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
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
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
I’ve been thinking about technology policy in the United States in light of Mitt Romney’s May 17, 2012 comments that nearly half of United States citizens “are dependent upon government, believe that they are victims, believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, … Continue reading Welfare Internet
The amazing organizing and coalition-building going on around stop and frisk policies in New York City inspired me to write “Stop. Frisk. Double-Click.” for the MIT Press Blog yesterday. Stop and frisk is a controversial policy where officers detain and search people based on subjective evaluations of public behavior: furtive movements, “casing” a location, and … Continue reading Stop. Frisk. Double-Click.
Is it too old-school Women’s Studies professor-y of me to point out that the eG8 — the “historic conference on the internet and the future of the digital ecosystem” that preceded the 37th annual G20/G8 summit in France — was a total sausage party? Of 109 speakers, 10 were women. Yep. That’s a whopping 9%. … Continue reading eG8 Sausage Party
