They’re heroes on the battlefield. But once they return home, our veterans face joblessness, depression, homelessness, and suicide.
In Washington state, Growing Veterans is trying to fight these grave problems through the simple act of bringing former service members together to farm. Chris Brown, the founder of the nonprofit, told Briana Gerdeman of The Woodinville Weekly that a veteran once told him, “It’s nice to be able to plant something in the ground that will explode into life rather than into destruction.”
Brown is a Marine Corps veteran born and raised in Woodinville, Washington. After finishing his service, he went to college and started volunteering with the Veterans Conservation Corps, a veteran training program that helps restore and protect Washington’s natural resources. During his time with the organization, he saw first hand how rocky veterans’ transition into civilian life can be. Many of those that Brown met were interested in sustainable agriculture, so after he graduated in 2012, Brown launched his nonprofit to help members of the armed forces and grow healthy produce at the same time.
Growing Veterans employs seven soldiers at its main farm and seven more at partner farms, relying on the help of more than a hundred volunteers total. The farm work gives veterans a chance to connect with fellow soldiers and other volunteers who may not have served in the military.
Of the veterans who participate, Brown told Gerdeman, “Some of them are really interested in becoming farmers. Others just want to get outside or get involved in their community.” He said they welcome the chance to be “a part of something bigger than themselves…it’s something we all kind of long for, but veterans especially, because you’ve been with this group for so long. So it can be really huge for them, and therapeutic.”
What happens with the food that Growing Veterans raises? It’s sold to the community through Growing Washington CSA, where people can sign up to purchase food boxes of local, chemical-free produce that comes with the added bonus of helping veterans.
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Tag: Washington
Will Providing Drivers’ Licenses to Undocumented Immigrants Improve Safety?
According to the New York Times, there are around 11.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, many of them driving — regardless of whether or not they are licensed. Which is a somewhat scary situation facing the rest of us out on the roads.
In response, a growing number of states (including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington) have begun to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. According to the Seattle Times, as of last year all but two states — Arizona and Nebraska — had altered their laws to at least allow immigrants brought here as children to obtain driver’s licenses.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., told Andrea Billups of NewsMax, “It doesn’t given them any legal status, but by giving them a government-issued ID, it helps them imbed in society.”
As for the rest of the states who haven’t given driver’s license privileges to undocumented people yet, it might make financial sense to do so. According to Hispanically Speaking News, when the Massachusetts legislature was debating this idea in March, the head of the state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles, Celia Blue, said licensing undocumented drivers “would generate nearly $15 million in state revenue through license fees and other charges, plus $7.5 million in renewal fees every five years.” Massachusetts state senator Joseph Vital said, “This isn’t to excuse the fact that they’re undocumented. But they’re on the roads. They’re driving. Many uninsured.”
When Colorado passed a law allowing for the licensing of undocumented immigrants last June, the bill’s sponsor, state Senator Jessie Ulibarri, said that law enforcement supported the legislation, according to Reuters. “Our roads will be safer when we can properly identify everyone who drives on them. We estimate that thousands more Colorado drivers will get insured because of this law.”
Sarah E. Hendricks of Drake University wrote in her April report “Living in Car Culture Without a License: The Ripple Effects of Withholding Driver’s Licenses from Unauthorized Immigrants,” published by the Immigration Policy Center, “States that do not offer driver’s licenses to unauthorized immigrants will limit the contributions that immigrant communities as a whole can potentially make, are likely to face negative economic and public safety consequences, and tend to fail in attempts to use such restrictive state-level policies to reduce the presence of unauthorized immigrants.”
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Shooting For Hope: How One Photo Changed This Foster Teen’s Life
“A picture is worth a 1,000 words,” is a maxim that’s taught us the power of imagery. But that doesn’t always resonate when a picture fails to capture its subject.
For a 16-year-old foster child, that seemed to be part of the problem. Deon, a teen born and raised in Yakima, Washington, has spent most of his childhood in and out of foster care since the age of 5. Last year, he gave up finding a family, expecting his final years in the foster care system to wind down.
In most states, foster children become responsible for themselves when they turn 18. While some agencies provide job training programs or workshops to build resumes, most of these children are thrust into adulthood without any support or stability. In fact, more than 27,000 of the 400,000 children in U.S. foster care leave the system without any family or support, according to U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Children’s Bureau.
“It’s pretty frightening for them because they really are just pretty much on their own,” said Amber Louis, a recruitment and outreach specialist for the Northwest Adoption Exchange in Seattle.
But that all changed for Deon, who thanks to a photographer’s eye, found a new outlook on life.
Jennifer Loomis, a family photographer based in Seattle, was scrolling through photos of children on adoption sites when she realized how poor their quality was.
“I was so blown away by how bad the photos were that I thought, ‘Oh my God, these photos don’t show these kids at all,'” she told CNN. “I can’t get a sense of who these kids are.”
Loomis contacted the Northwest Adoption Exchange, and Louis quickly responded. Loomis enlisted another photographer, Rocky Salskov, arranging a two-day photo shoot to capture the spirit of seven children between ages 9 and 17 who are looking for a home. Deon was fortunate enough to be selected.
“I wanted photos where you could look into their eyes and see into their soul a little bit better, where you could be like, ‘Wow, Deon, what a guy,’ ” she said.
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It worked. Joanna Church always wanted to adopt an older child and she began her search after her husband, Sean Vaillancourt, a sonar operator for the Canadian Navy, agreed. Church first spotted Deon’s old photo on a website and skipped past it, but after seeing his newfangled shot on the Northwest Adoption Exchange, she was captivated.
“You saw…personality in the face, like you saw it coming off the page and it was enough to get us to stop and open that profile and look at it it, and want to get to know Deon better,” Church said.
Deon moved in with Church and Vaillancourt in October, and the adoption process soon followed.
“They’ve really given me a new look on life,” he said. “Instead of feeling just like that I’m all alone, I actually feel like I have somebody there for me.”
Church and Vaillancourt are helping Deon with obtaining Canadian citizenship to prepare for their move to Victoria, British Columbia, in August. Deon, who had trouble in school, has since improved his grades, joined the track team and is learning to drive. The couple is also dedicated to ensuring their new son keeps in touch with his biological family — including his great grandmother who has taken care of him over the years.
When you give someone a chance, it can change their life forever, Deon said. “You are basically saving a life.”
As for the new parents, the relationship has led Church to become an advocate for adoption, sharing her good fortune to raise awareness about older kids waiting for homes. She often hears that parents are nervous about the uncertainty that comes with older children, she adds.
“And my response is always, you [don’t] know what kind of kid you’re going to get when you birth them,” she said.
Vaillancourt contends it’s about giving someone else a chance.
“We’ve all had our chances, from our parents, from somebody looking out for us, and these [kids] have nobody looking out for them.”
Meet a Former Big-City Police Chief Who Wants to Turn American Law Enforcement on Its Head
Past behavior doesn’t always predict future behavior. Norm Stamper is a case in point. Stamper was the Seattle Police Chief in 1999, when hundreds of people protested the World Trade Organization meeting. Under Stamper’s direction the police opted to disperse the protesters with tear gas. The tactics resulted in Stamper’s resignation and prompted him to begin a period of “very painful learning,” he told Sarah Stuteville of Seattle Globalist. He told her that using chemical agents to disperse the protesters was “the worst decision” of his career. Ever since, Stamper has been studying law enforcement in other countries to find techniques and ideas that could be effective for the American justice system.
In his book Breaking Rank, Stamper advocates some controversial law-enforcement ideas, including legalizing drugs, abolishing the death penalty, and relying more on citizens for enforcement than police. He told Stuteville that the drug war has incarcerated far too many people, especially minority men. “We’ve got the drug war raging since 1971 and pitting police against low-level, nonviolent drug offenders, creating natural animosity and tension between police and the community—in particular young people, poor people and people of color,” he says, pointing to Portugal, which decriminalized drugs in 2001, resulting in a decrease in drug use and overdose deaths.
Stamper says we can learn from communities in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where women gather to bang pots and pans outside the homes of men who abuse women, creating a ruckus to publicly shame the men and raise awareness of the problem. “I think we should return to the earliest days of primitive law enforcement,” he told Stuteville, believing that America can “have citizens that are attuned to, and actually carrying out, a public safety role.”
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These Blind Vets Train to Climb North America’s Highest Mountain
Scaling mountains can invigorate the spirit. But is the same true if you can’t see the view from the peaks you’re climbing?
Two inspiring climbers training to summit Alaska’s Denali are demonstrating that sight is not a barrier when it comes to mountain climbing.
During their service with the Army in Iraq, Scott Smiley lost his vision to a car bomb and a grenade blinded Marty Bailey. In March, the two met with climbing guide Eric Alexander in Summit County, Colorado, where they climbed Quandary and Lincoln peaks to train at high altitude and mentally prepare for their planned May ascent of Denali, North America’s highest peak. If they succeed, they will become the first blind people to conquer its challenging West Rib.
Alexander is a capable guide for the vets: He’s summited mountains across the world, and guided his friend Erik Weihenmayer toward becoming the first blind person to summit Mt. Everest in 2001.
Smiley, who continued his military service after his injury as a teacher at West Point and Gonzaga, told Melanie Wong of Vail Daily that he can still perceive the beauty of the Rocky Mountains. “I still think it’s one of the most beautiful things,” he said. “The air is fresh, pure and clean. I live in Spokane, Washington, and you don’t get those senses hitting you all the time. There’s the beauty of seeing things, but those pictures go to my mind and it puts a smile on my face.”
It will take practice and courage for the vets to learn how to find steady footing with their ice-climbing crampons and to keep their ice axes and ropes from tangling as they climb. Bailey and Smiley are chronicling their journey and accepting donations to help with training costs on their website Blind Strength. “This climb is drawing awareness,” Smiley said. “It’s about doing things that I enjoy and being an example on others not to give up on life and push through hard times.”
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When It Comes to Fostering Civic Engagement, Nothing Beats a Newspaper
As the Internet becomes more omnipresent in people’s lives, newspapers have been declining — losing ad revenue and readership, and in the case of several major publications, disappearing altogether. But besides forcing citizens of these communities to get their news fix digitally rather than the old-fashioned way, what effect does the loss of the broadsheet have? A study suggests that it causes citizens to become less engaged.
In the study “Dead Newspapers and Citizens’ Civic Engagement,” published in the journal Political Communication, Lee Shaker of Portland State University analyzed the civic engagement data in the 2008 and 2009 Current Population Survey to see what happened in Seattle when its Post-Intelligencer became an online-only publication in 2009, and in Denver when its Rocky Mountain News eased publication completely in 2009. Shaker studied civic engagement as measured through such activities as participating in local groups like PTAs and neighborhood watch committees, contacting elected officials, and buying or boycotting certain products because of the values their companies espouse. He found significant declines in several of these areas in Denver and Seattle compared to 16 other cities that maintained their newspapers during the same period.
Shaker concludes, “The advent of new communication opportunities suggests that new forms of engagement will also develop. Thus far, there are many questions about the importance of place online: why should any one place matter when we may all be virtual and interconnected? And yet, our society is still geographically organized and governed. Ultimately, if we desire healthy and productive democratic communities, then the provisioning of local news — which helps tie citizens to each other and their communities — must continue.”
The New York Times, Gawker, and Salon aren’t going to report on the city council meetings in your town, which may be one reason why some digital titans have begun propping up the old-fashioned news source. So while the newspaper may be a shopworn institution, it provides a service to democracy that no other entity can so far replace.
MORE: What Are All Those Teens Doing On Their Phones? Learning About Politics, Apparently.
Can Writing Poetry Help Set Incarcerated Youth on the Right Track?
“You don’t understand what it’s like.”
“You never listen to me.”
Most teenagers make these over-the-top complaints to adults at some point during those angst-filled years. But for some troubled teens, these emotional statements aren’t hyperbolic. And those are just the kids that Richard Gold wanted to help.
When Gold left Microsoft 18 years ago, he started the Pongo Teen Writing Project, a Seattle non-profit that connects with troubled teenagers who are in jail, homeless, in the foster care system, or being treated for mental illness, and teaches them to write poetry to express themselves. Since 1992, Pongo has served 7,000 teenagers, providing them with volunteer writing mentors and publishing their work in anthologies.
Gold told Jeffrey Brown of PBS NewsHour, “What so many of us struggle with is the unarticulated emotion in our lives, and when poetry serves that, it’s doing something essential for the person and for society.”
Through one of Pongo’s programs, writing mentors visit juvenile inmates individually for an hour, asking questions about their lives and emotions to guide them toward writing poetry about their experiences. The mentors transcribe what the inmates express, collaborate on revisions, then give the teenagers a chance to read their work aloud to the group.
Pongo volunteers do similar work at the New Horizons homeless youth center Seattle, helping homeless teens write poems, and hosting poetry reading events.
The workers in the juvenile justice system attest to the difference Pongo makes in the lives of the teens it works with. Warden Lynn Valdez at the King County Juvenile Detention Center, once an incarcerated gang member himself, said that after the teens write their poems, “the reward is, I think that they have actually released something that they have repressed inside.” King County Juvenile Court Judge Barbara Mack said that the young people she sees in her court “have never really learned how to express themselves. And Pongo gives them the opportunity to do that in a way that’s not threatening.”
It’s clear that poetry can be a powerful tool to make teenagers feel valued as they try to move past their rocky adolescences and become productive adults.
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Can a Voucher Program Reduce Student Turnover Rate?
It’s no wonder that in Tacoma, Washington, educators noticed that homeless students were slipping behind. After all, these kids moved so many times, their learning was continually disrupted. So to combat this, the Tacoma Housing Authority collaborated with McCarver Elementary, the poorest school in the district, to provide families with housing vouchers that would stabilize them and allow their kids to study more continuously.
Fifty families experiencing bouts of homelessness signed up for the program, which began back in 2011. It gave them a 5-year housing voucher provided that they adhere to several rules — including making sure their kids showed up to class when the school bell rang. These families also receive assistance from caseworkers, who support them in obtaining education, certifications, and jobs. Each year, the level of support decreases by 20 percent, with the goal that by the end of the 5-year period, the family will become self-sufficient.
Tacoma’s approach seems to be working: Test scores and attendance have increased, and the families are moving around less. In 2006, McCarver Elementary’s turnover rate (the percentage of students moving in and out of the school) stood at a whopping 179 percent. It’s down to 75 percent now, with only 13 percent turnover for students enrolled in the voucher program.
According to the Seattle Times, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington is looking to extend this program beyond a single school district through the proposed Educational Success for Children and Youth Without Homes Act. Meanwhile, state senators and representatives in Washington state have supported the Homeless Children Education Act, which would provide resources to identify and serve students suffering from homelessness. Washington’s governor will soon consider it for signing.
For Mary Kamandala, a Sudenese refugee and mother of six, the housing program in Tacoma has been a life saver. “I’m from zero,” she told Ashley Stewart of the Seattle Times, “so it was a really bad situation when I came here. It was just me and them, and no one could help me.” With the help of Tacoma Housing Authority caseworkers, Kamandala earned a home-care certificate and found a job at the Korean Women’s Association, while the housing voucher provided her kids the stable home base they needed.
A Northwestern State Proves That a Higher Minimum Wage Doesn’t Necessarily Increase Unemployment
Talk about forward thinking. For 16 years now, the state of Washington has boasted the highest minimum wage in the U.S. — currently $9.32 per hour, a full two dollars and change more than the federal mandate of $7.25.
When west coast voters passed the initiative in back in 1998, opponents claimed that a higher wage would kill jobs. Coincidentally, this is the same argument that is being used by politicians, business groups and lobbyists who are fighting against President Barack Obama’s push for a $10.10 minimum wage. As the debate continues, Bloomberg analyzed the numbers in Washington state, and the results are surprising.
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After Washington’s minimum wage increase passed, which increased wages over two years to $6.70 and linked future increases to inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index, unemployment in the state spiked for a three-year period. However, in the years that followed, unemployment gradually decreased. For four of the past five years, Washington’s unemployment rate has been below the national average — as well as below the averages for the Western and Southern regions. Overall, Bloomberg reports that Washington’s job growth has continued at an average of 0.8 percent annually, outpacing the national growth rate of 0.3 percent.
An added bonus? Poverty in the state trailed the U.S. average for at least seven years as well. And payrolls at Washington’s restaurants and bars — employees of which are particularly vulnerable to minimum wage laws — have expanded by a whopping 21 percent. In other words, after 15 years of implementation, Washington’s minimum wage increase is successful. “It’s hard to see that the state of Washington has paid a heavy penalty for having a higher minimum wage than the rest of the country,” Gary Burtless, an economist at Brookings Institution and former U.S. Labor Department worker, told Bloomberg.
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How do the results seen in Washington line up with those projected nationally? A report by the Congressional Budget Office published in February found that President Obama’s proposal of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would reduce employment by 500,000 workers — a talking point that has been levied by opponents of the wage increase. However, the same report found that a higher minimum wage would lift 900,000 people out of poverty.
So while it’s true that raising the minimum wage would create higher costs for employers — which could lead to job cuts — the increase in pay will likely be pumped back into the economy by citizens who are spending more money than they would be able to if they were being paid at a lower rate.
That might not be enough to convince Congress, but just take a look at this sobering map created by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which shows the hours per week that minimum-wage employees would need to work in order to afford a two-bedroom apartment. In Washington, these employees would need to clock 81 hours a week — and that’s despite the fact that they are paid the the highest minimum wage in the country. For the 19 states that adhere to the federally-mandated $7.25 an hour … well, let’s just say it doesn’t look like these employees will be affording the apartment of their dreams (or even any apartment) anytime soon.
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This Is How You Teach Compassion to Eighth Graders
This week eighth graders at Seattle alternative school The Option Program at Seward (TOPS) put regular lessons aside to embark on a three-day mission to learn about the social services in their city and the people who use them. Students in the annual Planting the Seeds program are equipped with maps and passes for public transportation that they use to visit food pantries, shelters, and other charities, where they pitch in. Eighth graders—along with adult chaperones—sleep at churches to increase the immersion. This year they focused on getting to know homeless people.
Language-arts teacher Lori Eickelberg started the initiative a few years ago, and told Safiya Merchant of the Seattle Times, “I think this project plants a seed. I don’t know if it’ll change anybody’s life forever, but…I hope that it plants a seed of finding the beauty in the other.”
The students left their phones and iPods at home, and completed such projects as stocking the University District Food Bank and making Valentines for the needy. TOPS’ website collects some of the reflections students have upon completing the program. One wrote, “This trip has taught me so many things. It has taught me to open my heart to people I wouldn’t normally talk to. It has also taught me to be thoughtful about what I can do to help, because I can do so many things to help.”
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