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Wen is an emergency physician and the health commissioner of Baltimore City. Two months ago, my husband and I welcomed our baby son, Eli, into the world. Hearing his first cry and getting to hold him were the happiest moments of our lives. When he was placed on my chest and I could see and touch him, I felt like I knew him already. The doctors told us he was healthy and well. I couldn't wait to start our lives together as a family. The night we arrived home, Eli wouldn't stop crying. Crying...

Last month, after six months of construction, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority reopened the first of three rehabbed Brooklyn stations. It had new USB charging stations, large-screen digital maps, countdown clocks, and even a new mosaic. But what really caught straphangers’ attention was the leaning bar. A slanted wooden slab set against the wall at about the height of a person’s rear end, the bar was meant to give passengers a way to take some weight off their feet as they...

ACEs, Adversity's Impact A child’s perspective of a traumatic experience [2 min - Sesame Street in communities] Child abuse and violence survivors are being misdiagnosed and re-traumatized by the NHS Traumatic events take toll on the heart Hispanic children and exposure to adverse experiences Childhood poverty, poor support may drive up pregnant woman's biological age Bullying Beyond bullying: Study shows damaging affects of multiple forms of victimization on school climate Ignore, respond,...

(Heather) McGhee is the president of Demos , a public policy organization that advocates for social change. As a black public figure, she's no stranger to receiving retorts from racially prejudiced individuals. However, the experience she had with the caller on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" was altogether different. After the caller announced himself as someone who is prejudiced, McGhee braced herself for a rant but was surprised to hear a simple ask instead. "What can I do to change?" asked...

Across the parking lot from a YMCA in Des Moines, about a dozen men sit on black plastic chairs in the basement of a former Catholic high school. This is a court-ordered class for domestic abusers, part of a new statewide curriculum for batterer intervention in Iowa. According to police reports, one man here kicked his wife several times in the stomach. Another threw a lamp at his girlfriend's head. Lucas Sampson - a man with the imposing appearance of a viking but the gentle demeanor of...

In 1928, the leaders of 15 countries committed to renouncing war as a tool for resolving international disputes. They enshrined this commitment in the Kellogg-Briand Pact (sometimes referred to as the Paris Peace Pact) and were later joined by 47 other countries. But war, of course, continued, and the pact is generally remembered as a well-meaning but ineffectual fantasy—when it is remembered at all. Now, Yale law professors Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, the authors of The...

It’s a problem that isn’t going away: the so-called “affordable” housing we’re building in many cities—by which we mean publicly subsidized housing that’s dedicated to low- and moderate-income households—is so expensive to build that we’ll never be able to build enough of it to make a dent in the housing affordability problem. The latest case in point is a new affordable housing development called Estrella Vista in Emeryville, California, (abutting Oakland and just across the bay from San...

The last time you handled a challenge well, were you called a credit to your race? When you go shopping, do store clerks watch you closely or follow you? Do you have trouble finding a hair salon nearby that knows how to style your hair? When you buy greeting cards and magazines, is it difficult to find ones with people the same race as you? If you answered no to these questions, you’re almost certainly white. There’s also a good chance you’ve never looked at your whiteness this way.

On Wednesday, Senators Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) issued a report scrutinizing the management of private foster care providers, and skewering one especially notorious foster care agency. Stirred by news stories chronicling dozens of child deaths because of management of foster care services by The MENTOR Network , a national for-profit provider, Hatch and Wyden directed the Senate Finance Committee to study the matter. The ensuing report , entitled “An Examination of Foster...

This article was originally published by Everyday Feminism . It has been edited for YES! Magazine. No matter how long you’ve been politically conscious, you’ve probably figured out by now that activists are by no means perfect. Even while we’re trying to end oppression, we can sometimes make some harmful mistakes ourselves. So how do you address oppressive mistakes in your community? Say you’re at a social justice event that’s promising in some ways but problematic in others. What do you do?

On a recent morning in Atlanta, Georgia, Marian Davis and four volunteers set up folding chairs along a busy stretch of the Atlanta Beltline where people come to exercise, sightsee, and shop. Next to them, a sign advertised their services: “Free Listening.” Davis and her “listening team” are volunteers with a nonprofit called Sidewalk Talk , a community project that aims to dismantle loneliness, a growing public health crisis in American cities. By gathering on the street, they aim to use...

The judges’ citation for the winner of the National Book Award for non-fiction, Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning , is both unstinting in its praise and a challenge to readers: Stamped from the Beginning turns our ideas of the term ‘racism’ upside-down. Ibram X. Kendi writes as a thoughtful cultural historian, aware that he is challenging deeply held, often progressive assumptions. Using a masterful voyage through the history of US political rhetoric, beginning with Cotton Mather...