SOCIAL JUSTICE – Page 18

How a Black Farming Community Found Justice

4Apr

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

How a Black Farming Community Found Justice

Black families in the South are doing important work to continue the legacy of Black farming communities. Shirley Sherrod co-founded New Communities, a Black farming community in rural Georgia. But at one time, she wanted to leave farming far behind. As a teenager, Sherrod dreamed of leaving the South. Her mind traveled North—away from the White sheriff, known as “The Gator,” who ruthlessly and violently patrolled the area’s Black residents. Away from her family’s farm and the backbreaking days spent picking cotton. Away from the segregated schools. “My goal was to try to get as far away from that whole system and as far away from the farm as I could,” she says. But in March 1965, her senior year of high school, Sherrod’s father was shot by a White farmer during a disag...

2Apr

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SOCIAL JUSTICE, VIDEO REELS

NYC Commission on Human Rights bans hair discrimination

Earlier this week, the New York City Commission on Human Rights instituted a law that bans discrimination by employers, schools and other public places, based upon hairstyle. Banning certain hairstyles, whether in the workplace or at a school, is now considered a form of racial discrimination in New York. Guidelines released by the city's Commission on Human Rights apply to everyone, but are particularly geared towards protecting the rights of black people. Violators can be fined up to $250,000, although proving the discrimination may still be difficult. by Kristen Saloomey Al Jazeera's Kristen Saloomey reports from New York.

7Feb

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Plutocracy We Have vs. the Democracy Most Americans Want

We will have true democracy when economic power and political voice reside with we the people, all the people. This is part two of a two-part series. See part one here. Economic power is—and always has been—the foundation of political power. Those who control the peoples’ means of living rule. In a democracy, however, each person must have a voice in the control and management of the means of their living. That requires more than a vote expressing a preference for which establishment-vetted candidate will be in power for the next few years. My previous column, “Confronting the Great American Myth,” distinguished true democracy from government by the wealthy, a plutocracy. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. Constitution was written by representatives of the new nat...

31Jan

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Next Stop for Retired School Buses: Tiny Houses for Homeless Families

My nonprofit converts buses into fully functioning, attractive 240-square-foot tiny houses on wheels for homeless children and their parents. The rains came down sideways. We had one hour to get our first new “skoolie”—a school bus converted into a tiny house on wheels—out of the construction yard and into its new home at an RV park. We needed to get Betsy the Wonder Bus plugged into power, test the hot water heater and get the fire going in the brand new wood stove. This would be its first night as a home for an unsheltered family. Made by our newly minted nonprofit, Vehicles for Changes, Betsy rolled down the highway to its new space at the Jackson Wellsprings RV Park just outside of Ashland, in the southernmost tip of Oregon. Everything worked as we checked it off: sto...

18Jan

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Oscar Grant Was Shot by Police 10 Years Ago. Now His Family Is Helping Others to Heal

His life was cut short on a train platform. Now his family is building bridges between police and the community, and connecting families affected by such violence. Oscar Grant III was an unarmed Black man killed by a police officer in Oakland, Calif., years before Black Lives Matter drew national attention to the growing number of unarmed Black men, women and children who die at the hands of law enforcement officers—what some scholars are calling an epidemic. Jan. 1 marked 10 years since the 22-year-old father was fatally shot by the Bay Area Regional Transit officer in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day. In the decade since his tragic death, Grant’s family has helped to create a police citizen review board of BART, established a foundation, and launched a campaign...

5Apr

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

Racism and the Off-Duty Doctor

How my hospital ID has become an “I exist” card. In medical residency, I trained at a county hospital in Los Angeles. Black and Brown patients lay on gurneys in the emergency room and lined the halls on the wards. Our patients were mostly poor, often undocumented. The doctors were mostly White. One of my Guatemalan patients told me that on the difficult, monthlong walk into the U.S., contending with blisters and diarrhea, she’d learned that our hospital was the first place to get decent, free care. As residents, we worked and lived in the hospital so many nights, it felt like home. On one of my days off, in street clothes—jeans and a T-shirt—I went into the hospital to finish dictating some patient notes. It was morning. As usual, I went through the metal detector coming into the h...

27Nov

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Unique Arts Festival Where Performers Play for Their Health Care

O+ was created to address the lack of affordable medical care for a chronically underinsured population: artists and musicians. When Christopher Stott-Rigsbee was attacked by assailants in November 2010, he got a concussion, bruised ribs, gravel embedded in his gums, cuts all over his face, and he lost three teeth. But the real pain came later. The lead singer and songwriter for the Plattsburgh, New York-based band Adrian Aardvark, Stott-Rigsbee started having panic attacks and anxiety; after four years, he finally began seeing a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with PTSD and depression. “It has taken years for me to start the recovery process, and I will be working to recover my self-worth, masculinity, and my faith in humanity and society for a long time,” Stott-Rigsbee sa...

15Nov

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

What School Lunches Have to Do With Fixing Wealth Inequality

Dismantling a capitalist food system could begin with schools, which nationwide spend about $3 billion on food contracts. Once a year, Russell Farms in Brackney, Pennsylvania, hosts a harvest celebration, where students from nearby Tioga Central School District in New York state get to visit, talk to farmers and pick apples from the farm’s 12 varieties. “It’s a great day because the kids can make the connection and see where their food is grown,” says Julie Raway, a registered dietitian for 15 New York school districts. And they are excited when the same fruit they sampled shows up in their cafeteria at school. Russell Farms sells apples to local school districts as part of a Farm to School initiative—a growing national movement that aims to create equity and redistribute wealth...

6Nov

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Journalism, SOCIAL JUSTICE

This Isn’t the First Time White Supremacists Have Tried to Cancel Birthright Citizenship

History shows that a broad coalition of civil rights activists is how to fight back. In the latest in a long string of attacks on immigration, this week Trump declared he would issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship. Established by the 14th amendment to grant citizenship to freed slaves, the idea that all people born in the United States are U.S. citizens, regardless of race or where their parents came from, has long been upheld by the courts and the Constitution. But this is not the first time White supremacists have tried to restrict the rights of citizenship along racial lines. In a little-known episode from World War II, nativist agitators who had led earlier efforts to exclude Asian immigrant communities—and paved the way for Japanese American incarcerati...

25Oct

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

What Is the Real Cost of Mass Incarceration?

The documentary ‘Milwaukee 53206’ depicts the toll of the prison epidemic on families and entire communities. When documentary producers first approached Beverly Walker about featuring her family in a film, the Milwaukee mother and grandmother knew what that meant: cameras trailing them, her cherished privacy breached. But her husband, Baron Walker, by then having served nearly two decades of a 60-year sentence, saw an opportunity. “I thought it could be quite helpful, though at the moment I didn’t know to what extent,” says Baron, who had been sentenced in 1996 for being party to a pair of bank robberies. “In prison you have no voice…. This movie, I realized, could be that voice…” Baron Walker couldn’t have known then that it would eventually lead to his release. Milwaukee 532...