Tag: Deseret News

Deseret News, 11 June 2021

I used to love summer: the heat, the beach, the afternoon thunderstorms, those sickeningly sweet, dye-infused, high-fructose corn syrup filled popsicles that suddenly appear in the grocery store. But now that I’m a working mom with two children, turning the calendar over from May to June fills me with dread.

It’s not because my kids are home for the summer — in fact, I wish I could spend several months on holiday with my children. No, I dread summer because of the cost of summer camp, which is obscenely, ridiculously expensive here in Palm Beach County, Florida, as it is in much of the country.

This summer, we will pay upwards of $1,700 per month to send our two kids to summer camp — $300 more than we pay for preschool during the year and $300 more than we pay in rent every month.

Sit with that for a minute: In a normal month, we pay almost the same amount of money for rent as we do child care. In the summer, we pay more for child care than we do rent.

But I want to make summer camp happen for my kids because, when I was young, I felt the pain of missing out. My parents couldn’t afford camp, so I often accompanied my dad, who was a janitor and lawn man, as he cleaned one sorority house and then cut grass at another.

For my help, he paid me a small wage. And while I did learn a lot about real life and hard work and responsibility — lessons that have served me well, of course — I sometimes think I missed out on some quintessential aspect of childhood: a true summer.

Like my parents, I could probably keep my kids home as I work now. I could plop them down in front of the TV with some sweet squeezy-pops in hand.

But I want their summers to be more than that. I want them to have fond memories of water play with friends and singing songs and immersing themselves in art projects that end up hanging on the walls of our home.

And so here I am, so worried about paying for summer camp that I’m tightening my belt — literally. For lunch most days, I’m opting for seltzer. Two birds, one stone: I save money and slim down for weekend trips to the beach.

That so many American families are struggling to pay for summer camp is a failure of both society and policy.

For school-aged kids, there are far too few free or low-cost camp options and not enough spots. It’s the rare summer camp that offers scholarships. And demand outstrips supply.

But don’t just take it from me. A new report by the Afterschool Alliance says the same.

The special report on summer camp, “Time for a Game-Changing Summer, With Opportunity and Growth for All of America’s Youth,” reveals that not only do Americans struggle with a lack of child care options in the summer months, but also that, as is the case with everything in this country, the issue is rife with economic inequalities (that often translate to racial inequalities).

An “increase in summer program participation,” the study notes, has been “driven largely by families with higher incomes, while unmet demand for summer programs remains high, especially among families with low incomes.”

“For every child in a summer program, another would be enrolled if a program were available,” the report notes. So that means that we need at least double the amount of spots that we currently have.

I asked other working moms about the summer camp conundrum and most said they spent the year saving for summer camp, only to start the new school year wiped out financially and beginning to save again for the next summer. Some who couldn’t afford summer camp talked of complicated schedules that involved swapping child care responsibilities with other friends with kids. Many mentioned that the YMCA offers summer camp on a sliding price scale but also added that the program filled up quickly; others felt their local YMCA programs were still financially out of their reach.

On the other end of the financial spectrum, I’ve got a colleague in New York City who would probably love to pay $1,700 a month for summer camp. In her neighborhood, summer camp runs $1,500 a week. Per child. With two kids, she would pay $3,000 each week, for a grand total of $12,000 a month.

From where I sit, my colleague is wealthy. But she and her husband don’t have that kind of money, so they’ve crafted a unique summer camp plan. They’re renting a house in Connecticut and sending their kids to day camp there — renting a house for the summer is actually cheaper than paying for New York’s programs.

This whole conversation applies to after-school programs, too. In the fall, my daughter will begin public school. But that doesn’t mean we’ll be off the financial hook. The starting bell rings at 7:45 a.m. and school lets out at 2:45 p.m., a little over half way through my work day. Her public school has no free after-school program. We will have to either pick her up or pay.

This is the case in much of the country: The Afterschool Alliance notes that for every kid in an after-school program, there are three waiting to get in.

I’m not going to blame the camps or after-school programs themselves. They have their expenses and their owners need to turn a profit (probably so they, in turn, can send their own kids to astronomically expensive summer camps and after-school programs).

Instead, I see this as a major policy failure. And though the Biden administration is promising free preschool for 3- and 4-yearolds, what about good, safe, high-quality summer camps and after-school programs for all of America’s children, regardless of age and income?

Without support, parents are left to figure it out on their own, often sacrificing their savings, if they have some. Moms sometimes abandon their career plans to take jobs that allow them to pick up their kids after school or have summers off, and then get stuck in what has been called the “pink collar ghetto” of jobs that allow us to work and take care of the kids.

I wonder how low-income and middle-class women and families will ever get ahead in this country that talks a lot about “family values” but does little to actually help us stand on our feet. And I wonder how America will remain ahead in the world without its women — half the population — fully engaging in the workforce because we don’t have the supportive policies we need to do so.

The summer camp conundrum — and other policy gaps — exact an unmeasurable toll. The psychological impact of running up against the other glass ceiling — that of unaffordable child care and the way women must scale back their ambitions accordingly — is devastating.

This is the type of thing that infuriates me to the point that I’ve considered throwing my hat into the political ring. AOC rode the whole “I’m a waitress from the Bronx” thing into office. Why can’t I take my “I’m a mom who’s outraged about how expensive summer camp is” platform all the way to D.C.?

I’m telling you, I’d do it … if only I weren’t so darn busy sipping seltzer and researching low-cost — or at least semi-affordable — summer camp options for my kids.

Deseret News, 31 May 2021

Although the next presidential election is still 3¹⁄₂ years away, some Republican hopefuls are already taking tentative first steps that could, eventually, lead to the White House.

Top GOP leaders will be at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference, which will take place June 17-19 in Orlando, Florida, to court some of their party’s most important members — religious conservatives — and see how these voters respond to their pitch.

The list of invited speakers includes big names like former President Donald Trump — who has not yet ruled out running in 2024 — and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley. Politicians that many see as the future of the Republican Party, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are also expected to make an appearance, along with lesser known but still important figures like Mark Robinson, the lieutenant governor of North Carolina, and Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-North Carolina, who is currently the youngest member of Congress.

Events like the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conference offer politicians a chance to deliver unfiltered messages directly to members of the public — helping to shape the national dialogue — as well as the opportunity to connect with potential supporters and donors, experts on religion and politics say.

Attendees leave the conferences energized. Back home, they start spreading the word about different political candidates and some become early organizers for future presidential campaigns.

To some extent, the “Road to Majority” and gatherings like it can make or break a Republican candidate’s relationship with religious conservatives, who play a key role in the GOP, said Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government.

These events can be the start of a relationship between candidates and attendees that leads to cash donations, campaign volunteering and a supportive buzz — little things that make a big difference over time.

“It’s not the event itself — it’s the snowballing effect over time,” Rozell said, adding, “I would expect any presidential aspirant to show up.”

The Faith and Freedom Coalition was founded by Ralph Reed, a powerful religious and political leader whom Time Magazine once called “the right hand of God” in a 1995 article about his former organization, the Christian Coalition.

The Faith and Freedom Coalition, launched in 2009, aims to cast a wider net than Reed’s previous group. It seeks to serve not just Christian conservatives, but “values voters” of many stripes, Reed told The Economist in 2010.

By 2011, CNN was already calling the organization a “political powerhouse,” noting that “just about every Republican” who hoped to snag the 2012 GOP nomination would be present at the group’s annual conference that year.

However, the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s $50 million push to get out the conservative vote in 2020 failed to win Trump the reelection he was looking for. Now, they’re regrouping.

The goal of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conferences is not just to connect voters with Republican stars, said Tim Head, the organization’s executive director.

The gatherings also create “synergy and momentum” and impact the GOP’s policy plans, he said, explaining that state and local politicians — who are both speakers and attendees at such conferences — pick up ideas from organized presentations to casual chats in the hallways and everywhere in between.

“It’s very common that those organic conversations and presentations end up making their way into legislation,” Head said. “A Texas legislator ends up presenting on what happened in the (state) legislature this year and then we get a call from a guy in Tennessee, ‘Hey, can you get me in touch?’ or ‘I’ve been working on a bill.’”

In this manner, policies and legislation “spread like wildfire,” he added. “Conferences are a great way for these things to jump state lines.”

The Faith and Freedom Coalition’s conferences help steer the Republican Party, Rozell said. They enable GOP leaders to see what politicians or policies animate the religious conservatives in the crowd.

Religious conservatives, he explained, “have an outsize influence on Republican nominations — not only at the national level but particularly at the state and local level.”

And conferences like the “Road to Majority,” Rozell added, “have a significant impact on many of the leaders and supporters of religious conservative organizations.”

However, other academics are less convinced about the impact of such events.

For example, Clyde Wilcox, a professor of government at Georgetown University who used to attend the Christian Coalition’s annual conferences, says that, back then, there was little correlation between which politicians appeared at the event and who ended up becoming the Republican presidential nominee.

But Rozell believes the buzz generated by these conferences can begin to translate to a groundswell that could potentially carry a candidate to the White House.

“Money follows political support,” he said. “Being able to build a grassroots network of potential supporters and being a leader in the culture wars — that’s going to bring money.”

Raising credibility and visibility among the grassroots helps deliver “significant funds to their future campaigns,” Rozell added.

Deseret News, 21 May 2021

My husband and I watched with relief as a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas went into effect at 2 a.m. Israel-Palestine time on Friday. As I finished cooking dinner at our home in West Palm Beach, Florida, he shared footage with me of Palestinians celebrating in the streets in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinians were hailing the cease-fire as a victory, my husband, who is Palestinian, explained, since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — after initially digging in his heels — had been forced to give up on a military campaign that accomplished next to nothing. Both Hamas as an organization and its individual leaders had survived. Soon, they would be able to reequip for the next inevitable round of fighting.

We’ve both lived through many moments like this before — the cease-fires that bring an immediate cessation of hostilities but accomplish nothing in the long term. Both Israelis and the Palestinians are trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of violence.

When I lived in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories from 2007 to 2014, I personally experienced numerous battles between Israel and Hamas: the 2008-2009 war known as Operation Cast Lead, a couple of brief escalations in 2011, then two more in 2012, including Operation Pillar of Defense, an Israeli military campaign that was launched just weeks after an informal cease-fire.

During Pillar of Defense, for the first time, a Hamas rocket reached Jerusalem, where I lived then. When the siren sounded, there was nowhere to go — my landlord used the bomb shelter for storage — and so I stood in the threshold of my studio apartment in Kiryat HaYovel, guessing that if our building was hit, structures like door frames would remain.

The last escalation I witnessed turned into the horrific and terrifying 2014 summer war known as “Operation Protective Edge.”

Almost all of these escalations — and probably others that my husband and I failed to remember when making the list above — ended with either informal or formal cease-fires. That should tell you everything you need to know about the concept.

Now the latest round of bloodshed has been paused with yet another cease-fire. I’m elated, of course, that the death and destruction wrought by both Israel and Hamas has stopped. But I also feel a sense of dread because I know that both sides are doomed to repeat this cycle unless the core issues are addressed.

Those problems, in my opinion, boil down to a simple concept: equality. Until Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights in the land, we will see cycle after cycle after cycle of violence. Countless escalations with ceasefires that are always temporary, that represent only a break in a never-ending blur of fighting.

Deseret News, 20 May 2021

Earlier this week, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians went on strike over Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza, violence inside of Israeli cities and efforts to evict Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

In the Bethlehem area, youth have gathered to protest outside of the large checkpoint known as “300” — where only those with an Israeli-issued permit may pass from the West Bank into Jerusalem.

Locals tell me that this month’s protests are far bigger than they were during previous escalations and that among the protesters marching from Bethlehem toward the checkpoint are Palestinian Christians, a group that’s rarely mentioned in coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The problem, Palestinian Christians tell me, is that the ongoing violence, which came to a cease-fire early Friday, Israeli time, is often framed as a clash between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims. In reality, the battles and protests aren’t about whether Judaism or Islam has a stronger claim to the land.

Instead, both Christian and Muslim Palestinians are pushing back against the Israeli authorities who they say treat them differently than Jews. They’re reacting to “73 years of injustice,” said Antwan Saca, a Christian Palestinian who lives in Beit Jala — a small town snuggled in the mountains outside of Jerusalem that blends almost seamlessly into Bethlehem, which is just down the hill.

Palestinian Christians like Saca argue that framing events in religious terms — that is, Muslim versus Jew — represents an attempt to carve up Palestinian identity in order to better “divide and conquer” the population.

Although Palestinian Christians are, in some ways, treated differently by the Israeli authorities than their Muslim brethren — for example, Christians who live in the West Bank receive hard-to-get permits to access Jerusalem during Christian holidays — when all is said and done, Israel still treats them as any Palestinian, they say.

“At the end of the day, the Israelis do not see me as a citizen, as an equal peer,” said Saca, who is currently director of the Palestinian programs for Seeds of Peace, and a community activist who has long worked in the area of peace, justice and human rights.

“I was married to a foreigner and at some point her presence (her visa) here was rejected. It didn’t matter that I’m Christian. Facing the system, I’m still a Palestinian,” he said.

While Palestinian Christians make up a tiny segment of the population in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories, they have long played an outsized role in the economy, politics and society — including a key role in the Palestinian national movement, even before Israel was established in 1948.

Prior to the establishment of Israel, local Arabic newspapers played a tremendous part in solidifying both a national identity and a consensus around the question of Zionism. One of the most influential publications, Falastin, was founded by Palestinian Christian Issa El-Issa. Khalil al-Sakakini was a Christian and an early and influential Palestinian nationalist. Edward Said, one of the world’s leading academics on the topic of Palestine and one of Zionism’s fiercest critics, was also a Palestinian Christian.

And Christian-majority Beit Sahour was at the heart of nonviolent resistance during the First Intifada, the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, with its 1989 tax revolt — residences’ refusal to pay taxes to the Israeli government.

Today, Christian institutions play a vital role in keeping Palestinian society afloat as it struggles economically under Israeli occupation. Not only do Christian institutions provide much needed jobs, but also many Palestinian hospitals are Christian, including Al Ahli hospital in the Gaza Strip.

Two days ago, the new Anglican Archbishop of Jerusalem, the Most Rev. Hosam E. Naoum — himself a Palestinian — made a plea for the fuel needed to keep the generators at Al Ahli hospital running. Portions of the Gaza Strip are without power due to the Israeli blockade and bombardment, according to the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, and so without fuel and donations, Al Ahli hospital won’t be able to cope with the “crushing flow of injured and traumatized victims” streaming through its doors, the Rev. Naoum said in a statement.

He also called for “an immediate cease-fire” and for the United Nations and international community to “address the underlying injustices and grievances that have led to this latest unrest in a recurring cycle of violence.”

Other Christian leaders in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories have also expressed their support for all sides. On May 9, as tensions mounted, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem also issued a statement calling for an end to Israeli provocations in Sheikh Jarrah and at Al-Aqsa Mosque, remarking that the actions “violate the sanctity of the people of Jerusalem and of Jerusalem as the City of Peace.”

“The actions undermining the safety of worshipers and the dignity of the Palestinians who are subject to eviction are unacceptable,” the Heads of the Churches of Jerusalem remarked.

They concluded their statement by calling for the intervention of the international community “and all people of good will.”

The Palestinian Christians I spoke with believe the international Christian community has not done enough to respond to these calls. They feel abandoned and wonder why Christians around the world are aligning themselves with Israel.

American Christians, in particular, should be pushing back against their political leaders, who are some of the biggest supporters of the Israeli military, Saca said.

American Christians, he said, are not “carrying the cross as (Jesus) asked (believers) to do … they’re not standing up for justice and they’re not standing up to the oppressors.”

“How are you showing up with Christian values?” he asked. “How are you showing up and standing up for those undermined by power?”

Many American Christians support Israel as the Jewish homeland on the basis of religion. Sometimes referred to as Christian Zionists, they believe that Jews returning en masse to the land precedes the second coming of Christ. Often overlooked, however, is the presence of the Palestinian Christians who have lived there for centuries and the impact that today’s politics have upon their daily lives.

In the absence of international support, Palestinian Christians are standing up for themselves by hitting the streets to protest near the 300 checkpoint. Locals say that the Israeli army isn’t letting the demonstrators get far and is turning them back with tear gas and rubber-coated bullets, sometimes before the first stone has been thrown.

A young Palestinian Christian woman who lives in the neighboring village of Beit Sahour, which is home to Shepherd’s Field, tells me that, on a recent day, the tear gas was so heavy it wafted all the way to her family’s house, about a mile away from the checkpoint. The granddaughter of Palestinian refugees from Jaffa who were forced to flee their homes in 1948, she says the current escalation has left her too frightened to leave her house, let alone travel to Jerusalem — a place sacred to Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike.

“This violence that’s happening in the streets — it’s very dangerous,” she said.