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In an office overlooking downtown Erie, Pennsylvania, Saeed Taraky pulls a pen from a box beside his desk. He presses the stylus, and a small light illuminates the barrel of the pen. A message reads: Welcome to America! Welcome to Erie, PA! Create a Great Future For You and Your Family! The pens will go to new American citizens after they complete their naturalization ceremonies, which Taraky conducts. The small gift is the kind of earnest and optimistic gesture that says a lot about how this Pennsylvania city approaches new arrivals. Saeed Taraky, the city of Eries immigrant and refugee liaison, stands in front of Afghan and American flags at the Afghan Community Center in Erie, Pennsylvania. [Photo: Dustin Franz/Capital & Main] Taraky, once a refugee from Afghanistan, is now Eries refugee and immigrant liaison. He and his family arrived in 2022, after fleeing the Talibans return to power, and found a welcoming community in Erie. Today, trying to provide the kind of welcome he once received, he helps newcomers resettle and coordinates an immigrant and refugee council that offers immigrant perspectives on city policies. But for city officials in Erie, creating a welcoming atmosphere for immigrants is not just about generosity. Its a path city leaders say they have chosen out of necessity. After decades of industrial decline, Erie has become a case study in how some Rust Belt cities are surviving by welcoming newcomers. Once home to more than 138,000 people, the city now has a population that hovers at 90,000. Eries ailments have continued long into this century. For the past two decades, factories and manufacturing jobs have been leaving Erie for the South and for Mexico. A major blow came in 2018 when General Electric, the citys major employer for more than 100 years, sold its Erie branch. Pedestrians cross State Street, the main thoroughfare in downtown Erie. [Photo: Dustin Franz/Capital & Main] Faced with declining industries and population, city leaders made a bet: What if they made their city a destination for immigrants and refugees? Immigration can be a kind of panacea for population decline, said Elizabeth Jones of the Welcoming Center, which promotes immigration as a catalyst for economic development in the Philadelphia area. Immigrants are more likely to be working age, start businesses, and file patentskey drivers of economic growth. The Afghan Community Center offers resources to Eries burgeoning Afghan immigrant community. [Photo: Dustin Franz/Capital & Main] Erie embraced that philosophy. Its mayor, Joe Schember, made getting the city designated a welcoming community a priority. That has included promoting English classes, ensuring there are pipelines for immigrants to enter the workforce, and launching a New American Council to gather insight from immigrants and refugees themselves. Research backs their efforts: According to a report by the Economic Research Institute of Erie at The Pennsylvania State University at Erie, The Behrend College, immigrants contribute $253 million to the county economy each year, and thanks to immigration, the population has stabilized after years of decline. While many local leaders credit newcomers with strengthening the tax base, filling essential jobs, and revitalizing schools, not all politicians representing the area are as welcoming. And the progress the region has made in integrating new arrivals is now threatened by a resurgence of federal anti-immigrant policiesputting Eries fragile revival at risk. Federal funding cuts have shaken refugee agencies. The three agencies in Erie, which provide resettlement services including housing assistance, English classes, and assistance with the health system, receive a significant portion of their budgets from the federal government. Despite multiple court orders for the Trump administration to unfreeze funding, their grants remain paused. Given what has happened so far, we almost have to assume the worst-case scenario, said Katie Kretz, the executive director of the Multicultural Community Resource Center. Kretz and leaders of two other relief agencies appealed to the Erie Foundation in March for emergency funding. Since then, the foundation has set up a rapid response fund. But Eries other agencies, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants Erie field office and Catholic Charities, have already laid off employees, and the future is uncertain. While the U.S.and thus Eriehas not accepted any new refugees since the start of the Trump dministration, service providers are assisting recent arrivals on shoestring budgets. Hopefully [the anti-immigrant mood] is a short-term blip, and the longer-term trend is that we continue to realize the value of inviting new people into your community, said Chris Groner, director of Eries office of development services. Erie County is represented by Republican Rep. Mike Kelly, who has made immigration one of his key issues. President Bidens open border policies have turned every state into a border state, Kelly said on the House floor last year. He has specifically spoken out about crossings at the northern border, given that Lake Erie forms part of the U.S. border with Canada. If [immigrants] were wearing the uniform of a foreign country, we would think we were being invaded and we would say, ‘My God, who is watching the border?’ Kelly said at a hearing on the northern border in 2023. Erie County, which is made up of a more progressive city surrounded by more rural, conservative areas, is known for being a swing county and a bellwether of national elections. Since 2008, a majority of voters in Erie County have chosen the winner of the presidential race. That includes choosing Trump in 2024. Immigration was one of the top issues for voters during the presidential election, with Trump promising to ramp up immigrant arrests and deportations while in office. A September 2024 Pew Research poll found that 56% of registered voters supported mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. Trump has made good on his promises, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement arresting more than 66,000 people in the first 100 days of the new administration. Yet peoples views are nuanced, as 64% of Americans believed that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S. if certain requirements are met, according to a November 2024 Pew poll. To Jim Wertz, a Democrat who is currently running for Erie County Council, anti-immigrant sentiment hasnt been a noticeable problem in the city of Erie or even the county. Regardless of political [identity], folks recognize the value of these communities, he said, suggesting it may be because of residents real experiences with immigrants. Folks here go to the grocery store and meet people actually affected by anti-immigrant policies, added Wertz, who is a professor of broadcast journalism and digital media at Pennsylvania Western University at Edinboro. That includes the Trump administrations crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Though officials in the city of Erie have said they do not expect the police department to work with ICE, the Erie County Sheriffs Office has detained immigrants in Erie County Prison on behalf of the federal agency. At the end of February, nine immigrants were detained in the jail, according to Erie News Now, before some were transferred to a central Pennsylvania facility. Against this backdrop, Taraky said that the city is planning to help remove that gate between immigrants and U.S.-born residents by inviting nonimmigrants to see the culture of immigrants [and] what they bring to the table, which includes the food and fun aspect of cultural integration: new cuisines, cultural performances, and gatherings. One of the new arrivals putting that approach into practice is Karim Hanif, a doctor in Afghanistan before he and his family fled the Taliban and moved to northwestern Pennsylvania. In February, he opened Ariana Halal Kitchenthe first Afghan restaurant in Erie. His son, Mohammad Abid, translated as Hanif explained that he wanted to work for himself and also give back to the Erie community. Eries Afghans love the familiar food: The restaurant will be growing fast because a lot of Afghans keep coming to Erie, Hanif said. But Hanifs customers are diverse: He serves other Muslims who are seeking halal food, like Somalis and Syrians, as well as U.S.-born Americans who are broadening their palates, eating cuisine theyve possibly never tried before. Karim Hanif opened Eries first Afghan restaurant in February. [Photo: Dustin Franz/Capital & Main] There are at least 6,000 first-generation immigrants in the city of Erie, and more than half are refugees who were forced to flee dangerous conditions in their home countries. In addition to Afghanistan, Eries refugees hail from countries including Bhutan, Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Burundi, Ukraine, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Eritrea, Kosovo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Metropolitan areas in the Rust Belt were famously immigrant enclaves in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But today, these cities foreign-born residents tend to represent a relatively small percentage of the overall population compared to the U.S. average. Fewer than 7% of the city of Eries residents are foreign born, compared to about 14% in the U.S. Even so, those immigrants bring jobs and businesses and inject money into the local economy, researchers across the country say. The city actively supports immigrant- and refugee-owned small businesses with microgrants, which have provided many of them with an initial infusion of capital. Immigrant entrepreneurs operate at least 100 ventures in the city, from day care centers and grocery stories to art galleries and auto repair shops. For his part, Taraky remains committed to highlighting the benefits of immigratioboth through his words and his wardrobeas he supports newcomers in integrating into the community. On a day in March, he wore a dark three-piece suit, complete with a patterned red pocket square. Dressing well allows people in the community to see an immigrant as a professional, he said. The hope, Taraky added, is that rather than clash, immigrants and nonimmigrants will come together [and] understand each other. By Kalena Thomhave This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
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E-Commerce
Artificial intelligence is rapidly being adopted to help prevent abuse and protect vulnerable peopleincluding children in foster care, adults in nursing homes, and students in schools. These tools promise to detect danger in real time and alert authorities before serious harm occurs. Developers are using natural language processing, for examplea form of AI that interprets written or spoken languageto try to detect patterns of threats, manipulation, and control in text messages. This information could help detect domestic abuse and potentially assist courts or law enforcement in early intervention. Some child welfare agencies use predictive modeling, another common AI technique, to calculate which families or individuals are most at risk for abuse. When thoughtfully implemented, AI tools have the potential to enhance safety and efficiency. For instance, predictive models have assisted social workers to prioritize high-risk cases and intervene earlier. But as a social worker with 15 years of experience researching family violenceand five years on the front lines as a foster-care case manager, child abuse investigator, and early childhood coordinatorIve seen how well-intentioned systems often fail the very people they are meant to protect. Now, I am helping to develop iCare, an AI-powered surveillance camera that analyzes limb movementsnot faces or voicesto detect physical violence. Im grappling with a critical question: Can AI truly help safeguard vulnerable people, or is it just automating the same systems that have long caused them harm? New tech, old injustice Many AI tools are trained to “learn by analyzing historical data. But history is full of inequality, bias, and flawed assumptions. So are people, who design, test, and fund AI. That means AI algorithms can wind up replicating systemic forms of discrimination, like racism or classism. A 2022 study in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, found that a predictive risk model to score families risk levelsscores given to hotline staff to help them screen callswould have flagged Black children for investigation 20% more often than white children, if used without human oversight. When social workers were included in decision-making, that disparity dropped to 9%. Language-based AI can also reinforce bias. For instance, one study showed that natural language processing systems misclassified African American Vernacular English as aggressive at a significantly higher rate than Standard American Englishup to 62% more often, in certain contexts. Meanwhile, a 2023 study found that AI models often struggle with context clues, meaning sarcastic or joking messages can be misclassified as serious threats or signs of distress. These flaws can replicate larger problems in protective systems. People of color have long been over-surveilled in child welfare systemssometimes due to cultural misunderstandings, sometimes due to prejudice. Studies have shown that Black and Indigenous families face disproportionately higher rates of reporting, investigation, and family separation compared with white families, even after accounting for income and other socioeconomic factors. Many of these disparities stem from structural racism embedded in decades of discriminatory policy decisions, as well as implicit biases and discretionary decision-making by overburdened caseworkers. Surveillance over support Even when AI systems do reduce harm toward vulnerable groups, they often do so at a disturbing cost. In hospitals and eldercare facilities, for example, AI-enabled cameras have been used to detect physical aggression between staff, visitors, and residents. While commercial vendors promote these tools as safety innovations, their use raises serious ethical concerns about the balance between protection and privacy. In a 2022 pilot program in Australia, AI camera systems deployed in two care homes generated more than 12,000 false alerts over 12 monthsoverwhelming staff and missing at least one real incident. The programs accuracy did not achieve a level that would be considered acceptable to staff and management, according to the independent report. Children are affected, too. In U.S. schools, AI surveillance like Gaggle, GoGuardian, and Securly are marketed as tools to keep students safe. Such programs can be installed on students devices to monitor online activity and flag anything concerning. But theyve also been shown to flag harmless behaviorslike writing short stories with mild violence, or researching topics related to mental health. As an Associated Press investigation revealed, these systems have also outed LGBTQ+ students to parents or school administrators by monitoring searches or conversations about gender and sexuality. Other systems use classroom cameras and microphones to detect aggression. But they frequently misidentify normal behavior like laughing, coughing, or roughhousingsometimes prompting intervention or discipline. These are not isolated technical glitches; they reflect deep flaws in how AI is trained and deployed. AI systems learn from past data that has been selected and labeled by humansdata that often reflects social inequalities and biases. As sociologist Virginia Eubanks wrote i Automating Inequality, AI systems risk scaling up these long-standing harms. Care, not punishment I believe AI can still be a force for good, but only if its developers prioritize the dignity of the people these tools are meant to protect. Ive developed a framework of four key principles for what I call trauma-responsive AI. Survivor control: People should have a say in how, when, and if theyre monitored. Providing users with greater control over their data can enhance trust in AI systems and increase their engagement with support services, such as creating personalized plans to stay safe or access help. Human oversight: Studies show that combining social workers expertise with AI support improves fairness and reduces child maltreatmentas in Allegheny County, where caseworkers used algorithmic risk scores as one factor, alongside their professional judgment, to decide which child abuse reports to investigate. Bias auditing: Governments and developers are increasingly encouraged to test AI systems for racial and economic bias. Open-source tools like IBMs AI Fairness 360, Googles What-If Tool, and Fairlearn assist in detecting and reducing such biases in machine learning models. Privacy by design: Technology should be built to protect peoples dignity. Open-source tools like Amnesia, Googles differential privacy library, and Microsofts SmartNoise help anonymize sensitive data by removing or obscuring identifiable information. Additionally, AI-powered techniques, such as facial blurring, can anonymize peoples identities in video or photo data. Honoring these principles means building systems that respond with care, not punishment. Some promising models are already emerging. The Coalition Against Stalkerware and its partners advocate to include survivors in all stages of tech developmentfrom needs assessments to user testing and ethical oversight. Legislation is important, too. On May 5, 2025, for example, Montanas governor signed a law restricting state and local government from using AI to make automated decisions about individuals without meaningful human oversight. It requires transparency about how AI is used in government systems and prohibits discriminatory profiling. As I tell my students, innovative interventions should disrupt cycles of harm, not perpetuate them. AI will never replace the human capacity for context and compassion. But with the right values at the center, it might help us deliver more of it. Aislinn Conrad is an associate professor of social work at the University of Iowa. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
Gen Zers are putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to shopping. Nearly all Gen Z consumers96%say they shop with intention, and 66% believe their purchases should reflect their personal values, according to the newly released Lightspeed Commerce report, which surveyed over 2,000 North American shoppers. Spending habits have never been more visible, thanks to social media. Todays consumers have more ways than ever to signal their morals and valuesand more platforms to share those choices. Posting shopping hauls and empties videos, or filming a fit check with coffee in hand has become prime social media fodder. In an age where everything is content, more consumers are choosing brands that reflect who they are and what they stand for. A hallmark of Gen Z is coming to age in a hyper-connected world. In this world, every follow, like, repost, and even purchase is a direct reflection of a persons identity and values, Lightspeed CEO Dax Dasilva tells Fast Company. Through this connected world, there is a never-ending exposure to global issues, where activism, accountability, and cancel culture move at the speed of light. Today, the wrong purchase can carry social consequencesnot just from peers, but from the broader judgment of the internet. This pressure is especially strong among Gen Z: Thirty-two percent fear being canceled for supporting the wrong brands, which is more than five times higher than for boomers (6%). In many ways, this fear of being judged or canceled and the understanding of the weight of their buying decisions differentiates Gen Z from older generations, who have traditionally shopped based on things like price or quality, Dasilva says. This trendwhat Lightspeed calls value spendingis part of a broader consumer shift. Nearly all consumers (92%) identify as at least somewhat intentional in their purchases. While price (78%) and quality (67%) remain top priorities across generations, purchasing decisions that align with personal values or identity are close behind, cited by 62% of respondents. In the past six months, 27% of consumers made purchases based on national pride; 18% supported brands tied to charitable or social causes; another 18% chose products for their sustainability impact; and 15% factored in a CEOs political alignment. For 32% of these value spenders, this is a new behaviorbut half believe their spending carries more influence than ever before. Value for money has taken on a new meaning.
Category:
E-Commerce
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