New Clear Vision

Food Justice, Out of the Mouths of Babes

by Randall Amster

“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies, that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.” — Psalm 8:2

My oldest son recently “graduated” from preschool. In the endearing ceremony, each of the children was asked what they want to be when they grow up. His precocious, divergent, and unanticipated response was, “I want to be a farmer like my dad.” And I couldn’t have been more proud.

To be sure, I’m hardly a “farmer” in any real sense of the word. Yes, I do work hard to scratch out a good-sized family garden each year in this high-desert habitat, and in our five years here we’ve planted an orchard and built a large chicken coop, among other interventions. So while I definitely get my hands dirty and spend a fair bit of time building soil and coaxing vegetables from the granite and clay, my skills are much closer to the hobby side of the coin than anything that can rightly be termed “farming.” (more…)

Creating Community Wherever We Are

by Jay Walljasper

In a surprise, the Washington Post ran an article defending suburbs from the usual charges of being white, wealthy, boring, selfish, right-wing, and environmentally-abominable places.

More than half of Americans now live in suburbia, including most subscribers, so it’s no surprise the newspaper would take an opportunity to reassure its readers that they live in perfectly fine communities.

The surprise was who wrote the article: William Upski Wimsatt, a champion of hip hop culture who grew up on Chicago’s South Side and in 1994 published a book titled Bomb the Suburbs.  Wimsatt took pains to explain that “bomb” was youth culture slang for graffiti, but he left little doubt about his feelings toward the ‘burbs. (more…)

Resisting Militarism in Our Schools

by Harry Targ

I have been thinking a lot lately about “ideological hegemony” — how and why we think about the political world in the ways we do. I do so not to add another layer of theory to an already complex set of arguments about economics and politics. Nor am I interested in immobilizing political activists. Rather, I think progressives need to think about how to challenge the ideas that most of us are supposed to accept and believe.

Of course, the primary public institutions that transmit ideas and ways of thinking to people, from the start to the end of their educational careers, are schools. Our friends on the Right know how important it is to shape schools at all levels. Early in this century I remember hearing Rush Limbaugh say on one of his radio programs that “the only institutions we do not yet control are the schools.” With this as a goal, just the other day we read stories about Koch brothers’ money financing faculty positions at Florida State University in economics (presumably Marxist or structural economists need not apply). (more…)

Remedying the Harsh Realities of ‘Incarceration Nation’

by Diane Lefer

“Drug prohibition is the biggest failed policy in the history of the United States, second only to slavery.”

Maybe that was not a surprising claim to hear at the Pasadena-Foothills ACLU chapter’s public forum held at Neighborhood Church on May 10th. After all, the chapter was co-sponsor of Michelle Alexander’s appearance in March at the Pasadena Public Library where she reported, as detailed in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, that largely as an intentional consequence of the “war on drugs,” there are more African American men under correctional control now than were enslaved in 1850. What was maybe unexpected was to hear the claim from James P. Gray — a white guy from Orange County who is a retired judge, former Navy man, and a former federal prosecutor who put people away after major drug busts.

Gray was a featured speaker, along with Pasadena police chief Phillip Sanchez and public defender Shelan Joseph. Each brought a distinct perspective to address how to respond to the mass incarceration of men (and women) of color. (more…)

Restoring Justice for the Children of Incarcerated Parents

by Victoria Law

In 2004, I facilitated a discussion on incarcerated mothers at the MamaGathering, an alternative parenting conference in Minneapolis. The 20-plus parents who attended the discussion were politically conscious, if not politically active. Among them was a social worker who worked with children in foster care.

In 1997, Congress passed the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA), which stipulated that states must begin terminating the legal rights of parents whose children are in foster care for 15 of the past 22 months. The termination is irrevocable. Only three states made exceptions in cases of parental incarceration; the third state, New York, only passed its discretion act in August 2010.

The results were dramatic: termination proceedings involving incarcerated parents increased 108 percent nationwide from 260 in 1997 to 909 in 2002. In contrast, in the five years before ASFA, the number of termination proceedings increased from 113 in 1992 to 142 in 1996. (more…)

Building a World of Wealth and Wellbeing for All

by Diane Lefer

Okay, so the headline to this article may not garner as many hits as Sarah Palin or Charlie Sheen, but maybe it will bring in more readers than “Cumulative Environmental Impacts in Los Angeles: Public Health’s Role in Emerging Policy Solutions.” I’m trying to put into practice something I learned at a conference by that name where I also got enough facts to delight any data junkie. But speaker Dr. Tony Iton, senior vice president of the California Endowment said the public health community has put “too much emphasis on facts and data” out of the belief that “once people know the truth, things will change.” But they don’t change. So instead of offering data, I’d rather tell a story about two neighborhoods. (more…)

Arizona’s Ethnic Studies Ban Ignites a Human Rights Movement

by Roberto Rodriguez