scholarly journals Rural Social Safety Nets for Migrant Farmworkers in Michigan, 1942–1971

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Emily Prifogle

ABSTRACT In the 1960s, farmers pressed trespass charges against aid workers providing assistance to agricultural laborers living on the farmers’ private property. Some of the first court decisions to address these types of trespass, such as the well-known and frequently taught State v. Shack (1971), limited the property rights of farmers and enabled aid workers to enter camps where migrants lived. Yet there was a world before Shack, a world in which farmers welcomed onto their land rural religious groups, staffed largely by women from the local community, who provided services to migrant workers. From the 1940s through the 1960s, federal, state, and local law left large gaps in labor protections and government services for migrant agricultural laborers in Michigan. In response, church women created rural safety nets that mobilized local generosity and provided aid. This article uses Michigan as a case study to argue that these informal safety nets also policed migrant morality, maintained rural segregation, and performed surveillance of community outsiders, thereby serving the farmers’ goals of having a reliable and cheap labor force—ultimately strengthening the economic and legal structures that left agricultural workers vulnerable.

2020 ◽  
pp. 001872671989946 ◽  
Author(s):  
James M Vardaman ◽  
John M Amis ◽  
Paul M Wright ◽  
Ben P Dyson

Childhood obesity remains one of the defining challenges of our time, with government response around the world being largely ineffective. This has been particularly the case in the USA, which continues to suffer high rates of childhood obesity despite numerous legislative interventions to combat it. In order to develop insight into this ongoing catastrophic change failure, we engaged in a three-year qualitative study of the implementation of policies in the USA designed to reduce childhood obesity through school-based interventions. We found that leaders in schools, as in many organizations, were faced with numerous, often conflicting, pressures from federal, state, and local community stakeholders. The resultant ambivalence led to change failure being reframed as success to in order to fit with locally expressed priorities. In bringing light to an understudied aspect of change implementation, local community pressure, we further theoretical understanding of why large change interventions often fail. We also offer insights more generally into the (re)framing of change and the influence of local communities on organizations. Policy and managerial implications are also discussed.


2001 ◽  
Vol 43 (9) ◽  
pp. 29-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Tennant ◽  
J. Sheed

Historically within most catchments, resource management programs have been planned and implemented in isolation of one another. This was once the case in the Goulburn Broken Catchment, a major catchment of the Murray Darling Basin, Australia. Although only 2% of the Murray Darling Basin's land area, the catchment generates 11% of the basin's water resources. Learning from the past, a cooperative and collaborative approach to natural resource programs has developed. This approach is the envy of many other catchment communities and agencies. Through a combination of “Partnership Programs”, “Operational Initiatives” and community involvement, significant programs have been implemented within the catchment, which will benefit not only the local community but communities further afield. The outcomes of the waterway health program highlight the benefits provided through the establishment of cooperative and partnership resource improvement programs. These programs were founded on the ability of the community to recognise the need for integration, base management decisions on best available science and an ability to work together. Their effective delivery has been provided through the resources provided, to the local community, by the Natural Heritage Trust with matching and State and local allocations. While programs have shown success, challenges still face the community. These challenges include verification and implementation of environmental flows, storage of the catchment's vital water resources, and maintaining community involvement and participation in on-going works programs. The Goulburn Broken Catchment community, with the support of Federal, State and Local Governments, is looking at opportunities for continued improvements in waterway health.


1974 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
William G. Lesher ◽  
Harry P. Mapp

“Give the government back to the people,” a popular phrase in recent months, exemplifies the concern over the proper role of the federal, state and local units of government in providing and financing public services. Constituents are frustrated by bureaucratic programs, frequently insensitive to local needs, that are initiated at higher levels of government. They are equally frustrated by the inability of units of local government to initiate and finance programs designed to satisfy the needs of the local community.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-98
Author(s):  
Alex Tabor

In 1970, citizens of New Castle, Pennsylvania, a small industrial city an hour north of Pittsburgh, responded to the racially motivated murder of a local black Vietnam veteran in that city with vandalism and firebombing that forced the mayor to place the city under a state of emergency for three days. The series of exchanges preceding and following the murder reveals much about that city's history, and how several factors influenced local forms of racism. Existing scholarship has focused on racialized policies and practices in two spatial extremes—large cities and small towns—while this analysis seeks to illustrate how local, regional, and national influences shaped what forms of race-based policies and practices in spaces between these municipal extremes were permissible. Beyond place and space, this research contributes to a different set of conversations about the ways identity and community are articulated through the actions of individuals and groups, and how those understandings are shaped by individual and collective memory. This analysis begins by situating Ronald Mitchell's murder within the historical context of 1970s New Castle, broadens to place New Castle amid much larger and smaller municipalities across the country, and briefly contours some historical forces that shaped racism in policy or practice across time. I illustrate how federal, state, and local authorities responded to crises comparable to that which occurred in response to Mitchell's murder in the 1960s, and highlight how the underlying causes identified during investigations by those bodies manifested throughout the city's history and at the scene of Mitchell's murder. I also explore the role of institutions and memory in shaping knowledge and use of the past and build upon earlier scholarship in asserting their centrality to equitable futures.


1983 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara W. Travers

This paper presents strategies for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the school-based speech-language pathologist. Various time management strategies are adapted and outlined for three major areas of concern: using time, organizing the work area, and managing paper work. It is suggested that the use of such methods will aid the speech-language pathologist in coping with federal, state, and local regulations while continuing to provide quality therapeutic services.


Commonwealth ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennie Sweet-Cushman ◽  
Ashley Harden

For many families across Pennsylvania, child care is an ever-present concern. Since the 1970s, when Richard Nixon vetoed a national childcare program, child care has received little time in the policy spotlight. Instead, funding for child care in the United States now comes from a mixture of federal, state, and local programs that do not help all families. This article explores childcare options available to families in the state of Pennsylvania and highlights gaps in the current system. Specifically, we examine the state of child care available to families in the Commonwealth in terms of quality, accessibility, flexibility, and affordability. We also incorporate survey data from a nonrepresentative sample of registered Pennsylvania voters conducted by the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics. As these results support the need for improvements in the current childcare system, we discuss recommendations for the future.


2000 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
James S. Wunsch

The political revolution of contemporary Africa has so far largely been limited to the centre and to re-establishing the same institutional forms and processes which failed Africa in the 1960s. These regimes are already showing signs of erosion. This problem can be understood through the theory of public goods. Key collective or ‘public’ goods problems impede the collective action necessary for institutional development. Top-down strategies cannot surmount these problems because they cannot integrate and unify the population or structure consensual and sustained collective action.As currently constituted, national levels of government in Africa will be poor partners with local communities in development, be it of democracy or of the economy. In many cases, national regimes only exist at all because minimal contributing sets or political monopolists controlled, were given, or mobilised the resources to establish constituting rule systems which they used to sustain their existing relative advantages during the break-up of imperial systems. As this advantage is usually at the expense of the majority which lives outside the capitals, resources and policies to improve these areas are slow in coming. The slow, bottom-up process by which a true public constitution is built, one which reflects and elaborates generally held values, is built on existing political relationships, and protects social diversity, has never been allowed to develop.Refounding the African state must resolve these problems if it is to succeed. Ethnically and religiously diverse peoples will rule themselves better under federal and consociational systems which give local leaders space to lead local institutional development, authority to play a role in national governance, a process to develop consensus on central policy and to check the centre when there is no consensus. This requires a foundation of viable, real, developed structures of local governance if it is to succeed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Jeavons

There are serious gaps in our knowledge and understanding of how public policy at the federal, state, and local levels affects the work of a wide array of nonprofit organizations. On October 4th and 5th, 2010, the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Organizations (ARNOVA), with the support and encouragement of the Bill and Melinda Gates, Kresge and C.S. Mott foundations, convened a group of thirty nonprofit scholars and leaders to explore what we know about the impact of public policy on the nonprofit sector. The conference focused on how public policy helps or harms the ability of nonprofit organizations, particularly but not exclusively public charities, to fulfill their missions.


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