Jobs & Unemployment
Obama Restores Civil Rights
Published September 01, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Good news this morning: the Obama Administration is "restoring" the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice - the agency for anti-discrimination enforcement in the areas of housing, voting rights, employment, and so forth. Under Bush, the division was notoriously politicized, with conservative and Christian loyalists with little civil rights experience recruited and charged with prioritizing religious cases at the expense of the division's core focus on racial/ethnic discrimination. Why am I writing about this at Poverty in America? Because discrimination has historically reinforced racial, gender and other forms of inequality in housing, jobs, etc. - leading to the disproportionately high rates of women and people of color living in poverty.
Keep Poverty on the Agenda
Published August 30, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
With the death of Sen. Kennedy and the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina both happening this week, the topic of poverty was fresh in the public's mind. In eulogizing Kennedy, most of us could take pride in remembering his service to "working people" everywhere, his commitment to poverty reduction over the life of his career. With Katrina, it is also about a job unfinished, but with a much less nostalgic, sweet glow - the enduring problems of blight, housing insecurity, racial inequality and poverty are glaring, graphic, and depressing.
Whether you're motivated to action by the inspiring good works of folks like Senator Kennedy, or fueled by a sense of outrage over injustice, this past week offered plenty of reminders that poverty is a persistent, entrenched, political problem for which solutions exist. Investments in early childhood education pay lifetime dividends. Economic boycotts and union movements highlight workers' rights and benefits. Providing childcare, fair pay, and extensive family leave policies give mothers better opportunities to compete economically and earn enough to care for their families. And universal health care bankrupts neither households nor the entire medical system.
Change.org is just one platform where you can commit (and re-commit) to fighting poverty in the U.S. To start, let's begin by keeping poverty on the public agenda - as a problem we can and must solve. Let's not let it slip away as our weekend tributes wrap up. As Uncle Teddy and 15k volunteers in New Orleans remind us, the cause endures and the work goes on.
("Not Everyone in SF is Rich..." by Son of Groucho)
Prisoners Feed the Hungry
Published August 23, 2009 @ 05:57PM PT
As hunger spreads, many states are relying increasingly on inmates for farming, "gleaning," and food bank assistance. Prisoner assistance with stocking food bank warehouses, picking food from fields that might otherwise rot, or even planning and harvesting produce occurs through formal employment programs that states run mostly for non-violent, short-term offenders. Free prison labor is a godsend for stretched food banks and state budgets alike, and prisoners gain needed work skills that may prove useful when they are released.
The article is very positive in terms of this skills-for-food exchange. Assuming - and this could be a big if - that the prisoners are treated well in these manual labor programs, the examples of prisoner assistance and food bank gratitude from Ohio to Texas are a refreshing contrast to the reality of overcrowded, militarized, segregated prisons nationwide. Institutions that we've starved of resources so desperately that prisoner training programs have been slashed left and right, contributing to growth of repeat offenders who languish on the inside and can't cope on the outside. Please use the revolving door to your left, sir.
For the prisoners participating in these farming and food bank programs, I wonder how many of them have ever picked up a bag of food from a local bank, in addition to packing them up now. Here's wishing them some success in translating what they've learned as they've done their time to fruitful employment and steady wages when they're out. And many thanks to the incarcerated around the country who are helping us fight the scourge of hunger.
(Boxes of potatoes at the San Francisco Food Bank by a tree is nice)
1 in 5 Americans are Poor
Published August 22, 2009 @ 11:34AM PT
As summer melts away and non-profit organizations gear up for a difficult fall, anti-poverty activists need an accurate picture of just how tough it is out there. Following up on Greg's great post from Thursday that captured the growth of hunger nationwide, we offer now a quick summary of the latest recessionary figures:
- 37.3M people were living below the official poverty line in 2007; 2008 should see another 1.5M added, for a statistically significant growth to 12.7% of the population. Experts anticipate an even worse result by the end of '09, and estimate we could hover around 15% of the population officially considered living in poverty. Even acknowledging how outdated this poverty measure is, we have not counted 1 in 7 people living in poverty since the recession of the early 1990s. And if historical census figures that include the "near poor" are anything to go by, we can expect 1 in 5 people, or 20% of Americans, to be living in or near poverty by the end of this year.
Empower Women, End Poverty
Published August 21, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
If you haven't yet read the series on women and poverty at The New York Times, I highly recommend adding it to your weekend reading list. The paternalistic on-line title notwithstanding, the collection of articles details the collective economic improvements in poor communities and households resulting from investing in women's and girl's education, health, bodily safety and autonomy, and work opportunities. The focus of the issue is mainly on the developing world, where the majority of the world's poor - and poor women - live. This is always somewhat frustrating for domestic anti-poverty activists, as if our nation is a haven of gender equity and parity. Nonetheless, there's some important lessons on education, policy and power for those of us fighting for equality and an end to poverty stateside.
Taking Stock: Hunger Across America
Published August 20, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
In previous posts, including this one, I've talked about the need for adequate summer feeding programs in order to make sure that children do not go hungry while school is out of session.
But as the economy continues to contract and unemployment continues to rise (although apparently levels of joblessness are beginning to level off), I've come to realize that it's not just children who are in need of food assistance this summer, it's everyone.
From middle-class families to single parents to young couples trying to support themselves on minimum wage jobs, it seems as though no one is immune to the pangs of hunger this season.
With this in mind, I decided to take a look around the country to see how bad it really is out there:
Highest Income Inequality Ever
Published August 16, 2009 @ 09:00AM PT
We've surpassed even the vaunted inequality of the 1920s - the "Gilded Age" years that preceded the Great Depression. In 2007, the top 10% of American workers took home just under 50% of all wages. Think about that: if 10 workers were to split $100, one guy (no doubt) would get $49.70, and the remaining 9 would split $51.30. What do you think that one man does for a living compared to the other nine? What jobs, to your mind, possibly deserve that kind of distorted payout?
The paper, written by a Berkeley professor, shows how from 1993 through 2007, the top 1% of earners captured "half of the overall economic growth." Think about how hard you've been working at your job for the past two decades - now you know where your hard-earned profits have gone! And the trend continues - the just released Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows American workers are working longer hours for less pay. Make sure you click through the link to see that thanks to all this productivity, corporate profits are up.
And the cycle continues.
Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly thinks if Democrats or progressives try to rectify this inequality they will be charged with fomenting "class warfare." David Sirota sees the wrangling over Social Security and concludes we're all ready there. We've asked a few times here: is it time to protest yet?
