Guest Bloggers
On Health Care: The Wal-Mart Effect in Washington
Published July 16, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
As Change.org's own Tim Foley reported a week or so ago, Wal-Mart has recently come out (in a letter to President Obama co-signed by the Center for American Progress and Service Employees International Union) in support of an employer mandate that would require most businesses to provide health care coverage to all of their employees.
This change of heart by the mega-corporation--whose dismal labor practices have been well-documented over the past decade--has been called a major political turning point in the nation's current health care reform debate, and could push the country towards more "universal" coverage for all its residents.
However, since reading about this corporate "coming to God" moment, I can't stop asking myself two important questions: why and at what cost has Wal-Mart chosen to support health care reform?
Food Deserts Benefit From Farmers Markets
Published July 09, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Many have come to realize that the problem of food deserts is not that there is no food to eat at all, but rather, that fresh, affordable and healthy food are much harder to come by than the fried chicken and Big Mac's found on nearly every street corner. It is a problem of access and affordability more than anything else.
With the knowledge that Tennessee is one of the most food insecure states (particularly in regard to children) in the entire country, Vanderbilt University graduate student Darcy Freedman decided to conduct research to determine how to address issues of childhood obesity, family nutrition and food security issues in four of Nashville's underserved communities.
What she found was that families do not only need help accessing fresh food, they also need help learning how to eat healthy and understanding why it is so important to their health. And thus, the Veggie Project was born.
Dirty Laundry and Disaster Relief
Published July 08, 2009 @ 06:50AM PT
I was visiting my mom over the long weekend, which meant I had access to cable television. As committed as I am to abolishing the prison industrial complex, I'll be the first to admit that I jump at the chance to veg out during Law and Order marathons whenever I visit mom. This time around though, there was a series of highly irritating commercials in heavy rotation that kept distracting me from the innovative and unpredictable plot lines of crime drama shows. The commercials were for the Tide Loads of Hope program.
If you've never heard of Loads of Hope, it's basically a portable laundromat that Tide transports to disaster affected areas so that people can have clean clothes even when they might be in precarious living situations. I believe that the program started after Hurricane Katrina.
Simple, kind, and well-intentioned, right? I'm sure people devastated by natural disasters (or floods related to weather events as is the case with Katrina and New Orleans) really do appreciate the service. But as a Gulf Coast resident, this feels like a marketing ploy driven and sustained by our suffering. When it comes down to it, how much more money is Tide spending on airing television spots about Loads of Hope than on funding the portable laundromat and supplies? How has this campaign improved Tide's corporate image, and how many people buy bottles of Tide with yellow caps because they like the idea that their money is funding a program like Loads of Hope? And how much money that could have gone directly to local non-profits engaged long-term in disaster recovery has been redirected to Tide as it passes through the Gulf Coast?
...Now What?
Published July 05, 2009 @ 08:31AM PT
So... what changed?
When we found out the unemployment was 9.4% for May, we were told that things were looking up, that there were "green shoots" of signs of possible recovery, that some time soon, maybe before the end of the year, the economy would turn around and things would get better...
And then June's unemployment rate turned out to be 9.5%... and everything went back to being awful.
What changed?
Not much, really - how else to explain only a one-tenth of one percent increase in the unemployment rate - but perhaps what had seemed like a leveling off in some graphs of the economic downturn continued on downward progressions instead. Turns out we have a housing crisis, a foreclosure crisis, a banking crisis, a credit crisis, and a consumer crisis... and none of them appear to be going away.
The Economic Impact of Childhood Hunger
Published July 02, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
For the last several years, many education experts have been calling for longer school days, weeks and years as a way to halt the competitive disadvantage being felt by American students in a global workplace where countries such as China and India keep their children in school for significantly more time.
The case has been made that the U.S. economy is suffering, in part, because our students simply cannot complete professionally with more highly educated foreigners.
A new Feeding America report supports this claim and states that--in addition to scaled back schooling--childhood hunger in the U.S. is a "contributing factor to the nation’s economic woes and puts America at a competitive disadvantage."
Eating Healthy on a Food Stamp Budget...
Published June 25, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
...is it possible?
I'm certainly not the first one to ask this. Doing a little Google "research," I've come across quite a few bloggers (here) (and here, for example) who have asked the exact same question.
While theoretically it is possible to survive on the meager allotment allowed through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP aka Food Stamps), many who have attempted to prove this through a month-long (or longer) "food stamp" diet do not take into account the realities of needing to survive on such a budget.
Yes, if everything goes exactly as planned through an entire month, it is probably possible to eat a relatively healthy diet on a food stamp budget. But what if your car breaks down and you need to get it repaired so you can get to work? What if you or one of your children has to make an unexpected trip to the doctor's office? It is this kind of unanticipated expense that cannot be simulated in any sort of experiment.
It's That Time Again
Published June 24, 2009 @ 05:54AM PT
It is Atlantic hurricane season again. As this time rolls around, I find myself happy to be living in a second floor apartment and nervous about the prospect of another storm coming our way. In addition to the terrible stress that impending storms bring to residents of a region still trying to recover from the physical and emotional damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina, evacuation is expensive. Further, the mandatory evacuation for Hurricane Gustav last year, which was the largest evacuation in U.S. history, demonstrated that local, state and federal officials haven’t done enough in the last four years to make the evacuation process easier, particularly for our poorest and most vulnerable residents.
Evacuation for a hurricane is a human rights issue. In the New Orleans area, shoddy levee construction and environmental degradation mean that it might not even take a direct hit from a hurricane to flood the entire city and drown thousands of people. We have to consciously construct policies that make it possible for everyone to evacuate.
Though this is not an exhaustive list, there are a few things I’ve learned about through my own work and relationships, along with the work of other advocates and organizers that need to change in order for everybody to be able to evacuate.
