NEWSRACE AND ETHNICITY

She sat in my office, light reflecting from her rippling jet black hair, her dark eyes shining  with tears dripping incessantly over the chiseled planes of her face.

She told me the history associated with each scar and injury: this one from a stabbing, this one from a gunshot, this one from a beating by her man. It was easier for her to tell me those stories than to recount what brought her to my office that day. Finally she told me of the concussion, the broken jaw, the bleeding from her ears, and the reconstructive surgery she needed "down there."

She and her 11 year old son had accepted help from a man whom she didn't know well. He kidnapped her and shoved her son out of the car. He went to the police station, but she was not found until three days later. Fortunately, the kidnappers neighbor saw her emerge naked and bleeding from his apartment, and called the police. Her assailant had finally fallen asleep and she was able to untie herself and flee, shaking in fear that he would wake up and use the gun he had threatened her with so often.

Earlier this month Washington, D.C. got a new mayor, Vincent Gray, and he’s already getting off to a poor start.

At a recent D.C. City Council meeting, a plan was approved that would cut off direct public assistance to recipients who are in the program longer than five years. Mayor Gray claims the reason for the cuts is financial.

The plan will cut and over time eliminate benefits to city residents who receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits for over five years.

What makes this plan most frustrating for those of us organizing around poverty issues is that it is coming from someone who has worked with families in need as the former Director of D.C.'s Department of Human Services. One would think with those years of experience he would understand what families are going through - especially during this recession time.

“Clearly Mr. Gray knows what the harm will be to families," said Judith Sandalow, Executive Director of the Children’s Law Center. "He has a lifetime of experience of working with low-income families, so I don't understand why he felt a need to do this."

New Orleans. A beautiful city that has suffered more than enough trauma in recent years... Now there is a new tragedy.

Eight homeless youths were burned to death as they tried to escape the cold weather in an abandoned warehouse in the Ninth Ward district. The eight kids who perished in the blaze have yet to be identified, but they were believed to be in their late teens to early twenties. "We don't know their IDs," Fire Department officials told The Huffington Post. "They were so burned we cannot even tell their genders."

Please sign the petition demanding action!

The Ninth Ward is the same area that was severely devastated during Hurricane Katrina. Over the summer, we expressed our outrage at the continued neglect of the citizens of this fragile area of the city. But the neglect and devastation continue.

Since Katrina, rates of homelessness have doubled.  Linda Gonzales of New Orleans Mission estimates there are around 3,000 people each night without a place to go. New Orleans city shelters only have around 800 available beds. It doesn't take a math major to realize this is a very skewed equation. As a result, many of these people resort to squatting in various abandoned buildings to escape the elements.

The death penalty. Just the mention of the words can create a controversial debate with clear sides. On one side are those who are strongly in favor of committing to death those who have committed severe crimes. One the other side are those who are strongly against the death penalty, mainly stating that it is an inhumane system that is often enforced unfairly and/or mistakenly.

Then there is retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.

When he joined the highest court back in 1976, he voted to reinstate the death penalty after it had been out of practice for the previous four years.  Then, in 2008, he wrote a concurring opinion stating that he believed the death penalty to be unconstitutional. This was after more than 30 years and more than 1,200 executions. And just a mere two years prior to his retirement.

What is the cause for the drastic change?  It seems his years on the high court overseeing countless decisions to commit individuals to death persuaded him to change his views. His belief now is that the death penalty represents “the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes.”

At noon today 12 women from El Paso began a hunger strike in front of the White House to protest the endemic poverty and violence that plagues the United States-Mexico border.

The women, part of the group La Mujer Obrera, are calling for federal decision makers to immediately support long-term community development in the region. The communities along the 2,000-mile border are among the nation's poorest.

At a time when billions are being spent on construction and security at the border, La Mujer Obrera is demanding that women not be left out of the equation, and rightfully so. According to a position paper (pdf) released in August by La Mujer Obrera, the majority of both documented and undocumented immigrants in the region are women and children, many of whom are fleeing domestic violence in their own countries.

Further, female immigrants suffer even more workplace wage discrimination than do their male counterparts — this despite the fact that the average immigrant woman is better educated and more likely to be a student in an English language class than her male counterpart.

In recent years La Mujer Obrera has taken matters into its own hands and renovated four abandoned garment factory buildings for a women workers' development program, as well as created a daycare center, restaurant and a festival marketplace in El Paso to create jobs and help women break free from the cycles of poverty and violence. But a lack of financial and political support has put its efforts in jeopardy. This lack of support has pushed the women to say, "Enough."

In the lead up to an election day with the potential to change the course of our country, one particular piece of local legislation has garnered international buzz.

A legalization measure, known as Proposition 19 in California, seeks to "legalize various marijuana-related activities, allow local governments to regulate these activities, permit local governments to impose and collect marijuana-related fees and taxes, and authorize various criminal and civil penalties." In other words, this legislation will allow adults to grow up to 25-square-foot plots of marijuana and possess up to an ounce of the substance.

Leaders from around the world, from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to Mexican President Felipe Calderon have condemned the measure, with Calderon concerned that a growing demand for the drug would increase the power of Mexican drug cartels.

Nonetheless, some advocates believe that this legislation could deal a major blow to domestic poverty.  This past week, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece that presents Prop. 19 as legislation that would significantly help state and local governments fight poverty.

Consider these facts: California now spends $200,000 more detaining juveniles than on educating children in impoverished Oakland. Each year, approximately 750,000 Americans, many of them low-income, are arrested for possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Further, our drug enforcement laws have led to a proliferation of poverty among African-Americans. According to a study by the Drug Policy Alliance, blacks in Los Angeles are arrested for marijuana possession at a rate seven times higher than that of whites. To make matters worse, studies now show that more black males end up going to jail than college. These barriers keep black males from finding work; it hinders black women from finding "suitable husbands," as Kristof says; and black children become less likely "to grow up in stable families with black male role models."

There's an old saying that goes something like this: by the time America gets a cold, black America has pneumonia.

Well, on Thursday it seemed that whoever said it first had it right.

More than 14 percent of Americans found themselves living below the poverty line in 2009, according to newly-released U.S. Census Bureau data. Thanks in part to the Great Recession, 43.6 million people — one in seven Americans — are poor.

That was the news almost every information outlet made clear. And, given that there were about 39.8 million poor Americans in 2008, that's a remarkable one-year increase.

By most accounts, this is the story of America in a recession — a portrait of millions pushed into poverty rather than those who were already incapable of escaping it. Another big part of the story that hasn't gained much attention is  just how bad the Great Recession has been for black and Hispanic individuals in 2009.

Here are some of the most disturbing details (pdf): nearly 26 percent of blacks and just over 25 percent of Hispanics were poor in 2009. Only about 9.4 percent of white Americans were poor during that same period of time.

To be fair, gargantuan gaps between white, black and Hispanic poverty rates (and income levels (pdf)) aren't new. They just got worse — much worse — in 2009.

The reasons are complex and interrelated. They rage from the quality of schools and teachers that serve the nation's low-income kids to, yes, poor personal decisions. But they are also the direct legacy of decades of discriminatory policies and practices affecting everything from the way housing is sold to the way banking is done and other wealth and poverty drivers far too numerous to name. And it's not just a question of what's happened in the past. Poverty disparities are very much a function of what is still happening right now.

In early 2009, former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich made some rather controversial comments during a House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee meeting.

Referring to the scope of the stimulus package, Reich said that he is "concerned, as I'm sure many of you are, that these jobs not simply go to high skilled people who are already professionals or to white male construction workers.

And therefore, in my remarks, I have suggested to you, and I'm certainly happy to talk about it more, ways in which the money can be — criteria can be set so that the money does go to others. The long- term unemployed, minorities, women, people who are not necessarily construction workers or high skilled professionals."

In the aftermath, Lou Dobbs, Fox News and many white conservatives were quick to put Reich in bed with the Obama administration and label them both as racist against these marginalized "white construction workers." Others said Reich's words were taken out of context. After the political/cable news dust settled, the question which remains (and which came to the forefront again during the Shirley Sherrod debacle) is: are the white working poor the newly disenfranchised?

In his recent New York Times op-ed, Ross Douthat presents troubling data that indicates a white demographic that has become increasingly disadvantaged. College admissions for example, have become so "conscious of their mandate to be multiethnic," that they set aside financial aid for minority students, a category they know they'll be ranked on, over poor whites. Membership in high school ROTC, 4-H or Future Farmers of America actually works against young white people.

"The melting pot" might refer to the entire United States, but New York City is famously one of the country's meltier spots. New York has a rich immigrant history — think of Ellis Island or the tenements of the Lower East Side — and continues to attract thousands of new immigrants each year. Unfortunately, newcomers to New York, and the U.S. in general, face higher poverty rates than the native population as a whole, so many of them rely on some form of government support to make ends meet.

Two years ago, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg took a positive step towards helping the city's immigrant population: he signed an executive order requiring every city agency to provide interpreters, translated signs and documents and other language support for individuals who speak little or no English, vowing to "make our city more accessible, while helping us become the most inclusive municipal government in the nation."

Translating a few forms may sound like a small thing, but for non-English speaking immigrants trying to navigate the confusing maze of New York City government bureaucracy, you can bet the move was welcomed. (I don't know about you, but I find government offices confusing and time-consuming even without a language barrier.) Bloomberg was hailed by activists for helping to ensure that immigrants have equal access to public housing, food and other benefits and for setting a positive example for other communities around the country to follow.

I wish I could end the story there, but as it turns out, Bloomberg's commitment to provide language support for immigrants has fallen woefully short. Immigrants and activists have spoken out (and filed at least one lawsuit), alleging that the translated signage and interpreters that were promised have not materialized in many agency offices. A study (pdf) released this week by Make the Road New York and the New York Immigration Coalition corroborates that information, finding interpreters scarce or non-existent at the Human Resources Administration, the Police Department and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which handles the city's affordable housing programs. Even worse, many immigrants interviewed for the study did not know they had a legal right to language support because no one at the agencies had told them and, sigh, there are no posted signs explaining their rights.

Children born into poverty have it a lot worse off than even impoverished adults. We write about this all the time because it's a serious issue. Children who grow up in poverty are far more likely to be affected by it as adults, either unable to escape or more likely to backslide. The symptoms of poverty — persistent hunger, poor nutrition, failing schools, inadequate housing — affect children in their most formative years and lay the groundwork for what may end up being, for many, the difficulties of adulthood.

A new study (pdf) from The Urban Institute explores how children born into poverty are not only more likely to be plagued by it during childhood; it will likely be a persistent problem for them in adulthood as well. Two economists, using data from a University of Michigan study that tracked the same families over 40 years, found that nearly 50 percent of children born into poverty spent at least half of their first 18 years in poverty. And, 21 percent of children born below the poverty line will spend half of their first 25 to 30 years in poverty.

The study also shows how race plays a disproportionate role. Sixty-nine percent of black children born into poverty and 31 percent of white children born into poverty spend half of their young lives impoverished. Black children are seven times more likely to be persistently poor than white children. Black men born in households below the poverty line were half as likely to be employed between ages 25 and 30 than black men born above the poverty line.