The Advocate

Signal boosting to amplify this incredible opportunity: "My name is Nguyen Pham, and earlier this year, I created the Mensa Foundation's first-ever Progress Pride Scholarship to lift and center marginalized students at the intersection of BIPOC and LGBTQ.   The Progress Pride Scholarship has just officially launched, and I'm spreading the word to drum up interest in the application.  Up for grabs are two $10k college scholarships -- the Foundation's largest scholarship awards ever -- for those who identify as BIPOC and LGBTQ and who have a demonstrated record of positive service to the BIPOC and LGBTQ communities.   An essay is all that's required up front, due January 15, 2022.  Open to all U.S. university students.  Awardee(s) will be selected in early 2022 and will then need to furnish a résumé/CV.   To help with promotion, I've assembled an info page at https://progresspride.org/ as well as an e-flier, included below and attached as a forwardable image.   W

Please watch this 10 minute clip from CNN on how effective and innovative the Street Crisis Response Team in San Francisco has been, as well as interviews with Steven Taylor's grandmother Addie Kitchen, who tell us that a program like this in San Leandro could have prevented his murder at the hands of former SLPD Officer Jason Fletcher. Click here for link. This program is not just cost-effective compared to traditional policing, but it actually solves problems in a sustainable and ethical way. The CATT program in Alameda is insufficient because it keeps police officers as the first point of contact and leaves it to their judgement on whether to call in a CATT team in situations that they have no expertise with. This is what defund the police means in action. This is what trauma-informed care looks like. This is how we deal with mental health crises. This is the model we need to be using in San Leandro and scaling it up to include other issues that police are not trained or equippe