Items

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  2021-08-22

  What COVID-19 Meant for My Mother: A Latina Small-Business Owner’s Experience in the Bronx.

  The item I am submitting is a pandemic auto-ethnography detailing the disproportionately negative impact of COVID-19 on Latinx businesses. I do so through the narrative of my own family's experience, specifically my mother, as well as supporting academic research of general demographic trends. This piece speaks to how the pandemic, while in and of itself does not discriminate, has proportions of its impact that demonstrate a systemic bias leaving certain racial and ethnic groups less protected and far more targeted than others. The piece also connects how these discrepancies are not products of the pandemic, but rather were already systemically there and exacerbated by the pandemic.
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  2021-03-18

  Oakland clinic offers Mayan interpreter for COVID-19 vaccinations

  Oakland clinic offers Mayan interpreter for COVID-19 vaccinations La Clinica de La Raza is targeting Latin Mam or Mayan-speaking community with translation service Thursdays OAKLAND — A new COVID-19 vaccination clinic in the Fruitvale neighborhood is offering interpreter services for the Latin Mam or Mayan-speaking community. This month, La Clinica de La Raza began offering the community-targeted vaccination service at 32 locations across the Bay Area, including ASCEND Elementary School on East 12th Street, where Latinos who speak Mam, K’iche ‘and Q’eqchi’ can get translation help from appointment to inoculation on Thursdays. There are over 22 different Mam dialects spoken primarily by people of Guatemalan and Mexican descent. According to a recent UC San Francisco study, Mayan people with Guatemalan roots are the fastest-growing ethnic group in Oakland. “I’m here to support my community, getting them the service that they deserve,” Brenda Sucely Perez, the on-site interpreter at ASCEND, said last week while about 450 eligible people were vaccinated. Staff at the Fruitvale site have administered roughly 2,000 Moderna vaccines per week since opening on March 4, according to La Clinica officials. Salvador Garcia, an Oakland firefighter, volunteered at the vaccination clinic. “Coming to get the vaccination is a good thing because it would help prevent the spread,” Garcia said, adding that it’s especially important given how close relatives in the Latino community live. “When you’re around people in such tight quarters around here, the way the families live with each other, it’s just good to have the preventative measure of the vaccination.” It’s also one of the reasons the nation’s first and strictest stay-at-home orders proved ill-suited for the hard-hit Latino community, a four-month Bay Area News Group investigation found. That analysis showed case rates for the region’s Latino residents are nearly four times higher than White residents, while the Latino population has fared worse against the virus across California. During the fall case surge, economic pressure to keep working outside the home became another major factor in the Latino community’s higher COVID-19 positivity rate in the Fruitvale neighborhood than the rest of the state, according to a UCSF study conducted in September. The results of that study found that antibody-positive prevalence was 9.8% overall among people who live and work in Fruitvale, a predominantly Latino neighborhood. The number spiked to 26.8% among the Latin Mam, or Mayan, speaking community, USCF [sic] researchers noted. The COVID-antibody test shows that someone once had coronavirus.
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  2020-11-06

  Día de los Muertos 2020 with SPARC Art

  Traditional celebrations of Día de los Muertos include family and communities gathering to celebrate their loved ones that have passed on. To pivot with the pandemic experiences, SPARC Art hosted a livestream event and virtual ofrenda.
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  2020-09-18

  Pilot Projects Artist Talk: "La Morena"

  Pilot Projects Artist Talk: "La Morena" is a conversation with Arizona-based muralist and painter Lucinda Yrene Hinojos and director Pita Juarez about the short film “La Morena,” on view Sept. 15–19, 2020 as part of Pilot Projects: Art. Response. Now. Lucinda talks about the process behind her murals, art and activism, and what she is working on next. The short film “La Morena” features Arizona artist, Lucinda Yrene Hinojos, who is claiming her roots and activism through her art. She brings all her love, inspiration and pain into creating murals with the guidance of her ancestors who energize her art. The result is a mural that focuses on the power of community, family and healing. This film was produced in association with Mango Skies and Poder in Action. To learn more about La Morena, check out: https://lamorenaart.com/ ***They discuss art during the pandemic, police brutality, social justice, how Covid-19 has affected their art.
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  2021-03-30

  Racial Equity In Vaccination? Dialysis Centers Can Help With That

  Dialysis patients fall into the high-risk category for COVID-19. Many dialysis patients are also Black or Latino, both have groups that have high COVID-19 rates and low rates of health care access. The Bidan administration has announced plans to have dialysis clinics distribute vaccines to patients, which will help the vaccination rates of the high-risk communities.
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  2021-01-25

  Voices for Ethnic & Multicultural Awareness (VEMA) Gathered to Honor Estavon Elioff and Eddie Uti

  Voices for Ethnic & Multicultural Awareness (VEMA) and community members gathered to honor the lives of Estavon Elioff and Eddie Uti from the Iron Range region of Minnesota. Elioff was a 19-year-old Latinx male who was shot and killed while unarmed by Sheriff's deputies in Mountain Iron, MN last year. There is an active investigation into his death by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Eddie Uti was a 29-year-old Samoan father of two from Hibbing, MN found dead in 2020. His last known contact was with the Itasca Sheriff's department. A medical examiner’s report revealed he died from a drowning after being “found floating near the shore of Pokegama Lake.”
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  2020-10-07

  COVID-19: A Barometer for Social Justice in New York City

  From the article: A recent study by researchers at Harvard University found that mortality ratios for Black and Latinx communities in the United States were 3.6 and 2.6 times higher, respectively, than the mortality ratio for non-Hispanic Whites,1 a stark gap also reported in New York City (NYC).2 Other similar patterns have been found in NYC over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mortality rates for the Latinx and Black populations are 242 per 100 000 and 226 per 100 000, respectively, both more than twice those for White and Asian American residents.3 Surveys conducted by the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy and others tell an even more alarming story. The gaps in mortality rates are just the tip of an iceberg of long-standing public health–related inequities among people of color in the United States. These discrepancies threaten all US citizens—wealthy and poor alike—and they have been exacerbated by the coronavirus.
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  2020-03

  Racism during COVID-19 for minorities

  The material presents racism during the Pandemic and how it has affected people from different racial communities like Hispanic Latinos, Asians, and African Americans.
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  2020-10-13

  Finally moving to Phase 2

  Wenatchee has been in lockdown and stuck at phase 1.5 for months due to an inability to get the virus under control. We finally received word that we could move to phase two and reopen things like the museums and library in town, which have been closed for 7 months due to COVID. This reopening means that many public services like computer use at the library and wifi for those who do not have access to it at home will be open and able to be used by those that need it. It is an important to compare where we are at to other places that moved into new phases much quicker, some of which had spikes because of it. I personally have not been able to leave and have been stuck at my house for months. I used to go to the library three times a week for school and to get out of my house but with a pandemic, I have been spending more time inside. I do not feel comfortable enough to go to the library yet, but am excited that the option is now there. Back to normal is still not an option though, and I worry that this will cause more cases in my area. This whole experience has been eye opening for how much I did unplanned, now I have to plan everything I do so I can keep myself and my family safe.
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  2020-10-08

  Watch Me Grow Right Through The Concrete Cracks

  The story behind this image is something I hold true to my creative process, in aspects of the pandemic, what I would like people to know is that even when life seem colorless with no blossom, we have the capacity to make something beautiful out of pain, fatigue and tiredness because humans are relentless and resilient, like a flower growing right through the cracks.
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  2020-09-01

  American Values

  This essay was produced as a part of the American Studies program at California High School in San Ramon, California. The essay is in response to the prompt "Is America currently living up to its core values?" This essay argues equal rights in America. It also includes references to the following modern events BLM.