New Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Award Advances UCLA Luskin’s Mission of Social Justice The new Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Social Justice Award was created to advance research that focuses on issues of racial justice and inequality

By Adeney Zo

Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., served as dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs for seven years, and his legacy here continues to inspire and provide support for Luskin students.

Through the efforts of members of the UCLA Luskin advisory board along with many other donors, the new Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Social Justice Award was created to advance research that focuses on issues of racial justice and inequality. Reflecting the School’s mission to bring about social change through academic excellence, this award highlights student scholarship that addresses crucial societal issues.

Board Chair Susan F. Rice explains, “Frank Gilliam’s commitment to social justice permeated his leadership approach. His collaborative style in cross-discipline initiatives left a significant legacy on the students, the faculty, the campus and our Board of Advisors. In particular, the Board relished Frank’s pride in the Luskin School students as research practitioners engaging public personnel in social justice issues. It seemed fitting to establish an award recognizing student initiative.”

This year’s award recipients will be studying a wide range of topics related to social justice, diversity and equity.

Susanna Curry, a doctoral candidate in Social Welfare, was selected for a project which will study housing insecurity among millennials. Curry’s ultimate goal as a researcher is to help end homelessness in the U.S., but her research will first examine the causes of housing insecurity among millennials in early stages of adult life.

“I want to encourage social welfare scholarship to include a greater understanding of housing insecurity, that is, the situations in which people find themselves immediately before becoming homeless such as living temporarily in another person’s home, moving frequently, and facing eviction or a high rent burden,” said Curry.

Curry aims to study how childhood adversity and access to social supports, particularly stemming from the foster care system, may influence housing instability among young adults.

“It is important that we better understand living situations and housing-related stressors beyond age 21, and associated risks and resources, so that service providers and policymakers can develop greater supports for these [foster] youth as appropriate into young adulthood,” said Curry.

Curry will also examine on a national scale how social and cultural patterns may factor into this issue.

While Curry’s work will examine a nationwide issue, three recipients of the award will focus their research on issues within UCLA. Elizabeth Calixtro, a master of Public Policy student; Kevin Medina, a master of Social Welfare and master of Public Policy student; and Nisha Parekh, a master of Public Policy and Law student, were selected for their proposal to evaluate diversity and equity programming at UCLA in conjunction with the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

“We plan to use the data we collect to create feasible recommendations for the UCLA Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) regarding ways to harmonize the various EDI-related efforts across campus,” said Medina. “EDI was created less than a year ago, and we aim to provide recommendations that will further this harmonization project.”

All three members of the team have backgrounds in social justice work, allowing for them to advance the mission of the award while also utilizing their combined experience to create change within UCLA.

“We felt that selecting a topic addressing equity issues would allow us to bring together multiple lenses and skill sets to create an impactful policy project,” said Medina. “This award provides us with the necessary and scarce resources to actualize our ambitious vision for our policy project.”

The team will be evaluating the EDI’s programs through focus groups, interviews and a campuswide survey. They will also be contacting universities similar to UCLA in order to understand how other schools implement diversity and equity programming. With the implementation of a new undergraduate diversity requirement for UCLA College freshmen, this study may play an important part in the development of these courses.

Other award recipients are Marylou Adriatico, a master of Social Welfare student, and Joanna L. Barreras, Charles H. Lea III and Christina Tam, all doctoral candidates in Social Welfare.

To learn more about the Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., Social Justice Award, or to make a contribution, visit this page.

A summary of the project descriptions for the Social Justice Award winners can be found here.

A Conversation With David Simon Luskin Lecture Series features the journalist, screenwriter and producer discussing the great divide in the ‘two Americas’

By George Foulsham

Fractured. Rigged. Tragic.

David Simon uses those words often as he describes what’s become of America, or, as he puts it, our “two Americas.”

Simon, a former police reporter for the Baltimore Sun who left the paper and became a successful television screenwriter and producer, was the capstone of the two-day inauguration of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. His keynote address at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater was part of the Luskin Lecture Series.

The event also featured a screening of one episode of the Simon-penned HBO series “Show Me a Hero.” Simon is perhaps best known for his critically acclaimed series on HBO, “The Wire.”

“‘The Wire’ showed us that the court of law, the police station, the city bureaucracy are as much a part of the game as the street,” said Ananya Roy, director of the Institute on Inequality and Democracy, who introduced Simon. “And the game, as the line in ‘The Wire’ goes, is rigged.”

Simon’s themes and messages, conveyed through his writing and television shows, reflect in many ways the mission of the new institute.

“How do we do a better job of living together?” Roy asked. “This is a question that animates David Simon’s work. How do we live together in the context that David Simon has described as two separate Americas? Simon’s artistic and journalistic work reminds us that the creation of these two separate societies is by will. It’s by policy, by plan.”

Simon’s lecture was titled “The Audacity of Despair,” which also happens to be the name of his blog, a self-described collection of “prose, links and occasional venting from David Simon.”

During his Luskin Lecture, Simon covered a broad range of topics, from politics to activism to police. And, yes, he did a little venting.

the Audacity of Despair with David Simon

“Nothing quite works in this very complicated and tragic and rigged system, if you believe that one singular ideology gets you out of every problem,” Simon said. “I think that one of the great plagues of our age is that right now there are any number of people — and I think we are witnessing it in this election cycle — who think they can explain what ails us and why we are so fractured, in a single paragraph.

“If you have an ideology that works in every set of circumstances,” he added, “you’re probably about to say something stupid. Or do something stupid.”

His experience as a newspaper journalist informed his screenwriting, and his views about policing, as well as the war on drugs.

“I know a lot of good cops who will tell you that the drug war destroyed us,” Simon said. “They sold us this drug war, and we committed our resources to it, and we bought it.”

“When we are talking about the drug war, law enforcement issues and mass incarceration, I ask the question of whether or not poor communities are over-policed or under-policed,” he added. “The consensus was over-policed. It’s complicated. It’s in the complications that we lose ourselves.

“I’ve heard in the activism that we don’t need the police. I’ve heard that we don’t need the prisons,” Simon said. “The answer is these communities are brutally over-policed to the point of consigning hundreds of thousands to criminal histories. And yet these communities are utterly under-policed, for the things they desperately need.”

Simon also reflected on his experiences while covering the police in his hometown, Baltimore, and how not much has changed.

“I don’t believe in community policing,” he said. “If you want social work, hire a social worker. A good police department does one thing to make a city better. It figures out the right guy to arrest, and it takes him off the corner. If you get killed in Baltimore, you will not be avenged, and your family will not be avenged. But, more than that, the guy who killed people will still be standing on the corner with a gun. And he’ll do it again.”

Simon, who also wrote the television series “Treme,” which aired for four seasons on HBO, put a lens on democracy, and how it’s changed.

“(Winston) Churchill said democracy is the worst form of government, until you consider every alternative,” Simon said. “I think my critique would be, what’s fallen by the wayside, what we’ve permitted to become a shell of democratic ideal, because we’ve been able to construct these two Americas where the rules can be applied differently. That has to be deconstructed.”

Simon closed by issuing a challenge to all attending the lecture, saying that a simple act of civil disobedience would help bring an end to the war on drugs.

“If you are asked to be on a jury, on nonviolent drug use, and they ask you to send another human being to prison because of this disaster of a drug policy, acquit. No matter what the evidence is, acquit,” Simon said. “Search your conscience. Is my country really going to get better for putting another person in prison for nonviolent drug use? Does that make America stronger or weaker?”

The Luskin Lecture Series

The UCLA Luskin Lecture Series enhances public discourse on topics relevant to the betterment of society. The series features renowned public intellectuals, bringing scholars as well as national and local leaders to address society’s most pressing problems. Lectures encourage interactive, lively discourse across traditional divides between the worlds of research, policy and practice. The series demonstrates UCLA Luskin’s commitment to encouraging innovative breakthroughs and creative solutions to formidable policy challenges.

Challenging Inequality UCLA Luskin Professor Ananya Roy Has a ‘Clear Mandate’ for Social Justice; New Luskin Institute: Teaching, Scholarship and New Center to Focus on Inequality and Democracy

 

By Stan Paul

On day one of teaching her first UCLA undergraduate course, “Democracy and Inequality,” award-winning scholar, author and teacher Ananya Roy wasted no time getting right to a key point. Roy wanted to convey to students that “unprecedented forms of income inequality currently afoot in the United States have been produced through policies,” including taxation.

Roy describes her course, open to undergrads and grad students, as “taking up the case of persistent inequality in liberal democracies,” as well as covering key frameworks and methodologies for understanding and analyzing poverty and inequality. In doing so, she says that the already very popular course examines forms of action — from the role of government to social movements — that seek to intervene in such problems.

“It is important for us to recognize that various forms of inequality, be it income inequality or racial inequality, have been constructed and maintained,” said Roy, who joined UCLA in 2015 after many years on the faculty at UC Berkeley. And, her own discipline is not free of culpability, according to Roy. Urban planning, she said, is also “complicit in the production of racial inequality,” citing redlining and other forms of spatial segregation as examples.

But, Roy said, “The good news is these forms of inequality can also be challenged and tackled.”

At UC Berkeley, Roy held the Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice. Her course on global poverty regularly drew hundreds of undergrads each year, and, in 2010, The New Yorker called the advocate of public higher education “one of Berkeley’s star teachers.” The dynamic instructor, who also uses social media to encourage her students to think about their participation in public debate, also earned the Distinguished Teaching Award, the university’s highest faculty teaching honor, and the Distinguished Faculty Mentorship Award.

Roy is also a prolific author. Her book “Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development” won the 2011 Paul Davidoff Award from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning, given for books that promote participatory planning and positive social change. Other titles include “City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty” and, most recently, “Territories of Poverty: Rethinking North and South.”

Roy recently joined an international group of scholars as the co-editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (IJURR), published by Wiley-Blackwell.

Launch of New Center on Inequality and Democracy

In addition to teaching as a professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Roy will serve as the inaugural director of the new Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. The center will be launched with two days of events, Feb. 4-5.

Roy has an ambitious — and still developing — task at UCLA, Luskin and the wider community. At the new institute, based within the Luskin School, she will oversee a multifaceted program of research, training and public scholarship concerned with both the current moment of inequality as well long histories of oppression and marginalization. With research interests ranging from social theory to comparative urban studies, Roy has dedicated much of her scholarship to understanding and analyzing persistent poverty in a prosperous but unequal world.

“The institute’s work is just getting started,” said Roy, but it will be quite different from similar centers and institutes at other universities. Key themes of the institute will be racial justice — and not only in economic terms — and thinking across the global north and south as opposed to focusing only on the U.S. or other countries. And, while the center will seek to “move the policy needle,” Roy said social movements will provide a guide as to how such change can take place.

“We recognize social change happens through the hard work of organizing and mobilizing. We also recognize social movements as producing key ideas, frameworks and approaches for diagnosing the public problems of our times.”

Another goal of the center is to create a space for debate. “I think the point we want to make is that it is necessary to have an intellectual space for debate within the left, within progressive and radical thought and action,” Roy said. “We hope the institute will be such a space. And Los Angeles is the ideal setting for such ambitions.

“It is a great privilege to be able to establish and direct this institute, to do so with a clear mandate for social justice, to do so at one of the world’s great public universities, and in a city that manifests enduring inequalities but is also home to inspiring forms of activism and mobilization.”

To learn more about the new Institute please visit the website at: http://challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/

More about Ananya Roy
Born in Calcutta, India, Ananya Roy earned her bachelor’s degree at Mills College in Oakland, California, and her master’s and doctoral degrees at UC Berkeley. At UCLA Luskin, Roy holds the Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy and faculty appointments in Urban Planning and Social Welfare.

For a look at Professor Roy’s work in critical poverty studies, see #GlobalPOV: http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/GlobalPov/

Recent Findings Concerning Alcohol Abuse and Suicide Policies minimizing harmful alcohol use are essential for suicide prevention.

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By UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs

Recent studies conducted by UCLA professor Mark Kaplan and a team of researchers shed light on the association between alcohol abuse, racial-ethnic demographics, and suicide. The study, funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, reveals patterns between heavy alcohol use immediately prior to suicide with certain demographic groups, notably 43 percent of American Indian/Alaskan Native men and 35 percent of women demonstrated heavy alcohol use (defined as postmortem blood alcohol level at or above .08) at the time of suicide.

Other particularly vulnerable groups (demonstrating high alcohol use prior to suicide) include:

  • Latinos — 30.6 percent of men and 25 percent of women.
  • American Indian/Alaska Native — 43 percent of men and 35 percent of women.
  • White men — demonstrated 24.4 percent rate of heavy alcohol use.

“Using the 2005-11 National Violent Death Reporting System (n=52,276) and the 2001-02 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (n=43,093), we examined odds of heavy alcohol use among suicide decedents relative to living respondents across racial-ethnic groups after stratifying by gender and then adjusting for age and alcohol dependence,” wrote Kaplan, lead author of the study and Social Welfare professor at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The paper “Heavy Alcohol Use Among Suicide Decedents: Differences in Risk Across Racial-Ethnic Groups” appears in the January 2016 online issue of the journal Psychiatric Services published by the American Psychiatric Association and emphasizes the markedly elevated risk of suicide associated with heavy alcohol use across all racial-ethnic groups and especially so for Hispanic women. According to Kaplan and colleagues, “Policies minimizing harmful alcohol use are essential for suicide prevention, particularly for the most vulnerable.”

 

Social Welfare professor receives grant to create center in Watts Jorja Leap awarded a $200,000 two-year funding commitment

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Social Welfare professor Dr. Jorja Leap has been awarded a $200,000 two-year funding commitment from the California Wellness Foundation to create the UCLA Luskin Watts Center for Nonprofit Management. This funding will support the first phase of a ten‐year initiative designed to respond to a critical need for leadership expansion and support within nonprofit agencies. In response to the UCLA Luskin 2013 report, “Spread Thin: Human Services Organizations in Poor Neighborhoods,” the Center represents an effort to develop leadership, fundraising capacity, policy advocacy and communication technology among the small and struggling nonprofit agencies of Watts.

What differentiates the Center’s approach from similar programs is its unique integration of adapted training, mentoring and resource provision through re‐granting. The Center will offer active, ongoing leadership development, focusing on the use of communication technology, fundraising diversification and strategy, as well as expanding knowledge and skills in policy advocacy.

The Center will pair each nonprofit agency participant with a dedicated UCLA coach‐mentor. The coach‐mentor will provide organizational case management and support, along with reinforcing what is learned through trainings and communicated throughout group sessions. The role of the coach‐mentors will include problem‐solving, consultation on adaptation and application to ensure learnings truly apply both to needs and programming in Watts and within the scope of the work the participant is engaged in, along with general support and accountability. In addition, to foster sustainability, coach‐mentors will be building skills in the first cohort of selected individuals, preparing them to mentor subsequent cohorts composed of the next generation of Watts nonprofit leaders.

The Watts Center for Nonprofit Management will launch in January 2016.

 

Urban Planning Alum Patrick Horton Receives Honor Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti congratulated Horton for his service to the public

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Patrick Horton MA Urban Planning ’01 was recently honored for dual civilian and U.S. Coast Guard service at the Chamber of Commerce in his hometown of Temple City. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti congratulated Horton for his service to the public both within the Coast Guard and as a Los Angeles City employee. As a member of the Coast Guard, Lt. Horton serves in maritime law enforcement, search and rescue, and marine wildlife protection as an Executive Officer based in Long Beach. Horton has served three terms as a Temple City Planning Commissioner.

Meet the 2015-2016 class of Luskin Senior Fellows Students and faculty met with Senior Fellows, members of the community that serve as mentors and advisors to UCLA Luskin.

By Adeney Zo
UCLA Luskin Student Writer

Each year a distinguished group of leaders from the public, private, and non-profit sectors is invited to become part of the Luskin School of Public Affairs community.  The Senior Fellows represent a bridge connecting Luskin’s problem-solving academic departments of Public Policy, Social Welfare, and Urban Planning to the real world challenges being faced by community, policy and political leaders at local, regional, and national levels.

“VC actually matched me with my mentor, Stan Hoffman,” said first-year Urban Planning student Riddhi Chakraborty, who looks to enter the field of real estate analysis policy. “His job is so related to what I wanted to do [in the future] that it was perfect.”

In addition, Senior Fellows have been asked to enhance their participation as leadership role models, providing students with a career meeting, a networking experience that includes arranging informational interviews with colleagues, and an invitation to spend a half-day at the business location of each Fellow.

First year Public Policy/ School of Medicine student Adia Scrubb was a former student of her mentor, Dr. David Carlisle. Encouraged by Dr. Carlisle to apply, she hopes to gain more knowledge of the healthcare policy field through the program. “I wanted to gain insider information on the work of a physician in the public policy setting,” said Scrubb.

This year’s annual Senior Fellows breakfast was held on October 29, 2015. The guest speaker was Michele Prichard, Director of Common Agenda for the Liberty Hill Foundation and a graduate of UCLA’s Urban Planning program. In her keynote, Prichard addressed the current issues new policymakers would face once they graduate, but encouraged the Senior Fellows with her three main points: There is no better time than now, no better place than Los Angeles and no better program than Luskin Senior Fellows to prepare students for a future in public affairs.

For photos of the event click here.

Senior Fellows Leadership Program

2015-2016

Randy Barth — Founder and CEO of THINK Together and the Executive Chairman of the Principal’s Exchange.

Kafi Blumenfield — Founding executive director of the Discovery Cube Los Angeles science museum and former Executive Director of Liberty Hill Foundation.

Danielle Brazell — General Manager of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.

Carol Chodroff — Opportunity Youth Director for the Alliance for Children’s Rights.

Rima Cohen — Managing Director for Aspen Health Innovators Fellowship.

Melissa Martinez — U.S. Diplomat in Residence at UCLA (serving Southern California).

Steve Nissen — Senior Vice President of Legal & Government Affairs at NBC Universal.

 

UCLA Luskin Report on Recruiting Homes for Foster Children The report focuses on the dual foster care recruitment system used to develop resource families

The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs has released a report on their analysis of the current process used to recruit and train new families for fostering and adopting children.  These families are referred to as “resource families.”  The report focuses on the dual foster care recruitment system used to develop resource families, one being the system used by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and the other being the system used by private state-licensed foster family agencies (FFAs).  By and large, the families recruited by DCFS become independent state-licensed foster homes, while those recruited by FFAs become certified foster homes providing care under the FFA’s management.  Patricia Curry, a Commissioner on the Los Angeles County Commission for Children and Families, remarks, “This report comes at a crucial time when L.A County is facing a serious shortage of foster homes. Hopefully we can take some of the key findings in the report and use them to guide us in developing a strategy for increasing the number of caring foster parents for children in the child welfare system.”

Seventeen of the 46 FFAs contracted by Los Angeles County agreed to participate in the study, along with DCFS managers involved in the resource family recruitment and training process.  The researchers used surveys and interviews of FFA and DCFS managers to gather their primary data.  Although many families expressed initial interest in participating, only two families fully participated, thus their insights were helpful, but could not be considered representative.  The data collection and analysis approaches were designed to describe each of the major points of the recruitment process and to document the impact of each part of the dual system, with emphasis on identifying areas of need and potential solutions.  The report notes positive aspects of the dual approaches, including the breadth of child-specific recruitment conducted by the County that is consistent with recruitment strategies recommended nationally and implemented in many counties and states.  These approaches include the weekly Wednesday’s Child TV feature on Fox 11 and the traveling and online Heart Gallery LA photo exhibits of children in foster care waiting for adoptive homes.  Like DCFS, FFAs are involved in a number of media campaigns (including television, radio, print and internet) to attract new resource families.  The report also highlights challenges presented by the dual system, including inconsistent information given to resource families regarding approval requirements and benefits.  According to the UCLA researchers, “The Resource Family Recruitment report highlights that there are many opportunities to overcome the challenges of the dual foster care recruitment system, including increased coordination and collaboration among agencies, more consistent quality foster parent training standards, and the creation of information systems capable of identifying and driving system improvements.”

The report was made possible through the financial support of the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation. “Our foundation is committed to supporting LA County and all its partners in ensuring that every child who enters foster care can look forward to being placed with a loving and supportive caregiver,” noted Winnie Wechsler, the foundation’s executive director, “UCLA Luskin School’s report offers some concrete proposals to help ensure that happens.”

Along with helpful charts and graphs representing the effectiveness of outreach efforts, the level of need for foster homes and the demographics of prospective resource parents, the report includes a number of recommendations related to each stage of becoming a resource parent (such as recruitment, training, assessment and approval).  Recommendations include exploring the use of online foster parent orientation, increasing transparency of the assessment and approval process, and improving interagency communication and collaboration.  Philip Browning, Director of DCFS, gives the report positive reviews, stating, “I am thankful to the Anthony and Jeanne Pritzker Family Foundation for funding this report and to the UCLA researchers for their insights and recommendations, which will help us as we move forward with our FFAs to recruit even more high quality families to meet the needs of the children we both serve.”

The full report can be found here.

For additional information, please contact:
Armand Montiel or Neil Zanville, DCFS Public Affairs
(213) 351-5886
amontiel@dcfs.lacounty.gov or zanvin@dcfs.lacounty.gov

Dr. Todd Franke, Professor
Department of Social Welfare
UCLA – Luskin School of Public Affairs
tfranke@ucla.edu

Dr. Robert Blagg, Director of Evaluation
University Consortium for Children & Families (UCCF)
UCLA – Luskin School of Public Affairs
rblagg@luskin.ucla.edu

Inequality is Focus of New Issue of Blueprint Income and wealth inequality is the focus of the newly release issue of Blueprint

By Stan Paul

Income and wealth inequality is the focus of the newly released issue of Blueprint, a UCLA partnership with the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

The second edition is once again led by editor-in-chief, Jim Newton, a 25-year veteran reporter and editor for the Los Angeles Times.

“American inequality decreased in the 1950s, only to explode in the 1970s and ’80s and to expand yet again during the recent recession,” writes Newton in the introduction.

Included in the Fall 2015 “Table Talk” section is an interview with economics Nobel Laureate and former presidential adviser, Joseph Stiglitz, author of the influential 2012 book, The Price of Inequality. Los Angeles Times editorial writer and deputy editorial page editor, Jon Healey, interviewed Stiglitz on subjects ranging from taxes and growth since the great recession to minimum wage and basic fairness.

“…we have become one of the nations among the advanced countries with the least opportunity. In the United States, the life chances of young people are more dependent on the income and education of their parents than in almost any other advanced country,” Stiglitz comments.

Research and profiles by noted journalists and scholars in this second edition include a look at leadership in Los Angeles, the physical suffering of the poor, unequal schools, wages and the middle class, and economic growth. Blueprint’s “Landscape” section includes writing on voter turnout (by Newton) as well as pieces on the working poor and same-sex marriage.

“We are more about conversations, writes Newton, adding, “I hope the pieces contained here will start some of those conversations, as policy makers and others who care about society consider inequality and how it shapes neighborhoods and destinies. Few questions more define our history; few are more important to consider and address.”

A public discussion led by Jim Newton is set for Oct. 21 at the California Endowment in Los Angeles. Scheduled discussants are: former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, Homeboy Industries’ Father Greg Boyle and the California Endowment’s Robert Ross.

For more information and registration, please go to: http://blueprint.ucla.edu/event/public-discussion-thoughtful-l-a-leaders-on-poverty-and-politics/

Read the newly released second edition online at: Blueprint.ucla.edu