The fight to save Philly's Chinatown
… plus curiosities from Miss USA, Tuvalu, and more.
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Without further ado, here’s what’s on deck this week:
🥠 An American Chinatown in the shadow of mega-developers
👑 Inside the Miss USA controversy
🗣 The art of fofoca
But first, here’s a closer look at what’s been going on around the world in the last week or so:
294 — The number of community centers set up across Mexico City over the course of five years, offering social services, free classes, and other resources for youth and vulnerable communities. It’s one of the main reasons the city won the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize last week. The biennial award honors cities that create vibrant and livable communities for residents. The prize is named after Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister, who was instrumental in turning Singapore into a developed, clean, green city over the span of a few decades.
2 million — The number of people who have been affected by extreme flooding across southern Brazil, according to the country’s civil defense on Friday. Since last week, Rio Grande do Sul state has been slammed by a torrential downpour, receiving the brunt of an already intense El Niño season that scientists say has been exacerbated by climate change. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced, at least 126 have died, and scores more are declared missing. As of Friday, it is estimated that it may require as much as $3.7 billion USD to rebuild the state.
$100 Million — The amount that an IRS audit may cost the former U.S. President Donald Trump if he loses his audit battle, according to an investigation conducted by ProPublica. The investigative news publication found that Trump claimed improper tax breaks from his unsuccessful Chicago Trump Tower skyscraper.
“When Trump sought to reap tax benefits from his losses, the IRS has argued, he went too far and in effect wrote off the same losses twice,” write Paul Kiel and Russ Buettner.
Dive into their investigation to learn more
97% — The percentage of the population in Tuvalu that celebrates Christianity. On Monday, the island nation celebrated Gospel Day, an annual holiday that recognizes the arrival of the first Christian missionary in 1861. The arrival slowly replaced the indigenous community’s worship of ancestral spirits and deities with Christianity. Over the last few years Tuvalu has been hit by intense flooding due to rising sea levels. Last year we partnered with the UK’s Channel 4 News on an immersive documentary about rising sea levels in the Pacific Island country. It may become the first country to completely disappear because of the impacts of climate change, which has spurred Tuvalu to write the blueprint for how nations worldwide could address the threat of rising sea levels.
And now onto the main course: From San Francisco in the west and New York City in the east, Chinatowns across the United States have fostered community for the East Asian diaspora for over 200 years. But in equal parts, they have become targets for developers, leading to the gentrification of these storied neighborhoods and the erasure of community ties. Today, locals in Philadelphia’s historic Chinatown are waging a fight against the construction of 76 Place – an arena developers are planning to build for Philly’s NBA franchise, the 76ers, in the heart of Chinatown.
Some residents, business owners, and advocates of Philadelphia's Chinatown see the arena as a threat the future livelihood of the community. “For them, Chinatown is their only space that honors East Asian culture, providing a sense of safety and belonging. They worry that six years of road closures, construction dust, and noise pollution will decimate small businesses, many which have been struggling to rebuild since the COVID-19 pandemic and widespread attacks on Asian Americans,” writes journalist Allison Lau for Frame.
In our latest story, Lau sends a dispatch from Philadelphia, taking us into the David-versus-Goliath-esque fight between Chinatown residents and the developer trying to build a new NBA arena in their backyard. Philly’s fight to save its Chinatown mirrors efforts in cities across the U.S. — and could serve as a blueprint for future fights to come.
On Thursday, May 16 —The European IDAHOT+ Forum in The Hague, Netherlands, ends. The three-day long forum bills itself as an opportunity for world leaders to discuss LGBTQ human rights and policy at a time when the community’s safety is under mounting pressure. Worldwide, 64 countries have laws that criminalize homosexuality, yet more and more countries — like Estonia and Greece this year — have legalized same-sex marriage, potentially opening the doors for other countries to acknowledge LGBTQ rights.
On Sunday, May 19 — Mental Health Week ends in the United States amid what has become the halfway point of Mental Health Awareness month this May. The year’s theme is “movement,” signaling a renewed focus on the benefits of exercise to lift one’s mood and improve long-term mental wellbeing. Studies show that exercise can be as effective if not more effective than antidepressants or therapy in reducing mild-to-moderate depression. The percentage of adults in the U.S. who have been diagnosed with depression during their lifetime increased from 19.6% in 2015 to 29% in 2023.
On Monday, May 20 — World Bee Day occurs. Today, nearly 90% of the world’s flowers, 75% of the world’s food crops, and 35% of global agricultural land depend on pollination from bees. But a new study has found that warming temperatures due to climate change may be responsible for a worldwide bumblebee decline. In the last two decades or so, the number of American Bumblebees, once a dominant bee species in North America, has declined by 90%.
The world of U.S. beauty pageants is in turmoil. The U.S.’ biggest pageants facing are facing a moment of reckoning after both Miss Teen USA UmaSofia Srivastava and Miss USA Noelia Voigt renounced their titles within one week of each other. It’s the first time in Miss USA’s 72-year history that any title holder has voluntarily renounced their crown.
Both have signaled that a toxic workplace and a lack of mental wellbeing caused their exodus. And internet sleuths have discerned that Voigt’s public statement regarding her exit seemed to spell out “I am silenced” in the first few sentences. Both women are thought by those within pageant circles to have been silenced by an NDA, hampering the potential for either woman to tell their full story.
Far too often, workplaces are tricky territory for women. Research has shown that a record number of women leaders are leaving their employers, citing workplace culture as one main reason. Women are also far more likely to experience a toxic workplace than men.
Voigt and Srivastava’s exits may well be the beginning of a louder reform movement in the beauty pageant world — especially as mothers of the former Miss USAs and former competitors begin speak out, too.
You know that feeling of chatting with friends or acquaintances and hearing them talk about someone’s news or life? You maybe don’t even know the person but ask questions about who they’re married to, what they do for a living. It’s a form of conversation, a kind of gossip, where we derive pleasure from idly learning about what’s going on in someone’s life.
In Brazil, there’s a word for this: fofoca. Fofoca is the practice of learning about what’s going on in a person’s life, oftentimes someone other than the person you’re speaking to. A friend from Brazil told me it’s an “exchange of information that creates a sense of belonging.” Belonging in someone’s life, within a community, and more broadly connecting over common experiences of success, failure, grief, joy, and beyond.
In the book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari discusses how gossip helped early humans create stronger social bonds and a greater sense of community identity, leading to greater cooperation.
Turns out, fofocando might be the most human thing we can do.
— Ben
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