Price Research Continued

Welfare Reform and Postsecondary Education:

Welfare reform closed off welfare recipients to perhaps the most valuable pathway out of poverty: getting a college degree. President Clinton’s Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity and Reconciliation Act (1996) rolled back supportive policies such as the Family Support Act, and the laws of the vast majority of states that up to that point allowed participation in at least two years of postsecondary education (many states allowed more than two years).

        I have an established record of both traditional and action research on issues involving welfare reform and
                   access to higher education. The Howard Samuels State Management & Policy Center @ The City
                   University of New York Graduate Center is where I learned about the issue and how to tackle it in
                   terms of reforming the policies.

        My work in this area has included work with individual groups, consulting senior Senate staff on welfare reform,
                   and organizing a national conference on the issue (all under the aegis of the Howard Samuels Center).
                   Some selected publications on the subject include:

                   o   “Coalition-Building and State TANF Policy” (1999), “Proceedings of the National Conference: Welfare
                        Reform and the College Option” (Report, 1999)

                   o   “Welfare Reform and the College Option: Perspectives on the Issues” (Video documentary, 2002)

                   o   “Still Committed to the Higher Education Option: Model State, College and Advocacy Organizations
                        that Support Welfare Recipients Going to College” (Report, 2003)

                   o   “Making it Harder for Welfare Students to Attend College: Interrupting Oppression by Reforming
                        Welfare Reform's Postsecondary Education Policies,” International Center for Cooperation and
                        Conflict Resolution Working Papers (2004)

                   o   "Reforming Welfare Reform Postsecondary Education Policy: Two State Case Studies in Political
                        Culture, Organizing, and Advocacy,” Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare 32(3): 81-106. (2005)

                   o   “Using the Conference to Inform Public Awareness and Public Policy," Practicing Anthropology
                        29(2):36-39 (2007)

Community Organizing & Community Organizations

Community organizing involves diverse strategies of collective action. Common to the varieties are the centrality of ordinary citizens in guiding the process of collective action. Community organizing can serve many purposes, including strategies and opportunities for citizens to learn through experience, to practice and refine civic participation skills, to build new relationships and nurture existing ones, and to localize democratic practice.  And of course, there is changing the status quo! Community organizing is a means for ordinary citizens to challenge vested interests, especially those of political, economic, and social elites.

I gradually came to see the value of community organizing by reflecting on my own experience with the shortcomings of the “vanguard intellectual” organizing efforts, such as a focus on mobilizing large numbers of people for short periods of time. Community organizing offers an alternative that builds local, networked, leadership and power in ordinary citizens, while allowing for vanguardist strategies such as mass mobilization and confrontational protest.

        My interest in community organizing and community building as important elements of a change strategy and
        important elements of a change strategy and important areas of study has continuously grown since 2001.

                   o   I served as one of three evaluators for the Fund Community Organizing Initiative (2003-2007),
                       a Ford Foundation-sponsored initiative evaluated by the Howard Samuels State Management &
                       Policy Center. The Fund for Community Organizing Initiative focused on building capacity in
                       community organizing organizations and philanthropic organizations interested in supporting
                       community organizing. The multi-site project involved community organizing groups and foundations
                       in seven southern states (Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Mississippi, Georgia, and
                       Florida), and three cities (Los Angeles Chicago, Denver). I coordinated the Southern component.

                   o   I helped develop and lead an active learning component of the National Community Development
                        Institute's Transforming Philanthropy project employing participatory evaluation (and funded by the
                       W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the National Community Development Institute). The project involved
                       re-conceptualizing the practice of philanthropy in locally-relevant ways with six community
                       organizations, three from Southeastern North Carolina and three from the Bay Area of California.

                   o   I helped develop and lead a participatory evaluation of the Community Builder's Learning Project
                       (CBLP), an effort spearheaded by the North Carolina Community Solutions Network and the National
                       Community Development Institute (Oakland, CA), and funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. The
                       CBLP sought to help develop a North Carolina-based network of consultants, organizational leaders,
                       and community residents trained in skills and practices needed to work with communities of color
                       and low wealth communities.

                   o   I have conducted field and oral history research with the Community Farm Alliance, a statewide
                        organization of family farmers and food users in Kentucky. The Community Farm Alliance offers a
                        exemplary model of what a locally-integrated food economy can look like (see their web site:
                        http://www.communityfarmalliance.org/)

                   o   Kim Diehl and I co-authored a research report, A New Generation of Southerners, for the Funders
                        Collaborative on Youth Organizing (2004; published also in Social Policy, December 2004). During
                        2004 Kim and I visited and interviewed some of most visible youth organizing groups in the
                        American South.

Center for Integrating Action & Research (CIRA), UNC-Chapel Hill

                        Since June 2008 I have been the Co-Director of CIRA, a newly forming center that supports and
                        promotes engaged scholarship in the areas of collective action, cultural heritage, alternative
                        economies, alternative energy, and food justice.

Social Movements Working Group, UNC- Chapel Hill

                   o   The Social Movements Working Group (SMWG) is an interdisciplinary collective of professors,
                        graduate students, and activists interested in and/or active in social movements. The SMWG
                        organizes conferences and study groups around social movement concerns. In particular, the SMWG
                        has focused on the “knowledge production” aspects of social movements. I have been actively
                        involved in SMWG as a faculty member through 2007.

 *  Highlander Research & Education Center, New Market, TN

     Beginning in 2006 I have served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Highlander Research and
     Education Center (HREC).  For two years I served as Co-Chair of the Resource Committee, and beginning in April
     2009, will Chair the Resource Committee.  The HREC is one the South's (and America's) storied social justice
     organization, helping to incubate and nuture groups involved in the Labor, Civil Rights, Environmental Justice,
     Brown Lung, Mountaintop Removal, LGBT, youth, and other movements and organizing efforts.

 Curriculum Vitae

      Click here for my academic CV and a fuller list of my publications and contributions.