social services

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  4/28/2023
  

  From Mayor to Homeless: Craig Coyner's Life Tracked the Changes in Bend, Oregon and the West

  Deindustrialization, addiction and high housing costs, plus frayed social services and mental health care, have fed a housing crisis on the west coast. One town's mayor experienced this firsthand. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  6/15/2022
  

  Why Does US Policy Make Things Hard on Parents?

  For decades, the political idea that social services aimed at supporting parents and children constitute a governmental intrusion on the family has been used to thwart the kinds of supports that parents and children in the rest of the industrial world enjoy. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  4/21/2022
  

  Union Organizing in the Long Shadow of the Gilded Age

  by Daisy Pitkin

  On listening to Andrew Carnegie's "The Gospel of Wealth" in Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library as librarians perform the kind of social services Carnegie deplored (and try to organize a union, which he deplored more). 

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  4/5/2022
  

  I've Studied Child Protective Services for Decades – It Needs to be Abolished Now

  by Dorothy E. Roberts

  Commonly associated with the benevolent social reform movements of the late 19th century, child protective services are also rooted in the institutions that undermined Black parental rights under slavery and Jim Crow. 

• 
• SOURCE: Dissent
  4/1/2022
  

  Dorothy Roberts on the Punitive Logic of the Child Welfare System

  Legal scholar Dorothy Roberts's new book argues that the child welfare system has historical roots in campaigns of oppression against Black and Native Americans; combined with the financial incentives of privatized social services, the system encourages abuse and exploitation today.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/8/2021
  

  Joe Manchin's Denigration of "Entitlements" is Nothing New

  Historian Larry Glickman's work shows that Joe Manchin's fear of "entitlements" is part of a longstanding idea that American capitalism can't work without the threat of poverty and immiseration.

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  9/29/2021
  

  Traumatic Monologues: The Therapeutic Turn in Indigenous Politics

  by Melanie K. Yazzie

  American and Canadian politicians are happy to promote initiatives based in psychological understandings that "trauma" is the principal source of Native disadvantage, while ignoring the ongoing colonial exploitation of indigenous lands by the oil and gas industries.

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/27/2021
  

  The U.S. has Never Tried a Comprehensive Approach to Mental Health Care

  by Hannah Zeavin

  "The United States has never redressed a massive shortage of mental health-care providers, and no unified national infrastructure is in place to assist the most vulnerable would-be patients with navigating the difficult process of finding competent care and paying for it."

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  4/30/2021
  

  Child Welfare Systems Have Long Harmed Black Children Like Ma’Khia Bryant

  by Crystal Webster

  Although the death of Ma’Khia Bryant has been discussed as yet another example of police violence against Black Americans, it's important to recognize that she was also a victim of a child and family services bureaucracy that has been shaped by racism and left Black children to fend for themselves.

• 
• SOURCE: Made By History at The Washington Post
  9/4/2020
  

  A Forgotten Campaign To Support ‘Displaced Homemakers’ May Help Women Today

  by Suzanne Kahn

  A 1970s initiative by feminist Tish Sommers for legislation to help women who had worked at home as caregivers to more easily reenter the paid workforce. Her preferred term "displaced homemaker" emphasized the economic importance of domestic care work most often performed by women and women's vulnerability to economic disruption and provides a useful way to think about solutions to the problems caused by COVID today.

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  8/4/2020
  

  Why Are Child Care Programs Open When Schools Are Not?

  Drs. Robert Pianta and Myra Jones-Taylor expressed hope that parents’ pandemic experiences of working while juggling care and education will lead to a newfound appreciation for both elements, and the modern economy’s reliance on them.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  8/3/2020
  

  Stop Worrying about Protecting ‘Taxpayers.’ That Isn’t the Government’s Job.

  by Lawrence B. Glickman

  "Taxpayerism has perverted our political culture by denying the existence of a common good — or, perhaps, more accurately, by falsely defining that good, and even freedom itself, as low taxes for the rich and for corporations."

• 
• SOURCE: Retro Report
  8/3/2020
  

  Working Sick During Covid: What We Learned from Swine Flu (video)

  As Covid-19 spreads, keeping workers from becoming sick on the job is taking on renewed importance. Research shows that robust sick leave policies can play an important role in stemming a pandemic.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  7/17/2020
  

  History Shows That We Can Solve The Child-Care Crisis — If We Want To

  by Lisa Levenstein

  Today, in nearly two-thirds of households with children, the parents are employed. In 3 out of 5 states, the cost of day care for one infant is more than tuition and fees at four-year public universities.

• 
• 5/10/2020
  

  What to do about COVID? Start by Listening to People

  by Rachel F. Seidman

  An oral historian of medical care in the South observes that the current crisis shows weaknesses in the fabric of society that would have long been obvious to policymakers if they were more inclined to listen to ordinary people. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  5/6/2020
  

  Out with the Old: Coronavirus Highlights Why We Need New Names for Aging

  by Caroline Cicero and Paul Nash

  Although largely unnoticed by mainstream media, something significant has happened with the rise of COVID-19: the marginalization of older Americans.

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  3/15/2020
  

  Prayer Will Not Stop the Coronavirus

  by The Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

  America is not in trouble because people are not praying; we face an exacerbated public health crisis because this administration has spent more time preying on the most vulnerable than lifting all people.