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MassHealth Renewal: What's in the blue envelope for people under 65?

MasHealth
MassHealth is in the process of renewing eligibility for all its 2.4 million members during the one year period from April 1, 2023 to March 31, 2024. If eligibility can't be renewed through data matching, beneficiaries will be sent a blue envelope with a notice dated April 1, 2023 or later to be…

TakeRoot

https://takerootjustice.org/
TakeRoot Justice provides legal, participatory research and policy support to strengthen the work of grassroots and community-based groups in New York City to dismantle racial, economic and social oppression.  TakeRoot Justice employs a unique model of partnership with grassroots and…

Senate Ways and Means FY 2024 Budget Proposal: MLRI's Preliminary Analysis of Selected Issues

MLRI
On May 9, 2023, the Senate Committee on Ways and Means released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2024 (FY 24), which is referred to as Senate 3.  MLRI offers this preliminary analysis of selected budget topics affecting low-income residents of the Commonwealth.   Download…

Contact Information for Massachusetts Legislature (state senators and representatives)

MLRI
Room numbers and telephone numbers for Massachusetts state representatives and state senators.  Updated April 2023.  Click on the attachement below download a document which has all the contact information for both representatives and senators. Or, go to the Massachusetts…

House Ways and Means FY 2024 Budget Proposal: MLRI's Preliminary Analysis of Selected Issues

MLRI
On April 12, 2023, the House Committee on Ways and Means released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2024 (FY 24), which is referred to as House 3900.  MLRI offers this preliminary analysis of selected budget topics affecting low-income residents of the Commonwealth.  This analysis…

Why We Should Stop Saying “Underrepresented”

N. Chloé Nwangwu
Now, folks use the term “underrepresented” instead. It may feel like the safest option among the minefield of language and politics we all traverse, but I’d argue the term — for all its seeming inoffensiveness — is not just deeply harmful, it’s inaccurate. As an equity-informed brand…

When Black People Try to Make Progress, Backlash Is Quick to Follow

Allison Wiltz
From the article: "Black Americans are often treated like second-class citizens in a nation they helped to build. Yet, for those unacquainted with the nation's history of racial discrimination, it may be unclear why this racial hierarchy remains intact over a century and a half after the…

Study reveals bias in drug testing pregnant patients

Arielle Dreher
Pregnant Black patients were drug tested more often than white patients before delivery, a JAMA Health Forum analysis of patients in a large Pennsylvania health system from March 2018 to June 2021 found. Black patients were no more likely to test positive for using substances while…

Language Access for CLAVC

  On April 12th, 2023 MLRI's state-wide Language Access attorney, Iris Coloma-Gaines, lead a CLAVC training on Language Access in the Massachusetts Trial Court and beyond. The slides used in the training are attached.  A video of the presentation can be viewed…

MassHealth Managed Care Options in 2023

Various
On April 1, 2023 MassHealth members subject to mandatory managed care will have a new set of managed care options. These changes do not apply to people 65 or over or Medicare beneficiaries with voluntary managed options in SCO or One Care, or to other MassHealth members with MassHealth secondary to…

Systems Thinking

Racial Equity Tools
Systems thinking can help people understand why changes in multiple sectors are necessary to make genuinely sustainable progress towards racial equity in particular spheres such as education, health, or economic security. It can thus help identify both entry points for change and links among those…

The Ghosts of Housing Discrimination Reach Beyond Redlining

Urban Institute
Over the last few years, as public attention has focused on disparities caused by structural racism embedded in policy and practice throughout United States history, redlining has emerged as an  illustrative policy of structural barriers to homeownership and wealth-building…

Frequently Requested Statistics on Immigrants and Immigration in the United States

Nicole Ward and Jeanne Batalova, Migration Immigration Policy
This Spotlight offers information about the approximately 45.3 million immigrants in the United States as of 2021, by compiling the most authoritative and current data available. It provides an overview of historic immigration trends in the United States, sociodemographic information about who is…

It’s Not Irony, it’s Interest Convergence: A CRT Perspective on Racism as Public Health Crisis Statements

Racism as a Public Health Crisis Statements (RPHCs) acknowledge the reality that racism must be eradicated to ensure health justice: a fair and just opportunity for all individuals to be healthy. Scholars of critical race theory (CRT) have expressed doubt when it comes to the capacity of law-related…

Implicit Bias Module Series

Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
Free online training modules on implicit bias.

Governor's FY 2024 Budget Proposal: MLRI's Preliminary Analysis of Selected Issues

MLRI
On March 1, 2023, Governor Healey released her budget proposal for fiscal year 2024 (FY 24), which is referred to as House 1. MLRI offers this preliminary analysis of selected budget topics impacting low-income residents of the Commonwealth. Download MLRI's preliminary analysis…

DEI: Small, Practical Steps for Major Impact

Jessica Caspe, Esq., Employment Practices Solutions
Article provides three action items any business can take to create a more inclusive organization.  For small or medium-sized organizations with limited resources to dedicate to DEI efforts, determining how to meaningfully create a more inclusive work environment can be daunting.…

Racism takes a toll on the brain, research shows

Richard Sima
Article about how the chronic stress of structural racism and discrimination damages brain circuits and mental health.

No Coincidence: Black Family Separations Then and Now

upEND
The family policing system currently separates over 200,000 children from their families annually.  Black children make up a disproportionate amount of those who experience family separations. Many of these children will never be reunited with their families due to their parents’ loss of…

112 Ways to Show Your Commitment to Dei Beyond Your Hiring Practices

Rolling Stone Culture Council
Rolling Stone shares insights from its own Rolling Stone Culture Council to encourage readers to place DEI into practice in every facet of their company culture and operations. I appreciate this type of editorial; it’s an example of how organizations can demonstrate they’re walking the…

Black Families Overlooked, Misunderstood, and Underserved in the Family Courts

Jenae' Anderson, Zenell Brown and Viola King
Racial justice is critical to the American justice system and the mission to advance justice for all. As stakeholders examine efforts to create fairness in the justice system, it is imperative that internal standards and practices are critically examined. Implicit bias and racial inequality must be…

How to respond when a coworker says something offensive

Kenji Yoshino and David Glasgow
First, when a colleague makes a biased remark, the situation usually feels tense and adversarial, which makes it more likely you’ll freeze up or bungle your reply. Second, as we’ve noted, sometimes an immediate response is necessary—you don’t want to let a harmful comment…

Immigrants and Public Benefits - Public Charge Information

MLRI
This page describes an immigration policy called Public Charge. It is generally safe to get benefits you and your family are eligible for. See Q&As below. This information is not legal advice. If you have questions, contact an immigration attorney. To see which immigrants are eligible for…

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…

Centering Blackness: the Path to Economic Liberation For All

Anne Price, Jhumpa Bhattacharya, and Dorian Warren, Insight Center
This paper intends to provide a collective framework that addresses the intentional disinvestment, dehumanization, and exclusion of Black people from economic prosperity. The authors provide a detailed and thorough guide on how changemakers and policy experts can center Blackness at the forefront of…

Five Habits of Cross-Cultural Lawyering and More

Sue Bryant and Jean Koh Peters
Website that provides teaching and practice materials about cross-cultural lawyering in clinical legal education. We believe that all lawyering is cross-cultural, so teaching about cross-cultural lawyering is necessary if clinical students are to provide quality representation to their clients. We…

Black Women’s Best Framework

Coined by Janelle Jones (2020), “Black women best” is an economic principle that argues if Black women—who, since our nation’s founding, have been among the most excluded and exploited by the rules that structure our society—can one day thrive in the economy, then it…

IMCO Policy Priorities for Healey-Driscoll Administration

Massachusetts Immigration Coalition (IMCO) Policy Priorities for the Healey-Driscoll Administration

IMCO Policy Priorities for the Campbell Administration

Massachusetts Immigration Coalition (IMCO) Policy Priorities for the Campbell Administration

Closing the Gap: The Need for Allies

Kelly Stout Sanchez
I was at a mediation in a large products liability case. A senior partner at my firm and I had been working on the case with out-of-state co-counsel. At one point in the mediation, the out-of-state counsel was talking with our clients about what to consider when and if the defendants got into a…

Equity Analysis Tool: NCLER Capacity Building Module

National Center on Law and Elder Rights
From the introduction: "The Equity Analysis Tool is intended to provide a flexible outline to approach equity issues in any particular project, policy or case and to be easily incorporated to a program’s every day work. This Tool provides a general framework for analyzing the…

Adultification Bias

Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality
Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality's website featuring their work to address how adults view Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers. The quantitative data, collected under the leadership of Dr. Jamilia Blake, showed that even in the age bracket of…

Temporary Assistance For Needy Families: Sanctioning And Child Support Compliance Among Black Families In Illinois

Kathryn Kaplan, Suniya Farooqui, Jamela Clark, Emily Dobson, Rita Jefferson, Niya Kelly, Katherine Buitrago, Kimberly Drew, Aces Lira, Maxica Williams, Taishi Neuman, and Yoojin Kim
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a federal cash welfare program for low-income, working families with children in the United States that requires participation with child support enforcement, if one parent is noncustodial, to receive the cash benefit. Cash assistance has been linked…

The Adultification of Black Girls

Anti-Racism Daily
Black girls are perceived to be more mature and held responsible for how others see them, even as society consistently strips them of their autonomy. Black girls are disciplined and reprimanded more than their white peers, particularly in school. Generally, Black girls are more likely to…

Math teachers in virtual classes tend to view girls and Black students as less capable

Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, Ian Thacker, and Joseph Cimpian
Our experiment suggests teachers are identifying Black students as potentially having disabilities more often than white students who produced the same answers to math problems. Further, girls are not being given equal chances to be placed in gifted programs even when they give answers identical to…

The Case Against Summary Proceedings: Process as Racism and Oppressio

Andrew Scherer, Seton Hall Law Review
This Article argues that because of the many ways in which summary eviction proceedings privilege landlords and disadvantage tenants, their very structure is patently unfair. Moreover, because of the racialized nature of landlord-tenant relations, the summary eviction process perpetuates a…

The Lingering Legacy of Redlining on School Funding, Diversity, and Performance

Dylan Lukes, Christopher Cleveland
Between 1935-1940 the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) assigned A (minimal risk) to D (hazardous) grades to neighborhoods that reflected their lending risk from previously issued loans and visualized these grades on color-coded maps, which arguably influenced banks and other mortgage lenders…

Why schools’ going back to ‘normal’ won’t work for students of color

Adriana Villavicencio
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools were failing to adequately serve children of color. As a scholar of racial equity in K-12 education, I see an opportunity to go beyond getting students caught up. Rather than focus only on trying to close pandemic-related gaps, schools could…

Immigrant Benefits Chart - October 2022

Naomi Meyer, GBLS

EBT Skimming Flyer: SNAP benefits missing from your account?

MLRI
EBT card users are having their SNAP and cash benefits stolen following skimming of their card information by thieves. Attached is a flyer describing the issue and sharing information about what victims can do - please feel free to distribute this flyer to your community partners.

DHCD Staff Contact Information

DHCD
DHCD field and central office staff contact information.  

Changing the Housing Narrative by Talking About Race and Values

Glenn Harris, Michael McAfee & Dorian Warren
Three social change leaders discuss how to move the narrative about housing away from a focus on individual actions toward values, racial justice, and the well-being of all.

Dollars to Megabits, You May Be Paying 400 Times As Much As Your Neighbor for Internet Service

Leon Yin and Aaron Sankin, The Markup
An investigative piece that shows that across the country, AT&T, Verizon, EarthLink, and CenturyLink disproportionately offered lower-income and least-White neighborhoods slow internet service for the same price as speedy connections they offered in other parts of town.

Black women endure legacy of racism in homeownership and making costly repairs

Robin Bartram
According to a 2022 analysis of federal census data by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, nearly a third of homeowners who earn less than US$32,000 – about 4.8 million people – spent nothing on maintenance or improvements. I have noticed worrying trends in the…

Affirmative action bans make selective colleges less diverse – a national ban will do the same

Natasha Warikoo, Tufts University
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in two lawsuits on Oct. 31, 2022, brought by a group that opposes affirmative action in college admissions. Here, Natasha Warikoo, a sociology professor at Tufts University and author of the newly released “Is Affirmative Action Fair?: The…

Equity in the Distribution of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program: A descriptive study of equity in the first-ever nationwide eviction prevention program

US Department of the Treasury
The first and second rounds of the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program provided over $46 billion USD in funding to states, territories, Tribal governments, counties, and cities (“grantees”) to prevent eviction and housing instability in the wake of the pandemic. Overseen by the…

Diverging Pathways: Immigrants’ Legal Status and Access to Postsecondary Credentials

Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix, MPI
This issue brief uses MPI’s unique methodology for assigning legal status to immigrants in the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to explore the characteristics of adults without postsecondary credentials, broken down by U.S. citizenship and legal status. In doing so, it…

Unpacking the Term Hispanic and the Homogenizing of Diasporas

Jumko Ogata-Aguilar
Hispanic? Latino/a/e/x? The terms have been used interchangeably to describe people with roots in Spain or Latin America. The lumping of the terms, specifically Hispanic, has been used to refer to a person from Spain, Chile, the Philippines, or Equatorial Guinea. But the ambiguous nature blurs…

Do No Harm Guide: Additional Perspectives on Data Equity

Jonathan Schwabish, Alice Feng, Wesley Jenkins
When created with intention, data-based research can present a rich tapestry of evidence. Each data point a length of yarn, intertwining to present an engaging visual reflection of the research. But without enough high-quality yarn, enough colors and lengths, enough time spent weaving, or enough…

How to Be an Ally

Maria Fernandez, Employment Practice Solutions
Article describing some steps and ideas to achieve supportive and inclusive work environments through better allyship.  We can all use allies, both in our personal and professional lives. Spend a few moments reflecting on your best work experiences. What comes to mind? You likely…