Items

• 
  2022-05-10

  Athens Pride and Queer Collective to host first local Pride Parade

  This is a news story from WUGA by Sofi Grates. According to this article, it says that Pride Month will be back in full swing in Athens after it being canceled due to COVID. It will be hosted by Athens Pride and Queer Collective. The parade that is sent for June 12 will include vendors, music, and a cookout
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  2022-03-28

  A Voter Registration Rally & Vaccine Clinic

  This is an Instagram post by whitneyfordekalb. This is an advertisement for people to attend a voter registration and vaccine clinic. It is calling on a few Black organizations in addition to unions to join the rally. Below are a few sponsors of the event. This event is in Georgia.
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  2021-08-23

  Jones County, Georgia

  A friend of mine shared her experience with how her child’s school is handling the pandemic and exposure when kids test positive for Covid. She also shared the short conversation with her child’s teacher after receiving an email from the school.
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  2021-03-26

  Black Lawmaker Arrested For Knocking On Governor’s Office Door

  State troopers arrested a Georgia lawmaker who was knocking on Gov. Brian Kemp’s office door, in protest of the closed-door signing of a bill that would restrict voter access. Critics, including Rep. Park Cannon, say the new laws will disenfranchise Black and Democratic voters. “I am not the first Georgian to be arrested for fighting voter suppression. I’d love to say I’m the last, but we know that isn’t true.”
• 
  2020-09-21

  Protests against ICE, Forced Sterilization and Under Reporting of Covid-19 Cases in Detention Centers

  Last Monday, Dawn Wooten, a nurse at an ICE detention center in Irwin County, Georgia, revealed doctors were performing unnecessary gynecological procedures, including hysterectomies, on immigrant women being held. She also revealed the facility was underreporting the number of positive of COVID-19 cases by failing to test detainees and neglecting their medical needs. These cases of forced sterilizations are far too common in American history. After sterilization became legal and provided to Puerto Rican women for free, approximately one-third of the female population was sterilized between the 1930s and the 1970s, making it the highest rate of sterilization in the world. Health workers encouraged the procedure through door-to-door visits and employers showed favoritism towards sterilized women. I highly recommend a short documentary called La Operación available online about this US-imposed sterilization policy in Puerto Rico.
• 
  2020-10-23

  Dance to Express Grief

  It's been 39 days since Dawn Wooten, a nurse at a Georgia ICE facility, exposed mass hysterectomies were being performed on women for unexplained reasons. This week, 19 women at this facility came forward confirming Dawn's complaints and sharing doctors performed, or pressured them to undergo “medically unnecessary” surgery without their consent, including procedures that limit their ability to have children. In these photos, Ananya Chatterjea, Founder of the Ananya Dance Theatre, shares a dance piece expressing grief and resilience.
• 
  2021-03-01

  restrictions lifted

  It is an article that tells the story about lifted travel bans between Russia and Georgia.
• 
  2021-02-19

  The Delta Flight Museum Will Become Georgia’s Largest Covid Vaccination Site Next Week

  The state of Georgia has announced that they are partnering with Delta Air Lines to turn the Delta Flight Museum into a vaccination center. The center will be one of four major vaccination centers in Georgia. Vaccinations will be offered through drive-thru and walk-up.
• 
  2021-01-04

  Planning to Roll Out the Vaccine at KSU

  Kennesaw State University notified faculty and staff on January 4, 2021, that the university would serve as a distribution site for the COVID-19 vaccine to students, faculty, and staff according to CDC guidelines. All employees and affiliates not slated for the first wave, which includes people over age 65 and designated first responders, will fill out a survey on January 14 to indicate their interest in receiving the vaccine and enable them to be added to the vaccination schedule. Although I am only 36 years old, I am teaching in person this semester, and I am eager to get the vaccine.
• 2020-10-16

  Pre-Pandemic, what did we know? Teachers knew nothing.

  March 12th, 2020 seemed to be a perfect spring day in Southeast Georgia, it was a beautiful morning. I am a teachers assistant in a self-contained classroom in Liberty Co., GA. We had a long weekend ahead of us, March 12th was a Thursday and we had Friday off, 5 day weekend, and all of the kids knew it! So as any teacher would do we had a relaxed day. We taught normal morning lessons, talked to the kids about why they will not see us on Friday, Monday, Tuesday, or St. Patricks day that was coming up. So, we painted pictures of rainbows - nothing out of the ordinary, at least not in our little self-contained bubble. The teachers for some time had been hearing about this virus, and that it was far worse than the severe flu we saw in 2018, or anything else we have seen from overseas. This illness was something that we all were closely monitoring in the news because schools are the perfect breeding grounds for germs of any illnesses; however, we knew one thing - that there were some measures being put in place for travel. Then we get an all-call on the intercom in our classroom, "Hey 201, we just want to inform yall the main water line is broken up the road. We suggest you call your parents to get ready to receive their children, its a half-day." STUNNED we all took a moment, took a breath. Our 7 kids had no idea what was happening so we all took to our phones and called the parents of the most vulnerable first, then the ones we knew may take some time to get a hold of. Next we informed our parents of the children who ride buses that they will be on their way home within the next hour as the school had no water. We rallied up our kids, went through our daily clean up (4 hours earlier than usual) and gave them all tight hugs. Some of them didn't want to leave, some really didn't understand why they were going home so early, and some just wanted to get out of the crowd. In the end, I hugged every last one of my kids I took up to the front office because I had a sick feeling about this weekend. I told them to be good and listen to their adults and I waved goodbye. For most, that was the last time I saw that set of kids again because last year's class was older. Those children went onto middle school. Friday, March 13th, 2020 came and rumors started that we may not be going back to school on Wednesday because of some virus called Coronavirus. What was this? Why? No one understood. My teacher friends were all communicating online what was happening, a lot of uncertainty. The weekend came and went, nothing. Monday, the 16th of March, we got the news we weren't to enter ANY school building, this virus is highly contagious. I'd seen the news and by then China, Japan, Korea, and Italy were on total lockdown, Spain was following suit; along with the rest of the world, the US was the only nation in the world not really doing anything. However, in Liberty co. we were on lockdown, schools shutdown. At some point we were told only lead teachers and 2 assistants per grade level may go into the school to help get the children's personal belongings, this did not happen. Everything was shutdown, it was too dangerous. Personally, I didn't hear from the majority of my students after March 12th. Many factors are at play here: little to no technology in low-income homes, parents decided that since school was out they weren't obligated to stay in the area so they went to visit family in different Counties/States (so no communication was made) or parents didn't pick up the phones when we would call, those that we did see online wasn't for long because our teaching method is very hands on for Special Education our parents had no idea how to help at home and some gave in a put YouTube videos on all day. This wasnt easy for ANYONE I know. Pandemics, changes in general, and a sudden life change is ALWAYS hard. School as we know it will never be the same. As of today, this new school year we are doing hybrid teaching, which is giving parents the option to send their child to school face-to-face learning (with a mask on at all times) or they can have virtual learning. Our county provided everyone child and staff with ipads, so there's really no excuse at this point. I'm optimistic for the future, I feel a change in teaching. It's hard to change a system that is so engrained in our systems but we can figure it out.
• 2020-10-08

  An Unsure Election

  The experience of the election is changing. As a poll worker, I'm seeing this first-hand.
• 
  2020-08-27

  Drag in the Age of COVID-19

  This news article explores the effect the COVID-19 shutdowns have had on drag performances. Since March, Atlanta has banned gatherings of over 50 people in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus. For drag queens in the Atlanta area, this means that they have not been able to perform live since March. However, many have found virtual performances to be a viable alternative. Some drag queens, in fact, are glad that they are able to work virtually now as they had been wanting to get out of performing at bars. While virtual performances don't make as much money as live performances, the audience is a lot larger than if they were performing live.
• 
  2020-07-16

  Mask Requirements

  Science is usually something that I felt comfortable understanding at face value, in certain situations. Epidemiology, virology, and the like are areas where I would like the smartest person in the room to have the loudest microphone. It seems that this is not always the case in politics, especially with science that is less than flattering. This item was added TAGS v6.1.9.1. I originally searched under the hashtag #florida. Within that search, I have chosen to add the following tweet because it shows the disjointed response between the federal and state governments, not to mention local municipalities, over the pandemic. Link to the Washington Post article: (https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/16/coronavirus-live-updates-us/?p9w22b2p=b2p22p9w00098&no_nav=true)