Blog

(This is a written version of a presentation I gave at our January Meeting.) For the past year, Sonoma County ACEs Connection worked to make more people aware of Adverse Childhood Experiences. But especially after the big fires, it feels important to also talk about resilience. I want to start a discussion about simple resilience techniques that anyone could apply in their work, social and/or personal life. This is not new information, because the best resilience methods have been used by...

We at the Marshall Project won’t be covering the Super Bowl because, well, that’s not our mission. We don’t know each team’s third-down conversion rate, nor can we provide you with an edge that will help you win your Super Bowl pool. What we can do is look at the game through the binoculars of criminal justice. In a contentious season marked by player activism, speaking out – or taking a knee – against racism and police violence, we found several players who have been in the protest...

Indiana on Friday became the second state to win federal approval to add a work requirement for adult Medicaid recipients who gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act. A less debated provision in the state's new plan could lead to tens of thousands of people losing coverage if they fail to complete paperwork documenting their eligibility for the program. The federal approval was announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in Indianapolis. Medicaid participants who fail to...

Could state policies be improved by a greater understanding of the lingering effects of childhood trauma? That's the case that social workers and psychologists will be making to California legislators Tuesday as part a policymaker education day. The California Campaign to Combat Childhood Adversity wants lawmakers to learn about the effects of toxic stress resulting from childhood trauma, which they say can influence everything from health care to the economy . "California's children are in...

In the first of my two part review of this best-selling UK book I praise Darren McGarvey's independence of mind. I admire the way he uses his first hand experience of poverty and abuse to question the left's exclusive interest in structural economic factors. I think McGarvey is right to argue that economic change is important but that it is unlikely to happen soon. Meanwhile we must acknowledge that what people do as individuals has a major impact on their lives and their families.

At Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, a first-floor chapel with a raised ceiling, generous windows and a carpeted central area is the site for twice-weekly guided meditation open to staff, patients and family members. In Kansas City’s Crossroads Art District, the building that houses Truman Medical Centers (TMC) Behavioral Health includes conference rooms called “Jazz” and “Vine,” located so that people can reach them without passing through clinical space, interrupting patients or...

I have written a two part review of a book which is currently a well-deserved publishing sensation in the UK - Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey. He grew up in a poor household with an abusive mother in a deprived community in Glasgow. He is now a rapper and political commentator. In the first part of my review I look at how he argues passionately for structural economic changes but also promotes the idea of personal responsibility. In t he second part I look at ACEs, toxic stress and ...

In the wake of President Trump’s call for increased attention to workforce development during the State of the Union address, the Urban Alliance released a white paper with recommendations focused on job training and career planning for youth and young adults. The white paper, “ Job Training Starts Now: Why High School Students Need Youth Employment Opportunities ,” offers eight recommendations for addressing the lack of employment training, education and opportunities available to young...

“We are wondering: What’s the post-Harvey era going to look like?” said the Washington Post journalist Sarah Ellison on a panel at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which ended earlier this week. The festival itself, for one, looked different. In the 2017 edition, amid throngs of feminists clad in pink pussy hats, Harvey Weinstein proudly participated in the inaugural Women’s March in Park City. This year, following a wave of sexual-assault allegations by women in the industry, the former...

In these polarized times, liberals and conservatives tend to talk past each other . Leftists tend to envision a brighter future, while right-wingers lovingly look to a more-perfect past. "Forward," urged Barack Obama . "Make America Great Again," replied Donald Trump . Here's a thought: What if we could decouple those deep-seated propensities from actual policy positions? Specifically, what if liberals advocated for a progressive platform by evoking conservatives' nostalgia for a...

There’s a device called the Mosquito that emits an annoying sound at a very high frequency—so high that only young people can hear it. It’s marketed by its manufacturers as a means of discouraging kids from loitering in streets and other public spaces. (Shopkeepers have blasted Barry Manilow , to similar effect.) The UK’s first children’s commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, called it “an ultrasonic weapon designed to stop kids gathering,” and cited its use as proof that the nation’s attitude...

In November 1865—barely six months after Appomattox, and three weeks before the official ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment—the New York Tribune’s front page bore a provocative headline: “South Carolina Re-establishing Slavery.” The story laid out the new system being put into place in most of the former Confederacy—“Black Codes,” criminal laws targeting black citizens, coupling a long list of minor offenses with a schedule of prohibitive fines. If a black defendant could not pay the...