Children
Policies that Actually Promote Self-Sufficiency
Published June 26, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
The Boston Globe ran an editorial yesterday chiding the state for policies that deny the working poor real opportunities to move off public assistance. Published to coincide with the release of a new report by the Massachusetts Asset Development Commission, the editorial highlighted the reality that almost 50% of state residents are considered asset-poor - i.e., they have less than 3 months worth of financial security should they lose a job or income stream. Despite this, many poverty programs in Mass - and nationwide - penalize recipients if they earn beyond an arbitrary baseline amount, spend money on things like education, or own a car worth more than a certain value. The Commission's report identifies this as the "cliff effect"
"whereby working people reach a wage threshold and are precipitously cut off from benefits. These people are working hard at difficult jobs; they shouldn’t have to choose between reaching for a better life and losing support programs that make working possible."
Seriously - isn't this common sense?
When You're Hot You're Hot!
Published June 26, 2009 @ 06:39AM PT
I must be nuts. Days like this convince me of it. But I can’t really complain…
It’s the heat. I live in a humble, but normally comfortable, RV. By choice and for many reasons I don’t use my AC, even on days when outside temps bump 100 and humidity hits near-swamp level. I usually can find a place to go during the worst of the heat, but as I returned this evening the thermometer indicated a balmy 101 inside.
R.I.P. Michael Jackson
Published June 25, 2009 @ 06:02PM PT
He's being eulogized all over the television, radio and internet news, so I'll keep it short. I am of the generation that came up on Thriller. Michael was born in Gary, Indiana, to a steelworker father and his wife; according to Wikipedia his father physically and mentally abused him - and his reputation is forever marred by allegations of his own perpetration of child abuse.. He is remembered as "rising from poverty to stardom" - and not making the transition very well over his lifecourse. But what a talent - from a childhood singing" from the bunk beds" with his siblings in a rustbelt life of near-poverty.
I leave you with the We Are the World video that went to fight famine in Africa; Jackson and Lionel Ritchie co-wrote the song. Rest in Peace, Michael.
Action Alert: Congress Must Move on Immigrants' Rights & Gender Equity
Published June 24, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Apparently all the dawdling in Congress is getting under the skin of the NY Times Editorial staff, evidenced by three editorials yesterday demanding Obama lead on the Dream Act, the Paycheck Fairness Act, and legal aid. Read on to learn more about these bills and why we must nudge the Senate (and House) towards passage of these bills that will go a long way towards fighting poverty.
Foster Kids Save $3.1 Million
Published June 23, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
The Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative released a report last week showing that their matched savings program for current and former foster children has helped those kids save a combined $3.1 Million to use for nest eggs, education, etc. Foster children are disproportionately at risk for homelessness, pregnancy, unemployment and incarceration. This Initiative and others like it offer kids a chance to put small amounts away and have those funds matched, often dollar-for-dollar, to ease the burdens of poverty and surviving on their own in and outside the foster care system.
Matched savings programs, most often called Individual Development Accounts, are one of those millenial anti-poverty innovations that targets individuals as an alternative to public assistance. Typically funded by a mix of federal and private dollars (e.g., United Way, banks), the majority target adults and allow them to use the money for three things: homeownership, small business development, or education. Although an admirable program that inculcates good financial skills, the maximum amounts saved are often too small to buy a house or fund private education, certainly in most metropolitan areas. But I know through my CDC work that people have managed to save for a down payment or make business-related purchases like a new van to expand services.
It's great to see these programs specifically supporting foster children. These are the success stories we so often need to hear!
(Photo by alancleaver2000)
Putting Mothers To Work Watching Their Own Kids
Published June 23, 2009 @ 08:05AM PT
A report released last week shows that
the percentage of underemployed workers in Los Angeles County has doubled in the past year to 18 percent...Underemployment takes a broader look at the economy than official state unemployment figures because it also includes those who have given up on looking for a job or have been involuntarily reduced to part-time employment.
The report, "Ebbing Tides in the Golden State" by the Economic Roundtable also demonstrated that insecure employment has been hit hardest:
“Many of L.A.’s industries that have lost the most jobs in the first year of the recession have high rates of informal employment, including retail trade, construction, non-durable manufacturing, wholesale trade and hotels,” said report lead author Daniel Flaming, president of the Economic Roundtable, which is a non-profit public policy research organization in downtown Los Angeles.
As mentioned here previously, 1099s, those surviving on cash transactions, are really getting slammed in this recession. And now, California wants to keep unemployed mothers from job seeking and training, and pay them to stay home and care for their kids instead.
Poverty in America's Image Problem?
Published June 22, 2009 @ 09:49AM PT
Sorry for the long delay posting this weekend and today. I've been traveling around CT, NY and MA for wedding-related activities. I had a chance to catch up with a group of friends Saturday night that included fellow political junkies and writers and some finance types. People were pretty interested in my blogging gig, and Change.org more generally, which was very cool. A friend of mine's husband who I don't know too well wanted to know what the other causes were at Change.org, and was surprised to learn how popular global warming was compared to domestic poverty - and not because he's particularly interested in the latter. It was an interesting conversation in its randomness and it got me thinking - again - about how or whether people think about poverty in the U.S.
On the road yesterday with my fiance, I ventured that domestic poverty needs an appealing iconic image. He offered the migrant mother - taken by immigration, I responded. Homelessness is its own category; children offer represent hunger, child abuse or neglect, or the failure of public education. Or child poverty as its own issue area. Poor men are often memorialized as white homeless men, perhaps with mental illness or substance abuse problems, or as African-American criminals. Thanks to Reagan and the rest, all we're left with is the "welfare queen." Native American poverty is virtually invisible to the public eye, and the current economic crisis has disappeared the working poor, who, in their employee uniforms waiting for the bus, were the emerging image of domestic poverty in the 21st century.
The other challenge for domestic anti-poverty activists is to distinguish our work from global anti-poverty efforts. Of course, there's an indelible connection between our exploitative, global economic systems and poverty at home and abroad, and we'd benefit from a global workers' movement. But the surge in activism in recent years to significantly cut global poverty often overshadows the enduring problems we face here at home. The combination of our siloed approach to social justice with the scope of global poverty with our negative, individualistic approach to poverty in the U.S. really creates a rough road for us fighting economic hardship here at home.
I cruised around Flickr and Google this morning, comparing search results for the different Change.org causes and our respective blogs Google rankings. "Poverty" on its own is actually the biggest topic after immigration. But the more one encloses parameters around poverty, adding "America" or "domestic" or "United States", the more the web and image results shrink. "Poverty in America" is one of the smallest.
I'm pleased that this blog is in the top 20 Google results for "poverty in America" (3), "poverty" + "America" (6), and "domestic poverty" (14). I really believe a renewed anti-poverty movement is afoot in this country, but it's not going to look like the War on Poverty of years past, but more likely will grow hand-in-hand with rights-based movements for workers, immigrants, women, and as part of racial justice, environmental justice and economic human rights movements. Social justice is not neatly packaged nor successfully achieved within single-issue activist frames. The beauty of Change.org is its aggregation of a multiplicity of social causes in one place. But we must work together and learn from one another to make our world a more just and equitable place.
You want to know more about Poverty in America? Believe me, have we got it covered here at Change.org.
(Top photo from Newark, NJ by Tony the Misfit; bottom photo of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign's March for Our Lives at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN by Andrew Ciscel)
