RISE Round-up: Race and Health Care Reform, the Digital Divide, a Children’s Protest, & more August 23, 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.

Sorry for the late round-up this week, folks! To make up for it, we have a couple of extra links this week.

Resentment over Race and Health Care Reform On Racialicious, an open thread on the link between race and the healthcare protests.  The CNN segment they embed is interesting, but make sure you check out the comments too.  Common threads? That the view that social welfare programs “take resources from supposedly hard-working white people and give them to supposedly  lazy black people” is still pervasive, but that class is just as important if not more, and that resentment exists between minority groups as well.

Jails are the New Asylums A fascinating — if disturbing — article in the New York Times this week about mentally ill offenders in juvenile prisons.  As states cut their community health budgets and resources for the mentally ill become more and more scarce, thousands of kids are ending up in prisons ill-equipped to deal with them — not to mention rehabilitate them.

Growing a New Leaf We posted a while ago about an article on the potential of urban agriculture for reintegrating the homeless — here’s another story about the therapeutic value of growing things.  Also from the New York Times, this a slightly less depressing article about a farm in upstate New York that’s become a haven for recovering addicts, who divide their time between tending the farm and participating in more traditional rehab programs and activities.

Class, Race, and Digital Activism Leigh Graham at the Poverty In America Blog writes about a lack of focus on poverty at the recent Netroots Nation conference. In order to close the digital divide, Graham calls on activists to “incorporate our low-income neighbors into our on-line activism, or move beyond noble but limiting motivations like ‘help’ and ‘charity’ to ‘empowerment’ and ‘equity’.”

Lawsuit to Challenge School Harassment Policies The NYCLU has filed a federal lawsuit against the Herkimer County School District for failing to protect a gay high school student, identified in court papers as “Jacob,”  from the harassment of his classmates, which ranged from verbal assault  to physical abuse and threats of violence, with one student threatening the 14 year-old with a knife.  Catch the NYCLU’s own Karyn Brownson at the RISE, talking about working against adultism in adult/youth collaborations, and becoming an ally to youth like Jacob who so badly need them.  

Stop Stealing Children’s Smiles This is what 11 year-old Heidi Rubi Portugal said she wanted from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, which has arrested 264 immigrant workers in Pheonix since 2008. Portugal was a part of a children’s protest march calling for the release of the workers and an end to the raids, which have separated these children from one or both parents.

Sponsors August 22, 2009

We’d like to thank the following local business who have generously offered to donate food to RISE:

• Au Bon Pain
• D’Agostino Supermarkets
• Morton Williams Supermarkets
• Murray’s Bagels
• Pizza Mercado
• Think Coffee

Thank you to all our sponsors for their support!

RISE Round-up: The Chino Riot (and the Pipeline that Got Us There), Popular Education, Obesity a Social Work Issue? August 12, 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.

Riot in a California Prison Over the weekend, 200 inmates were injured in an 11-hour riot in an overcrowded California prison.   The riot was tragically predictable — a  New York Times editorial reports that in 2007, a California prison expert warned that the cramming of 5900 men into a facility designed for 3000 was a “serious disturbance waiting to happen.”  The editorial calls on the state government to find ways to reduce prison populations, and quickly.  For one idea, check out Aliyah Vinikoor’s session on restorative justice as a model for thwarting the Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline at RISE.

Speaking of the Cradle-to-Prison Pipeline Michelle Chen of Race Wire (one of our favorite bloggers, by the way) writes about a recent Human Rights Watch study that found that students with disabilities are disproportionately likely to be subject to corporal punishment.  Of course, she continues, that’s not the full story — again and again, the data has shown that students of color (especially Black students) are disproportionately labeled as developmentally delayed or emotionally disturbed, and disproportionately punished with violence.

Popularizing Popular Education Melinda K. Lewis (another one of our favorite bloggers) asks why popular education isn’t more, well, popular with social workers.  It’s popular with us, Melinda! Check out the links to popular education resources on her post, and Kayhan Irani and Ellen Baxt’s Theater of the Oppressed workshop at RISE if this is something you’re interested in.

Is Obesity a Social Work Issue? The NASW says yes, posting a list of suggestions for social workers on how to be sensitive when dealing with overweight or obese clients, particularly children and adolescents.  We say yes too, but for different reasons.  As this article on disproportionate overweight and obesity among food stamp recipients shows, it’s also a social justice issue — marginalized communities often lack access to fresh, healthy food, and are therefore more likely to suffer from obesity and related health problems.  It’s also impossible to comprehensively advocate for a just health care system without considering obesity — the disease, along with related conditions, accounts for nearly 10% of health care spending in the US.

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.