Time - USA (2020-04-06)

77

JASON

MACOVIAK

Beyond books

Picture a library.

Is someone telling

you to shush? When

Jason Macoviak

became manager

of Copper Queen

Library in Bisbee,

Ariz., the first thing

he did was get

rid of “all of that.”

Macoviak, 45, and

his team redid the

layout of the build-

ing to create

a “community

living room,” encour-

aging patrons to

talk and “get to

know their neigh-

bor.” His team also

revamped part of

an abandoned

middle school into

a public space that

teaches literacy to

children and adults.

Called the San Jose

Annex, it opened

in 2018 with the

help of the whole

community: a local

nonprofit designed

the layout; the high

school shop class

built shelving;

volunteers help

keep it running. In

2019, Copper Queen

Library was awarded

Best Small Library

in America by Library

Journal. “Because

we’re small,” Maco-

viak says, “we know

everyone.

—Madeleine Carlisle

KASSY

ALIA RAY

Civic duty

Grief makes many

people turn inward.

Others, like Kassy

Alia Ray, 32, use

their pain to open up.

Ray’s late husband

Greg Alia was a

police officer killed

in the line of duty in

2015 in Columbia,

S.C. At the time,

debates about police

brutality dominated

headlines. Ray, a

community psycholo-

gist, decided to work

on easing the tension

that can be fatal to

both officers and

those they’re meant

to protect. Since

2018, her nonprofit

Serve & Connect has

done the complex

work of building trust

between the two

groups—for example,

outfitting officers

with some 40,000

meals to give to food-

insecure families

they encounter on

the job. “Issues like

hunger and poverty

and trauma are really

at the root of a lot of

things,” she says.

—Katy Steinmetz

CHRISTOPHER EMDIN

Teaching teachers

Christopher Emdin believes hip-hop can make

better teachers. “It’s about telling stories,”

he says. Emdin, an associate professor at

Columbia University’s Teachers College, has

spent more than a decade working to bridge

the cultural divide between teachers and stu-

dents, especially when the teaching workforce

fails to reflect student diversity. The author of

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood ... and

the Rest of Y’all Too, Emdin, 41, wants teachers

to engage with students “on their own cultural

turf,” and he launched the #HipHopEd initiative

to get teachers to incorporate hip-hop into their

lessons. The goal is to transform how teachers

engage with young people and how students

engage with their educations as a result.

“The system, as it exists, just doesn’t do well

for a vast majority of young people,” he says.

“We just have to change it.” —Katie Reilly

PATRICIA TÉLLEZ-GIRÓN

Medical messenger

On a recent Monday, Dr. Patricia Téllez-Girón, 51,

answered questions on a radio show about the

coronavirus in Spanish for the Latinx audience

of Madison, Wis. The segment had been sched-

uled to last two hours, but for members of the

concerned audience, the chance to hear from

a professional in their own community in their

own language was particularly valuable—and

so the show went on an additional hour. It was

one of many efforts by Téllez-Girón to educate

and protect the community from COVID-19.

Téllez-Girón, a physician in Madison and

an associate professor at the University of

Wisconsin Department of Family Medicine and

Community Health, has played an active role

in community organizing efforts ever since

she moved to Madison in 1993 from Mexico

City. She has now co-chaired the Latino Health

Council there for 20 years and mentors young

aspiring Latinx medical professionals. And to

her, a crisis like the coronavirus outbreak high-

lights the vulnerability of the Latinx community

of Dane County, Wisconsin. Immigration sta-

tus, high poverty rates, large households and

employment in the types of jobs that can’t be

done from home all put people at risk. It can be

hard to find reliable public-health information

in Spanish even at the best of times; right now,

bridging the divide between Spanish-speaking

people and the U.S. public-health system is

a matter of life and death.

“Very few organizations were actually

keeping an eye on our community,” Téllez-Girón

says. “That’s why, as usual, when something

like [COVID-19] happens, the Latinx community

leadership right away starts organizing.

We don’t wait for others to come and help us.

However, we really want others to be aware that

we are here.”

So, together with the Latino Consortium

for Action and other groups in the community,

Téllez-Girón is helping to lead the Latinx charge

against COVID-19.“This is just the beginning,”

she says. “We’re sending a very strong mes-

sage to the community that we are here, we

need help and we need to work together.”

EMDIN: LAURA YOST; TÉLLEZ-GIRÓN: JOHN MANIACI—UW MADISON SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH; MACOVIAK: BRIDGET SHANAHAN; RAY: STEPHANIE TASSONE —Jasmine Aguilera

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