RECENT STORIES
Over the weekend we 
Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was a traitor, a racist, and some say, a murderer--basically the trifecta of despicability.
In the early 1960s America was shocked by images of Birmingham, Alabama's notorious and bigoted Police Commissioner 
It seems that Iowa's newly elected Republican Governor, 
The epicenter of crime in the black community, at least according to the
If you're black or Latino and you're planning on traveling in New York City, I suggest you fill your pockets with lots of subway and bus tokens because you're going to find hailing a cab next to impossible.
The owners of a Connecticut roller skating rink aren't apologizing for equating the traditional headscarf worn by many Muslim women to a Do-rag.
Why all the furor and consternation about the government sanctioned group grope playing out in our nation's airports this Thanksgiving season?
If I lived in New York, I know who would get my vote for governor. That's right, I'd put a big fat check mark next to the name of 
As is usually the case when it comes to talking about racism, folks have the tendency to quickly change the subject, and I find that infuriating.
The truth that you can't ignore when you bike across America, as Father Matthew Ruhl has just done, is this: poverty impacts every community.
Why are we still throwing black kids out of school like there’s no tomorrow?
Way down south in the land of cotton it's clear that "old times there ain't forgotten," particularly if you're State Sen. Glenn McConnell, leader of the South Carolina GOP.
I still haven't quite figured out what to make of Glenn Beck's "
Putting a new and sobering twist on baby mama drama, a recently-released study indicates that more than half of poor babies have mothers who are suffering from depression.
Don’t let those chubby cheeks or that toothless angelic grin fool you. While you're naively cooing goo goo ga ga, that cuddly, cherubic infant before you could be plotting America’s demise.
The makeshift shelter — a hurriedly constructed A-frame of 2x4s covered by a heavy plastic tarp — is a far cry from the glistening glass and brick 
Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.
Okay, I guess I’m a slow learner, but I finally get it: the GOP ain’t feeling black folk — nor brown, gay, or unemployed people for that matter.
In a state known for its "eccentric" brand of politicians — from 
"Is this real?" asked a little boy who couldn’t comprehend what he had just seen and heard. It seems the boy couldn’t accept the notion that four young men — well-dressed college students — would be denied service at a restaurant, simply because their skin was black.
I think I’m finally regaining my bearings after a disorienting and seriously disturbing month of May, during which I wondered if I had somehow become trapped in an H.G. Wells-like time experiment. It was as if I had some how become stuck in an episode of 
When you are poor it seems you can never catch a break.
South Carolina is the latest among a growing number of states pushing to make voting a privilege, rather than a right.
Thank you Arizona, for underscoring the fact that there is no black-versus-brown divide when it comes to immigration reform. We aren't falling for that tired old divide-and-conquer ploy of pitting African-Americans against their Latino brothers and sisters.
I pledged allegiance to the flag the other day — something that until fairly recently, I had not realized I had stopped doing.
- by Carl Chancellor · April 03, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICERead More »
Last Monday the photographic and multimedia exhibit "Fighting for the Forgotten" opened at the East 91st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis, featuring the work of 16 well-known photojournalists sharing their images of what it means to be poor in America. The exhibit is being sponsored jointly by AmericanPoverty.org, the East 91st Christian Church and the Indianapolis Star. It began touring the United States last fall in multiple exhibits sponsored by Catholic Charities USA. The organizers hope that by pushing the hidden adversity of Americans into greater view, the fight against poverty will become a national priority once again.
Change.org spoke with Steve Liss, one of the exhibit's featured photojournalists and director of AmericanPoverty.org. Liss is an award-winning photographer who worked with Time magazine for 23 years before beginning a teaching career at Northwestern University. His recent book, No Place for Children: Voices from Juvenile Detention, won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award in 2006. We talked to him about the new exhibit and the thinking behind it. These photos, and many more, are in the exhibit. To see more, go to AmericanPoverty.org.
Change.org: What was the impetus behind the photo exhibit?
Liss: We started this because we feel very little attention is being paid to those suffering from poverty in this country. Poverty is all but ignored by the mainstream media. It doesn't exist in terms of newspaper and television coverage. The poor just aren't news.
I know this because I've tried to push those stories but corporate media is to worried about offending their advertisers. Mainstream media wants nothing to do with images of poverty in America.
So a group of photojournalists from across the country who are committed to issues of domestic reform and social justice felt that we had an obligation to focus on this largely invisible problem of poverty and on this largely invisible segment of American society.
Our mission is to put a face on poverty and to start dispelling the destructive myths and stereotypes about poor people. We are attempting to raise awareness about poverty in the United States and encourage action on behalf of the poor.
- by Carl Chancellor · March 23, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICERead More »
Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.
According to the "This Month in New Jersey History" section of the official website of the Garden State, March is the month in which silent film star and New Jersey native Pearl White was born. For those who don't know, Ms. White starred in the wildly popular series of cliffhangers, The Perils of Pauline, that kept silent moviegoers on the edges of their seats nearly 100 years ago.
But the dangers faced by the celluloid heroine Pauline -- tied to railroad tracks with a steaming locomotive bearing down on her; set adrift in a canoe threatened by the raging fury of white water rapids; or pursued over a frozen landscape by a pack of hungry, snarling wolves -- pale in comparison to the real life perils facing New Jersey's poor thanks to the budget cuts proposed earlier this month by Republican Gov. Chris Christie.
Obviously, taking his cue from Snidely Whiplash, Gov. Christie, in order to close a nearly $11 billion gap in the New Jersey budget, has outlined massive spending cuts that disproportionally impact the state's poor and working class. As one Democratic state representative put it: the Governor's budget "is way too hard on the poor."
Gov. Christie was most certainly twisting the ends of a handlebar mustache and sneering when he decided to spend $820 million less on public schools; eliminate cash welfare for the able-bodied; double some drug co-payments for the elderly and disabled enrolled in New Jersey's prescription drug plan; cut state-financed school breakfasts and rental assistance programs for the poor; and, trim the state's earned-income tax credit to 20 percent of the federal benefit (the first time a state has reduced its earned-income tax credit, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities).The reduction to the earned-income tax credit results in a tax increase for the working poor.
Even prior to unveiling his budget, Gov. Christie had already drastically tightened the eligibility requirements for the state's subsidized health insurance program aimed at helping uninsured adults with children. Previously, parents in a family of four could earn up to $77,000 and still qualify for a health insurance subsidy. Now, that same family can make no more than $29,000 a year -- 133 percent of the poverty level -- to qualify for insurance.
- by Carl Chancellor · March 22, 2010 · CRIMINAL JUSTICERead More »
Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.
What’s another 60,500 or so brutal sexual assaults in the larger scheme of things?
I’m pretty sure that’s not U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s point of view. However, if he decides to put off implementing proposed national standards to decrease sexual abuse behind bars for another year he will be in effect saying just that.
Each year, more than 60,500 sexual assaults occur in our state and federal prison. Roughly 4.5% of the more than 2 million men, women and children behind bars are victims of rape and sexual assault. Our nation’s correctional facilities are failing miserably at protecting the prison population confined within their walls, particularly when you consider that more inmates report sexual abuse at the hands of prison staff than from fellow inmates, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Last year (60,500 sexual assaults ago), the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission created by Congress back in 2003 ( 423,500 sexual assaults ago) issued a series of proposed national standards to reduce the frequency of sexual assaults involving prisoners. Holder has until June 23 to review those recommendations and make modifications before making the commission’s standards nationally binding. But at this point, due to pushback mainly from corrections officials, it doesn’t appear Holder will meet that deadline, and he'll in all likelihood seek an extension to June 2011 (60,500 sexual assaults from now).
The NPREC standards -- formulated following years of research, including input from corrections officials, experts and prison rape survivors -- are getting held up over concerns about costs. Correction officials, citing budgetary constraints, are pressuring Holder and the Justice Department to weaken the standards: in essence, to implement something less than the zero-tolerance policy for prison rape recommended by the commission.
- by Carl Chancellor · March 08, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICERead More »
Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.
There are probably more than a few people who are upset that the movie Precious failed to walk away with an Oscar for Best Picture. I'm not one of those people.
I knew Precious didn't have a chance because it was nominated in the wrong category. It should have gotten an Academy Award nod as a documentary film. That's because the gritty drama set in an urban ghetto, which captures the dysfunctional lives of an abusive mother who terrorizes her 16-year-old daughter, herself a mother and pregnant with a second child, is all too real.
I understand that Precious, based on the novel Push by Sapphire, is a fictional work, but the harsh world the book and the movie depict is the stark reality that far too many children in America awake to everyday. To be precise, the number is 13 million children.
That's the number of children who live in poverty in this country. And like the titular character Precious, they face the toxic impacts of living a life unduly stressed by poverty. Many of those damaging impacts were touched on in the movie, including domestic violence, sexual abuse, obesity, homelessness, crime, underachieving schools, HIV/AIDs (somebody needs to cue up the orchestra here because I could go on like an Oscar winner's acceptance speech). However, I will highlight just one of the issues raised by the movie -- teen pregnancy.
- by Carl Chancellor · March 01, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICERead More »
Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.
Frankly, I would have more respect for payday lenders if they would simply pull a gun on their customers and shout: "This is a stickup!" At least they would be honest about their intentions.
What else would you call charging someone 400 percent to upwards of 900 percent interest but robbery?
The mob offers better rates and easier terms than payday lenders.
With products also known as "payday advance" or "cash advance," payday lenders strip billions of dollars from poor and minority communities every year by offering dubious loans that are designed to keep people who are already hurting financially and having difficulty making ends meet trapped in a cycle of debt.
Of the estimated 19 million Americans who used payday loans last year, at least 12 million are trapped in a cycle of 400 percent interest loans (the numbers look deceptively smaller when listed over, say, a two-week period). According to the Center for Responsible Lending, U.S. borrowers who rely upon high-interest payday lending for quick cash are caught in a "debt trap" that costs them $3.4 billion each year.
That $3.4 billion is coming out of the pockets of people who can least afford it. Of the 23,000 payday lending centers doing business across America, most are concentrated in poor and minority communities. In 29 states there are more payday loan storefronts than McDonald's restaurants.
A typical payday borrower is a female African-American or Latina. Payday loa - by Carl Chancellor · February 23, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICERead More »
Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.
Okay, I admit it, I just love those "Talking Baby" television ads that the online broker E*Trade traditionally debuts during the Super Bowl.
Now tell me, who can resist those adorable and precocious little tots, belted in their high chairs and using adult voices to explain to you and me the ins and outs of selling and buying stocks online?
And, by using shots of these toddlers hanging out in country club locker rooms and making high dollar stock transactions using their cell phones, the ads make clear -- not only are they damn cute, these babies are financially successful too.
Yep, those pint-sized, Pamper-wearing pitchmen hooked me again this year.
Well, at least for a short while. Then I got to wondering, what if instead of being the offspring of well-off parents these babies had been born into poverty just like one in every six American children?
- by Carl Chancellor · February 15, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICERead More »
Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.
In my hometown of Cleveland, where a 10-story tall LeBron James proclaims We Are All Witnesses, tell me how is it that no one witnessed 11 homeless women go inside a house on the city's east side and never come out alive?
Anthony Sowell, 50, sits in jail charged with the murders of those 11 women, all of them poor, all of them living on the streets. Their murders only came to light a few months ago, even though for years Sowell had allegedly been beating, raping and strangling homeless women in his well-kept Imperial Avenue home, which sits in the middle of one of Cleveland's working class neighborhoods.
That's what makes this story even more disturbing -- all this murder and mayhem occurring in the midst of people going about their everyday lives and no one witnessing a thing.
So much for LeBron's claim.
In no way am I linking the NBA, Nike, nor especially basketball superstar LeBron James to the deaths of these 11 homeless women. I'm just trying to underscore the fact that as a society we are all too engrossed in the hoopla and marketing that surrounds entertainment. The sad fact is that we're all guilty of being too easily distracted from what's truly important. Sometimes we need to tune out the mind-numbing distractions of the celebrity world and open our eyes to the reality around us.
- by Carl Chancellor · February 09, 2010 · ECONOMIC JUSTICERead More »
Carl Chancellor, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has been writing about social justice issues for decades, is a columnist for Change.org.
February is the perfect month to begin my regular column here on Poverty in America.
Why February?
Because it's Black History Month, the 28 days (when we're lucky, 29) set aside to recognize the many contributions of African-Americans to this nation of ours, although the month-long celebration tends to spotlight the Civil Rights Movement and the epic fight to end American apartheid. And that's alright, since focusing on the civil rights struggle and on the very embodiment of the movement, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., fluoresces the last great battle of his life -- ending poverty.
"Why are there forty million poor people in America?" he asked in his Southern Christian Leadership Conference presidential address of August 1967.
Shamefully, more than four decades later, Dr. King could ask the very same question.
According to Half in Ten, which is working to cut the poverty rate by 50 percent by 2020, nearly 40 million people, more than 13 percent of our fellow Americans, live in poverty. That number includes 13.3 million children. Another one in every three Americans struggles to make ends meet at twice the federal poverty level. Last year, 12.6 million households could not always afford enough food.
By the late 1960s, Dr. King was pivoting from the fight to end racial discrimination to the audacious goal of eradicating poverty in the United States. He recognized that just ending Jim Crow wouldn't usher in equality and understood that genuine equality was inextricably linked to economic security for all.
Dr. King also realized that poverty knows no racial boundaries -- it's not a black, white, red or brown problem, but an American problem.
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AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Carl Chancellor Akron, OH
Carl is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has a passion for social justice issues. For more than 20 years he was a reporter and columnist for the Knight-Ridder news service and its flagship paper, the Akron Beacon Journal. At the moment he is a freelance writer in the Washington, D.C.-area with the bulk of his writing focused on the health care and financial reform debates on Capitol Hill. He is always working on works of fiction and had a collection of short stories published in 2000.