Fenton’s Monthly Reads: May 2020
Even after a couple of months of social distancing and working from home, COVID-19 continues to lead in headlines as we all attempt to wrap our minds around this ongoing crisis. At Fenton, we remain diligent in helping our clients drive progress and respond to the day-to-day changes of life and work during this pandemic. (For more on this read: Progress During A Pandemic)
We still recognize what a privilege it is to continue to do the work we do despite the massive impact of this virus both locally and globally. We’re proud to do our small part in standing with those in our communities this pandemic will disproportionately impact.
Fenton’s Reading List this month takes another look at COVID-19 through a social justice lens to help us bear witness to the challenges different communities face during this time, how things are already changing (trending good or bad), and what we might be able to do to help institute longstanding change moving forward.
- Could coronavirus help Amazon workers unionize? Warehouse employees last month staged a walkout in Michigan to demand safer working conditions at their facility. So did workers in New York, Illinois and Minnesota.
By Nandita Bose and Krystal Hu, Reuters - How to Make Black Lives Matter During COVID-19. As the coronavirus exacerbates longstanding racial health disparities, researchers, local governments, and philanthropists are looking to data to understand and mitigate its impact.
By Frieda Wiley, Yes! - Coronavirus is not just a health crisis — it’s an environmental justice crisis. As skyrocketing unemployment is predicted to increase poverty rates and widen racial disparities, these same communities find themselves in the crosshairs of COVID-19
By Yvette Cabrera, Grist - A New Normal? Amid COVID-19, Criminal Justice Reform Funders Dare to Hope. Consequences for health and economic well-being follow familiar fault lines: race, income, age, geography. And while those lines often intersect, there are few places where they come together quite as forcefully as in the criminal justice system.
By Philip Rojc, Inside Philanthropy - What Women Dying In Prison From COVID-19 Tell Us About Female Incarceration. Fatal victims illuminate women’s unique problems in prison, and the all-too-common ways they get there in the first place.
By Cary Aspinwall, Keri Blakinger and Joseph Neff, The Marshall Project - This Neighborhood Stifled Gangs and Guns. Then a New Killer Moved In. Shootings had dropped sharply in South Jamaica, Queens, after local leaders engineered a cease-fire. But there is no negotiating with a virus.
By Edgar Sandoval, The New York Times - In these states, pandemic crisis response includes attempts to stop abortion. Several states have tried to ban abortions as part of emergency orders against elective medical procedures and nonessential businesses.
By Dan Keating, Lauren Tierney and Tim Meko, Washington Post - Coronavirus May Reshape Who Votes And How In The 2020 Election. Who does and doesn’t get to vote in November could rest on how states, political parties and the federal government respond to the coronavirus threat to U.S. elections.
By Pam Fessler, NPR - Coronavirus pandemic showed importance of digital access for people with disabilities. Since authoring the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) landmark legislation almost 30 years ago, the urgent need for accessibility has expanded to include not just the physical world, but also the digital one.
By Tony Coelho, San Francisco Chronicle - Video conferencing is a secret equalizer for women. Even more powerful is the effect that video conferencing has on a typically thorny feature of the modern business meeting: gender roles.
By Grace Chen, Quartz at Work