Students create hip-hop projects rooted in knowledge of Oakland public parks and climate change as part of Agents of Change youth artist residency program, funded by the California Arts Council. (Pictured pre-pandemic.)Sarah Arnold Photography/Hip Hop for Change
Turning a pandemic into an opportunity for educational and artistic empowerment is what Khafre Jay lives for, and his celebrated Hip Hop for Change network isn’t about to let today’s crisis (just the latest) short-circuit its mission. Before this pandemic, his grassroots group worked in schools and on the ground, teaching more than 20,000 kids the hopeful messages and inspiring beats of hip-hop as a human rights movement.
Jay is finding fresh ways to adapt: hosting a weekly Zoom for kids and teachers, sharing grant applications with unemployed artists, producing homemade hip-hop videos, and keeping people alive—HipHopForChange.org has a directory of resources for kids to find food, rent, utilities, and health care. “We’re always thinking of how to take care of our staff, our people, our folks,” he tells me, including an emergency fundraiser for artist-educators who’ve lost their jobs.
His group just scored two grants from the California Arts Council, one to provide free programming to all public libraries in Oakland and the other for an environmental justice summit. “We’re bringing environmental and hip-hop people together who don’t normally get to rock out. It’s amazing to think that we’ve taught more than 22,000 kids. When you create hip-hop curriculum, kids are gonna ask you for it! These kids are starving for any kind of culturally relevant pedagogy. They want enrichment.”
Hip Hop for Change also hosts women’s empowerment summits, after-school classes, and mentor workshops. “We’re investing in a nonviolent movement of resilience. I want to get people trained up like Medgar Evers trained up his folks, to expand where kids don’t have stable access to hip-hop expression, to further babies knowing they’re beautiful.”
Before you wave it off as a bizarre autocorrect misfire or clumsy typo, or an ill-conceived respelling, consider NOVID-19’s origins: “NOVID-19” got going as a just-say-no bit of creativity by hospital workers who named a staff break room the “NOvid room,” a space that allows NO talk of YOU-KNOW-WHAT-19 between shifts. The idea took off. Several medical centers worldwide are doing the same, at doctors’ and nurses’ own initiative. Rules of entry: “1) The first rule of the NOvid room is that you do not talk about COVID-19 in this room. 2) The second rule of the NOvid room is that you DO NOT talk about COVID-19 in this room. 3) The third rule of the NOvid room is that if you mention, imply, or talk about COVID-19, your time in the room is over and you must leave. 4) The fourth rule is to try and sit 2 metres [6 feet] apart…9) The ninth rule is to enjoy the break. 10) Remember you are amazing.”
That 10th rule, hm. But hospital workers are amazing, as are the organizers of NOVID Virtual Runs, drumming up donations for vaccine research. “The idea that NOVID says ‘no’ to COVID and that even a one-letter difference can lift people’s spirits, raise solidarity, and keep us united” is what inspired Blaine Penny, head of the mitochondrial nonprofit MitoCanada, to run with NOVID as a charity name, he tells me, and San Francisco’s Half Marathon manager heard about it and got onboard, establishing a NOVID-20 San Francisco Strava Club. “I knew this was something San Franciscans could get behind,” says Michelle La Sala, the half marathon’s organizer. More than 850 runners in 43 cities and seven countries have signed up for NOVID runs so far, raising thousands of dollars toward research.
But if you’re going to run, follow my colleague Jacob Rosenberg’s rules of the road: way more than 6 feet apart. And let me know your take on NOVID-19 (inspiring? too much? a bit of self-compassion among hospital workers?) at recharge@motherjones.com.
Club closures and festival shutdowns mean financial freefall for the many underpaid musicians living gig to gig, but the Jazz Foundation of America is taking creative, heroic action: an emergency fund and massive concert this Thursday with a big-name lineup in and beyond jazz—Wayne Shorter, Elvis Costello, Sheryl Crow, Danny Glover, Bruce Willis (blues harmonica; give him a chance), Rosie Perez, Jon Batiste, and many others, hosted by Keegan-Michael Key. Yes, a number of nonjazz celebs powering the party, but the full lineup is here, and the solidarity and support across genres keep the funds flowing and resilience up.
This isn’t jazz’s first emergency. It was born in one. From the field hollers and work songs to Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” Archie Shepp’s Fire Music, Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam,” and the Jazz and People’s Movement led by Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Lee Morgan, jazz is a sound of stamina. Of swing, survival, overcoming obstacles, resistance, celebration, and more. However you hear the full range of jazz, catch it Thursday and let me know what you think of the concert, and how online festivals can defy social distancing, at recharge@motherjones.com. (And bookmark our new Recharge blog for surprises this week.)
For the millions of mothers working on the front lines and the millions more incarcerated across America right now—80 percent of women in jail are mothers—spending Mother’s Day at a mandatory distance is a test of resilience. But also of solidarity. An 8-year-old and 10-year-old in Wisconsin created an online newspaper with their mother called the Quarantine Times to celebrate families everywhere; a mother and daughter are graduating together in North Carolina this week; doulas and midwives are organizing for change at the National Black Doulas Association; 150 hospital workers got a musical surprise for Mother’s Day in the Bronx; and the brilliantly creative Colorlines writer Rosana Cruz envisions “what a Mother’s Day steeped in racial and gender justice” could look like.
However you view the day, it’s grounded in searches for justice, traceable to anti-war activist Anna Jarvis, blues pioneer Bessie Smith, voting-rights activist Julia Ward Howe (who wrote the “Mother’s Day Proclamation”), and tens of billions of women throughout history. The cards came later. Consumerism came later. Tweetable feasts, later. Overpriced gadgets that break in a week, later. The origins run deeper, so let us know how you view motherhood beyond Mother’s Day at recharge@motherjones.com. We’ll highlight some of your stories on our new daily Recharge blog.
Tipping generously has always been essential in a broken system that underpays gig workers on the shaky premise that optional tipping is sustainable and sufficient, but during a pandemic it’s especially life-saving, and many customers are stepping up. An 18-year-old restaurant worker in Texas got a $1,300 tip ($300 to him and $1,000 to the rest of the staff) with a “good luck” note. Luck isn’t needed so much as action, but short of action we’ll take luck—like the luck visited upon a Florida server who got a $500 tip; an Arkansas server who scored a customer’s entire $1,200 stimulus check as a tip; and Tampa bakery workers who got a $1,000 tip.
A Recharge callout: Any supremely large tips (subjectively defined) will get a shout-out on this blog. Email your receipt to recharge@motherjones.com and indicate whether you want your name and city/town included. The whims and guesswork of the American tipping system are unjust enough before and during a pandemic, but acts of solidarity and generosity are coming through.
Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. See more editions and sign up here.
Like everyone else in the world, Venus and Serena Williams can’t play tennis to thousands of stadium fans right now. But they can play Tennis to millions of them. The superstar sisters lit up this weekend’s Mario Tennis tournament for coronavirus relief in doubles showdowns with fellow pros Maria Sharapova, Naomi Osaka, and Kei Nishikori, along with Seal, Steve Aoki, and other entertainers and fashion figures. The top team won $1 million toward a charity of their choice, and all other participants received $25,000 toward charities.
Seal kept shouting “boom!” each time he hit the ball, with live commentary from John “You Can’t Be Serious” McEnroe and YouTube’s iJustine. But the key highlights were the ballooning lobs, overhead smashes, lagging whiffs, and cartoonish unforced errors, everything a contest should be. The battle of thumbs, called the Stay at Home Slam, was livestreamed to 3 million viewers.
The big dollars went to No Kid Hungry, thanks to winning serves by Taylor Fritz and TikTok sensation Addison Rae. One day earlier, Serena gave an inspiring speech to students in an online graduation ceremony with stories about overcoming obstacles and taking risks. The 23-time grand-slam champion, despite not claiming Sunday’s title, is a supremely talented Tennis player.
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
The Catch. The most mythologized and celebrated grab in baseball history is just one piece of the sprawling puzzle that makes Willie Mays’ legacy: Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, a towering 450-foot drive to the wall, Mays sprinting back, fans erupting as the ball drifts overhead and lands in his outstretched glove. His over-the-shoulder catch-and-throw has been replayed millions of times. Play it today: Happy birthday to Mays, who turns one shy of 90. His new memoir is due out next week. Here’s that highlight. Watch below and let me know how you view it, and the catches after it, at recharge@motherjones.com.
On a roll. Enough with the fancy sourdough starters for homemade bread. Cinnamon rolls are the thing: A Portland family’s jumbo rolls raised $30,000 for a food bank after Whitney Rutz and her 7-year-old daughter posted a time-lapse video of a massive roll baking in their kitchen, to the salivating attention of friends, who wanted a sample. The first roll was auctioned off for $300; the second, $750. All proceeds go to Oregon hunger relief, with enough cash for 90,000 meals so far.
Nurses now. National Nurses Week starts today with stores and restaurants giving freebies and deep discounts to front-line workers on everything from burritos to beverages and shoes. The wave of support comes after the largest union of nurses protested in front of the White House to stand up for the thousands of health care workers infected due to the lack of protective gear.
#SolvingIt. The new weekly show #DearWorld Live is on a hot streak, last week tackling obstacles and opportunities for people with disabilities during the pandemic with guests Maysoon Zayid and five-time Paralympic athlete Tanni Grey-Thompson. Yesterday’s livestream focused on climate action, and next week’s episode takes on mental health and coping strategies in the era of COVID-19. Host Nelufar Hedayat highlights practical, on-the-ground solutions to global challenges every Tuesday at 10 a.m. ET.
Recharge salutes: Composer Anthony Davis for winning the 2020 Pulitzer for music for The Central Park Five, his operatic tale of racial injustice and the long march toward results; journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones for winning a Pulitzer for her essay “The 1619 Project”; Daily Show host Trevor Noah for paying his furloughed staff’s salaries out of his own pocket during the pandemic, including 25 staffers, from camera operators to stage managers; saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa, whose birthday was Sunday and who inspires new generations of improvisers with thunder; and 11-year-old Emerson, whose father tweeted about Em’s letter-writing penpalship with USPS carriers, with hand-decorated notes and creative envelopes thanking them for their service.
Recharge gets a recharge: We’re turning this newsletter into a daily blog next week! And we’re rolling out a daily newsletter with bits of everything, Recharge included. Stay tuned. I’ll leave you with these serene sands in Colorado from the National Park Service. Remember to say hey to Willie Mays today, and let me know how his catch holds up at recharge@motherjones.com.
#ParkedAtHome? Listen to the sounds of parks! From singing sands, to bugling elk, and claps of thunder, each park has a unique soundscape!
Duke Ellington on tour in 1963Victor Drees/Evening Standard/Getty
Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. See more editions and sign up here.
On a bright day 121 years ago today, in Washington, DC, two pioneering musicians named Daisy and James welcomed their son, Edward, into the world, and set in motion an artistic revolution embodied by the 3,000-plus compositions he created. Edward did more to transform the sound of American life, and the workings of bands, than anyone else in his time, but he wasn’t alone. Social distancing of another kind was in effect, but he pulled in space and time and galaxies of musicians and listeners, with a nickname supremely fit to his style.
For Duke Ellington’s birthday today, Healdsburg Jazz in California, overcoming the cancellation of its festival, adapted by throwing a Zoom listening party for hundreds of people on Sunday with live home performances, clips, and interactive walkthroughs of Duke’s life, hosted by bassist Marcus Shelby. “The deeper you dig, the more treasure you find,” Shelby said, capturing the vitality and range of a legend so canonized as a bandleader that it’s easy to overlook Duke’s first passion: piano. And his greatest strength: listening. “The most important thing I look for in a musician,” Duke once said, “is whether [the musician] knows how to listen.”
Healdsburg’s party continues with Staying Connected events and exclusive living-room recordings. There’s also a 24-hour Duke stream on WKCR today.
For Duke’s birthday, let me know which recharges you more, this original—recorded secretly and kept hidden for two decades before its release in the ’70s, when it won a Grammy—or this rendition by 28-year-old Aaron Diehl in 2013. Diehl was enamored by the ballad’s “impressionistic quality,” he tells me. “Just such a beautiful color palette, and that sense of space and serene line of melody.”
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
Postcard to the future. Seventeen years ago today, one of the most defining and powerful essays ever written about Nina Simone—who’d died days earlier—appeared in the Village Voice, an essay as profound as its subject. The themes are all too familiar during today’s pandemic: stamina tested, distance felt, justice sometimes achieved, and “love not quite as hoped,” but love still. It was written by the interdisciplinary artist and historian Thulani Davis, who hears Simone in a constellation of civil rights and artistic giants including Alice Walker, James Baldwin, and Toni Cade Bambara. Two decades later, Simone’s sound continues to enlighten and educate, as does Davis, a widely admired professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, on Twitter @temne. Here’s that piece, and the sound:
Take three. If you’re hearing a theme, it’s because jazz is a sound of resilience: pandemic-fighting, immunity-boosting, full of life, which, before the coronavirus claimed him, was lived fully by Henry Grimes. Grimes was one of the most revered bassists in jazz, who’d dropped off in the ’60s and by the ’80s was widely reported dead but resurfaced in 2002 when a social worker tracked him down in a single-room-occupancy LA hotel. He hadn’t played in three decades. But he moved to New York in 2003, returning to musical form. In a world he had never left, a recording that remains, here with Sonny Rollins.
Take four. Look up! We interrupt this session to bring you a giant asteroid passing overhead today, the biggest this year. You need a telescope for it, but go here for the next best way to see it. It’s a mile wide and twice as long. Thanks to my colleague Ben Dreyfuss, a former NASA astrophysicist, for the tip.
Take five. Before the New Orleans saint of music education Ellis Marsalis died this month of you-know-what, he raised a family of jazz trailblazers, including trumpeter Wynton and saxophonist Branford, who said Ellis “poured everything he had into making us the best of what we could be.” The mayor of New Orleans called Ellis “a legend…Words aren’t sufficient to describe the art, the joy & the wonder he showed the world.”
Take six. Alto saxophonist Lee Konitz lit up Miles Davis’ early bands and lived to see the coronavirus (but didn’t survive it), and in his vibrant 92 years, swung hard. Konitz had a roundly melodic style, bending notes and curving harmonic tones, taking wide lyrical turns in improvisations. He was born to Russian and Austrian parents in Chicago, and lives in his music.
Pulling together. Communities of Asian Americans and Asians across backgrounds have found creative ways to respond to the rise of xenophobic rhetoric and targeting in the wake of the outbreak, including a digital town hall tomorrow on how “Asian American history can help us understand the experience of AAPIs during this pandemic.” Big-name participants include novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, comedian Hari Kondabolu, PBS NewsHour’s Amna Nawaz, California Rep. Judy Chu, and many others. Details here.
Book it. Little Free Libraries, the front-yard bookshelves, just won a major award for its contributions to global education. While the future of physical book-sharing is unknown, the libraries’ impact is growing: 100,000 registered Little Free Libraries in 100 countries. The movement started with one person. Thanks to Dave Beard, my Recharge predecessor and National Geographic’s exec newsletter editor, for this book tip.
One of four winning designs by kids in a contest to create superheroes for our moment, made by 12-year-old Haile F. and sculptor Steven Cartoccio, in a challenge organized by comic studio LootHaile F./Steven Cartoccio of Concrete Jungle/Loot
As school closures sweep the world and affect more than 55 million US students, kids are finding creative ways to stay artistically engaged, some by drawing online, and a lucky few—including 12-year-old Haile in New York and 14-year-old Milo in the United Kingdom—by creating action figures to protect the planet’s most vulnerable people. And they’re winning awards for it.
A worldwide contest held by Brooklyn-based art studio and comic space Loot invited kids to invent characters with the strength and stamina to “address the challenges not only of their lives, but of the entire world,” the contest organizer tells me. A panel of judges picked four winners, and a renowned sculptor and animator is bringing their designs to life.
Even while Loot’s doors are temporarily closed, it’s keeping kids active on Instagram, including Haile, whose winning character “protects her kingdom from evil,” she says. And Milo, who designed “a determined and headstrong warrior who wants to help those who can’t help themselves.” Each of the four winners gets their figures illustrated and sculpted and possibly turned into comic books and animated shorts by Steven Cartoccio, known for teaming up with hip-hop legends Ghostface and Raekwon of Wu-Tang Clan, and Kool Keith, to create their own action figures.
“Our path since the pandemic started has been to respond to the challenge of kids being out of school,” Loot’s founder, Joe Einhorn, tells me. He and the Loot crew have made life in lockdown a little easier by posting a free art-lesson video every morning, seven days a week.
At press time, Mother Jones could not independently confirm that the 12-year-old’s and 14-year-old’s action figures can cure contagion, solve pandemics, and halt the rise of protofascism worldwide, but early evidence suggests they can. I mean, just look at them (and click the right arrow to scroll):
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
#SolvingIt. A step or two removed from the daily news cycle are front-line workers and community leaders #SolvingIt. The upliftinghashtag is part of a new Instagram series highlighting young artists, activists, and other changemakers tackling the world’s most pressing challenges, from corruption to contagion and wealth inequality. #SolvingIt assembles illustrations of people leading the way on microplastics in Bali, pipeline politics on Native American lands, and climate change. Among those #SolvingIt is journalist Nelufar Hedayat, whose new podcast, Course Correction, amplifies solutions, and whose weekly show, #DearWorld Live, launched last Tuesday with a chilling but constructive look at India’s lockdown affecting 1.3 billion people. Who else is #SolvingIt?
Balcony fix. A pastor in London is easing elder isolation by singing to residents from a distance with friends on violin and guitar. Amy Tan and her crew are criss-crossing neighborhoods to perform Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” and Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.” “The right music will lift my spirits,” she says, “so I think of all these people who have to self-isolate and how it affects them mentally, emotionally.” One neighbor with multiple sclerosis, living in isolation, had her birthday plans preempted by the pandemic, so she welcomed Tan’s visit. If you’re not on her walking path, watch Tan here.
No one’s pawn. A rising 16-year-old chess superstar did the unthinkable: He beat world champion Magnus Carlsen, the strongest player of all time, in a 16-game match last week. Mere mortals dream of it, but Iranian-born Alireza Firouzja took Magnus down a peg (someone had to). The 16-year-old plays under the flag of a global chess organization rather than his native Iran, which he left in protest of government restrictions on citizens competing against Israelis, a stance Alireza does not accept. “The only thing I think about is chess,” he says from France, where he moved to with his father. “It’s not easy” being shut in by the pandemic, “but luckily for this quarantine, we got the Magnus tournament.”
Uncaged. As social distancing continues, pet distancing doesn’t. Animal adoptions are picking up in Florida, where a shelter announced empty kennels for the first time in its history. The need for mental health reinforcements is not new, but it’s heightened during the pandemic, and the staff at Palm Beach County Animal Care and Control celebrated the news with a video of workers cheering in masks.
This or that? Two musical pioneers, both jazz bassists, share a birthday today: Paul Chambers and Charles Mingus. If you’ve got Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue on a playlist, you’ve got Chambers’ signature low-register sound, a bowed, plucked, strummed bassline. Mingus revolutionized the instrument by lifting it from the rhythm section to a melodic foreground. He was also a mesmerizing pianist. Which recharges you more, this Chambers recording or this Mingus one? Watch below, and let me know at recharge@motherjones.com.
I’ll leave you with a picnic perch overlooking the Grand Canyon, from the National Park Service Twitter feed. Have a safe week ahead, and let me know about today’s birthday battle: Chambers or Mingus?
A7: Find some peace and solitude by learning about your favorite park online! Settle in for a story, check out photo galleries, or watch a wildlife cam!
Protective masks hang in a decontamination room in Somerville, Massachusetts.Michael Dwyer/AP
Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. See more editions and sign up here.
With a short supply of face masks across the country and a shorter supply of political action and accountability at the highest levels of government to mobilize for front-line workers’ safety, it’s easy to overlook some of the inspiring ways that communities are getting results. But solidarity is growing: A new movement, #MasksForThePeople, launched last week as a crowdfunding effort to raise $1 million for protective gear, and support is coming in.
In the span of a few days, the campaign raised more than $100,000, a fraction of the billions (or trillions) this moment calls for, but the community cash is adding up. Each $10,000 provides masks and sanitizer for up to 5,000 people, thanks to civil rights leader Mike McBride and political comedian W. Kamau Bell, who co-lead #MasksForThePeople on the humanitarian hope that collective action can overcome contagion, corruption, and unequal power structures that disproportionately affect people in poverty, especially in communities of color, and anyone on the front lines.
“Our greatest aspiration is to create a tipping point of charitable giving,” McBride tells me, and it’s picking up speed, “which speaks to the urgency” supporters feel. A big boost came Monday when Twitter chief Jack Dorsey got wind and donated the full $1 million, taking #MasksForThePeople over the top. Big-donor pulls are always welcome, if double-edged, as certain billionaires’ donations double as publicity measures that conceal (or expose) enduring inequalities that predate the pandemic. But it’s fresh evidence that grassroots efforts like #MasksForThePeople compel action and awareness at all levels of society.
Masks, in many ways, cover who we are. They also reveal us. Supplying them, or failing to, is a test of who we are right now, and #MasksForThePeople is witnessing a surge in solidarity.
Daily dose. Artists everywhere are finding ways to connect creatively, including San Francisco–based artist Chiraag Bhakta, who is adapting to the closures by opening his studio to the world. He’s posting photos each day of a created or found object in his collection on Instagram, alongside personal commentary. Under the name *Pardon My Hindi, he shares his perspective as a South Asian American artist with razor-sharp wit and insight, injected with humor, about communities and unjust structures that deserve more light. Like this tissue packet, which he purchased in India, branded with the worshipfully illustrated words “My Boss,” whom Bhakta likens to Jeff Bezos, making headlines for contemptible labor practices at Amazon. “Honestly, I’m just trying to stay busy since I’m currently out of a job,” Bhakta tells me. “With these posts, I’m attempting to widen the conversation by showing an object and juxtaposing it with a current or historical story that people might not know. For me this gives the object another dimension of life,” and gives viewers hope. One visitor to his Instagram writes, “Your posts have been a beacon of light 🙌🏾” during this pandemic. The studio doors are open@PardonMyHindi.
Charged up. Medical students are rallying to collect cellphone chargers as donations for COVID-19 patients who enter hospitals without their own. Students Anthony Nardone, Carina De La Cueva, and Kamran Abri Lavasani are running the charger drive to get patients “connected with their family members,” De La Cueva tells me. Another student, India Perez-Urbano, created a GoFundMe that raised almost $1,000 for chargers in the two days after launching. “There’s been so much outpouring of support,” says Dr. Neeta Thakur of UCSF, who mentors the students. “Patients often go a full day with almost no human interaction…Phones are their only lifeline to their social support systems.” Her team wants to “restore that lifeline,” and the chargers are coming in.
On the house. Shopping for groceries is a risky proposition right now, but a helping hand can appear: A buyer anonymously paid for thousands of people’s groceries during senior hour at more than 70 supermarkets in Louisiana and Georgia. “Look at these faces—you can see the smiles and tears through the masks!” said one viewer of the photos that show shoppers breezing through the checkout aisles. The buyer’s identity was later confirmed: Tyler Perry, who didn’t deny the deed. “What I’m hoping is that by paying for the groceries for these people who are just like my mother, my aunt, come from where I come from…that other people will join in…You may not be able to pay for 73 grocery stores, but maybe you can buy groceries for one person.”
Nature now. If you’ve developed cabin fever, let the oceans and pastures come to you. A live feed of polar bears? Got it. Horses grazing in real time? Every day. A Northern Lights camera? Right this way. Beaches and farms and more. Keep a browser tab open in the background or foreground of your day, and run a live feed. Thanks to reader Annie Edwards for the tip, and Explore.org for creating it. Kentucky horses are writing this newsletter with me.
This or that? 126 years ago today, a girl was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in poverty. By the time she was 9, both her parents had died, as did a brother. She took care of her siblings and became a singer, sharing her voice and wealth of wisdom with a world that didn’t return that wealth. Especially today, let’s hear, recognize, and learn from Bessie Smith. Happy birthday to the Empress of the Blues. How to choose just one? Does this recording or that one stir you more? Let me know at recharge@motherjones.com.
Back by popular demand: the ceremonial Recharge photo from the National Park Service Twitter feed, this one of a sunrise peeking through the Grand Canyon, requested by several readers. Have a strong week ahead, and let me know about Bessie Smith’s birthday blues.
Additional photos from this morning's sunrise as seen from Yavapai Point on the South Rim (Sunday, April 12, 2020.)
The original "Hamilton" cast joins actors John Krasinski and Emily Blunt to surprise a 9-year-old fan by serenading her over Zoom in the new YouTube show "Some Good News."Krasinski/Some Good News
Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. See more editions and sign up here.
As the wall-to-wall coverage and stark statistics about the coronavirus continue to test our stamina and resilience, there is still, and always will be, some good news, including Some Good News, the new YouTube show that launched last week to more than 13 million views. It highlights the selfless acts of courage by front-line workers, caretakers, and neighbors rising up to meet the moment’s challenges.
Hosted from home by actor John Krasinski as himself—but eternally Jim Halpert from The Office—the show puts him behind a desk again, this time with viewer-submitted, uplifting stories. We meet a 15-year-old girl returning home from chemotherapy to a surprise party of friends and neighbors social-distancing in parked cars, with welcome-back balloons and signs, cheering as she goes by. We meet a woman with Alzheimer’s separated from her husband but singing “Amazing Grace” with him through a hospital window—in perfect unison. We meet a homeowner placing bottles of hand sanitizer on his porch as giveaways for any delivery worker to take home.
The 15-year-old, making a strong recovery, tells him in a video chat, “To my nurses and doctors…Thank you.” “I don’t know if I can do another [episode of Some Good News] after this,” Krasinski tells her, “because you’re the best news there is. You’re like the mic drop of all good news.”
Episode 2 of Some Good News: the entire cast of Hamilton reuniting by Zoom to serenade a 9-year-old fan whose birthday was supposed to be spent seeing the show in person, before the shelter-in-place closures. So the stage came to her. #SomeGoodNews
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
There is sunshine. Singer-songwriter Bill Withers grew up with a stutter. More than 70 million people stutter, a condition that challenged his speech, his schoolwork, his self-esteem. But not his voice. Withers found his voice, and a creative way to express it, after the death of his father at age 13. Years later, he wrote the soul-stirring ballads “Ain’t No Sunshine,” “Lean on Me,” and “Grandma’s Hands,” with an intimacy, deeply felt emotional range, and pared-down lyricism we can turn to today. Withers, who died on Friday at 81, created a sound of sunshine, filtered by clouds, not just for his moment, but for ours. My colleague Beth Eisenstaedt wrote the other day that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Beth was talking about high-quality, fearless journalism right now. It’s equally true of high-quality, fearless blues, in this live recording and this one. I couldn’t choose between them, so tell me which stirs you more, at recharge@motherjones.com.
Stronger for it. WOC Space is a virtual community of women of color for socializing, supporting, and sharing tips, created by environmental ecologist Tiara Moore on a basic premise: courage can surmount injustice. That idea was tested last week, when the group was hacked by bigots shouting racial slurs. The twin toxins of racism and misogyny had adapted to Zoom, but WOC Space is designed to prevail. After rebooting, Moore vowed to stay strong by password-protecting the chats and growing the email list. “That’s what gave me the strength to persist,” Moore tells me. “Being the leader of this organization and being attacked in that manner was jarring—it’s the most unbelievable experience I’ve had, and I’m a black female in science: I’ve been through a whole lot! But never like that. I’ve interacted with more women of color via WOC Space than I had my entire time in a job where I don’t see women of color every day. We’re stronger for it.” The group’s membership, and resilience, continues to grow. (H/t The Root)
Cooking to cure. After 11 years of sharing video recipes from his New London, Connecticut, restaurant, Jack Chaplin was forced by the pandemic to adapt. He’s more than adapted. He’s made meals for homeless members of the community, cooked for families in need, donated kitchen equipment to firefighters over the years, and assembled pizza kits for curbside pickup. His beloved channel Daddy Jack’s Cooking With the Blues shares blues history, cooking tips, family milestones, and wisdom without any of the pretense common among certain celebrity chefs, and with all the depth, generosity, and solidarity this moment needs. “It’s a wonderful thing to see people come together and assist each other,” Chaplin tells me. This pandemic “could be a conduit for” stronger communities. He’s (finally!) launched a Patreon crowdfunding page for new and loyal followers. Head over—his best is ahead. (NBC Connecticut)
Near and far. Gabi Yetter, an author in the UK, wanted to do more than volunteer at a hospice and shop for groceries for neighbors and elder friends, which she does, so she created a Facebook group, “The Good in Us,” where 800 members share uplifting posts from South Africa, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Australia, France, the United States, and elsewhere—anything “that’s shining light,” Yetter tells me. “We are all connected around the world….I’m looking forward to the day when I can hug my friends and family again.” Until then, and after, “The Good in Us” is open to all.
This or that? As I take the wheel of Recharge, I’ll end with the question I raised above: Does this recording or that one recharge youmore? Let me know at recharge@motherjones.com, and have a strong week ahead.
David Gilmour with his granddaughterCourtesy Polly Samson
In a normal week, I’d be telling you the story of two epidemiologists who got married in a Boston hospital during their 12-hour shifts fighting COVID-19, or the thousands of readers who rallied to the side of an iconic independent bookstore derailed by coronavirus closures. (Those readers swamped Powell’s Books of Portland with enough online orders that it was able to rehire more than 100 staffers.)
But this is no ordinary week, for a number of reasons. For this 100th Recharge, I want to share extra support in a time of profound tests—of our values, our character, and our communities. Over nearly two years, I’ve highlighted hundreds of people who have chosen to help others, often at great cost to themselves. And I’ve discovered that justice, in the face of obstacles, occasionally prevails.
Here are a few things we’ve learned. I’m saying “we” because many of the ideas and links came from readers like you:
People rise up to challenges
On the coronavirus crisis alone, we’ve covered a renowned restaurant that transformed its kitchen to prepare meals for front-line medical workers. Another story highlighted a passer-by who spotted a terrified elderly couple in a car in a supermarket parking lot, took their written shopping list, and bought their groceries so the couple wouldn’t risk catching the virus.
Children deserve better
We learned about an all-Muslim girls’ school basketball team that defeated prejudice as well as its opponents; a 6-year-old boy who donated thousands of dollars earned from his lemonade stand to help imprisoned migrant kids separated from their parents; a 12-year-old boy, called the n-word by bullies, who turned it around into a schoolwide antibullying effort; and a middle school football team, heading home after a game, whose players spotted an overturned car and came together to flip it back over, helping to save a trapped motorist.
A moment can create change
We covered a graduation speaker, her mic cut off during commencement when talking about sexual harassment, who went home and recorded it on YouTube for an audience of hundreds of thousands. We met the aspiring doctor on a train who helped save the life of a fellow commuter suffering a heart attack; and a homeless woman singing in a video, recorded by a stranger, that helped the singer win an offer from a Grammy-nominated producer.
We chronicled an artist who applied years of trauma therapy to coax the surrender of a gunman holding her and other shoppers at a Trader Joe’s. We saw how a stranger’s ignorant put-down prompted Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to write a children’s story about how kids who are different work together to create a garden. (Sotomayor has diabetes, and her characters include people with wide-ranging experiences and conditions, including autism, asthma, and Tourette syndrome.)
Thinking about the next generation
You can pay it forward: We saluted Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour for selling his guitars for $21.5 million and donating every dollar to fight climate change; Todd Bol for envisioning a world where the installation of little libraries on people’s lawns would spur community (and kindness)—and there were more than 75,000 dollhouse-size libraries in 88 countries by the time he died. And we honored librarian Elizabeth McChesney for spending decades bringing books to laundromats to reach new readers.
“I act because I love humanity”
These words, expressed 115 years ago by the namesake of this publication, reflect the embrace of Recharge by Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery and the week-after-week dedication of my editor, Daniel King, as well as his predecessor, Kanyakrit Vongkiatkajorn. A special thanks to Mother Jones staffers and readers for the ideas that made Recharge bloom. I’m off to a full-time job now, but I’ve been humbled by the opportunity to work with you to put together these inspiring roundups each week. And the show is not over! Stay tuned for similarly uplifting stories in creative new formats from Mother Jones. The beat will live on.
This newsletter always ends with a positive image. How about this irresistible Atlantic puffin, in flight and full of life, from a growing flock of once-threatened birds off the coast of Maine? To all of you, keep charging ahead.
Robert F. Bukaty/AP
David Beard is now executive editor of newsletters at National Geographic. Follow him on Twitter at @dabeard.
A sample of deliciousness delivered to front-line medical workers by one of the world's top-rated restaurantsCourtesy of the Herbfarm
Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. See more editions and sign up here.
When the coronavirus struck Washington state hard, a restaurant once named the top destination in the world by National Geographic Traveler joined so many others in closing. Since then, the Herbfarm has retooled as a kitchen feeding doctors, nurses, and medical staff at five hospitals on the front lines of the coronavirus fight.
Repurposing the restaurant helps everyone, co-owner Carrie Van Dyck toldThe Stranger.
“We’re going to still need to eat. And the farmers, fishermen, foragers, ranchers—they have food that they’ve produced and their normal outlet is the farmers market and restaurants, and all of that is closed, so they have nowhere to send that,” Van Dyck said. “We wanted to help out the [vendors] who’ve been supporting us, and think of ways to continue to buy from them, and also help out these people who are doing an amazing job [in hospitals] right now.”
The bulk of the effort is funded by a GoFundMe drive to help the medical staff at these hard-hit hospitals. “One thing COVID-19 teaches us clearly,” said one appreciative ER doctor, Jonathan Scheffer: “We are all, most definitely, in this together!”
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
Get me to the judge on time. Just after New York City’s marriage bureau got shut down Friday, a couple found a judge and got hitched. Alex Brook Lynn and Adam Levy, wearing plastic gloves, were married in a one-minute ceremony outside the marriage bureau. Judge Kevin McGrath followed the pronouncement with this: “May you [elbow] bump each other.” A second couple, wearing masks, happened upon the ceremony—and McGrath married them, too. Honeymoon plans for Lynn and Levy? A walk in a park in the Bronx, Lynn said, then back to their home in downtown Manhattan to shelter in place. “I did not think my wedding would be like this,’’ the bride said. “You kind of roll with what is going on.” (New York Post)
A world singing. Defiant people self-quarantined across the globe are following Italians’ lead by taking to porches, balconies, and rooftops, lifting their voices to stand together against the pandemic. In Montreal on Sunday, residents united to sing Leonard Cohen’s “So Long, Marianne” from their homes; in Mallorca, Spain, dancing and guitar-playing police led a locked-down neighborhood with songs; in Dallas, tenor Danzel Barber began a singalong of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me” from the windows of an apartment building. Readers, what did we miss? Let us know if your community is rising up as one in song. (CBC)
Helping the wallaby. Last we checked, Australia’s wildlife was fighting to survive against some of the worst bushfires in modern history. Now, marsupials that have survived face a challenge—many of the plants they feed on have been destroyed. People have stepped up to drop water, carrots, and sweet potatoes for starving wallabies. It’s helping. (New York Times)
Followup. Last week, we told you about senior citizens in their cars, terrified to buy groceries for fear of catching the coronavirus. Now, several supermarket chains have set up special hours for seniors and those with underlying health conditions. Veteran journalist John Schwartz joked that he was bummed he wasn’t carded upon arrival at a special early-morning entry to one grocery. I asked a cashier at another store on Sunday if the early crowd was nicer or ruder than the later customers. “Both,” she replied. (Mother Jones)
I’ll leave you with a bit of perspective: the light shining through ancient forests that have grown amid centuries of world crises. This image comes from Washington’s Olympic National Park, via the Interior Department’s Twitter feed. Remember, this land is your land. See you next week!
Rebecca Mehra speaking to CBS News affiliate KBNZCBS News/KBNZ
Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. See more editions and sign up here.
The woman in her 80s was holed up in her car for 45 minutes outside an Oregon supermarket, waiting for the right person.
She cracked the window when Rebecca Mehra approached on March 11. Almost in tears, the woman in the car told Mehra that she was terrified of catching the coronavirus, that she and her husband next to her had no family nearby—and asked if Mehra could spare them the risk of stepping outside by accepting cash to buy groceries for them.
Mehra took a $100 bill and a grocery list from the woman, got the groceries (canned goods, toilet paper), put them in the trunk, and returned the change.
“Frankly most people I know would have done the same thing I did. I was just in the right place at the right time,” said Mehra, who spoke to CBS News affiliate KBNZ after more than 11 million people shared her story. In the days since, severe restrictions on public gatherings have hit almost everyone and everywhere, and reports of selfless acts of support and community care have grown.
“I know it’s a time of hysteria and nerves, but offer to help anyone you can,” particularly elderly individuals and families, wrote Mehra, a professional runner. “Not everyone has people to turn to.”
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
Pitching in. After a nationwide run emptied the shelves of hand sanitizer, several distilleries realized they had the equipment and the alcohol to make their own. As long as they weren’t making health claims or selling it, they could help. “Ultimately, I’m part of the community. I want my friends and neighbors to be happy and healthy,” said Jon Poteet, of Shine Distillery and Grill in Portland, Oregon. “I want to be in a healthy community, and it feels good to be able to give back.” So Poteet is bottling and giving away hand sanitizer to customers, as is a distillery in Indianapolis, among others. “This is a time for all of us to come together and combine our focused efforts to get COVID-19 under control,” said Travis Barnes, of Indiana’s Hotel Tango Distillery. (KPTV)
The spirit of service. When coronavirus concerns prompted the cancellation of a Minnesota bar mitzvah over the weekend, the family decided to honor its agreement with a small Hmong caterer. Instead of a big party, the family “delivered the food to friends in quarantine and sent pans home with others,” wrote Carin Mrotz, executive director of Jewish Community Action in St. Paul, Minnesota. More than half a million people liked Mrotz’s tweet, with many praising the humanity of the decision. “Am not Jewish,” wrote Ian Murphy, “but this makes me proud to be human. Mazel tov (hopefully appropriate)!” Several respondents also asked for more details on Union Hmong Kitchen, the caterer that has already been featured by NPR. “I will attest to the deliciousness,” Mrotz wrote. (Twitter)
Recharge salutes: Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, beginning a series of “Songs of Comfort” to help people at this time; singer and actor Laura Benanti, who encouraged high schoolers to send videos of themselves singing their musical productions that have been canceled because of the pandemic; and the people of hard-hit Italy, shut in their homes but showing their solidarity by singing from the balconies in Siena, in Rome, in Florence, and elsewhere.
I’ll leave you with this video of Italian tenor Maurizio Marchini, who has serenaded Florence with Puccini’s Nessun Dorma. Please stay as safe and healthy as you can, and share your stories with us. Are you helping?
Screenshot of a WFMZ-TV video of 98-year-old Ronnie BackenstoeWFMZ-TV
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When Ronnie Backenstoe started selling Girl Scout cookies in the 1930s, they came in just three varieties and cost about 15 cents a box.
At 98, Ronnie—a scout leader and volunteer—says she’s happiest selling Girl Scout cookies alongside younger scouts, wearing her olive-green beret. But don’t be fooled—beyond her love and craving for cookies is a challenging, energetic teacher who has mentored, inspired, and motivated scouts worldwide, imparting words of wisdom and life lessons in the face of challenges across communities and generations, eastern Pennsylvania’s WFMZ reports.
The 98-year-old’s fellow scouts seek out Ronnie’s help and spirit of exploration that’s led scouts with her to Jamaica and Switzerland. “Her stamina, her energy, her mind, she’s nonstop,” said troop leader Barbara Allen Perelli.
At a time of coronavirus concerns and market plunges, Recharge cheers a scout who has stayed steady and focused on developing women leaders throughout the Great Depression, World War II, the threat of nuclear war, the wake of 9/11, ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and countless other challenges that test the core of a community’s ability to come together.
So, you’re wondering: What’s Ronnie’s favorite? Peanut butter, she announces without hesitation. Of those early flavors, Southern Living lists Sandwich (a cream-filled cookie), Shortbread, and Recharge’s favorite, Thin Mints (formerly known as Chocolate Mints and Cooky-Mint).
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
A voice of reason. Seventh grade teacher Angela Sheffield had a wakeup call about COVID-19 in early February, when a student coughed and another yelled, “Coronavirus! We’re all going to die!” At that moment, Sheffield, a teacher for 27 years, knew she had another assignment: Provide accurate information about the outbreak to her young students. “Misinformation can lead to stress, and stress can make it harder for children to learn,” the Indiana teacher says. She developed a chart to students about what we know, told them about the importance of challenging stereotypes and refraining from derogatory comments and conclusions. She was transparent and honest about her fears—that the school might close if the outbreak hit their community. After every statement, she reassured students that, for now, they were going to carry on as usual, and she repeated: Education is the key. (Chalkbeat)
Helping others. Eric and Erica Threlkeld don’t have diabetes, but they have traveled abroad to get low-cost insulin for Americans in dire need. Eric’s first trip to Mexico was for a family with a 9-year-old boy whose medications cost $550 a month; Eric got it for one-tenth that price. Since then, the Utah couple has made more trips and established a charity to help. “People in our country are being held hostage over the high price of insulin and other medications,” Eric says. “If nothing else, we’re hoping that by starting the foundation, we’ll be bringing some awareness for change.” (Washington Post)
He found him in the kitchen. Filmmaker Doug Roland needed an actor who is both deaf and blind for his short film and wanted someone with a mischievous sense of humor. He interviewed about a dozen prospective actors at a Long Island center for people with disabilities when someone suggested he look in the kitchen. Robert Tarango, 55, who has worked there for years, was perfect for Feeling Through, the 18-minute film released late last year, and the director and actor have given talks after showings. The effusive, charismatic Tarango, who lost his sight in his 20s from a rare genetic condition, grew up idolizing John Wayne and Henry Fonda. Now, decades later, he is challenging himself in this new direction. “Maybe,” Tarango says, “I could transition to become an actor” fulltime. (New York Times)
I’ll leave you with this blue view of Oregon’s Crater Lake National Park, via the Interior Department Twitter feed. Have a great week ahead!
Screenshot of a PBS News Hour video of unhoused choir members practicing in DallasPBS News Hour
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Choir members get a snack and $2 for their time. But they also get something else during their weekly rehearsals: reinforcement and respect.
The Dallas Street Choir formed with the goal of busting stereotypes and misperceptions about people forced to live in shelters or on the streets. Members include workers who can’t afford rent, and people who lost their homes under mountains of medical debt, or evicted after losing their jobs.
In the choir, they sing as one. They’ve played in concerts throughout Dallas and have performed at New York’s Carnegie Hall. On this Wednesday morning inside a day shelter, their sleeping bags and packs nearby, the choir members sang songs such as Paul Simon’s “Gone at Last.”
“My prayers goes out to those people out there on the streets, because it hurt me deep down inside,” one vocalist, 55-year-old Darrell Payne, told PBS NewsHour. The choir, he said, “makes me stronger, makes my voice stronger.”
Dallas, which is seeing increased homelessness as it booms, is one of 12 cities with musical programs for people without homes. The choir’s founder, Jonathan Palant, a professor and conductor of choirs in the region, has helped some 2,000 Dallas Street Choir singers over the past five years. “What we offer through music is personal integrity,” he said. “You may not have four walls, but our singers will tell you, four walls, a home doesn’t make.”
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
Be prepared. Racism blocked Herman Flora’s drive to reach the pinnacle of Scouting at a period of historically heightened segregation. Now 90, he was watching his grandson become an Eagle Scout when Herman got a surprise: special recognition for his own work more than seven decades ago. He says Scouting prepared him for a future to defend his nation, attend Howard University, and succeed in Washington real estate. “It is,” he said, “what made me what I am.” (Washington Post)
Saving wallabies. Chris Pryor has helped grow the population of brush-tailed rock-wallabies in Australia’s Kangaroo Valley. Most survived the horrific bushfires that swept parts of the country recently. Pryor’s home didn’t, but she’s thinking of others while she, with a strong support group, works to restore her house. “It’s just stuff,” she says in the ashes of her kitchen. “You can replace things.” (Christian Science Monitor)
What can’t libraries do? Public libraries have grown to serve as job centers, cafes, and places to earn GEDs, learn English and other languages, and get your taxes done. Now Boston libraries are joining those in Chicago and New York as places considering the construction of adjoining apartments to ease a housing crunch. The Boston Public Library is weighing whether to add housing to four of its 25 neighborhood branches. (WGBH.org)
Inspired. First grade teacher LaToya McGriff still remembers her excitement when a teacher of hers dressed up as a storybook character for a class. For Black History Month, McGriff wanted to do more than that: She wanted her Virginia students to see historical figures like themselves every day—and learn how Black pioneers and trailblazers made a mark. McGriff said her interactive lessons have stirred curiosity among her students—about history and themselves. (CBS News)
I’ll leave you with this golden view of California’s Point Reyes National Park, via the Interior Department Twitter feed. Have a great week ahead!
9-year-old Bellen WoodardCourtesy Tosha Woodard via Theresa Vargas/Washington Post
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Bellen Woodard was the only Black girl in her third grade class in a Virginia school. “My friends were asking for the ‘skin color’ crayon,” she said, knowing what that meant, what it implied—and what it didn’t.
After talking with her mom later that day, Bellen came up with a response other than handing over a peach-color crayon. “I think I just want to ask them what color they want because it could be any number of beautiful colors,” 9-year-old Bellen, now in fourth grade, recounted to the Washington Post’s Theresa Vargas.
Bellen gave that answer to her classmates. And her teacher did, too. Soon her entire class came around to change not just their speech, but their assumptions and views. That quick sign of recognition inspired Bellen to come up with a project to help other kids challenge unexamined attitudes: “More Than Peach,” her new project, donates kits to students with a note from her, a drawing pad, and crayons or colored pencils that include, among many, “apricot,” “burnt sienna,” and “mahogany.”
Donations and offers of help are coming in from all over the country to her “More Than Peach” website. “It’s been crazy,” her mom says. “They just come all day.” The Virginia Museum of History and Culture asked if it could add one of Bellen’s kits to its collection.
Bellen said she’d first seen more inclusive crayons in second grade but hadn’t thought much of them. “Now, they are more than just a pack of crayons,” she said. “Now, they are a kind of change.”
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
R.I.P. She was an American hero, NASA’s administrator said. But before the 2017 movie Hidden Figures, few Americans knew about NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, who died Monday at age 101. Johnson, who broke racial barriers at NASA, hand-calculated America’s first missions with astronauts and helped bring the stricken Apollo 13 back home. How did she do it? “I didn’t allow their side-eyes or annoyed looks to intimidate or stop me…If I encountered something I didn’t understand, I’d just ask,” Johnson wrote in her autobiography, Reaching for the Moon. (NBC News)
Helping a parent get home. Mike Good had a nightmare travel day. He was stuck in the last row of a plane delayed by storms and wouldn’t be arriving home in Nashville until his father-daughter dance with his twin girls was due to begin. But a flight attendant’s announcement about his circumstances prompted the rarest thing from passengers—they remained in their seats while he sprinted out first. “I grabbed my bag, ran down the aisle, and thanked everybody. I was wishing everyone a happy Valentine’s Day as I ran down the aisle,” Good said. He got there only 50 minutes late and quickly joined his daughters and wife. (People)
Give Paris one more chance. Anne Hidalgo wants to make France’s capital better. The Paris mayor knows her constituents want to live in dignity and work in decent conditions, get provisions easily and have access to education and leisure. Hidalgo hopes to turn Paris into a “15-minute city” for residents, providing what they need within a 15-minute walk or bike ride from their homes. Sounds like a worthy aspiration for other cities I know. (City Lab)
Recharge salutes: Longtime neonatal nurse Lissa McGowan, who was treating young Zayne Caldwell when she learned she’d also treated Zayne’s dad, David Caldwell, in the same New Jersey hospital three decades ago; and Florida’s Miami-Dade County, which renamed its stretch of Dixie Highway to honor Harriet Tubman. “It’s never too late to do the right thing,” Commissioner Rebeca Sosa told the Miami Herald. Lastly, Parker the Snow Dog, a 3-year-old Bernese mountain dog, was unanimously voted by a public board to be honorary mayor of Georgetown, Colorado.
I’ll leave you with this image from Arizona’s Horseshoe Bend, suggested by reader Robin Baker Barr. This is from colleague Kevin Drum, and it’s pretty impressive. Have a great week ahead.
Screenshot of a high school protest after a teacher allegedly told a US-born Mexican American student to “go back to [her] country"@kylehillman/Twitter
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“Go back to your country,” a Chicago high school teacher allegedly told a 17-year-old Mexican American student, who was born in the United States, after the student and her classmate refused to stand for the national anthem. The students said they were exercising their rights—and expressing their beliefs in free speech.
The second student, 18, said the teacher told her she had no respect for those who’d given their lives for this country (and inquired if she was getting free lunches).
After word spread last Wednesday, students at the school, which is predominantly Latino and Black, held a sit-in (captured on video) and demanded the teacher be fired. The next day, the school said he was removed from the classroom and told to remain home with pay until an investigation was completed. The alleged comments were “unacceptable language that violated the district’s anti-discrimination policy,” a school spokesperson said.
The 17-year-old student said she felt the teacher had racially profiled her, and said the teacher’s personal politics got in the way of his job. The other student said the teacher approached the students while “we were silently exercising our rights, our beliefs, and our opinion.” The school principal said a group of students had raised previous questions about the same teacher’s behavior, which will be investigated as well. The teachers union had no comment on the case.
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
Enlightening a community. For 9-year-old Anmol, the teasing began in kindergarten. “Tomato head,” they called him. Coming home from school, he asked his mom, Sukhvir Kaur, “Do I look American?” The target of the teasing, Anmol said, was the turban, or patka, the head covering that members of the Sikh faith wear. It symbolizes equality by democratizing a style of headwear traditionally worn only by India’s elites. Anmol didn’t get a chance to tell that story while he was teased at school in Visalia, California, but he did get to share it for a PBS public service announcement, which is being broadcast throughout the region. The exposure has bolstered Anmol. “It’s great,” his mother said, “to see my shy, quiet kid become more confident.” A reader response from @JoannSarcinella: “Anmol you do look American. American to me…are many beautiful shades, ethnicity, cultures, languages, religions, foods, all in this amazing pot of soup. We are all diff but the same. We are one people and together we make America one of a kind. I hope you see this.” (Fresno Bee)
The possibility of joy. It took 50 straight days of running for Kayla Williams to begin to feel better, and to realize that what she’d felt for years was more than blue. The former Army sergeant was working a high-stress job, raising kids, and dedicating herself to her husband, who’d sustained a traumatic brain injury in Iraq and needed treatment for symptoms of PTSD. Finally, Williams realized she needed help, too. “In my 40s,” Williams writes, “at last I am open to the possibility of living a life of joy.” (The War Horse)
Gratitude: She stopped at the police station and dropped off baked goods—and this note: “I went to detox the next day and haven’t used since,” she wrote. “Due to you guys saving my life through CPR, and Narcan, I got my life back.” That meant holding down a steady job and regaining custody of her daughter, said the woman, who police did not identify. A lieutenant for the Natick, Massachusetts, Police Department, Cara Rossi, said the gesture touched the officers deeply. (MetroWest Daily News)
Recharge salutes: Taxi driver Rajbir Singh, who intervened to stop a 92-year-old California woman from being scammed out of $25,000; the state of Florida, which has removed guns from the hands of hundreds of high-risk people under a law passed after the Parkland school massacre; and members of North Dakota’s Native American population, who won a settlement after years of fighting that would allow many to vote. The state had passed a voter ID bill that required a form of identification many Native Americans did not have.
I’ll leave you with this quote from columnist and author Connie Schultz: “Gentle courage is the strongest, because it is one’s essential nature, needing no reason to prove itself.” And here’s a majestic sunset from Big Bend National Park in Texas, via the Interior Department’s Twitter feed.
Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. See more editions and sign up here.
Their opponents are in gym shorts and jerseys on the court. The Salam Stars, in long-sleeve shirts, sweatpants, and hijabs, huddle and stretch before taking their positions. “Sometimes we see [our opponents] laughing” at us, says Jumana Badwan, captain of the Stars, the girls basketball team at an Islamic academy in Milwaukee. “Sometimes we see them whispering to each other [about us].”
The Stars have found ways to confront and see through the looks of suspicion and surprise from opponents: Last year the team finished 14–4. This year their goal is simply to play their hardest.
Badwan, a senior, tells Great Big Story that the team gains strength and solidarity from a disciplined coach, Kassidi Macak, who grew up five minutes from the school but had no connection with the Muslim community whose players she is training.
The history of exclusion and inclusion in basketball and sports broadly is never far from the mind of Macak, who doesn’t let up on her players. She challenges them on and off the court to play for more than points: The students team up to break boundaries in basketball, but also dispel myths and challenge assumptions about what Muslim girls and women—in hijabs or not—are setting out to tackle.
“We’re a small family, and we take on any task together,” Macak says. “We support each other.”
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
Shutting down poison. Scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency wanted to ban a neurotoxic pesticide suspected of causing lower birth weights, lower IQ, and attention deficit disorder. Higher-ups at the EPA, however, were fine with chlorpyrifos, although California, Hawaii, and New York banned it. Now, the pesticide’s biggest US supplier, Corteva, has decided it will stop making it. Corteva’s decision to halt pesticide sales came on the same day that California’s ban on the chemical took effect. “Due to this reduced demand,” the company announced, “Corteva has made the strategic business decision to phase out our production of chlorpyrifos in 2020.” Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the move “a victory for our kids, farmworkers, and rural communities nationwide.” (Mother Jones)
Stopping Russian hackers. Estonia, right on Russia’s border, could teach the United States a thing or two about stopping Kremlin disinformation. Russia launched cyberattacks on its neighbor in 2007, but Estonians fought back. Now there’s a growing nationwide volunteer organization devoted to stopping Vladimir Putin’s campaigns of disinformation and deception—and it would be willing to help the United States, if Americans wanted. “We decided we just have to become much more resilient, and make sure, in case something similar happens again, we will be ready,” says Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar, Estonia’s ambassador at large for cyberdiplomacy. (Christian Science Monitor)
Equal time. Finland has decided: seven months of paid family leave for each parent. The decision was made by 34-year-old Prime Minister Sanna Marin and her four other governing coalition parties, all led by women. A single parent will have access to the seven-month allowance for both parents. The decision was lauded inside and outside the country. That’s “what happens when women lead politics,” NPR’s Diaa Hadid tweeted. The goal is to promote gender equality and raise the birth rate. Last year, Finland had the fewest babies born since 1868, when a famine struck. (NPR)
Recharge salutes: The Kansas City Chiefs’ Derrick Nnadi, who made good on his promise to pay for 100 dog adoptions if his team won the Super Bowl; and 91-year-old scientist Dr. Ananda Prasad, who challenged conventional wisdom to show that zinc could cut the duration of the common cold.
I’ll leave you with a big welcome back to NASA’s Christina H. Koch, who set a women’s astronaut record of 328 consecutive days in orbit. Have a great week ahead!
Rafael Ruiz, exonerated of a rape charge that sent him to prison for 25 years, with his lawyer from the Innocence ProjectBebeto Matthews/AP
Welcome to Recharge, a weekly newsletter full of stories that will energize your inner hellraiser. See more editions and sign up here.
He could have gotten out of prison years earlier. But he wouldn’t take a plea—because he didn’t do the crime.
Last week, after 25 years behind bars and 10 more years outside of prison shadowed by his unjust “record,” a judge in New York vacated Rafael Ruiz’s rape conviction in light of DNA evidence exonerating him. Ruiz had been convicted despite the fact that he did not match the description of the attacker.
If he would have pleaded to a lesser charge, he would have been out in three years, he was told. That’s the coercive calculation that leaves many innocent people with a criminal record, unable to vote in many cases, and tarnished as they search for jobs.
“I was thinking about my freedom all the time I was in there, the best way I could,” Ruiz said. “I didn’t want to take no deal, because I’m not a criminal. I’m glad I ain’t took no bid, I’m glad I tried to prove my innocence, I’m glad people came along and helped me.”
To Ruiz’s sister, Maria, the exoneration means the two of them can “walk together with no shame in the street now. We’re able to go to the beach and show our face. We don’t have to hide under dark glasses and big umbrellas.” (NY Daily News)
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
Improving the United States, one building at a time. John Henry Boalt called Chinese people unassimilable liars, murderers, and misogynists. He pushed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first US immigration ban on a specific group of people. Last Thursday, after protests at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt’s name was taken off a law school building. For student Ryan Sun, the removal couldn’t have happened too soon. Walking into the building without Boalt’s name, Sun said, gave him “a sense of closure.” (Los Angeles Times)
An angel, punished. Emily James was a senior official at a US Bank call center. On Christmas Eve, a caller from a nearby gas station said he’d deposited money in his account but couldn’t draw on it to pay for gas or Christmas presents for his two kids. James checked; he was right. She couldn’t fix the problem immediately, but she got permission from her boss to take a break, drove over, and gave him $20 of her own money. It was the kind of thing you see on bank commercials about employees going the extra mile. But US Bank fired James. And her boss, too. James has been reduced to selling her blood plasma for money. Three articles from the Oregonian and a New York Times column by Nick Kristof prompted a widespread outcry—and Saturday night calls from the bank’s CEO to James and Kristof. The CEO accepted responsibility for what went wrong, telling Kristof, “I will fix this.” Stay tuned. (New York Times)
Respecting the heart. For nearly half of his life, Mike Cohen had been plagued by cancer, a heart attack, and chronic heart failure. Then, in February 2018, he got a new heart, one that had belonged to James Mazzuchelli, a Navy flight surgeon who’d died in a helicopter accident. Mike got stronger in cardiac rehab after the surgery, developed a fondness for pizza, and hatched a bold plan: He would bike cross-country, from San Diego to Jacksonville, to pay his respects at the grave of his heart donor. He wrote to James’ mom, Christine Cheers, who met Mike at the gravesite when he pedaled in. She hugged Mike. And got a stethoscope to hear his heart, James’ heart. (Bicycling)
I’ll leave you with a stunning sunset over Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park via the Interior Department’s Twitter feed. Have a great week ahead!
An Oakland, California, tent encampment similar to the one at 37th and Martin Luther King Jr. WayJane Tyska/Digital First Media/The East Bay Times via Getty
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For a decade, she lived two doors down from a vacant lot that was overgrown and ignored. One day in August, Stefani Echeverría-Fenn pushed through a hole in the chain-link fence and started sweeping, clearing the brambles, and pitching a tent. Since then, the lot has become a welcoming community for people priced out of housing, or who could never afford it to begin with, in Oakland, California.
Echeverría-Fenn and other neighbors with homes take out the trash, make sure the 21-person area has clean water, and empty the lot’s toilets in their own apartments. The camp also has a pump sink and a solar shower.
The site, known as 37MLK (it’s on the corner of 37th and Martin Luther King Jr. Way) has become a model for communities of people with or without housing to come together and improve conditions and care for unhoused families in the city.
“There are people who are living with their adult kids here,” Echeverría-Fenn says. “There are people who have their younger kids visit them here, and it doesn’t feel like a depressing sad place the way that other encampments do.” (Guardian)
Here are more Recharge stories to get you through the week:
Standing up for decency. The customer was spewing racist, anti-Muslim language in an Applebee’s restaurant. Manager Amanda Breaud asked him to leave. Then, Breaud said, her boss chastised her—and she was eventually fired. Other customers (and readers who have read Breaud’s story) have rallied to her defense. One left a note on a receipt that read: “To the Manager — Thank you for standing up to hate + Racism. Thank you for your service.” Breaud, who has filed suit to get her job back, told the Asbury Park Press she hopes her actions help others fight bigotry. “I’m a gay woman and I’ve been at the bar before or out in public and had people say things about me,” she said. “A lot of my life I wish that someone would have stood up for me. Now that I’m able to stand up for myself, I want to stand up for other people.” (NBC News)
Restoring history. There are more than 95,000 national historic sites. Only about 2 percent are devoted to African American history and culture, reports the New Yorker’s Casey Cep. For generations, resources weren’t devoted to preserving these spaces, says poet and Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander, and people of color have had “to carry around knowledge and stories in our bodies.” After the 2017 attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, by white supremacists, a new fund was established to empower historians and archeologists to more clearly mark and honor these spaces. (New Yorker)
Go libraries! What’s the most common cultural pursuit in the United States? Going to the library, by a 2-to-1 margin over things like going to a movie theater or attending a sporting event, according to a Gallup poll. Women go to the library about twice as much as men do, and people from 18 to 29 even more so. Since a similar 2001 survey, there have been small increases in the percentages in Americans going to a museum, a live music or theatrical event, or a national or historic park. (Gallup)
Recharge salutes:Fauzia Lala, a black belt in tae kwan do, who, after she faced harassment, began teaching self-defense to other Muslim women in Washington state; Terrance Lewis of Philadelphia, exonerated after 21 years in prison, who is trying to free others wrongly behind bars; Scotland, whose power grid is on track to be run 100 percent by renewable energy this year.
eI’ll leave you with the northern lights over Alaska’s White Mountains National Recreation Area, via the Interior Department’s Twitter feed. Have a great week ahead!
Warm coat ☑️ Hot soup ☑️ Sense of wonder ☑️
It’s always a thrill to see the Northern Lights shimmer & dance over public lands on clear, winter nights. Pic at White Mountains National Recreation Area #Alaska@BLMAlaskapic.twitter.com/V6LxG0VOrw
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