Hunger
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."
Drawing Fresh Foods to Low-Income Neighborhoods
Published June 25, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
Through a range of financial incentives and zoning regulations, states and cities are bringing supermarkets to previously underserved low-income communities:
Through the Pennsylvania Fresh Food Financing Initiative, Mr. Brown, who owns 10 other supermarkets in the Philadelphia area, got a $1 million grant and $7 million in federal New Markets tax credits, which are aimed at stimulating investment in low-income communities. Several customers said the prices at Mr. Brown’s store were fairer than what they had been used to.
This is not a new story. I remember the excitement around the Pathmark on 125th in NYC when I lived there 10 years ago. But for such an "old" story, progress certainly is slow!
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.
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)
Priced Out of Food Stamps by the Stimulus
Published June 18, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
Under the economic recovery plan, laid-off workers have seen a $25 weekly bump in their unemployment checks as part of a broad expansion of benefits for the poor. But the law did not raise the income cap for food stamp eligibility, so the extra money has pushed some people over the limit.
The story that follows is infuriating and heart-wrenching. It's the accumulation of anecdotes like this that cause people to hate the government and its "red tape." Never mind that I've had similar outrageous bureaucratic snafus with corporate America - though, none, by the way, that caused me to go hungry. At least in DC they're trying to increase access to and the value of food stamps.
In other news, If I don't close out some of the tabs in Firefox, my PC might crash on me, so here's a domestic poverty news dump:
The "Hidden Scandal" of American Hunger
Published June 18, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
What happens when gas prices reach such heights that poor families in rural areas can't afford to drive into town to visit the food pantry? What happens when quitting your job is actually more economically sound than spending $200 a week on gas to reach employment 50 miles away? What happens when you have to choose between feeding your children or buying needed prescriptions? What happens when the social safety net fails to catch those who are falling into chronic hunger?
These are some of the questions that Sasha Abramsky seeks to address in his recently-released book Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger And How To FIx It. Admittedly, I have only just started reading it and am about 40 pages in right now. However, I wanted to let all you hunger advocates know about this book in case you haven't heard of it already.
Learning From Europe?
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.
