VAWA is not enough: adding economic and racial justice

A statement from leading domestic violence scholars explains why the Violance Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization must go further beyond a focus on criminalization to put economic justice and racial equality at the center of policy reforms.

“…while we applaud much that is in the bill, we are concerned that like its predecessors, the bill focuses a significant amount of funding on criminal justice responses and much less on economic and racial justice initiatives that would support efforts to stop domestic violence. We urge Congress to do more to address economic and racial inequalities that make poor women–particularly poor women of color, undocumented women, and Native American women, more vulnerable to intimate violence. We urge Congress to recognize that economic policies that result in widespread unemployment and downward mobility increase domestic violence. We further urge Congress to recognize that as important as criminal remedies may be for some victims, a focus on criminal justice remedies will never be sufficient to empower women. Many women who experience domestic violence do not want the current limited menu of criminal justice responses. We urge Congress, therefore, to consider and support programs that explore alternatives to the current criminal adjudication models, and that address the underlying causes of abuse.”

The scholars include Donna Coker, Deborah Weissman, Julie Goldscheid, Valli Kalei Kanuha, Leigh Goodmark Caroline Bettinger-Lopez, and James Ptacek. For more information, see VAWA remake updated 3 2 27 12

Call for Papers: Teaching about Domestic Violence

Teaching About Domestic Violence
Special Issue
CALL FOR PAPERS
Original manuscripts sought for a special issue of Violence Against Women entitled
“Teaching About Domestic Violence.” The special issue will be edited by Madelaine
Adelman (Justice & Social Inquiry, Arizona State University) and Donna Coker (Law,
University of Miami).
With this special issue we seek to reveal how and why domestic violence remains an area
of pedagogical interest at the college and university level, and to take stock of the state of
the art of teaching about domestic violence. In doing so, we hope to document the
movement against violence against women, and share innovative approaches to thinking,
learning and teaching about domestic violence.
We welcome original contributions on individual or team-taught courses or programs
related to domestic violence. Contributors are asked to reflect on how they incorporate
disciplinary frames, theoretical tensions, or other sources of intellectual and policy debate
within the field of domestic violence studies, into their courses, along with the challenges
and opportunities embedded within their approach to teaching and learning.
Potential contributors to the special issue are asked to submit their manuscripts of no
more than 30 double-spaced pages, inclusive of abstract, tables, figures, notes and
references, written in APA style. Shorter essays are welcome. The manuscript must
include an abstract of no more than 100 words.
Please send the manuscript in WORD format as an attachment to Donna Coker
(dcoker@law.miami.edu) and to Madelaine Adelman (mad@asu.edu) no later than Mon. Oct. 1, 2012.
For the full description see: Call for Papers re Teaching Domestic Violence.

Higher Education Access and the Reproduction of Privilege

By Lisa R. Pruitt

Two recent items in the New York Times have caught my attention in relation to how access to higher education reproduces privilege and undermines class mobility.  One is “Cuts Threaten Access to College Placement Tests,” for which a summary follows:

As part of the federal budget agreement last December, Congress cut federal financing for programs that offer advanced high school courses to slightly under $27 million, from $43 million the previous year, with only about $20 million to be used to subsidize low-income students’ exam fees.  So, in recent weeks, state education officials have been notifying high schools that low-income students, who have for decades been eligible for fee waivers,  will have to pay $15 for each of the first three exams they take, and $53 per exam for any beyond that.

Needless to say, this federal cut is sure to decrease the AP credits that low-income students are able to rack up, thereby increasing their college costs and perhaps also deterring them from seeking higher education.

The other recent item is Thomas Edsall’s post titled “The Reproduction of Privilege” on the New York Times Campaign Stops blog.   This excerpt sums up the phenomenon Edsall wishes to highlight–that higher education is no longer the path to class mobility that it once was.  Rather, higher education–particularly at top institutions–is more often the preserve of the well off, dominated by the children of those who have already arrived socioeconomically:

Instead of serving as a springboard to social mobility as it did for the first decades after World War II, college education today is reinforcing class stratification, with a huge majority of the 24 percent of Americans aged 25 to 29 currently holding a bachelor’s degree coming from families with earnings above the median income.

Seventy-four percent of those now attending colleges that are classified as “most competitive,” a group that includes schools like Harvard, Emory, Stanford and Notre Dame, come from families with earnings in the top income quartile, while only three percent come from families in the bottom quartile.

Edsall’s piece is chock full of additional data that all flies in the face of “the American dream” of class mobility, revealing it to be more myth than reality.

The Devastating Disconnect Between Rich and Poor

Posted by Lisa R. Pruitt

The Occupy Wall Street movement has recently drawn national attention to economic inequality, and several new studies and a book just published also invite us to consider the acuteness of this inequality, as well as its causes and/or consequences.   These publications all highlight education, to one degree or another, as a key indicator of class and class mobility.

The New York Times, NPR and the Los Angeles Times all ran features this week on Charles Murray’s new book, Coming Apart:  The State of White America, 1960-2010.  Murray, labeled “a libertarian social scientist” by NPR (and worse things by other liberal pundits), is a controversial figure due in large part to his co-authorship of The Bell Curve.  In that 1994 book, Murray described  a “cognitive elite” who, he argued, get ahead in large part because of their superior IQs.  The controversy was understandable given his assertion that whites tend to have higher IQs than African Americans and some other minorities.

I want to focus here, however, on some of the less controversial information featured in Coming Apart. By this, I mean to steer clear of the book’s commentary on values and related suggestions for remedying the problem.  (I do, however, recommend Paul Krugman’s op-ed and Nicholas Confessore’s review which offer incisive observations regarding those aspects of the book).  Also, to be clear, I have yet to read the book and so rely here on characterizations from media reports.

Call for Papers and Participation in ClassCrits V: From Madison to Zuccotti Park: Confronting Class and Reclaiming the American Dream

This workshop, the fifth meeting of ClassCrits, takes on class and the American dream as its theme. The most quintessentially American trait may be our capacity to look past current misfortune and imagine a brighter future.  Americans love a “rags to riches” story and have long believed that hard work and determination will pay off in the long run. Two years into a sluggish “recovery” from the Great Recession, however, many Americans have lost some of that earnest optimism. Faced with persistent unemployment, a nationwide foreclosure crisis, deep cuts to state and local budgets, and declining state support for public education, Americans are questioning the promise of upward mobility. Indeed falling backwards is now a recognized phenomenon affecting more and more of the “middle class,” arguably blurring the distinctions between the “middle class,” the “working classes” and “the poor. But roused by economic insecurity and the political assault on workers’ rights, “ordinary” people from Madison to Zuccotti Park have taken to the streets to voice their dissent. Taking on the slogan “we are the 99%,” the protest movement has launched a national dialogue about income, wealth and structural inequality, race, gender and class divisions in society, and, fundamentally, what it will take to reclaim our vision of a good life.  From Madison to Zuccotti Park: Confronting Class and Reclaiming the American Dream will therefore bring together scholars, economists, activists, policymakers, and others to critically examine both the relationships between and the complexities of class and inequality.

 We invite panel proposals and paper presentations that speak to this year’s theme as well as to general ClassCrits themes.  See below for details.

 In addition, we extend a special invitation to junior scholars to submit proposals for works in progress. Each work in progress will be commented upon by a senior scholar as well as other scholars in a small, supportive working session.

Possible Topics:

• Constructing & Deconstructing the 99%
• The Vanishing(ed) Middle-Class (family, housing, health care, education, income, employment, other)
• Social Mobility—Falling Backwards
• Gender Dynamics in Economic Downturns and Recoveries
• The Role of Women & Women’s Issues in Protest Movements
• Anti-Poverty Strategies
• Mapping a Way Forward (strategies for change in general)
• Political Failure (tax policy, immigration, labor & employment, welfare, other)
• Politics 2012–Political Opportunity?
• Structural Inequality (law, public health, education, other)
• Conscious and Unconscious Animus Against Poor People (immigration, criminalization, family, other)
• Spatial Inequality (segregation, rurality, surveillance)
• W(h)ither the Social Safety Net? (welfare, bankruptcy, housing, food, other)
• Class and Inequality: How are they different?
• Exploring the Racial & Inter-Racial Impacts of Economic Downturns and Poverty
• International Social & Economic Equality/Mobility (shared lessons and lessons to be learned)
• Human Rights or Civil Rights?
• The Great Tech Divide (in terms of race, gender, class, location [suburbs, cities, rural areas])

In addition, we invite panel proposals that speak to the general themes of ClassCrits, including:

•  The legal and cultural project of constructing inequalities of all kinds as natural, normal, and necessary
• The relationships among economic, racial, and gender inequality
• The development of new methods with which to analyze and criticize economics and law (beyond traditional “law and economics”)
• The relationship between material systems and institutions and cultural systems and institutions.

ClassCrits V will be held November 16-17, 2012 at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Keynote Address:  Professor Erik Olin Wright, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin.

Please submit your proposal by email to classcrits@gmail.com by February 17, 2012

Photo-essay: Occupy UC Davis, November 22, 2011, 9:45 a.m.

This gallery contains 20 photos.

Photoessay: Occupy Oakland, 11/2/2011

A couple of snapshots of the “general strike” day. The mood in the crowd was peaceful and mellow and the smell of pot was everywhere (this is Oaksterdam, after all). In contrast to what the New York Times has reported about Occupy Wall Street, the crowd was also quite diverse in ethnicity and age as well as politics.There was a strong religious presence, from daily meditations organized by the East Bay Meditation Center to contingents from various Christian and Jewish groups. And lots of music and art — T shirts being silkscreened on the spot while speakers blasted James Brown’s “The Big Pay-Back” in between live performances.

Things seemed well organized also. A bus showed up from Berkeley and several hundred people joined the crowd, greeted with loud cheers. Food lines were orderly and there were clothes distribution boxes and plenty of porta-potties. Very little police presence except for the ubiquitous helicopters.

Nice to see a revolution that includes yoga and gardening.

Great posters, and folks on stilts, too.

This afternoon the plan is to occupy the Port of Oakland.

Another contingent of students set off to occupy the University of California Office of the President, which has its offices in downtown Oakland (rumor has it, ironically, that UCOP moved to Oakland to avoid Berkeley protests).

This is still my favorite: