New Orleans — As the Louisiana state Senate debated what the National Homelessness Law Center says is “one of the cruelest anti-homeless bills in the country,” more than 50 mainly Black unhoused people sat and lay on the sidewalk in New Orleans’ Central City neighborhood. The bill, which already passed overwhelmingly through the state’s Republican-dominated House of Representatives…
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A half-dozen cars had been in the queue for nearly four hours by the time the House of Hope mobile food pantry line began to move. Seventy or so more idled behind them by 11:30 a.m., when the food distribution began. The plan was to begin handing out boxes of groceries at 11, but the Facing Hunger Foodbank truck delivering the food blew a tire en route. No one complained.
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This past June, Ashley Voss-Barnes received a court summons in the mail. PrairieStar Health Center, a nonprofit community health center in south-central Kansas, was suing her for $675 and her wife for $732 in unpaid medical bills. Voss-Barnes knew the clinic received federal funding to make preventive health care accessible in a region where many families, including her own…
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On Tuesday, Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, announced that they will donate $6.25 billion to fund investment accounts for 25 million children in the U.S. The money would bolster “Trump accounts” launched by the White House in July by providing each eligible child with $250 for their account’s growth. The program has faced widespread criticism for providing rich…
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The human condition includes a vast array of unavoidable misfortunes. But what about the preventable ones? Shouldn’t the United States provide for the basic needs of its people? Such questions get distinctly short shrift in the dominant political narratives. When someone can’t make ends meet and suffers dire consequences, the mainstream default is to see a failing individual rather than a…
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