Calvin Trillin, The Wire & the AFL-CIO
Two Southern California events and one national contest that you might want to know about.. 1. THE WIRE For those of you who are hard core fans of The Wire, the Liberty Hill Foundation is honoring...
View ArticleMONDAY: Social Justice Shorts
PRISON INMATES WORRIED ABOUT THE ECONOMIC CRISIS TOO—-AND FOR GOOD REASON A column in the Milwaukee Journal by Eugene Kane reports exactly what I’ve been hearing from the guys who call me collect from...
View ArticleMonday’s Social Justice Shorts
THE INCARCERATION GENERATION According to federal data, on any given day 1.5 million American children have a parent in prison, usually a father. Yet, until now there have been few studies on the...
View ArticleSocial Justice Shorts
ARNOLD STEPS IN TO SAVE STATE PARKS—BUT MAYBE NOT FOR THE REASON HE SAYS This past Friday, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger jumped into the budgetary breach with a plan to miraculously rescue 100 state...
View ArticleSex Offenders in Church & Other Social Justice Shorts
SHOULD SEX OFFENDERS BE BARRED FROM CHURCH? That’s the question that Time Magazine and a convicted sex offender name John Nichols and his attorney are asking. Here are clips from the Time story. North...
View ArticleSocial Justice Shorts: Thursday
(NOTE: The HP ad above was featured on the same page that contained Emily Bazelon’s Slate article below about the sexting and cyberbullying cases, and the juxtaposition struck me as…..um….amusing.)...
View ArticleOscar Romero is Finally—Officially—Remembered
Yesterday— 30 years ago—Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, was assassinated, sparking El Salvador’s 12-year civil war. For the first time in all those 30 years, El Salvador has commemorated...
View ArticleCalifornia Wellness Foundation Picks New CEO
On Wednesday, the California Wellness Foundation announced it had named Kaiser Permanente executive Dr. Diana Bontá as President and CEO. Why am I telling you this? Because the Wellness Foundation is...
View ArticleViolence Prevention: Barking With the Choir and Standing With the Despised
Nearly 20 years ago The California Wellness Foundation was one of the first organizations of consequence to promote the recognition that violence was not merely a crime problem. It was a serious public...
View ArticleLouisiana Prison Capital of the World, Brian Banks Exonerated, and more…
LOUISIANA LEADS THE WORLD IN INCARCERATION RATES Louisiana has more people behind bars per capita than anywhere else on earth, with a rate of one in 86 residents incarcerated. From the for-profit...
View ArticleSolitary Kids, Leimart Park Stop (Finally!), Gangs and Immigration, and Gay...
UPDATE ON REFORM BILL FOR KIDS IN SOLITARY A bill that would define and limit the use of solitary confinement for kids in juvenile facilities—SB 61, authored by Sen. Leland Yee—made it through the...
View ArticleVictims of Bullying More Likely to End Up In Criminal Justice System…Child...
VICTIMS—NOT JUST THE BULLIES—HAVE A HIGHER RATE OF CRIMINAL INVOLVEMENT LATER Victims of chronic childhood bullying (especially women) have significantly higher rates of substance abuse, arrest,...
View ArticleU.N. Investigator Wants to Examine California Prisons…Domestic Violence...
(VIDEO: Piper Kerman, whose memoir inspired the Netflix original series “Orange is the New Black,” discusses America’s prison system at TEDxMarionCorrectional.) U.N. TORTURE INVESTIGATOR CONCERNED...
View ArticleFerguson, Los Angeles & Lakewood….the Task of Finding Facts Beneath the...
Over the weekend, emotions continued to run high over the shooting of Michael Brown. Attorney General Eric Holder announced via a Sunday morning news release that, under the supervision of the DOJ, a...
View Article