Social Justice

Equality is easy to grasp in theory but often hard to achieve in reality. In this accessible and wide-ranging work, American University law professor Robert L. Tsai offers a stirring account of how legal ideas that aren't necessarily about equality at all - ensuring fair play, behaving reasonably, avoiding cruelty, and protecting free speech - have often been used to overcome resistance to justice and remain vital today.

For decades, the Left has been putting on a play with themselves as heroes in an ongoing civil rights move­ment - which they were mostly absent from at the time. Long after pervasive racial discrimination ended, they kept pretending America was being run by the Klan and that liberals were black America’s only protectors. It took the O. J. Simpson verdict - the race-based acquittal of a spectacularly guilty black celebrity as blacks across America erupted in cheers - to shut down the white guilt bank.

Based on extensive research, Naomi Lawson Jacobs and Emily Richardson have collected prophetic and transformative narratives of experience, shared directly by disabled people who have rarely been enabled to speak in Christian books about disability. By centering disabled Christians’ own stories, this book calls for churches to move from a care-based approach to disability, to one that is focused on justice, equality and access to churches for disabled Christians.

From one of the world's foremost intersex activists, a candid, provocative, and eye-opening memoir of gender identity, self-acceptance, and love. My name is Hida Viloria. I was raised as a girl but discovered at a young age that my body looked different. Having endured an often turbulent home life as a kid, there were many times when I felt scared and alone, especially given my attraction to girls. But unlike most people in the first world who are born intersex - I grew up in the body I was born with because my parents did not have my sex characteristics surgically altered at birth.

Artist, poet, and performer Jezz Chung (they/them) focuses on cultural change through personal transformation. In This Way to Change, Jezz shares contemporary poetry, accessible prose, and healing practices from different therapeutic modalities to explore subjects like healing your inner child, nourishing friendships, decolonizing your thinking, deconstructing binaries, and intentional community-making.

Ida B. Wells is an American icon of truth telling. Born to slaves, she was a pioneer of investigative journalism, a crusader against lynching, and a tireless advocate for suffrage, both for women and for African Americans. She cofounded the NAACP, started the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, and was a leader in the early civil rights movement. This engaging memoir relates Wells’ private life as a mother as well as her public activities as a teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight for equality and justice.

How can we raise happy, well-adjusted kids today amid so much injustice and uncertainty? This is the question at the heart of the progressive parent’s dilemma. Fortunately, award-winning science journalist Kavin Senapathy has the answers. In this lively, accessible exploration of modern parenting, Senapathy guides listeners through the complex cultural, environmental, economic and political issues facing all families today.

Climate Change has become a major topic of debate in today's politics, with some advocating serious changes in policy in response to it, and others suggesting that scientists and politicians are misreading, misrepresenting, and misapplying the data. Elgin Hushbeck, Jr. is not afraid to challenge scientific orthodoxy, and in fact believes it is very important that we do so. In this little book, he gives an introduction to a number of problems that he and others see with the apparent consensus view on this topic.

Preet Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it. Bharara believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, he argues, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws both in our justice system and in human nature. Bharara uses the many illustrative anecdotes and case histories from his storied, formidable career - the successes as well as the failures - to shed light on the realities of the legal system and the consequences of taking action.

Reproductive Justice is a first-of-its-kind primer that provides a comprehensive yet succinct description of the field. Written by two legendary scholar-activists, Reproductive Justice introduces students to an intersectional analysis of race, class, and gender politics. Loretta J. Ross and Rickie Solinger put the lives and lived experience of women of color at the center of the book and use a human rights analysis to show how the discussion around reproductive justice differs significantly from the pro-choice/anti-abortion debates that have long dominated the headlines.

What's Up with White Women? is a practical guide for White women who are interested in becoming more effective in their cross-cultural, anti-racist practices. Blending real-life stories, theory, and anti-racism practices from decades of on-the-ground work, the authors invite White women to understand their gendered role in systemic racism and their unique opportunity for action. White women are positioned in a power hierarchy between White men and BIPOC.

You don't need more money, or time, or even another election cycle to bring transformational change to your community. What you need is to believe that daily microdoses of good over years and years can create a great return. Stop waiting for the big change moment and seize the good that you can do today.

Chief Justice Rehnquist's engaging writing illuminates both the high and low points in the Court's history, from Chief Justice Marshall's dominance of the Court during the early 19th century through the landmark decisions of the Warren Court. Citing cases such as the Dred Scott decision and Roosevelt's Court-packing plan, Rehnquist makes clear that the Court does not operate in a vacuum, that the justices are unavoidably influenced by their surroundings, and that their decisions have real and lasting impacts on our society.

Crimes and violations of the law require punishment, and our legal system is set up to punish, but what if the system was recalibrated to also weigh grounds for forgiveness? What if something like bankruptcy - a fresh start for debtors - were available to people convicted of crimes? Martha Minow explores the complicated intersection of the law, justice, and forgiveness, asking whether the law should encourage people to forgive, and when courts, public officials, and specific laws should forgive.

The night of May 25, 2020 changed America. George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed during an arrest in Minneapolis when a White cop suffocated him. The video of that night’s events went viral, sparking the largest protests in the nation’s history and the sort of social unrest we have not seen since the '60s. While Floyd’s death was certainly the catalyst (heightened by the fact that it occurred during a pandemic whose victims were disproportionately of color), it was in truth the fuse that lit an ever-filling powder keg.

Breathe explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in contemporary America and what it means to parent our children in a persistently unjust world. Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African-American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love.

This audiobook gives youth workers the opportunity to go beyond simply trying to motivate kids to serve those in need and invites them to help their kids wrestle with why those people are in need in the first place. Specific topics that will be addressed include the out-of-the-box-Jesus, the power of repentance, biblically grounded motivations for service, the power of community, as well as how to respond to the poverty, racism, and unequal power relationships.

When Valena Beety first became a federal prosecutor, her goal was to protect victims, especially women, from cycles of violence. What she discovered was that not only did prosecutions often fail to help victims, they frequently relied on false information, forensic fraud, and police and prosecutor misconduct. Seeking change, Beety began working in the Innocence Movement, helping to free factually innocent people through DNA testing and criminal justice reform.

It was a time, much like today, when Americans feared for the future of their democracy, and women stood up for equal treatment. At the crossroads of the Watergate scandal and the women’s movement was a young lawyer named Jill Wine Volner (as she was then known), barely 30 years old and the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called "the mini-skirted lawyer" by the press, she fought to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts - and prevailed.

In Justice Seeker, celebrated social justice activist and veteran educator Lacey Robinson delivers an engaging combination of storytelling and research that explains why justice is something that is happening—or not happening—inside the classroom and within the details of teaching and learning. You'll explore ways to identify and eliminate the shame-inducing pedagogies impacting Black and brown children from classrooms and the world at large.