Half the children in American public schools are low income and one million are homeless. Yet today’s school reform agenda dismisses poverty as just an excuse. Join the National Superintendents Roundtable via videostream as it explores these issues in Chicago, July 11 and 12. Presentations (all times Central): 6:00 pm, Friday, July 11: Kent McGuire of the Southern Education Foundation […]

By Teresa Albano Editor, People’s World               NEW YORK –During his Jan. 1 inauguration speech New York City’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, pledged to take “dead aim” at the Big Apple’s obscene wealth gap.  He had called it a “tale of two cities” throughout his campaign, yet reaffirmed in his speech that ending the “economic and social inequalities that threaten to unravel […]

LOS ANGELES —One-third of U.S. women live in or near poverty, a release about a new report, to be unveiled Jan. 12, says.             A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back From The Brink, commissioned by the Center for American Progress and a foundation run by activist Maria Shriver, also puts to rest the common, outmoded picture of U.S. families headed by a working husband, […]

The Half in Ten Foundation and the Center for American Progress released a study recently that found Americans have strong support for education as a priority for reducing poverty across the country. “50 Years after LBJ’s War on Poverty: A Study of American Attitudes About Work, Economic Opportunity, and the Social Safety Net” found that 25 percent of those surveyed […]

ROME —Building on statements he has made before – and this time, making it clear it’s his official position – Pope Francis I is blasting “the tyranny of unfettered capitalism,” plus economic inequity and financial finagling.  He demands that politicians guarantee their citizens “dignified work, education and health care.” And in a long apostolic exhortation to Catholic bishops, priests, workers […]

By Sam Pizzigati Editor, Too Much Do crime and inequality run together?  Sociologists, psychologists, and epidemiologists — scientists who study the health of populations — have over recent decades released serious research that shows a strong connection. But most of this research has been what investigators call “cross-sectional.” Researchers have compared different places and found these places — be they […]

If you want to cut poverty in the U.S., one big way is strengthen unions. That’s the word from new Obama administration Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, speaking at a recent conference hosted by the progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress.  Below are excerpts of his address: “Of course, the best anti-poverty program is the availability of good jobs.  […]

ARLINGTON, Va. (PAI)—The widening income and wealth gap between the rich and the rest of us has many causes, including globalization, so-called “free trade” treaties and a corporate-political campaign to smash unions and worker rights, a panel of experts discussing the issue concludes. And the panel told a forum assembled by the Fairfax County, Va., Democrats, that activists should join […]

WASHINGTON—So-called school “reformers,” bent on closing “failing” schools, ignore “the elephant in the room,” poverty, that accounts for poor student performance, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten says. Speaking in mid-October to an Economic Policy Institute forum, the teachers union head also challenged a Right Wing myth, and a Right Wing goal: That most public schools are failing and […]

While jobs remain scarce and middle-class families are still struggling to recover from the Great Recession, some of Washington’s politicians are making cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) a top priority while they continue to protect outrageous tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are proposing to cut $40 billion from […]