total time: 22.19 minutes
total words: 3444
[Anna Callahan]: So it looks like we are live. I want to say hello to everybody who's watching. I see that Hannah is a little bit frozen, so I'm going to go ahead and switch her over. Hey, we've got her. Awesome. So I'm Anna Callahan, and I have with me Hannah Friedman. who has been doing just amazing work with mutual aid Medford and Somerville. So fantastic, really great. So Hannah, I would love to have you just say a little bit about who you are and how MAMAS, Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville started.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, thanks, Anna. Hi, everyone. My name is Hannah. I use she, her pronouns. I live in Medford, right by Magoon Square. And yeah, I'm been in Medford for, I came here for college and stayed. And mama started right when, about a week and a half ago, two weeks ago, when a lot of the coronavirus precautions were really starting to become like a present reality for everyone. And with two of my housemates and another friend who's local to Somerville, we started MAMAS, which stands for Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville. And It's basically a collective and set of resources about how to set up a mutual aid network in your area. And so there are a bunch of different parts. There's ways where folks can provide offerings that they have that other community members can share in. There's a place where people can write about needs that they have and other community members can get in touch with them to fill it. And then there are neighborhood pods, which are basically like folks that take on reaching out to their neighbors and spreading the word in like a certain geographic region and then kind of connecting all of their neighbors with the larger resource bank that we're building with Mamas. So things are still pretty new. It's only been about two weeks and we are, you know, just like reflecting and trying to shift and build things out to really be the kind of network that we're going to need to weather this crisis.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, absolutely. So we're going to talk more about mamas in just a second. I thought we might open up with a couple of public service announcements. And I don't know if you've had a chance to read these. There have been some Medium posts that became very popular by a guy named Tomas Pueyo. I'm not sure that I pronounced that correctly. I don't know. Oh, and by the way, if you're watching on YouTube, you can just write a question or a comment and then we can see those and we'll answer people as this goes on live. So in the first Medium post that he made, it's called Coronavirus, Why You Must Act Now. That one is really about how serious this is and the importance of social distancing or what I like to call physical distancing, right? We need to be physically distant from each other. Keeping six feet of space, not touching things other people have touched, just the the reality of how incredibly contagious coronavirus is and how important it is that we slow down, we like flatten the curve, as I say, we slow down the number of people who are infected because of the fear of overwhelming our hospitals. So I don't know if you have any thoughts about that.
[SPEAKER_03]: Just to keep listening to, uh-oh.
[Anna Callahan]: You seem good, I can hear you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm so sorry, technical difficulties. Technical difficulties, so sorry. That's okay. We can see and hear you great. Great. Yeah, that sounds good to me. Just trying to keep up with all of the really fast-moving new public health guidelines that are in place. Absolutely. we can to keep each other safe. That's right.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. So I just wanted to kind of start this off in case there are people who don't really understand the magnitude of the crisis that we're in and why people are doing all these measures, like why all the schools have been shut down, why all the restaurants have been shut down, you know, why all of this stuff is happening. that it really is critical that we not overwhelm our hospitals, basically. But the other one, and he did a second post after he got many millions of views on that first post, and basically it's talking about what does this look like? Do we have to stay indoors, socially isolated from each other for six months or a year? For people who are maybe aware of how bad it is and want to not be need a ray of hope. So the ray of hope is that already in some countries they have flattened the curve and so it's really a question of right now doing everything we can to reduce the number of people who get it at the same time. But you know there was a great video of a doctor talking about what's happening in Taiwan and in Taiwan you know they are they are currently kind of going about their daily lives. They have tons of tests. They have testing for everyone. They have plenty of masks. Everyone wears masks. As you enter public places like schools or shopping malls, they have little people who have like a little forehead temperature check And then if you are quarantined, the government actually calls you at national health care. So the national health care system calls you three times a day to ask you about your symptoms. And if you need to go to the hospital, they arrange to have you delivered to the hospital. And they pay people to stay home. So, you know, there's a lot of hope there that we are not going to have to live like this forever. And if we can just, you know, be good for the next few weeks, we'll see. Every country is different. Every region is different. But hopefully we can get it under control and have some hope for more normal lives soon. Okay, great. So now I want to ask more questions about Mutually Medford and Somerville. It's so exciting. I know you guys have, you have a lot of email lists. Can you just talk about sort of what you have available to people and how people are communicating through Mamas?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so things are still in the works. And we are launching new systems like almost every day, which is pretty cool. But right now, the things that we have available for folks are to connect via the needs and offerings spreadsheets, which can be found on our website, mutualaidmamas.com. And we also have a hotline that's available to folks. Oh my god, I should know the number by heart, but I don't. Let me pull it up. The hotline number, if anybody ever needs anything, wants to get in touch with anyone, connects up with some resources, you can call our hotline at 339-545-1315. Again, that's 339-545-1315. And we have an awesome rotating list of volunteers that are answering those hotline calls every day and connecting people with the resources that they need. So in addition to the hotline and the needs and offerings list, we also have a set of Google groups that folks can join if they're interested in taking on a more active organizing role in the network. And we also have like a WhatsApp group chat of all of the Neighborhood Point people who can get together and just like share best practices and tips and ideas and support each other on that. So yeah, if you sign up through the offerings form or otherwise give us your email, we will put you on our email list. So we've been sending out a couple of newsletters. We just started this week and hope to continue sending out newsletters with like resource roundups and calls to action and other ways that folks can plug in.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, that's awesome. So I know that we don't wanna, you know, give it any personal information, but what are the needs that you're hearing, right? I'm assuming, like, there are people who've lost their jobs. There are people, there are, you know, college students who have been kicked out of the dorms. So tell me what are some of the things that you're hearing from people in their needs?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it really runs the gamut. Folks are in all kinds of different situations. And like you lifted up, there's a lot of college students that were needing, especially right when Tufts was closing, some rapid response support. and some housing support. But we've also just had folks who are either immunocompromised and self-quarantining or folks who might have been exposed and are self-quarantining who need support in getting groceries from the grocery store and picking up their prescriptions. Running errands. We are connected with some different local nonprofits to help run deliveries back and forth. We are turning some of the little free libraries on the corners into micro food pantries, which is a pretty cool idea. Taking the books out for now and putting some cans and canned food in. But yeah, and it's also a lot of just like checking in on older folks. We had someone who used to live here, who now moved out of state, whose mother still lives in Arlington. And he's like, he called us and he was like, she is all alone. She doesn't have any groceries. How can you help? And someone was going grocery shopping for her in like 15 minutes. And yeah, stuff like that. There was a pretty funny and really sweet example right on St. Patrick's Day of an older woman who was really disappointed to be missing out on her annual community corned beef dinner and like posted about it on the needs group and somebody responded and went to the grocery store and bought the ingredients and cooked her a corned beef dinner and delivered. Very Boston.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, definitely. I want to go ahead and take this opportunity. There was someone who posted a need, and for the show we kind of reached out to a few people, and she said she's very happy to have her email that she had sent read on the show. So I'm just going to read the very opening. My name is... So my name is Ivy Ryan and I am a Somerville based actor and teaching artist and I just lost three quarters of my income and I'm scrambling to make it through March and April. So I think there are all sorts of needs that people are posting. It's really amazing to sort of see what you're talking about, that there are people posting what's going on in their lives, and then there are all sorts of people who are offering to help. And I think it's very exciting and really what every community needs, what our community needs, what every community needs.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I do just want to speak also, though, to the role that, like, governments could be playing that would certainly make mutual aid work a lot easier. I mean, I feel pretty nervous for April 1st to roll around and everybody's rent to be due, because we are receiving a lot of donations, but it is not going to be enough to cover all of the needs that folks are gonna have with bills and rent due April 1st. And I do think that there are some actions, groups like City Life Vida Urbana that are based in Boston have been calling for rent freezes, a moratorium on evictions, foreclosures, mortgage payments. And there are like real material choices that our state politicians could be making to make this crisis a little easier for everyone to weather.
[Anna Callahan]: Absolutely, you know, so thanks for that great segue because I was gonna, I was gonna run by you. So Ben, you and Kemp and City Councilor was going to be here tonight and then you know how everything is changing like every five minutes. I feel like in the last week we've been through like a month. Things are changing so quickly every day, so he's not able to make it tonight, but he sent over some of the things that he and J.T. Scott, two Somerville City Councilors, have requested. They did a resolution for things that they say the state and national government should do, and I'll just read a few of these off, and I'd love to get your sense about them. For workers in small business, including universal paid family and medical leave for all, unexpanded unemployment insurance for all workers, including self-employed, hourly, and gig workers. Financial assistance, including regular direct cash payments to all people without means testing for the duration of the crisis. a public ownership stake of any large corporation receiving a federal bailout, and a prohibition on stock buybacks for any large corporation receiving a bailout. And I know stock buybacks are this thing that's confusing, not a lot of people understand it. They were illegal until 1982. So it is very recently that corporations have been allowed to sort of buy up all of their own stock, which increases the price of their stock, which makes all their shareholders richer, and does nothing for the company except put it in deeper debt. So any thoughts on those before I go on to the next two? Keep going. Keep going. Awesome. Voting rights, including immediate implementation of vote-by-mail policies in all states and territories in order to assure that our democracy functions during this crisis. And the fourth one is incarcerated people, including taking all steps to avoid COVID-19 infection among incarcerated people, such as releasing all people currently held in pretrial detention. A lot of those are people who just don't have the money to pay for cash bail. So sad. Prohibition on detaining people for greater than 48 hours without a court order. without a court order finding a threat to public safety, and immediate clemency and release granted for incarcerated people who do not pose a threat to public safety. Your thoughts?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I mean those all sound very important. I hesitate a little to weigh in on your questions about like social distancing, public health policies, like state policies, because I am not an epidemiologist. I am not a politician. I do not write policy. I'm just like a regular Medford residents, like trying to keep things organized. But from what I know about Ben and JT, those sound awesome. And I'm really grateful to have their progressive leadership in this moment. I think that all sounds exactly like what is needed. And I feel really excited and blessed to follow their lead.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, totally. I will say, I think we're going to have a criminal justice person on next week to talk about what's happening inside of jails where, you know, there literally isn't soap. It's like people are forced to like eat at the same table. I mean, it's just... terrifying, terrifying.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, on top of like the existing like human rights abuses that are already happening.
[Anna Callahan]: Exactly, exactly. And the number of people who are in jail for like marijuana. a lot of crimes, which is not a crime. It's like so crazy, so crazy.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I appreciate you bringing all this up.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Any final words before we go on to invite our local doctor in to chat with us?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's it. Just that everyone in Medford and Somerville is welcome to get involved. If you are living in like a neighboring town, we can hook you up with other mutual aid networks that are popping off all across the state and the country. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can just email mutualaidmamas at gmail.com. And again, if you have any needs whatsoever, you can always reach out to our hotline. That's 339-545-1315. And find us on our website, MutualAidMamas.com and on Facebook. So that's it for me.
[Anna Callahan]: Thanks, Anna. Thank you so much for all the incredible, incredible work that you guys have done. It's amazing. Thank you. Thank you. We'll see you soon. Thank you so much. So I am now going to invite in a doctor whose name is Mvanwi Callahan. And yes, it is not an accident. She is my sister. And here she is. Let me switch over the name. It's the first time I've done this. There we go. Mvanwi, hello. Hi there. I appear to, unfortunately, you are frozen at the moment. Let me just see if I can. You're frozen in Skype. Oh, dear. Oh, no. We've got your photo, but we cannot see you in Skype. So let me, do you mind if I just call you back? That's absolutely fine. Go ahead. I'll be right here. Let me do that. Oh, no. Let's see. I have lost both of them. I'm going to do, A quick dial in.
[VeyH3pw1bHY_SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[Anna Callahan]: Hey, hey, it's Daphne Boland. Hi. Hang on one second. I'm going to see if I can get my sister in here. Daphne is going to be on with us in just a minute. Hi there. Hopefully this is working. Great. Give me one second. I'm going to switch over the camera. That looks perfect. One second here. OK. Hi. Excellent. Great to see you. So first, if you don't mind just introducing yourself for the audience.
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: Sure, absolutely. I'm Madonna Callahan. I actually practice right here in Medford Center. I'm a primary care internist and I've been working in Medford for about four years and in Somerville, I was a Somerville and just living there for about 15 years.
[Anna Callahan]: Great. That's awesome. And yeah, can you, first of all, I'm gonna interrupt to say there was a question, I'm just now looking at the comments, so if you're making a comment, said the guest audio is echoing, hopefully we just, hopefully it's not echoing anymore. Got a thumbs up, that looks like that's right. Someone asks, hey everyone, what's for dinner? So it's always good to have fun on these shows. And someone asked, how many people are involved in mamas? Oh, I meant to ask that question. I'm sorry that I didn't. We'll get, well, next time we'll get some updates on that. So move on. I would love to ask you just a general question. Like what is it like to be a doctor here in Medford during this craziness?
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: I have to say it's not like anything I've ever seen before. And I think everyone could say that. It's really unprecedented. And I think for us, as it has been for people in any profession, it's been different every single day. So we actually have been having meetings every day, sometimes multiple times a day, as the guidelines have changed, as the testing has become available, as the epidemic is expanding. And so just trying to keep up with the latest recommendations, has been one of the difficulties as we go along.
[Anna Callahan]: Can you give an example of a recommendation that was yesterday or the other day?
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: One of the big difficulties that we're still struggling with is the lack of enough tests. And I will just frankly say there are not as many tests as I would like to have for coronavirus. At the very beginning, only, and this was now two weeks ago, only people who had international travel or knew they were exposed to someone who was positive for coronavirus could even get a test. And obviously we knew there were already cases in Washington and California, you know, all over, and we just didn't know who was exposed and who wasn't. So about 10 days ago, they lifted those restrictions and we were able to test domestic cases. But because there are so few tests, there are not nearly enough tests to test even the sick patients. And we know that there's some asymptomatic people as well. We're really focusing on those that are high risk for transmitting to others. So people who live in nursing homes, EMTs, firefighters, grocery store workers, who if we don't know if they have coronavirus or not could potentially spread it to dozens of other people. So I, every day I have questions from patients and I would love to test everyone that is sick and that I think could very well have coronavirus. And currently we just do not have enough testing in the state. Wow. Any ideas of when that's going to change? So I do have some good news. And once again, this is changing every day. So on Monday, the Broad Institute reported that they actually developed a rapid test that would take about an hour or possibly even less. That has not been in production and really widely distributed, but I think it should be coming soon. So there is some news, but I still feel that right now we have a test that takes three, four, five days to come back, sometimes even more. And people are sheltering in place, not just sheltering, they're quarantining, their family's quarantining, their friends are quarantining, and it has a huge effect.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And if we only had the testing, then people could get tested and they wouldn't have to.
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. Then we'd be able to have the people who need to be quarantined stay home. And the people who can go back to work, go back to work. That's been affecting our providers as well. Because right now, our biggest effort is to do no harm. So any provider that walks in and has a sniffle, I mean, we really have to take them out until we get them tested so that we know that we're not spreading it to our patients. And so one of the issues we've had is that we have multiple providers who are quarantined, and they're not able to see patients, which means that limited number of providers has to see everyone else.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about other ways that clinics that are still open are protecting both the clinicians and the patients?
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. So one of the things that we've established, we actually have six centers across the state that do drive-through testing. And so this is really key because when we have someone that we think may have coronavirus, we can do the testing, we can get that information to them, and they never walk in the building. We know that this is passed through droplets, but also if droplets fall on a surface, a table or a doorknob, it can get passed from person to person. So we're really doing our best to limit the exposure of people who might have coronavirus to people who don't. The other thing that we've done is we've really switched over a ton of visits to telephone or video visits. So, for example, people who might have had their diabetes visit with their doctor, now they will talk about their blood sugars over the phone, they'll talk about any side effects, but we may not bring them in because we know that diabetics, for example, are at higher risk of complications. And then the other piece is that we're actually canceling a lot of elective visits. I say elective, what I mean is kind of preventive care, what usually we want to do to keep people healthy. But those physicals, regular check-ins, we're just postponing for now. And I know that's true at other hospitals too. They're canceling all of the surgeries that don't have to be done right now, knowing that bringing people into the center could help contribute to spread, and that we're going to need that capacity as the numbers keep skyrocketing.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And so one thing I also wanted to ask you about, just because I know we've talked about a little bit, is there's some sort of rotation schedule? So there's specific places where the COVID patients are being sent, and other places where they're not coming in, and then there's a rotation schedule. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: So for example, we have those six sites that do the drive-through testing. all the patients that normally would be spread across multiple practices, anyone that we even think could have coronavirus goes to those testing centers, which allows the other testing centers to see other patients that need to be seen. You know, people still sprain their ankle, they still get appendicitis, they still need to come in from time to time, and we just want to protect those patients who have the usual things from getting coronavirus.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, and is there a rotation of
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I mean, for example, basically, we're trying to let every doctor know that we just are going to be as flexible as possible. So I'm going to be working at one of the coronavirus sites where we have a rotation of people who can. I mean, some people obviously have medical reasons why they really shouldn't be in those sites. So we're trying to find physicians that can do that and rotate them through. both for relief of the people who are seeing all the coronavirus patients and also just because we know with quarantining with the possibility of getting sick we're going to need extra providers. Healthcare workers are really at very high risk of getting this and we know that and we're willing to do that and be there for people but at the same time we're going to need those second ranks and those third ranks to come in when those providers are out for a couple of weeks.
[Anna Callahan]: It's really incredible the sort of organization that is happening between these different hospitals and different, you know, different sort of corporate entities, right? So there's, you know, various different organizations that own different clinics. And so it's really amazing to see that all this coordination happening.
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: I know that some of the hospitals are already outreaching to other centers, community health centers, our centers, to see if there are physicians that could work in the hospitals when that need comes to pass. And as much as that may feel like disaster preparedness, it's exactly what we're doing. We wanna be prepared. Hopefully it doesn't get to that point. Hopefully everyone's work with staying at home means we've really flattened the curve. But if we need to, we wanna make sure that we know who we can call in. And right now, just to talk a little bit about the numbers, We had over 700 cases yesterday. We're at over 1,800 today. So we're really on that steep end of the curve. So we don't know exactly where this is going to flatten out, but it's definitely not there yet.
[Anna Callahan]: And the idea of flattening the curve is that the action you take today will flatten the curve 10 days from now? Something like that?
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely. One of the key pieces is that if we don't exceed the hospital capacity, then everybody can get the care that they need. The worst case scenario is what we've seen in Italy, where they're really making choices about who gets a ventilator and who doesn't. And we just do not want to be in that situation. Now, we're very lucky in Boston that we have a lot of hospital resources. I think we saw that in the Boston Marathon bombing, where there were a lot of victims, but we had the resources to really take care of everyone who was injured. And I'm hoping that we are able to pull through this because of all the resources that we have and the preparations that we're doing.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And you were mentioning earlier today, I think that we have more hospitals and medical clinics per person than most places or? Than most places.
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: Exactly. I mean, Boston is fairly unique. We have a ton of teaching hospitals and just a lot of hospital systems. And for this situation, that's actually a real blessing. So we're in a good position, but I do think that everyone is taking this very seriously. Already hospitals are seeing a lot of coronavirus patients. And once again, we don't want to get to that point where we don't have enough beds. Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: So all you out there, this person you're seeing on the screen is one of the people that you will save a big nightmare and headache and staying up late and working too hard and maybe getting coronavirus if you stay home, keep your social distance, wash your hands. Can you just say one little thing about why washing your hands is really effective, that that is effective and why it's effective?
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: So we think about droplets and people coughing and sneezing, but the truth is we all touch our face a hundred times a day or more. And so the truth is that when you, just scratch your nose, then you might have coronavirus on your hands. And so you have to wash your hands regularly. And if you go out, if you go grocery shopping, I just really encourage people to wash their hands after they get home to make sure that everything from when they were out is off.
[Anna Callahan]: And the good thing about washing your hands is like the virus itself is encased in like a lipid. Absolutely. Thank you. Yes.
[_nqx7ioWHe0_SPEAKER_03]: So it has a little, it has kind of a coating of fat around the outside. So if you break up that fat, the virus can't survive. And so the truth is that just good old regular soap and water works. Use it regularly. You don't need to make hand sanitizer. You can just use regular soap. It works just fine.
[Anna Callahan]: Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you, of course, for the work that you're doing. You guys are the heroes of the day, the week, the month, the year, probably. And thanks for being on. Absolutely, thank you. Good luck out there. Okay, be safe. Okay, so our next guest is Daphne Ballin. Here she is. Hey, Daphne, how are you? Hi, how are you? I'm good, and Daphne is one of our paraprofessional teachers in Somerville Public Schools. Do you wanna give a little, I just gave the intro already, but do you wanna say anything more about sort of who you are and all that?
[VeyH3pw1bHY_SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, again, my name is Daphne. I am a paraprofessional. I work in the preschool, pre-K-8 style program. And that's about it. Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: I've been in the education field for years. Oh, great. You can tell. So I really have two questions for you. The first one is what it's like to be a teacher during the whole coronavirus craziness. And then the second one is going to be about the paras and the current contract fight that you're in. But if you could talk first about what is it like? You're a teacher, and then all the schools are closed.
[VeyH3pw1bHY_SPEAKER_00]: unprecedented. It's completely different. It's almost like your life has been flipped upside down. The thing about us teachers is that we, you know, as much as they say, leave your work at home, work at work, we take our work at home with us because these are vulnerable children. And so we care about what they've done, how they get, how their accomplishments go. We care about their daily lives. And you deal with different types of children. So you have children that don't necessarily have, you don't necessarily have a concern for them in terms of their home and what they're dealing with. Then you also have children that do have concerns. You have the classroom every day, shifts and changes, and we always have to be prepared for that. If something happens that day in the classroom, we kind of go home and try to process and try to figure out what can we do next and for the next day to kind of have a successful day for these children. So we don't go to bed and forget about our problems or our daily issues. And this has been very, very, very emotional to us because it's different. And everything has shifted for us. And we're not just concerned about what our lesson plans are or how these children are going to learn. We're concerned about how they're feeling and how this change is affecting them. and how that's going to affect them moving forward. And our biggest thing is to try to figure out, you know, communicating with these students, being specific to which students as a teacher that you have the most connection with and trying to figure out, can you help? We have a huge need for translation. Many of parents speak different languages and they have no idea what's going on. They don't understand it. This whole, you know, having the virtual learning thing is difficult. Parents have to go to work. There are parents that have to go to work. And so what happens to these children? So it's been hard. It's a process. And we're dealing with it. We're going head first. with it, but it is different. It is different.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. And what is your, is, are you, so are you doing things during the day through the public school system that they have? Are you doing training? Are you doing, you know, are you interacting within Zoom calls with the kids? Like what's, what's, what's happening day to day?
[VeyH3pw1bHY_SPEAKER_00]: We do. So my class in particular, we do once a week where we meet with the children on Zoom. There are other classes depending upon the age and what's best for the individual teachers. They may have Zoom every day. There are school classes that have a Zoom meeting every day. There are others that have twice a day or things of that sort. Within our classrooms, not in our classrooms, within our actual school, we have two conference meetings a week, just to keep connected with each other and bounce off ideas as to what would work best in certain situations, and just try to figure out how do we keep ourselves afloat during these times. Of course, we still have the pantries, we're giving out diapers and Chromebooks to students in need. We're still working behind the scenes and trying to do our best to just provide for these children and help these families as they go through this time.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, we have a comment from one of the viewers that says, thanks, Daphne. And the Welcome Project is offering translation services for free to help communicate resources, et cetera.
[VeyH3pw1bHY_SPEAKER_00]: Awesome. That's something that I could definitely go ahead and convey that message to anyone.
[Anna Callahan]: Good, good. Yeah, so I would love to hear from you a little bit more about the paras. I know you guys are in a contract fight with the city of Somerville for a living wage. And if you can give us a brief sort of rundown of what it is and then sort of what's the state of it now.
[VeyH3pw1bHY_SPEAKER_00]: Sure. Well, one of our biggest fights is that paraprofessionals without whether they have a degree, whether they don't have a degree, whether they have experience, to not make more than $25,000 a year.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah, that's so insane. Sorry, that's like so horrible. It's like I can't even believe it.
[VeyH3pw1bHY_SPEAKER_00]: It's insane. So a lot of paraprofessional teachers are making $20,000 a year, forcing them to have to work two, three jobs. to be able to make ends meet. All of the paraprofessionals have to wait every year at the end of the school year to know if they're going to have their job the next year. And this is from someone that's brand new that's just been working a year to people that's been working 25, 30 years. So our fight right now is to kind of flip what's been wrong with this system and kind of start to get in for a change. And this isn't going to happen overnight. And that's why we've come up with this plan where we're asking for $25,000, because $25,000 is nothing. It really is too low. It is too low. Exactly. But what will happen is, if we start there, then we could move on, move into something that is fair and just for these people that are working with the most vulnerable children, people in our world, in our city, in our district. So we have been working really hard with the help of our union, of course, and so many community members that have just been standing with us in this site. And we're going to continue to call it a site because that's what it is, because we have been dealing with a lot of pushback. And so here we are, we were in the, we were going to have our first negotiation meeting with members of the school committee. And that happened after we, came in as a school committee meeting, and they finally made a decision to meet with us. But unfortunately, everything, coronavirus came in, and we weren't able to have that meeting. It was canceled as schools were closed that day. But we are planning to have a meeting next week sometime. The date has not been set. I mean, I can imagine. We said next week, but that was before Governor Baker said that we have to have, school doesn't probably start until May 4th. Yep, that just happened today, right? Right, exactly. And it's just, you know, it's a lot. It's a lot for a school committee and for our superintendent to deal with. So, and their plan was to show up this time. We will see. Hopefully we can have a meeting next week, but if not, we continue to persevere. And we'll see what happens next.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. Great. It's good to have the update on what's going on with that. Oh, of course. Absolutely. There's lots and lots of us who are on your side. We appreciate that. Of course. So yeah, great to talk to you. Do you have any final thoughts? By the way, if anybody has questions, we can always throw your questions up here. You can just put them in the comments in the YouTube comments section. So yeah, if you have any final thoughts you want to about just about how can we weather this? How can parents get through this time without child care. How do we do that?
[VeyH3pw1bHY_SPEAKER_00]: I need your help. It's crazy. But yeah, the biggest thing that they need right now is to feel as though they have a strong support system. And I know that we're going to have work for them. We're going to, you know, have ideas as to how to make the structure of the day go well for you. So try your best to fit in a structure that's going to work best for you and your home and your children or child because you don't want them to be overwhelmed. Let them have fun. This is different for them and they miss their teachers. They miss their they miss their classmates. I mean, I have my daughter with me and she tells me every single day, I miss school, I miss school. We just had a Zoom meeting with her classmates and all of them were just so happy to see each other. And they, you know, they just expressed how much they miss their class. And so it's different. And so, you know, think of those things and find things that they enjoy, keep them entertained. Entertainment is learning. A lot of people think that, you know, a notebook and paper is part of the learning process, but there's so much more in daily interactions. There's so much a child can get with a walk outside with you and the dog or just an adult in the conversation. They are learning their sponges. So take advantage of that. And go from there. Yeah.
[Anna Callahan]: And by the way, being outdoors, A-OK, right? A-OK. A-OK. This whole stay at home thing doesn't mean you can't go for a walk, go for a bike ride, go to a park, and stay six feet away from the other people. Right.
[VeyH3pw1bHY_SPEAKER_00]: Right. Exactly. And that's the best time for them because they need it.
[Anna Callahan]: Yeah. They do. Great. Thank you so much. Lovely to see you. You're welcome. Thank you for having me. Good to see you too. Absolutely. And we'll keep in touch and we'll keep people updated on how the Paris fight is going as well.
[VeyH3pw1bHY_SPEAKER_00]: Sounds good. Thank you very much for your help with this as well. Have a good night. All right. Take care of you too.
[Anna Callahan]: And so that's it. We're going to go ahead and I will close up just with a reiteration that Number one. Oh, I have a lot of comments coming in. Let's see. This is funny. Living in a roommate situation can be tricky in easy times. How do you convince roommates who won't agree to stop having guests over to agree? Is having one guest in your personal quarters over okay? Wow, that's a very interesting question. Who knows who is the best person to answer that question? I have lived with roommates for pretty much my entire adult life. I live in co-ops and my family now lives in co-op and we love our housemates. But we all sat down and we had the conversation about Who is going to be invited over? Who is not going to be invited over? Where is it okay for us to go out of the house? real conversations about the sort of danger, the actual danger of what it could be like. And not, like I know a lot of people, because it's more dangerous for people who are older, maybe younger folks are thinking like, oh well, even if I get it, it's like a flu, it's not a big deal. Like even if you are okay, and even if it is like a regular flu for you, or even if you do not show symptoms, So the reason this thing, you know, my sister who was just on was saying that there were 700 and something cases yesterday in Massachusetts and like 1,700 cases today. So more than doubled the number of cases that we saw come in. That's because you transmit the disease to anyone that you interact with before you even have any symptoms at all, before you know that you have it. For other people, it is really important that you guys have that conversation and talk about like, hey, you know, who is going to come over? And where are those people going? And what are those people doing? And washing your hands and all those things. I do feel for you. Having roommates can be a big blessing, makes you less lonely. But it also, you know, these things to discuss and agree upon are pretty important. So good luck with that discussion. And oh, and we have a comment from someone saying, I would have a conversation with your roommates about not having guests over. The more closed loop, you could have the better chance of not spreading, less interaction, less spreading. So great. And then finally, I will put, I don't know how to do it right now. I'm still new to this thing of broadcasting at the same time as having other people, other speakers on, so using some new software. But I'm going to put some links to the Tomas Pueyo articles, the Medium articles, about why you must act now, so the importance that might be helpful with the roommate discussion. And then the hammer and the dance, which is a lovely, a really good article that gives you hope that we're not going to be here social distancing forever. I also have someone commenting, saying that if it's multiple roommates and having a group conversation and getting everyone on the same page is really important. And I totally agree with that. Thank you, everyone. It has been great. I want to say one of the big goals of doing this, we're going to try and do it every week with different folks. We have city councilors from several and Medford that we'll have on the show, and lots of other people. And one of the big goals is to hear stories of what's happening in our community. and to have others in our community be aware of what's happening to the sort of more vulnerable people. So we know that there are folks here who have lost their housing because they were at Tufts. We know there are folks here who have lost their jobs. And so finding ways that we can support each other is what this is all about. Thank you, everyone. We're going to sign off for now. You can always go to AnnaCallahan.com slash getupdates to sign up there to make sure that you hear about future shows that we're going to have. We'll try and have them once a week. Thank you. Bye bye. Stay safe.
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