Learning From Europe?

categories: Activism, Children, Government, Hunger, Jobs & Unemployment, News, Policy, Race Ethnicity Class & Gender, The Economy

Published June 14, 2009 @ 03:00PM PT

There's some articles I've been wanting to post this week that I'm throwing up here for your Sunday evening perusal, all related to different conversations we've been having this week at Poverty in America:

US unemployment has surpassed Europe's for the first time since the 1980s, prompting a reconsideration of calls for Europe to liberalize its economy to the same extent that we have. "The countries that have done best to soften the [economic crisis] are those with a tradition of social partnership among employers, trade unions and government. Those include the Netherlands, Germany and the Nordic countries.

Trained chefs used to churning out high-end organic food for haute restaurants turn their attention to feeding the poor and hungry.

A forerunner to the type of work done at Miami Workers Center and elsewhere, "Luke Cole, an early leader of the environmental justice movement, which holds that many minority neighborhoods have become toxic dumping grounds because their residents are poor and powerless, died Saturday in Uganda."

And Bread for the City also weighs in on whether rising unemployment will force a reconsideration of our welfare-to-work emphasis.

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Author

Leigh is a PhD candidate in urban planning at MIT, and a consultant on U.S. Gulf Coast recovery. She sits on the Board of the Allston-Brighton Community Development Corporation in Boston, and has worked with non-profits, foundations and local governments on policies and programs aimed at reducing urban poverty and inequality.