Reclaiming Your Community

Reclaiming Your Community

Author: Majora Carter

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2022-02

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1523000309

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Majora Carter shows how brain drain cripples low-status communities and maps out a development strategy focused on talent retention to help them break out of economic stagnation. "My musical, In the Heights, explores issues of community, gentrification, identity and home, and the question: Are happy endings only ones that involve getting out of your neighborhood to achieve your dreams? In her refreshing new book, Majora Carter writes about these issues with great insight and clarity, asking us to re-examine our notions of what community development is and how we invest in the futures of our hometowns. This is an exciting conversation worth joining.” —Lin-Manuel Miranda How can we solve the problem of persistent poverty in low-status communities? Majora Carter argues that these areas need a talent-retention strategy, just like the ones companies have. Retaining homegrown talent is a critical part of creating a strong local economy that can resist gentrification. But too many people born in low-status communities measure their success by how far away from them they can get. Carter, who could have been one of them, returned to the South Bronx and devised a development strategy rooted in the conviction that these communities have the resources within themselves to succeed. She advocates measures such as • Building mixed-income instead of exclusively low-income housing to create a diverse and robust economic ecosystem • Showing homeowners how to maximize the long-term value of their property so they won't succumb to quick-cash offers from speculators • Keeping people and dollars in the community by developing vibrant “third spaces”—restaurants, bookstores, and places like Carter's own Boogie Down Grind Cafe This is a profoundly personal book. Carter writes about her brother's murder, how turning a local dumping ground into an award-winning park opened her eyes to the hidden potential in her community, her struggles as a woman of color confronting the “male and pale” real estate and nonprofit establishments, and much more. It is a powerful rethinking of poverty, economic development, and the meaning of success.


Tobacco Town Futures

Tobacco Town Futures

Author: Ann E. Kingsolver

Publisher: Waveland Press

Published: 2010-12-29

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 1478609273

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Situated between the foothills of Appalachia to the east and bluegrass country to the west, Nicholas County has been home to small tobacco farms in rural Kentucky for the past 200 years. But now, in the midst of tremendous economic changes generated by the movement of both textile jobs and tobacco production to other countries, residents of Nicholas County face an uncertain future. Based on twenty-five years of research, Kingsolvers longitudinal ethnography of Nicholas County, her home community, synthesizes geographical, historical, economic, and political processes that have shaped lifeways and worldviews. She documents the perspectives of farmers, factory workers, politicians, those pursuing new niches in the labor market, and middle school students in search of alternative futures. Countering stereotypes, Kingsolver emphasizes the skills and agency of rural residents and demonstrates how people in widely dispersed and seemingly isolated communities in the world are connected through capitalist logic and practice, thereby illuminating globalizations far-reaching effects.


Rural Social Work

Rural Social Work

Author: T. Laine Scales

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-07-03

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1118672984

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A thoughtful text integrating strengths, assets, and capacity-building themes with contemporary issues in rural social work practice Now in its second edition, Rural Social Work is a collection of contributed readings from social work scholars, students, and practitioners presenting a framework for resource building based on the strengths, assets, and capacities of people, a tool essential for working with rural communities. This guide considers methods for social workers to participate in the work of sustaining rural communities. Each chapter features a reading integrating the themes of capacity-building and rural social work; discussion questions that facilitate critical thinking around the chapter; and suggested activities and assignments. Rural Social Work, Second Edition explores: Important practice issues in rural communities, including the challenges of working with stigmatized populations such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, the homeless, and people living with HIV/AIDS Practice models that hold special promise for rural social workers, including evidence-based practice and community partnership models Newer research tools such as asset mapping, social network analysis, concept mapping, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Exploring how social workers can integrate the tremendous resources that exist in rural communities into their practice, Rural Social Work, Second Edition provides a solid introduction to the complex, challenging, and rewarding work of building and sustaining rural communities.


The Great Reclamation

The Great Reclamation

Author: Rachel Heng

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2024-03-26

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0593420128

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WINNER OF THE NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE AND THE JOYCE CAROL OATES PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, TOWN & COUNTRY, KIRKUS, ELECTRIC LITERATURE AND BOOKPAGE! "Stunning…epic…impressive…It is a pleasure to simply live alongside these characters.”—The New York Times "A deep and powerful love story."—NBC The Today Show "A beautifully written novel. I loved so much in this book: the richly imagined setting, the complicated love story, and the heartbreaking way history can tear apart a family." —Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful Set against a changing Singapore, a sweeping novel about one boy’s unique gifts and the childhood love that will complicate the fate of his community and country Ah Boon is born into a fishing village amid the heat and beauty of twentieth-century coastal Singapore in the waning years of British rule. He is a gentle boy who is not much interested in fishing, preferring to spend his days playing with the neighbor girl, Siok Mei. But when he discovers he has the unique ability to locate bountiful, movable islands that no one else can find, he feels a new sense of obligation and possibility—something to offer the community and impress the spirited girl he has come to love. By the time they are teens, Ah Boon and Siok Mei are caught in the tragic sweep of history: the Japanese army invades, the resistance rises, grief intrudes, and the future of the fishing village is in jeopardy. As the nation hurtles toward rebirth, the two friends, newly empowered, must decide who they want to be, and what they are willing to give up. An aching love story and powerful coming-of-age that reckons with the legacy of British colonialism, the World War II Japanese occupation, and the pursuit of modernity, The Great Reclamation confronts the wounds of progress, the sacrifices of love, and the difficulty of defining home when nature and nation collide, literally shifting the land beneath people’s feet.


Conflict and Human Security in Africa

Conflict and Human Security in Africa

Author: A. Kumssa

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-06-06

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 0230119263

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This edited volume looks at human security and conflict in northern Kenya and nearby areas within Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Uganda. It spells out the precise meaning and nuances of human security in today's global economy and examines the causes and effects of conflict in the region within the context of human security.


Permission to Come Home

Permission to Come Home

Author: Jenny Wang

Publisher: Balance

Published: 2022-05-03

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1538708027

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“Dr. Jenny T. Wang has been an incredible resource for Asian mental health. I believe that her knowledge, presence, and activism for mental health in the Asian American/Immigrant community have been invaluable and groundbreaking. I am so very grateful that she exists.”—Steven Yeun, actor, The Walking Dead and Minari Asian Americans are experiencing a racial reckoning regarding their identity, inspiring them to radically reconsider the cultural frameworks that enabled their assimilation into American culture. As Asian Americans investigate the personal and societal effects of longstanding cultural narratives suggesting they take up as little space as possible, their mental health becomes critically important. Yet despite the fact that over 18 million people of Asian descent live in the United States today — they are the racial group least likely to seek out mental health services. Permission to Come Home takes Asian Americans on an empowering journey toward reclaiming their mental health. Weaving her personal narrative as a Taiwanese American together with her insights as a clinician and evidence-based tools, Dr. Jenny T. Wang explores a range of life areas that call for attention, offering readers the permission to question, feel, rage, say no, take up space, choose, play, fail, and grieve. Above all, she offers permission to return closer to home, a place of acceptance, belonging, healing, and freedom. For Asian Americans and Diaspora, this book is a necessary road map for the journey to wholeness. .


On Vanishing

On Vanishing

Author: Lynn Casteel Harper

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2020-04-14

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 1948226294

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A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An essential book for those coping with Alzheimer’s and other cognitive disorders that “reframe[s] our understanding of dementia with sensitivity and accuracy . . . to grant better futures to our loved ones and ourselves” (The New York Times). An estimated fifty million people in the world suffer from dementia. Diseases such as Alzheimer's erase parts of one's memory but are also often said to erase the self. People don't simply die from such diseases; they are imagined, in the clichés of our era, as vanishing in plain sight, fading away, or enduring a long goodbye. In On Vanishing, Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain, investigates the myths and metaphors surrounding dementia and aging, addressing not only the indignities caused by the condition but also by the rhetoric surrounding it. Harper asks essential questions about the nature of our outsized fear of dementia, the stigma this fear may create, and what it might mean for us all to try to “vanish well.” Weaving together personal stories with theology, history, philosophy, literature, and science, Harper confronts our elemental fears of disappearance and death, drawing on her own experiences with people with dementia both in the American healthcare system and within her own family. In the course of unpacking her own stories and encounters—of leading a prayer group on a dementia unit; of meeting individuals dismissed as “already gone” and finding them still possessed of complex, vital inner lives; of witnessing her grandfather’s final years with Alzheimer’s and discovering her own heightened genetic risk of succumbing to the disease—Harper engages in an exploration of dementia that is unlike anything written before on the subject. A rich and startling work of nonfiction, On Vanishing reveals cognitive change as it truly is, an essential aspect of what it means to be mortal.


Reclaiming Rural

Reclaiming Rural

Author: Allen T. Stanton

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-05-15

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 1538135256

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As rural America continues to undergo massive economic and demographic shifts, rural churches are uniquely positioned to provide community leadership. Leading a rural congregation requires a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities facing these communities, as well as a strong theological and community-focused identity. Allen T. Stanton describes how in establishing this identity, rural leaders build a meaningful and vital ministry. Reclaiming Rural explores the myths and realities of rural places, and how those common narratives impact the leadership of rural churches. Ultimately, rural congregations must practice a contextual understanding of vitality, which understands both the strengths and challenges of leading in a rural setting. Arguing for a practice of evangelism imbued with this mission of vitality, Reclaiming Rural promotes the church as a leader in economic and community development, modeled upon a Wesleyan theology of grace. Acknowledging the many challenges facing rural churches, this book is an energetic and encouraging guide to overcoming social and economic obstacles to build a thriving congregation.


The Minneapolis Reckoning

The Minneapolis Reckoning

Author: Michelle S. Phelps

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2024-05-07

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0691245983

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"Since the beginning of the Black Lives Matter Movement in 2014, police brutality, police violence, and police reform have emerged as central public policy concerns, and throughout that time, Minneapolis has been at the center of these conversations, both as a leader in progressive police reform and as a demonstration of the failure of those reforms. From solidarity protests with Ferguson in 2014, to an occupation of a police precinct following the killing of Jamar Clark in 2015, protests following the death of Justine Damond (Ruszczyk) in 2017, and the uprising following George Floyd's murder in 2020, activists in Minneapolis have long demanded that the city take measures to make Black Lives Matter. In 2020, these demands shifted from police reform and accountability toward police defunding and abolition, culminating in a deeply contested ballot initiative to replace the Minneapolis Police Department with a new Department of Public Safety-a debate that has come to symbolize the rift in opinion about the role of policing that continues to divide the nation. The Minneapolis Reckoning uses Minneapolis as a case study to understand policing, police violence, and anti-police-violence activism in the twenty-first century. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2021, as well as detailed historical analyses of transformations in the Minneapolis Police Department from the Great Migration to the present, Michelle Phelps tells the complex story of elected officials, elite interests, activist organizers, and residents struggling to gain power over the police. Tracing the ways in which movements pushing for the transformation of policing have crashed into the local politics of race, inequality, and violence, both in the years leading up to the murder of George Floyd and in its aftermath, Phelps offers revealing lessons about the political struggle over policing and the power of social movements for racial justice to create change"--