Tag: equity

California Opens Applications For $15 Million Marijuana Equity Grant Round To Local Jurisdictions

California officials have begun accepting applications for the Cannabis Equity Grants Program for Local Jurisdictions for the coming fiscal year. The grants are part of the state’s effort to use cannabis tax revenue to fund equity programs for people disproportionately impacted by the drug war.

The purpose of the program is “to advance economic justice for populations and communities impacted by cannabis prohibition and the War on Drugs by providing support to local jurisdictions as they promote equity in California and eliminate barriers to enter the newly regulated cannabis industry for equity program applicants and licensees,” a description says.

The funding round is open to any local California jurisdiction “that demonstrates an intent to develop a cannabis equity program or that has adopted or operates a cannabis equity program.”

Applications for the grants program will be accepted through December 14, with awards expected to be announced in January. The online application is available through the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) website.

Money from the program funds local programs offering technical support, regulatory compliance and assistance with securing startup capital to equity applicants and licensees. The grants “will further the stated intent of the AUMA by reducing barriers to licensure and employment in the regulated industry,” according to a description posted on the California Grants Portal. “Offering these types of support will also aid the state in its goal of eliminating or reducing the illicit cannabis market by bringing more people into the legal marketplace.”

Grants for last fiscal year, announced this past February, went to 16 cities and counties across the state, ranging from $350,000 for San Diego County to nearly $2 million for Oakland.

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Missouri NAACP Threatens Lawsuit To Stop Marijuana Social Equity Arrangements That ‘Defraud’ The State

James Harnden has been a longtime activist for cannabis legalization, ever since he got slapped with a low-level felony possession charge for having an ounce of weed.

The 56-year-old Rockford, Illinois, resident says that charge has cost him job opportunities for 30 years.

Earlier this year, he saw an advertisement in the Craigslist “gigs” section posted by a Michigan cannabis real estate group called Canna Zoned MLS. It was looking for “partners who qualify as a social equity applicant” to participate in Illinois’s lottery to award cannabis business licenses that are, in part, meant to benefit people impacted by marijuana criminalization.

“I spent most of my life applying for jobs and not getting them,” Harnden said. “So I’m like, ‘Okay, so maybe one of these licenses will swing my way.’”

The Craigslist ad read: “If you are eligible and provide the required documentation, we will give you $2,000, just for helping us submit the lottery application! If we win the lottery and secure a license, we will give you an additional $20,000!”

Harnden says what he didn’t realize was that he signed a contract agreeing to hold 100 percent ownership interest on the application, but that he wouldn’t get revenue or profits from the business. After the business passed through all the state and municipal approvals, the contract stated that Harnden would be required to sell his share of the business for $1 to the group or be held in breach of contract.

The contract also authorized the group to enter Harnden’s information into lotteries for social equity cannabis licenses in other states—and that’s how Harden says he got paid $500 to be part of the lottery for Missouri’s microbusiness license program.

Harnden was eligible to apply in Missouri because of his marijuana charge, which is among seven eligibility categories that also includes living in census tracts with high poverty and unemployment rates. Canna Zoned’s Jeffrey Yatooma is listed as the “authorized agent” on the contract Harnden provided to The Independent, leaving a space for his signature at the bottom.

Yatooma secured two of the 16 social equity cannabis licenses—in Columbia and Arnold—issued earlier this month, according to information obtained by The Independent through a public records request. Those records show Yatooma is listed as the “designated contact” for 104 out of the 1,048 applications for dispensary licenses in Missouri’s lottery.

Yatooma’s group was not the only one using the strategy of flooding Missouri’s lottery with applications to obtain a dispensary license. An Arizona-based consulting firm is connected to more than 400 dispensary applicants, including six winners, and a Missouri firm is connected to more than 80 applicants and two winners. Both said their clients did not advertise or promise payment for submitting applications.

In at least three states holding lotteries for social equity cannabis licenses this year—Illinois, Maryland and Missouri—Yatooma’s group has offered to pay eligible people up to $2,000 to apply on their behalf and $20,000 more if they won.

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Oregon Is Removing a Requirement for High School Students to Show ‘Essential Skills’ Before Graduating

Last week, the Oregon Department of Education unanimously voted to remove a requirement for Oregon high schoolers to demonstrate basic mastery in reading, writing, and mathematics in order to graduate. The requirement, which was most often met using students’ standardized test results, has been paused since 2020.

According to state documents, the “Assessment of Essential Skills” benchmark is typically met when a student meets a cutoff score in a statewide standardized test, though alternatives can be used for students who opt out of the test, such as samples of classroom work or scores from other tests like the SAT or ACT.

While score cutoffs have been unavailable since the pause in 2020, a state guide from the 2016-2017 school year lists the cutoff for one popular test, the Smarter Balanced test, which student take in their 11th grade year, as a score of 2515 for reading and 2543 for math. Based on score percentile data from 2017-2018, assessments would put those scores roughly in the 25th and 45th percentiles respectively (assuming no major changes in student performance over one year). 

While the math cutoff in particular might seem high, both ranges would barely put test takers just a few points into the “Level 2” range in Smarter Balanced’s 4-level scoring range. Level 2 scores are defined by the testing organization as meaning that a student has a “partial understanding of and ability to apply the knowledge and skills associated with college content readiness,” adding that a student in this level would need “support” to be ready for college.

While not every high school graduate can or should go to college, if a high school student can’t even demonstrate “partial” understanding of the subject matter of their classes, letting them continue on to their senior year and graduate high school without additional intervention is clearly irresponsible.

However, critics have framed the extra remediation many low-performing Oregon students receive as damaging. Department of Education officials opposed the policy in part because “higher rates of students of color, students learning English as a second language and students with disabilities ended up having to take intensive senior-year writing and math classes,” extra remediation that “denied those students the opportunity to take an elective,” according to The Oregonian. 

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Lone Democrat Who Opposed Marijuana Banking Bill In Senate Committee Explains His Vote

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) was the sole Democrat to vote against a marijuana banking reform bill during a committee markup last month. In a new interview, the senator described his vote as an effort at making important equity improvements while there’s still a chance to do so.

“I’m worried that if we pass a bill with all of the fees and the revenue that comes, and not begin to address the issue of restorative justice, we’re not going to go back and get those communities,” Warnock said during an appearance on Crooked Media’s Lovett or Leave It podcast that was posted on Sunday. Black and brown people especially, he said, have been “hollowed out by half a century of the so-called war on drugs for using marijuana.”

Warnock was discussing the Secure and Fair Enforcement Regulation (SAFER) Banking Act, which would protect banks that service state-legal marijuana markets from being punished by federal regulators.

“What it does is it allows businesses and banks to participate with cannabis businesses in states where it’s legal,” Warnock explained, “and so it creates a safe space for them. But the communities that have been most devastated by the so-called war on drugs, [it] doesn’t do a thing for them at all.”

“My question was, ‘Who are we really making safer?’”

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California School District Considers Removing Honors Courses For Sake Of “Equity”

A San Francisco Bay Area high school district is considering removing honors classes for high school students in an effort to streamline its courses and promote “equity” – a move that has sparked concern among students, parents, and teachers.

The Sequoia Union High School District’s board discussed the move during a six-hour meeting Sept. 20, but did not come to a decision on the matter.

District administration staff annually review courses based on students’ academic outcomes, and “typically in response to low scores … that have not improved over time,” according to a district analysis.

Arguing for equity, the analysis stated that eliminating certain honors courses and merging students taking “advanced” classes with those taking them at “grade-level” would “diversify” the classroom and could improve academic outcomes for students who “have historically experienced barriers” to advanced coursework.

Over the past several years, Sequoia Union has merged advanced freshman science with grade-level science courses and merged advanced freshman math courses with grade-level math districtwide.

At several individual high schools, advanced English, physics, and chemistry have additionally been merged with their respective grade-level courses.

The analysis said its study found such changes had little-to-no effect on the districts’ advanced-placement students—while students that have struggled saw academic improvement and higher rates meeting college entrance requirements.

“When students have greater access to rigorous coursework and are held to high standards, they are more likely to meet those expectations,” the analysis stated.

But SUHSD Students First—an advocacy group made up of students, parents, teachers, and community members—raised concerns about transparency, saying that the school community was not given an opportunity for input on the matter.

The group said they believed the analysis was “biased” toward merging despite their efforts to work with the district to get neutral data.

“We are disappointed the board did not ensure a neutral report and did not have any participation in the review of the data.  It is clear we should have advocated for an external contractor to conduct the research and prepare the report,” the group said in a statement on their website.

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Speculation Swirls Over Reports Of Obama-Linked Hawaii Official’s Refusal To Release Water During Blaze

Hard questions are being asked about what role a Hawaiian water official connected to President Barack Obama had in delaying fire prevention measures that could have reduced opportunities for the Maui blaze to rapidly spread and take the lives of over 100 individuals.

M. Kaleo Manuel, a Hawaii water official and an “Asian Pacific Leader” with the Obama Foundation, gained notoriety in the days following the horrific fires after a previous video was unearthed showing the water throttler explaining his philosophy that water should not be seen as “something we can use” but rather an “earthly manifestation of a god.”

“Native Hawaiians treated water as one of the earthly manifestations of a god… So that reverence for a resource and reciprocity in relation is important to our well-being. Over time, we’ve become used to looking at water as something that we use, and not necessarily something that we revere,” said Manuel.

“If we can look as islanders at how we reconnect to those traditional value sets. My motto is, let water connect us and not divide us… It requires true conversations about equity.”

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Food Service Giant Sued Over ‘White-Men-Need-Not-Apply’ Program

A former employee of a large food service corporation is suing the company in federal court after it fired her for refusing to participate in a program that discriminates against white male employees.

Courtney Rogers worked for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Compass Group USA Inc. from her home office in San Diego, California.

The company had more than 280,000 employees and $20.1 billion in revenue in 2019, according to its LinkedIn profile. One of the world’s largest employers, the company has thousands of employees in California and counts among its clients Dodger Stadium, San Francisco International Airport, Uber, Snapchat, Netflix, Disney Studios, and NBC Universal.

The company has won recognition for promoting so-called diversity, including appearing on the Forbes list of Best Employers for Diversity from 2018 through 2022.

Its corporate parent, U.K.-based Compass Group PLC, had $32.2 billion in revenue in 2019.

Ms. Rogers was hired in August 2021 and given the job title of “Recruiter, Internal Mobility Team.”

Her responsibilities included the processing of internal promotions, which encompassed posting job listings, reviewing applications, conducting interviews, writing and sending offer letters, carrying out background checks, ordering drug tests, initiating and reviewing onboarding, and ensuring that personnel updates were reflected in the system.

Compass created a program it called “Operation Equity” in March 2022, a purported diversity program that offered qualified employees special training and mentorship and the promise of a promotion upon graduation, according to the legal complaint that was filed in Rogers v. Compass Group USA Inc.

The lawsuit was filed on July 24 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California under the auspices of the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm headquartered in Chicago that organized the legal action.

But participation in the program was restricted to “women and people of color.” White men were not allowed to participate and receive the associated benefits of training, mentorship, and guaranteed promotion.

By calling it “Operation Equity,” the company “used a euphemistic and false title to hide the program’s true nature.” The program would more accurately be called the “White-Men-Need-Not-Apply” program because it is an example of “‘outright racial balancing,’ which is patently unlawful,” and is the kind of program “promoted by people … who harbor racial animus against white men,” according to the legal complaint.

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‘Disgusted’ New Zealand Surgeons Now Required To Consider Ethnicity Of Patients

Surgeons in Auckland, New Zealand are ‘disgusted’ over a new policy rolled out in February which requires them to address “historical disparities in healthcare access” for Māori and Pacific Island communities, which will be factored into a new ranking system that determines priority for surgical procedures.

According to leaked documents obtained by the NZ Herald, the new initative, implemented by Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand, uses an “Equity Adjustor Score” algorithm to assign priority based on clinical urgency, waitlist duration, geographic location, ethnicity and level of deprivation.

Patients of Māori and Pasifika backgrounds receive higher rankings, while European New Zealanders and other ethnicities are downranked.

Several surgeons spoke with the Herald, one of whom said he was “disgusted” by the new system.

“It’s ethically challenging to treat anyone based on race, it’s their medical condition that must establish the urgency of the treatment,” said the surgeon, adding “There’s no place for elitism in medicine and the medical fraternity in this country is disturbed by these developments.”

A document on the equity adjustor which was leaked to Newstalk ZB shows two Māori patients, both aged 62 and who have been waiting more than a year, ranked above others on the list. A 36-year-old Middle Eastern patient who has been waiting almost two years has a much lower priority ranking.

An email by Te Whatu Ora business support manager Daniel Hayes in April said: “Hi team, Heads up. This is going to be the new criteria for outsourcing your patients going forward. Just putting this on your radar now so that you can begin to line up patients accordingly. Over 200 days for Māori and Pacific patients. Over 250 days for all other patients.” -NZ Herald

Health Minister Ayesha Verrall defended the move, pointing to a Government-commissioned, independent review of the health system conducted in 2018, which found that the system produced unequal outcomes, particularly for populations deemed vulnerable.

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How ‘equity’ ruined cannabis legalization in New York

New York’s legal weed experiment is going about as poorly as possible.

Earlier this week, the state finally signed off on a handful of new dispensary licenses, a full two years after legalization.

Illegal pot shops, meanwhile, have gotten so common — and so attractive to criminals — that Gov. Hochul has asked Albany to approve five-figure fines and tough enforcement powers to help shut them down.

It remains to be seen whether any state can legalize marijuana without serious downsides.

But New York’s attempt has been particularly disastrous.

This is in large part because rather than prioritizing tax revenue or public health in the legalization process, Albany put progressive-tinged “social justice” strategies front and center in its policy design.

They admit as much.

Hochul has emphasized that New York State’s marijuana industry will benefit those who committed crimes under prohibition.

The state’s Office of Cannabis Management has said that “social and economic equity” is a “major focus” of legalization.

And the New York City Mayor’s Office promised to put equity “at the center” of the budding industry. You get the idea.

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Kidney Transplant Controller Wants To Distribute Human Organs Based On ‘Equity’

If someone donates one of their kidneys and later needs a new one, should they go to the top of the transplant waitlist? Yes, say good people. Yes, say normal people. Not anymore, say the bureaucrats in charge of the transplant waitlist. Instead, they say it’s time for a “more equitable approach.”

Currently, the people at the top of the kidney transplant waitlist are people who have donated one of their organs to someone else (living donors), young children who are a great biological match with an organ, and patients who are very hard to be matched with any organ. The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) is a private non-profit that holds a contract with the federal government to run the transplant waitlist, and they want to change that. UNOS wants to remove these “hard boundaries” in favor of a new system that erodes the protections for living donors.

A report commissioned by UNOS envisions a drastic reduction in prioritization for living donors — going from the current virtual guarantee of getting a new kidney to a slight bonus on the waiting list — equivalent to as low as 10 percent of the total prioritization score. This policy would betray those who have already donated an organ and discourage others from donating in the future. They are pushing this policy even though their own research shows that changing from the current policy will not reduce death rates but lead to a higher rate of failed kidney transplants in the first year after surgery.

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