Category: economic justice

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Civil Rights economic justice Homelessness Poverty Social Justice

Who Are Those Living In Homelessness in Cincinnati?

buddy gray
buddy gray, the founder of the Cincinnati Homeless Coalition.

Hamilton County, Ohio, home of Cincinnati, is seeking to ban homeless camps from its county. Its District Attorney argues that the homeless must go into shelters or leave the county.
I spent about twenty months as a live-in, full-time volunteer in a homeless shelter, which was an opportunity that brought me to Cincinnati in the summer of 2014. During that time, I lived as a Catholic Worker, a movement founded by Dorothy Day in the 1930s whose proponents devote their lives to fighting injustice, poverty, and violence. My time there informed my understanding of the plight of those living in homelessness and who it is that makes up that population.

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Grace Place, the homeless shelter in Cincinnati’s College Hill neighborhood where the author served for about two years.
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Civil Rights economic justice Immigration LGBTQ Rights religious freedom Supreme Court

Gays, Bans, and Unions: The Supreme Court’s Eventful Summer

Nikita Srivastava (’19)

2018.06.04_SCOTUS_Rally,_Masterpiece_Cake_Case,_Washington,_DC_USA_02750_(41662234545)The Summer of 2018 gave Americans unpredictable weather, new celebrity romances, and, of course, a lot of Supreme Court decisions. After months of waiting, the Supreme Court released three opinions that will greatly effect American History. These are the major cases that caught American’s attention: Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Trump v, Hawaii, and Janus v. American Federation of State County, and Municipal Employees.

The Supreme Court of the United States in Masterpiece v. Colorado ruled 7-2 in favor of the Colorado Baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. However, the Court made a narrow decision leaving room open for a larger question: whether businesses can discriminate against gay individuals based on the rights protected in the First Amendment.

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economic justice Feminism Gender Equality Gender Wage Gap student leaders Women in the Law work-family

Women Negotiating Like Pros

UC Law Women teaches women how to fight the gender wage by giving its members the necessary negotiating techniques. 

Nikita Srivastava (’19)

aaron
Professor Marjorie Aaron. Image from UC Law Faculty Website

UC Law Women hosted a Salary Negotiation Event on March 21, 2018. As a group, UCLW wanted to provide a tool its members could use to fix gender related issues. For this event, UCLW focused on backlash women face when negotiating their salaries.

Professor Marjorie Aaron was the guest lecturer who crafted a presentation that focused on her work in negotiations and her own experience. She has not only participated in many negotiations herself, but also has written several scholarly articles on the topic including one about gender and negotiations. Professor Aaron delivered an interactive lecture that engaged in the students’ interests. The lecture started with general negotiation techniques that men and women could all use also known as gender-neutral techniques. These included: not disclosing what you want from a firm; not disclosing your information; learning about the firm; use anchoring; and do not overshoot.

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child care economic justice Gender-based discrimination Intersectionality Race Discrimination work-family

History Lessons: Women of Color and Work-Family Conflicts

jocelynfrye_600x900Guest Contributor: Jocelyn C. Frye, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

Author Toni Morrison once wrote, “If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”  Her words are a reminder that there is value in each woman’s unwritten story, and we are all empowered to write our own narratives.  Morrison’s charge is particularly timely in the present-day conversation about women, work, and family where incomplete soundbites too often substitute for  richer discussion about the diversity of women’s experiences and the history they bring to the table. This problem is especially acute when it comes to the discourse around work-family issues.

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economic justice Intersectionality

Breaking the Debt Cycle: CFPB Targets Payday Lending

I need[ed] some money ASAP.  So I called my Mom.

“Mom, I need some money!”

And, she’s like, “No, why don’t you just go ahead and get a pay day loan?”

“What’s that”? 

“You just borrow some money from them and then you pay them back once you get your money on payday.”

I said, “Oh, okay sure.” So I do it, I get my little pay day loan.

This excerpt from a community-based research project involving UC Law Professors Emily Houh and Kristin Kalsem, and Public Allies Cincinnati shows how easy borrowing money can be.  The dialogue is from a “zine,” a small black and white publication that graphically depicted interviews about payday lending, a financial resource relied upon primarily by low-income communities of color.

Almost 30% of Americans don’t have banks, or, if they have them, rely heavily on alternative financial systems like payday loans, rent-to-to-own, or car title loans to make ends meet. Most do so because they don’t believe they have enough money to open a bank account. In addition, these banking alternatives are easy to use and conveniently located.

But these pluses come with significant minuses.

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