RISE Round-up: NASW on Social Justice, Health Care, Education Gaps, the Bed-Stuy Farm August 5, 2009

Every week, we post a round-up of RISE-relevant articles from around the internet.  Have something to add? Leave a comment. For a more up to the minute look at what we’re reading, follow us on Twitter.

What Sets Us Apart What sets social work apart from other professions? According to Elizabeth J. Clark, the Executive Director of the NASW, it’s “our belief in social justice.”  In a recent speech, she calls on social workers to ensure that the “great traditions of social work — those of social justice, advocacy, and hope” remain our guiding principles and priorities.  

Social Workers Needed for Health Care Reform We’re loving the NASW this week, apparently.  On their advocacy blog, they call on social workers to check off the last item on Fraces Perkins’ list, the one she didn’t quite get to — health care reform.  Check out their blog for updates on their legislative efforts, and use this tool from the Kaiser Family Foundation to familiarize yourself with the different plans up in the air.

The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations… Continued On RaceWire, an article about using  structure versus culture to understand the achievement gap between poor Black students and their middle and upper-class white counterparts, and how it’s affecting the Obama administration’s policy.  Some say that the gap is a cultural problem, and if we could just get Black kids to “recognize the value of an education,” we’d solve it.  Others — “structuralists”  as the article calls them — “see educational gaps as a byproduct of institutionalized inequity, rather than just poor decision-making.”

 Save the Bed-Stuy Farm Eight years ago, the Reverends Robert and DeVanie Jackson were running an emergency food program in Bed-Stuy, a neighborhood where healthy food was extremely hard to come by.  Realizing that their community would be healthier if fresh produce was more readily available, they cleaned up an abandoned lot behind their building, got Green Thumb status for it, and created a farm that now feeds 3000 people each month.  Now that it’s not an vacant dumping ground anymore, developers want it.  Sign their petition to let elected officials know that this farm is important and shouldn’t be destroyed for gentrification.