poverty in america - LA Progressive

Blessed Are the Poor, But Not in America

Walter Moss: The first thing we need to do is roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. If we can’t do that, we’re not going to have the resources to do the next ten things.

Smiley and West – The Book Tour

By Sharon Kyle

Award-winning broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, one of the nation’s leading intellectuals are touring the country addressing the issue of rising poverty in the United States.

We Need to Show Consideration for the Poor

By Alvaro Huerta

Alvaro Huerta: Making food stamps a campaign issue is a loser for Republicans. Too many Americans now recognize how vital the program is.

David Brooks’s Anti-Poverty Program: “Bourgeois Paternalism”

By Joseph Palermo

Joseph Palermo: After telling his readers he isn’t going to blame the poor for being poor because of their bad behavior, David Brooks plows right ahead and blames the poor for being poor because of their bad behavior.

The Perils for Obama of Not Talking About Poverty in America

By Joseph Palermo

Joseph Palermo: By not speaking about the poor and poverty in America President Obama allows the Reagan era “welfare queen” construct to go unchallenged and, even worse, creates a vacuum that’s already being filled by right-wing pseudo-scholars.

Americans, Our Work Is Cut Out For Us In 2011

By David A. Love

David Love: The problem is that the United States is falling apart. It has become a Third World country. Record numbers of people are unemployed.

Haiti Reminds Us of the Poverty at Home

By David A. Love

David A. Love: It is unfortunate that it took an earthquake to put the spotlight back on poverty in Haiti. To be sure, the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince would have been devastating under any circumstances. But the people of Haiti had been suffering for years. The difference is that no one cared, because people often become weary hearing about black people suffering.

Return to Mexico City – Growth of a Nation

By H. Scott Prosterman

The ESPN special, “Return to Mexico City ” is a thorough retrospective on the legacies of Tommie Smith and John Carlos. For anyone with a vivid long-term memory of those events, the high quality footage from those dramatic days will stir a full range of emotions. While we romanticize about it, we forget that 1968 [...]

I Tremble For My Country

By Charley James

The American author and naturalist Terry Tempest Williams once wrote, “The eyes of the future are watching us and they are praying that we learn to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with clasped hands that we might act with restraint, leaving room for the life that is destined to come.”