The State of Opportunity

Still Changing After All of These Years

Celebrating forty years of outreach to America's marginalized, the Center for Community Change has helped carry on the dreams of America's most inspirational dreamers. Launched in 1968, following the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the center was a direct response to the war on poverty that was embarked upon during the 1960s.

The Movement Vision Lab has posted a well produced video that looks at the movement that launched the center, and the work CCC has done over the years to lift up American communities.

We're excited about the work that we've been able to do with the Center for Community Change, working to foster values that bring our communities together and open the doorway for opportunity to all Americans. Forty years after RFK was gunned down in front of the nation's eye, I find a great sense of satisfaction and hope in the cry for change that many have been calling for in recent times.

The spirit of Kennedy seems alive and well in the hearts of the many attendees I encountered last Friday at the Better Deal Conference in Washington. The conference set out the many issues that young Americans face; issues such as the fact that many find themselves achieving a lesser standard of living than that of their parents. Key issues such as housing raise some serious questions as to the obstacles that our Future Majority will face.

However, in spite of the mountain that has risen in front of young Americans since their parents traveled down these same roads, a great energy was felt throughout the crowd. Rev. Lennox Yearwood, from the Hip Hop Caucus said that the children born after 1968 are part of the "Dream Generation," those who have lived in the world that Dr. King had dreamed of when he imagined freedom ringing from the highest mountain.

with the National Mall only a few blocks from the Beter Deal conference, where Dr. King had cried out his dream, change seemed well masted in the horizon.

The seeds that the Center for Community Change has planted over the past forty years continue to grow, and bear the fruit of our future leaders. Their voice is strong, and when reflecting on the work CCC has done over the past forty years, I'm excited to think what the next forty will hold.

Disappearing Food

Rising rents are not only displacing New York residents but their food as well.  As the New York Times reports, the city of eight million now has just over 550 moderately sized supermarkets, defined as at least 10,000 square feet.

The dearth of easily available fresh food isn't confined to poor communities but these areas are disproportionately affected.  A Health Department study from last year specifically compared the Upper East Side with Harlem finding a vast disparity in access to healthy foods.  Harlem has twice as many bodegas, or corner stores, than the Upper East Side but these stores typically offer less healthy food.  Only three percent of Harlem bodegas even sell leafy green vegetables.  Expanding to other food options, 16 percent of Harlem restaurants serve fast food compared to only four percent on the Upper East Side.

Predictably, the result is Harlem residents are three to four times as likely to be obese or have diabetes.  Yesterday's NYT article features an excellent citywide map (see below) showing the correlation of low supermarket density and incidences of diabetes.  Pay particular attention to the Bronx and the intersection of Queens and Brooklyn.

Baking More Pie

With a tongue-in-cheek ad declaring “Our prices are insane!,” last week’s Education Week section of the New York Times ran a cover story entitled “The Low Cost of College.”  Inside, an article by David Leonhardt describes a surprising trend among elite American universities.  They are actually reducing tuition and increasing aid for low-income and middle classed students.

Beginning next fall, schools including Dartmouth, Haverford, and Rice will offer grants instead of loans to lower income students.  They are following the lead of schools like Harvard, which announced in 2006 that parents making less than $60,000 would not have to pay anything toward their kids’ education.  And many schools are reaching out to middle class families too—Harvard announced in December that it would also offer significant financial aid to families making less than $180,000.

Leonhardt’s article points out that these efforts are extremely modest compared to the substantial decrease in low-income students at elite schools over the last two decades.  As we reported in The State of Opportunity in America, “since 1983…the increase in tuition costs at both public and private four-year institutions has greatly outpaced the increase in median family income.”

As Leonhardt’s piece correctly notes, increases in the federal Pell grant—which typically goes to families making less than $40,000—would accomplish far greater positive change, as would reforms that transcend these elite schools, like “preparing more low- and middle-income children to attend college, lifting the graduation rates at community colleges and large four-year colleges, and simplifying and expanding federal financial aid.”

The article falls short, though, when it comes to discussing the reasons why any of these changes are worth making in the first place.  Explaining that “there are several arguments for increasing economic diversity at elite colleges,” the article says (1) “it makes the universities more consistent with their self-image as meritocracies;” (2) these colleges “have come to play arguably a larger role in American society;” and (3) “recent research also suggests that lower-income students benefit more from an elite education than other students do.”

Is that really it?  Those reasons, it seems to me, are both cynical and narrow.  They are out of touch with the promise of opportunity that a quality college education represents for successive generations of Americans.  What about these reasons:

➢    A fundamental value in our society is mobility—the notion that where you start out in life should not determine where you end up—with access to college serving as a primary rung on the upward ladder of opportunity.  If the country’s most prestigious schools are effectively open only to the rich, the mobility ideal is thwarted, and these institutions’ public mission must be called into question.

➢    Economic diversity is crucial within institutions like these that train so large a share of our nation’s leaders.  Not only should those leaders hail from the breadth of our population, but their education should include learning from and with people from different backgrounds.

➢    It’s in our national interest to ensure that opportunity is available to everyone in our society.  Taping the genius of kids and communities that have traditionally been shut out of the American Dream will generate untold societal benefits—cures to deadly diseases, new technologies, economic and social advances—that we can barely conceive of today.

➢    With manufacturing jobs disappearing, empowering working class families to make the leap to a globalized, information economy through a top-notch education is critical to our success as a nation.

Why do the reasons matter?  Because if opening elite schools to low-income families is just about making Ivy League bureaucrats proud of themselves, or because poor kids may get an incrementally greater value than rich kids, then it's about others, not about all of us. 

Just as important, connecting financial aid polices to our national values and interests leads to other, more profound questions.  Like so many articles about higher education, the piece fails to ask how we can go beyond ways of dividing up the existing educational pie, and actually bake more pie.   Clearly, the future of our nation depends not only on achieving a mix of students from different backgrounds, but also on expanding educational opportunities so that every kid who can do the work has access to a school that taps her or his full potential.  Expanding opportunity and, therefore, shared prosperity, is where we should set our sights as a nation.

Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?

The United States is a vastly unequal country, not just in terms of income and wealth, but also in terms of access to opportunity - some communities have it, some don't.  And it turns out this inequality of opportunity hurts not just the poor or people of color who face a legacy of discrimination, but everyone in our society. That’s because inequality literally harms our health – people at every descending step of the socioeconomic ladder have worse health than those just one rung above, and societies characterized by high levels of inequality have poorer health than those that are more equal. 

Public health scholars have known this for quite some time. But now a new, powerful documentary series by California Newsreel promises to inform a far broader audience of the pernicious effects of inequality on health. This series, “Unnatural Causes,” is airing on PBS stations around the country, and tells the stories of real people – some poor, some middle class, some well-off – and how their access to opportunity affects not only their health, but the health of others in their communities. It shows how, for example, the health of nearly every resident of a small town in Western Michigan declined when a major factory closed, relocating the plant to Mexico where the company could pay workers wages one-tenth of those earned by the Michigan workers. It shows how subtle, persistent racism and social deprivation can lead to a higher incidence of low birth weight babies among black women. And it shows how a Pacific Island community’s health was compromised when the U.S. government uprooted it, disrupting traditional health and nutritional practices.

Cynics might suggest that inequality is a natural phenomena – some people are “winners,” others “losers” in a competition for resources. Or that attempts to solve – or even raise awareness of – these problems are un-American, and can lead only to radical strategies such as the redistribution of resources.

But addressing inequality doesn’t take a revolution. We can begin by asking ourselves what kind of country we want to be. If we believe – as most Americans do – that the United States should be a place where everyone has a fair chance to achieve their full potential, then we can focus on achievable policy solutions. These include things like providing access to high-quality early child education programs for all children, reforming school financing to equalize the quality of education in K through 12^th grade, and reducing financial barriers to college. We should also support living wage policies, so that no one who works full-time is forced to live in poverty, and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit program. We should provide job training so that more people can participate in high-growth jobs, such as in the technology industry. We should invest in affordable housing and fix the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. We should support housing mobility programs, so that people in low-opportunity communities can move to better neighborhoods, and invest in jobs and schools in low-opportunity communities so that they become attractive places to live and work.

These are but some of the ways to restore opportunity and improve our health. It doesn’t take a revolution – just a reconciling of our beliefs with our actions.

Alan Jenkins on The Tavis Smiley Show

Listen to the Tavis Smiley Show as The Opportunity Agenda's Executive Director, Alan Jenkins, joins Tavis to discuss issues as part of Smiley's series Below the Line: The Changing Face of American Poverty.

The Tavis Smiley Show airs nationally on Public Radio International (PRI) affiliates.

A Debate on Housing, Live from the New Orleans City Council

• Louisiana news station WDSU is offering a live video feed from the New Orleans City Council meeting on the impending demolition of public housing.  In addition to those speaking at the meeting, hundreds of people are standing outside City Hall in protest of the lack of affordable housing in the region since the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina two years ago. Present-day inequities in New Orleans are often framed with respect to human rights; the demand for affordable housing is just one aspect of ensuring that residents have the social and economic security needed to provide for their families with dignity.

• Bloggernista has reported that Congress has lifted a nine-year ban on using public funding to support needle exchange programs in Washington, DC.  Despite the fact that syringe exchange programs have proven effective in reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS, this ban had held firm while the capital city has the developed the highest rate of HIV infection in the nation, a true modern epidemic noted for its immense racial disparities.

• The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog reposted an Associated Press article entitled 'State supreme court rules counties are liable for inmates' care,' including conditions that existed prior to imprisonment. It's great to see a court ruling in favor of the responsibility of the community to provide a basis level of health care for those in custody without other options -- this is a good step towards the recognition that all Americans deserve access to health care.
  

Justices voted 8-0 on Tuesday in favor of HCA Health Services of Oklahoma, the parent company of OU Medical Center. The hospital sued Oklahoma County commissioners and Sheriff John Whetsel over $2.2 million in medical payments for treating prisoners in the jail from February 2003 through September 2006.

The county's argument was that much of the expense was to treat conditions that predated the prisoners' arrests, Justice Marian Opala wrote in the court opinion.

• The DMI Blog analyzed a recent New York Times editorial on Arizona's new law intended to crack down on undocumented immigrants, offering praise for what it refers to as an 'example of smart immigration policy.' Author Suman Raghunathan expounds:

I am, in fact, waxing poetic on a stellar editorial in yesterday’s  Times.  This gem of a piece outlines in plain, centrist-liberal-speak why going after employers who employ undocumented immigrants instead of enforcing existing labor law makes for poor immigration policy.

What’s more, Arizona’s law (and believe me, there are many more in the works across the country) will do nothing to address our nation’s desperate need for smart and fair policies that welcome immigrant contributions into our economy. Worse yet, it does nothing to bring undocumented workers out of the shadows with a legalization program to level the playing field on wages and labor conditions for all workers – documented and undocumented, green card holders and US citizens.

Meanwhile, the Presidential election campaigns continue to work themselves into a fevered state, trying to say as little as possible on immigration policy (pick a party, any party) while sounding tough on undocumented immigrants (again, pick a punching bag, any punching bag). 

Here’s to hoping those high-falutin’ political operatives take a page from the Times’ editorial board’s playbook when they think about immigration. 

Undocumented Immigrant Honored in Arizona

• Latina Lista wrote about yesterday's ceremony in Arizona to honor Manuel Jesus Cordova Soberanes, the man who saved the eight-year-old boy who spent a night in the desert after his mother died in a car accident. Given that Cordova gave up his opportunity to find work in order to ensure the boy's safety, "U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz. wants to reward Manuel for his selfless act of kindness with a special visa that would allow him to come to work in the US."  Grijalva's aide Ruben Reyes admitted the chances of having a such visa issued are slim, but spoke of the importance of recognizing Cordova's generosity:

"We think he actually brings another tone into the discussion of immigration. Unfortunately the discussion of immigration is (mostly) negative but with his acts of heroism it counters so many of the other negative aspects," Reyes said. "It brings a face of dignity, humanity and a bond that the two countries can share and he's a shining example of that."

Author Marisa Treviño had another take on the situation, however, on which makes a valid point about underlying economic inequalities and family integrity:

There is no doubt Manuel is that and so much more when you compare him to the critics of illegal immigrants in this country whose rhetoric is violent and hate-filled.

Yet, if Rep. Grijalva really wanted to help Manuel, why not award the man enough money to help him do something constructive in his hometown so that he doesn't have to leave his own children again?

Grijalva already knows the chances for a special visa are next to nil for passage. So, basically the Congressman is dangling another false hope in front of Manuel to give the appearance of helping him when in reality, he's not.

And in the end, Manuel will still have disappointment and poverty — along with, a certificate of heroism.

• The Inteligenta Indiĝena Indigenismo Novaĵoservo blog reposted a New York Times article on 'Brazilians Giving Up Their American Dream.'  Hundreds of middle-class Brazilians who had immigrated to the US years ago in search of social and economic security are now choosing to return to Brazil.  For undocumented Brazilians, life has become too difficult to justify the risk of staying, when they are unable to obtain driver's licenses and there is no comprehensive immigration reform in sight.  As the American dollar loses value and Brazil's economy is booming, it seems only logical to follow the job opportunities back to the Southern hemisphere.

• Too Sense has given us an update on the Jena Six case: While it looks like the six students will all be accepting plea bargain agreements, the victim of the beating has just brought suit against "the adults accused of beating him, the families of the juveniles allegedly involved and the board of the school where the attack occurred."

• Prometheus 6 linked to a Birmingham News article about the local school district's decision to acquire and distribute 15,000 of the new $200 XO laptops which were created to increase computer access in the developing world. According to they city's mayor Larry Langford, "We live in a digital age, so it is important that all our children have equal access to technology and are able to integrate it into all aspects of their lives...we are proud that Birmingham is on its way to eliminating the so-called 'digital divide' and to ensuring that our children have state-of-the-art tools for education." While the laptops are available for purchase in the US (for every laptop bought, another goes to a child in a developing country), this is the first reported large-scale purchase for use within the country -- and one which highlights inequalities in access to technology within our nation.

• The Huffington Post has reported on today's Supreme Court hearing on "whether the detainees at Guantánamo have habeas corpus rights - a cornerstone of civilization and a principle established 800 years ago in England, giving prisoners the right to challenge the basis of their detention in court."  The ACSBlog is also covering the case, which is a matter concerning basic human rights in America.

Birth of a Movement

• Alan Jenkins' new piece is up on TomPaine.com.  Writing about this past Saturday's Heartland Presidential Forum, Jenkins asserts:

"The forum was revolutionary in at least two ways. First, it was organized not isolated issues, but around shared values and a progressive vision. And second, it featured real people—grassroots leaders from around the country—sharing their stories and asking the candidates pointed questions.

The grassroots leaders who took the stage voiced again and again the ideas that embody Community Values—that "we are all in this together," that "we are all connected" and "share responsibility for each other," that we "love our neighbors as we love ourselves," and that it's time to reject the "politics of isolation" and embrace the "politics of connection."

But it was their diverse and compelling personal stories that brought that message home in vivid color."

• Various blogs posted yesterday about the impending demolition of public housing in New Orleans, a travesty given the lack of affordable housing in the Gulf zone. The DMI Blog quoted a New York Times article on the slow pace of housing recovery in the region. The Facing South blog published 'HUD Sends New Orleans Bulldozers and $400,000 Apartments for the Holidays,' concluding that such government policies ignore the common good and abandon the vulnerable in our communities:

"Poor and working people in New Orleans and across the globe are living on property that has become valuable for corporations. Accommodating governments are pushing the poor away and turning public property to private. HUD is giving private developers hundreds of millions of public dollars, scores of acres of valuable land, and thousands of public apartments. Happy holidays for them for sure.

For the poor, the holidays are scheduled to bring bulldozers. The demolition is poised to start in New Orleans any day now. Attempts at demolition will be met with just resistance. Whether that resistance is successful or not will determine not only the future of the working poor in New Orleans, but of working poor communities nationally and globally. If the US government is allowed to demolish thousands of much-needed affordable apartments of Katrina victims, what chance do others have?"

• Rather than stand trial, Mychal Bell of the Jena Six has elected plead guilty to a juvenile charge of second-degree battery.  Skeptical Brotha has explained that Bell will serve eight more months in prison, as the eighteen month sentence will honor the ten months he has already spent in jail.

• The last couple days have seen a few stories on human trafficking in the US.  Angry Asian Man has reported on a trafficking ring just busted in Vermont, and the New York Times has written about a newly-surfaced case of modern-day slavery on Long Island.

• Finally, a number of immigration blogs have commented on the upcoming reality TV-show called "Who Wants to Marry a US Citizen."  With a new take on reality television, programming which blends contemporary political issues with the classic dating series, the show "aims to show love knows no borders. Besides, that is what America is about: a multi-cultural nation."  The Unapologetic Mexican has cited our 'national obsession with immigration' as pointing to the need for comprehensive reform of immigration policies.

The Katrina of Public Health

• The Huffington Post published an opinion piece yesterday on health equity entitled The Katrina of Public Health. Author Jayne Lyn Stahl begins:

Some alarming, awe-inspiring, news today out of Washington, D.C., and no, it's not Trent Lott's resignation. The results of a study, the first of its kind, of HIV cases in the nation's capital are out, and they show that AIDS has reached "epidemic" proportions in D.C. (WaPo)

In the five-year test period in question, ending in 2006, while African-Americans comprise roughly 60 percent of the city's population, they account for more than 80 percent of the more than 3,000 HIV cases that have been identified. Ninety percent of women residents who tested positive for the disease are African-American. And, nearly 40 percent of reported cases were among heterosexuals showing, in the words of a District administrator, that "HIV is everybody's disease" in D.C.

The presence of an epidemic of this magnitude so close to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can't help but make one wonder if federal policy, or non-policy is at the nucleus of this health catastrophe. Yet, where is the public outrage that a campaign of misinformation, disinformation, or information/education blockade should claim the same demographic casualties as that of Hurricane Katrina.

Stahl continues to cite the government policies that have contributed to DC's epidemic, public health negligence compounded by the absence of needle exchange programs in the area:

On this administration's watch, more than $100 million in grants have been allocated for abstinence-only education programs. The president pressured the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to eliminate, from its Web site, anything that might promote the efficacy of using condoms to prevent STDs, and AIDS. Roughly 90 percent of the $15 billion set aside for fighting HIV globally has been made available to domestic groups for use in their ongoing worldwide campaign to promote abstinence, and to discourage the use of condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

• The Republic of T has highlighted a recent decision by Florida's Palm Beach Community College to provide health insurance coverage for employees' pets but not their domestic partners.  With the rationale that “Your pet is a member of your family — his quality of life is important to you,” the college trustees have provided employees with a 5 percent discount and group rates on a range of health insurance plans for their pets, covering "wellness care, vaccinations, X-rays, surgery and hospitalization (although pre-existing conditions may not be covered)." Yet in August the college opted not to extend the same affordable benefits to same-sex partners of their employees, despite the fact that it would not have cost them anything to do so.

• Immigration News Daily discussed a new trend in which foreign consulates have begun providing health care services for immigrants in the US without medical insurance. Both the Salvador and Mexican consulates in Washington, DC are offering medical services, and are expanding the health programming around the country in collaboration with the Hispanic Institute for Blindness Prevention.

• Immigration News Daily has also reported on a new initiative by Latino organizations in the US to register one million new Latino voters before the 2008 elections.  The coalition is hoping that current affairs such as the health care, education, the Iraq war and immigration will drive many voters to the polls for the first time.
  

• Latina Lista has posted about Mexican TV network Azteca America's decision to produce and include English classes in its US programming.  The Spanish-language network does not intend to imply support for an English-only America but to recognize the benefits of a multilingual society. According to Luis J. Echarte, chairman of Fundación Azteca America and the Azteca America network:

Spanish-language television is often a first-stop and point-of-reference for information for recently arrived immigrants. Our community looks to us for guidance on immigration, legal changes, and natural disasters, to name a few examples.

There’s no doubt that our community can better assimilate themselves and increase their economic and political power with increased linguistic skills.

'Reckless Optimism': People Really Are Able to Turn Their Lives Around

• The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog has reposted an interesting New York Times article on an innovative program providing prenatal care for homeless women in San Francisco. With nineteen years as a non-profit agency, and a staff of fifty-three people, half of whom have been homeless in the past, the program is a model of the core value of redemption, or the idea that we all deserve the support needed for a new start:

"The Homeless Prenatal Program has evolved from its original mission of helping destitute women give birth to and then keep healthy babies to become a resource dedicated to stabilizing entire families. It offers what this particular woman excitedly described here as 'a plethora of services' for mental health, housing and substance abuse problems. It combines those with an array of alternative health approaches not usually available to the poor, like yoga, massage and chiropractic treatments.

'People call me a reckless optimist, and you have to be to do this kind of work,' said Martha Ryan, founder and executive director of the Homeless Prenatal Program. 'But I see enough success. I see people really able to turn their lives around, and I see their children be able to move forward and have a different life.'”  

• Prometheus 6 wrote about yesterday's Washington Post article entitled Middle-Class Dream Eludes African American Families. A new study by Pew Charitable Trusts has revealed that "nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults," thus confirming the struggle among people of color to maintain the American value of upward mobility.

• The Huffington Post has a great piece up by Sally Kohn of the Movement Vision Lab on the writers' strike. Speaking of the absence of the community frame in television or film media, Kohn praises the writers for joining together but contributes a larger cultural analysis of what has shaped our values of individualism:

"If you turn on your TV today or sit for a matinee at your local cineplex, you'd wonder whether it's an entirely different crop of folks holding the pens behind the scenes. After all, much of the shows and movies they write promote extreme greed, competition and the notion that we have to pull ourselves up from our individual bootstraps --- NOT that we're all in it together, in solidarity. While most of us in real life, like the striking writers, have learned that we can't succeed without the help of others around us, most reality TV shows from American Idol to Survivor tell us that the only way to the top is fierce competition against one another.  Meanwhile shows like Desperate Housewives tell us that selfishness is good and there's no such thing as too much greed and status --- mind you, the same greed that is keeping the Hollywood execs from sharing the wealth with writers. And in countless movies, writers resort to racist and homophobic 'humor' that helps further divide our country rather than unite us together."

• The DMI Blog has written about the Coalition to Raise the Minimum Standards at New York City Jails, a multi-organizational campaign that achieved a number of victories this year as "the Board of Corrections (BOC) proposed a number of changes to the Minimum Standards for New York City Correctional Facilities" which cover rules and regulations for city jails. Author Ezekiel Edwards reports that while the BOC was not swayed on every issue of importance to prisoners and their families, significant progress was made in preserving and improving conditions of incarceration: "As a result of the Coalition's relentless efforts, the BOC voted against the 'overcrowding' policy, against putting those in need of protection in 23-hour solitary confinement, and against reducing Spanish translation services." 

• Feministe has a new post entitled 'Housing is a Human Right' which provides information on upcoming protests against the fact that all public housing units in New Orleans are slated for demolition after a recent federal court ruling. The Facing South blog has also posted about the controvery over the formaldehyde-laced trailers provided as temporary housing -- while Gulf Area families have been living in the trailers, FEMA has cautioned its own employees against entering them.

• Finally, Latina Lista has reported on a DailyKos post by the author of the Migra Matters blog called 'A progressive plan for immigration reform,' referring to the resource as "the most insightful, certainly most thorough and step-by-step approach into fully understanding the immigration issue." Given his opinion that immigration is the new topic du jour, author Duke1676 prefaces his summary with "I figured it might be a good time post up a diary that sums up everything I've learned in my past three years here posting on immigration issues." With some 454 comments by readers, it's worth a read.