Tag: poverty

We are committed to contributing to meaningful and lasting change. And this is part of what keeps us amongst the sane. We understand, and always have, that the price that we will pay for this is the efforts to silence us, to isolate and destroy us!

As this weekend’s storm has reminded us, hurricanes can be a threat to U.S. cities on the East Coast as well the Gulf. But the vast changes that have taken place in New Orleans since Katrina have had little to do with weather and everything to do with political struggles.

Berkeley, Calif.: The most liberal city in America and the world, some say. And yet Berkeley High School, with over 3,500 students and 250 teachers, has only eight Black teachers. Scandalous!

Support for the hunger strike grows with solidarity actions across the U.S. and Canada this past weekend. A series of noise demonstrations outside jails, detention centers and prisons occurred internationally in St. Louis, New York City, Oakland, Los Angeles, Montreal and Kitchener, Ontario.

Chants such as “Kill the bill,” “Hands off workers! Make the banks pay,” “Who’s got the power: We’ve got the power” and many others are echoing off the walls inside and outside the Capitol. Since Feb. 14, tens of thousands of students, workers and other community members have liberated the Wisconsin Capitol in Madison in response to Gov. Scott Walker’s “budget repair” bill, which would eliminate collective bargaining rights for 175,000 public sector union workers statewide.

Jazz Hudson is one of the new up and coming poets out of the Bay who has been making a name for herself at poetry readings - one of the most loquacious and passionate young sistas to come out of the concrete jungle of Oakland in a long time.

“We don’t work with Indians,” SFHA had told Myron. He began his story with this, the first in a series of discriminatory statements made to him by SFHA. The injustice began in August of 2009, when the family was informed of that their Section 8 voucher had been approved; they’d been on the list for 11 years.

Much of the world focuses on family and creating safe and loving environments for children during the holidays, but many of the world’s children suffer extreme deprivation and abuse of their human rights. Acholi children living in an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in Kitgum, Northern Uganda, “think that a refugee camp is home.”

Bayview Hunters Point is a community not exempt from poverty, violence, racism, police terrorism, gentrification, institutionalized ignorance, displacement and demonizing media coverage. With the Tough House Project, founder Jamal James Modica hopes to give this community a voice.

“POOR’s rule from the beginning was to break down the myth of objectivity and the implicit ‘other’ stance of journalism. We accomplished this through the integration of self, the use of ‘I’ in every story,” explains Tiny – Lisa Gray-Garcia. POOR needs your help right now. Become a Revolutionary Donor today!

A small group of poverty and indigenous scholars from POOR Magazine, bleeding internally from our own wounds of eviction, landlessness, budget genocide, racism, po'lice brutality, incarceration and violence, arrived in Detroit on a hot Saturday in June to attend the U.S. Social Forum. Leaving, again we passed the empty homes, silent neighborhoods and shuttered businesses and yet this time I saw something else: real change and land reclamation not rooted in capitalist ownership.

Not since the levees exploded in New Orleans and caused the devastation attributed to Hurricane Katrina have the people of the U.S. been so committed to relieving the suffering of Black people. So how is all this money being spent?

The Chinese government responded March 12 to the release of a U.S. human rights report critical of China by issuing its own report criticizing the U.S. human rights record. The report covered issues relating to crime, racial discrimination and poverty and accused the U.S. of using its hegemonic power to continue “trampling” on the sovereignty of other countries while “posing as the world judge of human rights.”

Black History Month Special: "Big Man," a founder of the Black Panther Party and the first editor of the Black Panther newspaper, reviews an excellent new book telling the story of the shootout in September 1970 between the Panthers and the New Orleans PD in the Desire public housing development through the words of the people who lived it.

Haiti, once the colonial-era "Pearl of the Antilles" (Caribbean), then the "Mother of Revolutions," has suffered for nearly two centuries for daring to fight for - and win - its freedom from European colonialism, slavery and plunder. If it hadn't been bled and exploited for centuries, Haiti would've had the wherewithal to protect its people.

A new report released today finds that African Americans and Latinos are experiencing the brunt of the economic recession, from joblessness to foreclosures, and that targeted economic policies are required to address the racial economic divide in the U.S.

African-American joblessness – nearly twice the national rate – is quickly becoming the first showdown between Black leaders and the nation’s first Black president as national Black and civil right leaders raise their voices telling the Obama administration it’s time to end the jobs crisis in the Black community.

At the Cape Town film festival, Cynthia McKinney debuted Minister of Information JR's "Operation Small Axe," a film that will get folks ready for the venue change in the Oscar Grant killer cop case. It's screening Saturday, Oct. 17, 1:30 p.m., at the West Oakland Library, 18th & Adeline, for Black Panther History Month and Thursday, Oct. 22, 7 p.m., SF State Student Union for the Black Student Union.

One hundred years ago, a global outrage surrounding the death of an estimated 10 million Congolese resulted in the end of King Leopold II of Belgium’s rule in the Congo. Ordinary people around the world from all walks of life stood at the side of the Congolese and demanded the end of the first recorded Congolese holocaust. A century later, the world finds itself facing the same issue, where the Congolese people are subjected to unimaginable suffering.

The Gulf Coast Civic Works Campaign welcomes President Barack Obama’s decision to create a federal working group to examine our nation’s long-term recovery policies in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and to extend the mandate of the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Recovery.