The Economy
Low-Wage Workers Routinely Cheated
Published September 02, 2009 @ 12:46PM PT
A powerhouse of scholars has just released a comprehensive report documenting systemic, "widespread" wage violations in the low-wage market. 68% of more than 4,000 low-wage workers surveyed (average wage was $8.02/hour) had experienced at least one wage violation in the week prior. Wage violations included: not receiving overtime pay, not being given any breaks, having deductions illegally taken from paychecks, being forced to work past their scheduled finishing time, having their tips inappropriately garnished, and being paid less than the legal minimum wage. Critical to keep in mind as you advocate for workers' rights: the overall quality of the the workplace correlates strongly to the likelihood of wage violations.
Poverty as a Political Issue
Published August 31, 2009 @ 09:20AM PT
The American Prospect featured a great piece last week about how politicians frame poverty - and how that impacts public sentiment towards the poor. After Reagan effectively boogey-womaned mothers on welfare, President Clinton reframed Democratic economic policy as one concerned with the middle-class. This was a political maneuver to fight poverty subtly using a more inclusive rhetoric; many political observers claim that President Obama is doing the same thing today. What's especially interesting here is how their policy actions within our economic circumstances influence our general attitudes toward the poor. Is the best time to fight poverty now - during an historic recession - or when the good times roll again?
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)
25% NOLA Public Housing Residents Lost
Published August 25, 2009 @ 08:53AM PT
Saturday August 29 marks the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of the US Gulf Coast. The pre-storm problem of deep poverty and racial inequality has worsened, and gone largely unreported. Those of us at Change.org have an opportunity to reverse that trend. It begins by educating ourselves on the enduring struggles down there to provide a safe, affordable place to live for all those who lost their homes due to a lethal combination of a natural disaster and wrongheaded public policy. To start: HUD cannot locate over 25% of public housing residents who were living in the now-demolished "Big Four" projects prior to the storm.
More, including what you can do, after the jump.
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.
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:
