Today, the lines are blurring between the middle class, the working poor and those unable to find work. The housing crisis, the lengthy recession, wage stagnation and a “recovery” in which the well-paying jobs that evaporated have been replaced by low-wage, contingent jobs have led to more Americans slipping down the rungs of the economic ladder. – […]
Clarence Hightower
Dr. Clarence Hightower is a visionary leader with more than 37 years of nonprofit
experience in the Twin Cities. He is the current executive director of the Community Action
Partnership of Hennepin County, one of the largest anti-poverty organizations in the area and the state’s largest Energy Assistance program. He welcomes reader responses to chightower@caphennepin.org.
Posted inOpinion
Solutions to poverty sidetracked by partisan squabbling
To get away from poverty, you need several things at the same time: school, health and infrastructure — those are the public investments. And on the other side, you need market opportunities, information, employment and human rights. — Hans Rosling The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of […]
Posted inOpinion
U.S. media continue to ignore or misrepresent poverty
It is our moral failure that we still tolerate poverty. —Ela Bhatt Something more fundamental than household economics may be reshaping journalistic attitudes toward public issues. Today’s top-drawer Washington news people are part of a highly educated, upper-middle-class elite; they belong to the culture for which the American political system works exceedingly well… Their silence […]
Posted inOpinion
America is still two nations with a dual economy
In the group that has been here longer, white Americans dominate both the FTE [finance, technology, electronics] sector and the low-wage sector, while African Americans are located almost entirely in the low-wage sector. In the groups of recent immigrants, Asians predominantly entered the FTE sector while Latino immigrants joined African Americans in the low-wage sector. […]
Posted inOpinion
The ghost of Rondo still haunts I-94
During the three-year life of this column, I have focused on the subjects of gentrification and community development at least a half dozen times, maybe more. In those pieces I have often made mention of the construction of Interstate 94 through the heart of the Twin Cities. Of course, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 […]
Posted inOpinion
We are not seeing real progress in addressing poverty
In 2011, following the release of the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Minnesota Compass published a statistical profile titled “Poverty in Saint Paul.” The data, which was alarming, showed that nearly one-quarter of all St. Paul residents lived below the federal poverty guidelines. And, of the more than 67,000 people living in poverty, approximately […]
Posted inOpinion
When do we say “Enough is enough?”
The persistence of racial disparities in our healthcare system (MGN Online) When you allow racial disparity and institutional inequity to affect one part of the country, eventually it’s coming back to get everyone. Tim Wise America has the best doctors, the best nurses, the best hospitals, the best medical technology, the best medical breakthrough medicines […]
Posted inOpinion
Documentary film highlights effects of ‘hyper’ gentrification
First of a two-part column The disposition to admire and almost worship the rich and powerful, and to despise, or, at least to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. ― Adam Smith We can either have democracy in this country […]
Posted inOpinion
Will history judge honorable our treatment of the poor?
…Whatever thoughts we have about God, who he is, or even if God exists, most would agree that God has a special place for the poor. The poor are where God lives. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is where the opportunity is lost and lives […]
Posted inOpinion
Poverty and place: How where we grow up matters
Across the United States, the likelihood that poor children will eventually rise into the middle class or beyond depends heavily on where they live. — Adam Belz During the final week of 2016, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published an in-depth three-part series titled Rising from Poverty. Written by Star Tribune Business Reporter Adam Belz, these […]
Posted inOpinion
As threat of poverty grows, we must continue the fight against it
Social-inequality trends over the past half century indicate that class divisions are growing more rigid, most are getting worse off, and those at the bottom are falling further, faster by the day. It’s the momentum of change that is causing much of the pain and anxiety, as many self-identified “middle-class Americans” are realizing the truth […]
Posted inOpinion
More poor seniors a calamity in the making
After a lifetime of working, raising families, and contributing to the success of this nation in countless other ways, senior citizens deserve to retire with dignity. — Charlie Gonzalez When it comes to the story of aging in America, there are two bottom lines. The first is that everyone is getting older. That of course […]
Posted inOpinion
Teenage obesity continues to rise
Low-income households tend to be rich in empty calories This is what people don’t understand: Obesity is a symptom of poverty. It’s not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It’s because kids are getting sugar, fat, empty calories — lots of calories — but no nutrition. — Tom Colicchio In […]
Posted inUncategorized
New training facility will improve state’s energy conservation
Although its roots extend back to at least the 19th Century with the founding of the Sierra Club in San Francisco, the concept of a “green” (or ecological) movement began to take shape in America during the 1970s. Marvin Gaye’s classic “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” from the 1971 album What’s Going On would almost […]
Posted inNews
Reports of declining U.S. poverty don’t tell the whole story
The official measure is outdated, and doesn’t take important economic realities into account. Are those with incomes slightly above the poverty threshold not “poor people,” as most of us would understand it? — Bill Moyers & Company The U.S. government’s official measure of poverty hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years: It’s still based […]
Posted inOpinion
Cost-burdened families stuck on a treadmill to nowhere
In his famous 1960 essay “Fifth Avenue, Uptown,” legendary author, activist and expatriate James Baldwin wrote that “Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one’s feet have simply been placed on the treadmill forever.” […]
Posted inOpinion
The disparate economic conditions between men and women
It was 1978 when Dr. Diana Pearce, who is currently the director of the University of Washington’s Center for Women’s Welfare, coined the phrase “the feminization of poverty” in a famous essay that still reverberates nearly 40 years later. In this essay, titled “The Feminization of Poverty: Women, Work and Welfare,” Pearce writes “Poverty is […]
Posted inOpinion
The ever-present threat of gentrification and persistent lack of affordable housing
On a handful of occasions I have used this column to discuss the issue of affordable housing, as well as its troubling relationship to the trend of gentrification. In one such article, I used the city of Portland, Oregon as something of a case study. I suggested that Portland’s fate raises a number of concerns […]
Posted inOpinion
Quindaro, Kansas: a symbol of American urban decline
In one of the northernmost points of Kansas City, Kansas — nestled in between the Missouri River to the north and the bluffs that rise above it to the south — lay the historic ruins of Quindaro, Kansas. Founded by abolitionists in 1856, Quindaro originally served as a port-of-entry for emigrants dedicated to the cause […]
Posted inOpinion
Blacks and Whites alike entrapped by the ‘Gatsby Curve’
In July, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a particularly insightful commentary by Dr. Carlisle Ford Runge. In his essay “Black or white, the poor are trapped at the bottom,” Runge, the Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law at the University of Minnesota, explores the issue of poverty across racial lines and how […]