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Work Requirements Are Rooted in the History of Slavery

Ife Finch Floyd and Suzanne Wikle
Work requirements—or requiring people to find employment in order to access public benefits—force people to prove that they deserve a social safety net. But where did they come from, and why are they still a central part of economic policy today? 

Criminalization of Homelessness

Eric Tars, Legal Director, National Homelessness Law Center
From vagrancy laws and the workhouses of pre-industrial England to legal segregation, sundown towns, and anti-Okie laws in the U.S., ordinances regulating the use of public space have long been used to exclude marginalized persons based on race, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, and…

Sworn Statement for Declaring Shelter Expenses for SNAP

MLRI
Households applying for SNAP benefits are not required to submit a lease, landlord verification or rent receipt to verify shelter costs. Instead, households can self declare rent, mortgage, and type of utility costs by sending DTA a written statement or providing the information to DTA over the…

The Racial Wealth Divide And Black Homeownership: New Data Show Small Gains, Deep Fragility

Joseph Dean
KEY TAKEAWAYS: Black households had the largest percentage increase of any group in median net worth from 2019 to 2022, up 60% to $44,900. Black wealth gains did not, however, narrow the racial wealth divide to any meaningful degree: A three percentage-point contraction in the Black-White…

The DTA Assistance Line: Information for Clients and Community Organizations

MLRI
MLRI knows that right now it can be very hard to reach DTA by phone. Click here for a list of tips from MLRI on how to get help if you can't get through the DTA Assistance Line.  How do I reach DTA? DTA has one main phone number called the DTA Assistance Line: …

Income and Benefit Standards for SNAP

MLRI
SNAP benefit levels, gross and net income tests, and deductions.

Governor's FY 2025 Budget Proposal: MLRI's Preliminary Analysis of Selected Issues

MLRI
On January 24, 2024, Governor Healey released her budget proposal for fiscal year 2025 (FY 25), which is referred to as House 2. MLRI offers this preliminary analysis of selected budget topics impacting low-income residents of the Commonwealth. Download MLRI's preliminary analysis…

National Trends of School Pushout: Summary of Discipline Data for Girls in U.S. Public Schools, 2011-2018

National Black Women's Justice Institute
A snapshot of national disciplinary trends among girls in public schools broken down by race and ethnicity across four school years between 2011 and 2018.

Why DEI Leaders Are Burning Out — and How Organizations Can Help

Kelly Pledger Weeks, Nicolina Taylor, Alison Hall Birch, Myrtle P. Bell, Anna Nottingham, and Louwanda Evans
Our in-depth interviews with 23 HR and DEI professionals across various industries in the United States offered evidence that the mantle of DEI work is emotionally taxing. These professionals shared vivid accounts of stress and frustration and expressed the need for near-constant emotional…

Answers to Common Bankruptcy Questions

Greater Boston Legal Services and National Consumer Law Center
This brochure was originally prepared by the National Consumer Law Center, and adapted for Massachusetts by Greater Boston Legal Services. View it on the MassLegalHelp website: Answers to Common Bankruptcy Questions What is involved in Filing for Bankruptcy

What Is Marginalization & What Can You Do About It?

Beth Castle
Marginalization, as we currently define it, is the act of relegating someone to an unimportant or powerless position—making them feel, if you will, like they’re the notes squeezed into the margins of society. Scrawled. Practically unreadable. Small. At work, marginalization happens because a…

SNAP 101: Basic Benefits Training (BBT) Materials - January 2024

MLRI
Below are the powerpoints and materials from the January 24, 2024 SNAP training, presented as part of the MLRI/MCLE Basic Benefits Training series. Advocates are also encouraged to review the MLRI SNAP Advocacy Guide also listed below. About the Faculty SNAP 101 Presentation Slides…

Federal Poverty Guidelines - 2024

MLRI
The charts below set forth the annual, monthly and weekly 2024 Federal Poverty Guidelines (based on HHS thresholds).  In addition, the annual, monthly and weekly 115% of poverty, 125% of poverty,  187.5%, 200% of poverty and 300% of poverty amounts are listed. Finally, you can…

Utility Advocacy for Low-Income Households in Massachusetts

MLRI, et. al.
Materials from the January 18, 2024 Utility Advocacy for Low-Income Households in Massachusetts training, presented as part of the MLRI/MCLE Basic Benefits Training Series: Agenda About the faculty Utilities Advocacy for Low-Income Households in Massachusetts (pdf of…

Building Narrative Power

Color of Change
Papers and Presentations Focused on Strategy, Infrastructure & Content for Culture Change and Narrative Change Strategies

Who lives here: Digging deep into Boston's demographics

Simón Rios
More than 650,000 people live in Boston — tiny by comparison to other major cities — but nearly 5 million inhabit the metro area. Boston itself officially became a majority-minority city in 2000, meaning fewer than half of residents identify as “non-Hispanic white.” Latinos, Black and…

Are You Constantly On Guard at Work? You Might Be Experiencing Emotional Tax

Stephanie Olsen
Emotional tax is defined as a psychological burden, usually as a result of being different from those around you in terms of race or gender.  Are you always on high alert, defending and explaining yourself when you really shouldn’t have to? Maybe you hide your true self, trying to deflect…

Race Relations in Mexico- The Color Hierarchy

LibreTexts
Explanation of how racial relations in Mexico have been influenced by the colonial caste system.   Document date unknown.

How Tone Policing is Used to Silence Marginalized People

Nicole Cardoza, Anti-Racism Daily
Tone policing is one of many ways that dominant culture “polices” marginalized people. Either subconsciously (informed by one’s unconscious bias) or intentionally, some people use tone policing to deflect from their own inappropriate misconduct and put the person reacting to their…

Diversity Nudges The transformational power of small changes in attracting, recruiting, and onboarding new employees can deliver a diversity dividend

Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio
Despite their commitments to diversifying their workforces, many companies continue to struggle with attracting, hiring, and retaining employees from underrepresented groups. Achieving workplace diversity is not easy, but leaders can target, address, and nudge specific data points and…

Refugees, Asylum Seekers, and Migrants

Amnesty International
There are many reasons why people around the globe seek to rebuild their lives in a different country. Some people leave home to get a job or an education. Others are forced to flee persecution or human rights violations such as torture. Millions flee from armed conflicts or other crises or…

Settlement: SNAP lawsuit against DTA about use of SNAP out of state

MLRI
  This information is for people who got a notice titled "Notice of Class Action Settlement in SNAP Lawsuit Against the Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA)." These notices were mailed by DTA on July 3, 2023. Click here to see the notice in English.  Para leer esta…

Haitian Immigrants in the United States

Beatrice Dain and Jeanne Batalova
The recent increase in immigration to the United States from Haiti is the latest chapter in a decades-long story of migration in response to an array of disasters and crises. The United States is the world’s top destination for Haitian migrants. The nearly 731,000 Haiti-born U.S. residents are…

White patients are more likely than Black patients to be given opioid medication for pain in US emergency departments

Trevor Thompson and Sofia Stathi
White people who visit hospital emergency departments with pain are 26% more likely than Black people to be given opioid pain medications such as morphine. This was a key finding from our recent study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. We also found that Black patients were…

I studied 1 million home sales in metro Atlanta and found that Black families are being squeezed out of homeownership by corporate investors

Brian Y. An
It turns out that while Wall Street firms control just a sliver of the single-family rental market nationally, they can have much more influence at the local level. In the Atlanta metro area, these firms own nearly one-third of all single-family rental properties. They’re even more…

2023 Upper Income Limits in MassHealth and Health Connector

MLRI & MassHealth
MassHealth updates its income standards with the current year's poverty level on March 1. Attached is MLRI's table showing the upper income levels for MassHealth and Health Connector programs, updated to show the cost of living adjustments for 2023 that take effect in MassHealth…

How to think about race and administrative burdens

Don Moynihan
Administrative burdens limit access to resources and generate negative experiences of government. A related concern is that these burdens reinforce patterns of inequality. Indeed, the first formal guidance the the Biden administration offered on reducing administration burdens was in…

Racial bullying in schools is on the rise — including here in Mass.

Alexis RickmersOren Sellstrom
At a tranquil pond on Cape Cod this summer, a white teenager invoked George Floyd’s name. But it wasn’t to support the Black Lives Matter movement — it was to torment a Black youth, mocking him as his white friend allegedly trying to drown him. Earlier this month, white students at Concord…

Income/Food Benefits and Immigrant Eligibility: Chart on Eligible Statuses

Pat Baker, MLRI & Naomi Meyer, GBLS
Cash and food stamp/SNAP eligibility chart by immigration status for Massachusetts residents.

Five Steps to Build and Sustain Diversity in Your Organization

Keith D. Dorsey
Creating an equitable environment and supporting diverse populations in navigating them are key to sustaining workplace diversity. Organizations can work toward this goal by taking five steps: committing to sponsorship, addressing systemic factors to eliminate glass ceilings, diagnosing “glass…

The Racism Black Kids Endure Is Spiraling Into a Health Crisis

Margo Snipe
Article discussing how new research shows that although racism might not be the most common type of discrimination, it had the greatest impact on teens. For Black kids, that stress is often caused by racism that comes in school settings: from peers, teachers, or administrators

Why Pay Transparency Regulations Are a Strategic Management Opportunity

Tamara Montag-Smit, Karoline Evans, Brandon Smit, and Cassondra Batz-Barbarich
Robust appraisal systems make pay transparency an opportunity to improve performance rather than a compliance burden.     

New MassHealth Unit for Problem Cases

MassHealth
New Escalation Protocol for Problem MassHealth Cases: The Service Solution Unit (SSU) MassHealth is standing up a new process to “escalate” problem MassHealth cases after initial attempts to resolve an issue with MassHealth Customer Service or the MassHealth Enrollment Center or other units…

Vietnamese Immigrants in the United States

Jeanne Batalova
In previous decades, the vast majority of Vietnamese immigrants to the United States arrived as refugees. Recently, most are coming through family reunification channels, either as immediate relatives of U.S. citizens or through other family-sponsored pathways. The change represents an evolution of…

Measuring The Enduring Imprint Of Structural Racism On American Neighborhoods

Zachary Dyer, Matthew J. Alcusky, Sandro Galea, and Arlene Ash
A long history of discriminatory policies in the United States has created disparities in neighborhood resources that shape ethnoracial health inequities today. To quantify these differences, we organized publicly available data on forty-two variables at the census tract level within nine domains…

Latino, Hispanic, Latinx, Chicano: The History Behind the Terms

Yara SIMÓN
The effort to coin a term to describe a wildly diverse group of Americans has long stirred controversy. The terms Latino, Hispanic and Latinx are often used interchangeably to describe a group that makes up about 19 percent of the U.S. population. While it’s now common to use umbrella terms to…

Race Wealth Snapshots

National Community Reinvestment Coalition
Catalog of socioeconomic briefs on racial wealth gaps.

Framework for Evaluating Reformist Reforms vs Abolitionist Steps

UpEND
The questions in this document provide a guide to analyze whether proposed reforms to family policing further entrench the family policing system or move us closer to abolition of family policing. The questions we ask are a reflection of the world we want to build—one without family policing and one…

MassHealth Monitoring Project

MLRI
The mission of MLRI’s MassHealth Monitoring Project is to ensure that everyone on MassHealth keeps their coverage, or moves to other affordable coverage, during the April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024 MassHealth eligibility redetermination process. This website - which includes…

Public Housing Redevelopment Residents' Bill of Rights

Mass Law Reform
The Massachusetts Union of Public Housing Tenants (Mass Union) has worked with its members and the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute has worked with legal services advocates, primarily at Greater Boston Legal Services, to create this Public Housing Redevelopment Residents' Bill of Rights to…

Maternal deaths in the U.S. more than doubled over two decades with Black mothers dying at the highest rate

CBS News
Maternal deaths across the U.S. more than doubled over the course of two decades, and the tragedy unfolded unequally. Black mothers died at the nation's highest rates, while the largest increases in deaths were found in American Indian and Native Alaskan mothers. And some states…

FPP CLA Referral Form for DCF

CLA
Form that DCF workers should fill out to refer clients to CLA's FPP.

GBLS FPP General Intake Form

GBLS
GBLS's FPP intake form

FPP CLA Referral Form for Community

CLA
Referral form to be used by members of the community to refer clients to CLA's FPP

Advancing Racial Equity: Legal Guidance for Advocates

Stephen Menedian
Memorandum has been developed for advocates willing to seek to forthrightly advance racial equity objectives while hewing as closely as possible to prevailing legal constraints and limitations. It also seeks to clarify a few common but unfortunately pervasive misunderstandings that prevail…

There Is No Rung on the Ladder That Protects You From Hate

Brian X. Chen
Asian-Americans are reeling from the killings in Georgia and a rising number of attacks nationwide. Could confronting racism bring solidarity across their class divides?

Digital divide persists even as Americans with lower incomes make gains in tech adoption

Emily A. Vogels, The Pew Institute
Roughly a quarter of adults with household incomes below $30,000 a year (24%) say they don’t own a smartphone. About four-in-ten adults with lower incomes do not have home broadband services (43%) or a desktop or laptop computer (41%). And a majority of Americans with lower incomes are not…

Inclusive Language Resources

Georgetown University Library’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee
Inclusive language is defined as language that "acknowledges diversity, conveys respect to all people, is sensitive to difference and promotes equal opportunity." While language has the power to create bonds and understanding, it often has been used to define differences that marginalize,…

Census Data Maps

Statistical Atlas
From the About section: "StatisticalAtlas.com is a website dedicated to satisfying all your cravings for in-depth statistical data and analysis for all of the US. Get high-level overviews for the entire country, then drill down through 10+ map levels, all the way down to the individual…

Legal Aid Web Accessibility

LSNTAP
From LSNTAP (Legal Services National Technology Assistance Project):   Materials on web accessibility for legal aid