2020-03-02_Time_Magazine_International_Edition

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able Americans who cannot take on the
cost or the burden of getting an ID. So
in 2017, Kat Calvin, 36, founded Spread
the Vote, a nonprofit dedicated to help-
ing people secure IDs. It’s now active
in 12 states, with more than 600 volun-
teers. As the 2020 election approaches,
the organization reports having helped
over 4,500 people obtain IDs; more than
77% of them have never voted before.
But Calvin’s mission has grown be-
yond the ballot box. A large percentage
of food banks and homeless shelters
also require IDs. You also need an ID for
legal employment. “Just basic survival
is almost impossible without one,” she
says. A common response that Calvin
hears from her clients: “I’m a person
again.” —m.c.

Patrisse Cullors
IMPROVING CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The acTivisT and
educator Patrisse Cul-
lors is best known
for a movement that
swept the entire U.S.:
in 2013, along with
Alicia Garza and Opal
Tometi, she co-founded
Black Lives Matter. Recently,
though, her focus has been more local.
Her new plan, the “Yes on R” cam-
paign, supports a ballot initiative—
Measure R—to reform the Los Angeles
County jails, buttress oversight of the
sheriff ’s department, and provide treat-
ment and mental-health care for those
incarcerated in L.A. Measure R will be
voted on this March, thanks to more than
a quarter-million signatures getting it on
the ballot. “We have to have strong com-
munities, strong cities and strong coun-
ties,” says Cullors, 36. And, she notes,
local work can lead to something bigger :
people from across the country have
reached out to her about implementing
something similar to Yes on R in their
own cities. —Josiah BaTes

Jonathan Eisen
SEEKING SCIENCE DIVERSITY

JonaThan eisen, proFessor aT The
genome center at University of Califor-

nia, Davis, knows he’s an unlikely cham-
pion for female representation at sci-
entific conferences. But he also knows
someone needs to point out the dearth of
women who are speakers at these events.
Since Eisen, 51, first vented his frustra-
tion with the problem in a 2012 blog
post, his social-media feed has called out
scientific gatherings that disproportion-
ately feature male scientists.
His posts make him the target of crit-
icism from colleagues, and conference
organizers have threatened to bar him
from their future meetings. But he will-
ingly bears the brunt of that backlash,
and has received grateful feedback from
men and women who appreciate his
serving as the lightning rod for any fall-
out. Now, Eisen says that around a third
of his posts highlighting gender bias at
conferences come from other scientists.
On his blog, he also includes advice
for how to run a more diverse meet-
ing that includes not just a better bal-
ance of men and women, but people of
color and scientists at different stages
of their careers as well. “We can fix
this,” he says. “And no doubt things
have been changing. But also with-
out a doubt, it’s not enough.”
—alice park

Michael Haynie
MEETING VETERANS’ NEEDS

When michael haynie leFT The
Air Force after 14 years to teach business
at Syracuse University, he was shocked
by how little attention the people in his
new world paid to the challenges facing
veterans. In 2011, recognizing that
someone had to step up, he
founded Syracuse’s Institute
for Veterans and Military
Families (IVMF).
Veterans need
attention— especially as
they transition from mili-
tary to civilian life—so, in
addition to research and advo-
cacy, the institute provides free profes-
sional training programs to veterans
and their families, and has served more
than 132,000 since its founding, reach-
ing more people in 2019 than any other
transition program for U.S. veterans.
What began as a staff of three has grown

to more than 100 full-time employ-
ees operating around the world. Come
April, Syracuse will open the National
Veterans Resource Center, a $62.5 mil-
lion facility, to be the center of IVMF’s
operations. For Haynie, 50, the building
is about “planting a flag.”
“It’s about signaling to the rest of the
higher-education community that these
issues matter,” he says, arguing that
America has a moral obligation to en-
sure that “we get to a place where folks
we send off to war don’t come home and
feel like an outsider in the same society
that they went off to defend.” —m.c.

Nelson Luna and
Whitney Stephenson
INTEGRATING SCHOOLS

nearly 66 years aFTer The U.s.
Supreme Court ruled racial segregation
in public education unconstitutional,
more than half of the nation’s students
still attend largely segregated school
districts. In New York City, one of
the country’s most segregated school
systems, students are leading the fight
to change that.
Nelson Luna and Whitney Ste-
phenson, both 19, founded Teens Take
Charge at their public charter high
school in 2017 to campaign for integra-
tion. Since then, Teens Take Charge ac-
tivists from more than 30 high schools
have led walkouts and a City Hall sit-
in, protesting the uneven distribution
of resources in the system and the ad-
missions process for the city’s special-
ized high schools, which enroll mostly
white and Asian students.
Now first-generation college
sophomores, Luna and Ste-
phenson are still involved in
that advocacy, though a team
of current high school stu-
dents, along with fellow student-
led activist group IntegrateNYC,
have pushed the movement forward.
This spring, both groups are planning
a citywide school boycott, echoing a
1964 anti segregation boycott by about
460,000 New York City students.
“Although it may look different in
this era,” Stephenson says, “it’s still
AINA: COURTESY BLACK MAMAS MATTER ALLIANCE; BAKST: COURTESY A BETTER BALANCE; CULLORS: GETTY IMAGES; HAYNIE: SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY school segregation.” —k.r.


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