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The Government of Canada Delivers Support to Help Those Who Are Homeless in Toronto

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:51:18 -0700

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(June 20, 2008) - Young pregnant women and single mothers in Toronto working to break free from the cycles of homelessness and poverty and build a stronger future for themselves are getting help from the Government of Canada.

Senator Consiglio Di Nino, on behalf of the Honourable Monte Solberg, Minister of Human Resources and Social Development, is attending today's grand opening of 1900 Sheppard Avenue West, which received more than $2 million in federal homelessness funding for Toronto Community Housing to support people with special housing needs.

The Government of Canada delivers support to help those who are homeless in Toronto

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:00:00 -0700

New York Neighborhoods Need Fresh Food

Mon, 5 May 2008 14:27:23 -0700

Courtesy of New York Times

The NYT reports that "Big Apple" residents can't find supermarkets in walking distance from their homes, and they are, consequently, spending their food budgets in drug stores where no fresh foods are available.

A continuing decline in the number of neighborhood supermarkets has made it harder for millions of New Yorkers to find fresh and affordable food within walking distance of their homes, according to a recent city study. The dearth of nearby supermarkets is most severe in minority and poor neighborhoods already beset by obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

All over the city and not even just low-income neighborhoods, the community's food crisis is also a labor problem. As grocery stores close, as many as 100 workers could be left without jobs.

At stake at the Bronx store are more than 100 jobs, many of them filled by local residents, including teenagers and single mothers. Some of the employees more or less grew up in the business, starting as teenagers with part-time, unionized jobs. The pay and benefits have helped them support their families, and even prosper.

Welfare Reform is Like Soup

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:37:41 -0700

Imagine a dinner party for which I hire a caterer who I tell exactly what to cook, give my favorite soup recipe and stand over in the kitchen making sure that they prepare it exactly as I say. When the food comes out and my guest’s spoons go into their mouths, their faces contort, noses scrunch and conversation ends. There’s just way too much salt. I go huffing into the kitchen to yell at my caterer for making the food to salty and return talking about what an incompetent and contrary company I’ve hired.

Today’s New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton, who supported her husband in signing 1996 welfare reform legislation and continues to extol its virtues, says she tried to pass legislation as a Senator to remedy some of its failings but was unable to do so because Republicans would not let her. It's like when I hypothetically yelled at the caterer. Clinton is blaming the Republicans for screwing over poor people while it was she and her husband who were responsible for the job in the first place.

Clearly it's not a perfect analogy, as the Clintons passed welfare reform under great pressure from the right, but its not that far off. And it begs that we have a memory longer than the last 36 hours. Bill Clinton gutted welfare, abandoning scores of poor women and families of color, all with Hillary Clinton’s sometimes active and sometimes tacit support.

Making matters worse, the article quotes Barrack Obama announcing his support for the Clinton era welfare reforms as well.

“Before welfare reform, you had, in the minds of most Americans, a stark separation between the deserving working poor and the undeserving welfare poor,” Mr. Obama said in an interview. “What welfare reform did was desegregate those two groups. Now, everybody was poor, and everybody had to work.”

But welfare reform actually let poor people languish and it passed with white people’s support. White people's racist resentment made poor whites act against their own self interest. Obama suggests that the solution to this white resentment about undeserving Black poor people was found in welfare reform by abandoning poor people altogether. Is this what he meant when he talked about ending the racial stalemate in his race speech?

Clinton and Obama will need to match their policies to their words when it comes to ending poverty and racial inequity. Welfare reform is a perfect model of what happens if they do not.