Time International - 02.03.2020

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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