Charmed by Charm City

Fair pay for college graduates and minimum wage food service employees (referencing previous post) alike. Come on, America.

If you want fries with that, you might want to learn how to make your own. Starting today (July 29) fast food workers will stage strikes across New York City, Chicago, St.

On the day federal legislators let student loan interest rates double, Oregon’s legislators passed a bill to make student loans obsolete.The proposal is really only a tiny, tentative first step in that direction--calling for a committee to decide to create a pilot project--but it’s nonetheless a conjunction of many inspiring rarities: A fresh idea, passed swiftly and unanimously, bringing real progress to increasingly crushing student debt.

It’s not your imagination: cities are getting richer, and suburbs are getting poorer. As a recent Brookings Institute report pointed out, more poor inhabitants of the U.S. live in suburbs than in cities and rural areas. That’s evident from even a cursory look at the Urban Institute’s new maps that look at poverty and race in the U.S. between 1980 and 2010.The maps include dozens of metro areas--everywhere from Abilene, Texas, to Weirton, West Virginia. By and large, the trends are clear: There’s more poverty in the suburbs, and more racial and ethnic diversity in the poor population.

Despite spending $50 billion to audit factories for companies such as Nike, Gap, and others, the system to ensure safe and humane working conditions is still routinely gamed. For factory owners, social auditor visits can be an excuse to slap on cosmetic changes and give workers the day off.

Charlotte Johnson, 61, who lost her home to the Middle East redevelopment and moved into one of the area's new apartment buildings, is less convinced. 'There will be a lot of … whitewashing, but it will never be forgotten,' Johnson said. 'It will always be Middle East at heart.'"

Beautiful post on good.is about international refugees, their transition to life in America, and the International Rescue Committee written by MASD's very own, Becky Chen!

Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Happy Earth Day!

  Please join us for MASD's Opening Reception! There will be lots of people, light food/refreshments, and of course amazing work from the MA in Social Design students. The show will be in the Pinkard Gallery in the Bunting Center on MICA's main campus. Featuring:  Amanda Allen, Mira Azarm, Becky Chen, Jonathan Erwin, Cinnamon Janzer, Sharon Kong, Hee Jin Suh and Lauren Weinstein Gallery Hours:  Monday-Saturday: 10:00 am -5:00 pm  Sunday: 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm  Closed major holidays The show will be open through May 2. For more information about the M.A. in Social Design, visit www.micasocialstudio.com

Paulo Friere

The Food Chains trailer by documentary filmmaker, Sanjay Rawal, addresses the important issue of American agricultural labor. It is compelling, shocking, and relevant to pretty much anyone who eats food.

If we can carefully observe the progress of an implemented project, we then have the opportunity to make improvements along the way, which can likely reduce the impact or slow the momentum of a failing project's trajectory (rather than simply evaluating at the end and finding surprising disaapointment). This is another imperative reason why constant critique, evaluation, measurement, collaboration with community, and commitment are crucial throughout the duration of these types of projects. Benjamin writes, "Sadly, however, not everybody wants to measure impact with great accuracy and not everybody wants to see the results. “Politicians don’t like their brilliant ideas being put to the test,” explained Ben Goldacre, a researcher in the U.K. working on public policy trials." Hopefully this is an attitude that can be transformed, and we can learn to see measuring impact as an asset for assisting us in reaching our paramount goal: positive, meaningful, relevant, sustainable, wanted, and needed social change.