Author Archives: wrenchinthegears

It seems the United Way is planning for a future inhabited by a mass underclass of precarious labor. In fact, this “future” may already be here, it’s just not evenly distributed as the quote attributed to William Gibson suggests. For the past few years United Way chapters nationwide have been mobilizing awareness campaigns around ALICE. The […]

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the United Way, and the Aspen Institute are in the process of rolling out a “two-generation,” coordinated program of data exploitation designed to enmesh poor families in ongoing systems of digital monitoring. In order to secure their most basic needs for survival, families in need will be expected to demonstrate […]

The next logical step in the evolution of pay for success finance is broadening the scope of interventions from individuals to families. Rather than focusing on a child that needs educational support, an incarcerated person planning for re-entry, a veteran’s PTSD, or a substance user’s recovery, investors are developing new models that expand targeted populations […]

If an increasingly automated Fourth Industrial Revolution economic system demands an abundance of poverty data to keep global capital markets moving, it makes sense that those in power might seek to increase births resulting from unwanted pregnancies. I do not believe it is coincidental that provisions for home-visits, widespread ACEs screenings, and early childhood investments […]

It’s been a bit quiet on the blog. I continue to research, to map, to watch talks and prop myself up reading books about resistance. A friend told me I needed to take a break and get some perspective-to MAKE something. Eventually, I did. I spent a few weeks making a quilt for a colleague […]

The image above was taken at a fall 2017 protest at the ribbon cutting for the Vaux Big Picture School in the Sharswood neighborhood of North Philadelphia, a HUD “Choice Neighborhood.” The middle school was closed for several years and reopened under the management of a private operator (though titularly still a “public” school). Big […]

I know a number of activists out there are working to raise awareness around the brutality of third grade reading guarantees. These laws demand students achieve a specific score on standardized reading test. If they do not, they can’t advance to the next grade. I wrote this short introduction with the idea that it could […]

As I wrote in a previous post, “Don’t Let Impact Investors Capture the Non-Profit, Activist Media,” documentary film has been hijacked to advance the social impact investment agenda. I touched on it in a piece about Ted Dintersmith’s, Most Likely to Succeed. Dintersmith launched a Sundance-affiliated program, the Catalyst Fund, matching social justice minded filmmakers […]

This is a follow up to my previous post about Strive Together’s plans for “cradle to career” collective impact. Pursuing this work is a curious experience. Most times I can’t tell what, if any, progress I’m making. Yet I continue to forge ahead and regularly stumble across guideposts that seem to affirm I’m doing the […]

I’ve heard rumblings from folks in a number of states about pending legislation to establish home visit programs for expectant families or families with newborns or pre-school age children. So many families are struggling. Poverty is at an all time high. When hearing about such bills, those who have not been faced with the challenge […]