The Somali community in the U.S. are active in many areas that show significant leadership in Civic engagement, policy work, and research. However, they are underrepresented in climate and mental health activism. With Somalia ranked one of the top countries for global vulnerability to climate change, what barriers do Somali Americans face to being involved in climate justice? And what are the facilitators that could allow them to enter this critical work? Furthermore, as refugees from a country that has experienced over 30 years of conflict, the need for Somali youth to be able to communicate about mental health to parents, among themselves, and others is high, but there are few places for youth to find this language and build these bridges to address relevant issues such as climate change and mental health that the community is facing. This project aims to identify and understand the relationships between neighborhood and cultural identities, climate justice, and psychological aspects of trauma and belonging. Implementing the participatory experience-based co-design (EBCD) methodology, six Somali youths between the ages of 20 and 24 showcase resilience by learning research and climate change activism principles. They will be going out into the community to integrate what they have learned from research activities in this community-based research project. The result that we hope this project to have is that these youths reach back to their communities and educate others about what they have learned.

Increasing the minimum wage lowers poverty (Stevans and Sessions, 2001, 66-74). However, other factors such as increased participation in the labor force, education levels, and expanding minimum wage coverage have an equal or greater impact on poverty reduction – Implementing one or more of these variables alongside an increased minimum wage shows the greatest impact on poverty reduction. Additionally, the Covid-19 pandemic showed a significant impact on poverty rates. In this paper, I dialectically interrogate arguments and evidence for and against raising the minimum wage to alleviate poverty. I audit theory and empirical data from leading secondary sources and numerical primary data from the US Census Bureau, particularly from the US state of Massachusetts from 2012 to 2021. My findings show that alleviating poverty is a complex problem, however raising the minimum wage does have a clear impact. **Poverty reduction refers to any decrease in the percentage of the population reported to be in poverty.

Enumeration through the census has been carried out in the United States since 1790. Enshrined in the Constitution as the process by which representation is apportioned, it has been politically charged since its first iteration. Despite the efforts of some, it has never been solely administrative and has instead often been used as a political tool. A prime example of which being its inclusion of the three-fifths rule, the clause allowing pro-slavery states to count slaves for determining representation in the House of Representatives, but not extending political rights or protections to slaves. While there is significant research on the negative effects of the racial legacies of the census on African American and Black populations, as they have been disproportionately affected, there is far less research on its effects on other oppressed groups. This project seeks to lessen this disparity by studying the effects of the census on Indigenous Americans. More specifically, this project seeks to answer the question, how do questions on race and ethnicity on the census, and their available responses, negatively affect Indigenous Americans? This paper examines the census through an Indigenous analytical lens to highlight adverse impacts on Indigenous Americans and argue that federal institutions generate these negative outcomes in distinct pathways. This paper is of interest to those studying American politics, systems of inequality, and politics of difference.

Revisiting the HIV pandemic is key to understanding how the current challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic are being addressed. Marginalized communities were the most affected by failed public health policies during both the HIV and COVID-19 pandemic. This paper takes a comparative approach to identify how marginalized groups survived through mutual aid networks during both times of crisis. We analyze cultural artifacts from marginalized communities hit hardest by HIV from 1986 to 1993, and compare and contrast with personal accounts and cultural production from the current era of COVID-19 to add to the growing body of research on pandemics and cultural change. Our results indicate that mutual aid networks are built around harm reduction practices developed most significantly during times of crisis, that comprise an ever-changing infrastructure for survival for those who are abandoned by the state. Moreover, this paper finds that the latent mutual aid networks created by the HIV pandemic are being revived in new forms in response to COVID-19. We refer to the rich mutual aid networks during both pandemics as an infrastructure of care which begins to address the harm caused by gaps in public health policy during a pandemic.