Justice Is Just Us

Gee Brooks is a young, idealistic probation officer in Maryland who wants to make a difference. She's one of the few officers who doesn't think a new case is a new burden. Gee believes most offenders have positive attributes, but she is caught in a criminal justice system that tries to catch offenders failing and then send them back to prison. Harsh punishment for offenders is the norm-the accepted culture. A tragic event with a parolee under her supervision propels Gee to confront both the system and the emotional scars buried within her. Enraged by the external tragedy, she erupts into an abrasive public confrontation with a powerful state parole commissioner. Gee and her officer friends-Huggie, Pepe, and Hattie-known as the Cuatro Amigos, spontaneously forge an unstoppable grassroots uprising. The humanistic revolution, as it's sarcastically referred to by the press, is on. The Cuatro Amigos hope to survive the punishment that managers and state officials have planned for them long enough to gain the support of the community. A story of friendship, healing, and leaning into conflict, Justice...Is Just Us demonstrates the power of support in changing behavior-from the mighty to the meek.

FINALIST FOR THE 2021 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION Claudia Rankine’s Citizen changed the conversation—Just Us urges all of us into it As everyday white supremacy becomes increasingly vocalized with no clear answers at hand, how best might we approach one another? Claudia Rankine, without telling us what to do, urges us to begin the discussions that might open pathways through this divisive and stuck moment in American history. Just Us is an invitation to discover what it takes to stay in the room together, even and especially in breaching the silence, guilt, and violence that follow direct addresses of whiteness. Rankine’s questions disrupt the false comfort of our culture’s liminal and private spaces—the airport, the theater, the dinner party, the voting booth—where neutrality and politeness live on the surface of differing commitments, beliefs, and prejudices as our public and private lives intersect. This brilliant arrangement of essays, poems, and images includes the voices and rebuttals of others: white men in first class responding to, and with, their white male privilege; a friend’s explanation of her infuriating behavior at a play; and women confronting the political currency of dying their hair blond, all running alongside fact-checked notes and commentary that complements Rankine’s own text, complicating notions of authority and who gets the last word. Sometimes wry, often vulnerable, and always prescient, Just Us is Rankine’s most intimate work, less interested in being right than in being true, being together.

This is the story of Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op, Canada's first fair trade coffee roaster. This book describes its successes and its failures and details how a small group of people -- "just us" -- worked against adversity and defied many of the norms associated with building a business. In this fascinating tale, general readers, business owners and community activists will find hope and the courage to forge new paths, build new organizations and shape a new society. This story is also about the fair trade movement, providing a snapshot of the struggle of the small coffee producers in the South to control their own production, find a fair market for their coffee and get a fair hearing for their concerns. Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op is an experiment in a radical business model -- one rooted in cooperation, social justice and meaningful social change.

Based on an actual wildcat strike that occured in 1979, There Ain’t No Justice, Just Us tells the story of a middle-aged college professor, and former seventies radical, who finds himself caught in the web of a mid-life crisis and a decaying marriage. In his search for a more authentic identity, he winds up leading a wildcat strike in a gritty South Chicago factory. Along the way he encounters a variety of leftists and African-American and Mexican industrial workers who lead genuine, if impoverished, lives. The wildcat strike becomes the psychological gauntlet through which the characters must pass to achieve personal integration. The professor’s quest for internal wholeness leads to a love affair with a radical feminist attorney and activist. In the end, the professor must choose between authenticity and love, or continuing his sedate, middle-class life. Ancillary characters, including Cecelia Sanchez, a Mexican-American college student, find themselves drawing psychological strength from the unfolding battle and engaging in their own liberation struggles—in her case, trying to find the inner spirit to move out on her own, away from her patriarchal family.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

In my first semester of college I wrote a short poem for a homework assignment. My English professor Dr. Jeff Koloze, asked If I had ever considered publishing any of it. I had written poetry in the past and the only person I ever let read it is my best friend David Binion. My passion is African American history, and I find it somewhat despicable that my people have suffered some of the greatest atrocities known to man. As I began to write the poems contained in this book, my own personal tragedies resurfaced and took center stage. These stories are not discussed in the public sector as quickly as tragedies to other races are, and some or most of them are viewed only as a statistic. It is my wish these poems can offer some liberation that is brought on by absolute hatred of one's own race and those who may hate you.

"This book will help keep generations of world-changers in the game, instead of tapping out because the struggle is too great." --Tim Coleman, Founder & Lead Pastor at Brown's Mill Church "[A] refreshingly honest and an inspiring read." -- Idelette McVicker, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of SheLoves magazine.com "This book [will] benefit those who run non-profits, those who work for them, and those who fund them." -- F. Volker Greifenhagen, Academic Dean at Luther College How do we reconcile joy and sorrow in a world that is both beautiful and desperately broken? Can we put the "human" back into "humanitarianism?" Is there a way to let go of disillusionment, hold onto hope, and redeem our pain for good? Author and non-profit director Katie Bergman explores these questions while reflecting on her geographically sprawling pilgrimage to pursue justice without being crushed by it. Driven by her personal experiences from Cambodian villages to Canadian inner-cities, from courthouses to street corners to orphanages, this book of confessions starts a dialogue about the trials and triumphs of seeking justice. The author's personal narrative weaves in a sequence of coming-of-age stories capturing her journey of learning to grieve without despair, to dream without guilt, and to serve without defeat. She will warm and break your heart with profound stories of intervening in human trafficking in Southeast Asia, teaching children with special needs in rural Mexico, spending austere summers planting trees in the rugged wilderness of northern British Columbia, and backpacking through Eastern Europe in self-imposed solitude. When Justice Just Is provides authentic insight, gripping challenges, and a global perspective of the joys and struggles of humanitarian work as the soul to a fresh conversation of learning to be kinder to the world while also being kinder to ourselves.