Answering the call (credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
If you ask most Americans to describe what comes to mind when you say the word “concussion,” they will likely describe a staggering football player being helped off the field. This is understandable, as football is fully enmeshed in our culture. When Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered a vicious head injury a few weeks ago, for example, the debate around his handling was a major media storyline. And, in recent years, concussion awareness in youth football is now standard.
That is good news: concussions and traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are serious medical conditions that can dramatically alter the trajectory of a person’s life. But we cannot solely focus on football players or even just men if we want to mitigate their impact and treat those afflicted. Instead, we need to broaden our horizons and recognize that TBIs are also dangerously linked to domestic violence.
The limited data we have paints a distressing picture. Annually, an estimated 10 million adults in the United States experience domestic violence and/or intimate partner violence, and 74% of domestic violence events involve injuries to the head or neck.
This suggests that the 1.5 million Americans each year who survive a traumatic brain injury, and the 230,000 hospitalized, is likely a serious undercount because domestic violence survivors are rarely assessed for concussions in interactions with law enforcement, medical care, mental health systems, or even victims’ services. In other words, there is a barely-noticed and highly-understudied public health epidemic primarily afflicting some of our most vulnerable neighbors.
There are several negative impacts stemming from the lack of awareness, data, and medical literature on this link.
First, and most importantly, survivors are simply not getting the care that they desperately need in the short term, extending their suffering. And the undiagnosed and untreated negative impacts of a concussion – including light sensitivity, foggy memory, and constant headaches – can impact future employability, credibility in the eyes of law enforcement, and even influence survivors’ self-worth.
This lack of resources can also perpetuate a vicious cycle of poverty. After all, domestic violence is a leading cause of homelessness for women and their children, and 41% of families entering the New York shelter system do so because of abuse. Many do not even know they may have a concussion or that they are suffering from long-term medical effects because they are focused on escaping the clutches of their abuser.
In other words, TBIs remain a major blind spot for America’s most vulnerable – and it is complicating the road to justice, recovery, and equality in New York and across the nation.
That is why our organizations, Volunteers of America-Greater New York (VOA-GNY) and Safe Living Space, partnered to create an innovative, first-of-its-kind TBI screening program at all seven VOA-GNY domestic violence shelters here in New York City.
When survivors and their families enter a VOA-GNY emergency domestic violence shelter, they will now be offered concussion screenings developed in partnership with the medical experts at Safe Living Space. Those in need of care will be connected to the Concussion Program at Northwell Health, where they will receive medical care.
In the short-term, this data will assure that all domestic violence survivors entering VOA-GNY residences have access to a full suite of TBI services and evaluations. It will also help to fill a glaring gap in medical literature around the link between DV and TBI as we build on these findings to create a formal study.
Of course, this work alone will not solve the many challenges facing survivors. Far from it. To do that, the many institutions working with survivors will need to account for the impact of concussions on the community and build a new infrastructure accordingly.
The good news is that we’ve done this with football and other sports – and now the time has finally come to extend that knowledge out into broader society and ensure that nobody is left behind to suffer in silence.
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Myung Lee is the President and CEO of Volunteers of America-Greater New York, an anti-poverty organization working to end homelessness in the New York area by 2050. Dr. Edie Zusman is the CEO of Safe Living Space, a group of medical practitioners working to raise awareness of TBI. On Twitter @VOAgny & @SLS_MediaTeam.
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Gov. Hochul at the Court of Appeals (photo: Mike Groll/Governor's Office)
As we sat together in a Brooklyn backyard, we examined shared circumstances: all of us were convicted of serious crimes that caused immeasurable harm, received a life sentence, and served decades behind bars. Now, all of us have much to be thankful for – we each had our sentence commuted through clemency. Collectively, we reflect on the many people still in prison who merit the same consideration.
Each of us has been doing all we can to re-integrate into our families, communities, and society at-large. We tend to loved ones who are elderly and ailing. We work and engage with social justice organizations that provide support for incarcerated women and their children, and with case management services for formerly incarcerated persons. We help organize impacted communities in efforts to secure legislative reform around the pernicious effects of mass incarceration.
Gubernatorial grants of clemency -- the official recognition of redemption -- bring much needed hope to those in prison. Every time a sentence is commuted, it reverberates across correctional facilities. Those who may have resigned themselves to life in prison now leave their cells eager to focus inward on areas of growth through education and by participating in and developing programs to benefit themselves and others.
While granting clemency sends a clear message of hope, the converse is also true. When New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2015 and then again in 2017 rolled out a clemency project, anticipation spread like wildfire to people inside and their families outside that the governor would use his vast constitutional clemency power on an ongoing basis. And yet, we are among the fortunate few to reap the benefits of clemency.
To people serving massive prison sentences, false hope of the potential for release is often worse than no hope. The unwillingness to grant clemency to those who accept and acknowledge responsibility for the harm they caused, who have worked so hard to repair and transform, and who have been incarcerated for decades, magnifies the feelings of despair and futility that pervade prison life.
We know we are not special. We are first-hand witnesses to the many men and women who have used their time in prison to grow, improve, mentor others, and atone; to take stock of who they are and what brought them to prison. We know how much these men and women have to offer to everyone on the outside. Yet due to a criminal legal system that regularly inflicts massive, death-by-incarceration sentences, they face the reality of perishing in prison despite no longer in any way resembling the person they were decades earlier when they were first incarcerated.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, in similar fashion to former Governor Cuomo, raised hopes when she promised to devote more resources to clemency and to issue grants on a regular basis rather than the typical once-a-year December announcement. We know too well the crushing disappointment when December 31 would come and go with at best a few people receiving clemency. The resulting anguish is palpable and is manifested by decreased involvement in various programs and activities, as people surrender to the reality of dying behind bars.
Governor Hochul’s clemency website provides that applicants should demonstrate “exceptional strides in self-development and improvement.” We know numerous people who meet and far surpass that criterion. We also know people serving life sentences for crimes committed when they were as young as 15 years old. We know people who are now in their seventies and eighties. We know people who are gravely ill. We know people who have selflessly devoted themselves to others in prison through hospice care, as mobility aides, and as sign language interpreters. And we know numerous people who have served 30, 40, or more years and present no threat to public safety. In fact, public safety would be improved if more people were returned to their families and communities.
We have banded together to amplify our voices. We call ourselves the Clemency Collective and hope that Governors will heed our message. Along with promising clemency on an ongoing basis, Governor Hochul created a clemency advisory panel. We hope the governor will also turn to us as a clemency resource. We know what it takes to prosper in the harsh confines of prison and the many challenges that people inside face every day. We have experience-based suggestions for how to improve the clemency process; to make it transparent and accessible so that it will inspire and motivate those inside to pursue life-affirming goals, as well as provide confidence to those in the community at-large that successful applicants for clemency are ready and able to safely re-enter and contribute to society. In the meantime, we raise our collective voice to implore Governor Hochul to fulfill her promise and begin granting clemency on a regular basis.
The Clemency Collective:
Colin Absalom
Roy Bolus
Ulysses Boyd
Richard Chalk
Judy Clark
Paul Clark
Rodrick Cole
Robert Ehrenberg
David Gilbert
Andre Jenkins
Gregory Mingo
Arnold Raimondo
Alfonzo Riley
Monica Szlekovics
Jon Adrian Velazquez
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A naturalization ceremony (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
The midterm elections are now behind us and the lame-duck session is the perfect time to tackle a long-standing problem: immigration policy. The issue has a profound bearing on most Americans' communities and schools, as well as their economic interests and notions of justice.
Specifically, Democrats must finally codify the rights of Dreamers, those who are beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and remedy continuing worker shortages in key industries like agriculture, health care, construction, and manufacturing, where non-citizen labor is ready, willing, and able.
Democrats – who control the House and Senate until January – have a tight window to make this right. And they have bipartisan support among Americans. They should seize the opportunity, effective immediately. 2025 may be too late.
DACA status Americans – the overwhelming majority of whom are young Latinos and Latinas – are foreign-born individuals who came to this country as minors. They are Americans and must enjoy the same rights as all citizens. They have grown up in our communities and places of worship, and in our schools, sports leagues, and civic organizations. They shouldn’t be expected to return to countries that are foreign to them and where their safety is at risk.
In recognition of the hazards posed by repatriating these young people to their countries of origin – most of them nations riddled by authoritarianism, violence, and crime, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order, enabling DACA youth to remain in the U.S. temporarily to study and work, while legislative efforts could be advanced to provide them permanent resident status and a pathway to citizenship.
In recent years, however, the Trump White House resisted the efforts of DACA status young people to be permanently incorporated into our national life and economy, opposing their permanent residence and a fair process that would allow them to become citizens. Courts, where immigrant-unfriendly judicial appointments have increased, have also stymied efforts to protect DACA status for millions of young people.
Yet 74% of Americans, when polled by the Pew Center, overwhelmingly support making DACA rights permanent.
Further research and evidence finds that 'DACAmented' Americans are remarkably productive and law-abiding – as K-12 and college students, workers and entrepreneurs, and volunteers across the nation – wherever they reside, study or work. Some of these young men and women have also served admirably in the U.S. military.
Congress should resuscitate and pass HR-6. The Act would establish a clear pathway to permanent resident status for DACA beneficiaries, including the right to reside, study, and work in the U.S. It would also prohibit states from denying otherwise eligible DACA youth in-state tuition and benefits at public colleges and universities. California, New York, and five other states now offer tuition assistance for DACA recipients, but all students with DACA status deserve the same tuition benefits as their peers across the nation.
Such action is essential to develop a nationwide pipeline of strong workforce talent that is better aligned with our changing demographics and increasingly global economy.
For similar reasons, effective immediately, Congress should pass legislation to more fully mobilize available noncitizen workers; doing so can help to address persistent labor shortages in critical fields like home health care and child care, and aid various supply chain sectors beset by the recent covid crisis (from agriculture to retail, construction, and technology).
Expanding economic opportunity and agency for the nation’s young, fast-growing, and heavily immigrant Latino workforce is a worthy investment in our nation’s future. Latino students and workers, many of whom are Dreamers and non-citizens, are essential contributors to our evolving multicultural society and economy. We need practical and reasoned policy interventions to activate their still-not-fully-tapped contributions.
The measures we propose here will not provide the comprehensive reforms that are needed to address our nation’s many immigration challenges, but they will establish a practical start that is worthy of bipartisan support in the waning days of the current Congress. The time to act is now.
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Félix V. Matos Rodríguez is chancellor of City University of New York. Henry A. J. Ramos is senior fellow at The New School Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy.
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