Suchergebnisse

In this article, Felicia Kornbluh profiles activism and litigation by the civil rights movement that centered directly on food and indirectly on access to income with which to provide food for families. It builds upon the evidence of these efforts to restore to the history of civil rights pivotal battles over political economy, that is, the nexus between government action and the material and nutritional fortunes of citizens. It draws upon a virtually unused set of grassroots-level documents that chronicle civil rights law in action—outside of federal courts and in local communities. Civil rights battles here were welfare rights battles, in the senses of helping individuals get and maintain public aid and of pressing at the limits of the welfare system to raise questions about the distribution of wealth throughout the society.

This paper examines the historical alternatives to welfare reform, namely the guaranteed income. This is, in a sense, the simplest possible approach to poverty, in that it proposes that each adult citizen receive a basic adequate income from a combination of market and state resources; if someone is not earning a wage, then she or he receives substantial support from the government and, in the case of a low wage, receives a smaller supplemental grant. The paper explores the meaning and history of the idea of a minimum income for all U.S. Citizens and argues that it was an object of serious discussion by intellectuals, advocates, and government officials during the Johnson and Nixon years. It also explores the reasons for its emergence, and both the strengths and weaknesses of the idea as it came into being. The article concludes the most successful solution to the problem of poverty in the early twenty-first century is likely to be a combination of "making work pay," a family-based strategy, and a functioning support system of basic income for those who earn very little or nothing.

"Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, historian Felicia Kornbluh delivers an urgent book about two key reproductive rights victories in New York that set the tone for the nation. A Woman's Life Is a Human Life is the story of two movements that transformed the politics of reproductive rights: the fight to decriminalize abortion and the campaign against sterilization abuse, which happened disproportionately in communities of color. Their victories occurred just before and after the Roe v. Wade decision, and their histories cast new light on the case and the fate of reproductive choice today. From dissident Democrats who were first to try reforming abortion laws, to clergy leading the nation's largest abortion referral service, to Puerto Rican activists who introduced sterilization abuse to the reproductive rights agenda, and Black women who took the cause global, A Woman's Life Is a Human Life chronicles the diverse ways activists changed the law and demanded reproductive justice. With firsthand accounts and previously unseen sources-including from her mother, who drafted New York's law decriminalizing abortion, and their across-the-hall neighbor, Dr. Helen Rodríguez-Trías, a Puerto Rican doctor and leader in the movement against sterilization abuse-Felicia Kornbluh shows how grassroots action overcame the odds-and how it might work today"--

In Ensuring Poverty, Felicia Kornbluh and Gwendolyn Mink assess the gendered history of welfare reform, foregrounding arguments advanced by feminists for a welfare policy that would respect single mothers' rights while advancing their opportunities and assuring economic security for their families