Category: Commentary

There is a word I want us to consider: blagony. It’s a portmanteau of Black and agony, and it captures a specific psychological space.

It’s not merely being the only Black person in the boardroom. It’s the sustained emotional labor, the relentless vigilance, the pressure of representation and racialized perception — all while trying to meet the explicit performance metrics of any job.

The only Black engineer in a meeting. The single Black adviser on a team. The only Black teacher, the only Black graduate student. The Black female leader whose presence is always under the magnifying glass.

This is the daily landscape for many, and it is, in its quiet omnipresence, exhausting.

To understand blagony is to understand that workplace stress isn’t just about deadlines and deliverables. In the last decade, a significant body of research has reminded us that burnout — the chronic stress response the World Health Organization formally recognizes in the workplace — emerges not only from workload but from identity threat, lack of psychological safety, and perpetual masking of one’s authentic self. Burnout has been with us for decades, yet we are only beginning to grasp its intersecting causes.

In Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, Emily and Amelia Nagoski explain that stress has a physiological component that often isn’t resolved by self-care alone. Stressors accumulate, and without mechanisms to complete the “stress cycle,” our bodies and minds remain in distress.

Now imagine experiencing the ordinary stress of overwork while also managing the extraordinary stress of visibility — being watched, categorized, and held up as both token and template for an entire community. That’s blagony. It’s not just about being in the room; it’s about being on stage in every room.

Organizational research shows this isn’t abstract. Studies probing wellness in underrepresented groups report that women of color — and particularly Black women — face compounded barriers in professional settings.

They are both underrepresented and overlooked, which research connects to diminished career progression, reduced well-being, and heightened psychological strain.

This isn’t about victimhood. It’s about recognition. True psychological safety — the freedom to bring all of who you are to work — is one of the major predictors of organizational success. Yet, for Black employees, that safety is often a mirage. They must code-switch, temper their expertise with humility, and constantly evaluate whether being authentic will be rewarded or punished.

This labor — unmeasured, unpaid, and deeply internalized — is blagony.

Of course, we talk about inclusion and equity, about diversity plans and affinity groups. But intention isn’t impact. A reading of workplace wellness literature reveals a troubling tendency: The wellness industry urges individual strategies — meditation, resilience, boundary setting — while often ignoring structural stressors that are built into the workplace.

Jennifer Moss, in her widely discussed book, The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It, argues that organizations must stop treating burnout as an individual failure and instead redesign workplaces to reduce chronic stress.

Yet, most corporate wellness programs remain superficial: apps, yoga classes, snack bars, mindfulness sessions. None of these treats the root of blagony: the constant cognitive load of being the sole representative of a marginalized group. Psychological research calls this “identity threat,” and it’s real.

In higher education and STEM settings, scholars highlight how Black professionals must mask parts of themselves — hide cultural cues, soften speech, temper humor — to conform to dominant norms. Every day, they must decide: Be fully me and risk being misunderstood? Or mold myself into the organizational ideal and risk losing touch with my own sense of self, or possibly risk losing my job?

In a striking parallel, centuries of research on microaggressions show how seemingly small, everyday slights accumulate into a wear and tear on the psyche. One corporate DEI consultant who has developed mindfulness tools for Black workers notes that these workers face not only the standard burnout of their peers, but additional layers — microaggressions, coded language, isolation, and stereotypical assumptions — which add up over the years.

That is blagony.

Some might raise the counterargument: Isn’t this just the cost of progress? The pain inherent in entering spaces that were never designed for everyone? But that is precisely the problem. Organizations and societies that value innovation, creativity, and collective intelligence must also value plurality of perspective, and the racial and ethnic components that come along with it. If we ignore the emotional costs paid by minoritized workers, we will degrade our own workplaces and squander human potential.

Consider the economy’s current preoccupation with “wellness.” Most wellness initiatives are rooted in an individualistic self-care model that assumes stress arises from personal habits. But when stress is born of organizational dynamics, personal adjustment alone isn’t enough.

Nagoski reminds us: Stress is physiological, yes, but it’s also social. You cannot meditate your way out of an environment that constantly signals that your presence is provisional.

Blagony demands more than corporate slogans or pulse surveys. It demands structural change. It demands that we rethink hiring, promotion, and evaluation criteria. It demands that we foster climates where people don’t feel the need to mask their identities to fit in. It demands sustained effort to build genuine psychological safety.

There is also a cultural dimension. We must shift from valuing perfection to valuing wholeness. We must recognize that human beings — especially those carrying the cumulative weight of historical and structural marginalization — cannot compartmentalize identity from performance. Workplaces that expect competence without empathy will find neither.

In my own conversations with Black professionals, what emerges over and over is not a desire for special treatment, but for authentic belonging. They don’t want to be tokens. They want to be colleagues whose full humanity is recognized and respected.

So let’s retire the idea that burnout is merely overwork. Let’s broaden our understanding to include blagony: the strain of being seen as a single voice for a whole community, the chronic vigilance against bias, the emotional taxation that is neither acknowledged nor compensated.

If we want workplaces that are not just more diverse but more human, then we must reckon with this. Because until we address the unique stressors Black employees carry — and redesign institutions to reduce them — we will continue to lose not just talent, but our shared moral coherence.

Blagony is not a symptom of individual weakness. It is a signal that our workplaces — and our culture — still have far to go.

Jack Hill is a diversity consultant, child advocate, journalist, and writer.

The Delaware River, the Chesapeake Bay, and other flagship waterbodies make news headlines with stories of the long and costly struggles to restore their fish and other wildlife.

But while these high-profile efforts grind on, the real story of the Delaware River’s health hits closer to home.

Beneath the ice on small streams across Pennsylvania, thousands of species of fish, insects, snails, and mussels are waiting quiescently for spring, just as fishers, kayakers, and water lovers wait out the cold winter months, eager for spring.

Poor report card

Alarmingly, Pennsylvania’s recent river report card indicates that some of those streams are likely to wake up in the spring more degraded than last year. The tally of impaired streams and rivers in Pennsylvania grew by 852 miles since 2024 (longer than a round-trip drive from Philadelphia to Erie), while only 154 miles of streams (shorter than a round trip to Lancaster) were removed from that list.

Overall, our rivers are worse off than they were two years ago, and 37% of the state’s waterways remain impaired. If there were a hospital for polluted streams, five patients would have entered for every one patient discharged. And the larger the river and the broader the watershed, the bigger the challenge of bringing back fish and wildlife.

While the report isn’t uplifting, we are fortunate that the state Department of Environmental Protection produces a thorough and transparent analysis of the facts on where and why improvement and degradation have occurred. The report shows us that the key to faster success is focusing efforts around small headwater streams.

These streams, the ones our roads carry us over every day in our communities and that often go unnoticed, are where we find a trickle of hope: Watershed improvements lead to cleaner streams and healthier fish and wildlife populations. They are also the streams that can bring communities together to protect open space, strengthen zoning laws, and form partnerships to target local sources of pollution.

Restoring health

Usually, the science shows us that streams don’t need invasive repairs with backhoes and chain saws akin to a surgeon’s curette and bone saw; they need, like many people making New Year’s resolutions, to go on a diet — for streams, one that’s lower in pollution and higher in leaf litter.

Practically, this means aggressive reduction and treatment of stormwater runoff, eliminating sewer overflows, upgrading sewage treatment, preserving and planting forests, restoring the healthy agricultural soils that benefit farmers, and reducing the use of chemicals on our own properties.

We expect 2026 will bring news of the important progress being made to the Delaware River, as the Philadelphia Water Department will soon be required to meet new water quality standards. Cheer for the Delaware and other superstar rivers, but remember that progress starts at the source of pollution.

Therefore, in 2026, we hope to see a new focus on clustering pollution reductions and protections in smaller watersheds, where measurable improvements in fish and wildlife communities are faster, cheaper, and easier to achieve. That will require more DEP staff to make those measurements, more engaged citizens to champion local actions, and more science to guide the rehabilitation of our streams and watersheds.

Just as evidence-based medicine improves health outcomes and lowers costs, evidence-based restoration improves biological outcomes for our streams and rivers.

The list of potential pollutants is long, so research is needed, now more than ever, on how to restore fish and wildlife at the lowest cost.

Scott Ensign is the assistant director and a research scientist at Stroud Water Research Center. David Arscott is the executive director and a research scientist at the Stroud Center.

The first time the police arrested me, in 2011, I expected it. We were Occupy Philadelphia, we were doing a sit-in at the Comcast lobby. Of course, they led us out in cuffs.

The second time, I didn’t see it coming. Cops stormed the Occupy encampment, driving us into the street. They trapped us with barricades, making their subsequent dispersal orders a physical impossibility.

Then, they arrested us illegally for our supposed failure to comply, hauling us all to jail. The experience was shocking. Naively, I had thought that attempted compliance would spare us arrest that day.

My shock at the time seems quaint now. In the decade that followed, Philadelphia police at mass protests showed an increasing disregard for their supposed rules, the law, and our bodies.

During the 2018 Abolish ICE protests, they bruised us and destroyed our belongings. In 2020 — as we protested George Floyd’s murder — they tear-gassed nonviolent crowds, often also shooting at us with potentially lethal baton rounds.

Those 2020 marches were the last mass protest I felt able to take part in, not out of a sense of self-preservation, but because we had begun to try and start a family. There is no proving that the sudden, heavy bleeding I experienced immediately after the gassings was a miscarriage. No proving that my inability to conceive in the following seven months had any relation to the gas. I’ll never know. What I do know: There is ample evidence demonstrating these chemical weapons to be abortifacients and hormonal disruptors.

When we did finally manage conception, I feared too much for my pregnancy to attend mass protests and risk that gas again. I’d spent my entire adult life organizing and attending political demonstrations; it felt like a major part of my vocational identity had been stolen from me.

After giving birth in 2021, I knew from my Occupy years that even perfect compliance could not protect me from arrest and detention. I was breastfeeding, and my underweight infant routinely rejected offers of formula. I couldn’t risk the possibility of separation or a tainted milk supply.

Then another pregnancy, another birth, another child dependent on breast milk. Mass protest faded even farther into the rearview mirror.

As the second Trump administration implemented textbook fascist practices and dissenting protests became increasingly vital, I agonized about my political responsibilities, but once again stayed home. My children are so young, the youngest still nutritionally breastfeeding. I still don’t feel comfortable risking even a few days’ disappearance in jail, or tear gas-tainted milk supply.

As the previous week’s events made clear, birthing parents and primary caretakers — a population consisting mostly of women — are increasingly in a position in which we must make impossible decisions about exercising our right to protest.

Last Wednesday, in Minnesota, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot Renee Good in the face. Eyewitnesses report that Good — a mother who had just dropped her 6-year-old off at school — received conflicting orders from ICE agents. “Get out of here,” one agent reportedly told Good. When she attempted to comply, another agent fired three shots into her car, ending her life.

Let’s be clear: Even if Good had violated officer orders, there would be no excuse for this summary execution. Video clearly shows she posed no physical threat to any of the agents; there can be no justification for this apparent murder by agents of the state.

I highlight her compliance not to suggest that her life should have depended on it, but to emphasize the reality that neither whiteness nor obedience protects against violent state repression. This has always been true, but we have entered an era where agents of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE act with a brazen disregard for human life, most especially the lives of not only targeted immigrant minorities but also protesters decrying this Trumpian ethnic cleansing campaign.

These rogue agencies now treat constitutionally protected, nonviolent political speech as immediately punishable by violence, by chemical weapon, and even by death.

The risks of protest for birthing parents and primary caretakers of young children are disproportionately high. We must fear not just for our bodies, but for our pregnancies, and the continued physical and emotional safety of our kids.

Many of us who are politically active are increasingly forced to make impossible choices between the civic action this moment demands and our sense of responsibility to the vulnerable children who depend on us.

The image of Good’s blood on an airbag next to a glove compartment bursting with children’s stuffed animals is a stark reminder of the reverberating familial impact of a caretaking mother’s death, and the horrors this rogue presidential regime is only too happy to inflict on dissenters — especially dissenting women.

“Fucking bitch,” mutters one of the agents — very possibly the shooter — as he surveys the deadly wreckage. In their eyes, it seems, unruly women earn themselves an instant death sentence.

Whatever the Trump regime’s excuses, however, Renee Good acted legally and on principle. She chose to stand up to the fascists, to stand up for her neighbors. Her civic virtue cost her her life, and cost her child a mother.

Illegal, violent repression of political opposition chills all political opposition speech, of course. When we are responsible for the care of the very young or other extremely vulnerable people, however, the effect compounds. Caretakers fear not just for our lives and freedom, but for how deeply and immediately our children might suffer in our absence. We stay home from the protests we might otherwise attend (and are blamed for our “irresponsibility” when we don’t).

As a result, more and more childbearing-age women find ourselves having to weigh especially horrific possibilities when considering participation in the critically important speech that is a public political demonstration. And as the tragic killing of Good shows, these fears are not unfounded.

The Trump regime, meanwhile, has repeatedly affirmed this killing as justified. Their message to politically active mothers like me is clear: Stay home, or your children will suffer the consequences. It is a gendered threat, and they know it.

At the same time, Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem overplayed their hand. Their draconian approach has backfired, emboldening a wide swath of vulnerable people to take to the streets and militantly resist ICE occupation.

Fox News now complains of “wine moms” using “antifa tactics.” A Native American mother at home with her baby shelters an immigrant DoorDasher from kidnappers. Somali aunties take to the streets of Minneapolis to hand out sambusas to protesters. DHS weakly complains about parents taking their children along to marches. Moms in Minnesota are guarding their kids’ schools from ICE and organizing mutual aid efforts, like grocery delivery to immigrant families.

Where the Trump regime sought to frighten a populace into cowering submission, they have succeeded in radicalizing whole communities — even and especially the vulnerable — into militant action. They sought to instill fear; they have instead inspired righteous fury.

The women they tried to banish to the kitchen have taken to the streets and to other acts of resistance, joining a host of vulnerable people with every reasonable excuse to avoid the fray.

“Hope has two daughters,” wrote St. Augustine of Hippo. “Their names are Anger and Courage.”

Hope is a mother, it seems. And she is introducing DHS to her kids.

Gwen Snyder is a professional organizer and longtime Philadelphia activist.

Philadelphia was the first place many early Irish immigrants saw when their long journey ended. The Port of Philadelphia was the gateway to their new world.

Between 1717 and 1775 alone, a staggering quarter of a million immigrants arrived from Ireland to the 13 colonies.

By 1776, those same immigrants were deeply involved in the creation of the new republic. Three of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, signed in Philadelphia on the Fourth of July, were born on the island of Ireland. Another Irishman, John Dunlap of County Tyrone, printed the first copies of that declaration on the night of July Fourth.

Irish people continued to shape the American Experiment from those earliest days. Nowhere is that story more evident than in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, now home to more than 1.8 million Pennsylvanians who proudly claim Irish heritage.

Irish workers built Pennsylvania’s canals, its railroads, and its industries. Irish families helped shape its neighborhoods and the civic institutions where they found their home. Irish solidarity and resilience became part of the life fabric of Philadelphia.

The exchange was truly two-way: Ireland’s journey toward independence was inspired by the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Our 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic recognized the support of Ireland’s “exiled children in America.”

This transatlantic exchange of ideas continues to define our relationship and enrich our two countries to this day.

Ireland and the United States now share one of the world’s most dynamic relationships: economically, culturally, and politically. Across the 50 states, more than 780 Irish-founded companies employ over 200,000 people, bringing skills, entrepreneurship, and a global outlook to local economies nationwide. In Pennsylvania alone, 29 Irish companies support 12,000 jobs. Foreign direct investment from Ireland into Pennsylvania is growing across critical sectors, including pharmaceuticals, business services, and industrial equipment.

Today, the United States remains Ireland’s largest trading partner and its leading source of investment. American companies have long recognized Ireland as a trusted partner in Europe and a place where global businesses can thrive, innovate, and access the barrier-free single European Union market of 450 million consumers.

As Ireland’s 19th ambassador to the United States, I am proud to represent a country whose people have helped shape this nation for 250 years.

My hope is that America 250 will not only commemorate the past but will inspire the future, encouraging new generations of Irish Americans to continue to weave this rich transatlantic tapestry.

Geraldine Byrne Nason is the ambassador of Ireland to the United States.

Many households that are cost-burdened are not high-income earners paying for luxury housing — they are low-income residents with limited affordable housing options. As a result, many low-income families spend more than half of their income on rent, making other necessities like food and healthcare difficult to support. High demand, low inventory, and rising costs have created an affordable housing crisis and a growing unmet demand for quality affordable housing.

In Philadelphia, there is a deep, structural gap between the number of very low-income households and the supply of housing they can afford. As in many American cities, housing affordability is a significant issue in Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Housing Authority, in partnership with the city, is boldly addressing this issue head-on with its plan to preserve housing for its current housing stock that provides housing to nearly 80,000 Philadelphians while creating new opportunities for the tens of thousands of residents who are waiting far too long for a home.

The benefits of preserving and expanding affordable housing extend well beyond simply providing a place to live. Affordable housing investments support wage growth by creating quality jobs in construction and related industries while also giving families more financial stability to advance in the workforce.

Every dollar invested in affordable housing generates construction jobs, supports local contractors, and strengthens the tax base. PHA’s $6.8 billion Opening Doors Initiative is preserving existing housing and creating new affordable housing communities that generate widespread economic benefits. A recent economic impact study by Econsult Solutions Inc. demonstrates that PHA’s efforts are providing a significant boost to Philadelphia’s economy.

PHA’s completed and anticipated investments to preserve, acquire, or build 20,000 affordable housing units from 2023 to 2030 will generate a significant cumulative impact on the local and state economies. Locally, capital investments from PHA’s planned developments are estimated to produce almost $10 billion in cumulative economic impact, supporting more than 3,700 full-time jobs, generating $2.7 billion in employee compensation in Philadelphia. Statewide, these investments are projected to produce a total of $11.3 billion in cumulative economic impact, supporting 4,700 full-time equivalent job years and $3.2 billion in employee compensation during the period of construction.

Creating opportunities

These capital investments are also creating new opportunities for PHA’s skilled labor partners who help build high-quality, professionally managed housing communities. Those workers, in turn, will spend a portion of their salaries and wages within our local economy, catalyzing the procurement of a wide range of goods and services, as well as new economic opportunities for local vendors. Along with expanding the labor workforce, the maintenance and operation of new and rehabbed developments will generate more than $100 million in new tax revenue for the city of Philadelphia.

To complete all these investments, PHA must reduce operating expenses in line with lender and bond issuance requirements, potential federal public housing funding reductions, and multifamily industry staffing norms. In addition, PHA must also take action to streamline its property management functions to better service residents on-site while also decentralizing some management operations to procure qualified third-party property managers to realize millions of dollars in annual savings.

PHA’s recently announced restructuring and rightsizing plan achieves these requirements. Through engaging the Building and Construction Trades Council to modify its collective bargaining agreement, PHA will be better able to sustain and preserve its newly developed and repositioned housing portfolio. Once fully implemented, PHA will generate an estimated $28 million in annual operating savings, which will be redirected to preserve its housing stock, provide enhanced services to residents, and expand housing opportunities to the tens of thousands of Philadelphians on its waiting list.

This is a proactive approach to repositioning and strengthening PHA’s housing portfolio for the benefit of the families who depend on PHA. Decisions like this are never easy, but they are necessary to protect residents’ needs and to ensure the financial sustainability of PHA’s new and repositioned housing assets.

PHA remains committed to opening doors to new affordable housing opportunities and creating a sustainable future for Philadelphia’s housing needs.

Kelvin A. Jeremiah is the president and CEO of the Philadelphia Housing Authority.