In 1996, the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, a grassroots advocacy organization, won a historic legal victory against the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority. The resulting consent decree forced the MTA for a period of ten years to essentially reorient the mass transit system to better serve the city’s poorest residents. A stunning reversal of conventional governance and planning in urban America, which almost always favors wealthier residents, this decision is also, for renowned urban theorist Edward W. Soja, a concrete example of spatial justice in action. In Seeking Spatial Justice, Soja argues that justice has a geography and that the equitable distribution of resources, services, and access is a basic human right. Building on current concerns in critical geography and the new spatial consciousness, Soja interweaves theory and practice, offering new ways of understanding and changing the unjust geographies in which we live. After tracing the evolution of spatial justice and the closely related notion of the right to the city in the influential work of Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey, and others, he demonstrates how these ideas are now being applied through a series of case studies in Los Angeles, the city at the forefront of this movement. Soja focuses on such innovative labor–community coalitions as Justice for Janitors, the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and the Right to the City Alliance; on struggles for rent control and environmental justice; and on the role that faculty and students in the UCLA Department of Urban Planning have played in both developing the theory of spatial justice and putting it into practice. Effectively locating spatial justice as a theoretical concept, a mode of empirical analysis, and a strategy for social and political action, this book makes a significant contribution to the contemporary debates about justice, space, and the city.

Seeking Justice in an Energy Sacrifice Zone is an ethnography of the lived experience of rapid environmental change in coastal Louisiana, USA. Writing from a political ecology perspective, Maldonado explores the effects of changes to localized climate and ecology on the Isle de Jean Charles, Grand Caillou/Dulac, and Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribes. Focusing in particular on wide-ranging displacement effects, she argues that changes to climate and ecology should not be viewed in isolation as only physical processes but as part of wider socio-political and historical contexts. The book is valuable reading for students and scholars in the fields of anthropology, sociology, geography, environmental studies and disaster studies as well as public policy and planning.

Examines the concept of biblical justice and the meaning of righteousness, using evangelical theology and personal narratives to show the importance of giving one's life away and living with justice, mercy, and humility.

Here is a study of the major themes of both the Old and New Testaments that bear on issues of social justice, e.g., creation; exodus; liberation; prophets; psalms and Wisdom literature; Jesus and the kingdom of God; Matthew and the heritage of Israel; Luke: Jesus as a Prophet who proclaims good news to the Poor; and Paul: justification and community solidarity. Concluding reflections are included. The work will consist of reflections on each of these themes followed by resource bibliographies that will help people to continue their own study. The book has arisen from three decades of speaking and writing on the issues of social justice in the Bible and from engagement in over twenty-five "Preaching the Just Word" retreats founded by the late Walter Burghardt, SJ, and given to priests throughout the country.

Unusual coming from a leftist perspective, this book argues that those who care for social justice should seek more globalization and not try to prevent its development or roll it back.

Susan K. Williams Smith is a minister and activist who has been on the front lines of social and racial justice for many years. As she has marched shoulder-to-shoulder to resist systematic oppression, she has heard the same question over and over: “How are we going to get through this?” Rest for the Justice-Seeking Soul was birthed out of those cries. Here is a soul-care manual for social justice-seeking believers who stand in constant vigilance against all forms of racial, class, and gender oppression. The fight for justice and equality is an exhausting daily grind—and the work is never over. That’s why it is incumbent upon all who speak and advocate for the less fortunate to practice self-care. You can’t fight when your tank is empty. In response to the many calls and emails she has received from friends, clergy, and strangers who are in utter despair and even deep depression, she has created ninety daily devotions to provide a daily spoonful of hope and encouragement, a healing balm to “strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees” (Hebrews 12:12). Lift your gaze upward toward a better future by allowing God to restore harmony and focus in your soul and justice in your community. Our God is bigger than whoever is oppressing you. As the old hymn states, “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.”

"Since the publication of the first edition of Beyond Consent, issues of justice remain critical in discussions, debates, and policy making in biomedical research in involving human subjects. The second edition adds new content in two different ways, first by asking authors to examine the issues identified in the first edition by asking what has changed and what new issues arise in the contemporary environment, and second by adding chapters to take on issues that are salient today and looking forward. The result is a new treatment of the issues of justice in research through fresh perspectives and by examining the latest issues. The editors have assembled a group of leading scholars and researchers as contributors, and author the final chapter themselves. This collection is a vital resource for students and scholars of bioethics, medicine, and public health policy; as well as for members of institutional review boards (IRBs), research administrators, and policy makers."--