Blog / Racial Justice

Bread for the City Community,

Over the past month our country has been battered by tragedies in Louisiana, Minnesota, and Texas. These shootings remind us of two difficult truths: wishing we lived in a post-racial society doesn’t make it so, and the issue of race and all of its complexities will challenge us for years to come.

In response to these recent tragedies, several Bread staff members met to discuss the trauma of the shootings – both of police officers and those at the hands of police officers. In these discussions, we sought to address one central question: What does all of this chaos and pain mean for our work in social justice?

Hello my People! Let’s talk Juneteenth…

An internationally recognized day of observance, Juneteenth (June 19th, abbreviated), commemorates the day that presumably the last slaves in America were freed with the reading of The Emancipation by General Gordon Granger to enslaved residents of Galveston, Texas in 1865. Some historical texts have also noted that Juneteenth was originally known as the “Day of Jubilee” or “Jubilee Day”.

The U.S. Pays Reparations to Holocaust Victims … What about its Own Victims?

This blog is re-posted from: http://jewschool.com/2016/02/39122/strange-case-reparations/

In the first decade of DC’s experiment with public housing redevelopment, at least two of the New Community Initiative’s (NCI) four guiding principles have repeatedly been left by the wayside: Build First, and the right of residents to return to their communities.

A functional Build First would keep residents in quality affordable housing near their original homes during redevelopment; Right to Return would mean no new barriers on their ability to come back.

After a Public Roundtable on these issues last week that was powerfully charged by Bread for the City leaders’ testimony, the DC Council appears to be getting serious about a vision of NCI that truly works for public housing residents.

On February 2nd, less than a week after a dozen Bread leaders and staff testified on NCI, the Council unanimously introduced a resolution to…

Public housing residents filled the room to testify at the DC Council on January 28th about the ways the DC Housing Authority (DCHA) has betrayed them through neglect and dereliction of duty as a landlord.

Tenants noted systemic housing code violations like rodents, mold, leaking plumbing, and holes in ceilings and floors, as well as DCHA’s unwillingness to respond to requests for service. Residents also testified to the warm memories and positive communalism they’ve loved about their public housing neighborhoods at their best.

These stories came out at a Public Roundtable on the New Communities Initiative (NCI) held at the John A Wilson Building, where about a dozen Bread for the City client leaders and staff testified, many for the first time.

This is the launch of a monthly series – “Chairman’s Corner” – where our Board Chair, Paul Taskier, will write about a variety of topics that impact Bread for the City and indeed the community and nation at large. We invite you to Read, Enjoy and Share!

We have all just witnessed momentous changes in our national landscape. June, 2015 will long be a month remembered for the changes it ushered in, or cemented in place.

Normative Family Structures

On June 26, 2015, millions of Americans celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to affirm the love and commitment of same-sex couples who asked, in the words of Justice Anthony Kennedy, “for equal dignity in the eyes of the law.”

The Social Security Act (Act of August 14, 1935) [H. R. 7260] “An act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health…”

Along with Medicare, to which Social Security’s success is inextricably linked, Social Security is the most successful anti-poverty measure in our country’s history.

Social Security keeps 22 million Americans out of poverty, including 15 million elderly Americans, according to research from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and pays more money to children than any other government program. In the tattered remains of the American social safety net, Social Security remains of the strongest links.

But beneath the surface of this New Deal mainstay, there is a history, and a present reality of exclusion, discrimination, and loss.