Blog

Dear Teacher I remember you and I would imagine you remember me well. I am your student. We have shared space for many years yet have never come to know one another. Although I have known you over twenty years and spent more time with you than even my closest friends and family, our relationship has remained transactional, tense, contentious and at times violent. We have cursed, threatened and insulted each other, I have thrown chairs and spat at you and you have restrained me multiple...

A year after the Santa Fe City Council adopted in February 2017 a resolution strengthening its welcoming and non-discrimination policies toward immigrants, the federal government launched a series of audits demanding verification from local small businesses that their employees were eligible to work in the country. In response to this blitz, advocates and city officials held a press conference in early March calling out an attempt to disrupt business, wreak havoc, and create a culture of...

We are delighted that CAREgivers film is being used to promote public and professional awareness regarding the subject of vicarious trauma and staff wellness; AND we are now beginning to see early steps toward organizational change and the potential for new policies that can promote staff resilience. Several exciting things are happening: firstly, public television broadcasts and screenings of CAREgivers film around that country are opening up important conversations about staff exposures to...

We are the heroes of our journey Transformed, by the alchemy of faith, suffering, and resilience

This week, BCR networks from across the country will come together to share lessons learned in building resilience in the face of community adversity with one another and with the nation’s lawmakers. This meeting takes place in Washington, DC – a city with one of the highest opioid death rates in the country where, like in other American urban areas, it’s African American deaths due to opioids that are spiking most steeply. Violent crime is down but homicides increase.

Note: Since the March 11 airing of Oprah's segment on trauma on 60 Minutes, articles continue such as this April 12 one by Susan Heavey posted on the website of the Association of Health Care Journalists, Center for Excellence in Health Care Journalism. Have you seen others? Please post on ACEs Connection if you have. New efforts to address children’s health with an increased awareness of potential trauma in their lives gained fresh attention recently, boosted by a big media name – Oprah...

Real estate entrepreneur Marjy Stagmeier is the anti-slumlord, a conscientious capitalist, an investor who genuinely cares. Among the rolling hills and dense pine canopies east of Atlanta’s I-285 bypass, down the street from a halal meat market, two Buddhist temples and Good Times Country Cookin’, sits the Willow Branch Apartment Homes. The complex is tucked behind a flapping “Welcome” flag, which is emblematic of Clarkston, a small but famously global suburb that has been coined “Ellis...

The annual TED conference wraps up Saturday. It kicked off in Vancouver this week with a collection of short talks from this year's TED Fellows — a group of "rising stars" from across disciplines and around the world. They talks have become must-see sessions for those in the know, as they feature people doing cutting edge work that hasn't yet broken out. One theme that quickly emerged from this year's crop of Fellows: fighting systemic racism in the United States. Two TED Fellows, artist...

For generations of white American families, homeownership has been a fundamental means of accumulating wealth. Their homes have grown in value over time, providing security in retirement and serving as an asset against which they can borrow for education or other purposes. But African-Americans were essentially shut out of early federal programs that promoted homeownership and financial well-being — including the all important New Deal mortgage insurance system that generated the mid-20th...

The Trump Administration plans to cut thousands of Department of Justice positions, which may mean a 25 percent (or more) culling of the already tiny 60-person federal agency focused on juvenile justice, according to several sources at the department or with connections to the department. News of these cuts comes as advocates are working feverishly to hammer through a reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), a 44-year-old law that trades federal grants...

The Taking Freedom book series, a collaboration between The Social Justice Foundation , the Service Employees International Union's Racial Justice Center , and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) , is intended to address a wide range of issues, from housing rights, to debt burden, to police reform, and more. On August 1st, five black students in satiny green and red robes and mortar boards waited inside an elementary school classroom, listening for...

Earlier this week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to both enforce existing work requirements for participants in programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and to consider adding federal work requirements for participants in programs like Medicaid . The executive order argues that work requirements are necessary to encourage more recipients to become self-sufficient, concluding that...