Secret Food Bank, Vaping, Cop Culture Clash: Patch Partner News

Every day, Patch brings stories to its readers from more than a dozen news and information partners. These organizations contributing to Patch range from Kaiser Health News to the Racine County Eye to Chalkbeat – and others, both local and national.

As much as a news organization, Patch is a publishing platform that would love to share your thoughts, ideas and information, too. Here is just a sample of some recent posts. If you'd like to appear on the Patch platform, and have your work be among the stories that attract more than 80 million reads each month, contact colin.miner@patch.com.

In Santa Cruz, Clandestine Food Bank Draws 100s Of Farmworkers

By CalMatters

Farmworker families afraid of getting assistance from food banks due to recent immigration raids now participate in secret food handouts that are passed by word of mouth or telephone.

All eyes follow the white van as it rolls into the alley.

More than 100 people — almost all migrant farmworkers from the nearby agricultural fields of Santa Cruz County — line up along a shaded edge of the street, tucked off a long road dotted with modest houses and neat lawns. Some lean on grocery carts, waiting for the delivery of boxes loaded with colorful sacks of carrots, potatoes, cabbage and onions, bundles of rice and beans, boxes of grapes, shampoo, toilet paper and laundry detergent. The arrival of the van means the boxes will be distributed soon.

Here, hidden in plain sight in one of California's poorest counties, a clandestine operation delivers supplies to people who can't afford the food they harvest for others and are so worried about immigration enforcement that they are afraid to visit official food banks and sometimes even grocery stores.

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Detroit High Schoolers Using New Curriculum Aligned With State Standards

By Chalkbeat

High school students in the Detroit district — for the first time in more than a decade — will start the school year with a new curriculum this fall.

District leaders say the new materials meet those standards and are crucial to preparing students for annual state tests and college entrance exams. Last year, Detroit students had the worst results in the country among major cities on a rigorous national exam. In state tests last year, just a fraction of the district's students passed the English Language Arts exam. State test results released this week show the district is making across-the-board gains.

In the district's English language arts curriculum, textbooks will be centered around "culturally relevant" texts. The new materials also ask students to focus more on making arguments with evidence that comes from the texts they read.

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Everything You Need To Play Baseball Is Getting Hit By Trump's Tariffs

By ProPublica

Since 1983, Kim Karsh has helped baseball teams deal with an inconvenient fact of the modern economy: Almost everything you need to play America's homegrown sport is now made in China, from cleats to batting helmets.

Lately, supplying the game's amateurs and fans has gotten more difficult. Karsh owns California Pro Sports in Harbor City, California, where invoices for big customers now include a caveat: Prices are up due to the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese imports, and they could rise further on short notice.

"We have to explain to our customers that the trade war affects them as it does us," Karsh said. "We can pass on pretty much everything to the consumer. The problem is, now they will shop lower-quality items. Some understand, and other people don't."

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The Culture Clash Over Phoenix Police

By Cronkite News

A preschooler reportedly takes a doll from a dollar store. Police surround her parents' vehicle in a sun-soaked parking lot, guns drawn. One officer threatens, with an expletive, to shoot. A head is slammed against a police car; legs are kicked apart. Onlookers videotape the scene, murmuring disapproval.

A video goes viral. Changes are demanded, debated, promised. Insults and accusations are exchanged by police supporters and police reformers. Sides entrench in dueling points of view and distrust mounts.

"I feel like there is a core fundamental problem with policing," said Parris Wallace of Poder in Action, which advocates for changes in public systems and policies.

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Mysterious Vaping Lung Injuries May Have Flown Under Regulatory Radar

By Kaiser Health News

It was the arrival of the second man in his early 20s gasping for air that alarmed Dr. Dixie Harris. Young patients rarely get so sick, so fast, with a severe lung illness, and this was her second case in a matter of days.

Then she saw three more patients at her Utah telehealth clinic with similar symptoms. They did not have infections, but all had been vaping. When Harris heard several teenagers in Wisconsin had been hospitalized in similar cases, she quickly alerted her state health department.

As patients in hospitals across the country combat a mysterious illness linked to e-cigarettes, federal and state investigators are frantically trying to trace the outbreaks to specific vaping products that, until recently, were virtually unregulated.

If you work at a news organization or a nonprofit and would like to partner with Patch, contact Patch's Manager of News and Content Partnerships, Colin Miner, at Colin.Miner@Patch.com.