April 2018

For the past 18 months, many political scientists have been seized by one question: Less-educated whites were President Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters. But why, exactly? Was their vote some sort of cri de coeur about a changing economy that had left them behind ? Or was the motivating sentiment something more complex and, frankly, something harder for policy makers to address? After analyzing in-depth survey data from 2012 and 2016, the University of Pennsylvania political scientist...

Today, about 40,000 mobile home parks exist across the United States. They were critical to filling housing shortages during World War II and even more so after the end of the war. They have the potential to create opportunities for low-income housing, yet many mobile home parks are in danger of erasure from our cultural landscape. Eduard Krakhmalnikov, a preservationist and landscape architect, has a passion for these often-overlooked places. His research on mobile home parks was featured...

For more information, or to register for this webinar, click here . Overview This second series of on-line continuing education presentations will inform participants of what we know about withdrawing from psychiatric medications. This set of 8 monthly webinars will focus on the views of internationally recognized psychiatrists and begin on June 19 with a town hall session hosted by Robert Whitaker with 3 participants. One will be a person with lived experience in withdrawing, the second and...

The Attachment & Trauma Network, Inc. (ATN) is seeking workshop proposals from the experts in the field of creating trauma-sensitive schools. Our 2nd Annual Conference for Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools will be Feb 17-19, 2019 and will include 75 workshops -- with room for a limited number of "deep dive" 3-hour sessions. We're expecting 800 or more education professionals from across the US, Canada and other countries. Our 2018 conference had educators from 38 states and 4 countries.

For two hours, the guest speaker talked about various traumas children may experience and how they can impact a person for the rest of his or her life. But Allison Sampson–Jackson also shared a message of hope. She stressed that those who have been abused or neglected—or have seen loved ones put in jail or struggle with substance abuse and mental health issues—can develop skills to retrain the way the brain responds. Those traumatized don’t have to face higher incidences of suicide or poor...

Ohio, a state where 4,329 people died of drug overdoses in 2016 , a death rate second only to neighboring West Virginia, is taking the fight against the opioid epidemic into the classroom with a new style of drug-abuse-prevention education. Ohio’s plan, controversial in a state that prizes local control over schools, features lessons that begin in kindergarten. Instead of relying on scare tactics about drug use or campaigns that recite facts about drugs’ toll on the body, teachers are...

As the judge climbed the watchtower stairs in Pelican Bay prison, he heard muffled gunshots below. When he reached the top, he looked into the prison yard and saw bodies lying in the dirt. One was his law clerk, spreadeagled on the ground in his suit, alongside dozens of inmates. Guards stood over them, guns aimed. “My clerk was thinking he’s gonna die and this is his last day on earth,” Judge Thelton Henderson recalled. What appeared to be the taming of a riot was actually an audacious...

For almost 40 years, the rate at which Americans have started new businesses has been in a steady decline. This is bad news, since new firms drive the high-wage jobs and market competition that our economy desperately needs. Racial and socioeconomic disparities in business ownership further stifle entrepreneurship and threaten the long-term economic health of our cities and our economy. But a silver lining may have come in one of the most unexpected of places: the Trump administration’s tax...

The rate of maternal mortality in the United States, already higher than in other wealthy countries, has risen by more than half since 1990. The grim increase is largely because of alarmingly high rates among black women, who nationally are three times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth as white women. In New York City, the numbers are even more staggering. Black women here are 12 times as likely to die from childbirth-related causes as white women. They experience severe,...

April 5th began in the usual way at the Southeastern Provision meat-processing plant, in Bean Station, Tennessee—some workers were breaking down carcasses on the production line, while others cleaned the floors—until, around 9 a.m., a helicopter began circling above the plant. Moments later, a fleet of cars pulled up outside. Agents from the I.R.S., Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice), and the Tennessee Highway Patrol emerged, and proceeded to arrest ninety-seven people, most of them...

In 2016, a greater percentage of babies were born at low birthweight in Jackson County, Colorado, than anywhere else in the country. That might not seem like such a big deal these days, with modern technology powerful enough to nurse babies who are born months premature back to health. But according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s annual County Health Rankings Report, we should think twice before dismissing the importance of underweight babies. Indeed, the 2018 Key Findings Report...

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O'Malley has worked in the DA's office for over thirty years. She is nationally known for her revolutionary work on behalf of Domestic Violence survivors, and for sexually exploited people, especially children. In this conversation, Nancy speaks candidly about the motivations for her work, how she practices self care and her commitment to learning from victims and survivors.