Category: Social Justice
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Diversity & the Future of Boston
She’s spent her career helping organize voters in poor urban neighborhoods, working to reduce youth incarceration, and empowering underserved communities. Now, she’s aiming to make Boston a more fun, business friendly city. Malia Lazu, Director of the newly formed Future Boston Alliance, aims to improve Boston’s image by luring and keeping creative industries in the…
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Cornel West: A Voice in the Wilderness
“I come to you tonight with a heavy heart,” Cornel West began. “I just buried my grandmother,” he continued at the crowd gathered at West Park Presbyterian Church in the New York, which caused a collective “ahhh.” Dr. West cancelled a number of speaking engagements in early March, pausing his whirlwind schedule to deliver the…
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Race & Liberalism
“Race” as an idea barely existed before the Enlightenment and the onset of modernity in the West. Today, many dismiss the race-concept as an illusion, arguing that “there is no such thing as race;” or in more universalist terms, “there is only one race: the human race.” Yet race continues to demarcate and stratify all…
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Racism: A Personal Meditation
Racism has been a constant companion all of my life. I, first, met him in the first grade in Richmond, Kentucky. During this tender time, I had developed a crush—or whatever 6 and 7 year olds call it—on a girl in my class who happened white. Somehow, my teacher, who was white as well, caught…
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The Welfare Vote
In early August, I received a voter registration letter and application from the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA). I remarked that DTA was doing their job — perhaps because of a voting rights lawsuit brought against the agency in December of 2011. The lawsuit was brought by NY-based independent think-tank, Demos, and New England United…
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Looking for a Good Job? Don’t Get Your Hopes Up
Michelle Chen In These Times If you think your job stinks, you’re not alone. And if you’re still looking for a decent job, don’t expect to find one anytime soon, or ever. A new analysis of job quality, assessing various measures of benefits and wages, confirms what many of us already suspected: Good jobs are…
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Where Are the Jobs?
Dashka Slater Economic Hardship Reporting Project As we stood in line at a Burger King in Sacramento, Calif., Joe Sisco gave me a nudge. “Look at the age of the people who are here right now,” he said and cocked his chin toward the three women behind the counter, each several decades past the age…
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Empty Condos Hold Opportunity in U.S. Housing Crunch
Matthew Cardinale IPS Large cities like New York and Chicago, which have been grappling with a lack of affordable apartments combined with an abundance of vacant, unaffordable condos, are now trying to turn some of those empty condo units into rentals, with varying levels of affordability. Recent changes in the U.S. economy and the housing…
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Mass. Unemployment Up 6.1%
By Matt Murphy STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, AUG. 16, 2012….Massachusetts employers added 1,600 jobs in July, but the state’s unemployment rate ticked up slightly for the first time in three years to 6.1 percent, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report released by the Patrick administration Thursday morning. A previously reported 2,600…
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Just Don’t Go
James Shearer Spare Change News Not that anybody asked me … but all this noise about the Chick-Fil-A controversy is, in a word, just noise. The owner of this fast food chain, one Mr. Dan Cathy, made some remarks several weeks ago that his company is all about “family values” and that he himself is…