Time to call your congressperson:   Today would be a good day to call your representative and senators to support a reasonable HUD budget - see these talking points from CarsonWatch, and please take a few minutes to make those calls.  To contact your members of Congress, call the congressional switchboard toll free at 202-224-3121 or visit the House website and enter your zip code in the box provided. 
 
Recommended reading for new HUD staff :  We have added Dr. Ben Carson to our 50 year civil rights history of HUD, Fifty Years of "The People v. HUD". Watch the slideshow here or open the PDF here
 
100+ Change:   Many social change organizations made pitches to the MacArthur Foundation last year in their $100 million grant competition - looking for "one big idea" that will make a difference.  The Foundation has now posted all the proposals online - a fascinating snapshot of what activists and nonprofits are dreaming of doing.  We submitted a proposal with the Baltimore Regional Housing Partnership on behalf of our "Mobility Works" technical assistance project to fund new multi-year housing mobility programs in a dozen highly segregated metro areas.  We didn't make the finals, but you can see our proposal here - and our 90 second video summary here (all the projects were required to submit a 90 second summary of their proposals).
 
 
 
Upcoming events
 
Conference on student assignment policies:  The Penn State Center for Education and Civil Rights is hosting a June 1 training conference in DC to support districts and charter schools in using student assignment to further racial and socioeconomic diversity (PRRAC and the National Coalition on School Diversity are co-sponsors). Registration is free, and the event will be held at the Georgetown Law Center in Washington, DC (2 blocks from Union Station).  For more information and a link to register, click here

National Forum on the Human Right to Housing , to be held in Washington, D.C., on June 6-7, 2017 - more information here.
 
 
Other resources
 
Voices of youth in Baltimore, after the uprising :  Thanks to a team of sociologists at Johns Hopkins for this moving series of interviews with young people in Baltimore who have high hopes for themselves but often feel abandoned by their city.
 
Childhood trauma and segregation :  David Troutt has published "Trapped in Tragedies: Childhood Trauma, Spatial Inequality and Law," a law review article outlining legal framework to address childhood trauma as a a civil rights issue. 
 
Fair housing enforcement still urgently needed: See the National Fair Housing Alliance's annual Fair Housing Trends report.
 
Progressive Planning , the long time magazine of the Planners Network, has migrated to a new digital platform as "Progressive City."  The excellent spring issue is available here.   (The Planners Network is a 40+ year old association of progressive planners, conceived as an alternative to the mainstream American Planning Association, and originally launched in 1975 by Chester Hartman, who later became PRRAC's first Executive Director)


 
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