By Jason Anderson, Senior Director, Communications
As 2018 came to a close and many of us were focused on the holiday season, a headline came across the news wires that stopped us in our tracks.
It had been reported that a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl who crossed a remote part of the U.S.-Mexico border with her father had died two days after been taken into custody by the U.S. Border Patrol in New Mexico.
Her name was Jakelin Caal.
Given the tragic event, many thought that law enforcement officials would learn from that situation and put the necessary procedures in place to prevent that kind of incident from happening again.
This blog originally appeared on the SOCAP19 blog. Click here to visit the original post.
By Alison Powers, Manager, Cooperative and Community Initiatives
Communities of color have experienced historical and structural disinvestment, which has led to an unprecedented racial wealth gap, historically low home ownership, and exploitative work environments that keep individuals and families of color from achieving shared prosperity.
By Ellis Carr, President and CEO, and Dan Varner, Board Chair
Looking back at our journey through 2018, both as an organization and as a country, it is no surprise to us that Merriam-Webster’s “word of the year” was justice. The meaning and implications of justice were central to important conversations taking place in communities across the United States.
Alaina Beverly has spent her career championing and empowering underserved communities and working with stakeholders to work toward justice and opportunity for all. She started her career as a litigator for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and later worked in the Obama Administration supporting civic engagement in communities. Her expertise as a lawyer and civic organizer for communities of color nationwide aligns strongly with our work, which is why we are honored to have her as a board member.
By Olivia Rebanal, Director, Inclusive Food Systems
Despite positive headlines about the American economy, financial vulnerability is a reality for many people. This was brought into sharp focus during the government shutdown Communities rallied around their members and organizations provided support, but it became clear that many individuals and families, even those with stable, full-time employment, found themselves one crisis away from financial instability.
With thousands in communities across the country, community health centers (CHCs) seem like a long-standing part of the national health care system. However, the origins of CHCs are relatively recent, born out of civil rights struggles that started 10,000 miles away. They owe their start to Dr. Jack Geiger, who applied an idea that he had seen used to address the stark health care disparities in apartheid South Africa to the structural racism that African Americans experienced in accessing quality health care.
This blog post originally appeared on the SOCAP website. For the original post, please visit this website.
The challenges of mass incarceration and poverty are all too often intertwined in the U.S. Seventy million Americans currently have an arrest or conviction record and that number is growing by the day. These “returning citizens” face a shocking number of barriers upon re-entry that often prevent them from securing jobs, housing, education, business loans, and other keys to social and economic security.
This has been a year of reflection and introspection for me. In 2017, Capital Impact Partners, a national Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), had its best year since our founding in the early 1980s. We implemented new programs and innovative products to unlock opportunity for underserved communities across the country, and, I am proud to say, deployed record volumes in support of economic, social, and racial justice – and have continued that critical work in 2018.
Despite our recent successes, our accomplishments sometimes feel hollow given the growing wealth gap, wage stagnation, and continuing racial and social injustice. Many Americans, including some of my own family, feel that opportunity is out of reach.
By Ellis Carr, President and CEO, and Rosemary Mahoney, Board Chair
We believe everyone deserves a voice and economic pathways that allow them to shape their own futures.
We believe that a community’s voice and economic opportunities can be strengthened with the right tools. Our objective is to develop tools for and with our communities that amplified their voices and created hope, shared prosperity, justice and inclusion.
“3. 7. 8. 2. 4. 0. 3. 7. The first thing that happens when you go to prison, they take away your name, and from that moment forward, you’re that number: Hodge, 37824037. It’s the beginning of the dehumanizing experience of mass incarceration.”
The words of Teresa Hodge give a brief and disheartening glimpse into the truth of America’s criminal justice system. What is worse is that, as Teresa alluded to, the dehumanizing experience of incarceration continues beyond the walls of the facility; it has lasting and far reaching impacts on those who have been caught up in the system.
