LANSING, Mich. – The Syrian conflict is a monumental humanitarian crises with decades of social and human development lost since it began in 2011.

A Michigan social worker is spearheading a plan to rebuild the country.

Social workers are the backbone of civil society, says Marijo Upshaw of Detroit, who is a member of National Association of Social Workers-Michigan.

So she and her Syrian-born husband had an idea to train Syrians in the field. She explains that Syrian social workers, as opposed to those from other countries, would have knowledge of what's happening on the ground.

"Half of the country is living in extreme poverty,” she points out. “Fifty percent of Syrian children are out of school. The health care institution and educational system are in absolute crisis. Half of the hospitals in Syria have been damaged if not completely destroyed."

Upshaw discovered the International Community Action Network (ICAN) program at McGill University in Montreal, which trains Middle Eastern activists in rights-based social work practices.

Together they launched a project to establish the profession of social work in Syria. The initial goal is to recruit and train 24 Syrian nationals.

Funds were privately raised to train the first fellow at McGill in the fall of 2014. Upshaw says it's an engineer-turned-activist who faced dire circumstances fleeing Syria.

"He had to walk four days by foot, in cars and caravans that carry animals,” she relates. “At one point he had to walk through ISIS country. He was detained by ISIS. He was released and he made it into Turkey and had to spend a week recuperating physically."

The program cannot currently get into Syria, but is working to establish training in nearby Jordan. The trained fellows eventually will build a social work academic program inside Syria post-conflict.

Upshaw says Syrians are willing to fight for their basic dignity and freedom, but need more support.

"One of the things that was so sad to see in this recent crisis is the Syrian people who've been the victims over the last four years have now been re-victimized by some of the policies in the United States – some of the anti-refugee and anti-Muslim sentiment," she states.

About 11 million Syrians have been forcibly displaced and nearly 250,000 killed in the conflict.




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This July 4th marks nearly 250 years since the United States declared its independence, setting the country on a path to establishing its democracy. But some feel the state of U.S. democracy needs close examination.

Lindsay Schubiner is with the Portland-based organization Western States Center. She is the director of its Momentum program, which is focused on countering white nationalism - and she said it's clear to many that the future of democracy is in peril.

"The country has watched as bigoted and anti-democracy movements have built political power and have been welcomed into mainstream politics, at least by many people," said Schubiner. "And that has had enormous and devastating repercussions."

As an example, she pointed to the white nationalist shooting of ten Black people in Buffalo, New York, in May - and the January 6 insurrection at the nation's Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Schubiner said the congressional hearings on January 6 are important because they're holding people accountable for what happened.

"It's critical to have elected officials and community leaders speak out clearly, and forcefully and repeatedly," said Schubiner, "both in support of inclusive democracy, but also to clearly reject the bigoted and anti-democracy movements."

Schubiner encouraged people to join and organize within local and neighborhood groups.

"We really do have the power to protect our democracy if we take action together," said Schubiner, "and a lot of that can start at the local level."




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The arrests of 31 white supremacists outside of a Pride festival in North Idaho shook the country over the weekend. It's only part of a larger uptick in far-right extremism.

The group involved is known as Patriot Front, which renamed itself after the 2017 rally in Charlottesville where one of its members ran over and killed Heather Heyer. However, Patriot Front was not the only extremist group at the Coeur d'Alene Pride festival. Leah Sotille, a freelance reporter who covers this issue in the Northwest, said a local biker group and Idaho state Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, made the event a flashpoint.

"The Pride festival was going on, and then around the park there was a guy holding an AR-15, there were people holding signs and trying to intimidate people at the festival," Sotille said. "So, people seemed to respond to the Panhandle Patriots' and Heather Scott's calls to get people there to protest."

It's not yet clear what the Patriot Front members planned to do at the festival. Local police arrested them for conspiracy to riot.

Sotille said other far-right figures at the event included Matt Shea, a former eastern Washington state representative. Shea is known for his extremist rhetoric and has been seen with Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers leader facing sedition charges for his role on Jan. 6, 2001, at the U.S. Capitol. Two people who attend Shea's church were among the men arrested.

Sotille said the latest attack on the LGBT community may feel new but it is not for folks like Shea.

"The whole debate around trans youth and trans people - this is something that has just revived old grievances within the far right," she said. "But I think it's just something that people like Matt Shea have pounced on to continue to push the views that they've always had."

Idaho has struggled with white supremacists in the past, although only one of the men arrested is from Idaho. Sotille said it's important to see this as one of many extremist incidents taking place within a short time span across the country.

"It was just a week ago or two weeks ago that we were all talking about the Buffalo shooting at the grocery store, and how the shooter was motivated by a white-supremacist ideology," she said. "This group, Patriot Front, is part and parcel, it's the same ideas about a white ethno-state."

Sotille has authored a book about religious extremism in Idaho, called "When the Moon Turns to Blood," which comes out next week.


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Nebraska did a better job counting the state's Latino residents in the 2020 Census than new national undercount data suggests.

According to analysis by the Brookings Institution, 5% of Latinos in the U.S. went uncounted in 2020, three times the undercount in the 2010 census.

Lissette Aliaga-Linares, assistant sociology professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, said she was not surprised by the high national undercount.

"Many of the Latino community don't trust public institutions," Aliaga-Linares pointed out. "People don't ask for help, even if their children are eligible for help, out of fear that will increase the threat of being deported."

Civil rights organizations had warned the Trump administration's hostile rhetoric toward immigrants -- including an effort to include a citizenship question on the census, which was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court as unconstitutional -- would lead to a higher than average undercount.

According to the Urban Institute, Nebraska's undercount in 2020 is projected to be 3.6%.

The U.S. Constitution calls for a once-a-decade head count of everyone living in the United States, regardless of their immigration status. The stakes are high. Federal funding and political representation are determined by census numbers.

Aliaga-Linares noted volunteer civic engagement efforts across Nebraska were essential for getting a good count in the 2020 census, but the state still faces challenges going forward.

"There has been a lot of local initiatives for getting everybody counted," Aliaga-Linares acknowledged. "But if you don't have the support from the top, from the governor, from the state level, we will still face problems with undercounted minority populations here."

Latino leaders and advocates criticized Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts for failing to fund a state count committee, a commonly used tool for reaching historically hard-to-count communities. Many are now raising concerns about the fallout from the high national undercount over the next decade, which will impact funding for health care, public education, children's, veteran's, senior's programs, and more; along with political representation at the federal, state and local level.