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Ronaldo Chang Barrero, the owner of West Palm Beach art warehouse, the Box Gallery, is finding new ways to integrate present social movements with Hispanic-influenced art. His gallery contains various works from over 50 local, national and international artists. Barrero chooses to display art representing underrepresented and overrepresented issues by finding artists that are not creating commodities, but have depth and context. “Everything is a social justice exhibit,” Barrero says. For the past seven years, Barrero has held an annual exhibit for Hispanic Heritage Month. This year, this exhibit looks slightly different. With the United Nations Climate Change Hub 360, an event showcasing actions for climate change prevention, starting on Oct. 16, he wanted to combine the two events to create more influence for this particular exhibit. “Hispanic Heritage [Month] did not make me shy away from the issue of the environment, or conservation and stewardship,” Barrero adds. The Box Gallery is now displaying the work of Colombian artist, Moises Morales Duque, whose work debuted in San Fransisco and, later, Colombia. Duque takes an unorthodox approach to art by setting a blank canvas in public areas and welcoming people to paint freely, documenting the human footprint. Duque then paints around the stains and adds an animal in the middle of the man-made chaos. “These paintings are a call to think a little bit more about our actions,” Duque expressed. Duque invites all ages to paint on his canvases, but admits that children are normally the primary contributors. Both Barrero and Duque agreed that collecting impressions from children makes a stronger impression. “The more footprints that we leave, the less room there is for cohabitation,” Barrero says. By doing away with a normal exhibit, like highlighting artists of Hispanic heritage, Barrero, with the help of artist friend Duque, is becoming a strong driving force for social justice art. The Box Gallery does not shy away from highlighting difficult topics that are being discussed by the youth of today. Barrero said he thinks of a gallery as a sacred space, or temple, where controversial conversations can exist without challenging others’ reputations. By McKay Campbell

West Palm Beach celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month by hosting local events and recognizing established Hispanic-owned businesses. Downtown on Clematis Street, the city of West Palm Beach brings Vamos a Bailar, an event featuring live music, a dance performance, and local delights from nearby businesses. Some local businesses such as Dr. Limon Ceviche Bar and Salento Coffee shared their perspective on how Hispanic culture affects their life in the community. By Jasmine Lien

An older woman gently cups a collection of dainty wooden beads in the palms of her hands, her eyes bright and fingers twitching with anticipation. As her gaze glazes over the seemingly insignificant cedar pieces, a hazy memory creeps to the forefront of her mind: a young Navajo girl, adorned in the traditional garb of her people, standing on display for all to see. She spins where she stands, a smile spreading across her youthful face while layers of her family’s handcrafted jewelry clink against her small neck. Her mother, a brisk woman fueled with drive and motivation, scurries about their roadside stand selling her wares to passing travelers. Beads of sweat glisten on the middle-aged woman’s brow, reflecting the unrelenting heat of the Arizona sun, the day’s exhausting agenda and the unbearable pressure of trying to provide for her family. As quick as it came, the memory fades, its wispy presence dissipating into the depths of her subconscious as though it’d never even existed. Aware of her present surroundings once more, Bertha Secody gives a firm shake of her head and refocuses her attention back to the task at hand. It wouldn’t do her well to dwell on the way things used to be. The COVID-19 pandemic had made sure of that. Now 58, Secody is one of the many Navajo individuals who’ve experienced the financial devastation the pandemic has left in its wake. With a father of heightened vulnerability to COVID-19 and three young grandchildren to look after, Secody and her daughter Connie Rose John, 29, have since turned traditional Navajo beadwork into their family’s primary source of income. “It was kind of hard for us, for our kids,” Secody said. “We used to travel a lot. But when COVID hit, it slowed down every business that we have.” With nearly 300,000 established members and approximately 173,000 individuals living on the reservation, the various communities of the Navajo Nation continue to experience little reprieve in the pandemic’s aftermath. In addition to the virus’s pattern of targeting Navajo elders and other high-risk individuals, the reservation’s job market has suffered greatly since the start of the pandemic. Navajo counties in Arizona alone suffered a sharp increase in unemployment rates, surging from 7.2% in April of 2019 to 15.5% exactly a year later. Selling traditional-style jewelry to tourists is a common business strategy among the Navajo people and often requires sellers to travel throughout the reservation extensively in order to better market their wares. Given that the Navajo Department of Health’s official stay-at-home-order mandated that all reservation residents not engaged in essential activities self-quarantine until further notice, many families lost more than just a major source of income- their businesses were shut down completely. Secody and John are intimately aware of how such regulations impacted the Navajo people as a whole. “When [COVID-19] happened, it put a lot of fear in our hearts,” John said. “You hear about things through social media that happen in other countries but you never think ‘Oh, it’s going to happen here.’” Before the pandemic hit, Secody would take John and her children, their beading materials and the family’s completed jewelry pieces to the local gas stations in Tuba City, AZ. There, they would stand by the main entrance and hawk their wares to bystanders and tourists in the hopes of making a decent profit. Despite the pandemic taking a major toll on the Navajo community’s ability to sell jewelry to outsiders, the family’s small business had already been on hold before COVID-19 even became an issue. Since their family business was run solely by her mother and herself, John eventually submitted to the reality that the competition within this specific market between her and her Navajo community was too great of a burden for her small family to bear. They simply didn’t have the time or resources needed to keep themselves in the jewelry-making game. To John's own surprise, it was the aftermath of the pandemic that encouraged her and her mother to start beading again. With long days and nights spent cooped up inside their home and financial insecurity hanging over their heads, the mother-daughter team banded together once more to try and make ends meet. Secody and John are not the only individuals on the reservation who have used jewelry-making as their way to get by. Betty Tsosie, 78, has participated in the traditional Navajo practice for as long as she can remember, and recalls the ways she and the rest of the Navajo community sold their handmade products before the pandemic forced everyone indoors. “We used to sell on the road,” Tsosie said. “We used to make stands. Now I don’t do that anymore.” Due to her age and the extensive preexisting health problems she’d been facing before COVID-19 hit, Tsosie is unable to market her jewelry on the roadside with the other Navajo sellers. Instead, she opted for selling her creations through friends and third party sellers and only recently started allowing clients to physically entire her home. While Navajo sellers like Tsosie and Secody have made individual attempts to combat the pandemic’s financial devastation, Navajo Nation authorities have sought to do their part as well. In early July of 2020, Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez approved the tribe’s first expenditures of Arizona’s coronavirus relief bill, which was originally approved by the state on Mar. 27, 2020. Consisting of approximately $714 million dollars, a partial percentage of the $8 billion originally promised to the Navajo Nation by the U.S. federal government, this bill was enacted by Nez with the goal to ensure that all Navajo residents would be able to provide for themselves over the course of the pandemic. According to John, however, this hope never came to full fruition. “A lot of people missed out,” John said. “Some of them didn’t get paid [at all]. Either they hit the deadline or the census numbers that are given out from our tribe didn’t go through with their applications.” While some Navajo families found ways around this hurdle, like Secody and John with their jewelry-making business, others were forced to rely solely on the generosity of others. Namely, the Navajo Nation’s COVID-19 Relief Fund. Established by the Navajo Nation’s Health Command Center, this fund serves as the tribe’s “only official COVID-19 fundraising and donation effort.” With it, both Navajo and outside sources can give monetary donations to the reservation’s occupants, which are then used to aid residents with any financial and medical needs resulting from COVID-19. In addition to the federal-based fund, many groups and organizations not associated with the Navajo Nation’s government came together at the height of the pandemic to raise funds on their own. The NDN Collective is an individual group set on “building the collective power of Indigenous Peoples, communities, and Nations.” Aware of the condition many of their Navajo brothers and sisters are in as a result of the pandemic, they’ve rallied together to encourage others to contribute to COVID-19 relief for Navajo communities. Using their hashtag “Donation4NavajoNationChallenge,” this organization was determined to fundraise at least $227,000 by the end of their allotted time period. By the time the challenge concluded on May 20, 2020, the NDN Collective reached their goal. This group continues to spread awareness of COVID-19’s impact on their people and encourages individuals to donate to their “COVID-19 Response Project.” Despite each of these efforts to provide aid to struggling residents, one fact still remains: People in the Navajo Nation have had to go without. Some have had to go without food, some without reliable compensation and still others without the confidence that they’ll make it to tomorrow. This uncertainty, which has compromised every aspect of normal life, pushed many individuals, like Secody, John and Tsosie, to take matters into their own hands and attempt to provide their families with what outside sources could not: recurring income. Navajo crafted beads and bracelets may not equate to a stimulus payment or a donation, but if successful, they ensure that the families on the reservation will make it another day. And for some, such assurances are all they need to keep trying. by Brenna Brown

The COVID-19 pandemic continues in the United States and around the world. That doesn’t mean that certain, personal business can be delayed indefinitely. Funerals for the deceased, whether they died due to COVID-19 or not, continue despite the social distancing and lockdown guidelines the pandemic has caused. This has led to various approaches to seeing those who’ve passed off. Chuck Bowman is the immediate past president of the National Funeral Directors Association and has been in the funeral business for most, if not all, his adult life. He currently lives in Liberal, Kansas where he operates a funeral home with his family. Brad Zahn has run West Palm Beach’s Tillman Funeral Home & Crematory for 36 years. The home is privately owned and not connected to the NFDA. The two managers related in detail several solutions. Both placed limits on the number of people in the funeral parlor at a given time at 10 individuals. “We're trying to achieve social distancing where we would normally allow numerous people to come into the funeral home,” Bowman said. The parlor is then cleaned and sterilized between services to make it safe for the next procession. There’s also an open-air, graveside alternative that allows more wiggle-room for attendees. One new method is called “drive-by.” “Some funeral homes have people drive by, stay in their car and view through a window the visitation of the body and pay their respects that way,” Bowman said. Then, there’s the “FaceTime” approach, with services like Skype and Facebook being most commonly used. According to Bowman, this approach is working “very, very well,” since it allows those quarantined, out-of-state or physically incapable of traveling to view the procession safely. “Quite frankly, this will be an outcome of the future, as we’ll do more and more of this broadcasting through Facebook and other media, not just in case the virus resurges but in general,” Bowman said. “I still think it’s best to attend the funeral together in-person, be part of a group. I think that it gives comfort to one another. To honor the deceased and share the memories,” Bowman said. One major reason why funerals can’t simply be delayed until the quarantine ends is due to the decaying nature of the cadavers. Even though bodies brought to funeral homes are refrigerated and embalmed quickly, they can stay preserved for up to six to eight weeks. “That's not a good thing for the family because they're waiting for their service time and their grief to move forward,” Bowman said. There have been few setbacks to the new approaches funeral homes are taking based on the experiences of Bowman and Zahn. “The only drawbacks Tillman has had were that one or two families weren’t willing to abide by the regulations that we’re following from the CDC,” Zahn said. Zahn reluctantly suggested to those families to schedule a service with another provider as he wants Tillman to maintain those regulations for the safety of both the funeral-goers and the staff. The Tillman Funeral Home calculated the number of services performed throughout the pandemic months. In February, 63 families were served, 75 were served in March and 83 were served in April. “We’re generally busy most of the time, but we haven't been overwhelmed because most people are not having services,” Zahn said. “They're generally cremated immediately, buried immediately or flown home to states north to be buried.” The new or at least more recognized funeral methods have also had a positive effect on Bowman himself. A cousin of his from Utah recently died and FaceTime allowed him to mourn without leaving his home and duties in Liberal. “I was kind of feeling outcast from the family because I couldn't attend,” Bowman said. “So, they broadcast at their funeral home, and I managed to be a part of it. It was very personal, and it did help my personal grief.” By Benjamin Wainer

Vaping has become a health issue in the weeks following bans of flavored e-cigarettes in New York and temporarily in Massachusetts. This new concern comes from illnesses related to vaping, which have seen a sharp rise this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). One chart displays the steep rise in hospital admissions from e-cigarette use beginning to climb in late July. The illnesses from e-cigarettes have caused lung injury and death in more severe cases. “It’s a combination of a few things,” Karen Kennedy of Trustbridge Health in Florida said. “What is being found out is that some of the chemicals that are being put into these cigarettes, that are used for flavoring, is what’s causing different types of reactions in their lungs. Some of them are irritants that make it look like you have asthma, where you can’t take in oxygen very well. It makes it difficult to breathe.” The damage vaping can cause can seriously harm vital organs. “There’s a next level where it causes damage to their lungs,”Kennedy continued.  “They are calling it popcorn lungs. They begin to stretch, unable to pull air in. Your lungs expand, and it pushes the air out, the lungs contract. It loses that elasticity to be able to contract them out. It is comparable to emphysema.” Kennedy also mentioned the effects of THC in marijuana type e-cigarettes. “THC has a significant amount of tar in it. Even if you smoke a marijuana variant of it rather than regular cigarettes, you’re more likely to get lung cancer. I don’t think we have them here, but in other states they do have them.” Anthony Abdo is a manager for Levels Smoke Shop, a vaping store in West Palm Beach, Florida. He explained the vaping problem from the perspective of someone who sells vaping products. “What they report in the news is speaking to illegal, illicit, black market THC vape carts, marijuana vape carts, that are not available to everybody in states like Florida and Michigan,” Abdo said. “In states that marijuana is not legalized, there are markets for these illicit vape cartridges, and that is absolutely, 100% the cause of these people’s deaths.” Abdo maintains that his store and many like it across the country are “absolutely” in favor of regulations provided by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “If vape stores and those that supply are doing their due diligence, then what we have here, like our vape juice, is already FDA regulated. It must be made in a clean room with no contaminants.” William Ciano has been vaping for two years to try to quit smoking. “I feel as though if it’s bad for us, it should be banned,” Ciano said. “Then again, smoking is bad for us and they won’t ban that, so it’s kind of a contradiction. If they would ban vaping, they would go ahead and ban tobacco altogether.” Ciano does not think extreme measures are the answer but that drug legislation has room to improve. “The legalization of everything would pretty much be anarchy,” Ciano said. “It hasn’t worked in other countries like Spain or Mexico. However, we should decriminalize certain things because it doesn’t make any sense to have certain things like marijuana be classified as a class-one narcotic.” Abdo, Ciano and Kennedy all agree that rather than outright banning flavored e-cigarettes or vaping in general, states should implement stronger and safer regulations. “The officials will have to recognize that the e-liquids are not the problem. It’s the accessibility and the availability that is the problem,” Abdo said. “The same way that alcohol is regulated so that you must present your ID to prove you are 21 or over, that’s what should happen to the vape industry.” But there’s another problem that Kennedy noticed: Like cigarettes, vape products are available in many different places. Someone could go to the corner store and purchase them. Kennedy said a possible solution is to take all the products that are age-restricted and put them in age-restricted retail spaces. By Benjamin Wainer