What's left in the community? Oppositional politics in contemporary practice

The growth of community-based not-for-profits in the Anglo-Americanworld has been mirrored by weakened political demands and adiminished set of critical political perspectives. Nevertheless,significant efforts in Anglo-American communities still existand provide examples of community-based organizing that havenot lost sight of the goals of social and economic justice.This article explores practice examples that demonstrate theexistence and possibilities of politically oppositional communityorganizing in the current difficult and complex political economy.These examples present effective, if imperfect, community initiatives.The three discussed – The Fifth Avenue Committee, ACORN,and Immigrant Worker Centres – offer alternatives to contemporaryforms of community practice moderated by economic globalizationand the policies of neo-liberalism. The article ends by drawinglessons from these experiences and their potential in the contemporarypolitical economy.     

“What About the Rest of Us?” An Overview of LGBT Poverty Issues and a Call to Action

In this article, I argue that, despite the myth of gay affluence, existing research is conclusive enough to claim that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) adults are overall less financially secure than their heterosexual, cisgendered counterparts. I demonstrate that LGBT poverty is a broad social issue that can no longer be viewed as affecting only specific subpopulations of LGBT communities. I argue that the social work profession and the LGBT movement need to recognize LGBT poverty as a social issue. I then present a call to action for social work practitioners, researchers and LGBT organizations.