Chasing Social Justice

While deeply meaningful and utterly essential, social justice work can be confounding. Why do we take one step forward and then two steps back - on income inequality, the environment, immigration, gun control? What can we do to bridge the divides in our increasingly polarized country, beginning with the very language we use? How can nonprofits and public agencies best serve constituents in need, balancing mission with necessities such as marketing (too often dismissed as a luxury)? What lessons from past social justice efforts directly benefit our current work? How do those in justice professions make a sustainable difference, and how do we keep on keeping on? Chasing Social Justice is written in an unusually poignant and accessible way, combining lived experience with political analysis, illuminating lessons learned over the past three decades across social justice movements, initiatives, and organizations. This riveting new book is ideal for: Nonprofit leaders Professors teaching graduate and undergraduate students in areas such as Public Health, Social Work, Management, Public Policy, Education, Sociology, and Political Science New and long-time activists

On March 18, 1963, in one of its most significant legal decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that all defendants facing significant jail time have the constitutional right to a free attorney if they cannot afford their own. Fifty years later, 80 percent of criminal defendants are served by public defenders. In a book that combines the sweep of history with the intimate details of individual lives and legal cases, veteran reporter Karen Houppert movingly chronicles the stories of people in all parts of the country who have relied on Gideon’s promise. There is the harrowing saga of a young man who is charged with involuntary vehicular homicide in Washington State, where overextended public defenders juggle impossible caseloads, forcing his defender to go to court to protect her own right to provide an adequate defense. In Florida, Houppert describes a public defender’s office, loaded with upward of seven hundred cases per attorney, and discovers the degree to which Clarence Earl Gideon’s promise is still unrealized. In New Orleans, she follows the case of a man imprisoned for twenty-seven years for a crime he didn’t commit, finding a public defense system already near collapse before Katrina and chronicling the harrowing months after the storm, during which overworked volunteers and students struggled to get the system working again. In Georgia, Houppert finds a mentally disabled man who is to be executed for murder, despite the best efforts of a dedicated but severely overworked and underfunded capital defender. Half a century after Anthony Lewis’s award-winning Gideon’s Trumpet brought us the story of the court case that changed the American justice system, Chasing Gideon is a crucial book that provides essential reckoning of our attempts to implement this fundamental constitutional right.

These essays include writings from Cornel West, Michael Omi, Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua and Michelle Fine. The essays address the multiplicity and scope of oppressions ranging from ableism to racism and other less-well known social aberrations.

The notion of social justice permeates much of current Western political and cultural discourse with a newfound urgency. What it means to be socially just is a question Morris et al investigate and interrogate, looking at psychology’s contributions to the subject and considering the practicality of social justice in light of modern subjectivity. The book begins by examining the lack of equity and inclusivity in education and the ways in which psychology has been complicit in the margninalization of oppressed groups. Drawing upon Lacanian theory, it goes on to discuss how diversity initiatives take on an obsessive-neurotic characteristic that can stifle those it claims to understand and promote .The authors investigate the anxiety around the performance of being socially just or "woke" and suggest how psychology can contribute to the development of socially just humans, more attuned to the needs of others, through the appreciation of interconnectivity and compassion. An imperative text for scholars and students of philosophical and theoretical psychology, critical psychology, social psychology, psychoanalysis, social work, and education.

There is a healthy development in the human service professions these days. At community clinics, private practices, and universities around the country mental health professionals and service providers are working with increased awareness of the toxic effects of social inequities in the lives of people they aim to help. Quietly, by acting out thei

When best friends Tai and Mila are reunited after a summer apart, their friendship threatens to combust from the pressure of secrets, middle school, and the looming dance auditions for a new talented-and-gifted program. Fans of Renée Watson’s Piecing Me Together will love this memorable story about a complex friendship between two very different African American girls—and the importance of speaking up. Jamila Phillips and Tai Johnson have been inseparable since they were toddlers, having grown up across the street from each other in Pirates Cove, a low-income housing project. As summer comes to an end, Tai can’t wait for Mila to return from spending a month with her aunt in the suburbs. But both girls are grappling with secrets, and when Mila returns she’s more focused on her upcoming dance auditions than hanging out with Tai. Paula Chase explores complex issues that affect many young teens, and So Done offers a powerful message about speaking up. Full of ballet, basketball, family, and daily life in Pirates Cove, this memorable novel is for fans of Ali Benjamin’s The Thing About Jellyfish and Jason Reynolds’s Ghost. "Chase vividly conjures the triumphs, tensions, and worries percolating in the girls’ low-income neighborhood." (Publishers Weekly, "An Anti-Racist Children's and YA Reading List")

The United States has been epitomized as a land of opportunity, where hard work and skill can bring personal success and economic well-being. The American Dream has captured the imagination of people from all walks of life, and to many, it represents the heart and soul of the country. But there is another, darker side to the bargain that America strikes with its people -- it is the price we pay for our individual pursuit of the American Dream. That price can be found in the economic hardship present in the lives of millions of Americans. In Chasing the American Dream, leading social scientists Mark Robert Rank, Thomas A. Hirschl, and Kirk A. Foster provide a new and innovative look into a curious dynamic -- the tension between the promise of economic opportunities and rewards and the amount of turmoil that Americans encounter in their quest for those rewards. The authors explore questions such as: -What percentage of Americans achieve affluence, and how much income mobility do we actually have? -Are most Americans able to own a home, and at what age? -How is it that nearly 80 percent of us will experience significant economic insecurity at some point between ages 25 and 60? -How can access to the American Dream be increased? Combining personal interviews with dozens of Americans and a longitudinal study covering 40 years of income data, the authors tell the story of the American Dream and reveal a number of surprises. The risk of economic vulnerability has increased substantially over the past four decades, and the American Dream is becoming harder to reach and harder to keep. Yet for most Americans, the Dream lies not in wealth, but in economic security, pursuing one's passions, and looking toward the future. Chasing the American Dream provides us with a new understanding into the dynamics that shape our fortunes and a deeper insight into the importance of the American Dream for the future of the country.

For nearly a decade, Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice has been the definitive sourcebook of theoretical foundations and curricular frameworks for social justice teaching practice. This thoroughly revised second edition continues to provide teachers and facilitators with an accessible pedagogical approach to issues of oppression in classrooms. Building on the groundswell of interest in social justice education, the second edition offers coverage of current issues and controversies while preserving the hands-on format and inclusive content of the original. Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice presents a well-constructed foundation for engaging the complex and often daunting problems of discrimination and inequality in American society. This book includes a CD-ROM with extensive appendices for participant handouts and facilitator preparation.

It would be easy to despair at the state of the world today. But we must not. Indeed, we cannot. In this book Neil Findlay brings together first-hand testimony from people who have played crucial roles in social justice campaigns. Their stories are personal, political and unforgettable. They say a lot about dignity, integrity, courage and humanity. We can apply what we learn from them to build a sustainable and fair society for generations to come. Activists, social justice campaigners, trade unionists and environmentalists will find this collection inspirational, emotional and educational. And they will understand why it is titled If You Don't Run, They Can't Chase You. With contributions from 'Andrea', Margaret Aspinall, Alex Bennett, Brian Filling, Maria Fyfe, Elaine Holmes, Mark Lyon, Alistair Mackie, Olive McIlroy, Tony Nelson, Paul Quigley, Terry Renshaw, Dennis Skinner, Dave Smith, Jim Swan, Louise Taggart and Yvette Williams. We must examine the campaigns and struggles people have gone through, listen to their stories, study their actions and in turn look at the world now, and apply what we have learnt.

Kerry Cook is an innocent man who wrongly served two decades in Texas's notorious death house for the brutal 1977 rape and murder of 21-year-old Linda Jo Edwards. His struggle for freedom is said to be one of the worst cases of police and prosecutorial misconduct in American history. In the summer of 1977, Cook was staying in Tyler, TX. He met an attractive young woman named Linda Edwards and was invited back to her apartment for a drink and left his fingerprints on the sliding glass door. Four days later, Ms. Edwards was found brutally murdered. When the police dusted for prints, they found Cook's and immediately arrested him. Edward Jackson testified that Cook confessed to the murder during a jailhouse conversation. Jackson was set free, only to kill again several years later. Cook, on the other hand, was convicted and sentenced to death. He was thrown into a world for which no one could be prepared, and he survived beatings, sexual abuse, and depression; all the while, he fought against a justice system that was determined to keep him quiet and loath to admit a mistake. Through the work of a crusading group of lawyers who forced a series of retrials, his case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered the case be reconsidered. It wasn't until the spring of 1999 that Cook was finally able to put the nightmare behind him: long-suppressed DNA evidence had linked James Mayfield, Linda Edwards's ex-lover, to the crime.