Poverty

Suburban Sprawl Causes Segregation & Isolates The Poor

August 16, 2015 Ben Adler, www.grist.org Educate! Housing, Poverty, Racism, Segregation, Sprawl

By Ben Adler for Grist - Forty-seven years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act, you might think that these problems are gradually disappearing. You would be wrong. “Architecture of Segregation,” a new study from the Century Foundation, a liberal think tank, finds that concentrated poverty, especially among African-Americans and Latinos, is actually getting worse. Among the key findings: “The number of people living in high-poverty ghettos, barrios, and slums has nearly doubled since 2000, rising from 7.2 million to 13.8 million.” “Poverty became more concentrated [since 2000] — more than one in four of the black poor and nearly one in six of the Hispanic poor lives in a neighborhood of extreme poverty, compared to one in thirteen of the white poor.” But the culprit isn’t simply racial discrimination — it’s also suburban sprawl.

Lessons From Watts For Ferguson, Baltimore, L.A. And Everywhere

August 12, 2015 Gloria Walton, www.scopela.org Strategize! Living Wage, Poverty, Urban

By Gloria Walton in Scopela - In the last 20 years, SCOPE has emerged as a local laboratory for L.A. From day one, we were pushing the envelope. Experimenting. How do we build community power and influence? How do we elevate equity in all policies? We believe if you start by building a program for people with the most burdens, facing the greatest barriers, who come from the poorest communities, if you start there and build a program for those communities to succeed, then you have a program that will benefit everyone. SCOPE’s 20-year-old jobs model does that. Our model couples entry-level jobs with job-training and apprenticeships to create real career pathways into good-paying union jobs in entertainment, health care and the green economy. These programs go the extra mile by providing paid on-the-job training, mentoring by experienced senior workers and tutoring to help pass certification exams and tests.

Percent Living In Poor Neighborhoods Doubled Since 2000 To 13.8%

August 12, 2015 Alana Semuels, www.theatlantic.com Educate! Community, Neighborhoods, Poverty

By Alana Semuels in The Atlantic - Half a century after President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a war on poverty, the number of Americans living in slums is rising at an extraordinary pace. The number of people living in high-poverty areas—defined as census tracts where 40 percent or more of families have income levels below the federal poverty threshold—nearly doubled between 2000 and 2013, to 13.8 million from 7.2 million, according to a new analysis of census data by Paul Jargowsky, a public-policy professor at Rutgers University-Camden and a fellow at The Century Foundation. That’s the highest number of Americans living in high-poverty neighborhoods ever recorded. The development is worrying, especially since the number of people living in high-poverty areas fell 25 percent, to 7.2 million from 9.6 million, between 1990 and 2000.

Poor Neighborhoods To Get Green Car-Share Program

August 9, 2015 Eleanor Goldberg, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Climate Change, pollution, Poverty, Transportation

By Eleanor Goldberg in the Huffington Post. Los Angeles, CA - In many areas, poor residents typically have longer commutes and less access to public transportation than middle- and upper-class communities, yet they’re being excluded from the growing car-share trend. But that gap may at least begin to close in Los Angeles. Across the U.S. people earning between $5,000 and $30,000 a year spend about a quarter of their household income on transportation. Though car-sharing programs can help low-income individuals greatly cut down on travel costs and gas emissions, these companies typically don’t cater to poorer neighborhoods since the profit potential isn’t there, Streets Blog USA points out.

Sick Mother of 8 Detained For Stealing Food Dies

August 7, 2015 Erica Garner and Reggie Harris, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! health, police brutality, Poverty, Racism

By Erica Garner and Reggie Harris. New York, NY - We applaud Governor Cuomo for temporarily instituting a special prosecutor to investigate tragedies like Raynette Turner's death. Without his executive order, we would not be paying attention to the unacceptable death of this mother of eight arrested who was held for two days without bail for allegedly stealing crab legs from a grocery store (presumably to eat). After reading the responses from local politicians and community activists, we find it necessary to highlight a glaring question we are left with after all of the congratulations and backslapping: Is it reasonable to keep a visibly sick mother of eight in jail for two days because she allegedly stole food?

Chicago Activists Fight For Survival

July 23, 2015 Maya Dukmasova, www.truth-out.org Resist! Inequality, Poverty, Public Health, University, Violence

By Maya Dukmasova in Truthout - On the first Wednesday in June, nine Chicago activists were arrested for occupying an administration building at the University of Chicago during an annual alumni reunion. They demanded to meet with Rob Zimmer, the president of the university, to discuss the lack of a Level 1 trauma center on the South Side, as hundreds of big donors were poised to arrive on campus. Two and a half hours later, firefighters cut a hole through the wall and the nine were detained by university police. In the previous month, nine other demonstrators for a South Side trauma center had been arrested during a march on Michigan Avenue. Currently, all four of Chicago's adult trauma centers are located on the North and West sides of the city, leaving almost a fifth of city residents and large swaths of the South Side without a trauma center within a 5-mile radius.

We Are All Greeks Now

July 14, 2015 Chris Hedges, www.truthdig.com Educate! Austerity, Europe, Greece, Poverty, Working Class

By Chris Hedges in Truth Dig - The poor and the working class in the United States know what it is to be Greek. They know underemployment and unemployment. They know life without a pension. They know existence on a few dollars a day. They know gas and electricity being turned off because of unpaid bills. They know the crippling weight of debt. They know being sick and unable to afford medical care. They know the state seizing their meager assets, a process known in the United States as “civil asset forfeiture,” which has permitted American police agencies to confiscate more than $3 billion in cash and property. They know the profound despair and abandonment that come when schools, libraries, neighborhood health clinics, day care services, roads, bridges, public buildings and assistance programs are neglected or closed. They know the financial elites’ hijacking of democratic institutions to impose widespread misery in the name of austerity. They, like the Greeks, know what it is to be abandoned.

Marijuana: Race & Class, Decriminalization Does Not End The Work

July 4, 2015 Chris S Duvall, www.theconversation.com Educate! Decriminalization, Marijuana, Poverty, War On Drugs

By Chris S Duvall in The Conversation - Massachusetts just opened its first marijuana dispensary, with many applauding the move. And as more and more states decriminalize the drug, polls show that most Americans believe that the costs of marijuana prohibition outweigh its benefits. There are surely social benefits to legalization. For one, fewer marijuana-related arrests should slow spending on the war on drugs, which has been astronomically expensive and unsuccessful. And fewer arrests should benefit minority communities that have experienced racially biased drug-law enforcement. Blacks, for instance, face nearly four times the rate of marijuana arrests as whites, despite similar rates of marijuana use and overall drug use between the two racial groups. However, even after decriminalization in some states, racial disparities in arrest rates have persisted, though the total number of arrests has dropped.

U.S. Must End Predatory Payday Loans, Create “Public Option” Banking

June 29, 2015 Ira B Dember, www.occupy.com Create! Banking, Exploitation, Poverty

By Ira B Dember in Occupy - In March, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed rules to crack down on predatory payday lenders. These rules would prevent many payday lending abuses and give consumers a way out of lenders’ debt trap. Under the CFPB’s new rules, borrowers would first have to show they could cover their basic living expenses while repaying loans. Lenders could skip "means testing" and instead limit each person’s total borrowing to $500 – with a single finance charge and no repeated charges. Gone would be auto title loans: if you can’t repay, lenders can't grab your car. (Workers often lose their jobs when they lose their wheels, a "death spiral" that spreads personal and financial chaos.) A couple of months after the CFPB published its proposed rules, TheHill.com reported financial industry blowback.

World Refugee Day: Human Face Of A Global Crisis

June 21, 2015 Staff, www.telesurtv.net Resist! climate crisis, Neoliberalism, Poverty, Refugees, Trade, Wars and Militarism

By TeleSurTV.net. This year, World Refugee Day comes as the number of displaced people around the globe hits records levels of nearly 60 million, the majority of whom are hosted in developing countries. By the end of 2013, developing countries hosted 10.1 million refugees, or 86 percent of the global population of refugees. Countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, Pakistan, and Jordan carry a considerable burden of hosting the world's displaced, whereas wealthy countries such as U.S., Australia, Canada, and the U.K. are lagging far behind in helping to address the global refugee crisis.

Germans March In Munich Against G7 Talks & Trade Deal

June 6, 2015 Ashoka Jegroo, www.wagingnonviolence.org Resist! Climate Change, Free Trade, Germany, Poverty

By Ashoka Jegroo in Waging Non-Violence - Over 30,000 people crowded onto the streets of Munich, Germany on June 4 to protest the upcoming meeting between leaders of seven of the world’s richest countries. “I’d say I’m here against the inequality that continues to prevail — that we have it so good and others have it so bad,” a protester named Julia told EuroNews. “And because we must not lose hope that one day the world really will be equal, and we will all have the same values.” Protesters also took the chance to address a wide variety of issues. Chief among these issues were poverty, climate change, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, a proposed free trade deal between the United States and Europe that has been negotiated mostly in secret. Environmentalist groups, NGOs, opposition parties and anti-globalization activists all marched through Munich’s streets together with “Stop TTIP — Save the Climate — Fight Poverty” as their motto.

As Latin America Moves Left It Successfully Confronts Hunger

June 3, 2015 Marianela Jarroud, www.ipsnews.net Educate! Caribbean, Hunger, Latin America, Left, Poverty, Social Change

By Marianela Jarroud in IPS News - The Latin American and Caribbean region is the first in the world to reach the two global targets for reducing hunger. Nevertheless, more than 34 million people still go hungry. “This is the region that best understood the problem of hunger, and it’s the region that has put the greatest emphasis on policies to assist vulnerable groups. The results achieved have been in accordance with that emphasis,” FAO regional representative Raúl Benítez told IPS. According to The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) 2015 report, released Wednesday by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), hunger affects 5.5 percent of the population of Latin America – or 34.3 million people. That means the region has met the target of halving the proportion of hungry people from 1990 levels, established by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the international community in 2000, with a 2015 deadline.

Report: US Kids Are Poorer Than They Were Decades Ago

May 28, 2015 Rebecca Klein, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Children, Economic Justice, Education, Poverty

Teachers reported that kindergarten students from affluent households in the 2010-2011 school year were more likely to have positive approaches to learning than those whose families live below the poverty line, according to the center's annual report, called The Condition of Education 2015. A positive approach to learning includes paying attention in class, keeping belongings organized and enthusiasm for learning. Female students, students who were older at the start of the school year, students who came from two-parent households, and students whose family income was more than twice the poverty threshold were more likely to have positive approaches to learning, according to teachers.

Matt Taibbi: Why Baltimore Blew Up

May 27, 2015 Matt Taibbi, www.rollingstone.com Educate! Baltimore, Housing, police brutality, Poverty, Racial Justice, Social Change

When Baltimore exploded in protests a few weeks ago following the unexplained paddy-wagon death of a young African-American man named Freddie Gray, America responded the way it usually does in a race crisis: It changed the subject. Instead of using the incident to talk about a campaign of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of illegal searches and arrests across decades of discriminatory policing policies, the debate revolved around whether or not the teenagers who set fire to two West Baltimore CVS stores after Gray's death were "thugs," or merely wrongheaded criminals. From Eric Garner to Michael Brown to Akai Gurley to Tamir Rice to Walter Scott and now Freddie Gray, there have now been so many police killings of African-American men and boys in the past calendar year or so that it's been easy for both the media and the political mainstream to sell us on the idea that the killings are the whole story.

Spotlight On Baltimore

May 27, 2015 Todd Cherkis, www.labornotes.org Educate! Baltimore, Freddie Gray, Poverty, Worker Rights and Jobs

Baltimore erupted after the killing of Freddie Gray. The crisis has laid bare a city strained beyond human capacity by inequality and police violence. Public policies have created islands of wealth and comfort, surrounded by a sea of service cuts, hyper-policing, and degrading poverty in which most of the city is drowning. It’s those policies that gave rise to the police violence that ended Gray’s life—an extreme example of the injustice that people here are facing every day. What’s unusual about this moment is that, through their own extraordinary effort, Baltimore’s poor people are being seen and heard. The same pundits who usually focus on how to bring more wealthy people to Baltimore and push the poor out to the suburbs are now talking about how to grapple with savage poverty, hyper-policing, and state violence. “The murder of Freddie Gray was like a boomerang,” says West Baltimore resident Randolph Ford, “flipping the status quo around to where the unity of the people and the fight for social justice has strengthened.”

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