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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...

This article was published by TalkPoverty.org . Officially, the United States ended debtors' prisons in 1833. Unofficially, as we saw in the Justice Department's report on racially biased policing in Ferguson, there is a system of fines and fees for minor crimes that often result in jail time for the poor, mostly black citizens who cannot afford to pay them. To provide more context on the issue, I talked with Peter Edelman, Georgetown University law professor and former staffer for Robert F.

The latest experiment in a universal basic income will be coming to Stockton, California, in the next year. With $1 million in funding from the tech industry–affiliated Economic-Security Project, the Stockton Economic-Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) will be the country’s first municipal pilot program. As currently envisioned, some number of people in Stockton will receive $500 per month. That’s not enough to cover all their expenses, but it could help people with rising housing costs,...

In the District, 47 percent of children and teens have experienced a traumatic event, such as the death or incarceration of a parent, witnessing or being a victim of violence, or living with someone who has been suicidal or who has a drug or alcohol problem, according to new federal data . In Maryland and in Virginia, the rate was 41 percent. The findings come from state-by-state survey data released Thursday from the 2016 National Survey of Children’s Health, which aims to take a first-ever...

Long-term mental health effects of extreme weather are a hidden public health epidemic, one that is expected to strain the U.S. health care system as the intensity and frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires, earthquakes and other natural disasters increase in coming decades because of global warming and other planetary shifts. http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/10/12/katrina-brain-the-invisible-long-term-toll-of-megastorms

An estimated one out of three California adults has an arrest or conviction record, according to the nonprofit National Employment Law Project. If employers weed out applicants who check "yes" for the Have you ever been convicted of a crime? question on a job application, they could be preventing millions of Golden State residents from getting a paycheck. These applicants also tend to be people of color, since African-Americans and Latinos are arrested at much higher rates , often for crimes...

In the days after his son was born, Rob Sandler found the thrill of becoming a new father replaced with dark feelings of dread and hopelessness. Those feelings, coupled with sleep deprivation and stress, culminated in a panic attack during his son’s bris. As a group of old friends was saying goodbye after the ceremony, “I had this feeling that they were leaving and I was stuck in this situation that would never get any better,” said Mr. Sandler, a marketing executive in Dallas. “I just felt...

When I was a kid, I'd always sink into myself just a bit whenever the issue of racism would come up among my white peers. Of course, I was used to talking about racism in other contexts, specifically with my family; growing up as a black kid in South Carolina, I would've found totally sidestepping the issue largely impossible. For instance, I remember talking with my family about racism when, in 2000, South Carolina lawmakers removed the Confederate flag from the state's capitol dome. I...

The three-year project includes creating and piloting a process for integrating trauma-informed approaches into primary care. The National Council for Behavioral Health is leading the three-year initiative, Trauma-Informed Primary Care: Fostering Resilience and Recovery , to educate health care providers on the importance of trauma-informed approaches in the primary care setting. In July 2017, the National Council convened a multidisciplinary group of 11 health care stakeholders, who serve...