Pela zona do Centro de São Francisco encontrei montes de pessoal com blusões da Urban Alchemy. Cheira-me que isto a longo prazo isto tem tudo para dar errado. Uma milícia/força de segurança semi-privada que ainda pode redundar numa máfia...
#SanFrancisco#SF#UrbanAlchemy#NonProfits#Homelessness: "Miller started the nonprofit with $36,000 and a contract to manage public toilets in San Francisco. “You can’t polish a turd,” she says. “Well, we polished that turd.”
In five years, Urban Alchemy has amassed at least $62 million in contracts, mostly with cities—San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sausalito in California and Austin in Texas. UA boasts that its budget has increased some 500 percent in the past two years. It says it employs 870 practitioners, 94 percent of whom have been incarcerated or unhoused. And UA wants to take its model nationwide. “We’re the Google or Instagram of social services,” Miller says.
(...)
Critics say Urban Alchemy is policing public space, while UA says its workers, who are not state-licensed private security guards, “provide complementary strategies to conventional policing and security.” Even if UA calls them “ambassadors” or “practitioners”—and even if, according to one former employee, the nonprofit stressed to the ambassadors that they were not “security guards” in internal communications—a search on LinkedIn shows employees describing themselves as security guards.
“It sounds good on paper,” says Couper Orona, a street medic who was unhoused in San Francisco from 2016 until recently, but the reality is that UA is “another Band-Aid instead of fixing the actual problem” of homelessness. “It’s a security force that can bully people into doing what they want—but it’s OK because it’s not the police.”"
by Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott & Alex Mierjeski @ProPublica
#Thomas has attended at least two #Koch donor summits, putting him in the extraordinary position of having helped a #political network that has brought multiple #cases before the #SupremeCourt.
After shepherding the case to the #court, #Koch network staff #attorneys are now asking the justices to overturn a decades-old #precedent. (#Thomas used to support the precedent but flipped his position in recent yrs. 🤔)
2 years ago, one of the network’s groups was the plaintiff in another #SCOTUS case, which was about #nonprofits’ ability to keep their #donors#secret. In that case, Thomas sided w/the 6-3 #conservative majority in the Koch group’s favor.
The #PositConf2023 workshops have finished, and today the conf proper begins! A quick 🧵 on my thoughts.
This thread will involve #RStats, #Community management, #RStatsPkg dev, #nonprofits, and maybe other things that we'll find along the way!
I don't love how threads (don't) work here, but I'll do my best to make this work! (1/3)
If you’re looking to donate to organizations for Maui Relief, WCK is already there working hand in hand with locals.
“WCK’s Relief Team reached #Maui with hundreds of sandwiches that were quickly delivered to emergency workers fighting the blaze near #Lahaina. We are now visiting shelters and rural communities on Maui and the Big Island and will continue to identify and fill meal needs.”
I am EXCITED to share my DEI Op-Ed for Personal Fitness Professional Magazine!
I’ll share a recent volunteer experience that opened my eyes to events shaping the community where I was raised. As a person of color and first generation Dominican, I am painfully aware of our nation’s epidemic of gun violence.
Celebrating the first Cyber Civil Defense Summit, read more about why I fund @CyberpeaceInst as part of #CyberCivilDefense. They are helping in protecting our most vulnerable public infrastructure: #nonprofits and the people they serve.
Research shows that orphanage founders, tour companies and mission organizations often benefit most when the goal of serving vulnerable children is not accomplished.
Further, Western missionaries and volunteers are encouraged to behave toward “orphans” in ways that further increase their risk of abuse.
Here's more about what experts call the “orphan industrial complex”:
Your images on social media are lovely, but they need descriptions — for blind friends and family, for a public account you manage, for when you tag public accounts in a picture.
Every where a picture goes, an image description goes with it.
This is also known as alternative text. When uploading on Mastodon, there is a field available that will appear. Add details of what is going on in the picture — at least the who and what. #AltText#Marketing#Communications#NonProfits
One of the objectives for advocacy about #CrisisLines is to stop the unregulated and hidden access to crisis conversations by the service providers for any "use" they choose.
Mainly #NonProfits or so-called #DataForGood for-profit corporations aka USA #HealthCareIndustry. Given cover and funding from US gov't contracts. It's not hard to see the #DataRush aided by waiving or trampling #Consent, so these corporations can calibrate algorithms. Which will then be foisted back as "#AI " assistants on those who can't afford care as the "best answer" for them, given care is not available.
This is the so-called #DataEthics of we know best, therefore your consent is not required. And "this is for your own good". Meanwhile, where is the $ flowing?
Sitting miles away from home in #vancouver, BC pondering what my next #career move should be. I'm currently a Web Content Manager, I was an Art Director in another life, and in 1987 after reading about Richard Garriott as a kid, I wanted nothing more than to be a game designer.
The whole game designer thing never worked out. I loved being a Graphic Designer at an agency, even though I worked hard to pay my dues. Web Content Management has made me money, but at the cost of happiness? #work
Part of the problem is that I got sucked into the shitty world of #nonprofits. While it has been fulfilling at times, and I hope that I've been able to make a difference in the live of #kidney patients, I believe it was a mistake from a career standpoint.
This current #job started in 11/2021, and for that first year, it was everything I wanted. I worked for an awesome boss and for the first time in a while, I was making money and happy at work. Then she left and it's been pure hell since.
I wrote this Nonprofit Quarterly article for fellow nonprofit social media/digital staff who are trying to explain to their higher-ups, non-digital staff or board the state of social media platforms and why our strategies require different thinking beyond the usual focus on campaigns and need more focus on safety, accessibility, and inclusion: