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Speaker 1: 00:01 A local vigilance plan to mourn the loss of life in Beirut.Speaker 2: 00:05 Evan has been in turmoil and we did not need anything like this to happen. That kind of accessibility situation.Speaker 1: 00:12 I'm Maureen Kavanaugh with Alison st. John. This is KPBS mid day edition, lack of childcare during the pandemic may derail many women's careers. When a family loses childcare or they have to choose between expensive childcare and going to work. Usually this burden falls disproportionately on women. And so we're seeing that really on steroids. Now, a deadline is approaching to apply for small business loans and officials say there's still money left in San Diego. And on our summer music series, guitarist, Israel Maldonado talks about his love affair with the music of Brazil. That's a head on mid day edition.Speaker 1: 01:01 Lebanese officials are still assessing the devastation caused by Tuesday's huge explosion in Beirut. The death toll now stands at more than 135 people with 5,000 injured and estimated 300,000 people have had their homes badly damaged or destroyed, and now lack adequate shelter. The tragedy has shocked the world, but has caused a deeper, more personal grief for people of Lebanese heritage. My guest Joseph's fire was born in Lebanon. He now lives in San Diego. He has many family members and friends in Lebanon, and one of his friends was killed in the Bay root explosion. Joseph's fire is also the president of the house of Lebanon in Balboa park and Joseph, welcome to the program.Speaker 2: 01:46 Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me. How did you find out about the explosion? So as you know, nowadays, we are working from home and I was sitting in my desk in my bedroom working and, um, my daughter came up to me with, with her phone. She said that I just heard from my friend that there's a huge explosion in Beirut. And I said, Oh wow. Okay. So let's, let's take a look. And then I grabbed my phone, of course. And there was about maybe 10 texts and then WhatsApp text and, and that's how I heard about it. And then of course I stopped everything and then we'll go to the TV with all the social media and, um, and the bad news started to trickle in. And that's how I found out about it.Speaker 1: 02:30 Were you able to speak to people, you know, who survived the blast?Speaker 2: 02:36 Yes. We did speak to some of our friends in Beirut that survived the blast and, uh, and they were total in shock, totally in shock. They described it as if it was a nuclear bomb and they never ever experienced this as, as you know, Lebanon has gone through so many Wars and whatnot, and they've never seen anything like it before. How you find out about your friend's death? Well, uh, so when we started to, when I started to communicate and receive these messages, asking questions, so at first they sent us a clip video of where his office was and, and that clip video, people were starting to search for, uh, injured and injured people. And then there was a lot of dust in the air and whatnot, as you can imagine. And then I heard his name, they said, we need to take nozzle to the hospital, he's bleeding. So that was the first that I heard about it. Then they kept telling us, giving us updates. No, he's doing fine. He's then in the hospital. And then, you know, it didn't take more than 10, 15 minutes later. We heard also that he passed away.Speaker 1: 03:43 I'm so sorry for your loss.Speaker 2: 03:46 Oh, thank you. I'm so sorry for all the losses in Lebanon. I mean, because of the carelessness of the government, uh, this happened, and there was no reason at all for these people to, to die or get injured or lose their homes. Uh, it's, it's really a disaster. Now there,Speaker 1: 04:03 Let me ask you a question about that. The explosion was apparently caused by tons of amyl nitrate fertilizer that was stored unsafely for years at the port of Beirut and accusations have been made that mistakes like that are a trademark of the present Lebanese government. And sounds like you agree,Speaker 2: 04:22 Absolutely. This, this disasters falls squarely on the current government's shoulders. There is no excuse, no reasons, none whatsoever to say all while it's the manager's fault or whomever's fault, this port is monitored. And sir, and they have continuous surveillance by the government. What goes in and what goes out and they knew about it. And then the some security forces down there, they reported it to the government three years ago. They said, look, we have this huge amount of explosive sphere that are stored in the, in the port. They don't belong here. What do we do about it? And they kept not talking about it. They just ignored it until this disaster happened.Speaker 1: 05:05 Lebanon was already in economic and political turmoil before this tragedy, from what you're hearing is the country prepared to recover from this.Speaker 2: 05:14 Gotcha. Well, you know, um, back in, uh, October, 2019, uh, you probably, you probably know that we had the revolution and the revolution started because of the corrupted careless, not being able to be taking and not able to take care of the business and Lebanon to run the country. So the people revolted, they were like enough is enough. I mean, just imagine Beirut, you hear a lot about it. What it does not have seven 24 electricity, garbage is piling in the streets. Water sometimes is on. Sometimes it's off all the social services. Sometimes they are provided. Sometimes they are not. So people were fed up and they went to the streets and about a million million and a half people went into the streets, revolting against this government. Um, and of course the COVID-19 came in. Everything, you know, went down and now we have this disaster.Speaker 2: 06:06 So yes, Lebanon has been in turmoil and we did not need anything like this to happen. That kind of exasperate the situation. So, um, it is really a disaster. And I can tell you now that the community in San Diego is not just sad. They are angry. We are just angry. We need help. We need United nations. We need NATO. We need whomever to come in and then take over the country, send all these politicians home, not home, send them to jail because I am pretty sure I'm very confident that they're going to be, they're going to be found guilty for all the, all the mishaps that happened, you know, for the past three years in Lebanon. And, um, and we need help. We need help desperately. Now, before yesterday,Speaker 3: 06:52 Tell us about the fundraisers that you're over organizing here in San Diego.Speaker 2: 06:56 So we have two, two fundraising activities that are happening. One of them that I'm involved with, one of them is through the house of Lebanon. You can go to house of Lebanon, uh, dot org, and then you will see on our front page a button where you can donate money and send to Lebanon. The other one, it's called a LPI charity on Facebook, a LVI charity on Facebook. You can go in and then you can also donate the money is going to NGOs down in Lebanon. They are distributing the monies to a number one families who have lost loved ones, um, to, to rebuild their homes and then three to pay for all the medical, um, uh, treatment that they're receiving down there. Okay.Speaker 3: 07:41 Speaking with Joseph's fire, who is the president of the house of Lebanon in Balboa park and Joseph, thank you very much.Speaker 2: 07:49 It's my pleasure. Thank you for reaching out to meSpeaker 3: 07:55 A quarter of the women who have lost a job during this pandemic sense because of a lack of childcare. And for those who are still working at home, the pressure of balancing care for small children with managing work responsibilities is crushing Alicia, assessor, modus studies, gender and labor market issues at the school of public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern university. She surveyed over 2000 parents nationwide and may and June, and says the crisis in childcare could affect women in the workforce for decades to come. Alicia, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. Now, you yourself are a mother. Tell us first about your experience of balancing work and childcare. During this pandemic, I have four children, the youngest of which is an eight year old, who just finished second grade. So she's a rising third grader. And when the pandemic first hit and school's closed for three weeks here in Massachusetts, you know, we, my husband and I juggled between us working from home and keeping her engaged and then schools closed for the rest of the year. And we put in, you know, some more structure around that. And we went with a remote learning and then over the summer, we've just been stitching together childcare, but all to say that with each extension of the lack of childcare or the remote learning that's happening with schools, it's just getting harder and harder for working parents to sustain these childcare arrangements that worked okay for three weeks or three months. But now looking at it for an entire academic year would be really difficult to pull off.Speaker 4: 09:25 So you did this survey of a couple of thousand parents around the country. What was the main thing that you found that struck you?Speaker 3: 09:33 Yeah, so along with two other colleagues at Northeastern university, when we did our survey, we set out to find out what working parents were struggling with and learn more about the kinds of strategies that they had been engaging in. And we were surprised just by the magnitude of the problem. So we found that 13% of working parents reported that they either had lost a job or reduce their hours solely because of childcare. And we were really surprised that it was more than one in 10 working parents. And then we also asked them all about their time that they spend during the week and how much they're spending on work during the pandemic compared to before the pandemic. And we found that on average working parents are losing eight hours a week or one full working day because they need to juggle childcare along with their work responsibilities.Speaker 4: 10:18 And who did you find in your survey was feeling the worst brunt of all this?Speaker 3: 10:22 Yeah, so certainly more vulnerable populations. So we found that the hours loss were greater for women of color women without a college degree women in lower income households. And a lot of that stems from holding an imperson job or an essential job where you actually can't be working from home like myself and my colleagues who are professors. And we've been able to conduct our research working from home. But if you have to be there in person, then there really becomes the point where the rubber meets the road and you have to choose between either childcare or being at work. And that seems to be where this is falling most disproportionately on those populations.Speaker 4: 11:05 When you say that this is likely to affect parents, primarily women in the longterm. How so?Speaker 3: 11:10 Sure. So our survey also revealed when we looked into the job loss piece of this, that among our sample, those who had become unemployed during the pandemic, we found that 25% of the women who reported becoming unemployed during the pandemic said it was solely due to a lack of childcare compared to only half, as many men reporting that they had lost a job to childcare. And so as with other points in time, when a family loses childcare, or they have to choose between expensive childcare and going to work, usually this burden falls disproportionately on women. And so we're seeing that really on steroids now during the pandemic where women are really bearing the brunt of. And I think, you know, it's one thing perhaps to pull back from the labor force for a few weeks or a few months, but now we're looking at an entire year of hybrid learning or remote learning in schools. We're going to find probably that more women are going to be dropping out over the next, you know, nine to 12 months as we continue in this pandemic. And that has really longterm implications for their ability to get back into the labor force for their earnings potential, to be able to stay on track in their careers.Speaker 4: 12:21 Since your column came out, California has allowed daycare providers more flexibility in class sizes and staffing requirements. Do you think that'll stop this onslaught of daycare closures that you predict in California at least?Speaker 3: 12:34 You know, I think it's helpful. I think the more that we learn about the virus and the science of it and the transmission among younger children that we need to act on that. And then the question becomes, which of these preventive measures are the most important? Is it the limitation on the number of children in a particular space and the social distancing, or is it the practice of wearing masks or is it hand or what combination of these gets us to the safest environment in the least costly way. And so, as we are able to learn more and loosen some of these restrictions, we'll be able to have more childcare slots open up, but that's a pretty rare thing for right now. And also we haven't had much funding support for the childcare industry, which has really been devastated in terms of their ability to have the same class sizes and enrollment that they did before be able to take in the same revenues. And at the same time, having additional costs put on them with additional cleaning, with additional staffing, uh, with additional toys that need to be purchased. So there's no sharing. So I think that it's a move in the right direction, but I worry it's too little too late, that there's already very, a very high number of daycare providers that are already heading towards bankruptcy, or I've already gone out of business.Speaker 4: 13:46 You say too little too late has been done. What else needs to be done in your opinion?Speaker 3: 13:51 So the first thing that needs to happen is in this package that Congress is considering there needs to be a bailout for the childcare industry. The childcare industry got $3.5 million in March, which was less than $2,000 per daycare center in the United States. What we really need to do is support the industry. And that would mean an investment of about $50 million. According to a letter of support that was circulated among economists we're over a hundred economists signed on, um, that Congress needs to be doing something to support the industry, but we also need to make sure that we support working parents. And so we need to get dollars to working parents as soon as possible for them to be able to put together, um, even informal care arrangements, especially as the school year starting. So with more of the move to hybrid school openings for remote learning, this is time that families had not budgeted for daycare.Speaker 3: 14:45 This was time that was covered by public schools. And so there's a lot of families out there, right? For reforming schooling, pods, and other ways to be able to have their kids supervised during the day during this remote learning time, which are works out well for middle class and upper middle class families, but for low income families who had not budgeted for this, and don't have as many resources, we need to expand some kind of childcare support to those families, to be able to pay for someone, to supervise their kids so that they can get to work. Thank you so much for being with us. You're welcome. We've been speaking with Alicia, Sasser, modus, Dino who studies gender and labor market issues at the school of public policy and urban affairs at Northeastern university. This is KPBS mid day edition. I'm worrying Kavanaugh with Alison st. John four weeks. Members of the [inaudible] nation have been protesting border wall construction in San Diego County saying their cultural heritage sites are being destroyed. KPBS reporter max, roughly nether tells us human remains have now been positively identified at the construction site. And local tribes are preparing for legal action against the government.Speaker 5: 16:08 It stretches for 14 miles along rugged terrain. The quickly rising wall now cuts through areas that the [inaudible] nation, a collection of native tribes based on both sides of the us Mexico border consider a major thoroughfare for their people. It was used for generations before white settlers arrived, burial sites, former villages, and other culturally sensitive sites dot the landscape. But members of the Cooma AAC that customs and border protection, which is helping manage construction on the site has ignored evidence of the cultural heritage sites. They're now building a top ofSpeaker 6: 16:41 They're using ten-year-old surveys to try to say that there aren't sites in certain areas. And when we've gone out there to protest, we've seen Midland soil, which is signs of cremation. We've seen flakes, tools, grinding stones. We've seen everything out there. And, and that's an areas that they say that aren't artifactsSpeaker 5: 16:58 28 year old. Cynthia Parata is a tribal council member of the LA Posta band of mission Indians. She and other young [inaudible] women have been leading the protest movement and the searing heat of summer and the Laguna mountains. They've been standing in front of construction equipment and blocking access roads. Parata says the government is breaking the law by disregarding the native American graves protection and repatriation act known as NAGPRA Congress enacted it in 1990 to protect and safely relocate native burial sitesSpeaker 6: 17:29 Just want them to do it right right now they're waiving the laws that protect our remains, which is through NAGPRA. And they're waving a lot of other laws as well, which is we're just not okay with because we fought so hard to get those laws to begin with. And now they're waving them and just blowing through with the workSpeaker 5: 17:44 Last week, members of the [inaudible] nation were accompanied by a forensic anthropologist who says she identified what was most likely a cremated human bone in the past customs and border protection has reached out to native groups to determine what to do with the remains and engage in a government to government consultation about the best way to move forward with construction while preserving cultural heritage sites. It usually does this months before the beginning of construction, but this time Parata says the government began construction without doing any of that.Speaker 6: 18:15 I actually just heard about it. And we went out there to see if it was true. And we see in the construction we're getting done. And that's when we decided to take action, because we didn't know about it. We never received any information about it.Speaker 5: 18:27 The QA say a representative from the army Corps of engineers told them the DOD is allowed to waive laws regarding burial sites because the wall construction is a matter of national defense. The money used for the wall construction is being redirected from the Pentagon's counter, narcotic budget, a transfer of money. That's currently being challenged in court. Now with further proof that CBP and the DOD are moving forward with the project without following the law, the [inaudible] are preparing a loss to it to try to stop the wall construction.Speaker 6: 18:57 They're creating new access roads. They're creating new storage areas for their equipment. And none of those areas were monitored.Speaker 5: 19:04 CBP says it had several discussions with [inaudible] leadership and members of various tribes since June to address their specific concerns, Kuma protesters, and especially younger tribe members say those meetings have gone nowhere.Speaker 6: 19:18 I don't feel that we're protesting. I feel like we're just out there simply protecting the land, protecting the history.Speaker 5: 19:24 19 year old, Brooke Bains, who grew up on the Manzanita reservation has been juggling her first cashie