A Black Lives Matter protest more accessible to those in the disabled community is being organized for next Friday in Portsmouth.
Despite President Trump’s recent about-face from skepticism to support of mask-wearing as a means to lessen the risk of Coronavirus infection, there are undoubtedly tens of millions of Americans, including, perhaps many New Hampshire citizens, who believe that federal and state orders requiring them to change their behavior significantly to lessen Coronavirus risks are unconstitutional.
As I’ve written in previous columns, when the Post-Coronavirus Era begins—hopefully in early or mid-2021—many types of jobs will be in great demand because of federal laws and programs then in effect. Furthermore, long-term planning about these jobs may be important for many New Hampshire business people even now.
To stop the spread of the coronavirus, museums, like many other cultural institutions, extinguished the lights in mid-March. Some in New Hampshire opened cautiously this month, with limitations. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, curators and educators are ramping up programs to keep members and visitors engaged online and soften the financial blow from the pandemic’s blunt arrival.
(The Currier Museum in Manchester prepares to open its doors to the general public on August 20 with timed ticketing and strict safety protocols. (Courtesy Currier))
Sarah Letendre was arrested on July 11 following a reported domestic violence incident at her Rollinsford home with her husband, R.J. Letendre, a Dover police officer. She was later charged with violating a protective order in the case. She allegedly fled from police, but turned herself in on Thursday after Rollinsford police obtained an arrest warrant.
However, she has since spoken out about the case on Facebook.
(Dozens of people marched from Henry Law Park in Dover to the police station to protest Sarah Letendre’s arrest. Photo By Damien Fisher, Granite State News Collaborative)
Eva Castillo recibe con regularidad llamadas de inmigrantes locales que le piden llamar a la policía por ellos.
Castillo, una inmigrante de Venezuela, ha trabajado por años para mejorar la relación entre la población inmigrante de New Hampshire y la policía. Pero, muchos de ellos, incluyéndola, aun le temen a la policía.
Eva Castillo has worked with Nashua and Manchester police departments to implement policies against asking for immigration status upon traffic stops or arrests, but those policies vary widely across New Hampshire communities. Many immigrants fear that they could be profiled and asked for immigration status upon calls to the police for help or routine stops, actions that could lead to detainment and deportation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Eva Castillo/Inklink File Photo)
Protests over George Floyd’s killing at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis amplified efforts to discuss racism in the classroom. However, the journey for educators to understand how racist systems perpetuate inequities began long before multicultural crowds rallied in the streets to support the Black Lives Matters movement. Kyra Dulmage is a fifth grade teacher at Oyster River Middle School (ORMS) in the Durham region, and a member of the newly-formed Seacoast Educators for Equity (SEE), whose mission is to create more inclusive versions of history.
While coronavirus is the public health issue that’s most concerning for many New Hampshire residents, the state is quietly experiencing an outbreak of other viruses, including the sexually-transmitted infections syphilis and gonorrhea. To help combat that and overcome the fact that fewer people are coming to health clinics for STI testing during the pandemic, Planned Parenthood of Northern New England has started offering at-home STI testing.
With an abbreviated timeline that prevented further deliberation, the Legislature combined legislation left on the agenda since March and sent both single-issue and omnibus bills to Governor Sununu. The Senate compiled both bills originating in the Senate and the House into larger bill packages, and the House’s schedule only permitted concurrence or rejection of bills relayed to it by the Senate, rather than an amendment process through Committees of Conference. The result was a series of bills covering a wide variety of topics, including future COVID-19 vaccines, expanded dental benefits for Medicaid recipients, raising the minimum wage, unemployment compensation for COVID-19-related reasons, paid family and medical leave, protections for renters behind on payments during the pandemic, telehealth services, New Hampshire Employment Security’s computer systems, and importation of prescription drugs from Canada.
As a tragic result of the Coronavirus, tens of millions of Americans, including many New Hampshire citizens, will be unemployed when the Post-Coronavirus Era begins, and their only means of survival will be the trillions of dollars that the federal government will borrow to provide them with survival distributions.
MIS-C was first reported in May in New York City, and there is still little known about the full scope of the disorder that strikes children, but it has been linked to COVID-19 and displays symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease -- a rare pediatric inflammatory disease that can lead to toxic shock and coronary-artery aneurysms, according to a June 29 study from the The New England Journal of Medicine.
Another teacher interviewed for this story, who wished to be anonymous, said he, too, had trouble covering the material he normally covers in his classes. He said the material he covered wasn’t even close to what guidelines suggested.
He also said he did a lot of worrying about his students who had tough lives at home. He added many of them didn’t have the necessary resources, including WiFi, printers or a basic grasp of the technology they were being asked to use with no previous training.
The Civil Rights Unit, currently staffed by one full-time attorney, has brought a total of five cases to litigation since it began in December 2017. Assistant Attorney General Sean Locke, the current head of the unit, said that breaks down to one case in 2017, two in 2018, two in 2019, and none yet in 2020. The number of cases brought to court don’t show the full picture, however. Locke said that in 2018 the unit dealt with 40 complaints, resulting in 19 formal reviews being opened. The reviews involve speaking to witnesses, reviewing reports and conducting investigations.
The dynamics of two-parent households have shifted dramatically in the last 20 to 30 years, with men and women contributing income more equally, says Beth Humberd, an assistant professor and expert in gender and the workplace at UMass Lowell's Manning School of Business. Then the pandemic hit. Support structures like daycares, summer camps and afterschool programs collapsed, potentially dissolving the strides women made.
