The Structure of Inequity and Racism in the US
Fig 1. Core structure in the US The causal feedback structure above is the primary driver of inequities in the US. This is the central feedback loop for families in the US. We can start...
A Warning from Madeleine Albright
One of my book groups recently read Madeliene Albright’s book, Fascism: A Warning. It was published in 2018, though much of it written before Donald Trump was elected to the presidency. While it didn’t succinctly...
Respect – What We Mean
Respecting the dignity of every human being also means for me that a person’s inherent value has nothing to do with his or her assets, bank accounts, property, color of their skin, race, religion, work,...
Surprise, surprise
The election was (partly) about money
Educated enough to be comfortable. Comfortable enough to care more about decency than money. I was as surprised as anyone about the outcome of the election. I should have seen the clues. I’m from rural...
Laws and Practices –
Unequal Advantages
In a recent meeting held by SURJ-Boston (Stand Up for Racial Justice) and the Boston Anti-Racism Knapsack group, we talked about all the laws and practices that have led to structural racism throughout our history. This is the list...
Incarceration & Health – Part IV Profits and Investment
Systems thinking tools focus on cause and effect relationships that together drive the behavior of things we care about over time. Profits are just one of those things. This blog is part four in a...
Incarceration & Health – Part III The Racial Divide
This blog is part three in a several part series on Incarceration & Health. Here are links to the two previous blogs in this series: Part I: A Lifelong Sentence Part II: Families Repeating Patterns...
Incarceration & Health – Part II Families Repeating Patterns
In February 2016, at the request of the Minnesota Dept. of Health, a diverse group of about 30 people met in Minnesota to talk about the relationships between incarceration and health. In the previous blog, Part...
Incarceration & Health – Part I
In February 2016, I traveled with some ReThink Health colleagues to St. Paul Minnesota where Jeanne Ayer, the Assistant Commissioner of the Department of Health, and Dana Farley had convened about ~30 people to talk about the...