2017
June
14
Wednesday

Monitor Daily Podcast

June 14, 2017
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Yvonne Zipp
Features Editor

Amid the tragedy of the fire at London’s Grenfell Tower comes news of neighbors heroically rescuing neighbors. Among those alerting residents to the danger and helping them to safety were Muslims, awake in the early morning hours in observance of Ramadan.

“Muslims played a big part in getting a lot of people out,” Andre Barroso told Britain’s The Independent about the blaze that killed at least 12 people and injured about 75. “Most of the people I could see were Muslim. They have also been providing food and clothes.” 

Places of worship have been busy: Nearby St. Clement’s has offered shelter, while Sikh gurdwaras also were collecting food, clothing, and other necessities to help victims, many of whom escaped in just their pajamas. On Wednesday, donations poured in to nonprofits, fire stations, and a crowdfunding site.

Residents have repeatedly warned about safety concerns in the 24-story high-rise. A just completed £10 million ($12.8 million) renovation included a central heating system and cladding to make the building’s exterior more attractive – but not the sprinklers that are mandatory in new high-rises. Authorities will investigate both the fire's cause, as well as the adequacy of safety measures.

On Wednesday, residents described Grenfell to reporters as a place where all nationalities and faiths were welcome. This morning, that sense of community may have saved lives.


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Today's stories

And why we wrote them

Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters
Capitol Police kept watch in Washington today following an early morning shooting at a congressional baseball game in nearby Alexandria, Va., in which five people were wounded, including House majority whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana. Police identified the suspected gunman – who was killed in a shootout with police – as James T. Hodgkinson III, age 66, from Illinois.

It's no secret that Americans have turned demonizing political opponents into the new national pastime. Indeed, three-quarters of Americans surveyed in a new poll describe incivility as a "national crisis." This morning, on a baseball field, that crisis boiled over into a mass shooting. The question now is whether politicians and citizens alike will be willing to pull back and see the humanity in one another.

Does disruption work in foreign policy? The Monitor’s Howard LaFranchi looks at the case of Qatar.

Yankee thrift goes 21st century with Boston’s decision to become a zero waste city – moving from a disposable society and harking back to the days of “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” (No word yet on what happens to boxes of string too short to be saved under the city’s plan.)

SOURCE:

United States Environmental Protection Agency

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff
Seth Wenig/AP
A sign marks a pick-up point for the Uber car service at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Travis Kalanick, the company’s chief executive, announced Tuesday that he would take some time off. The firm has been scrutinized under his leadership for mismanagement and deep concerns about its work culture.

Lots of Silicon Valley tech firms have tried to change their work culture, with varied results. But perhaps none has faced as steep an uphill climb as Uber, which might literally need to change the face of its company, the Monitor's Laurent Belsie writes.

Lonnie Shekhtman got the idea for our final story of the day from a conference she attended at the Heritage Foundation on conservative methods of helping people out of poverty. She went to Chattanooga, Tenn., to see how it works.


The Monitor's View

For the third straight year, Americans have hit a record high in their giving to good causes. Last year, according to a Giving Institute survey released June 13, donations or grants by individuals and philanthropies totaled $390 billion. The biggest increase, or 6 percent, went to animal-welfare and environmental groups.

Yet these measurements of altruism have a new problem. More people are not limiting the idea of supporting good causes to only charities, churches, or other nonprofits. In the past decade, another type of giving – called “impact investing” – has taken off. This involves people putting their values into action through financing of for-profit companies involved in social causes, from reforestation to prisoner rehabilitation – while also accepting smaller returns than other investments.

An estimated one-third of affluent families now hold impact investments, according to Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and U.S. Trust. And in a survey by the Global Impact Investing Network, the size of this market reached more than $113 billion last year.

The type of impact investors varies widely. They include social entrepreneurs, who apply business practices to pursue a social cause, such as sustainable farming. Or they can be traditional grant-giving foundations that direct part of their endowments toward worthwhile causes, such as solar-panel innovations. Or they can be wealthy families that invest in bonds that finance housing for the homeless.

But one type of investor could greatly increase this type of doing good. In a survey last year by Greenwich Associates and American Century Investments, one-third of institutional investors planned to increase portfolio allocations to impact investing over the next three years.

Defining what is “social good” is not always clear in such investing. Yet many nonprofits, such as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, are establishing metrics for these investors to follow.

For now, the trend at least breaks up old thinking about what is a nonprofit and a for-profit organization. Most of all, it expands notions of how to achieve the public good and challenges the idea that goodness itself has limits.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

The subject of mental health, especially as it relates to teenagers, has become increasingly prominent in media and entertainment. It’s an important and challenging topic to address. Contributor Ingrid Peschke explains how ideas from the Bible that speak to God’s infinite love and care for each of us have helped her to better support her own teens. For example, the book of Jeremiah assures us of God’s love: “ ‘I have loved you with a love that lasts forever’ ” (31:3). The desire to express God-inspired kindness and love nurtures qualities such as respect, honesty, and unselfishness. We all have the innate ability to feel the tender presence and goodness of divine Love in our lives.


A message of love

Victoria Jones/PA/AP
Sandwiches were shared among residents displaced by a fire that engulfed the 24-story Grenfell Tower in West London overnight. The number of people killed was still being tallied today, and the cause of the fire remained under investigation. (See the editor's intro at the top of this issue.)
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for spending time with us today. Come back tomorrow, when Fred Weir in Moscow will be looking at new “e-democracy” tools for overcoming the notorious inertia of Russian bureaucracy – and promoting direct communications between government and society.

More issues

2017
June
14
Wednesday
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