How do we describe, as Lillian Smith herself asked in Killers of the Dream, “trouble…so big that people turn away from its size, [their] imaginations closed tight against the hurt of others”? And how do we do it all while grounding our readers in the radical possibility of hope, reconciliation, and healing? Continue reading Lillian Smith Book Award address
An effort to create a code of ethics for data science was recently announced at the Data for Good Exchange. The stories I tell in Automating Inequality may offer some insight. Continue reading A Hippocratic Oath for Data Science
February 16, 2018 On February 9, I learned that Allegheny County Department of Human Services had responded with concern to the excerpt from Automating Inequality that was published in Wired magazine on January 15, 2018, calling key aspects of the piece inaccurate. Below is a response to their unsigned statement, released by the office of … Continue reading A response to Allegheny County DHS
In the course of writing Automating Inequality, I’ve come to realize that how I talk about class in America can be counterintuitive for some readers. I thought it would be useful to start a conversation about class here before the book drops January 16. This might take a couple of posts…so let’s start with what seems … Continue reading Notes on Class in America, Part 1
With rain still falling on southeast Texas, I read Rick Jervis’ profoundly moving August 27 story in USA Today. In it, Jervis explains how the impacts of Hurricane Harvey have been compounded for many poor and working-class communities by a more mundane disaster: it’s the end of the month. The elderly, the ill, the disabled, the … Continue reading Disasters on top of disasters
On March 31, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his last Sunday sermon, “Remaining Awake through a Great Revolution,” in the National Cathedral. In it, he announced the Poor People’s Campaign, which he warned was America’s “last chance” to arouse its “conscience toward constructive democratic change.” King’s assassination, just days later, threw the campaign … Continue reading Poor People’s Campaign reading and action list
Caseworkers get a bad rap on both sides of the political spectrum. On one hand, they are unpopular with people who receive public assistance. Recipients and welfare rights advocates accuse them of making judgments based on racial and class bias, treating clients like criminals, and acting as if public assistance dollars are coming out of … Continue reading Caseworkers vs. Computers
First lines often suck. A bad first line introduces the subject, but don’t suggest the stakes of the game. A bad first line begins the story, but doesn’t engage your senses or rouse your interest. A bad first line is like a host who invites you into the house, and then turns off the lights. … Continue reading First lines, First Days
While I am encouraged by attempts to stem the tide of the epidemic of gun violence in America, and welcome a vigorous conversation about how to support and provide resources for people struggling with mental illness in this country, I am horrified to near-speechlessness by the mental health provisions of the recent gun control legislation … Continue reading Cuomo Criminalizes the Mentally Ill
This winter finds me wrapped in a scarf of Dr. Who-ish proportions and immersed in archival research for my next book, The Digital Poorhouse: Computers, Public Services and American Citizenship. This month, I am looking into the design and implementation of the Welfare Management System (WMS) in New York State in the 1970s and 80s. … Continue reading Poverty & High-Tech Billionaires
