When nonprofits that provide after-school programs for youngsters of color from poor families rely financially on wealthy, predominantly white donors, they might be forced to vary their priorities. Due partly to class and racial divides, these nonprofits struggle to speak the right way to address the interests of program participants while meeting donors' demands.

This was shown in a Detailed case study I wrote about it in Children & Schools, an instructional journal. The afterschool program I studied supports girls from low-income families in a northeastern city. The girls, who’re in grades 3 through 5, receive free weekly mentoring sessions.

The mentors are college students who volunteer to assist construct the women' confidence and ambition by reading and discussing stories about female athletes, film directors, politicians, human rights activists and other role models. The organization is led by a black woman who hails from the local people, and the nonprofit uses its own curriculum.

Participating in this system gives the women a secure approach to explore their “multiple identities,” a nonprofit worker told me.

But as I conducted interviews, convened focus groups, analyzed documents, and observed a virtual fundraiser, I discovered time and time again that the group's staff felt pressured to make use of corporate jargon when communicating with donors, who’re overwhelmingly wealthy white businesspeople.

The nonprofit's executive director said one in all the advantages of participating within the mentoring sessions is their playfulness. The girls can “just be free, just have fun, talk to their mentors and journal,” she said.

While she believes this system is worth it, she says she often faces disconnections when answering questions from her donors.

“It's always, 'What is your business model? And what are your key performance indicators going to be? How are you going to grow?'” She felt pressured to speak as if she were running a non-public company and to deal with goals which might be more relevant to the corporate than people who can best support the women in her care.

She was frustrated that she needed to focus a lot on donation numbers, while less tangible successes like “the joy of the program participants” weren’t resonating with donors.

Why it is necessary

Numerous Students take part in programs run by non-profit organizations throughout the varsity 12 months and throughout the holidays.

Many of those helpful opportunities profit from the participating children and young people chronically underfunded public schools.

Some of those programs are run by national organizations corresponding to the YMCA and the Boys & Girls Club of America. Others operate on a smaller scale. They may provide tutoring or teach chess, drama, martial arts, and other skills. It is common for them to have a combination of private and non-private funding. Some also charge tuition fees.

Other researchers have found that participation in community-based programs can profit children from poor families and their neighborhoods.

Because of their connection to varsities, these nonprofits must meet strict requirements set by local state, city and college regulations, while also meeting the needs and expectations of their donors or risk losing much-needed funds.

What happens next?

While I didn’t interview the donors of this nonprofit within the pilot study described here, I’m now doing so for my dissertation.

The Research Brief is a brief overview of interesting scientific papers.

In the 2 years since Saboteurs planted explosives on Nord Stream 1 and a couple of – gas pipelines that span the Baltic Sea and connect Russia with Germany – suspicion fell on plenty of possible culprits.

Immediately after the explosion on September 26, 2022, many Western experts Russia blamesThe theory was that Moscow blew up the pipelines as a part of its “hybrid warfare” approach – to show its willingness and skill to attack critical infrastructure – or as “False flag” operation to defame Ukraine.

Since then, journalists and experts have named plenty of culprits, including President Joe Biden and the CIA, Ukraine and Poland.

Swedish and Danish intelligence investigations resulted in February 2024 without identifying the saboteurs, and thus does little to curb conspiracy theories.

Then, in August 2024, German media reported that, as a part of the continued German investigation, the general public prosecutor’s office had issued an arrest warrant against a Ukrainian diving instructor living in Poland.

Kyiv rejected the accusation of official complicity, saying:absolute nonsense”; Krzysztof Gawkowski, Poland’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Affairs, meanwhile suggested that the German findings were “inspired by Moscow” and aimed to create a rift between NATO countries.

Nevertheless, it has contributed to a change in the final perception of the incident, and the explosion is now considered a global crime against civilian infrastructure, which is majority-owned by Russia.

And that may be a clear victory for Russia. Moscow can have at all times been concerned with cementing its narrative slightly than checking out the reality.

While investigators are in search of the motives, means and opportunities for the sabotage itself, observers of post-Soviet geopolitics and the tactics of President Vladimir Putin are examining like me may also examine Russia's motives for portraying the attack as a deliberate criminal act. And here the Nord Stream case serves as a reminder of how effectively the Kremlin uses disinformation and manipulation to push its narratives, often to sow discord within the West and distract from Russia's actual crimes elsewhere.

This is true even when – as currently appears to be the case in reference to the Nord Stream explosions – the forensic evidence gathered thus far is consistent with Russia’s preferred narrative.

Nord Stream in context

The explosions on the Nord Stream pipeline occurred seven months after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. By that point, the Kremlin's military offensive had stalled and Putin was directing his efforts toward a protracted war of attrition. His military had Almost 15,000 civilian casualties have already been claimedand in September 2022, there have been sustained attacks on critical Ukrainian infrastructure, including dams, railways, hospitals, schools, and the energy grid.

Built and operated by a consortium led by majority state-owned company GazpromThe Nord Stream pipelines expanded Russia’s ability to weaponize energy by controlling natural gas prices and flow rates. For this reason, Putin’s opponents, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, viewed Nord Stream 2 as dangerous geopolitical weapon during construction in 2021. The completion of Nord Stream 2 meant that Russia’s gas supplies to Europe – which is essentially depending on Russia for its natural gas needs – Ukraine is essentially bypassed and end the necessity to pay transit fees to Ukraine and Poland.

Thus, Ukraine had a transparent interest in stopping the flow of gas through the Nord Stream pipelines. The same was true for Russia's competitors on the European energy market, including Norway and the United States. And the identical was probably true for German political parties that advocate an energy transition towards sustainable and renewable sources.

Although Nord Stream 2 was accomplished, it was not yet operational on the time of the Russian invasion. blocked by German energy regulatorsAnd Nord Stream 1, which was put into operation in 2012, was closed indefinitely by Russia in August 2022.

More than a mystery

Therefore, it was not a giant consideration for Western analysts to accuse Russia of Destruction of its own, now useless pipeline to signal its willingness and skill to attack underwater infrastructure.

But over time, this view was replaced by stories that treated the sabotage as an actual crime mysterywith a concentrate on uncovering motives and means. Investigative journalists and other analysts examined public statements, leaks from alleged whistleblowers, geospatial data, financial records, and even reenactments of the attack to unravel the case.

Some, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, took responsibility to the CIA and the Oval Office.

Since most US media couldn’t confirm Hersh’s story, they shunned repeating his claims, and the White House has consistently rejected it.

Stirring up conspiracy theories

Hersh’s view includes the assumption that powerful Western interests put pressure on investigators and fed stories to the media with a purpose to hide the reality.

This second-order speculation – the claim that the unique crime was made worse by a cover-up – has long been promoted by Russia as well. After Sweden and Denmark dropped their investigations, Moscow's representative on the United Nations Security Council, Vasily Nebenzia, called on the UN to take over the investigation, saying: “It is as if against the law had been committed – a murder – and a yr later the investigating authorities concluded that the victim was murdered.”

Russian disinformation

Russia is now accusing German prosecutors of preparing for complete the investigation without identifying those responsible.

The appeal of this narrative for Moscow is obvious. First, it matches Putin's argument that NATO is always plotting against Russia. And second, it offers the promise that Russia will get better the prices of the Nord Stream sabotage from the insurance firms. The insurers have thus far refused to pay, citing official findings that the sabotage “an act of war.”

Moscow, which is tirelessly trying to find evidence of NATO and US complicity, will probably not be satisfied with the one arrest warrant issued by the German investigation. Russia also desires to put the US within the dock – in spite of everything, President Joe Biden threaten with a NATO motion Nord Stream in early 2022. And Moscow responded to the German arrest warrant against a Ukrainian by doubling its accusations that the US ordered the attack.

Here, Russia could depend on the words of high-ranking US figures equivalent to Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has repeatedly Disinformation from confirmed Russian propaganda channelsand former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who praised the standard of life in Moscow during a much-criticized Putin interview.

After the Nord Stream explosions each Greene and Carlson They were quick to claim that Russia was not responsible, implying that the United States can have played a task.

Truth is just not the goal

Maintaining the Nord Stream “mystery” distracts attention from Russia’s documented crimes in Ukraine, including Attacks on civilian infrastructure and, based on the UN Human Rights Counciland shows a “disregard for fundamental principles of international humanitarian law and its human rights obligations”.

In the years because the Nord Stream pipeline explosion, Russia has relied on its extensive capacities in Disinformation and propaganda to advance its history. Russia has experience on this.

In January 2022, US government sources reported that Russia Attacks on pro-Russian civilians in eastern Ukraine and blame Kiev to justify the invasion. Similarly, analysts have cited the alleged Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow in May 2023 for example of Soviet-style “false flag” operations. It is that this track record that has led German security forces to suspect that there’s plenty of conspiracy regarding Nord Stream the evidence resulting in Ukraine was fabricated by Russian agents.

Speculation is seductive, and the Nord Stream case has attracted plenty of it over the past two years – a period during which Russia has waged a broad campaign of spreading deliberate lies and disinformation. During the identical period, Putin has repeatedly violated international law.

Russia's version of the Nord Stream affair may possibly be the dominant one when all investigations are accomplished. What is obvious, nevertheless, is that Putin's accusations against Ukraine and the US are motivated not by a pursuit of justice but by a desire to fire up trouble and distract. The truth is just not his goal, but a goal.

Almost 50 years have passed since Elvis Presley died; aside from an annual memorial service in August on the anniversary of the singer's death, there may be little news most days about Presley or his Graceland estate, which a national historic landmark in 2006.

So fans weren’t prepared when, in late May 2024, a mysterious private investment company issued a public notice of foreclosure on Graceland. The property seemed were used as security for an unpaid loan of nearly $4 million.

Suddenly it seemed as if a chunk of history could disappear with the blow of an auctioneer's gavel.

Many details of the episode are still unclearalthough the courts suspected fraud and immediately stopped the sale. An identity thief later claimed responsibility for the attempted fraud from the shadows of the dark web.

But the fear of The possibility of the family losing control of Presley's home raises a crucial query: Why is Graceland essential?

It is the second most visited house within the USAonly surpassed by the White House. According to the US Department of the Interiorthat made Graceland a landmark, “American culture and music were irrevocably changed by Elvis. It would be difficult to tell the story of the 20th century without mentioning the many contributions of this legendary, iconic artist.”

The department's report is definitely correct, but Graceland's story is more nuanced than the decree suggests.

In my two Books about PresleyI argue that the singer did indeed make significant contributions to American society. At the identical time, nevertheless, many have looked upon the singer's life, output, and legacy with derision.

Nowhere is that this condescension more evident than in condescending references to his homeland.

From East Memphis to Whitehaven

Graceland was not the primary house Elvis bought.

In 1956, he bought a house for his parents in an upper-middle-class suburb of East Memphis. The family had moved at the least 16 times since Elvis' birth, most of them in Pensions, social housing and rental houses.

The Presleys were accustomed to bringing their cultural customs with them to each stop.

At their latest address in East MemphisThis didn’t go down well with the neighbors, regardless that Elvis had turn into a superstar through his music, television appearances and film roles.

After receiving notification from his wealthy neighbors that they didn’t approve of his mother hanging laundry out to dry and raising chickens within the backyard, Elvis began to search for a house where he and his family wouldn’t suffer the violations of social class.

In 1957, when he was just 22 years old, he settled in Graceland.

Graceland was in-built 1939 as a ten,266-square-foot, two-story, Colonial-style “mini-mansion” with five bedrooms and 4 and a half bathrooms, 4 years after Elvis was born in a two-bedroom apartment. East TupeloMississippi, shotgun shack, a number of steps from the family outhouse.

The property was not a plantation, nevertheless it comprised 13 acres of a former large cattle ranch in Whitehaven, a hamlet several miles from downtown Memphis and named after Colonel Francis Whitewho helped construct the Mississippi and Tennessee Railroad.

The Whitehaven neighborhood had developed within the late nineteenth century, attracting Memphis' gentry as residents. In the mid-Fifties, real estate developers arrived and commenced to parcel out formerly large estates. Although it was still considered “rural,” it began to resemble a traditional middle-class suburb. By the top of the last decade, Whitehaven and the adjoining Levi neighborhood were were about two thirds white and one third black.

In 1970, Memphis annexed Whitehaven. When the Memphis City Council renamed the section of US Route 51 that ran through the community in 1971 to Elvis Presley BoulevardDesegregation and faculty buses encouraged the arrival of latest black students, residents and businesses. This activated the white flight, which eventually saw Whitehaven becomes a predominantly black suburb.

When tourists visit Graceland today, they find the “mini-mansion” in a predominantly black community. Many of the staff who work within the tourist complex are black.

A mood board with American motifs from the Fifties

Immediately after moving into Graceland in 1957, Elvis began renovations. He added rooms, a swimming pool, a stone fence and the now iconic wrought iron gates decorated with musical notes.

As along with his alternative of garments, Elvis approached interior design with the verve of a real postwar American consumer. If he liked something he saw in a magazine, movie or TV show, there was a superb probability a version of it could appear in one in all the home's 23 rooms.

Inspired by President Lyndon Johnson’s three televisions In the Oval Office, the singer placed the identical number in his media center within the basement. After spending plenty of time in Hawaii working and vacationing, Elvis redecorated a study with stone tile waterfalls, artificial ferns and tiki-style furniture, while Floor and ceiling covered with green shaggy carpet.

The overall results of Presley's intuitive house design was a mishmash of furniture, decor and art of varied styles and quality. Visitors expecting celebrity splendor were surprised by the house's relatively modest size and its unreserved acceptance of popular culture trappings. (Prince Harry, apparently, was not impressed when he visited Graceland.)

He never got beyond his raisins

Graceland – flashy and uninhibited – embodied Elvis.

He can have been essentially the most successful artist of his generation, however the cultural establishment all the time saw him as an outsider: he was too provincial, too Southern for a mainstream that was conditioned – rightly or wrongly – to see the South in a negative light. Every success he achieved was accompanied by an asterisk labelling him as “Horatio Alger with a drawn-out voice.”

Graceland was Elvis's sanctuary. It reminded him of his mother Gladys, who died in 1958. Here he felt most comfortable in his Southern identity, here he could simply be himself without having to fear being belittled.

But he was also isolated. Elvis and Graceland embodied a duality. They each reflected the rags-to-riches journey of the American dream, but each also had cultural qualities that were never perceived as dignified enough.

Perhaps this duality can make clear the cultural tensions that dominated the twentieth century – and proceed to accomplish that within the twenty first.

Many critics judge Elvis' refusal to offer up a rural working-class culture as backward and ignorantwhich dampened his artistic success. In a nation whose history – at the least that of polite society – emphasizes progress, Presley's unwillingness to alter was inexcusable, his penchant for the most recent gadgets or trends was derided as ostentatious and tasteless.

But for a lot of others, each inside and out of doors the United States, who should cope with the balance between tradition and modernity, between past and present, Elvis meant something else. They admire his connection to home and family and an ethic that Never get beyond your raisins – and all this when selling over a billion records.

Oh yeah, and he could sing pretty much too.

As California works to bridge the digital divide, Controversies swirl about who shall be connected and whether there shall be enough money to finish the job.

State leaders have promised to expand high-speed web access to all unserved or underserved neighborhoods. In 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill providing $6 billion in public funding to attain this ambitious goal. The Biden administration is taking one other step $1.9 billion for California from the 2021 infrastructure bill.

Until now, fiber optic cable has been the technology of alternative to attach Californians. Fiber is by far the perfect option for the state's planned 10,000-mile web backbone to be built along major highways.

But relating to connecting this “last mile,” the ultimate route from a significant web network to neighborhoods and individual homes, reliance on fiber threatens California’s ability to satisfy its goals.

Fiber optic lines are expensive and laying them underground can cost tens of hundreds of dollars per mile. Hang them on poles in a mountainous area, and also you're spending hundreds of thousands to attach a small variety of users — because the state proved this 12 months with an expensive deal for Plumas County. Such costs of providing last-mile web access will quickly strain the most important budgets.

Therefore, California should develop plans that mix fiber with alternative technology for these last-mile connections. In some situations, landline wireless, satellite and even old-fashioned coaxial cable technologies can provide less expensive Internet connections while still meeting state and federal speed standards.

Fixed Wi-Fi – where Wi-Fi routers are attached to towers or other tall structures – may be particularly helpful in distant, mountainous and rural areas. Today it serves 4% of residential broadband subscriptions in California. But landline radio is also a less expensive solution for underserved or unserved suburbs and concrete areas.

Fortunately, after years of prioritizing fiber projects, the California Public Utilities Commission appears to be more open to alternatives — at the least in its public comments. It stays to be seen whether the agency will meaningfully incorporate additional technologies to bridge the digital divide cost-effectively.

It's ironic that it took California leaders so long to significantly consider cheaper alternatives to fiber in a state known for its technological advancements. Newsom even vetoed a state Senate bill last 12 months that will allow eligible wireless carriers to use for billions of dollars in federal grants to expand web access, claiming that introducing wireless options would slow your complete initiative.

But without them, California's efforts to expand web access have been problematic. The nationwide initiative launched in 2021 has grown into one wasteful and reckless distribution of billions of dollars, using erroneous maps to develop the primary connecting routes. Now this system lacks the cash to construct all of its planned 10,000 miles of backbone fiber networks. Officials are eagerly awaiting one other $1.5 billion within the upcoming state budget to finish the work.

But there isn’t a guarantee that more government money will flow, especially given the estimated budget deficits in the following fiscal 12 months of between $38 billion and $73 billion.

As far as federal funding is anxious, that’s The responsible authority prefers fiber optic connections, but its overall goal is to assist states reach all households with poor or no web connection, even when this requires the introduction of other technologies.

Although the CPUC claims to support this goal, it agreed in January 5 million dollar project The use of fiber for a roughly 60-mile connection to simply 31 homes in Plumas County was just because no other provider applied for the grant.

It will not be enough to be open to alternatives to expensive fiber optic lines when expanding last-mile access. The CPUC must aggressively leverage cost-effective technologies.

Paying lip service to alternatives while accepting fiber because the default wastes public money and jeopardizes the nationwide deployment of high-speed web.