby.

Lionfish Festivities

Lionfish derbies are one of the most successful lionfish removal strategies. Scuba divers compete to catch and remove as many lionfish they can in a single weekend in a specific location.
Two to four divers gather at a lionfish-infested location and spear lionfish from sunrise to sunset. At the end of the weekend, the fish are hauled to shore, counted and measured. Teams win prizes amounting in thousands of dollars for bringing back the most, the biggest and the smallest lionfish.
The first derby started in 2009 in the Bahamas and has since expanded across Florida’s coast. Candelmo has helped host the derbies for the past year. Throughout the last decade, REEF has supported the removal of close to 40,000 lionfish. 
The derbies serve a dual purpose. “The hope is to get a decent number of lionfish off the reefs but also educate anyone who still doesn’t know much about them,” Candelmo told NationSwell.  
Over time, derbies have transformed into full-fledged lionfish festivals, where organizations provide educational materials, restaurants prepare lionfish tastings and musicians entertain attendees. “It’s always good to see the energy there and feed off of it,” Candelmo said. “You can see a very tangible impact.”
Studies have shown that lionfish derbies have been very successful at lowering populations and increasing native populations. One study, led by Stephanie Green, a marine biologist at the University of Alberta, showed that between 2012 and 2014, lionfish derbies reduced lionfish densities by 52%. It also stated that these annual events suppressed lionfish populations enough to prevent a decline in native species.
“We’ve definitely seen declines throughout the region, not just in Florida,” Candelmo said. “Everywhere that has had some sort of culling pressure has seen noticeable declines.”
Candelmo pointed out that the only downside to derbies is that they target shallower populations and not deeper populations (but traps are a solution to balance that out, she said).
“The good thing about the derbies as well is it leads to a really nice interaction between fishers and community members and managers and scientists,” Candelmo said.

Lionfish hunting is an increasingly popular ecotourism activity along Florida’s coast.

Vacationing With Lionfish

The appeal of hunting lionfish paired with helping the environment has created small sectors of ecotourism. People are traveling across the country to sail on dive boats and spear the fish. Dive shops have seen such an increased interest, that many devote boats and tours to specifically hunt lionfish. 
“Word has gotten out, so people across the country are calling our local diver charters and they want to go shoot their own lionfish,” O’Connor said. 
So if you’re off to your next vacation, think about heading to a place where you can also have a positive impact on the ecosystem.
There isn’t a single solution that will eradicate lionfish in our waters. Instead, it will take a group effort of eating, hunting and trapping to preserve our native fish and ecosystems.
“Everyone kind of has the same goal, all the fisherman, all the managers, all the scientists are aiming to reduce the population,” Candelmo said. “And that’s rare.”
More: This Sustainable ‘Farm of the Future’ Is Changing How Food Is Grown

In the Wake of Hurricane Michael, the Cajun Navy is Saving Lives

Posted on by robbie

While Hurricane Michael was still swirling in the Gulf, hours yet from devastating the Florida panhandle, the Cajun Navy was already waiting for it. They had boats, trucks, chainsaws and other rescue gear with them, and were helping people evacuate as the storm unexpectedly and swiftly morphed into a monster.
The Cajun Navy is a grassroots response to professional rescue organizations like the National Guard and FEMA. They help fill in the gaps, especially when the professionals are overwhelmed by calls from people in need.
The Cajun Navy first set sail in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans 13 years ago. Nearly 400 volunteers drove their boats through the flooded city, rescuing over 10,000 people from rooftops and buildings.
https://www.facebook.com/CNNReplay/videos/2222103264469514/
Since then, the Navy has reappeared during other natural disasters in the Southeast, mostly when federal response has fallen short. Over the past few years, they’ve added many more members and have become a more organized group. They’ve responded to hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Florence and now Michael. And they are out right there, as of press time, paddling through an unrecognizable landscape, sifting through debris, saving lives one by one.
People in distress can request help through the Cajun Navy’s Facebook page and through sites like CrowdSource Rescue, which was created in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. The Navy also leverages the power of social media to crowdsource help when they need it: A senior citizens’ home needed a backup generator installed, and within 3 hours, this post asking for help had more than 200 shares and a dozen comments. According to the Sarasota Herald, the Navy received more than 3,000 requests for help within the first 24 hours of the storm.
https://www.facebook.com/UNITEDCAJUNNAVY/posts/2285356931485077
As we begin to assess the full toll of Hurricane Michael, the Cajun Navy will be there, alongside other rescue workers, no matter the risk or how blurry the legal line is. (They’re a citizen team of “neighbors helping neighbors” as opposed to legally recognized first responders, which means they don’t usually meet the legal requirements for entering a disaster area.)
But as Cajun Navy president John Billiot told CNN, “If me rescuing people, and saving people’s lives [means] I get arrested, I said that’s no problem. America will have my back.”

Generating Coding Fever in Tech-Loving Minority Teens

Posted on by robbie

Alongside the glinting waves and pristine beachfront property, a surge of talent is transforming Miami into a tech hub.
The Kauffman Index rated the metropolitan area of Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach as the number one entrepreneurial area in America, and international tech startups are using the city for its geographic proximity to Latin America.
But in Broward County, just north of the white sands of Miami Beach, there’s a stark reality for the youth of color: They don’t have access to technology or entrepreneurial leaders the same way that some of their well-to-do peers do.
“In areas of high growth in the tech and entrepreneurial or small business sector, [minority] populations are completely left out of that activity,” says Felecia Hatcher-Pearson, co-founder of Code Fever Miami. “If you have an idea, oftentimes you have to leave your neighborhood in order to execute on that idea or get the right resources in order to make that happen. And that’s a problem.”
Hatcher-Pearson’s organization is bridging that digital divide — which she refers to as an “innovation desert” — by providing opportunities to young teens of color in coding lessons and pitching business startup ideas.
Since 2013, Code Fever has introduced more than 3,000 youth and adults to the tech ecosystem. It’s also served as host to more than 100 tech events, including boot camps and hack-a-thons.
This isn’t Hatcher-Pearson’s first attempt at bringing entrepreneurship to youth. After losing her marketing job at Nintendo in 2008 when the financial crisis hit, she moved back into her parent’s Florida home and opened an ice cream and popsicle stand in Broward County. She noticed that the kids in the community looked up to moneymakers: those selling drugs.
“Sometimes the first way [these kids] get introduced to entrepreneurship in their neighborhoods when they live in impoverished neighborhoods, it’s the guy that’s selling on the block, right? And if he’s successful, he’s getting a mentor, like someone showing him how to do it,” she says.
Hatcher-Pearson began pairing teens with entrepreneurs to learn how to market and sell sweets using extra stands she had laying around.
“We know what happens when young people can’t get their first jobs or don’t learn the basic skills on how to be self-sustainable, the entire cycle of poverty continues,” she says.
As Miami’s tech scene started taking off in 2010, Hatcher-Pearson recognized a similar lack of entrepreneurial mentorship.
“It wasn’t inclusive,” says Hatcher-Pearson, referring to the tech scene in Miami. “It didn’t include the black community or the Caribbean community in any of the activity, the resources, the programming or any of the spaces.”
With the help of her husband, Derek, the two started Code Fever.
The organization’s reputation is built on its ability to foster African American tech talent through its Black Tech Week. The summit provides multiple pitch opportunities to help finance burgeoning startups, class intensives geared toward making older generations more digitally native and education for teachers on how to bring in more technology into the classroom — a massive hindrance for students, Hatcher says.
“Oftentimes, their teachers don’t have the right tech training or tech confidence, and they’re the ones that are not doing a good job of allowing technology to be in the classroom,” Hatcher-Pearson says.
Ryan Hall, who heads the curriculum for Code Fever and Black Tech Week, says that based on his own personal experience, the role the organization plays in students’ lives is essential.
“I personally found that I was in a lot of these tech spaces, and I didn’t see a lot of people who look like me,” Hall says. “We care about taking people who are minorities and bringing them into the technology economy, because it has the ability to raise people out of their socioeconomic situation.”
Both Hatcher-Pearson and Hall attribute the program’s success to its ability to allow kids of color to integrate their own personal lifestyles and interests into coding. Code Fever accomplishes this by bringing in local black celebrities and creating hybrid projects that merge music and tech or sports and tech.
“Culture plays a major role in introducing students to [science, technology, engineering or math] fields,” says Hatcher-Pearson. “We have to introduce them to computer programming because… the current narrative is that the black and brown community doesn’t exist in tech, and we are pioneers in tech and innovation.”
The 2017 AllStars program is produced in partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal and celebrates social entrepreneurs who are powering solutions with innovative technology. Visit NationSwell.com/AllStars from Oct. 2 to Nov. 2 to vote for your favorite AllStar. The winner will receive the AllStar Award, a $10,000 grant to help further his or her work advocating for change.
Correction: A previous version of this video stated that Miami is the birthplace of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He was born in Albuquerque, N.M. NationSwell apologizes for this error.
 
[button url=”http://nationswell4.wpengine.com/tech-impact-allstars-2017/#vote-now-for-your-favorite-tech-impact-allstar” ]Vote for Felecia Now![/button]
 

The High-Tech Way Foster Youth Are Safeguarding Their Records (And Their Memories, Too)

Posted on by robbie

Florida’s child welfare system shuttled Jay Schad to a new home every of couple months — roughly 25 placements in all. (He lost the exact count.) The most disruptive move sent him to a group home in Tallahassee, two hours east of Panama City, his hometown, and plopped him into a new high school. Already a month behind his classmates, the freshman attempted to make friends by trying out for the football team. But with many of his records back in Panama City, including his latest physical exam, the coaches couldn’t let him take the field. Eventually, Schad got the go-ahead from a local doctor and started playing. But the setback made him feel, as he says, “let down by the system.” Hadn’t the 14-year-old been through enough with his mother’s meth addiction, his father’s violence and dozens of destabilizing moves to have to worry about his personal papers?
Record-keeping, a seemingly bureaucratic task, poses a huge challenge for the nation’s 428,000 foster youth. Already struggling to keep up with their peers, these adolescents might not realize the need to preserve their important documents until it’s too late. Even if a diligent social worker does compile a binder, it might be lost in a hectic move, and in some states, there are extra hurdles for a teen who’s aged out of the system. This means most applications — whether for financial aid, a new job or housing — can be stymied simply because documents are missing.
Cloud-based technology, however, might have an answer for these teens. My JumpVault, a virtual storage locker, allows a foster kid to upload and protect their essential files, like a birth certificate, medical history and school transcripts. Developed by Five Points Technology Group (FPTG), a business headquartered in the Tampa suburb of Bradenton, Fla., and funded by the state, My JumpVault currently has about 7,000 users. The digital records it holds, maintained securely behind several layers of authentication, won’t disappear like hard copies might.
Former foster youth played a large role in building My JumpVault. In 2009, two 19-year-old former foster kids led a statewide campaign to streamline access to Florida’s child welfare records. (Previously, emancipated youth needed a judge’s order to see their case file.) After successfully pushing a bill through the legislature, they started to question what access truly meant. Even though they’d won the legal right to look at their papers, did adolescents truly have access if the process of obtaining a copy was so difficult? That’s when the young men — Thomas Fair, now a member of the design team, and Mike Williams, an assistant product manager — signed on with FPTG to advise the team behind My JumpVault and help code the nascent app.
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Accessible by desktop or smartphone, an email address is all a teen needs to sign up for the service. Once they’ve locked the account with a password, they might log in to scan an important document they’ve just received or to locate an image, like Schad did eight months ago when applying for a waiter job at a restaurant. He’d misplaced his social security card, and his new manager told him he couldn’t clock in until he found it. Schad pulled up his electronic copy, and luckily, the boss accepted it.
To further ease the process, a couple of agencies recently partnered with FPTG to store files directly on My JumpVault’s servers. For example, Sunshine Health, the state’s Medicaid provider, lists a kid’s prior hospital visits and prescription medications. Soon, My JumpVault could integrate with the court system to track hearing dates and with local schools to keep report cards. “Tactically, it frees caseworkers up from having to provide documents over and over again in hard copy, and it puts youth in a better position for independence,” notes Chris Pantaleon, the company’s business development director.
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In addition to vital records, one of My JumpVault’s unique features provides storage space for memories. Because foster children might have only one or two pictures of their birth parents, storing photos is the best way to preserve a sense of self. Without these keepsakes, “You don’t understand who you are,” says Williams, who knows the feeling firsthand. “It’s like having no identity.” That’s why they encourage users to add pictures, certificates and awards. Even if a foster kid is relocated to another home, one whose walls might be covered with family portraits, he can take comfort in his own background and family roots, too.
Another powerful feature, which Fair pushed to include within the app, is a series of guides to help foster youth navigate difficult situations. These worksheets might list the names of all service providers in a metro area, provide instructions on applying for food stamps or explain the types of questions employers ask in an interview.
Schad knows there are plenty of issues still plaguing the foster care system. But at least with My JumpVault’s storage in the cloud, those kids don’t have to worry about whether paperwork might hold them back.

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This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future-forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.
 

In Miami, Veterans Are Lawyering Up

Posted on by robbie

When Guillermo Rose, 70, a retired Vietnam veteran, returned from a four-month trip in Panama, he expected to find his car where he’d left it: in a handicapped spot at the Miami International Airport parking garage, where disabled veterans were promised free parking. But the car had been moved elsewhere in the garage — and Rose had been slammed with a $1,600 bill for the space, far more than he could afford on his disability checks. He made the charge on his credit card and drove home, panicked.
Through his contacts at the American Legion and the VA, Rose heard about Mission United Veterans Pro Bono Project, which offers free legal assistance to South Florida vets. Housed within the Legal Aid Service and the charity United Way, a team of two staff lawyers and 380 volunteer attorneys help 1,500 former warriors, pilots, sailors and marines in Broward County annually with any legal questions they may have. Whether it’s fighting evictions, navigating family court, negotiating with creditors, changing discharge status or contesting parking tickets, the volunteer lawyers will take on any case. Within three weeks, Mission United had persuaded the Miami airport to reverse the charge — a small but important victory to a veteran who once felt ignored by American society.
“When I came back from Vietnam in 1971, they didn’t do anything for us: no jobs, no nothing. As soon as you’d tell employers you’re back from Vietnam, they weren’t interested,” says Rose, a disabled vet. “We’re treated better today than when I was a young guy. It makes me feel good that, finally, they’re helping out the veterans.”
Compared to half a century ago, veterans’ transition back into civilian society has been relatively smooth. While far from perfect, more medical options are available, the GI Bill still guarantees free college, housing authorities expedite applications from homeless vets, and job training can follow a tour of duty. Missing from that list, though, is legal help, which can affect everything else, note the attorneys who started Mission United three years ago. An improper discharge, for example, could limit a vet from receiving valuable benefits, or it might be misinterpreted by prospective landlords and employers as being found guilty before a court-martial.
This extra bit of know-how can be essential as veterans try to get their affairs back in order after years at sea or fighting abroad, adds Melissa Malone, a spokeswoman for Mission United. “These young men and women left their homes, their bank accounts, their family and kids. They left their lives here, and oftentimes, they put someone else in charge of it,” she says. “When they come home, it’s been a length of time and things might not be the same as before. Perhaps they have PTSD or some other war zone–induced challenges.” Seeing off-the-charts suicide rates for post-combat veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, Malone wonders how many took their own lives because they felt mired in a situation where a lawyer could have intervened.
While some critics take issue with the program offering help only to veterans, its volunteers see an underserved population with a unique set of circumstances. Repeated experience working with the Department of Defense or a VA hospital allows the project’s attorneys to develop an expertise, says James Heaton, Mission United’s lead lawyer. The situation often necessitates “some specialty,” and that only comes from “dealing day-to-day with the issues facing veterans,” he adds.
Heaton says the project developed from a long-seated desire to work in public service. After graduating law school and moving back home to Broward County, he contacted several veterans groups to volunteer his time. When Mission United asked him to take a full-time position developing legal assistance for former military, Heaton says he couldn’t refuse. “I went all in, and I haven’t had any regrets since.”
These days, Heaton is working on expanding the model nationally. He presented the idea to other United Way chapters earlier this year at a conference, and he discussed building a national network at a recent summit hosted by the American Bar Association. While nothing is officially on the books, Heaton says he’s already seen a glimmer of what a national network could accomplish when he calls colleagues across the country to ask if similar legal developments are popping up in their communities. “It’s not only a network for veterans, but also a network for professionals.”
That’s good news to Rose’s ears. He never expected to need legal help, but he recognizes that only an expert could have helped him reverse the airport’s steep bill. “I’m just happy Mission United helped me out,” he says. “And I’m glad to let other veterans who might need legal help know where they can find it.”
Heaton emphasizes that former service members helped civilians by honorably serving our country. Mission United’s legal aid, to him, is simply paying back what we owe in return.
The Mission United Veterans Pro Bono Project is a recipient of the 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media and technology.
Homepage photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Bicyclists Get a Safe Space to Learn Traffic Laws, Fixing a Broken Ballot System and More

Posted on by robbie

 

White Center Bike Park pleases many ‘spokes people,’ West Seattle Herald
It’s practically an American tradition: Dad takes his child to an empty parking lot to learn to drive a car. Why don’t we have the same for biking? In cyclist-friendly Seattle, a new “traffic garden” — a car-free model of real road, complete with stop signs, roundabouts and one-way streets — in a local park is giving kids a risk-free space to learn traffic laws.

Designing a Better Ballot, The Atlantic
In a country already mired by low voter turnout (two-thirds of citizens didn’t bother to vote in the last midterm election), ballots that go uncounted because they are left blank, unsigned or marked improperly is an even bigger civic concern. In Florida, home of the notorious hanging chad, and other jurisdictions, elections officials are simplifying language and adding design elements to ensure ballots are properly cast — and counted.

This Machine Could Prevent Gun Violence — If Only Cops Used It, The Marshall Project
When it comes to creating a national gun registry, law-abiding firearms owners often feel their Second Amendment rights are in the crosshairs. But if there’s one issue they should be able to agree on, it’s this: reforming an underutilized database that targets only criminal shooters. The National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) helps police track the unique markings imprinted on shell casings and flag matches at other crime scenes, implicating only the perpetrators.

Beyond Big Unions: How One Labor-Rights Advocate Envisions the Future for Workers

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Carmen Rojas’s parents immigrated to the U.S. as teenagers. Her father drove trucks, and her mother filed papers at a bank. Neither had finished middle school. A generation later, their daughter had graduated with a Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and traveled to Venezuela on a Fulbright scholarship. Today, Rojas heads The Workers Lab, a Bay Area accelerator that backs early-stage, labor-focused ventures. When Rojas thinks about her family’s upward mobility, she’s both pleased and disturbed: “It kills me to imagine that I might be part of the last generation  in this country to benefit from an economy and a government that saw opportunity as core to its existence,” she says.
“We have a reached a moment where we can no longer deliver on the promise of what work is,” says Rojas over lunch at a Thai restaurant in midtown Manhattan. To live in New York City, for example, even a $15 minimum wage wouldn’t cover the expenses of raising two kids: At minimum, each parent needs to earn $18.97 hourly to adequately support their family. Yet only a tenth of American workers are unionized, about half of what it was in 1983. “The 20th-century labor movement as we imagined it — the labor union, collective bargaining — is no longer in a position to protect and create opportunity for the vast majority of workers.”
Those shortcomings have led people to second-guess traditional institutions, as the rise of Donald Trump suggests. Capitalizing on the hot-button issue of income inequality highlighted by Occupy Wall Street and Fight for 15, The Workers Lab is trying to reimagine what the future could be. “That’s why we exist,” Rojas tells NationSwell, “to jump-start the next-generation workers’ movement.” She shared five current initiatives that illustrate what that future might look like.
1. CLEAN Carwash Campaign, California
Cooperatives place businesses back in the hands of workers, where they share in profits and decision-making. They can be a tool for advancement, nurturing professional skills among blue-collar laborers. The CLEAN Carwash Campaign, which fought legal battles on behalf of Los Angeles’s largely undocumented force of carwasheros, tested whether they could open a worker-owned car wash in South L.A. The model has prompted Rojas to start looking for opportunities elsewhere, including a farm in the Coachella Valley. If that co-op, owned by 7,500 workers, actually gets off the ground, it will be the largest in the country. No small feat for an industry that’s known for some of the worst working conditions in this country, says Rojas. “This farm conversion — and the fact that we’re even talking about cooperatives outside of Vermont or Maine — is awesome.”

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers monitors working conditions for tomato pickers in Florida.

2. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Florida
With the rise of the conscious consumer — the person who reads labels and researches brands online — certification has become one of the easiest ways to push businesses into compliance. In South Florida, which produces most of the nation’s tomato supply during winter, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers created a powerful set of standards for tomato-pickers to ensure they get paid on time, have a voice in the workplace, aren’t subjugated to sexual harassment, and can safely submit complaints without retaliation. They then brought these guidelines straight to buyers like McDonald’s and Yum Brands (Taco Bell and Pizza Hut’s owner), rather than the farms’ managers. Fast-food companies and supermarkets agreed to buy tomatoes only from companies that met certifications, forcing the industry as a whole to catch up. “The coalition was so good at creating the standard,” says Rojas.
The Workers Defense Project created a certification process to ensure safe construction sites throughout Texas.

3. Worker Defense Project, Texas
With just two OSHA inspectors for the entire state, Texas’s construction sites might as well be unregulated, says Rojas. “Employers aren’t required to pay workers’ compensation, and Texas has the highest rate of mortality in construction in the whole country.” For five years, the Worker Defense Project, an immigrant workers’ rights organization, had been advocating for policy change. They won concessions from some high-profile projects, but the sector as a whole wouldn’t budge. So rather than shaming those who wouldn’t get on board, the group launched its Build It Better campaign, which offered incentives instead. “Their idea was to create a certification for developers’ construction projects,” explains Rojas. For adding on-site monitors and training, the Workers Defense Project in turn would work to fast-track permits and reduce the insurance rate. As Rojas points out, “If people aren’t dying on your projects because they’re being trained, then you don’t need as much insurance.”
4. Coworker, District of Columbia
Rojas is still trying to figure out if digital tools are simply an offshoot of old-school worker organizing or something different entirely. But she is clear about which online project is her current favorite: Coworker, which is a petitioning platform that allows disparate workers to make collective grievances about hyper-specific issues known to employers, without the huge undertaking of forming a union. “For instance, they have 25,000 Starbucks baristas who have all signed different types of petitions and that Starbucks has responded to,” Rojas says of Coworker’s impact. “Often, there is no way for you as a barista in one of hundreds of stores in Manhattan to unify your voice with other baristas around scheduling, wages or appearance. Coworker created that way.”
5. Universal Basic Income, California
While the movement toward a universal basic income has yet to be realized (aside from a small pilot project in Oakland), Rojas is intrigued by the idea. Advocating this policy, which guarantees every family a minimum wage regardless of whether they work, might have gotten you laughed out of a room as a “crazy communist” in the past, but it’s now gaining traction. “The appeal of a basic income — a kind of Social Security for everyone — is easy to understand,” The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki wrote this summer. “It’s easy to administer; it avoids the paternalism of social-welfare programs that tell people what they can and cannot buy with the money they’re given; and, if it’s truly universal, it could help destigmatize government assistance.” Adds Rojas, “I’m interested in what it means for somebody who has spent his entire life in the labor movement to imagine non-labor institution solutions for the issues facing workers.”
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.

The Strange Bedfellows Working to Save the Honeybee, Why Uber Is Getting in the Business of Public Transit and More

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A Swarm of Controversy, WIRED
Can environmentalists and Big Agriculture come together to save honeybees? It’s a question Jerry Hayes, a former hive inspector turned Monsanto scientist, asks constantly. As conservationists blame Hayes’s company for colony collapse, he asks humans to learn something from the bees: how to cooperate for the hive’s sake.

Welcome to Uberville, The Verge
An experiment in an Orlando suburb could change the face of public transit. As part of a contract between Altamonte Springs, Fla. and Uber, local government subsidizes intra-city rides with the startup and fronts additional funds when connecting with mass transit. Critics argue that the plan isn’t accessible to low-income and disabled riders, but Altamonte officials say the deal was the only affordable way to connect the suburb’s sprawl.

Chicago Tackles Youth Unemployment As It Wrestles with Its Consequences, Chicago Tribune
Applying for a first job in Chicago can feel “like trying to go across Lake Michigan,” insiders say. Rap sheets or typo-laden résumés can ward off employers, and inaccessible transit through high-crime areas can discourage adolescents — disconnecting 41 percent of the Second City’s 18–24 year olds from work or school. Fortunately, a bevy of groups are helping this vulnerable group land work.

Upstanders: Employing the Full Spectrum

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John D’Eri set out to find a job for his son, Andrew, who is autistic. His journey led him to open a car wash where 85 percent of the employees are on the autism spectrum — and business is booming.
Upstanders is a collection of short stories celebrating ordinary people doing extraordinary things to create positive change in their communities produced by Howard Schultz and Rajiv Chandrasekaran. These stories of humanity remind us that we all have the power to make a difference.

The Big Idea That’s Growing Green Business in America

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After a lifetime of eating with disposable knives and forks, Michael Caballero, a 25-year-old industrial engineer at FedEx, looked the plastic cutlery in his workplace cafeteria in a new way. “I think in terms of process,” he says, tallying the environmental upheaval required to manufacture each fork — the extraction of oil from the ground, the overseas shipping, the refining and molding in a factory, the waste created by its packaging — a massive amount of pollution created for just a few minutes of usage before being tossed in a landfill.
Today, thanks to EcoTech Visions, a Miami incubator for green enterprises, Caballero’s 18-month-old company, Earthware, Inc., is building better disposable silverware. At EcoTech Visions’s current headquarters in Liberty City, Fla., Caballero is a member of a class of 26 “ecopreneurs” who receive 15 months of support and have access to office space, manufacturing equipment and other environmentally-minded folks. In the co-working space, architects and designers chat with electricians and engineers — a technical collaboration that’s rare but vital to successfully manufacture products, from battery-run motorcycles and aquaponics systems to plastic-based handbags and aloe salves.
APPLY: EcoTech Visions is an NBCUniversal Foundation 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program today.
The buzzing incubator is the vision of Dr. Pandwe Gibson, an African-American businesswoman who wanted to spark a sea change in commerce by supporting green jobs, particularly manufacturing ones. Because the consequences of environmental harm are so visible in southern Florida (as atmospheric temperatures rise, the sea levels follow, causing the Atlantic’s high tides to annually creep nearly one inch closer to the art deco real estate along Miami’s coastline), city residents are eager to embrace products that won’t further damage the Earth in the process. When Gibson first came up with EcoTech Visions three years ago, she used her iPad to share the idea with anyone who had time to listen to her elevator pitch. Since its launch, the incubator has created 15 new jobs, won grants for nine of its companies to work on prototypes and helped three other businesses obtain seed funding to kick start operations.
Last year, EcoTech was one of NBCUniversal Foundation’s 21st Century Solutions grant challenge winners, supporting progressive community solutions. “What we love is that it has the four Cs — it’s a catalyst for out-of-the-box solutions, it offers a destination for collaboration, it’s building a community for idea-creators and problem solvers and it’s driving local change by expanding small businesses and jobs,” says Beth Colleton, senior vice president of corporate social responsibility at NBCUniversal.
EcoTech Visions played a vital role in helping Earthware produce a durable alternative to the 16 billion pieces of plasticware thrown away in America each year (its cutlery is made with a corn-based resin that decomposes in just six months) and grow to its current state. Perhaps most importantly, the incubator covers the entry-level costs that can prohibit a business from entering the market — office space and manufacturing equipment — while Caballero still works at Fed-Ex to make a living. Without the support, he would have needed to front the money for Earthware’s first injection molding machine (which spits out products in the shape of pre-made molds) and a consultant to help him pick the right one; instead, Caballero pays a small rental fee to EcoTech in order to use the machine they purchased on his behalf.
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Additionally, the incubator introduced Caballero to other locals that could bolster his burgeoning enterprise, including sustainability advocates and potential customers, like the local school board, which recently put out a request for compostable cutlery bids. “The whole goal is to become a leading provider of compostable, sustainable products, using Miami as a hub into Latin America and the Caribbean,” footholds to an international expansion, Caballero says.
Clean tech and green manufacturing, as sectors, could provide the biggest hope of restoring jobs that have been lost due to the historic decline in American manufacturing (nationwide, about 5 million have disappeared since the millennium). Unlike other compostable products, which ship foreign-made cutlery to the U.S., Caballero’s eco-friendly business aims to create high-paying, manufacturing jobs right here in America; the two dozen other companies at EcoTech Visions will only add to this green wave of business. Caballero believes green industries will be most successful if others join the movement. The demand for sustainable products is already there, he notes, but supply will only match those levels if more entrepreneurs and manufacturers arrive on the scene. Even though they’ll technically be his competitors, there will be enough supply that prices will fall and consumers generally will see planet-friendly products as the new standard.
EcoTech Visions is looking to expand nationally, starting with Los Angeles next. If it achieves its goals, not only will Caballero be just one of countless American manufacturers producing environmentally-conscious items and providing jobs around the country, but the incubator could find itself leading the United States into the green industrial revolution.
EcoTech Visions is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!