Chun-Chih holding Arthur with Sebastian walking along the trail. August, 2000

Community Organizing and Social Work Policy Web Resources

Radical Sources:

• Z Magazine
• Pacifica Radio
• The Nation
• In These Times
• The Progressive
• Mother Jones
• New Internationalist

General Organizing

1. For labor organizing, you can see what the AFL-CIO is saying and promoting. If you are interested, you can sign up for updates from the AFL-CIO Working America.
2. Applied Research Center can help with racial justice issues through research, advocacy, and journalism.
3. The Center for Community Change tries to support leaders in grassroots community organizations in low-income or minority communities.
4. If you're interested in economic growth and methods of organizing centered on helping the manufacturing sector of a local economy you might find help from the Center for Labor and Community Research.
5. If you want to know who is donating what amounts of money to which political campaigns, you can find out by looking up public information about campaign contributions made available at the Open Secrets website from the Center for Responsive Politics.
6. Citizens for Tax Justice is an organization that says it is dedicated to fair taxation.
7. Families USA is a voice for health care consumers.
8. The Midwest Academy offers training for community organizers.
9. Boardsource is a group that tries to help non-profit corporations improve their advisory boards.
10. The National Organizers Alliance is a sort of professional organization for community organizers.
11. If you're interested in housing issues, you should be familiar with the National Housing Institute.
12. If you're concerned about wealth and income inequalities, you should be paying attention to UFE (United for a Fair Economy).

Advocacy and "Making a Difference" Sites Suggested by Nancy Amidei

1. Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation
2. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
3. National Conference of State Legislatures
4. OMB Watch
5. Alliance for Justice
6. Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest
7. Council on Foundations
8. Independent Sector
9. National Council of Nonprofits
10. National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy
11. CREDO action (a Working Assets publication)
12. Institute for Sustainable Communities
13. The On-Line Conference on Community Organizing (COMM-ORG)
14. League of Women Voters (Vote 411)
15. E-thepeople
16. Idealist
17. Internal Revenue Service charities website
18. Non Profit Action
19. One World
20. Organizers' Collaborative
21. SPIN Project
22. Virginia Organizing Project
23. Volunteer Match

Religion and Social Work:

• American Friends Service Committee is well-worth checking out. You might find the Robert Cray music video for "Twenty" inspiring. The AFSC has been active in peace issues for many years. Peace issues were once very important in social work. Jane Addams, for example, won the Noble Peace Prize in 1931.
• More information about Jane Addams.
• The Christian Coalition is a large and powerful organization. It's politics are opposed to the agendas of most of the other groups listed here.
• The Joseph and Matthew Payton Philanthropic Studies Library holds materials related to religion and philanthropy.
• The North American Association of Christians in Social Work is one of our religious-oriented professional organizations.
• The Swarthmore College Peace Collection is another site with some papers related to peace activities and religion.
• You might enjoy reading "There's Enough Poor to Go Around" at the Bamboo Project Blog.
• The Poverty News Blog and the Anti-Poverty Blog.
• Christian blog about ending child poverty.
• Living Water International and Living Waters International.

Policy Sources for social workers in Illinois.

• Social Welfare Policy class blog.
• The Capitol Fax Blog.
• The Illinois General Assembly webpage
• The NASW Advocacy in Illinois
• The Center for Law and Social Policy
• The National Center for Law and Economic Justice
• The Care Community (the second incarnation of this site) is like Facebook or Myspace except it's all about progressive causes like poverty, the environment, green living, and so forth. You can meet social work students and social workers here.
• Some more stuff from NASW about social workers and advocacy.
• The New Social Worker. (An online site for social workers).
• White House website
• The House and Senate
• Check out the American Public Human Services Association.
• The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Economics Websites:

• The Big Picture has a perspective on macroeconomic conditions.
• The RGE Monitor is one of the best economics web sites you can find.
• The Planet Money Blog and podcast is a source that presents economics news in a way that people without much of a background in economics will appreciate.
• One of the very conservative blogs that argue against all sorts of public spending is the Adam Smith blog.
• Another blog to read so you understand the mentality and ideology that opposes most forms of public welfare spending is Gary Becker's blog.
• And one more conservative economics blog is winterspeak.
• For pure fun, try the Freakonomics blog at the New York Times.
• Paul Krugman also has a blog at the New York Times, called Conscience of a Liberal.
• Brad DeLong maintains a good liberal economics blog called "Grasping Reality with Both Hands".
• The Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall is pretty popular among liberal and radical web policy enthusiasts, but its not really a blog that limits itself to policy and economics.
• James K. Galbraith (yes, he's the son of John), writes so frequently for various periodicals that the list of "news" and "analysis and commentary" at his home page can be used like a blog.
• William Easterly's Aid Watch blog is all about development aid.
• The afl-cio now blog for a labor union perspective.
• Clawback, a blog of Good Jobs First offers another radical perspective.

Housing Issues

• The Illinois Housing Development Authority has good information.
• One activists' group for housing is the Housing Action Illinois.
• Nationally, the National Alliance to End Homelessness is well-known.
• So is the National Coalition for the Homeless.
• The National Community Development Association is worth investigating.
• Check out the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development website for users.
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development official website.

Politics

• Dick Durbin's official Senate webpage.
• Rich Brauer's official Illinois General Assembly website.
• Larry K. Bomke's official Illinois Senate website.
• The Illinois General Assembly.
• The Illinois Chapter of NASW.
• Thomas, legislative information from Washington, DC.
• Center for Public Policy Priorities. A good, fact-based think-tank.
• The Government Accountability Office. The investigative arm of Congress.
• Industrial Areas Foundation.
• Open Democracy.

Civil Rights

• Key Civil Rights U.S. Supreme Court Decisions.
• Milestones in Civil Rights from the Eyes on the Prize documentary
• One of the best books on race relations and attitudes in today's America is Racial Attitudes in America by Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence D. Bobo, and Maria Krysan.
• The Hamilton College poll on racial attitudes (from 1999).
• NAACP
• NOW
• The Urban Institute
• The African-American Mosaic
• The Geneseo Migrant Center
• InMotion Magazine

Women's Issues

1. International Women's Day!
2. The National Organization for Women.
3. The Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
4. UNICEF's page on gender equality, which has links to several reports and multimedia items.
5. Federal publications and other documents related to the work of the Glass Ceiling Commission (1991-1996), or download and read the actual Glass Ceiling report (pdf 6.05 MB).
6. Weblog of the Break the Glass Ceiling Foundation.
7. Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).
8. The No-Dowry Society and other information from India about women's rights there.
9. Maternal mortality rates (women dying because of complications with pregnancy or giving birth) are explored by Nasr Abdalla Mohamed and Clara Menendez.
10. Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey.
11. inMotion website (Justice for All Women)
12. The Center for Gender and Refugee Studies.
13. The Tahirih Justice Center. (who was Tahirih?) (Some of her poetry.)

Aging

1. The American Association of Retired Persons.
2. The AARP website on policy & research for professionals in aging.
3. The Grey Panthers. This is a group that many students find appealing.
4. The Illinois Department on Aging.
5. The Area Agency on Aging for Lincolnland.
6. The University of Illinois Extension webpage on Elder Abuse & Neglect.
7. Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services Nursing Home page.
8. Illinois Council on Long Term Care Glossary page.
9. Levin & Perconti (lawyers) have a blog about nursing home abuse in Illinois.
10. The Medicare website.
11. U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Medicare & Medicaid page.
12. Social Security Online.

Mental Health

1. The NIMH website is the place to start.
2. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a good page about developmental disabilities.
3. The National Alliance on Mental Illness.
4. This study of the relationship (lack of one) between substance abuse and receiving disability assistance among homeless persons with mental illness.
5. Definitions and eligibility processes related to SSDI are explained in this 1991 paper written by Michele Adler for what is now known as the Office of Disability, Aging and Long-Term Care Policy.
6. Statistical snapshot of Social Security benefits, including the Supplemental Security Income and Disabled Workers Benefits.
7. Disability information for Illinois.
8. Disability application starter kits.
9. A fifteen page flowchart showing the processing of SSDI applications (pdf).
10. The Arc.
11. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law.
12. National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities (NADDC).
13. National Mental Health Association.
14. A very good article from the Oregon State Extension (my parents are Oregon State Graduates) about disability and chronic poverty in Oregon.
15. Disability, Poverty and Development (pdf) report (published in 2000) from the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom. This is an excellent report.
16. An excellent historical perspective on how people have understood mental retardation (by Biasini, Grupe, Huffman, & Bray).
17. The Cope Care Deal mental health website for teens.
18. If you go into mental health social work, you will want to read books such as Treating and Preventing Adolescent Mental Health Disorders, the DSM-IV, (which will be replaced someday by the DSM-V), and study materials available at the American Psychiatric Association's website.
19. The Cochrane Collaboration is the world's clearinghouse on information about studies of what works for medical disorders, and they have a good section on mood disorder treatments.

Child Welfare

1. The Women's and Children's Health Policy Center has a compilation of programs for children.
2. The Administration for Children and Families (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) has a page for statistics and research related to adoption, foster care, and child maltreatment. They also have a page on policy and planning.
3. A Summary of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act: Public Law 96-272 by Susan Collins, posted at the NYS Citizens' Coalition for Children, 2003 conference.
4. Child Abuse Prevention Network.
5. Children's Defense Fund.
6. Child Welfare League of America.
7. Child Welfare Institute.
8. Child Welfare Information Gateway.
9. National Resource Center for Child Protective Services.
10. CYFERnet (Children, Youth and Families Education and Research Network).
11. The 40 Developmental Assets from the Search Institute.
12. Voices for Illinois Children.
13. Voices for America's Children
14. Prevent Child Abuse Illinois.
15. Joe Ryan's evidence from Illinois that maltreated children are more likely to engage in delinquient behavior.
16. Foster Care vs. Family Preservation. An example of a biased and misleading position paper attacking foster care that nevertheless contains several interesting and accurate facts. This is a paper by a conservative group that supports parental rights and opposes the the state removing children from families. The point to remember (correctly argued in this flawed paper) is that there are times when it is better to work for family preservation rather than termination of parental rights, and removing a child from an abusive or neglecting household doesn't automatically save the child, as there are significant risks to children in the foster care or state custody systems.
17. The case of Katherine McCarron.
18. Evidence Based Practice Tool from the Results Oriented Management in Child Welfare site at the University of Kansas. The six links near the top of the main section are worth exploring, as are the four links at the bottom of the main section.
19. Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS).
20. List of Programs from Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Springfield, Illinois. Many of the services are related to adoption and child welfare.

Crime

1. American Correctional Association and their Corrections Connetion.
2. The CNN crime story page, with a mix of stories related to crime issues.
3. Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics.
4. Death Penalty Information Center.
5. Downsate Illinois Innocence Project at UIS.
6. Illinois Department of Corrections Victim Services.
7. The FBI.
8. The Federal Bureau of Prisons.
9. National Archive of Criminal Justice Data.
10. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
11. Youth Violence: A Report of the Surgeon General. (2001).
12. Community Oriented Policing Services.
13. Crime and the natural environment? Maybe there is a link.
14. Information for a social work response to victims of crime.
15. A Report from 1997 on what works to prevent crime.
16. A report on Boston's success in decreasing youth gun violence in the 1990s.
17. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention page about violence prevention.
18. The United Nations study of violence against children (from 2006).
19. The World Health Organization's study of Violence and Health (2002).

Health Care

1. Families USA.
2. The Milbank Quarterly.
3. The National Coalition on Health Care.
4. The Urban Institute.
5. NASW's Social Work Blog.
6. Physicians for a National Health Program.
7. The Heritage Foundation (conservative).
8. The American Enterprise Institute (moderate conservative).
9. The Brookings Institute (moderate liberal).
10. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (liberal).
11. John R. Battista (MD) and Justine McCabe (PhD) gave this talk to Green Party members in Connecticut outlining their case for a single-payer universal health care system.
12. The World Health Organization (WHO).
13. The Department of Health and Human Services.
14. Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services.
15. Illinois Department of Public Health.
16. The National Center for Health Statistics.
17. The California Senate Bill 840 is described here.
18. SCHIP Policy as explained at the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
19. An explanation of Medicare Part B.

International Aid and Poverty Reduction

1. Aid Watch
2. CHF International
3. Peace Corps
4. World Bank
5. United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
6. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
7. Oxfam
8. Heifer Interational
9. Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres)

Sources of information

1. The Center for Public Integrity
2. ProPublica. Journalism in the Public Interest
3. Vote Smart

Sources for other interests

Hadley-Ives Work Related Links
Hadley-Ives Personal Links