Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Increasing Housing Stability Through State-Funded Community Mediation Delivered By The Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (Hmp) Fy2023 Evaluation Report, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Karina Zeferino

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

The Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (HMP) is a comprehensive statewide program that provides free housing mediation services as a tool to increase housing stability with the intention of preventing homelessness created by landlord-tenant disputes. It is administered by the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston and deploys the community mediation system infrastructure with 11 Community Mediation Centers (Centers) participating and serving all 14 counties of the Commonwealth to provide free conflict resolution services for tenants and landlords/property managers with housing disputes at any stage, from the earliest point a problem occurs, up to, and …

Addressing Barriers To Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Massachusetts Community Mediation, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Shino Yokotsuka, Karina Zeferino, Jarling Ho

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

This report presents over three years of systematically engaging, documenting and analyzing the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) needs/gaps and assets of state funded community mediation centers in Massachusetts. The report was compiled by researchers and an in-house DEI expert at the statutory state office of dispute resolution, the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The office has been serving as a neutral forum and state-level resource for over 30 years.

The report is based on qualitative research that falls into the category of community based participatory research conducted through a series of community …

Addressing Barriers To Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In Massachusetts Community Mediation, Madhawa Palihapitiya, Jarling Ho, Shino Yokotsuka, Karina Zeferino

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

This report presents over three years of systematically engaging, documenting and analyzing the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) needs/gaps and assets of state funded community mediation centers in Massachusetts. The report was compiled by researchers and an in-house DEI expert at the statutory state office of dispute resolution, the Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The office has been serving as a neutral forum and state-level resource for over 30 years.

The report is based on qualitative research that falls into the category of community based participatory research conducted through a series of community …

Addressing Health Crises Through Courts? Climate Litigation In Latin America, The Right To Health And Vulnerable Populations, Thalia Viveros Uehara

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

As Latin America faces increasing climate-related health crises that disproportionately affect populations experiencing poverty and social exclusion, it becomes increasingly urgent to realize the most vulnerable's right to health. While the region's new constitutionalism (NLAC) has made progress in protecting this right, it has only recently begun to intersect with climate change law through rights-based climate litigation. This dissertation takes a transdisciplinary multi-methods research approach to answer the following question: How do health crises emerge within, and how are they addressed by courts through, domestic climate litigation in Latin America? Specifically, it examines how health concerns for vulnerable populations are …

Seeing Race As We Are: Avoiding, Arguing, Aspiring, Michael A. Cowan

New England Journal of Public Policy

Racial conflict in the United States pushes people to positions of argument or avoidance, more or less intensely and for varying lengths of time, depending on external events like the murder of George Floyd. Neither stance produces the conversations required to seek common ground and compromise around racial issues. Argument alone deepens divisions and avoidance leaves them to metastasize in the social body. In an attempt to go beneath these two positions, this article first explains the role and form of interpretation in all conflict and dispute resolution and how it is shaped. Then it examines the concepts and strategies …

Increasing Housing Stability Through State-Funded Community Mediation Delivered By The Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (Hmp) In Fy2022, Madhawa Palihapitiya, David Sulewski, Karina Zeferino, Jarling Ho

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

This report presents findings and recommendations from an evaluation of the Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (HMP) administered by the MA Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston in partnership with 11 Community Mediation Centers (Centers). The program is funded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and implemented in partnership with the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). The program was initially part of the Governor’s Eviction Diversion Initiative (EDI), which ended in the latter half of FY2022 and is continuing as an intervention to support housing stability. The evaluation was conducted by MOPC’s research unit comprised …

The Youth Inferno: Two-Way Working On Ancestral Lands, Pamela Nathan

New England Journal of Public Policy

In this article I present some of the work of Creating a Safe and Supportive Environment (CASSE) in Central Australia, Northern Territory, with the youth in the justice system, referring to our dual cultural and therapeutic program Shields for Living, Tools for Life. Psychoanalytic concepts and tools that have informed the work and transformed the trauma landscape are detailed. The work is at the epicenter of anger, concern, and politics in Central Australia and this epicenter has been named the “youth crisis.” It is a journey of feeling the heat, of being on a rollercoaster ride in a landscape of …

Social Security Benefits Continue To Fall Short Of Covering Cost Of Basic Needs For Older Americans, 2021, Jan Mutchler, Nidya Velasco Roldán

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

Social Security benefits fall short of what is required to cover the basic cost of living across the United States, according to new estimates based on the Elder Index, a county-by-county measure of the income older adults need to secure an independent lifestyle. Nationally, the average Social Security benefit covers just 68% of basic living expenses of housing, food, transportation, and health care for a single renter in 2021, and 81% for an older couple. The gap between Social Security benefits and what it takes to get by is especially problematic for older adults who rely largely or entirely on …

Getting To Yes: The Makings Of Paid Leave In Massachusetts, Christa Kelleher, Laurie Nsiah-Jefferson, Priyanka Kabir, Lillian Hunter, Cassandra M. Porter, Center For Women In Politics And Public Policy, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Publications from the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy

Considered one of the strongest paid family and medical leave laws in the nation, the paid leave law adopted in Massachusetts in 2018 was notable for the depth and range of robust caregiving supports and protections for workers. But just as notable is how the law came to be. After all, paid leave bills had been filed for years in Massachusetts. Decades in fact. Yet until 2018, there had been limited movement in the legislature to establish a statewide program. What led to the passage of paid leave legislation in Massachusetts with approval from a Republican Governor? What factors influenced …

Vermont: Collaborating To Educate Self-Advocates About Alternatives To Guardianship, Jaimie Ciulla Timmons

All Institute for Community Inclusion Publications

This promising practice describes Vermont’s statewide self-advocacy organization, Green Mountain Self-Advocates (GMSA), and their partnership with the Vermont Disability Law Project to organize legal clinics for people with IDD. These clinics have enabled self-advocates to get high-quality, easy-to-understand information about alternatives to guardianship they might not get anywhere else.

Increasing Housing Stability Through State-Funded Community Mediation Delivered By The Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (Hmp): Evaluation Report, Madhawa Palihapitiya, David Sulewski, Kaila O. Eisenkraft, Jarling Ho

Massachusetts Office of Public Collaboration Publications

This report presents findings and recommendations from a formative evaluation of the Massachusetts Housing Mediation Program (HMP) administered by the MA Office of Public Collaboration (MOPC) at the University of Massachusetts Boston in partnership with 12 Community Mediation Centers (CMCs). The program is funded by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and overseen by the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) as part of the Baker-Polito Administration’s Eviction Diversion Initiative (EDI). The evaluation was conducted by MOPC’s research unit comprised of staff and graduate student researchers, and does not necessarily represent the views of DHCD. As a statutory state office, MOPC …

Understanding Myanmar’S Buddhist Extremists: Some Preliminary Musings, Kumar Ramakrishna

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article examines Buddhist extremism in Myanmar. It argues that Buddhist extremism—like other types of religious extremism—is an acute form of fundamentalism. The article begins with a survey of how extremism is usually understood in the theoretical literature, showing that its religious variant is best conceived of as an acute form of fundamentalism. It then fine tunes this understanding, arguing that religious extremism is a fundamentalist belief system that justifies structural violence against relevant out-groups. The article outlines seven core characteristics of the religious extremist culled from the various theoretical approaches to extremism. It employs these seven characteristics to examine …

Seventeen Pieces: Displacement, Misplacement, And Conservation, Yasmin Merali, Kevork Mourad, Manas Ghanem

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the systemic importance of art in the conservation of images, historical reference, and cultural meaning as displaced victims of humanitarian crises make the transition from the land of their birth to a new country with a different history and cultural landscape. In presenting the work of Kevork Mourad, an artist of Armenian descent displaced from Syria, we show the essential, layered interplay of visceral, lived individual experiences and the historic collective memory of real and imagined pasts that survive the destruction of physical artifacts.

Protect Your 401k When You Leave Your Job, Pension Action Center, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Pension Action Center Publications

This fact sheet was produced by the Pension Action Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston in conjunction with the COVID-19 Rapid Response Systems Summer Institute, a joint partnership of Justice Catalyst, the People’s Parity Project, and the Systemic Justice Project.

How To Track Down Your Lost 401(K), Pension Action Center, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Pension Action Center Publications

This fact sheet was produced by the Pension Action Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston in conjunction with the COVID-19 Rapid Response Systems Summer Institute, a joint partnership of Justice Catalyst, the People’s Parity Project, and the Systemic Justice Project.

Talking About Casino Gambling: Community Voices From Boston Chinatown, Carolyn Wong, Giles Li

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

This pilot study examined the casino gambling practices of residents and workers in Boston Chinatown. The aim was to learn about the trajectory and life context of individual participants’ gambling activity, including how individual participants describe their motivation, nature and frequency of gambling, and its effects on self and family. The research was conducted by a university based research team in partnership with the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, and with the assistance of the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling.

The stories told by participants illustrate multiple and overlapping risk factors for problem gambling. Our conceptual approach took into account the …

Socio-Economic Well-Being Of International F-1 Students Living And Working In The United States, Elena K. Taborda

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

According to United States law, international F-1 students are nonimmigrant aliens residing in the United States temporarily. Yet, they are more than just short-term visitors, as many of them live in the country for years while pursuing their postsecondary studies. Since international students are foreign citizens, their rights and freedoms are bound by the constraints of the country’s immigration policies. This study is concerned with work-related restrictions imposed on F-1 students by the U.S. government, positioning international students’ limited opportunities for employment as being in violation with their basic human right to economic and social development.

This multi-method project drew …

The Strange Case Of The Seven Assessors, Janet Howard, Shaun Rafferty

New England Journal of Public Policy

New Orleans was, before Katrina, the only parish (county) in Louisiana to have multiple assessors. There were seven. Each of them had his or her own district, and collectively they formed the Board of Assessors. The strange structure was the vestige of times past, with no rhyme or reason in modern times.

Foreword, James Holmes

New England Journal of Public Policy

The International Communities Organisation (ICO) is a self-determination research and innovation center and a not-for-profit organization based in London. Guided by its vision of self-determination and the values of development and human rights, ICO aims to empower communities. It strives to foster an environment where organizations within these communities can overcome the barriers they face, allowing them to fulfill their potential and develop and create positive change for their local communities through local action, collaboration, and decision making.

To enhance our vision and our credibility as an international organization that works for peoples, we organized the February 2019 London conference …

European Union Integration And National Self-Determination, Mare Ushkovska

New England Journal of Public Policy

Recent demands for secession in several EU member states bring the issue of self-determination to the forefront of the debate about the future of the European Union. This article explores the European Union’s attitudes toward the international right to self-determination in the context of the rising salience of the greater political union between member states. The focus of the European project, in direct contrast to the glorification of nationhood, is on consensual decision-making rather than sovereignty, making self-determination obsolete in a reality of EU integration. This research finds that recognition of, or references to, the right to self-determination of peoples …

Editor’S Note, Padraig O’Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

The articles in this issue of the New England Journal of Public Policy have their origins in presentations at a Chatham House conference titled “Rethinking Self-Determination,” February 2019, hosted by the International Communities Organization and the journal.

Among the many aspects of self-determination they address: the elasticity of the concept as a human right in the context of “peoples” (Freeman); individual rights versus collective self-determination (Summers); Biafra as an early case of internal self-determination—the territorial integrity of the state and the right of secession when “the right of a people to participate in the decision-making processes of a country is …

The Right Of Peoples To Self-Determination In Article 1 Of The Human Rights Covenants As A Claimable Right, James Summers

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article looks at the potential for individual communications under common article 1 of the Human Rights Covenants, in particular, under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. It first outlines the problems posed by the drafting of common article 1, in particular, the identity of peoples. It then considers how individuals might be able to claim peoples’ rights through representation and the collectivization of individual rights.

Raising Indigenous Women’S Voices For Equal Rights And Self-Determination, Grazia Redolfi, Nikoletta Pikramenou, Rosario Grimà Algora

New England Journal of Public Policy

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that the right to self-determination for Indigenous peoples involves their having the right to freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. The implementation of this right is linked to the ability and freedom to participate in any decision making that relates to their development. Current laws and practices are considered “unfair to women,” because they sustain traditional and customary patriarchal attitudes that marginalize Indigenous women and exclude them from decision-making tables and leadership roles. Despite the many challenges Indigenous women face in …

Communicative Justice And Reconciliation In Canada, Alice Neeson

New England Journal of Public Policy

Communicative justice co-exists with other dimensions of justice and emphasizes the importance of fair communicative practices, particularly after periods of direct or structural violence. While intercultural dialogue is often assumed to be a positive, or even necessary, part of reconciliation processes, there are questions to be asked about the ethicality of dialogue when one voice has been silenced, misrepresented, and ignored for decades. This article draws on twelve months of ethnographic research with reconciliation activists and organizations in Canada and considers the potential for communicative flows to help compensate for structural inequalities during processes of reconciliation.

Self-Determination And Psychological Adaptation In Forcibly Displaced People, Numan Turan, Bediha İpekçi, Mehmet Yalçın Yılmaz

New England Journal of Public Policy

According to the UN Refugee Agency, as of 2018 approximately 70 million people were forcibly displaced because of intrastate and interstate conflicts. A majority of those people endured significant hardships, and a consensus is growing among researchers that forcibly displaced people have gone through potentially traumatic experiences that challenge their well-being and health. Consequently, a large amount of research focuses on their mental health concerns, whereas research focusing on their will to normalize their lives and grow after a traumatic migration is scarce. In this article, we highlight the efforts by forcibly displaced people to normalize their lives, pointing out …

Climate Change And Human Rights: Shaping The Narrative For Reflexive Responses From Civilization’S Leadership To Counter And Abate Climate Change And Enhance The Role Of Human Rights In The Rule Of Law, Michael Donlan

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article offers a bold new legal process for enhancing and upgrading the rule of law to enable civilization to cope with and counter the mounting damage and injustice caused by climate change. Climate change, once an unimaginable threat, is now a brutal, ubiquitous game changer that is leading inexorably to the demise of all humanity. Only by enhancing the rule of law and melding international law with domestic law can civilization fashion a coherent, global action plan for survival.

For almost three centuries greenhouse gases have been emitted around the world by the burning of fossil fuel, and—most alarming—these …

Prevention And Protection Interventions For Stateless Non-Refugee And Force Displaced Children, Tanya Herring

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article advances a general theory of law and justice that would expand the Palermo Trafficking and Smuggling Protocols to a wider application in human rights jurisprudence. The aim of the research reported here is to close the gaps in member-state policy and scholarship that addresses prevention measures and protection mechanisms for forcibly displaced children seeking self-determination in states that have not ratified the UN Convention on Refugees and the UN Conventions on Statelessness. The research is based on the premise that a stateless nonrefugee status constructs an extremely vulnerable state for children during forced migration and when they are …

The Right To Self-Determination: Philosophical And Legal Perspectives, Michael Freeman

New England Journal of Public Policy

Why do we need to rethink self-determination? In this article I argue that self-determination is a necessary feature of the human condition and a human right but that it is in part illusory and is potentially dangerous. We need to rethink self-determination because our collective thinking has been very confused, and bad thinking about self-determination costs many lives.

Finding Foreign Friends: National Self-Determination And Related Norms As Strategic Resources During The Biafran War For Independence, 1967–1970, Christopher Brucker

New England Journal of Public Policy

The study analyzes how the government of the Republic of Biafra used international norms to win foreign support during its 1967–1970 campaign to secede from Nigeria. Secession conflicts occur at the intersection of international and domestic politics. For independence movements, support from outside is crucial. But, as Bridget Coggins has asked, how can secession movements find “friends in high places”? International support for unilateral secession attempts is strictly prohibited. Domestic and international asymmetry are limiting secessionist foreign policy instruments to intangible means. Legitimacy is a central concept to illuminate the phenomenon. In international politics, legitimacy depends on the external perception …

Language, Indigenous Peoples, And The Right To Self-Determination, Noelle Higgins, Gerard Maguire

New England Journal of Public Policy

Language has always played a significant role in the colonization of peoples as an instrument of subjugation and homogenization. It has been used to control nondominant groups, including Indigenous peoples, often leading to their exclusion or assimilation. Many Indigenous groups, however, use language as a tool to connect the members of their community, to assert their group identity, and to preserve their culture. Thus, language has been used both as a means of oppression and as a mobilizer of Indigenous groups in their struggles for national recognition. Recognizing the significance of language in the identity and culture of Indigenous peoples, …