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Abolishing ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement)

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Tens of thousands of people with no criminal record whom I.C.E. has deported back to countries where their lives are at risk. In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), set up to stop terrorists, replaced the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which performed many functions relating to immigration as part of the Justice Department. The enforcement arm of DHS, I.C.E.'s primary mission is to target those who have made it past the border and are living here, in many cases for years.

The more than 30,000 immigrants detained at any one time in I.C.E.'s detention facilities across the country.[ 1] Many are denied medical care and are subject to solitary confinement, physical and sexual assault.[ 2] In 2017, 12 people died in these centers.[ 3] Despite detainees' hunger strikes and the demands of advocates, I.C.E. has taken no effective action against these abuses.

The families and communities of those suffering from the deportation or detention of their co-workers, neighbors, and family members. I.C.E. creates ever-widening circles of terror and loss.

Asylum seekers fleeing persecution, torture and death. Asylum seekers, even whose claims are deemed credible, are often placed indefinitely in detention without trial or bail.[ 4] A determination on their asylum cases can take years.[ 5]

Asylum seekers who are parents of children threatened by gang violence and political instability, and who seek sanctuary in the United States. Under recent policy enacted by the Trump Administration, I.C.E. incarcerates parents desperate to save their children's lives and places those already traumatized children into federal custody. I.C.E. was bad under Presidents Bush and Obama, but it did not separate children from parents legally seeking asylum.

Immigrants from South and Central America and the Caribbean who are deported far more than those from other countries. Also, in 2017, deportations of largely Muslim immigrants from Somalia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan more than doubled.[ 6] This, along with Trump's Muslim ban and his rhetoric about rapist Mexicans, "shithole countries," and "animals" sends a message to people of color that they do not belong.

The United States' reputation as a refuge. I.C.E. conducts raids in our schools, courts, and workplaces, spreading fear throughout our institutions. I.C.E.'s brutal treatment of unauthorized immigrants and asylum-seekers flies in the face of the country's foundation as a home for those fleeing persecution.

I.C.E. SERVES:

The for-profit prison industry. The majority of I.C.E. detainees are housed in private, for-profit facilities managed by companies including Geo and CoreCivic. These corporations are reporting record-breaking profits, and their contracts include bed quotas: The more people they detain, the more money they make.[ 7] The Department of Homeland Security pays an estimated $159 per day for each person detained.[ 8]

Supporters of President Trump's campaign promise to establish a "deportation force" merely by "taking the shackles off" the existing I.C.E. apparatus.[ 9] Since the 2016 election, seizures of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record have more than doubled.[ 10]

White nationalists, nativists, and advocates of ethnic cleansing. They want Trump to follow through on his threat to deport millions of non-white immigrants and to ban Muslim immigration.

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE TODAY AND DEMAND THAT THEY DEFUND I.C.E.!
U.S. Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

ADDITIONAL READING/RESOURCES:

Read the 10-year plan I.C.E. laid out in 2003, "Endgame," which "sets in motion a cohesive enforcement program with a ten-year time horizon that will build the capacity to 'remove all removable aliens,' eliminate the backlog of unexecuted final order removal cases, and realize its vision."

"Abolish ICE", explained by Dara Lind, vox.com

Who is Profiting from Incarcerating Immigrant Families? Follow the Money. This article from June 2018 digs into the for-profit prison companies cashing in on the detention of asylum seekers and other immigrants (CoreCivic and the GEO Group are the biggest). It also reports on the nonprofits that detain immigrant children (Southwest Key) and the other companies and banks propping up Homeland Security's abuse of power. Even after Trump rescinded the family separation policy, most of these companies expect to keep their "man-days" up by imprisoning entire families.

The Real Alternatives to Detention, Justice For Immigrants

Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, May 23, 2018

Fighting a dehumanizing U.S. immigration system, with Lee Gelernt: podcast & transcript, Why Is This Happening? with Chris Hayes, MSNBC

It's Time to Abolish ICE by Sean McElwee, The Nation

ICE Deserves to be Abolished by Molly Roberts, The Washington Post

Abolishing ICE is the radical idea America needs to be talking about by Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer

5 Reasons Why Activists Are Calling for the Abolition of ICE by Natascha Uhlmann, Teen Vogue

EDUCATIONAL FLYERS FOR DOWNLOAD:

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Tens of thousands of people with no criminal record whom I.C.E. has deported back to countries where their lives are at risk. In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), set up to stop terrorists, replaced the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which performed many functions relating to immigration as part of the Justice Department.

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List of NYC Issues from Mayoral Candidates

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List of NYC Issues from Mayoral Candidates

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See where the mayoral candidates stand on the big issues.

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In the United States, the income gap between the rich and everyone else has been growing markedly, by every major statistical measure, for more than 30 years.

Income Inequality

Income includes the revenue streams from wages, salaries, interest on a savings account, dividends from shares of stock, rent, and profits from selling something for more than you paid for it. Unlike wealth statistics, income figures do not include the value of homes, stock, or other possessions. Income inequality refers to the extent to which income is distributed in an uneven manner among a population.

Over the past four decades, the richest 1 percent of Americans have enjoyed by far the fastest income growth. The most rapid increase has occurred at the tippy top of the economic ladder. Between 1979 and 2019, the average income of the richest 0.01 percent of households, a group that today represents about 31,500 people, grew more than nine times as fast as the income of the bottom 20 percent of earners. These Congressional Budget Office figures include income from labor and investments. They do not account for taxes and means-tested public assistance, such as food stamps and Medicaid.

Income disparities are now so pronounced that America's richest 1 percent of households averaged more than 84 times as much income as the bottom 20 percent in 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office . Americans in the top 0.01 percent tower stunningly higher. With average household income of $43 million, they bring in 1,807 times more income than the bottom 20 percent.

The U.S. income divide has not always been as vast as it is today. In response to the staggering inequality of the Gilded Age in the early 1900s, social movements and progressive policymakers fought successfully to level down the top through fair taxation and level up the bottom through increased unionization and other reforms. But beginning in the 1970s, these levelers started to erode and the country returned to extreme levels of inequality. According to data analyzed by UC Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez, the ratio between the average income of the top 0.1 percent and the bottom 90 percent reached Gilded Age levels in the years preceding the 2008 financial crisis.

Over the past five decades, the top 1 percent of American earners have nearly doubled their share of national income, according to figures in the of people in the world's richest country who have to struggle to make ends meet. Federal pandemic relief legislation significantly reduced World Inequality Database . Meanwhile, the Census Bureau's "official" poverty rate for all U.S. families has merely inched up and down. In 2011, the Census Bureau began publishing a "supplemental" poverty measure that is more accurate but still likely understates the number child poverty rates, but those programs were temporary.

The nation's highest 0.01 percent and 0.1 percent of income-earners have seen their incomes rise much faster than the rest of the top 1 percent in recent decades. Both of these ultra-rich groups saw their incomes drop immediately after the financial crashes of 1929 and 2008, but they had a much swifter recovery after the more recent crisis. Income concentration today is as extreme as it was during the "Roaring Twenties."

Congressional Budget Office data show that taxes and means-tested public assistance narrow the income divide somewhat, but the gaps remain staggering. Between 1979 and 2019, the richest 0.01 percent of households had a cumulative income growth rate of 507 percent after accounting for taxes and aid transfers. That's more than five times the 94 percent growth rate for the bottom 20 percent of households. Tax cuts for the rich are a key driver of this rising inequality. The top U.S. marginal tax rate in 1979 was , compared to just 37 percent today.

The rich also benefit immensely from the tax code's preferential treatment of income from investments. Americans who are not among the ultra-rich get the vast majority of their income from wages and salaries. But the higher the U.S. income group, IRS data show, the larger the share of income derived from investment profits. The top tax rate for long-term capital gains is just 20 percent, compared to the top marginal tax rate on ordinary income of 37 percent.

Wage Inequality

Between 1979 and 2007, according to Economic Policy Institute research, paycheck income for those in the richest 1 percent and 0.1 percent exploded. The wage and salary income for these elite groups dipped after the 2008 financial crisis but recovered relatively quickly. Between 2009 and 2019, the bottom 90 percent had wage growth of just 8.7 percent, compared to 20.4 percent for the top 1 percent and 30.2 percent for the top 0.1 percent.

Productivity has increased at a relatively consistent rate since 1948. But the wages of American workers have not, since the 1970s, kept up with this rising productivity. Worker hourly compensation has essentially flat-lined, increasing just 17.3 percent from 1979 to 2021 (after adjusting for inflation). Over this same time period, worker productivity has increased 64.6 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute . In other words, productivity grew at a rate 3.7 times as fast as worker pay.

One factor in the widening income divide is the decline of U.S. labor unions. The share of the workforce represented by a union has declined to just 10.1 percent in 2022, down from over 30 percent in the 1940s and 1950s. Meanwhile, those at the top of the income scale have increased their power to rig economic rules in their favor, further increasing income inequality. In 2018, the richest 1% earned over 20 percent of all national income.

U.S. workers who are unionized continue to earn significantly higher wages than their non-unionized counterparts, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data , The gap is particularly wide among women. In 2022, median weekly wages for full-time unionized women amounted to $1,146 - $214 more than non-unionized women's earnings.

Men make up an overwhelming majority of top earners across the U.S. economy, even though women now represent almost half of the country's workforce. According to analysis by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, women comprise just 27 percent of the top 10 percent, and their share of higher income groups runs even smaller. Among the top 1 percent, women make up slightly less than 17 percent of workers, while at the top 0.1 percent level, they make up only 11 percent.

Since 1985, the average Wall Street bonus has increased 1,743 percent, from $13,970 to $257,500 in 2021 (not adjusted for inflation). According to Institute for Policy Studies analysis , if the minimum wage had increased at that rate, it would be worth $61.75 today, instead of $7.25. The total 2021 bonus pool for 180,000 New York City-based Wall Street employees was $45 billion - enough to pay for more than 1 million jobs paying $15 per hour for a year. Because the very rich can squirrel away much of their income, huge Wall Street bonuses don't have nearly the stimulus effect as raising pay for low-wage workers who have to spend nearly every dollar they make. The sharp rise in Wall Street bonuses has also contributed to race and gender inequality, as detailed in our facts sections on those issues.

Racial Income Inequality

In 2021, Fortune 500 CEOs, who earned $18.3 million on average, included just four Black and 17 Latino people - just 4 percent of the total. By contrast, these groups made up 43 percent of the U.S. workers who would benefit from a raise in the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025, according to Institute for Policy Studies analysis of Economic Policy Institute data. Black and Latino people comprise 31 percent of the entire U.S. labor force.

One indicator of racial disparities at the top of the U.S. earnings scale is the threshold for entry into the top 10 percent. According to the Pew Research Center, for white families to make it into this tier of earners in their racial group, they need to have annual income of at least $117,986 - nearly twice as much as the threshold for Black families.

Racial discrimination in many forms, including in education, hiring, and pay practices, contributes to persistent earnings gaps. As of the third quarter of 2022, the median white worker made 25 percent more than the typical Black worker and around 28 percent more than the median Latino worker, according to BLS data.

The Black unemployment rate has persistently run about twice as high as for white workers. These rates only count those who are actively seeking work, leaving out those who have given up finding a job. While racial gaps have narrowed somewhat in recent years, the divides remain wide. In November 2022, Black unemployment stood at 5.7 percent, compared to 3.2 percent for white workers, according to BLS data.

CEO-Worker Pay Gaps

CEO pay has been a key driver of rising U.S. income inequality for decades, and the gap between CEO and worker pay has only widened during the pandemic.

In 2021, corporate CEOs were quick to blame worker wages for causing inflation. But an AFL-CIO analysis reveals that workers' real wages actually fell 2.4 percent in 2021 after adjusting for inflation. Meanwhile, S&P 500 companies increased their CEO pay by an average of 18.2 percent while enjoying record profits and spending a record $882 billion on stock buybacks.

An Institute for Policy Studies report on the 300 U.S. corporations with the lowest median worker wages in 2020 drew similar conclusions. At over a third of these firms, median worker pay failed to rise above the inflation rate in 2021. By contrast, CEO pay at these same low-wage firms soared 31 percent to an average of $10.6 million, for an average wage gap of 670 to 1. At 49 of the 300 firms, pay ratios topped 1,000 to 1, while just 27 had ratios under 100 to 1.

An Institute for Policy Studies analysis of the pandemic's first year found that while ordinary workers struggled in the face of Covid-19, many corporate boards fixated on shielding their CEOs' massive paychecks. More than half of the 100 S&P 500 companies with the lowest median worker pay moved bonus goalposts or otherwise rigged rules to inflate CEO pay in 2020. Among these rule-rigging corporations, CEO compensation averaged $15.3 million, up 29 percent from 2019. Median worker pay ran $28,187 on average, 2 percent lower than the 2019 worker pay rate. The ratio between CEO and median worker pay at these 51 firms averaged 830 to 1.

With U.S. unions playing a smaller economic role, the gap between worker and CEO pay has exploded since the early 1990s. In 1980, the average big company CEO earned just 42 times as much as the average U.S. worker. In 2021, the CEO-worker pay gap was nearly eight times larger than in 1980. According to the AFL-CIO, S&P 500 firm CEOs were paid 324 times as much as average U.S. workers in 2021. CEO pay averaged $18.3 million, compared to average worker pay of $58,260. During the 21st century, the annual gap between CEO pay and typical worker pay has averaged about 350 to 1.

The CEO pay explosion, as shown in AFL-CIO analysis , contrasts sharply with trends at the bottom end of the U.S. wage scale. Average CEO pay at S&P 500 corporations is up 642 percent since 1991, while Congress has not passed a minimum wage increase for more than a decade. The federal minimum wage for restaurant servers and other tipped workers has been frozen at just $2.13 per hour since 1991. According to the Labor Department , 27 states have raised their tipped minimum, while retaining this two-tier system. Seven states and the District of Columbia have eliminated or are phasing out the subminimum tipped wage altogether, while in Michigan the issue was tied up in the courts as of December 2022. In 6 states, the tipped minimum is still $2.13. While employers are technically supposed to make up the difference if workers don't earn enough in tips to reach the $7.25 federal minimum, this rule is largely unenforced.

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Inequality in earnings between America's most affluent and the rest of the country continue to grow year after year.

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Teens' right to make their own medical decisions: COVID-19 vaccine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-shots-for-teens-can-hit-legal-snags-and-parental-pushback-11621416603
Lowering the voting age.

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Lowering the voting age is a new concept for many people, but there are many good reasons that show doing so is a sound and ethical choice.

1. Young people have adult responsibilities, but are denied the same rights. People under 18 are contributing and active members of society. Millions of us are employed and volunteer in our communities. Many people under 18 also have "adult" responsibilities - such as being the primary caregiver for an ailing family member, running a business, and making substantial financial contributions to our households.

We are also capable of incredible intelligence and accomplishment. People under age 18 have the ability to win a Nobel Prize, reach the summit of Mount Everest, conduct cancer research, become published authors, teach a graduate-level course in nuclear physics, run their own schools, work for NASA, and risk their lives to save others. If young people are capable of such a variety of amazing feats, certainly we have the capacity to vote for the candidate that best represents our interests.

2. Young people are expected to follow the law, but have no say in making it. People under 18 are expected to follow adult laws and experience adult consequences if we don't do so. In every state, it is possible for a case to be transferred out of juvenile court into adult criminal court, and in certain states all crimes committed by 16- and 17-year-olds are automatically transferred. Approximately 250,000 people under age 18 are tried, sentenced, or incarcerated as adults every year across the United States. This means that not only does our society expect young people to know "right from wrong" and the consequences for breaking certain laws, but our society also expects that we are able to navigate the adult legal system and are mature enough to be placed in adult prisons. It is hypocritical to tell us that we are mature, responsible adults when they commit a crime, but ignorant and naive when we want to vote.

We are also expected to follow the law regarding taxes. In 2011, people under 18 paid over $730 million in income tax alone and had no representation on how that money was spent. This "taxation without representation" should be no more tolerable to modern Americans as it was during the American Revolution.

3. Young people are already participating in politics. Despite attempts to exclude us from the political process, we are still making our voices heard. Young people have started ultimately successful campaigns for mayor and state legislature before they were even old enough to vote.

People under 18 have also participated in politics by forming Political Action Committees, managing campaigns, advocating for our rights in front of legislative bodies, and becoming grassroots activists. And even though we are not allowed to vote, young people are able to contribute just as much money to a political campaign as adults are. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that banning people under 18 from this part of the political process actually violates our First Amendment rights.

Whether it is forming political groups at school, organizing protests, or using social media to express our opinion, young people find a way to become involved in politics. And if we want to be involved in the political process this badly, how can politicians deny us the right any longer?

4. Young people make good voters. When the voting age has been lowered to 16, young people have shown our interest in voting. In 2013, when Takoma Park, Maryland, lowered its voting age to 16, registered voters under 18 had a turnout rate four times higher than voters over 18. And again in Hyattsville, Maryland (the second place in the U.S. to lower the voting age to 16), registered 16- and 17-year-old voters had a higher turnout out rate than older voters. Seventeen-year-olds also had a higher turnout rate than people aged 20-50 in the Chicago Primary in 2014.

Similar trends have occurred outside the United States. Voters aged 16 to 17 had a higher turnout rate than older voters under age 30 in Norway's 2011 elections, voters under 35 in Scotland's 2014 referendum election, and voters aged 18-20 in Austria's elections in 2011 and 2014.

Although it can be difficult to determine what constitutes a "good vote" (see below), a group of researchers tried to determine the quality of votes cast by people under 18 by comparing how well their votes aligned with their stated values. Voters aged 16-17 were found to have made choices that were "more congruent with party positions" leaving the researchers to conclude that "lowering the voting age does not appear to have a negative impact on input legitimacy and the quality of democratic decisions."

5. Lowering the voting age will help increase voter turnout. Voting is a habitual act - people who vote in one election are more likely to vote in the next. Lowering the voting age will establish new voters when people are less likely to be moving as a result of attending college or leaving their families. People under 18 tend to have stronger roots in their community, often having lived in the same area for many years and established connections to their school, family and friends, and other community groups. This gives us an awareness and appreciation of local issues. As we are less likely to live away from home, we don't have to deal with unclear residency laws or absentee ballots that can discourage college students or other new voters. Because of the habitual nature of voting, encouraging new voters at a younger age will increase voter turnout as the population gets older. Young people who vote also influence the voter turnout of their parents. In a study of the Kids Voting program (where people under 18 were allowed to cast votes in a mock election), parents who had children participating in the program were more likely to vote in the actual election.

6. Lowering the voting age will improve the lives of youth. Young people have a right to be heard and to have our interests taken seriously. However, by disenfranchising young people society tells us that we do not have anything of value to add to the political conversations in our society. It also gives politicians permission to ignore our interests as people under 18 have no way to hold their representatives accountable.

This is especially concerning since there are certain issues, such as environmental degradation, public education policy, long-term government debt, corporal punishment laws, and poverty that impact young people more than anyone else. Younger people may also be better in tune with modern issues around internet privacy and social media use. But since young people are underrepresented in politics, the issues affecting us are underrepresented as well. Lowering the voting age will also help to increase the civic engagement of young people. The words spoken before the Senate Judiciary Committee supporting lowering the voting age in 1971 are as true then as they are now:

"The anachronistic voting-age limitation tends to alienate them from systematic political processes and to drive them to a search for an alternative, sometimes violent, means to express their frustrations over the gap between the nation's deals and actions. Lowering the voting age will provide them with a direct, constructive and democratic channel for making their views felt and for giving them a responsible stake in the future of the nation." (1971 U.S. Code Cong. Admin. News at pp. 365-367)

7. Knowledge and experience are not criteria for voting eligibility. Even though young people can be as politically informed as older people, there is no requirement that either group have any political knowledge at all. In fact, whenever tests have been used to register voters, it has always been about preventing certain groups of people from having political power rather than making sure the electorate is as informed as possible. Because of their discriminatory nature, knowledge or literacy tests are not used anywhere in the United States.

In spite of this, Congress has tried to determine the amount of knowledge a potential voter might need and even then concluded in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that a sixth-grade education provided "sufficient literacy, comprehension, and intelligence to vote in any election." Later on, when renewing the Act in 1975, the Senate Judiciary Committee pushed this idea further by stating, "It is difficult to see why citizens who cannot read or write should be prevented from participating in decisions that directly affect their environment." (S. Rep. No. 94-295, 1975: 24)

If you are diagnosed with a developmental delay or experience a brain injury, you do not automatically lose your right to vote and in fact, many states have passed laws that expressly ensure that you retain the right to vote unless it has been removed in a court of law.

8. There are no wrong votes. In a democracy, we don't deny people the vote because we think they might vote badly. It can be easy to feel baffled by the way other people vote, even if we know them very well. Many people believe that there are voters who are completely ignorant of the issues, woefully misguided about the economy, who get their political ideas from biased media, vote for candidates based on their personality, and are completely naive about the world. And yet, disenfranchising people simply because we disagree with them is not considered a serious position, unless that group happens to be disenfranchised already.

No advocate for lowering the voting age believes that young people will always vote intelligently, especially since not everyone can agree on what that means. But the same can be said for adults. Why are young people held up to a higher standard than everyone else?

9. Arguments against lowering the voting age can be used to disenfranchise adults, too. In a democracy, universal suffrage is the right of all citizens and the ability to vote should not be taken away lightly or arbitrarily. If a group is to be disenfranchised, the burden of proof must lie with those who want to remove voting rights, rather than requiring the oppressed group to prove why they deserve the right.

Throughout history, arguments against increasing the franchise have always been dubious and they still are - no matter the group. If you think young people are too naive or uneducated to vote, then ask yourself how would you feel about receiving a test before you could vote. No matter the test, many adults would fail. There are also adults that lack maturity or can be easily manipulated. The argument that certain groups of people lack the knowledge or maturity to vote has been used against increasing voting rights to people who don't own land, servants, and women throughout history.

10. Legislation to lower the voting age has more support than you think. When the United States decided to end age discrimination in voting for everyone 18 and over in all elections, it adopted the 26th Constitutional Amendment. The Amendment's overwhelming and bipartisan support allowed it to make history as the quickest Constitutional Amendment ever to be ratified.

Today, lowering the voting age continues to have wide support. Nearly half of US states have seen legislative attempts to lower the voting age in the last two decades, including four towns in Maryland that have successfully lowered their voting age to 16. Internationally, more than 25 countries have a voting age lower than 18 and many more are looking at following their lead. You can check out our Voting Age Status Report to learn more about the wide-ranging support to lower the voting age.

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Top Ten Reasons to Lower the Voting Age - NYRA

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Lowering the voting age is a new concept for many people, but there are many good reasons that show doing so is a sound and ethical choice. 1. Young people have adult responsibilities, but are denied the same rights. People under 18 are contributing and active members of society.

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If you see school buses parked around your city and get confused because schools are closed, no worries. It's likely that those buses are pumping out wifi for students who otherwise struggle for internet access.

With schools shut down across the country, school districts have had to scramble to figure out how to provide online schooling quickly. That's no simple task, and the transition has been a rocky one for administrators, teachers, parents, and kids. For families without the technology that enables that transition, it's been even harder.

Since online learning is the only way students can stay connected to schools and teachers, internet is a vital service. But despite the ubiquity of internet providers, not all families can afford internet. Even in places where internet providers are offering free wifi to families who can't afford it, some still can't afford the hardware-modems, routers-that enable them to take advantage of it.

School districts across the nation are addressing part of this issue by transforming their now-empty school buses into mobile wifi hotspots to bring online access to students. School bus hotspots fill a gap for families that aren't able to get wifi in their homes, for whatever reason. And though the idea isn't new-some districts have been using wifi-enabled buses as hotspots for years-it is becoming widespread during the pandemic.

In Montgomery, Alabama, 11 wifi-enabled buses already have rolled out, six more will go out today, and more will come next week. Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed told WSFA News why the buses are important.

"Because we understand there's a digital divide," he said. "And the coronavirus pandemic that we're into right now has only heightened the chasm that exists between those who can access high-speed internet service and those who can't."

"The idea is that any parent, any child in any neighborhood where they see that yellow school bus, they can access the WiFi hotspot," said MPS Superintendent Dr. Ann Roy Moore. "They don't have to be right down the street from their home. If they're at home, it's fine, but if they're at their grandma's house and there's a bus down the road, they can also access from that location."

The largest school district in Austin, Texas has deployed more than 100 wifi buses around the city through a $600,000 grant from Kajeet, an education technology provider.

"As we prepare for the possibility of extended school closures, we know that an Internet connection is a lifeline and a learning link for our students," Kevin Schwartz, chief technology officer for Austin ISD, said in a news release.

"Austin ISD will be deploying many of our 500+ Kajeet Wi-Fi/Internet enabled school buses to locations around our school district so that students can connect using our district Chromebooks."

The buses do have some limitations, however. The buses in Austin broadcast about 300 feet, so some students may have to go outside of their homes to catch a signal. They are not allowed to board the bus, so inclement weather can make accessing the wifi tricky for some, but it's definitely better than nothing.

One thing the COVID-19 pandemic has succeeded in doing is shining a spotlight on existing inequities in our country. School districts in low-income areas that already struggle with funding suddenly have to figure out how to provide computers and internet to students, while many wealthier districts already had laptops or tablets for every student. Thankfully, donors and organizations are stepping up to assist, but addressing the economic inequality underlying the problem will need longer-lasting institutional solutions.

In the meantime, wifi buses are an innovative temporary stopgap for families who can't access the internet otherwise.

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School districts are transforming buses into wifi hotspots for students without internet

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If you see school buses parked around your city and get confused because schools are closed, no worries. It's likely that those buses are pumping out wifi for students who otherwise struggle for internet access. With schools shut down across the country, school districts have had to scramble to figu...

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Racial Discrimination and Injustice in the Police Force

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When the urban planner Robert Moses began building projects in New York during the 1920s, he bulldozed Black and Latino homes to make way for parks, and built highways through the middle of minority neighborhoods. According to one biography, Moses even made sure bridges on the parkways connecting New York City to beaches in Long Island were low enough to keep city buses - which would likely be carrying poor minorities - from passing underneath.

But Moses was no outlier. The highways and public spaces that shape our cities were often intentionally built at the expense of Black, Latino and other minority Americans.

Robert Bullard, a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University, says race has played a central role in how cities across America developed - and in how they continue to grow.

"Transportation has always been embedded in civil rights and racism," says Bullard. He points to Plessy v. Ferguson, the landmark 1896 Supreme Court case that upheld racial segregation in state laws. Homer Plessy, the plaintiff, was arrested for boarding a "whites-only" train car in New Orleans to protest segregation on Louisiana's railways.

While the court would eventually come to reject the "separate but equal" doctrine enshrined by the case starting in the 1950's, Bullard says even today, not all transportation is created equal. Instead, cities often base plans for bus routes, highways and other infrastructure on a premise that some communities have more worth than others.

Bullard, who has written and edited over a dozen books on the relationship between race, cities and the environment, says that historically, urban planners followed the path of least resistance. And because minority communities were already disenfranchised, they didn't have a say in how their neighborhoods were developed.

Some progress has been made as laws have changed around practices like housing segregation, but Bullard says minorities are often still excluded from planning decisions. He calls the dynamic at play "highway robbery," wherein minorities pay taxes at the same rates as white Americans, but those dollars then subsidize racist patterns of development.

Freeways and bus routes, however, are just one part of a bigger picture: what urban planners refer to as "locally unwanted land-uses." These projects include highways, landfills, incinerators, bus depots and other kinds of projects that disproportionately fall in minority communities and often cause pollution and harm the health of residents.

"Oftentimes, communities of color have the wrong complexion for protection," Bullard said in an interview with NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday. "You can't wash race out of it ... There's all kinds of studies that show that race is still the most potent variable for predicting who gets more than their fair share of the 'nasty stuff,' and who gets more than their fair share of the good stuff."

Bullard argues that losing out on "the good stuff" ultimately shortens Black and brown lives. Minorities are disproportionately likely to live in areas with more pollution and in areas that are flood-prone.

They also live in communities that end up retaining more heat due to a lack of parks and green spaces. The resulting "urban heat island" effect can turn deadly for minorities during warm weather. In Chicago, a particularly hot summer in 1995 led to over 700 heat-related deaths. Most of the heat wave's victims were elderly, poor and disproportionately Black.

Bullard also points to pollution as part of the reason why African Americans and Latinos are dying at higher rates from COVID-19 than other racial groups. Asthma is a risk factor for COVID-19, and several studies have linked African-Americans' high prevalence of asthma to environmental pollution. And preliminary research from researchers at Harvard has found that areas with more air pollution are seeing a corresponding rise in COVID-19 deaths.

At a time when statues of American historical figures who owned slaves or perpetuated colonialism are tumbling across the country, Bullard says movements for racial and environmental justice have long been removing "invisible statues" by changing the routes of freeways and transit systems and opening up access to clean, affordable and efficient public transportation to minority communities.

One model he points to is Los Angeles, where in 1996 organizers and local residents filed a class-action lawsuit against the Metropolitan Transit Authority to stop it from diverting federal funding to a light rail line in the predominantly white suburbs. An out-of-court settlement forced the MTA to build 278 new environmentally-friendly buses and won cheaper, safer bus rides for poor and minority residents.

Bullard says communities in Atlanta, the Bay Area, Chicago, New York and Boston have had similar successes through grassroots campaigns, lawsuits and administrative complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

Ultimately, Bullard says, these victories are about making sure that access to the city, nature, bike lanes and walkable neighborhoods aren't just the domain of the white middle class, but are open to poor, nonwhite people as well.

"We've made a lot of inroads in making sure that monies flow back to rebuild transportation, and that our dollars can be flexible in a way that doesn't just build roads and highways, but also can rebuild communities and livability."

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'The Wrong Complexion For Protection.' How Race Shaped America's Roadways And Cities

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When the urban planner Robert Moses began building projects in New York during the 1920s, he bulldozed Black and Latino homes to make way for parks, and built highways through the middle of minority neighborhoods.