Blog

Following in the footsteps of Seattle, San Francisco, and D.C., last night Baltimore, Maryland, passed legislation to increase its minimum wage to $15. But there’s one big difference between Charm City and those other three: It’s far less economically healthy. Baltimore would be the poorest city to join the “Fight for $15,” the national movement to mandate a $15 minimum wage. And that fact has been used as ammunition in arguments by both opponents and supporters of the legislation. [For more...

U.S. Senator Durbin (in dark jacket) amused by comment by Colleen Cicchetti at lectern ____________________________ Sometime during the next several days, the “Trauma-Informed Care for Children and Families Act” is expected to be introduced in the Senate by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) with co-sponsors Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Al Franken (D-MN). It will also be introduced for the first time in the House of Representatives by Chicago Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-IL7). A version of the bill was...

UPDATE! As of 3/27/17 all copies of the first run of this curriculum have been purchased or reserved. We hope to have a second printing/production run done soon, though the budget to provide free copies has been exhausted. Those requesting the materials from this point forward will need to submit the $60. required. I have also had some requests for a "preview" of the curriculum in order to see if it is appropriate for your ministry setting. I have attached the print portion of Week 2 so you...

Childhood experiences affect our development, influence our behaviors and help shape our outlook on life as we get older. Dr. Vincent Felitti of Kaiser Permanente and Dr. Robert Anda of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention conducted an original study on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in the 1990s. Studies showed a strong correlation between traumatic experiences and poor adult health as well as social outcomes later in life. More than 17,000 adult members were surveyed about...

There is far-reaching cultural misunderstanding when it comes to mental health. Pop culture often dictates that if you are suffering from a mental disorder, you’re either weird , violent or unstable . People absorb this from the world around them and weave it into how they perceive mental health sufferers. Yes, there are people suffering from extreme behavioral health issues, but a vast number of Americans suffer from these problems but live productive, healthy lives. Children and teens...

Two meetings last week, one in a ragged community center across the street from a waterfront Brooklyn housing project, the other in a well-lit assembly room in New York City’s elite criminal justice college in the heart of Manhattan, illustrated how a fledgling civil rights movement is growing around the tactics used by police to target young people in the city’s housing projects. Youth activists, parents, legal experts, cop watchers and other social justice activists gathered in the Red...

Margaret Love is a big believer in second chances. Since leaving her post as a pardon attorney for the Department of Justice, where she worked from 1990 to 1997, Love has been the executive director at the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, a non-profit with a focus on sentencing reform. (She also runs her own private practice .) At CCRC, Love has turned her attention to raising awareness around state-level forms of relief. “Nobody knew what was going on,” she says, explaining the need...

Do efforts to feed students help improve their performance in school? Mick Mulvaney, director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, grabbed headlines Thursday when he argued in favor of cutting federal funds to programs that provide food to poor students. His justification: There’s “no demonstrable evidence” that the programs help them do better in school. Tell that to Japan, where more than 10 million kids receive delicious, fresh food every school day, in large part because the...

The rapid rise in prescription opioid and heroin use in the United States has drawn significant public attention in the past several years. Between 2000 and 2015, over half a million Americans died from a prescription opioid or heroin overdose, and 91 Americans continue to die each day from opioid overdoses. Because heroin and opioids are often injected, they contribute to the spread of HIV and hepatitis C (HCV) through needle sharing. In 2013, deaths from HCV surpassed the number of deaths...

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and U.S. Representative Danny Davis on Monday unveiled the Trauma Informed Care for Children and Families Act, which is designed to address the toxic stress and trauma that impacts many children from Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. “As we work to address the root causes of violence, we need to focus on the impact that community violence and other traumatic experiences have on Chicago’s children,” said Durbin. “During a visit to the Cook County Juvenile...

Two hundred years ago, when the Academy was launched, a child growing up in New York, London, Medellín or Manila was part of a tiny minority. Only three percent of all the world's people lived in cities. The modern world is very different: for the first time in human history more than half of us now live in cities. By 2050, more than 70 percent of all children on Earth will be growing up in urban environments. In this increasingly urbanized world, cities play a major role in helping all...

Under President Trump, the federal role in education is set to be drastically curtailed. Last Thursday, Trump proposed slashing federal spending on schools by $9 billion. His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has vowed to shrink her agency and return power to local officials, which could mean scaling back civil-rights enforcement. All of these signals may also foreshadow a retreat on school integration. Integration made a brief return to the national stage last year when President Barack...