Steven Kim begins his presentation with a question: What words do you associate with gangs? Even amongst this group of youth counselors and educators at the Koreatown Youth and Community Center during a gathering last May, the responses veer...
When President Obama spoke to the Democratic National Convention in Colorado seven years ago, he tried to call a truce in one of the nation's long-running social debates. "We may not agree on abortion. But surely we can agree on reducing the...
You may have noticed the recent media attention being paid to the Compton Unified School District lawsuit ( NPR and LA Times ). The lawsuit has been filed on behalf of eight Compton students and alleges that the school...
By the time DeAngelo Cortijo was 14, he had been in more than a dozen foster homes. He had run away and lived on the streets for months, and he had been diagnosed with bipolar and anxiety disorders, attachment disorder, intermittent explosive...
What follows is the text of a “sermon” that I gave as a “congregational reflection” to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun...
Shuah Jones, 15, stuffed clothes under her bed blankets in the shape of a body, grabbed her diary and Bible, and crept downstairs. Wearing a long blue linen skirt and clunky buckled sandals, she opened the door, slipped outside, and paused to...
“There is no science without fancy, and no art without facts,” Vladimir Nabokov famously proclaimed . Today, hardly anyone embodies this sentiment more fully than Brené Brown , who came of age as a social...
Much of the conversation around gentrification essentially blames the people moving into urban neighborhoods. This feeling—that anyone who might be described as a gentrifier is doing something wrong—has even spilled into...
California authorities have agreed to sharply limit the number of inmates held in isolation for long periods of time, a major development in the national debate about solitary confinement. The agreement resolves a class-action lawsuit filed by...
On one of the last days of school at Wyoming Indian Elementary School in the spring, Cheryl Williams is playing a game of “8-plus” with Atsa, a first grader with a round, reflective face under a fuzzy thatch of black hair. These...
A documentary filmed at Lincoln High School is receiving national attention, even though “Paper Tigers” has yet to be officially released. “Word spread quickly nationwide through the trauma informed community and restorative...
He looks as though he is asleep — perhaps taking a nap before running off to play with his friends. But he’s not asleep. He’s dead. He died because of a war the world can’t or won’t solve and immigration policies...
I could show you what it looked like before the fire." Shane Horton pulls out his tablet in the smoke-filled parking lot of Hank's supermarket, where two Humvees full of tired-looking National Guardsmen are keeping watch for looters. It's a...
Thousands of California inmates who have spent years in solitary confinement will move back into the general prison population as part of a lawsuit settlement with the state. The settlement, announced Tuesday, ends the class-action suit...