JUST IDEAS
The Obama Legacy: Place-Based Poverty
I have spent the last 50-plus years of my life fighting poverty. In 1967, when I worked for Senator Robert Kennedy as his legislative aide, the Senator and I traveled to Mississippi. We saw children starving—literally—with bloated bellies, open sores that wouldn’t heal. Our nation did the right thing then—we expanded the food stamp program—and that’s why you don’t see that kind of starvation here today.
But we had to fight for it. And now we are going to have to fight again.
I Was Homeless in Rural America. Here’s How to Help Families Like Mine.
Source: AP Photo/Elaine Thompson Originally posted on Talkpoverty.org After we packed what was left of our belongings into our rusted-out minivan, my siblings and I loaded in to avoid the rain. We squeezed in among the garbage bags full of clothes, the kitchen...
The Tipped Minimum Wage Hasn’t Budged in 25 Years. That’s a Problem.
Originally posted on The Leadership Conference Education Fund After a quarter century, change has yet to come for tipped workers in the United States. Since 1991 – the last time the federal tipped minimum wage was increased – the first iPod was released and Google...
What Candidates Should Say about Poverty and Opportunity at Ryan’s Forum
First published on TalkPoverty.org and cross-posted on BillMoyers.com. This Saturday, a number of Republican presidential candidates will converge in South Carolina to debate and discuss “fighting poverty and expanding opportunity in America.” We hope that they...
New Research Documents Growth of Extreme Poverty
Cross-posted by several other media outlets, including Billmoyers.com and Commondreams.org. A new book by two of our nation’s foremost poverty researchers, Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, reveals the desperate circumstances that hundreds of thousands of children and...
404 Error: Why Internet Access is Still a Problem for Many in Poverty
Originally posted on TalkPoverty.org When President Obama recently announced the ConnectHome initiative in the auditorium of Oklahoma’s Durant High School, he again stated that the Internet is a necessity, not a luxury. No kidding, Mr. President. This isn’t news to...
Why the wealthy always win
Inequalities in income, wealth, and opportunity have risen to virtually unprecedented levels. In Affluence and Influence, political scientist Martin Gilens demonstrates that in policy disagreements between the most well-off and everyone else, the wealthy consistently...
50 Years Later: Why We Must Remember
Originally posted on TalkPoverty.org. Cross-posted on BillMoyers.com. This has been a summer of half-century commemorations, wonderful and gruesome. Last week we celebrated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the greatest and most important advance in civil rights...