Published Work Archives - Page 19 of 23

Working, Stiffed

January 22, 2025August 25, 2006

The American Prospect

The American Prospect • Aug. 25, 2006

It’s difficult to imagine a more sympathetic figure than Barbara Brooks. A full-time child care supervisor and part-time college student, Brooks is raising five kids on her own in a downmarket Long Island town. In the entire 90 minutes of Roger Weisberg’s Waging a Living, a documentary about the working poor set to air on PBS on August 29, few moments resonate more than when Brooks wipes away tears to explain, “The harder I work, the harder it gets.”

Premiering a week after the tenth anniversary of welfare reform, Brooks’ on-screen debut also happens to fall precisely one year after Hurricane Katrina thrust poverty back into the national consciousness.

Welfare Reform’s Silver Lining

January 22, 2025August 22, 2006

The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post • Aug. 22, 2006

You can generally count me out in heralding welfare reform as an unmitigated success. When President Clinton signed the bill into law ten years ago today, on August 22, 1996, he struck a dicey bargain, based on a premise that only a rich man would find credible: To end poverty, people had merely to go to work.

That’s true if you’ve got minimum wages starting around $20 an hour, public health care, free child care and housing subsidies for anyone who needs it. Unless I’ve somehow missing something in five years on the poverty beat, none of that describes contemporary America.

Welcome Shoppers

January 22, 2025August 21, 2006

City Limits

City Limits • Aug. 21, 2006

From beneath a purple awning emblazoned with “East New York Bargain$ For Less,” a handful of local residents are working to put a fresh spin on its previous tenant’s declaration by opening the neighborhood’s first food cooperative.

By mid-September, volunteers and staff from the Local Development Corporation of East New York hope to open the doors on a member-run grocery store featuring high-quality fresh produce, as well as bulk dry goods and other prepared foods. It’s the latest in a series of efforts by the East New York Food Policy Council, a project of the LDC, and other local activists to bolster access to fresh, healthy food in East New York.

Foodies in da ‘Hood?

January 22, 2025August 15, 2006

The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post • Aug. 15, 2006

Forget organics. Stop worrying about local. Just get some fresh food into the ‘hood. That’s a pretty basic summary of the latest brainstorm in the “How do we stop being so fat?” conundrum: Use bodegas–the cheap corner stores found in poor urban neighborhoods–as beacons of health. If it sounds unlikely that the local one-stop ice cream/malt liquor shop could be a promoter of sound nutrition, you’d best pause a moment and really take a look at the Bodegas as Catalysts for Healthy Living Act, introduced into the House in late July by Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY).

Jicama in the ‘Hood

January 22, 2025August 2, 2006

Salon

Salon • Aug. 2, 2006

Amid a crowd of New York City public high-schoolers, Antonio Mayers, 16, is trying — with modest success — to wrap his head around the idea of freezing a mango pit for later consumption as a popsicle.

“How long you put it in the freezer?”

“Just until it gets, you know, frozen. It’s really good,” says Michael Welch. Welch is leading Mayers and his tittering cohorts in a cooking class coordinated by EatWise, a New York nutrition and food systems education group.

Series: Getting By

January 22, 2025July 25, 2006

City Limits

The Young and the Jobless New York’s newest growth industry is a generation of young adults who are not in school and not employed. Most aren’t even looking for work. A changing economy is partly to blame–but so is government’s disinvestment in job training. Ending Workfare as We Know It? With 400,000 still on the … Read more

Body by Bodega

January 22, 2025July 24, 2006

City Limits

City Limits • July 24, 2006

Bushwick – > Federal officials are opening up a new front in the fight against obesity: access. Heading the charge is Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, representing parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Lower East Side, who plans this week to introduce the Bodegas as Catalysts for Healthy Living Act. If enacted, it would mark the first federal effort to target the issue of food quality and availability in the nation’s low-income communities.

The bill, which is also backed by the Washington Heights-based Bodega Association of the United States and local public health officials, would create a federal program offering grants through the Small Business Administration to help bodegas and corner stores stock and maintain fresh fruits and vegetables, along with low-fat milk and real fruit juices.

Kiwi Culture: New Zealand’s Capital Gets Hip

January 22, 2025March 29, 2006

Metro

Metro • March 29, 2006

Wellington, New Zealand–Say New Zealand and three things come to mind: Hobbits, sheep and mountains. Soon you’ll be adding a fourth: Hipsters. After a flurry of government investment in local creative industries—everything from film to fashion to popular music—young trendsetters are choosing to roost at home and they’re bringing the silkscreened T-shirts. The result? A transformation of Wellington, once known as a drab government hub, in to a vibrant arts and culture center, and the nightlife that comes with it. Here’s the best of what hip Wellington has to offer:

After-School Budget Won’t Budge: City Leaves Providers Scrambling

January 22, 2025December 12, 2005

City Limits

City Limits • Dec. 12, 2005

Child care providers around the city were riled up last week after a city official publicly explained the approach undergirding the city’s massive new after-school child care initiative: Pay less than needed and expect service providers to make up the rest.

“Government can be a big part of the solution but not the only part,” said Bill Chong, deputy commissioner of the Department for Youth and Community Development (DYCD), at a Milano School forum on the new “Out of School Time” (OST) program last week. “To depend simply on city resources is a short-sighted approach.”

Welfare Withheld: New State Reg Would Delay Benefits

January 22, 2025November 14, 2005

City Limits

By Tracie McMillan, available at City Limits. State officials are considering temporarily cutting people from the welfare rolls if they reach the federal five-year time limit, City Limits has learned. In an obscure regulatory change announced for consideration in mid-October, the State Office for Temporary and Disability Assistance put forth plans to require families to submit a … Read more