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Stimulus Bypasses Women and Minority Businesses
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Most Elderly Job Seekers Since the Great Depression
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Seeing Hartford
Bing Wins Full Term to Lead Detroit
Published November 04, 2009 @ 04:58AM PT
Lots of Mayoral races last night, with specific marching orders to revitalize and continuously improve our cities. I'll be back later today with some thoughts on their different charges, but here's a quick round-up:
David Bing is elected for a full-term in Detroit.
Wunderkind Luke Ravenstahl is re-elected in Pittsburgh.
Bloomberg wins by less than anticipated in NYC for his self-appointed third term (basically).
Menino wins easily, but also by a smaller margin than usual, in Boston. He's now the city's longest serving Mayor, beginning his 6th term today.
Lawrence, MA elects its first Latino Mayor, William Lantigua - the first in MA.
In Atlanta and Houston, no decisions yet.
Any key elections in your neck of the woods?
And Maine voters, WTH????
Poverty News Round-up
Published October 20, 2009 @ 01:25PM PT
Too many interesting tabs open in my browser to select just one story today. Here's the latest on poverty news and activism happening around the US:
- Thank you feds! For stepping in and telling Indiana that allowing private employers to use welfare data to screen potential employees is "inappropriate" and "not allowed." Ya think?
- If port cities Oakland and Long Beach, CA, have such similar demographic profiles, including lots of poverty, why is crime so much worse in Oakland? It's unclear, but fortunately there's a new police chief in town to try and reverse the city's terrifying trends.
- We've come a long way from the days of "No Irish Need Apply" - AG Andrew Cuomo in NY has charged EMC Construction with exploiting its workers, including using a three-tiered wage system for Irish ($25/hour), Black ($18/hour) and Latin@ ($15/hour) workers. Nothing encourages worker solidarity like abusive wage gaps!
- Mayor Bloomberg is creating jobs in NYC, but are they good jobs? The short answer: No.
- What the state gives, the market taketh away. Bloomberg builds or preserves 72k low-income housing units, 200k disappear due to vague and mysterious "market forces." Don't look under your beds at night, kiddies!
- And finally, let this be a lesson to other states: Indiana is pulling the plug on privatizing its welfare system, after thousands of eligible recipients lost benefits. One old measure they're bringing back in? Face-to-face interactions between recipients and case workers. Good to see we haven't quite eliminated jobs as we insist TANF recipients go find some.
(Photo of A.M. Walzer Co. US Inlay Puzzle Map by Marxchivist)
Flint: Back to the Land
Published October 19, 2009 @ 06:20AM PT
I thought about calling this post "Flint: Uplifting and Depressing" to quote the competing descriptors given to the city working to stabilize itself sustainably in the face of population decline and a lost economic base. This is one of those articles that often tires me, as its efforts to report on any source of progress during long-term shifts like rebuilding an eviscerated city can leave readers buoyed with false hopes or impatient for more positive outcomes ASAP. But it's a telling story of the highs and lows of fighting poverty - the reality that Flint is still deteriorating in places, even as potential new jobs and land uses come to the fore as officials and residents seek to turn around their hometown.
The main focus of the article is creative uses of land - an abundant resource in Flint - such as turning vacant properties into local gardens. For some Americans, a return to the land, rustic, pioneering movement is an economic necessity or the most viable economic solution. So it goes on one street in Flint.
As we know here at Poverty in America, both small scale and large scale efforts like this are happening all over the country. I praise local governments for allowing residents to exercise some creative control over their neighborhoods alongside government efforts to preserve housing, retain or bring in good jobs, and provide for citizens' economic well-being, safety and health.
(Photo of the Beresford Community Garden in San Mateo, CA by Vicky Moore)
How Environmental Justice Works
Published October 15, 2009 @ 09:03AM PT
Through MIT, I've had the opportunity to provide research and writing for a range of social justice clients, including grassroots groups fighting for environmental justice and green economic development. I've written occasionally about EJ here, but I've never really taken the time to define it. Embracing this frame is imperative as stimulus funds flow and talk of "green jobs" and "green development" abound.
Today, in honor of Blog Action Day 2009, in which Change.org hosts over 8k blogs from 135 countries worldwide to blog about Climate Change to raise awareness of this pressing global problem, I want to provide some important information on environmental justice, racism and equity to inform your climate change activism. To be effective climate change activists, we cannot forget the unequal and unfair impacts borne by low-income communities, often communities of color, often in the US South, on reservations and borderlands, from environmental degradation. Read on to learn more about these critical frames and see how one group in San Diego, the Environmental Health Coalition, is succeeding in pursuing environmental equity for low-income Latin@ communities there.
Desperation Reigns In Detroit
Published October 10, 2009 @ 09:27AM PT
You may have heard by now of the crush of Detroiters who descended on Cobo Hall this week to apply for homelessness prevention assistance. 50,000 - 60,000 residents have received applications for 3,400 packages of up to $3,000 to cover utility bills and fees associated with keeping one's home or moving into a new one.
The Detroit Free Press Editorial team beat me to the Katrina metaphors, and even threw in "tsunami" for good measure to describe Detroit's economic disaster.
But seriously: I know no flood waters have ravaged Detroit, nor have unseasonal weather conditions killed anticipated crop loads, but how can we not classify Detroit's 30% unemployment, 30% poverty rate, and upwards of 80,000 vacant homes as a national disaster? Are we so despairing ourselves, or so immune to economic conditions, that we've become inured to the increasingly regular photos of hoards of desperate Americans crowding our convention centers for whatever meager, emergency assistance we throw at them? If I could turn this into a photo essay I would: Those prior two links are of African-Americans lining up for free healthcare in South Los Angeles, and Detroiters at Cobo Hall waiting for aid applications. Those Depression-Era bread lines are NOT a thing of the past.
(Photo of Katrina survivors outside the Convention Center in NOLA by Wyn Henderson for FEMA)
No Work for Welfare in CA
Published October 07, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Cue the hyperventilating about dependency and free riders: California, in an effort to save money, has suspended work requirements for some of its public assistance recipients for the next 17 months. Never mind that its welfare-to-work program will become even more stringent in 2011, and that it cannot even afford to subsidize the critical child care needed for recipients to work in the first place. Layabouts will be getting rich off your tax dollars, without earning a dime! Shiftless miscreants.
Oh, what's that now? What are we seeing in Fresno, one of the first places to implement the new, less expensive policy? "Belying stereotypes, only about 10 percent of those who could be exempted from the work requirements — and supporting aid like child care — chose to do so in the first month." Turns out, people like receiving job prep and trying to play an active role in society! Let's try to remember that when we crank up the wailing about welfare queens despite the fact that "opting out" will become "mandatory" in the future due to CA's insane budget realities.
Help Hard to Get in 'Burbs
Published October 06, 2009 @ 07:31AM PT
The NYT ran two contrasting articles on the NY suburbs this weekend, highlighting the preservation and development plans for Long Island and the difficulty in accessing social services suburbanites have during the recession. They're worth reading together; L.I. public officials are promising to preserve the cherished single family homes and open spaces of the region, while hard-hit households struggle to find and get to the few shelters, soup kitchens and emergency service providers in the suburbs. Is this just a discrepancy that improved public transportation could resolve?
