With food prices climbing and the economy on shaky legs, more and more Americans are taking the food security of their families and their communities into their own hands.
An insightful piece in today’s NY Times (”Urban Farmers’ Crops Go from Vacant Lot to Market“) shows how innovative residents of low-income communities are using training from local nonprofits and even some funding from city coffers to help kick-start urban farms.
I know that these urban farms have really helped invigorate my neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. In fact, a 60-person delegation from the UN Commission on Sustainable Development is coming this weekend to Bed-Stuy to visit a couple community gardens, like the Bed-Stuy Farm (photo from their site).
Also, it’s worth pointing out that the Times’ story was written by Tracie McMillan, one of the best and most tenacious reporters when it comes to issues of food access and low-income communities. Visit her site to check out some of her recent work.
The Washington Post yesterday featured an interesting look at the “cadre of young black activists…using the Internet in an attempt to eclipse traditional civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and hit the refresh button on the civil rights movement.”
Led by the bright and innovative folks at ColorofChange.org, the movement is gaining steam, influence and members every day. The movement has carved a niche for itself by rallying around traditionally overlooked issues like the Jena 6, the demolition of New Orleans public housing and even the relatively wonky concerns about a FEC commission nominee’s questionable stands on voter suppression issues.
Blogger Gina McCauley, 32, who is organizing the first conference of nonwhite bloggers this summer in Atlanta, said that what Jones and Rucker have started “can potentially become a new Niagara movement,” a reference to the small contingent of black intellectuals, including W.E.B. Du Bois, who met near Niagara Falls in 1905 to form an organization to oppose segregation. The organization eventually became the NAACP.
Others have another name for the new efforts by black bloggers: Civil Rights 2.0. Blogger L.N. Rock said that if abolitionist Frederick Douglass, former congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin and “people like that were around today, they would have blogs.”
The organizing and policy potential of this movement is limitless. We’re already seeing real on-the-ground progress. By supporting and patronizing these sites, we can unleash another major force in the Equity Movement.
Remember when Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign raised eyebrows around the possibilities for using the Internet to fundraise? With the huge success of the Obama and Clinton campaigns raising millions online — Obama: 45 million last February, Clinton: 3 million within 24 hours after her Pennsylvania win — the Dean phenomenon seems as if it occurred during the height of direct mail days.
Now, more organizations are looking online for their fundraising efforts. According to Michael Hoffman, chief executive of See3, a Chicago consulting firm that specializes in nonprofit fund raising and communications, the old way of using direct mail to reach supporters is less effective (and relevant) than it was a few years ago. “Direct mail is on life support,” says Hoffman “New Rules of Attraction”, an article in the April 3rd issue of The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Although the article stated that many charities still raise most of their contributions with the direct mail, it contends that it is losing its attractiveness with new donors. “In 2007, the number of new donors who responded to charity mailings dropped by a median of 6.2 percent in a study of 72 of the nation’s biggest charities, on top of another 10.4-percent median drop in 2006.”
So, what’s your organization’s online fundraising strategy?
Word has it that…
“nonprofits are testing online social networks to raise money through these networks, betting that the Internet’s viral nature will open fresh avenues for fundraising and marketing.” (This being the word in the article, How non-profits are using social networking to raise money and awareness, Chicago Tribune, April 30, 2008.)
It’s a brave new online world, and nonprofits are venturing down creative paths for raising funds. And if recent history speaks to the enormous possibilities…a 3 million dollar day could be merely a few clicks away.
An intern for San Francisco’s Literacy for Environmental Justice wrote a heartrending and hopeful op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle last week. La Constance “Connie” Shahid has lived in SF’s Bayview-Hunters Point community all of her 21 years. Here she is describing what it’s like to grow up in a forgotten neighborhood:
Let me tell you what it’s like to live in the Bayview. In six square miles, we have hundreds of toxic sites and the highest pollution emissions in the city. Thirty percent of my community is under the age of 21, more than in any other part of the city. We are twice as likely to be hospitalized from asthma as other city residents; there are increased rates of diabetes, as well as breast and cervical cancer.
It seems like there is a liquor store on every corner, housing is rundown, drugs are everywhere, police sirens are constantly racing down the streets, and gang violence is nearly inescapable. Having to be cautious of which streets to walk on and which to avoid isn’t a way to live freely. It’s a way to live in fear.
Too many of my peers live and die with the fantasy of “ghetto life”; they dream of big homes, fast cars, and a multi-million dollar jewelry collection. We know that we’re not offered the best in life, but we make do with what we have, and some of us are fighting to make it better. A few of us, the ones hiding in dark corners, have dreams that take us to universities like Howard, Fisk, and Texas Southern. These young people are working hard to make their dreams come true, so that they won’t have to worry about living their lives in fear.
Please take the time to read the whole article. Also, the insightful and innovative folks at Think MTV did a short video feature on Connie and the rest of the youth at Literacy for Environmental Justice. Check it out:
Are our food options making us sick? According to a new report released today by PolicyLink, the balance of healthy-versus-unhealthy retail food options in your neighborhood is directly tied to your risk for diabetes and obesity.
The key finding: people living in neighborhoods crowded with fast-food and convenience stores but relatively few grocery or produce outlets are at significantly higher risk of suffering from obesity and diabetes.
The findings are the latest in a growing batch of evidence that the obesity epidemic is at a crisis level. As PolicyLink Vice President of Research Victor Rubin said for the release of the new report:
“Clearly the obesity crisis in California can no longer be seen only as a fight over personal choices. Public policies drive the universe of food options from which we can choose. Families who live in communities with choices limited to high-calorie foods and beverages face substantially greater health risks. Policy makers at the state and local level can save lives by giving Californians healthier food options.”
The results lend even more weight to a recent USA Today lead editorial, which argued that the obesity epidemic is literally killing Americans at a younger and younger age — and disproportionately targeting poor Americans.
Everyone knows how to lose weight: exercise more and eat less, fatty foods in particular. But fast food, eaten on the run and in vast quantities, has too often replaced the leisurely sit-down dinners with healthier foods of years past. Further, obesity is increasing worldwide, and among the poor more than the affluent. Broad social changes underlie the trend, and so it will not be easily reversed. But where it is worst, among the poor, better access to preventive health care plainly is part of the answer.
A century ago, poorer Americans were more likely to have their lives shortened by hunger and malnutrition. It would be a tragic irony if the obesity epidemic has a similarly devastating and unequal impact.
In a recent Mercury News interview with the authors of “Millennial Makeover, MySpace, YouTube & the Future of American Politics,” Michael Hais and Morley Winograd describe what they call the Millennials and the unusually sustained, life-long impact this generation will have on the politics of 2012 and beyond.
Who are Millennials?
Millennials are born from 1982 to 2003. They are the largest generation in U.S. history; they are also the most ethnically diverse generation. Forty percent are African-American, Asian, Latino or mixed race. One in five has an immigrant parent. There’s a million more Millennials than boomers. Though no more Millennials are being born, some are immigrating, so the generation keeps getting bigger. Boomers are leaving us and Millennials are still gaining in size.
Why should we care about them, beyond the fact that there are nearly 100 million Millennials, about a third of the U.S. population?
Every 40 years, a large, dynamic generation realigns or makes over the political system, and we believe that the Millennials are the generation that will lead the coming realignment. The last realignment was brought into existence by another large, dynamic generation but a very different type of generation, the baby boomer generation. There are twice as many Millennials as there are Gen-Xers, but there’s a million more Millennials than boomers.
Radio and TV talk show hosts and pundits often conjure images of destitute Mexican immigrants, hell bent on spreading their law-breaking ways and threatening sovereignty of our southern border. But Massey’s book provides ample proof that the face of immigrant America has changed dramatically in regard to race and class. The book documents how immigrants from Africa, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and other parts of the globe are making important contributions to the economic and social vitality of cities, towns, and rural areas.
In this interview on New York’s WNYC public radio, the Princeton sociologist explains that we must understand and respond to the underlying economic factors that have fueled the dispersal of immigrants from traditional gateway cities (Los Angeles and New York City) and states to suburban and rural communities in virtually every region of the country.
Amidst the shrill cries to “restore the rule of law” — often through evermore draconian policies aimed at punishing hardworking immigrants — Massey reminds us that addressing the dilemmas posed by these new patterns of immigration is not as simple as militarizing the border and cutting off services to immigrant children and families.
In communities from the Midwest to the Northwest, where white populations are simultaneously declining and aging, immigrants are the key to economic and social revitalization. Small towns that rely on industries (e.g., agricultural sectors, food processing, hospitality, etc.) with significant proportion of immigrant workers would face even greater financial challenges if immigrants were to leave voluntarily or by force.
There are some business and government leaders who understand this. Thankfully, they are quietly building support among civic leaders to help residents understand and respond constructively to rapidly changing demographic, economic, and social realities. A key element of this new outlook is the willingness to challenge leaders to go beyond scape-goating to collectively analyze the changes most needed to strengthen their communities.
Lester Heitke, who serves as Mayor in Willmar, Minnesota is a good example of this new leadership. When conflict erupted in Willmar in 2004, as a reaction to an escalation of ICE raids targeting families that worked in surrounding industry, Mayor Hietke did not rely on business as usual tactics. He refused to remain silent. Instead, together with the Chief of Police, the President of the Community College, and some other local leaders, Mayor Heitke organized community forums to give local residents a chance to vent their frustrations with the raids and the underlying economic conditions.
Since those tumultuous days, Heitke has garnered buy-in from city department heads, business, community, and other civic leaders to develop a more informed and visionary strategy to respond to the challenges facing the entire community-immigrants included. See link below for details of the goals that were developed by a civic engagement process Heitke refers to as Wilmar 2020. As the name implies this strategy seeks to improve Willmar’s economic and social prospects by looking forward not backward.
A new report out today shows that first-quarter foreclosures in California have gone up 327% over 2007 levels. An average of 500 homes every day are foreclosed on in the Golden State.
DataQuick said in a report warning that the widening foreclosure problem could “spread beyond the current categories of dicey mortgages, and into mainstream home loans.”
From DataQuick’s report on California foreclosures in the first three months of 2008: “Trustees Deeds recorded, or the actual loss of a home to foreclosure, totaled 47,171 during the first quarter. … Last quarter’s total rose 48.9 percent from 31,676 in the previous quarter, and jumped 327.6 percent from 11,032 in first quarter 2007.” That translates into 517 foreclosures every day in the first quarter of 2008.
There is no quick fix to the foreclosure crisis. But there are ways to help prevent the fallout from hitting hard-working families in the future. PolicyLink CEO Angela Glover Blackwell said in a recent commentary on public radio’s Marketplace that the housing crisis may give the momentum we need to commit to community land trusts:
The mortgage crisis has been a disaster for many hard-working families who are striving for the American dream. Millions of Americans, especially low-income people of color, now face foreclosure. Often, home foreclosures are clustered in specific neighborhoods. This concentration can virtually hollow out communities and dramatically drive down the potential resale cost of these foreclosed properties. This is a double whammy of individual loss and neighborhood deterioration.
But there’s a potential upside: These low costs present an opportunity to create something that the market has not: affordable homes.
Cities and towns can buy these homes for well-below market value. Then, they can fix them up and resell them at truly affordable prices. Covenants would require that these homes remain affordable for decades. The result? Communities could create a lasting pool of affordable housing.
The experiment is already underway. Birmingham, Ala., uses a federal program to buy foreclosed homes for as little as $1 each. The homes are then refurbished and resold. This helps stop the pernicious spread of blight.
This strategy isn’t new. Community Land Trusts started in the 1960s and have popped up in more than 35 states. These nonprofit trusts buy up properties. Some are individual homes and vacant lots that have fallen into disrepair; others have been taken over by local governments through tax liens.
Land trusts renovate these properties and return them to the market at affordable prices. This helps communities across the country create a stable and reliable source of good housing for working people.
The mortgage crisis has devastated families and communities across the nation. But every disaster offers opportunity. There are blueprints and tools available to rebuild our communities. Now we have to harness the creative energy to get the job done.
Via the Atlantic’s Matt Yglesias, here’s an interesting proposal from what Matt describes as the Green Party candidate for Paris Mayor which would “create a generous program along the lines of food stamps here in the U.S. but specifically targeted at the purchase of fresh produce.” Since my French starts and stops at “papier mache,” I’ll have to trust him on the translation.
California made a major stride in this direction just last week, when the state’s Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program decided to start offering “fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and soy products to the 1.4 million low-income Californians the program serves.” PolicyLink President Judith Bell was on-hand for the announcement.
