HUMBOLDT TODAY: The Humboldt County Supervisors discussed a resolution condemning hate speech; State Senator Mike McGuire is set to host a town hall discussing wildfire preparedness; plus, it’s Humboldt Bike Month! Those stories and more in today’s online newscast with John Kennedy O’Connor.

FURTHER READING: 

• NEED GROCERIES? With Emergency CalFresh Benefits Coming to an End, Arcata House Partnership is Opening Additional Free Food Pantry in Valley West
• CONVERSATIONS: The Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners of Providence St. Joseph Tell Us How They Support Victims

HUMBOLDT TODAY can be viewed on LoCO’s homepage each night starting at 6 p.m.

Want to LISTEN to HUMBOLDT TODAY? Subscribe to the podcast version here.

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Whether you’re homeless, low-income or just struggling to cover the high price of groceries, Arcata House Partnership invites you to help feed yourself and your family by using the free food pantry in Valley West, which is opening this week. 

Florence Carroll, administrative specialist for Arcata House, told the Outpost that the local nonprofit is concerned that more people will struggle to cover food costs in the coming months, as emergency food assistance programs made available during the pandemic come to an end. 

“With the cost of groceries going up, we’ve seen a lot of food insecurity in the area,” Carroll said in a phone interview Tuesday morning. “Now that emergency allotments are all ending, we’re going to see a lot more food insecurity.”

In 2020, as many people struggled from financial issues compounded by COVID, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act authorized emergency Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding, increasing the amount of state benefits available. For all Calfresh recipients, benefits were boosted to the maximum allowable amount for their household size, or $95 was added to those already receiving the maximum benefits amount. California also introduced the Pandemic-EBT program, which provides benefits for school-age children who would have been receiving free or reduced price meals at school, but didn’t have access during school closures.

Now, with the Federal Public Health Emergency ending on May 11, the Pandemic-EBT program will close out at the end of this school year and CalFresh emergency allotments will end on May 26, leaving around 5 million Californians  to see a dramatic drop in their benefit amounts at a time when food price inflation and the cost of living in California are extremely high. 

This sudden and dramatic loss of benefits has many food banks worried about the impacts, Carroll said, and the California Association of Food Banks warns that “California is facing a catastrophic hunger crisis in 2023.” 

This is why Arcata House Partnership, which already operates a food pantry on Wednesdays, is adding a second food pantry to help those who might be struggling to cover food costs in the coming months. The second food pantry will be in the Arcata House administrative building on Valley West Boulevard. 

Arcata House opened this temporary food pantry for the first time last summer, and Carroll said that it was very useful to the people in the Valley West neighborhood. This year, the nonprofit is expanding the number of weeks the pantry will be open, so that more people can be served. Carroll said it is important to have a food bank location in Valley West, where there are many unhoused people and low income families, who may have a difficult time making it over to the food pantry at the Arcata House Annex in downtown Arcata. 

But Carroll wanted to be clear that this service is not only for homeless or low income folks. Anyone, regardless of their income or housing status, is welcome to come get groceries. All of the food is donated by local grocery stores, which is also helping our area reach its zero-waste goals and come into alignment with California’s organic waste bill, SB 1383. 

“I think it’s good to point out that the food is from overstock from grocery stores,” Carroll said. “So this service also reduces waste.” 

The Valley West Food Pantry will be open at 4677 Valley West Blvd. every Friday from 4 to 6 p.m., starting this Friday, May 5 and ending on Sept. 29. Arcata House’s regular food pantry is open on Wednesdays from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Annex, 501 9th Street, Arcata. 

Arcata House is also looking for volunteers to help run the pantry. If you are interested in helping out, call 707-826-4528 ext 104, or email volunteer@arcatahouse.org

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Today, two nurses from the Providence St. Joseph Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners Team tell about the free service they provide to the community, assisting victims of rape or other forms of sexual assault. It’s a fairly powerful conversation and you might want to avoid it if those topics disturb you. But these women are amazing professionals.

If you’ve been sexually assaulted, call law enforcement and/or the North Coast Rape Crisis Team. The Rape Crisis hotlines are open 24/7. Here are the numbers to call:

• In Humboldt: (707) 445-2881
• In Del Norte: (707) 465-2851

Above: The Outpost’s John Kennedy O’Connor speaks with nurses Jennifer Hovie and Kristen Hansen of the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners team. A transcript can be found below.

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JOHN KENNEDY O’CONNOR:

Well, welcome to another Humboldt Conversation. I’m here today in Providence St. Joseph Hospital with Jennifer and Kristen, who are practice nurses. Thank you so much for joining us today. And here at the hospital, there is an incredible group of practice nurses, of which these two ladies are part of the team, who make up the SANE team, and that’s the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners. And you work, actually, in the wider community as well with the SART team. But tell us a little bit about the role that you have within this particular practice group.

JENNIFER HOVIE:

So our role is to provide medical care to people that have been sexually assaulted. So what we’re doing is just providing trauma-informed care to people that have experienced a sexual assault, and then as part of that medical care we’re also collecting evidence that we then pass on to law enforcement so that it can be analyzed for DNA.

O’CONNOR:

And you do in fact work very closely with law enforcement because this is part of the wider Humboldt SART effort, but this is something very much hospital-specific, isn’t it, that within here we are within your particular practice group.

KRISTEN HANSEN:

So we coordinate with law enforcement and North Coast Rape Crisis to perform evidentiary exams for victims of sexual assault in Humboldt and Del Norte counties and occasionally outside of that scope too. And we are the only group locally that does this. And so victims are not required to interact with law enforcement. When they are interacting with law enforcement, law enforcement will contact the team and schedule an exam for evidence collection. And for people who don’t feel safe reporting to law enforcement or interacting with law enforcement, Rape Crisis will coordinate with us to do an exam to collect evidence in the event that the survivor later feels comfortable pursuing the case.

O’CONNOR:

I suppose in my head I always think of sexual assault against women, but of course you do actually have experienced sexual assault against men as well, don’t you, in your line of work?

HOVIE:

So our team and our services encompass everything from birth to death. And so we have children that come in for exams, we have adolescents, adults, we have elderly people that have been assaulted — anyone who needs the services. 

HANSEN:

Regardless of gender or sexual orientation.

O’CONNOR:

When we arrived at the hospital today, you took us on a little bit of a tour, but there’s a very good reason for that, isn’t there? Privacy is obviously very important for anybody who is coming to the hospital in these circumstances.

HOVIE:

Absolutely. So one of the things that we emphasize to the survivors that come forward is that this encounter is very private, that we do take photos during our exam. These photos aren’t available to every medical provider, that they are closely guarded and they actually just go to law enforcement. That the details of their exam are not available to every person who ever accesses their chart. That it’s it’s a very private thing that we’re doing and we guard it closely.

HANSEN:

Even though it’s at the hospital, it’s not part of their medical record. None of this information is shared with anybody here. If they go to their doctor next week, their doctor wouldn’t know that they were here, couldn’t access any of that. And the other thing that we like to really emphasize with this is that this is all about choice and respecting survivors needs and their need to report. So of course, we wanna help people and empower them. But everything they do here is with respect to their choice, what they wanna do. If they can refuse any part of the exam, they can stop the exam at any time. They’re not forced to interact with us. They’re not forced to do anything that they’re not comfortable with. They’ve already had their choices taken from them. So it’s very important to us as nurses to respect that and support them in any way that we can — through privacy, through making sure nobody has to know, no one has to be involved. And they don’t have to tell us or participate in any part of the exam that they’re not comfortable with.

O’CONNOR:

And that, I think, as you were saying earlier, is one of the reasons why this particular space is very private, etc., because obviously if it took place in say the A&E area you run the risk of people being recognized.

HOVIE:

Absolutely. And then we’re doing an interview — they’re telling us what happened — and so we don’t want them to be overheard, either.

O’CONNOR:

You did say earlier that sometimes children are accompanying the victim, but you do make sure there is a policy for that as well.

HOVIE:

Right, and if the victim is a child, or the survivor is a child, then we make sure that we’ve separated the parent and the child for the interview portion, because there is a concern that if the child hears the parent’s concerns over and over, that they will incorporate that into their own memories, essentially, and kind of believe that that was true and correct, and it just kind of influences them. So we try and make sure that we’re separating them for that interview portion.

O’CONNOR:

Now, you were saying earlier that this is … obviously, you’re taking evidence, you’re gathering evidence, but you’re also providing medical care and medical support for somebody who may be seriously injured through an assault.

HOVIE:

So if we have someone who does require medical care, then obviously that takes precedence over evidence collection. So a lot of what we’re doing is just ensuring that if someone … and sometimes because of a trauma response, people’s recollection of what happened exactly and what events took place is a little spotty and it comes back in little bits and pieces. And so sometimes during my interview, I’ll find out that they were indeed strangled and that they had X, Y, and Z symptoms. And so that will just alert me that they need to be screened by a medical provider and we’ll take care of that. Sometimes we find injuries that would actually require, like, sutures or if there’s a foreign object that has been left behind and needs removal from someone other than me, then I would definitely enlist a higher level of medical care for those concerns.

O’CONNOR:

One thing I think to stress is you are not, although you obviously work hand in hand with law enforcement, you’re not law enforcement, you really are looking at the patient and the patient care and whatever happens in the next stage is really the next stage.

HANSEN:

Part of the clarification of our role is we are not … Sometimes people come and they want to know did something happen to me or did something happen to my child. And that’s not our determination or that’s not what we’re here for. We’re not here to do, like, a well child check and let you know if something happened. In most cases there is no physical evidence of sexual assault. Particularly in children. It’s very hard to do a physical exam and definitively prove sexual abuse or sexual assault. and particularly.

In adults, we can report our findings, but we can’t tell you yes, you someone was raped or yes, someone was sexually assaulted, except an extremely limited child cases. So we perform an exam, we look for medical conditions that need to be treated, we collect DNA evidence, but we we don’t make a determination. We can’t tell you, “Yes, something definitely happened.” If someone has had a complete blackout of events and they don’t remember anything or perhaps they’re too traumatized remember exactly what happened. We collect evidence. We take pictures of injuries we report that to law enforcement. And then what happens from there is up to the law enforcement investigation and so on and so forth.

O’CONNOR:

And you are a team of five, I believe, practice nurses, and this is a service that’s 24-7. People can just walk in, they don’t need to make any sort of appointment or anything.

HOVIE:

Well, saying that they can just walk in as a little … they do need to contact us ahead of time via law enforcement or through North Coast Rape Crisis. And if they’re not interested in participating with either of those entities, then we can certainly still do an exam for them.

HANSEN:

So our team is comprised of five nurses. We all have full-time jobs that we do as well. So we cover 24 seven call, but in that time we also have to work. Jen works three 12-hour shifts. I work five eight-hour shifts. So we do have to schedule, pre-schedule exams around our regular. And luckily we don’t do enough exams to need people here 24 hours a day, but that does mean that they have to be scheduled.

And because there’s only five of us, we keep our personal contact information private. There’s a single line that people call to schedule an exam and only Rape Crisis and law enforcement have that contact information. And they should be the only people really contacting us.

O’CONNOR:

That is the first protocol always, law enforcement or the Rape Crisis line.

HOVIE:

If someone presents to the emergency department reporting a sexual assault and says that they’d like an exam but that they don’t want to participate with law enforcement or rape crisis, and we can certainly accommodate that as well. We really do encourage them to participate with rape crisis because the level of support, emotional support and follow up with legal if that’s what they’re doing, counseling…

I mean, Rape Crisis, is an invaluable resource within our community and just having the exam done is probably not going to actually encompass or satisfy all of the needs of a survivor. I mean there’s a huge emotional component that isn’t going to be addressed entirely by doing this exam.

O’CONNOR:

Well Jennifer, Kristen, this has been very interesting. It’s very traumatic to listen to but certainly I think this is an incredible service and I think people really do need to know that this is available at the hospital. So thank you very much indeed for joining us today. Very much appreciate it.

Thank you for joining us for another Humboldt Conversation and join us for another one very soon.

The California Reparations Task Force published documents Monday indicating it plans to recommend the state apologize for racism and slavery and consider “down payments” of varying amounts to eligible African American residents.

The documents, numbering more than 500 pages, do not contain an overall price tag for reparations, but they do include ways the state could calculate how much money African Americans in California have lost since 1850, when the state was established, through today due to certain government practices.

The loss calculations would vary depending on type of racial harm and how long a person has lived in California. The loss estimates range from $2,300 per person per year of residence for the over-policing of Black communities, to $77,000 total per person for Black-owned business losses and devaluations over the years.

The state-appointed task force faces a July 1 deadline to make reparations recommendations to the Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom. Task force leaders have said they expect the Legislature to come up with actual reparations amounts.

The task force also is recommending a variety of policy changes to counteract discrimination.

“It is critical that we compensate, but not just compensate. We also need to evaluate policy that continues to hold us back,” said Monica Montgomery Steppe, a San Diego city council member who is on the task force. She spoke at a “listening session” in San Diego Saturday.

Who would get reparations?

The task force documents discuss two kinds of reparations: those arising from particular instances of discrimination or harm that require an individual to file a claim, and those that involve distributing money or benefits to all eligible Black Californians for racial harm the entire community experienced.

A recent example of an individual claim was Bruce’s Beach, a beachfront property and resort that the city of Manhattan Beach seized from a Black family nearly 100 years ago. Recently, partly because of the task force, government leaders returned the land deed to descendants of the Bruce family, who re-sold it to Los Angeles County for $20 million.

It is one of the few times a Black family was restored property taken by a local government.

“It is critical that we compensate, but not just compensate. We also need to evaluate policy that continues to hold us back.”
— Monica Montgomery Steppe, Reparations Task Force and San Diego city councilmember

Eligibility for reparations continues to be a controversy. The task force in March 2022 voted to limit potential compensation to descendants of free and enslaved Black people who were in the United States in the 19th century. The group narrowly rejected a proposal to include all Black people, including recent immigrants, regardless of lineage.

Everyone in the eligible class should be compensated, the task force report says, even if they can’t prove they suffered a specific harm.

“The State of California created laws and policies discriminating against and subjugating free and enslaved African Americans and their descendants,” the report says. “In doing so, these discriminatory policies made no distinctions between these individuals; the compensatory remedy must do the same.”

The final report, much like the task force’s previous interim report, lays out the history of systemic racism and ongoing injustices in California.

Costs of racial damage

The latest batch of documents also urges that eligible people be compensated in cash, sooner rather than later. The records instruct the Legislature to begin with “down payments” rather than waiting for full loss calculations.

The final report suggests dollar figures for certain categories of racial damage:

• For mass incarceration and the over-policing of Black communities, it estimates a loss per person of $115,260, or $2,352 for each year they lived in California from 1971 to 2020, corresponding to the national War on Drugs.
• For housing discrimination, it offers two methods of loss calculation. One method based on gaps between Black and white “housing wealth” would peg losses at $145,847 per person. The other method, based on governments’ “redlining” history, including discriminatory lending and zoning, would calculate Black residents’ losses at $148,099 per person — or $3,366 for each year they lived in California from 1933 to 1977.
• For injustices and discrimination in health, it estimates $13,619 per person for each year lived in California, or $966,921 total for someone living about 71 years — the average life expectancy of Black residents in California in 2021.

The reparations program would be overseen by a new state agency that would determine eligibility and distribute funds, the report says. The agency also would be responsible for helping individuals document and provide evidence for specific injustices.

Eligible Black residents should not expect cash payments anytime soon. The state Legislature and Newsom will decide whether any reparations are paid, and it’s unclear what they will do with the task force recommendations.

“This is the time where we really need the voice of the public,” said Khansa T. Jones-Muhammad, also known as Friday Jones, a member of Los Angeles’ reparations advisory commission. “This is the time to get your churches together. This is the time to get your school boards together.”

Jones made the comments during the listening session in San Diego.

Non-cash reparations

Some task force members have been dismayed at the amount of attention paid to the dollar figures under discussion. The final report provides dozens of policy recommendations aimed at preventing further discrimination and harm against Black residents.

“The biggest fight is implementation of all these recommendations, “ Montgomery Steppe said. “After the task force issues its final report, those recommendations need strong support in California’s Legislature and the government. It will take all hands on deck to ensure we push for a policy change from our state legislature.”

The task force is scheduled to meet again at 9 a.m. Saturday at Lisser Hall at Northeastern University, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., in Oakland. The meeting will be live streamed.

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CalMatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

HUMBOLDT TODAY: A local woman has been crowned Miss Indian World 2023!; the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors will consider an anti-hate resolution; plus, your latest weather and our daily poll in today’s online newscast with John Kennedy O’Connor.

FURTHER READING: 

• In its Second Report of the Year, the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury Tackles the ‘Dysfunctional’ State of Child Welfare Services in the County and the ‘Toxic’ Work Atmosphere Within the Department
• Humboldt Supervisors to Brainstorm Ways to Maintain Roads, Consider an Anti-Hate Resolution in Response to ‘Vicious and Hateful’ Message Aimed at Black, LGBTQ+ Communities
• YÉESHIIP! Local Woman Brings Home Miss Indian World Title
• California’s Next Housing Crackdown Could Force Cities to Plan More Homeless Shelters
• Lawmakers Want More Social Media Regulation. Here Are the Legal Hurdles They Could Face

Image from the title page of the report

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PREVIOUSLY:

• ‘IT’S OK TO VOTE’: Grand Jury Issues Its First Report of This Cycle, Focused on Humboldt County Election Integrity

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Today, the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury released the second of its reports for the 2022-2023 year — and if anyone expected it to continue on in the celebratory vein of the first one, on the county’s election systems .. well, they are in for a disappointment.

This second report takes aim at what the GJ calls the “dysfunctional” state of child welfare services in Humboldt County — and not just the county department nominally in charge of those things, but the county’s entire system for handling children who are victims of abuse or neglect.

In short, while the Grand Jury found that the people who work for the county’s Child Welfare Services division care deeply about the health and welfare of the children they work to protect, there are serious problems with morale, stress, overwork and burnout among employees — much of it, according to the Grand Jury, caused by understaffing. 

Not only has this led to what several people characterized as a “toxic” work environment within the department; additionally, it has led directly to the missing of state-mandated paperwork deadlines dealing with cases of abuse or neglect.

What to do? The GJ’s main recommendations all revolve around beefing up and streamlining the recruitment process for new employees. Currently, the jury says, the Child Welfare Services department only has a recruitment relationship with the Social Work department at Cal Poly Humboldt. There are many more pools to draw from.

Download the complete Grand Jury report here. Press release from the Humboldt County Grand Jury:

The 2022-23 Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury) Grand Jury has just released its first report of the year entitled Humboldt County Child Welfare Services and the Courts: Late Reports, Dysfunctional Systems, and Traumatized Children.

The 2022-23 Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury received a complaint that Child Welfare Services routinely misses statutory deadlines for submitting reports to the Humboldt County Superior Court.

These delays create unnecessary stress for children and families.

Over the last decade the Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury has investigated numerous complaints about the Department of Health and Human Services. While the nature of those complaints have differed, the introduction to the 2015-2016 Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury report stating—“those complaints conveyed dysfunctional work guidelines, distrustful working relationships, unresponsive upper management, mass resignations, and an unsupportive work environment” —largely reflects the essence of our current report. This 2022-23 report argues for significant changes in Child Welfare Services.

Child Welfare Services is charged with one of the most valued functions of our county government. Their job is to intervene when abuse or neglect is suspected or evident and make the best decisions for that child’s well-being. Not having enough social workers has resulted in case overload and missed mandated court reports. Institutional roadblocks regarding staffing, overtime, and child and family attorney interactions with County Counsel have all slowed the court process and possible family reunification.

Everyone we interviewed connected with CWS for this investigation has demonstrated a genuine passion for improving the lives of children here in Humboldt County. However, they all confirmed that the lack of staffing, recruitment and retention, lengthy hiring and vetting processes, high caseloads, long hours, high staff turnover, absenteeism, moral injury, and bureaucratic red tape is causing job burnout.

This report examines the causes and effects of the court report delays and the understaffed departments at CWS. It looks at ways CWS can employ non-traditional ways to improve staff recruitment, hiring, and retention, which ultimately will lead to the timely permanent placement of our children, Humboldt County’s most precious resource.

The intent of the 2022-23 Humboldt County Civil Grand Jury is to support an understaffed and overworked Child Welfare Services agency and the child dependency legal system by informing the citizens of Humboldt County of its findings and making long-term positive impacts with its recommendations.

Today Humboldt County is insanely proud of Eureka resident Tori McConnell, who was named Miss Indian World 2023 at this weekend’s Gathering of Nations powwow in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

McConnell, who is of Karuk and Yurok descent, tells us in the video above that she’s a graduate of the Native American Studies program at UC Davis, and was just accepted into the graduate program in Community and Environment at Cal Poly Humboldt, where she’s planning a course of study on traditional tattooing techniques.

Congratulations, Tori!