inequality

Few Safety Nets for Women of Color

UNITED NATIONS - As hundreds of activists from around the world descend on the United Nations Monday for a major two-week meeting on women's rights and equality, the economic crisis here in the host country is continuing to have an especially heavy toll on women of colour.

African American women were disproportionately impacted by the subprime and housing crisis in the United States that triggered the longer-term global meltdown, and they continue to be marginalised in the ever more precarious U.S. job market.

Posted in Economy/Trade, inequality

The Recession and the ‘Deserving Poor’

As the economy crumbles, issues of poverty and economic need have begun to make more frequent appearances in the news media. From October through December 2008, for example, the three nightly TV news shows ran 20 stories—about one every four or five days—addressing poverty or related issues such as homelessness or food stamps. A previous FAIR study of nightly news coverage (Extra!, 9–10/07), by comparison, found an average of one poverty story on the evening news every three weeks.

Posted in Economy/Trade, inequality, journalism, Media, stimulus, us poverty

Let’s Talk About Race—or Maybe Not

There were early indications that corporate media coverage of Barack Obama’s candidacy would be squirm-inducing, putting on display the elite (mainly white) press corps’ murky ideas about race much more than any straightforward reckoning of black Americans’ situation or what an Obama presidency might mean for their concerns.

Posted in inequality, journalism, Media, racism

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 27, 2009
3:30 PM

CONTACT: Children's Defense Fund
Ed Shelleby 202-662-3602
Evan Holland 310-695-8324

Children's Defense Fund, National Leaders Convene to Address America's Cradle to Prison Pipeline

Heads of NAACP, NCLR, U.S. Conference of Mayors, PolicyLink, and Nearly 200 Young Leaders Meet in Sacramento

SACRAMENTO - February 27 - Today, the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) and several co-conveners concluded their two-day California/National Cradle to Prison Pipeline Summit in Sacramento, California. The more than 500 attendees at the summit shared promising approaches and developed community action plans to stop the funneling of thousands of children down a pipeline to prison.

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The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) is a non-profit child advocacy organization that has worked relentlessly for 35 years to ensure a level playing field for all children. We champion policies and programs that lift children out of poverty; protect them from abuse and neglect; and ensure their access to health care, quality education, and a moral and spiritual foundation.

Children's Defense Fund Links:

Posted in inequality, prison system

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 24, 2009
12:46 PM

CONTACT: ACLU
Will Matthews, ACLU, (212) 549-2582 or 2666; media@aclu.org
Nsombi Lambright, ACLU of Mississippi, (601) 573-3978; nlambright@msaclu.org

ACLU Report Reveals Breakdown in Mississippi Alternative Schools

Alternative School System Failing to Prevent Dropouts or Provide Quality Education

JACKSON, Miss. - February 24 - Alternative schools in Mississippi are not adequately helping struggling students to succeed academically, leaving too many of the state's children to drift toward dropout and failure, according to a new American Civil Liberties Union report released today.

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The ACLU conserves America's original civic values working in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in the United States by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

ACLU Links:

Posted in civil liberties, Education, inequality

Elderly New Yorkers Angry as Crisis Hits Poorest

NEW YORK - From housebound grandmothers who relay on charity meal deliveries, to ailing retirees who cannot pay rising costs for medications, older Americans feeling the pinch of the financial crisis are getting angry and forming groups with names like "Senior Outrage."

In New York, with city and state tax revenues tumbling, benefits and services to the elderly are being cut, and many older residents are furiously drawing comparisons to the billions of dollars spent to bail out banks -- and pay Wall Street bonuses.

Posted in Economy/Trade, inequality, poverty

New Report Released on Valentine's Day Eve: Chocolate and Heartache?

For many, Valentine's Day is a celebration of love. For others, Valentine's Day is about pain, heartache, and longing...but it doesn't have to be that way.

Valentine's Day and chocolate go hand-in-hand, but for parents of children trafficked into the cocoa fields and kept there as slaves, our hunger for chocolate is a nightmare of heartache for their stolen children.

Posted in child labor, civil rights, fair trade, inequality, poverty, slave trade

Reconstruction Now!

President Barack Obama ended his first prime time press conference on the "I" word.

"When I hear people just saying we don't need to do anything...then what I get a sense of is that there is some ideological blockage there that needs to be cleared up."

The ideological "blockage" the President's talking about is about as big as it gets.

Posted in inequality, obama, Politics

'Poverty Olympics' Ridicule Games

A merry band of poverty activists danced down East Hastings Street Sunday to question the rationale behind the city and provincial governments' financial commitment to the Olympic Games.

The second annual "Poverty Olympics" was a lighthearted event aimed at raising awareness about the serious issues of poverty and homelessness that affect Downtown Eastside residents, said Wendy Pederson of the Carnegie Community Action Project.

Posted in Activism, inequality, poverty, protest

Inequality Alive and Well in US

President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress face one overriding domestic challenge. Can they reverse a generation-long plunge toward economic inequality not seen since the Gilded Age?

Posted in inequality, labor