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Are you unhappy about the world we live in? Senator Bernie Sanders wants you to know that your feelings are valid. In his new book, It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism, he discusses what is wrong with the US political system and what movements must do to change it.

Writing a book in plain terms about the pitfalls of political economy is no easy task. But anyone who has heard Sanders speak will not be surprised by the clarity of the book’s vision. Covering everything from the causes of economic hardship to the need for socialized systems to the logjams of the legislative process and the struggle for a more equitable world, It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism delivers a necessary message to the American people: capitalism is the problem, and building a working-class movement is the solution.

Economic rights are human rights

It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism starts with a plain fact: capitalism is an economic and political system designed to benefit the wealthy few and oppress the vast majority. As such, we cannot take any of our rights—be it freedom, democracy, or survival—at face value. The same oligarchs who control financial markets buy up mass media and influence political decisions consistently in their own interest. Our political reality, from the news we digest to the candidates we see on the ballot, is limited by what they allow. The one percent works hard, Bernie says, “to wield that power to benefit their interest at the expense of working families.”

The book makes the case for why people feel defeated rather than blaming them for being politically alienated. Living in a world run by the one percent makes everyone else miserable. Wages have stagnated for the past 50 years, while wealth inequality has reached unprecedented levels. Healthcare, education, and housing have all become unaffordable. As public policy has done less and less to mitigate the suffering of millions, faith in the government has declined.

If it’s okay to be angry, it’s also okay to expect better from the government. The book strongly favors the idea that “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people” should guarantee certain political and civil rights. But the US is built on a legacy of denying such rights to people, whether by enslaving Black people, denying women the right to vote, or resisting gay marriage.

Economic rights are no different. Sanders makes it clear that the right to thrive is no less important than the right to vote. Anyone who is working from paycheck to paycheck just to put a roof over their heads or buy medicine is not “free” by any means. Quoting Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Sanders emphasizes that “true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.” Using stark statistics and bold imperatives, he shows that the pursuit of happiness means nothing in an economy where just three people own more wealth than the 165 million people that make up the bottom half of US society.

But he also offers a blueprint for how to guarantee livable wages, liberate students from a lifetime of debt, and transition energy systems away from fossil fuels. He insists that we cannot create a just world without a movement that fights for a government that represents everyone. To build such a movement, people must first believe that they deserve better—and understand why they don’t yet have it.

Breaking Free from Big Money

In this book and on both the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaign trails, Sanders has prioritized opening the political process up to working people. To counter the outsized political influence of lobbyists and the super-rich, Sanders built grassroots campaigns that did not accept money from super PACs or corporations. This way, everyday people knew that they had buy-in. The proof of this was in the receipts—the average donation to the 2020 Sanders campaign was just $27.

This most recent people-powered presidential campaign prioritized people’s perspectives and built an impressive ground game doing so, traveling around the country and talking to everyday folks about what change meant to them. “What impressed me most,” Sanders notes, “was the willingness of people, often perfect strangers, to open up about their lives and share their pain, their anxiety, and the frustrations they had been experiencing.” They spoke about their fears in the face of mounting medical bills, their worries about loved ones who had been taken by ICE, their difficulties surviving on a subminimum wage, and their outrage at underfunded schools and insurmountable student debt.

After Sanders swept Iowa and New Hampshire and national polls showed him consistently beating Trump, making him the clear front-runner in the Democratic primary, major media outlets began to report that the Democratic Party was getting nervous. But what was the party so afraid of? It wasn’t that the campaign’s prospects against the incumbent were weak or that its ideas were unpopular or divisive. “Let’s be honest,” Sanders explains. “What the establishment was anxious about was the fact that we were beginning to transform the Democratic Party from an election machine dominated by wealthy campaign contributors and corporate interests into a multiracial, multiethnic, urban and rural movement of the working class.”

On Super Tuesday, the Democratic Party closed its ranks. After the other candidates dropped out of the race to support Biden and the pandemic made rallies and door-to-door visits impossible, it became clear that it was time to suspend the Sanders’ campaign. In his virtual concession speech, Sanders explained to millions of viewers that the most important victory was that “we changed public consciousness.” Policies such as universal healthcare, free college, and climate action had become popular in the mainstream, and they would persist in the minds of millions.

The motto of the Sanders campaign, “Not Me, Us,” was designed to empower a movement beyond the power of any one presidential candidate. It led to the moderate and progressive wings of the party collaborating to craft the most progressive legislative platform in history, and it helped to channel progressive energy into electing hundreds of candidates, from Congress to city councils, across the country. The overall message was that political change is not about any one issue, nor is it realized by any one person.

The idea that political change is a collective endeavor persisted, Sanders says, following George Floyd’s murder in May of 2020, inspiring the largest protests in American history. In the early months of the pandemic, 26 million Americans mobilized against police brutality and systemic racism at a time when millions more were losing their jobs, and hundreds of thousands were dying. The causes and consequences of racial and economic inequality were on full display, making it clear that the state was treating Black and working-class people as disposable. Months of uprising and organizing led to movements—such as defunding the police and ending voter suppression—to defend multiracial democracy and redistribute resources.

Sanders also explains how unprecedented energy in the streets compounded a sense of urgency on Capitol Hill. To reinforce organizers’ efforts, Sanders attempted to raise taxes on the one percent, expand Medicare for all, and provide Americans with $2,000 direct payments. The book does a deep dive into how reconciliation bills, known as the American Rescue Plan and the Build Back Better Act, sought to mitigate the long-term structural issues that had made people “disillusioned and disgusted” with US democracy, connecting people’s desire for social transformation with the challenging process of legislative action in the current political system.

It might seem counterintuitive to tell stories about political failure as proof of possibility. But It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism is relentless in its commitment to showing just how hard corporate interests and the political elite work to widen the gap between what people need and what the government provides. Sanders outlines how political fights that might seem wonky to the public, like the unsuccessful fight to increase the minimum wage, make it clear that the problems that ordinary Americans face are deliberately created and worsened by the current political system. From pension cuts to the climate crisis, from predatory loans to failing schools, Sanders shows that the process is designed to fail working people—which means it needs to change.

Billionaires and Other Things That Shouldn’t Exist

There is strength in certainty. One of the strategies of It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism is to state the truth with no punches pulled. Chapter subheadings like “Billionaires Should Not Exist” and “We Should Listen to Nurses” put political positions in the most decisive terms. If we want to live in a just, equitable world, we need to put faith in strong principles and put power behind the US working class.

These chapters cover core elements of the New Deal-esque platform that Sanders has championed since his early days as a Vermont senator. It’s one thing to say that billionaires shouldn’t exist but quite another to back this statement up: at the onset of the pandemic, Sanders introduced the Make Billionaires Pay Act, which proposed a 60 percent tax on the wealth gained by almost 500 billionaires between March 2020 and January 2021. The book also examines alternative models, such as Scandinavia’s generous social safety nets, as examples of a more humane and functional economy.

One chapter on media takes on these issues at a meta-level. Media owners often dictate what television stations and newspapers cover or ignore. Unsurprisingly, these owners ensure that issues around wealth and power are left on the cutting room floor. “Without deep discussions and honest analyses of corporate power, it is extremely difficult for citizens to understand what goes on in the country and why. And it is almost impossible to know who should be held to account,” Sanders writes. It’s also impossible to know what could change.

It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism is not afraid to have these hard conversations that movements require. “Let’s talk about politics as a process that can make the lives of working people dramatically better—or dramatically worse.” Real political action does not consist of focus groups or polls. It entails conversations about “how the current economic system destroys the lives of countless Americans” and how to identify “the root causes of our problems.” Real political action means asking hard questions and proposing bold solutions.

And, as the book emphasizes, real political action means organizing. Every Progressive political gain, from civil rights to minimum wage, was a hard fight to win. Without regular people winning elections for school boards, forming unions, marching in the streets, and building community organizations, real change cannot happen.

The book’s last chapter outlines core demands for a better democracy: get money out of politics, guarantee voting rights, abolish the electoral college, break up monopolies, save the planet, revitalize American media, and more. It also glosses over the reactionary messages that the Right uses to exploit division and resentment, like blaming immigrants or teachers for problems created by corporations and the political elite. Movements need to know their enemy and counter efforts to exclude people from civil society by creating inclusive demands. And so, with every paragraph, the book provides an impassioned and detailed map of our current political reality.

Bernie Sanders’ book arrives three years into a pandemic, after over one million Americans have died, after millions more have marched in the streets for racial justice, and after many others have lost their jobs or are at risk of being evicted or defaulting on their student loans. It is exactly the right moment to harness anger for political good, push for systemic change, and demand the possible.

Overall, It’s OK To Be Angry About Capitalism is a handbook to being unafraid. When we are angry, the last thing we want to do is compromise. And Sanders says that we shouldn’t. “There is not a middle ground between the insatiable greed of uber-capitalism and a fair deal for the working class,” between “whether or not we save the planet or “whether or not we preserve our democracy.” By taking the side of the working class, the Democratic Party and the Progressive movement can build the power required to overcome our current crisis. The danger is not being too bold, says Sanders. It’s being too cautious. It’s time to pick a side.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

This is the third article from A Green New Deal on the Ground, a series produced with Climate and Community Project, a progressive climate policy think tank developing cutting-edge research at the climate and inequality nexus. The series examines how Green New Deal initiatives aim to create climate policy that positively impacts everyday life. It also explores the political coalitions and campaigns centering environmental justice and equity in decarbonization across the US and champions both broad-based movement building and institutional power to harness resources and push for change.

Last week, United Teachers Los Angeles, the union representing 35,000 members in the Los Angeles Unified School, went on a three-day strike in solidarity with SEIU Local 99, a union representing 30,000 striking bus drivers, teachers’ aides, custodial workers, and special staff. UTLA is in the middle of negotiating contracts, demanding not only raises but student counselors and school improvements for “proactive climate justice and mitigation.” The solidarity strike demonstrates a united front in Los Angeles committed to respect, dignity, and living wages to benefit not only education workers, but the students they serve.

Public school teachers are not just educators. They are a workforce uniquely positioned to participate in political struggles in and beyond their schools. From Columbus to Seattle, teachers have been striking in response to long-term frustrations over the state of their profession and to address long-term and emerging injustices, including, increasingly, those created by the climate crisis. Taking on issues from housing segregation to mental health services to sustainable transportation in their contract fights, these workers are showing that labor power is key to fighting for climate justice in communities.

As both public-sector and care workers, teachers are essential to society’s functioning. They are responsible for educating the generation that will be most affected by climate change. But they do so while bearing the brunt of education privatization and state austerity policies that have stripped down the public-sector workforce, with districts relying heavily on property taxes and local revenues to fund public schools—a model that disproportionately disadvantages schools in low-resource, high-need communities.

The Need for an Education Policy Overhaul

It’s no secret that the US K-12 public education system is underfunded, understaffed, and under-resourced. As the climate crisis intensifies, poorer districts are even less able to provide healthy learning and working environments. Disparities in the education system map clearly onto racial and class disparities. Poorer districts are less resourced, face tighter budgets, and struggle to provide high-quality education and healthy, sustainable living and working conditions. In such districts—many of which already experience environmental racism—students and workers must deal with inferior HVAC systems, leaded water in drinking fountains, and toxic fumes from diesel school buses.

Indeed, the entire system is in dire need of an overhaul. In 2021, the Government Accountability Office estimated that 54 percent of all public school districts required updates of at least two major systems, including HVAC systems, roofing, and structural integrity. One in four districts required updates of at least six systems for proper functioning.

A public education system that reduces historic inequities among students and transforms school buildings into healthy, safe places to learn, work, and play—paired with strong labor supports—would bring countless benefits to students and staff, from increased physical wellbeing to better educational outcomes. The Green New Deal for K-12 Public Schools outlines such a vision for a green, just education system, with recommendations for school-based policy and programs and federal investment in climate resiliency and decarbonization. With each degree of warming, the urgency of enacting this vision grows.

The Exodus of Teachers

Public discourse often blames teachers and their unions for the institutional-level failings of a defunded public education system. Along with poor pay and stressful working conditions, this has led to rising frustration and a burnout crisis, demonstrated by the mass exodus from the teaching profession over the past three years. According to a 2022 survey by the National Education Association, more than 55 percent of educators plan to quit their jobs earlier than anticipated. Other care sectors, like nursing and child care, have seen similar withdrawals from the workforce.

This “crisis of care” is often considered separately from the climate crisis. But teachers’ movements for climate and labor justice have shown that mass, worker-led, grassroots movements have the power to push society toward a just transition. Indeed, the workforce driving a green transition will include not only energy and industry workers but also care and social workers.

To accomplish large-scale projects, from retrofitting buildings to decarbonizing transportation, the US must create coordinated industrial policies and rebuild state capacity. State and municipal public workforces that provide essential services, from sanitation and transportation to housing and education, must be revived and included for that to happen equitably. Teachers are not only critical to implementing climate policy—they can drive transformative changes through their organized labor power.

A Green New Deal for Los Angeles Schools

In California, students and workers in public schools experience the effects of the climate crisis daily. In September 2022, California experienced a record-breaking heat wave that shortened school days and forced the cancellation of outdoor activities. In 2020, wildfires—the result of both forest mismanagement and climate-change induced changes to weather patterns—generated 120 times more pollution than ground transportation. Smoke from wildfires can be up to 10 times more toxic than other forms of air pollution and has been linked to increased asthma rates among children. Already, in California, asthma-related absences are the leading cause of missed school days, which are linked to poorer educational outcomes. California is one of six states where absences can reduce school funding—a policy that disadvantages districts with more low-income and unhoused students.

In addition to impacting the health and educational outcomes of students, intensified heat waves, droughts, and wildfires threaten social and mental wellbeing. A survey of Sonoma County students following the severe 2020 wildfire season found that 77 percent of students experienced stress, anxiety, and depression to be significant obstacles to learning. Repeated exposure to extreme weather events compounds post-traumatic stress, especially for younger students. Public schools need more funding, higher staffing levels, and clear plans to mitigate environmental health harms to adequately support students and workers through the climate crisis.

In Los Angeles, United Teachers of Los Angeles has embraced climate justice as a core workplace issue. Through years of organizing, the union has demonstrated the power of engaging a coalition of workers, students, community members, and community organizations to win broad demands outside of the traditional scope of bargaining. This “Bargaining for the Common Good” approach to organizing recognizes workers as whole people with needs outside of the workplace, and community members as participants in struggles for strong contracts. To ensure maximum leverage against the school district, UTLA engaged in a years-long process of preparation for strong contract campaigns that include demands for racial justice and environmental health.

In 2019, the union’s massive six-day strike led to a series of contract victories, including caps on and annual reductions in class sizes; funding for additional counselors, school nurses, and librarians; and increased green space on campuses. In 2020, the union began a process that led to a member-wide vote to remove the Los Angeles School Police Department—a force of 400 officers that was funded by $70 million of the district’s $7.9 billion budget—from public school campuses. Union leadership pushed for the divested funds to be used for mental-health support and counselors, leading to the creation of 800 new positions dedicated to promoting student wellbeing. This invest-divest formula exemplifies the ability of unions to negotiate economic arrangements that multiply benefits beyond membership and into the greater community.

Building on this successful platform of racial justice demands, UTLA and its allies are now demanding the district bargain over climate justice proposals as part of the union’s “Beyond Recovery” platform. Proposals for “Healthy Green Public Schools” reflect many of the goals of the Green New Deal for K-12 Public Schools, including green spaces and food gardens for students and community members; conversion of internal-combustion engine school bus fleets to electric buses; the “installation of solar panels, use of school land for collection of clean water, [and] creation of schools as cooling zones,” equipping schools to serve as resiliency centers during climate emergencies; and increasing the availability of healthy, sustainable food options to address food insecurity, nutrition, and worker-friendly food sources. The platform also includes funding for “climate coaches,” who would help support student mental health.

Currently, the district is refusing to bargain beyond economic contract articles, but with its 2019 campaign that won racial justice demands, UTLA has demonstrated the power of engaging a broad-based coalition in a labor struggle that is able to win community-level benefits.

Care Workers Are a Labor Vanguard 

Built on years of deep organizing, coalition building, and local development, campaigns to transform schools have advanced despite decades of austerity and legal limitations on public-sector union bargaining power. These have included limits on the right to strike, which have rendered workers unable to translate negotiating power into contract items at the bargaining table and worn workforces down to bare-boned capacity. In the 2018 wave of wildcat strikes in “right-to-work states,” where laws severely limit union activity, public educators wielded the strike’s power, even without legal authorization, to advance common-good causes.

Teachers’ unions nationwide have been championing the priorities of the Green New Deal through common-good bargaining and contract campaigns. The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU-AFT Local 1) has bargained for school transportation assistance for low-income and unhoused students, prioritization of repairs of existing buildings over new construction, and the removal of toxic pipes and paints from school buildings. After a 24 percent drop in Oklahoma’s per-student spending from 2008 and 2015, the Oklahoma Education Association, a statewide union, organized work actions demanding that the state increase funding for education via “a higher tax on oil production, gas production, and motor fuels to fund public education.” (At the time, Oklahoma’s state tax on fossil fuels was the lowest in the nation.)

Unions have power beyond contract campaigns, especially when they build working-class coalitions. For example, Climate Jobs Rhode Island, a coalition of climate and labor groups formed in 2021, has been pressuring state officials to include climate provisions in all new funding for public schools and for all public schools in the state to have 100 percent net-zero emissions by 2050, with demonstrated progress in the years leading up to 2030. The coalition also aims to bring clean energy heating systems to all public and publicly funded buildings by 2050. Other goals include expanding public transportation and offshore wind and solar power networks. This comprehensive campaign for a statewide just transition centers workers and communities most affected by the climate crisis.

The Green New Deal framework goes beyond top-down climate policy—it is a framework for a holistic transition to a just future that takes a full view of communities’ working and living conditions. School systems can continue to compound inequities, or they can invest in schools so that they function as centers of healthy, safe, and sustainable communities. Education workers are teaching us that the path to transformative change for everyone can begin right outside the classroom.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Globally, more than 55 million people live with dementia, and that number is expected to nearly triple by 2050. Based on current trends, researchers predict that the number of dementia cases will rise to over 150 million in less than 30 years.¹ And without intervention, health inequities will persist. It is estimated Black and Latinx communities will account for more than 40 percent of Americans with dementia by 2030.²

Globally, there are more than 55 million people living with dementia, and that number is expected to nearly triple by 2050.

For public health professionals, this raises the question: What can be done to mitigate the burden of dementia? It turns out, an answer may lie at the intersection of the arts and science and, in particular, with music.

Researchers and mental-health practitioners from Northwestern University, the Mayo Clinic, and the Institute of Therapy through the Arts have joined forces to examine how music-based therapy can improve social engagement among patients with dementia. Their findings demonstrate that music not only improves dementia patients’ social communication but can also reduce caregivers’ distress.

Relatedly, there is a growing ecosystem of interventions that utilize the healing power of music to improve community health, such as the work of the Black Music Therapy Network, Inc. This national network supports the health and wellbeing of Black communities through community-based, culturally sustaining music practices. BMTN uplifts and preserves Black Indigenous music-based healing methods to dismantle “relational and structural violence through the liberatory practice of music.”³

Given the rising prevalence of dementia, could these efforts serve as a premise for broad-scale investments in community-led interventions that utilize the power of music to support people who are impacted by cognitive impairment?

What is dementia?

Dementia is a syndrome that leads to a decline in cognitive health—that is, the ability to make decisions and to clearly think, learn, and remember.⁴ This decline disrupts daily life and profoundly impacts one’s mood, emotional control, behavior, and relationships.⁵

Various forms of dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease, can make it difficult to socially connect and maintain healthy relationships.⁶ Although a dementia diagnosis can certainly strengthen family ties, for many, it can lead to feelings of isolation, loss, and loneliness. A 2020 study surveyed adults living with dementia and found that more than one-third reported feeling lonely, particularly those who were experiencing depression and living alone.⁷

While dementia can lead to social isolation, the reverse is also true: recent studies suggest social isolation can lead to a 50 percent increase in the risk for dementia and other medical conditions.⁸ This data adds to the body of evidence that social connections, and the lack thereof, impact disease progression and quality of life. It also explains why we should invest in programs that reduce isolation and foster connection in communities.

Who is impacted by dementia?

Dementia mostly impacts older adults across all races and ethnicities, although some forms of dementia do impact younger people as well. In the US, one in 10 older Americans have dementia.⁹ This finding is based on a nationally representative study released in October 2022—the first of its kind in over 20 years. Led by neuropsychologist Dr. Jennifer Manly, a research team estimated the prevalence of dementia and mild cognitive impairment, providing insights on the societal burden associated with these health outcomes.

Dr. Manly’s research demonstrates people with dementia and mild cognitive impairments are likely to be older, and there is a disproportionate burden among older Black and Latinx adults who share a higher prevalence compared to other racialized groups. However, dementia is not a normal process of aging, nor is it a function of race, which is a social construct. Research studies provide a window into the underlying cause of these differences, and as Dr. Manly states, these particular findings are important:

Dementia research in general has largely focused on college-educated people who are racialized as white.…This study is representative of the population of older adults and includes groups that have been historically excluded from dementia research but are at higher risk of developing cognitive impairment because of structural racism and income inequality. If we’re interested in increasing brain health equity in later life, we need to know where we stand now and where to direct our resources.¹⁰

How can music help dementia patients?

For people living with dementia, a new program offers a supportive path to building social connections and reducing loneliness through music. Led by the Institute for Therapy through the Arts, Musical Bridges to Memory^TM is a 12-week program designed to bridge “relationships between people with dementia, their families, and the greater community who serve them through live musical interactions, training, and research in music-based approaches.”¹¹

MBM engages participants in weekly sessions facilitated by trained music therapists. These sessions include interactive performances and training in communication skills to improve caregivers’ relationships with loved ones living with dementia. According to a 2022 study that examined MBM’s impacts, this music-based therapy can increase social engagement between caregivers and their loved ones despite ongoing declines in cognitive health.¹² How?

Research shows people with dementia benefit from interventions that harness their preserved cognitive and functional abilities. Music taps into our implicit memory, linking us to past experiences and emotions without the need for conscious awareness. This is especially true for music that is personally meaningful to us, such as a favorite song, which can promote brain plasticity and cognition.

In other words, our affinity for music can help support our brain health. Neurologist Dr. Ronald Devere notes, “Musical perception, musical emotion, and musical memory can survive long after other forms of memory and cognitive function have disappeared.”¹³ Even amid cognitive declines, music can help to promote connection and shared communication—making it a viable tool to support people with dementia.

In addition to improving communication, MBM positively impacts mood and alleviates caregiver burden. Caregivers who participated in this program reported significant reductions in distress as a result of improved communication through music.¹⁴ In short, the program’s positive health impacts extend beyond individuals diagnosed with dementia to their families and loved ones because it facilitates communication and social connection, particularly in cases where verbal language is no longer possible.

These findings add to decades of research that demonstrate that music can positively impact our health,^15,16,17 and they provide further insights into the benefits of the MBM program to people with dementia and their caregivers. They also align with other community-based interventions such as BMTN, which was created by founder and CEO Dr. Marisol Norris, to utilize music to foster healing.

A growing coalition of “cultural workers, music therapy students and practitioners, musicians, educators, researchers, and community agents” working at the intersection of music, wellness, healing, and transformation, BMTN offers music-based programs that center Black Indigenous music traditions and healing practices. Its work highlights the importance of culturally centered practices, particularly when addressing health inequities in communities that experience disproportionate illness burdens. Their efforts come with an analysis of the harms caused by structural racism and cultural appropriation, and they intentionally work to promote the liberation of Black people, which is key to our collective wellness.

In addition to educational training programs for music therapists, the network offers an online course, Healing Justice in Music Therapy, which encourages practitioners to have “radical conversations, mindful collaborations and holistic visions centering the Black community.” Through guided instruction, participants explore how to embed healing justice principles in their work to support community health through music therapy.

A promising public-health future prioritizes the arts

Music-based therapy offers the public-health field a promising tool in its mission to protect and promote wellbeing. The success of interventions such as MBM and BMTN, signal the need for more resources to support arts-based health initiatives. In the case of BMTN, more investments are needed to resource community-led efforts that center culturally sustaining practices. The efforts described here are just two of the many music-based therapy programs underway, signaling a ripe opportunity for coordination and collective visioning to collaboratively leverage the power of music to improve population health.

1. https://www.healthdata.org/news-release/lancet-public-health-global-dementia-cases-set-triple-2050-unless-countries-address
2. https://www.usagainstalzheimers.org/health-disparities-race-and-alzheimers
3. https://www.blackmtnetwork.org/about
4. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dementia; https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia
5. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dementia; https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia
6. https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia/types-of-dementia
7. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/gps.5305
8. https://www.cdc.gov/aging/publications/features/lonely-older-adults.html; https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/25663/social-isolation-and-loneliness-in-older-adults-opportunities-for-the
9. https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/one-10-older-americans-has-dementia
10. https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/one-10-older-americans-has-dementia
11. https://itachicago.org/musical-bridges-to-memory/
12. https://journals.lww.com/alzheimerjournal/Fulltext/2022/10000/Musical_Bridges_to_Memory__A_Pilot_Dyadic_Music.6.aspx
13. https://practicalneurology.com/articles/2017-june/music-and-dementia-an-overview
14. https://journals.lww.com/alzheimerjournal/Fulltext/2022/10000/Musical_Bridges_to_Memory__A_Pilot_Dyadic_Music.6.aspx
15. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2013/11/music
16. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10990596/
17. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-music-improve-our-health-and-quality-of-life-202207252786

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

The recent murder of Tortuguita “Little Turtle” in January in Atlanta’s Cop City was the first time US police shot and killed an environmental activist. Far from a singular event, what’s happening at Cop City is part of a global land-defense movement that uses human bodies to occupy lands threatened with pollution and disturbance in order to protect the areas. Recent events at Cop City spark an opportunity to fully understand the violence that land-defense protests face.

Here are five actions to pay attention to around the world.

• United States—Defend the Forest and Stop Cop City

How it started: The 300-acre Weelaunee Forest sits on the outskirts of Atlanta, GA. Thanks to the forest’s proximity to the city, Atlanta has one of the country’s highest percentages of tree canopy, boosting its resilience to climate change. The forest also has a painful history; it was taken from the Native Muscogee people by the state of Georgia then served as a slave plantation and later a prison farm. Today, the Atlanta Police Department wants to turn part of the forest into a tactical training compound called Cop City. Another part of the forest, Intrenchment Creek, is at risk of being sold to ShadowBox Studios, a film production company that would use 170 acres of forest to create an enormous soundstage—and make Atlanta the new Hollywood. Thus far, Atlanta’s local communities have had no say in the matter.

Current Action: Land defenders have been camping in the forest for months to stop construction and have faced violent police retaliation. On January 19th, violence escalated. That morning, local police confronted protesters in a militarized raid fashion, ultimately killing Tortuguita. Atlanta police continue to push the narrative that they are keeping Atlanta “safe” with the Cop City training compound and that the compound can co-exist in harmony with environmental stewardship. In truth, however, if it comes to pass, Cop City will make way for a more heavily policed Atlanta.

• Canada—Fairy Creek Old-Growth Logging Protests

How it started: British Columbia is home to old-growth trees that stretch close to 200 feet high and are 140 years old or older. Old-growth forests provide habitat for many ecosystems, protect biodiversity, and capture carbon, mitigating climate change. However, the wood from these forests is economically valuable, bringing in nearly $1.3 billion annually for Canada’s forestry sector. Environmental groups believe that old-growth forests are being logged at unsustainable rates, and a 2020 report shows that many forests in British Columbia are at risk of extinction. Fairy Creek—an area in the southern part of Vancouver Island—remains one of the last unprotected forested areas on the island and is a focal point of logging protests.

Current Action: The Fairy Creek protests started in 2020 and are a response to the government’s broken promise to stop logging in the province. In what has been called the most significant act of civil disobedience in Canadian history, protesters have been blocking roads to Fairy Creek and leading demonstrations on highways in major metro areas. Thus far, over 1,200 people have been arrested. The logging firm, Teal-Jones, appealed for an injunction to stop the protests, which police enforced with excessive force, denying media access. Between 2020 and 2023, RCMP spent nearly $18 million on policing resistance to stop protestors at Fairy Creek.

• Brazil—Indigenous Guards of the Amazon Rainforest

How it started: For decades, Indigenous Amazonians have struggled to protect their land from degradation, illegal land grabs, and extractive industries, such as gold mining and big oil. Many Indigenous groups, such as the Yanomami people, have been threatened with narcotics trafficking, illegal mining, and unauthorized air transport, particularly under the Bolsonaro administration, which encouraged such activities. According to Indigenous rights and environmental groups, these activities have had a detrimental effect on the social and health outlooks of the Yanomami people. Earlier this year, the Brazilian government—now under the leadership of Lula da Silva— declared a national emergency, describing the Amazon and Yanomami people’s current situation as genocide. In 2022, the Amazon rainforest saw record deforestation—the highest in six years. Estimates show that 13.2 percent of the Amazon’s biome has been lost, and the Amazon as a whole is approaching an irreversible tipping point—or transition from rainforest to degraded savanna and shrubland, which would release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

Current Action: “Indigenous guards” are stepping up to protect ancestral lands. Groups such as All Eyes on the Amazon, dubbed “TOA,” have stopped 52 illegal mining projects and helped to protect 79,000 acres of untouched forest. The Indigenous guards have started using data- and image-optimization technology to implement real-time land monitoring to “guard” over seven million hectares of the rainforest. In addition, the new Lula da Silva administration launched a national campaign to drive out the thousands of illegal miners from Indigenous lands. Most recently, a ministry created for Indigenous peoples launched a special forces operation in early February to crack down on illegal mining mafias.

• Tanzania—Eviction of the Serengeti’s Maasai People

How it started: This series of protests is the latest development in the Maasai’s ongoing history of displacement. The Maasai want to stay on their ancestral lands—a portion of which lies in the Serengeti’s Ngorongoro conservation area. A protected region in Northern Tanzania, the Serengeti comprises several game reserves and the Serengeti National Park and is home to the Indigenous Maasai people. In recent months, the Maasai have been protesting their forced removal by the Tanzanian government, which plans to lease 1,500 square kilometers of the Serengeti to the Otterlo Business Corporation for tourism and game hunting and is forcing the Maasai out with violence. In 1992, the Tanzanian government allowed the same corporation to take 4,000 hectares of land, which 50,000 Maasai people called home. In 2009, 3,000 Maasai were forcibly displaced at gunpoint, and between 2015 and 2017, close to 300 traditional Maasai homes were burned, leaving close to 20,000 people unhoused. The Tanzanian government believes that the conservation area is becoming overpopulated with Maasai and their livestock, leading to environmental degradation, and it is using the guise of “conservation” to justify state violence against this Indigenous group.

Current Action: In October 2022, the East African Court of Justice announced the eviction of the Maasai, setting a dangerous precedent according to which conservation can trump Indigenous people’s rights. Maasai activists who protested were threatened and fled to neighboring countries like Kenya. In December, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was due for a week-long visit to Tanzania to assess the situation, but the visit was postponed for fear that the Tanzanian government would not welcome an outside investigation. As of now, Maasai continue to protest to remain on their ancestral land.

• Germany—Lützerath’s Coal Mine Expansion

How it started: In Western Germany, the small, recently deserted village of Lützerath is being demolished to expand a lignite coal mine owned by German multinational energy company RWE AG. Lignite coal is responsible for 20 percent of Germany’s carbon emissions. Though studies show that the need for Lützerath’s coal is non-existent, the German government and RWE AG believe that lignite coal is necessary to secure the country’s energy future. Lützerath is supposed to have 280 million tons of such coal underneath it. Coal mining will steer Germany away from its climate goals outlined in the Paris Agreement, but RWE AG has strong influence; the energy company successfully pushed back the closure of two thermal power plants, and it struck a deal with the Green party that allows for the demolition of another abandoned village.

Current Action: After Lützerath residents left due to their immanent removal by RWE AG, climate groups and activists occupied the village to stop land clearance and demolition. At the start of this year, after word got out that German authorities would attempt to remove the activists occupying the village, nearly 35,000 protesters went to Lützerath. After a long standoff with the protestors, police got their way using batons, water cannons, motor saws, and other forceful means. Though the protest failed to stop the mine’s expansion, movements such as Lützerath Lives continue, forming part of the global battle between fossil fuels and climate justice.

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Land defense movements, such as the ones outlined above, are one of the most powerful ways to fight back against extractive economies that justify the use of state-sanctioned violence in the name of conservation, energy security, and so-called safety. Though land-defense movements show how dangerous it has become to defend the environment—and the rights of people who depend on lands threatened with pollution and disturbance—these movements are also calls to action. We can support mutual aid funds, like the Forest Justice Defense Fund and Luetzerath Lives, share protest media kits, and share reports from reputable news sources and human rights organizations. You can also follow the social media accounts of activists on the ground. Lastly, it is critical to learn about the Indigenous land you stand on. Tools like Native Land Digital can help. These are just some of the ways that we can help to mobilize from the sidelines and advance movements pushing for more input on how lands are preserved and used.

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.

Climate change, it seems, is a massive asteroid hurling towards us, threatening the human species with intense suffering and, some say, civilizational collapse, if not near extinction. Developed nations—which are responsible for most global carbon emissions—are racing for solutions. In particular, we are racing to substitute one energy-generating technology (combustion) and the natural resources on which it depends for others, while ignoring ecological and social consequences.

Take our approach to decarbonizing the transportation sector. Developed nations have decided that instead of driving fewer vehicles, we will drive electric vehicles, or EVs. Instead of rapidly expanding public transit systems and revamping city planning to promote walkability, we will substitute internal combustion engines—which rely on gasoline—for electric batteries—which rely on metal.

This decision has triggered a historic expansion of the mining and refining industry, the consequences of which have already been devastating to frontline communities.

The Mining Implications of Battery-Powered Vehicles

EVs have no fuel tanks. Instead, they have very large batteries. By way of comparison, the 12-volt battery used in a typical internal-combustion car weighs about 40 pounds. A typical electric car battery weighs over 1,000 pounds, while the batteries required to power electric buses and trucks can weigh up to three tons. All this weight—which will more rapidly wear down our roads and result in more fatal traffic accidents—comes from metal that must be mined and refined.

According to global mining financier Robert Friedland, “to transition just the world’s passenger cars to electric, we have to mine more materials in the next 30 years than we mined throughout human history.” Logically, then, as the EV revolution has geared up, so too has the mining and refining industry. Around the globe, mining companies are scaling up existing mines, reopening decommissioned mines, and building new ones.

EV-Mining’s Impact Worldwide

Ruinous to land, water, wildlife, individuals, and communities—and immensely profitable to mine owners and state actors—mining is “the archetype of extractivism” and a “one of the most destructive industries in the world.”

Take nickel, a key component of EV batteries as it increases energy storage and  mileage per charge. In 2020, predicting a state-sponsored surge in the US EV market, Telsa’s CEO and owner, Elon Musk, urged the mining world, “Please mine more nickel.”

Nickel mines are the traditional open-pit kind. They generate overburden (massive piles of dislodged and discarded earth) and toxic tailings (the mounds of sludge that remain after desired metals have been physically or chemically separated from the unprofitable part of an ore). So much earth moving changes a land’s topography, causing floods, landslides, and avalanches that sweep through nearby communities. Invariably, rains carry overburden into streams, causing sedimentation. Dams and ponds built to contain tailings invariably leak and break, releasing pollution into surface and groundwater, while waste is often dumped directly into the nearest body of water.

As habitats and ecosystems are polluted and destroyed, nearby communities invariably fall ill, and they lose their sources of sustenance and livelihood.

Indonesia is home to one of the world’s largest nickel reserves, tied with Australia. The country has long exported unrefined nickel for use in stainless steel production—with disastrous environmental and social costs. In 2014, in an effort to attract investment in the country’s nickel-refining infrastructure—enabling Indonesia to sell more profitable high-grade nickel to manufacturers—the government banned unrefined-nickel exports. After receiving pushback from the European Union and manufacturers, the government softened the ban. However, in 2020, Indonesia’s president once again banned all unrefined-nickel exports in order to sell EV battery-grade nickel to a growing EV-manufacturing industry.

Indonesia’s nickel-rich region now hosts two massive industrial nickel plants. In addition to thousands of acres of pit mines, each plant contains refineries, including high-pressure acid-leaching facilities, almost a dozen smelters, and coal power plants to fuel their operations.

The plants have triggered land grabbing, displacing Indigenous people through quasi- and extra-legal means, including misinformation and violence. Rainforests have been stripped from thousands of hectares. Landslides are now common. Pollution steadily leaches into the rivers from which local—now frontline—communities drink.

Toxic tailings have stained white beaches red and muddied the ocean. The mines’ coal power plants regularly release boiling water into the bays and lagoons, killing fish. The fish have retreated from their traditional feeding grounds. No longer able to live off the ocean, men have gone to work in the mines, where deadly accidents are common.

Coal plants and smelters spew ash at all hours. What is not inhaled settles as soot, coating homes, clothes, bodies, plants, and soil. Residents are often sick, their eyes irritated, their lungs inflamed and infected. Women must care for their ailing children as best as they can as they deal with their own respiratory infections. They pray for an opportunity to leave with their families. They say their lands are “dying.”

Thanks to the EV revolution, Indonesia’s industrial parks are steadily expanding, and plans for more parks are in the works.

Meanwhile, communities in South America’s arid “lithium triangle” are being “sacrificed” to mine lithium, the EV revolution’s base metal. Mines there rely on a water-intensive brining process that, according to a Friends of the Earth report, “consumes, contaminates, and diverts scarce water resources away from local communities,” causing illness and disrupting local agricultural and grazing economies.

Lithium mining is also threatening Native ancestral lands in Northern Nevada, where in 2021 workers broke ground on Lithium Americas. Constructed on leased federal lands, Lithium Americas is the first new large-scale lithium mine in the US in more than a decade. The Biden administration hopes it will address the US EV industry’s near total reliance on foreign lithium sources.

As the New York Times reports, “Lithium Americas has drawn protests from members of a Native American tribe, ranchers and environmental groups because in addition to dispossessing Native people of over 6000 square acres of ancestral land, “it is expected to use billions of gallons of precious groundwater, potentially contaminating some of it for 300 years, while leaving behind a giant mound of waste.” Thanks to a $600-million investment from GM, which pledged to phase out internal-combustion vehicle manufacturing by 2035, Lithium Americas is expected to begin operations in 2026.

The mining of cobalt—another key EV-battery component—is threatening to expand the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s cobalt mining industry, an “ecological and sanitary disaster” infamous for land grabbing, pollution, and exploitative, unsafe working conditions, including child enslavement. EV manufacturers are investing in new nickel mines in Tanzania to tap “one of the largest and richest undeveloped nickel sulfide deposits known at present.” Copper mining required to sustain the EV revolution is threatening Indigenous lands in Arizona and Alaska.

The list of EV mines goes on. Each is a sacrifice zone. Each has a frontline community.

Funding Priorities

Until it began receiving tax dollars, the automobile industry had no interest in transitioning to EVs. Sales of internal-combustion vehicles were steady, and the industry’s earlier attempts at generating EV consumer interest in developed nations had failed.

EV manufacturing took off first in China in the early 2010s, when the government began building charging stations and subsidizing EV production and purchases. Beginning in 2019, the European Union began “Subsidizing Its Way Into Electric Vehicle Leadership,” likewise boosting EV production and sales, followed most recently by the United States, whose current president has embraced the EV revolution.

In addition to encouraging more mining of Canadian and US federal lands, the Biden Administration has earmarked billions of federal tax dollars for EV development. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act directed more than $1 trillion in subsidies and incentives toward what it called “clean” energy production, including $20-billion to upgrade the nation’s power grids so that, among other things, they can charge hundreds of thousands of EVs at once. The legislation directed billions more to build EV power stations and subsidize US-based EV and EV-battery manufacturing. Forbes estimates that, from 2023 to 2032, the total value of these manufacturing credits could be as high as $190 billion. As Forbes writes, “These subsidizes can be monetized so that a producer is eligible for a direct payment from the Treasury.”

In response, the US automobile industry has changed its tune, making promises to phase out internal-combustion car manufacturing and invest in US-based EV-manufacturing facilities and in new mines around the globe.

Instead of demanding that the owners of these new EV plants pay their fair share of taxes—and using these new taxes to build out their public transit systems—states and municipalities have entered into “a megadeal spending spree like no other [in] U.S. history,” awarding more than $13.8 billion in tax abatements to at least 51 EV and EV battery factories in recent years. As usual, most state and local governments have not disclosed information about these abatements to the public.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has announced a single $4.7-billion investment in the nation’s public transit systems, a drop in the tax-revenue budget and a far cry from the $60 billion that the National Campaign for Transit Justice estimates US public transit systems need each year to “promote equity, access and environmental sustainability.” A chunk of this investment will go, not to expanding public transit systems, but to transitioning their bus fleets to electric.

Listening to Frontline Communities

The US Left—those of us who care about health and equity and are demanding a clean, just transition—does not appear particularly bothered by these funding priorities. To the contrary, we are cheering the EV revolution on, nodding to the importance of public transit while driving by in our personal vehicles.

Like most everyone in the US—except Native communities—we appear to have embraced technological fundamentalism, believing, despite evidence to the contrary, that more and better technology “is always a good thing” and that “any problems caused by technology’s unintended consequences can be remedied by more technology.” We read on our phones that we can recycle our way out of EV’s extractive problem, or that we can replace nickel with iron and cobalt with manganese—and we breathe a sigh of relief. We forget that to recycle hundreds of millions of EV batteries each year, we must first make them. We forget that there is no such thing as a clean mine.

We call EVs “clean” and “green,” spreading disinformation. We claim that the EV revolution can be “just,” stripping the word, justice, of its weight.

And we turn away from EV frontline communities, contradicting all that we say we wish to do. Our self-declared role—the role of the Left, of social justice movements—is to turn toward these communities.

They are telling us, “Electric vehicles are a false solution to climate change.” They are organizing—filing law suits, setting up protest camps, blocking roads, marching, and forming international alliances—to keep new mines at bay and close mines in operation. They are asking EV proponents, “What sacrifice are you making?”

They are saying, in short, that EVs are neither clean nor just—that the substitution of one energy-producing technology for another will not save us from climate change—not in a clean, just way—for each substitution requires another round of extraction. They are telling us that there is only one clean, just way to reduce our transportation emissions: dramatically reduce the number of vehicles on the road.

We—the Left—must imagine and enact our climate transition accordingly.

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(Readers interested in public transit activism may appreciate Transportation for America’s “Fight For Your Ride: An advocate’s guide for improving & expanding transit,” which offers practical and tactical advice for organizing to improve public transit systems.)

This article originally appeared in the Nonprofit Quarterly. See the original article here.