Latest news with #marginalizedcommunities
Mail & Guardian
3 days ago
- Health
- Mail & Guardian
Environmental injustice is becoming the new normal – we must resist it
The Klipspruit river polluted by sewage and mine waste in Soweto. (File photo by Delwyn Verasamy) On this World Environment Day, I find myself reflecting less on trees, oceans, and plastic waste, and more on people's lack of access to clean drinking water and safe sanitation. More particularly, I am thinking about the ways in which systemic environmental injustice is becoming frighteningly normalised by the generalised state of dysfunction in municipalities across South Africa. It is a crisis that is now spreading across historic divisions of class, race, and geography. Whether you live in a township, a rural village, a flat in a so-called 'middle-income' area, or even in the leafy, wealthier suburbs, you are not immune. This crisis is becoming everyone's crisis. And yet, it's still the most marginalised and vulnerable who suffer first and most. I want to share just three examples I personally witnessed in the past month. These are not extreme or isolated events; they are the daily, grinding reality for a large portion of South Africans. They reflect a system of environmental neglect and both government and private-sector-driven pollution that is eroding people's rights and dignity. Orlando Women's Hostel At the Orlando Women's Hostel in Johannesburg, raw sewage has been overflowing from two blocked sewer lines for nearly seven years. The spill has created what can only be described as a lake – a festering, open swamp of human waste flowing past homes, into streets, and eventually into the already heavily polluted Klip River. Adult residents speak of summer days spent holed up indoors to keep out the flies, while children play outside next to the stinking swamp. When I reported it to Johannesburg Water, they unblocked one drain and left. The sewage kept flowing. I was then told it's a housing issue – the hostel falls under municipal housing, and the matter must be referred there. That's where accountability ends. Activists come, journalists come, yet nothing changes. This is not an accident – it's a systemic failure of the state; it is environmental injustice in its most direct and practical sense. A violation of the right to dignity, the right to health, and the constitutional right to a clean and safe environment. WaterWorks informal settlement The irony of the name is not lost on the people of WaterWorks, where water doesn't work at all. WaterWorks is an informal housing settlement. Residents rely on JoJo tanks that are sporadically filled and cleaned by Joburg Water – if at all. When I visited, the tanks hadn't been filled for three days. To make matters even worse, these tanks are scattered far apart, making them hard to access, especially for elderly residents who are forced to pay young people R10 to R20 per trip to carry water. This is money taken from already meagre SASSA grants. The toilets in WaterWorks are shared chemical units. One elderly woman related how one night she was suffering from diarrhoea but was too scared to walk alone in the dark at 2am to reach a toilet far from her house. Such daily realities chip away at one's dignity; basic human rights are made conditional, fragile, and unequal – tied to geography and class. Environmental justice is not just about having clean air and protecting flora and fauna; it's the ability to use a toilet safely and access water with dignity. Claremont council flats In Claremont, a small pocket of council flats has had no reliable water for nearly a decade. This cannot be explained by elevation, pressure, or some complicated infrastructure glitch. The community has tried to explain to city authorities that their water challenges are not related to recent maintenance issues or leaking reservoirs. The harsh reality is that Claremont's scattered blocks of flats have been – and remain – forgotten. All residents are asking is to be heard and for a proper investigation to be done. When I met residents, they simply wanted to be acknowledged, to have some short-term solutions implemented – like extra JoJo tanks – and, most of all, clear answers. In the meantime, they've adapted. They keep records of water outages not in months or years, but in life events. 'My firstborn is 11 – I came home from the hospital with no water.' 'My grandson is 6 – when we brought him home, I was fetching water with pots.' 'When my mother had a stroke, I had no water to wash her.' What this reveals so clearly is that the impact of environmental injustice is not abstract. It is intimate. It lives in our births, our deaths, our illnesses – and our everyday survival. What I have briefly outlined are just three cases, all taken within a period of just one month, in just one metro. Multiply that by every small town, every metro, every province, every forgotten township, every rural area – and you can start to see the scale of the crisis and the challenges we need to confront and change. On World Environment Day, we must challenge – in word and deed – the assumption that environmental issues are somehow separate from daily life. The environment is not somewhere 'out there.' It is our sewerage systems, our taps, our rivers, our toilets. And increasingly, those systems are failing – not because of nature or a few bad entities and officials, but because of systemic government mismanagement and indifference, grounded in the structural inequalities that remain deeply embedded in South African society. While environmental injustice is very much about the toxic waste that big industries dump into our rivers, it is also very much about what our own government consciously allows – or directly causes – in places where they think no one is watching, or where no one powerful lives. We simply cannot allow this to continue. If we are serious about justice – environmental, social, or economic – we need to hold all those entities and individuals responsible, accountable. The only way that is going to happen is if we come together, across the very same divisions of class, race, and geography that this crisis traverses. Power can belong to the people. Dr Ferrial Adam is the executive director of
Washington Post
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘Heart Lamp' by Banu Mushtaq wins the International Booker Prize
Banu Mushtaq's 'Heart Lamp' has won the International Booker Prize, the first collection of short fiction to do so. Translated by Deepa Bhasthi, it is also the first book originally published in Kannada — the official language of the author's home state of Karnataka, in India — to win the award. 'Heart Lamp' explores the lives of Muslim and Dalit women in southern India, and its dozen stories were written and originally published over a period of more than 30 years. Mushtaq has said that many of its stories were inspired by individuals who sought her help as an activist and lawyer. 'I do not engage in extensive research; my heart itself is my field of study,' she said in an interview for the Booker Prize Foundation's website, later adding, 'My direct engagement with the lives of marginalized communities, women, and the neglected, along with their expressions, gave me the strength to write.' Accepting the prize in London at a ceremony Tuesday, Mushtaq expressed her hope that it might 'light the way for more stories from unheard corners, more translations that defy borders.' In her acceptance speech, Bhasthi, the translator, quoted a song in Kannada, which calls the language 'a river of honey, a rain of milk and compares it to sweet ambrosia.' 'Kannada is one of the oldest languages on earth, and I'm ecstatic that this will hopefully lead to a greater interest in reading and writing and translating more from and into the language, and by extension, from and into the magical languages we have in South Asia,' Bhasthi said in her acceptance speech. The collection has been lauded for its empathy and wry sense of humor. 'Mushtaq's compassion and dark humor give texture to her stories,' said a review published last month in the Financial Times. 'These deceptively simple tales decry the subjugation of women while celebrating their resilience.' This year's judging panel was chaired by writer Max Porter, who said in a news conference Tuesday that they deliberated over the finalists for six hours — approximately one hour per title — before voting on their top three. Though Porter declined to name the other two titles, he said that the judges unanimously chose 'Heart Lamp' as the winner: 'This is the book that — I don't think I'm betraying anyone's confidences or the energy in the room — this is a book that most of the judges used the word 'love' for, from very early on in the process, right through until our decision last night.' Porter, praising Bhasthi's translation as 'brilliant,' added that, 'Unlike many translations that seek to appear completely natural in the new language — an invisible translation so to speak — this is something different. This is a translation that celebrates moving from one language into another. It contains a multiplicity of Englishes. It is a translation with a texture. It is a vibrant, radical, extraordinary book.' 'Heart Lamp' was published by And Other Stories, a small press based in Sheffield, in northern England. (In the United States, one of the stories in 'Heart Lamp' was published in the Paris Review and another in the Baffler.) This is the publisher's first time winning the prize but its sixth nomination since 2019. Another of its titles, 'The Book of Disappearance' by Ibtisam Azem, translated from Arabic by Sinan Antoon, was also was longlisted this year. The International Booker Prize is awarded annually to a book of fiction, translated into English and published in Britain and Ireland. It comes with a purse of 50,000 pounds (about $67,000), split between the author and translator.
Forbes
19-05-2025
- Health
- Forbes
AI Didn't Invent Desire, But It's Rewiring Human Sex And Intimacy
As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in daily life, it's also infiltrating one of the most intimate and culturally charged domains of the human experience: sexuality. From sex education and therapy to digital relationships and erotic content, generative AI is not only transforming how we seek and consume information and connection; it's also redefining the core elements of intimacy itself. A landmark review, published in Current Sexual Health Reports, has synthesized five years of scientific findings from 88 publications and 106 studies. The report outlines how the general population has used AI in four key domains of sexual life: information-seeking, therapeutic support, romantic interaction and erotic expression. The implications? Nuanced. Promising. And in urgent need of ethical guardrails. Large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are now used to answer everything from "What is consent?" to "What are the side effects of birth control?" with speed and anonymity. For young people and marginalized communities, this on-demand access offers a rare combination of privacy, immediacy and judgment-free information, often bypassing the social stigma or inaccessibility of traditional systems. Yet access alone doesn't guarantee quality or equity. The aforementioned five-year literature review examined 14 studies assessing AI-generated responses to sexual health and found generally high levels of factual accuracy and completeness. However, bias and inconsistency remained, especially in politically and culturally sensitive areas such as abortion, gender identity and LGBTQ+ health topics. One concerning pattern emerged: certain AI tools promoted specific commercial products, while others omitted key risks or lacked contextual nuance, reflecting the potential biases embedded in the training data used to train these systems. It comes as no surprise that Generative AI is also entering and present within the realm of therapy. Users now turn to AI-enabled therapy bots and digital intimacy coaches for support with daily life events, relational stress, sexual dysfunction and dating burnout, among others. Of the 16 studies reviewed, many documented promising outcomes from this tool, such as reduced stigma and emotional relief, but also flagged risks of emotional over-reliance and false therapeutic expectations. The line between tool and surrogate, however, becomes especially blurry in the case of "AI clones" of real therapists, such as an investor who trained a custom GPT model using Esther Perel's podcast transcripts to recreate her as a digital therapist. The emotional resonance may indeed feel genuine, but as researchers caution, without clinical supervision or ethical oversight, users risk confusing simulated empathy with genuine treatment and mental attunement. The third domain explored in the review examines the evolving landscape of intimate and romantic interactions with AI entities, including erotic role-play bots, emotionally responsive avatars and AI-generated partners. Tools like Replika, a widely used social chatbot, allow users to create custom companions that flirt, console and simulate sexual engagement, often on demand and without the emotional complexity of a human relationship. Across 22 peer-reviewed studies, researchers found that AI-based relationships can offer real emotional comfort, mitigate loneliness and provide sexual gratification. For some users, especially those navigating grief, trauma or social isolation, these interactions represent a safe and stigma-free outlet; however, the research also raises critical concerns, namely, the potential for emotional dependency, social withdrawal and the reinforcement of gendered power dynamics embedded in the design of these AI personas. A 2019 U.S. survey cited in the review revealed that 8% of adults had engaged with an erotic chatbot, with usage spiking among bisexual men (24%). This statistic signals not just niche curiosity but growing normalization across demographics. What's clear is that AI companionship is no longer speculative; it's mainstream, multimodal and rapidly accelerating. While these technologies offer undeniable benefits for intimacy and autonomy, they also challenge long-held assumptions about what constitutes emotional reciprocity, relational ethics and authentic connection. Among the most chilling revelations in the five-year literature review is the accelerating proliferation of AI-generated non-consensual pornography: A technological frontier that has already outpaced ethical, legal and psychological safeguards. Of the 36 studies examined in this domain, the overwhelming majority focused on deepfake abuse, a disturbing trend in which AI models are used to graft real individuals' faces digitally, often women, minors and public figures, onto explicit content without their consent. This practice now has a name: AI-generated image-based sexual abuse or AI-IBSA. And while the term is new, its impact is already alarming. Victims of AI-IBSA report severe psychological distress, harassment, reputational damage and long-term trauma. For many, the experience mirrors the effects of real-world sexual violence, yet unlike physical assault, this violation is scalable, shareable and often untraceable. This might be an evident cultural inflection point. The advent of generative tools has unlocked unprecedented forms of creative freedom, but also of consentless simulation. And we have yet to fully grapple with what it means for our human bodies, boundaries and the very notion of personhood in a rapidly evolving era. Yet, amid this complexity, a quieter counternarrative is also worth noting. A small but growing number of artists, sex educators and therapists are exploring consensual AI erotica, reimagining fantasy, embodiment and pleasure through generative tools. Some use AI to create personalized, trauma-informed narratives for therapeutic healing. Others design inclusive, intentional and adaptive erotica that reflects identities historically excluded from mainstream content. Still, the review notes that these affirmative applications remain under-researched and under-amplified. Their ethical frameworks are nascent. Their platforms are marginal. And without deliberate investment in equity, consent protocols and ethical literacy, these positive potentials risk being overshadowed by the darker misuse of the same technologies. The takeaway? AI is paving the way to redefining the stakes of visibility, ownership and emotional sovereignty. As we enter this next phase of digital intimacy, the question is no longer just about access but self-agency. Artificial intelligence reflects desire. It amplifies it. And if left unexamined, it could distort it. As generative AI becomes increasingly entwined with what, why and how we learn about sex, seek connection and experience emotional intimacy, a future line of inquiry might well be about what we will allow these technologies to become. This landmark five-year literature review makes one thing unequivocal: AI is now embedded in the sexual health ecosystem, from education and therapy to companionship and erotica. It has the potential to democratize access, reduce stigma and amplify the voices of historically excluded individuals. But it also carries the capacity to amplify bias, deepen emotional isolation and enable new forms of digitally mediated harm, like deepfake abuse and non-consensual erotica. The difference lies not in the tools themselves but in how we design, deploy and govern them. Ethical AI in the intimacy space demands intention. This includes building transparent safeguards, training inclusive and culturally competent data scientists and establishing consent frameworks that are as adaptable as the technology itself. The future of intimacy will not be engineered in code alone but defined by the values we embed within it. In brief, the most transformative technologies are those that amplify, respect, and nurture human connection with care.
Fast Company
12-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
How 2 guaranteed income programs have taken hold in Minnesota
Artists and cultural workers are falling through the cracks of our economy at a time when their work has never been more needed in society. Their ability to exist and thrive is threatened by the cost of living and housing affordability crisis, our increasingly precarious economy, and cuts to grant funding under the new administration. Many exist in a structural grey area between independent gig workers and small business owners. Their work is often episodic, making them easily left out of safety net programs like unemployment and healthcare—this is especially true for artists from historically marginalized communities. To address these challenges, we need new systems and solutions to increase economic equity and ensure that our communities have access to creativity and culture. One such area we've seen a wave of interest and experimentation around the potential of in recent years is guaranteed income. What is guaranteed income? It refers to unrestricted recurring cash payments that people can use however they see fit to cover their basic needs and reach their personal and professional goals. Guaranteed income programs can be focused geographically on specific cities, on specific communities—for example young people, entrepreneurs, or parents—or a mix of both. At Springboard for the Arts, we've been delivering one of the longest running guaranteed income programs in the country since 2021, focusing on both urban and rural artists and creative workers in Minnesota. Our 100 recipients to date include painters, sculptors, hip‑hop artists, singers, composers, teaching artists, performers, and writers who are receiving $500 a month over a five-year period. This has given us the opportunity to reflect on what we've learned and what insights we can offer to others thinking about doing this work. Adapt each program to the historical, cultural, and economic extractions in that community At its best and most effective, guaranteed income is a tool for justice and repair by supporting populations who have been exploited by social, cultural, and economic systems in America. These programs should be tailored to a community's needs by considering the connection points between the economics, culture, and physical design of our cities and the impact of policy and planning harms from the past. Both cities and rural places bear the generational impact of economies based on the extraction of natural or cultural resources including redlining, land theft, the interstate highway system, and placement of industrial infrastructure, like trash burners, that has caused generations of environmental harm and adverse health impacts. The results of these policy decisions fall disproportionately on American BIPOC communities and neighborhoods, particularly Native and Black communities. For our work in Saint Paul, we've focused our efforts in Frogtown and Rondo—two neighborhoods that are culturally vibrant, resilient, and community oriented, yet that continue to be disproportionately impacted by historical disinvestment, discrimination, and extraction. Rondo, for example, is a historically Black neighborhood whose cultural and business corridor was destroyed in the 1950s and '60s by highway construction, causing generational economic and cultural harm that residents deal with to this day. Our rural work is focused in Otter Tail County, in West Central Minnesota. This community, like many rural areas across the U.S., is in the midst of economic transformation, including the loss of major employers, lack of affordable housing, and increase in predatory businesses like dollar stores and payday lending. Here, guaranteed income can be a tool for attracting and retaining the creative people these communities will need to imagine a different future. The focus on artists and creative workers is rooted in the idea that, like caregiving and community work, cultural work is a form of labor that communities depend on to be healthy but is not adequately valued by our current economy. Use artists to help change the narrative about guaranteed income programs While the idea of guaranteed income is gaining traction across the country, there are still embedded cultural and political beliefs that limit how far economic justice policy change can go. These are often harmful tropes like: 'Do people deserve it? How do they spend the money? Why don't they just get a job?' One of the most effective ways of countering these questions is for people to experience the stories of these programs on a human level, which can transform pervasive narratives about inequality and poverty into belief systems of belonging, deservedness, and inherent self‑worth. In this way, artists—particularly those participating in guaranteed income programs and who are locally rooted in their communities—have a unique role to play in guiding and delivering a narrative shift around guaranteed income. With this in mind, we created a project within our wider guaranteed income work, collaborating with a cohort of artists on Artists Respond: People, Place, and Prosperity. In this program, artists created public projects highlighting the root causes that lead to the need for guaranteed income, and its impact on families and communities. (These projects were supported separately and outside of artists' participation as guaranteed income recipients.) Artists have designed projects that range from podcasts and coloring books, to postcards, a public installation, and a collaborative performance/dance meditation made available on YouTube, all of which use messages that are reflective of their local communities. A billboard on rural Highway 210 by artist Kandace Creel Falcón looked at guaranteed income's connection to rural values, with the message 'In Rural We Tend to the Herd' as a way to root messaging in the collective values of that community and counter individualistic narratives that attempt to malign safety net programs. Cross-sector investment and collaboration are key Our original pilot was a cross-sector partnership—designed in collaboration with the City of Saint Paul's People's Prosperity Pilot guaranteed income program and supported by local and national funders including the McKnight, Bush, Surdna, and Ford Foundations. We recently announced the expansion of this work, which includes extending the Saint Paul pilot and adding additional participants to the pilot in Otter Tail County, Minnesota, totaling 100 artists across both locations and committing to five years. The majority of the pilots taking place across America have been 12 to 18 months, in part because that's the amount of time that cities were able to raise and access relief funds during the pandemic. These are a great start, but to have the kind of longevity that will allow us to make a meaningful—not just temporary—impact requires bringing more and different kinds of partners on board and moving from pilots to policy. This is an area where philanthropy has an opportunity to be a true partner by seeding longer-term pilots in more geographies and by supporting advocacy and policy work. Research and evidence matters When it comes to expanding the reach and impact of guaranteed income, research and evidence matters. Groups like Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, led by Saint Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, are integrating learning and research from local pilots into state and federal policy recommendations. Springboard for the Arts is working with the University of Pennsylvania Center for Guaranteed Income Research to collect data through community-led participatory research in both rural and urban locations, allowing us to understand what's working and how people are using these funds. Emergent themes from this research are compelling, with monthly income contributing to general financial stability; participants' ability to do longer term planning toward healthcare, savings, business ownership and housing; and increasing financial security so artists can generate creative work for their community and stay in their neighborhoods. This money is going toward rent and supplies but it's also being put to everyday expenses like fixing a car so that an artist can get to their job or buying snow boots for their children. Being able to point to these tangible impacts allows us to bring in more partners and more effectively advocate for policy. Even if it feels tedious, having a growing body of data will bolster all of our efforts for both individual programs and the movement as a whole. The experience with our pilot has shown us that guaranteed income works as a tool for supporting both an individual's economic security and their ability to contribute to their communities in creative ways. As our economy becomes even more stratified, there is an urgent need to advocate for policy innovations, like guaranteed income, that offer more Americans the freedom to take care of their families and communities and imagine and build a better future.
