Just Because I’m Poor Doesn’t Mean My Kid Shouldn’t Have Nice Things
Originally published on She Knows. My daughter and I were living in a conservative area when I started to notice an outcry to test people receiving public assistance for drug…
Who Are the ‘Legitimate’ Poor?
Originally published on Talk Poverty. Recently, I disobeyed a cardinal rule of the Internet and decided to read comments on an article I once published in the Missoula Independent. I…
Personal Narratives Can Change the World
This trip wasn’t just another day of traveling for work. I hadn’t been able to travel much at all in the last few years, and hadn’t flown on a plane…
Why Poverty Isn’t a Halloween Costume
Originally published on Talk Poverty and The Nation. When a website documenting the attire of Walmart customers surfaced several years ago, its popularity grew quickly. As Walmart is known for…
Arnie Graf: 2015 Change Champion in Community Organizing
Kate Casa contributed to this article. It was the mid-1960s and Arnie Graf, a 19-year-old student at the mostly segregated University of Buffalo, found himself witnessing discrimination in a very…
Fast Food CEO Blames Low-Wage Workers for Poverty
This piece was originally published on TalkPoverty.org. To be “poor” in America isn’t an identifying characteristic or a defining trait, like being forgetful or creative or tall. Being a low-income…
Reflections from Selma
Savannah Williams remembers where she was on March 7, 1965. “When Bloody Sunday happened, “ she explained, “I was at my first job working for the United States Department of Agriculture…
Financial Literacy Provides a Way Out for Abuse Survivors
Trigger Warning: This piece includes references to domestic violence and other forms of abuse. One in four women will experience domestic abuse in her lifetime. Abuse comes in many forms, but…
Poverty in Color: Race, Class and Television
Last week, NPR ran a story about who is poor on TV –and how some television shows depict poor people. Two of those shows were Good Times and The Wire,…
Politicians must stop dancing to the mantra of ‘It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World’
Originally posted on The Hill’s Congress Blog. In 1966, the “King of Soul,” James Brown, proclaimed, “It’s a man’s, man’s, man’s world!” And ever since, there hasn’t been a Brown…