A Couple of Good Resources re: Homelessness and Poverty

[pamela]

Bobbie just showed me this link and I think it's a great site. http://www.irp.wisc.edu/initiatives/outreach/dispatch.htm#1 They give daily updates, from newspapers throughout the country, on the issues of poverty and homelessness. I've added it to my bookmarks and plan to check it regularly to see what is going on with this issue and to post these articles in the appropriate places on DU and elsewhere. I will probably miss a few days so it would be great if a few others could also "adopt" this site.

I also came across a site recently that focuses on Poverty and Homelessness from a legal standpoint. Many of you have already seen and responded to one thread I posted about this organization in reference to their objections to the 2009 budget. They are doing lots of other good things like fighting the laws that restrict feeding the homeless and other laws that "criminalize homelessness." The organization is called The National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Here is a link...http://www.nlchp.org/index.cfm

Sojourners is another good organization. http://www.sojo.net/ They are a religious group but they aren't right-wing and they do good work. A lot of you are probably familiar with them through Jim Wallis but may not be familiar with all the work they do on behalf of the homeless and poverty issues. For example, here is an alert they sent out to "Pledge to Vote Out Poverty."http://go.sojo.net/campaign/voteoutpoverty

There are a couple other organizations I've been checking out but I'll limit this post to these three. Please feel free to add any links you have found that might be of interest. And thanks in advance for reading this and doing whatever you can do to help.

I still believe that Edwards supporters are the best.:)

[bobbolink]

1. Arrgghhh! I didn't see this earlier... Great compilation!

Folks, there is some really good stuff here, and lots of resources for Action.

I hope some of you will "adopt" a site, and keep the rest of us aprised of what is going on, and what we need to pay attention to.

Thanks, pamela... this is a great start!

:hug:

[truedelphi]

2. Thanks for this work of yours.

Excellent places to visit.

K & R/ed

[dajoki]

3. thank you pamela...

I have bookmarked these sites also and will continue looking for more that I can do. I will post anything I can find and would appreciate if anyone else will do the same. And thanks to Bobbie for her tireless and sometimes thankless work on these issues.

[demgurl]

4. K & R because this is important.

Great effort on your part. Thanks for posting this.

24 hours had passed so I could not rec this post but wish I had had a chance to.

[bobbolink]

5. heh.. I was thinking the 24 hour thing, also, but...

Nothing can be rec'd from this site.. it's a candidate group site...

sigh..

SO.. here's the deal.. would you be willing to post this in the poverty forum, or on GD?

It needs wider reading!

Thanks! :hug:

[mntleo2]

6. Activist for Poverty Here, Thanks Pamela!

...this is Cat In Seattle. What a great compilation! I knew of some of them but am grateful for all the other links you have set down here. I will bookmark them all.

Love

Cat

[Two Americas]

7. great work pamela

Thank you for this.

From the IRP Poverty Dispatch page:

"IRP compiles and distributes Poverty Dispatches, links to Web-based news items dealing with poverty, welfare reform, and related topics twice a week. Each Dispatch lists links to current news in popular print media. Persons wishing to receive Poverty Dispatches by e-mail should send a request to rsnell (at) ssc.wisc.edu."

From the Sojourner page:

Pledge to Vote Out Poverty

Martin Luther King Jr. famously warned that a "a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Yet despite King's caution, we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a disastrous war in Iraq while 37 million Americans are living in poverty and 3 billion people worldwide live on less than $2 a day.

This election season, we can answer Jesus' call to care for the "least of these" by demanding that candidates go on the record with real plans for addressing poverty in the U.S. and around the world.

Send this to canidates for office:

I pledge to make your commitment to overcoming poverty, which I believe is one of the greatest moral and religious imperatives of our time, central to how I cast my ballot in 2008.

I want to hear your specific plans for cutting in half over the next 10 years the number of Americans living in poverty and for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, thereby delivering hope to the billions of people living in extreme poverty around the globe.

In the coming months, I'll be working hard to ensure that you address these critical issues -- and to inform my friends, family, congregation, and community members about how you respond.

From the NLCHP site:

Lawyers Working to End Homelessness

The mission of NLCHP is to prevent and end homelessness by serving as the legal arm of the nationwide movement to end homelessness. To achieve its mission, the organization pursues three main strategies:

- impact litigation
- policy advocacy
- public education

NLCHP strives to place homelessness in the larger context of poverty. By taking this approach, the organization aims to address homelessness as a very visible manifestation of deeper causes, including:

- the shortage of affordable housing
- insufficient income
- inadequate social services

NLCHP addresses the causes of homelessness, not just its symptoms.

[OneGrassRoot]

8. Thank you, Pamela....

and demgurl (I just saw at GD and K&R'd). And bookmarked. I give myself 3 minutes to scan GD nowadays; glad to see this.

[knitter4democracy]

9. Wow! Thanks for these!

I'm going to check them out tonight when I have time. They all look good. Thanks!

[pamela]

10. Hey thanks everyone!

I feel kind of embarrassed that I'm being praised for posting a couple of links, but thanks! And thank-you demgurl for posting this in GD and thanks to Bobbie for sending me that first link and for all that she has done to raise awareness on these issues.

This idea may sound simplistic, but I've also started doing a daily Google news search for the words "poverty" and "homeless." Here are a couple of interesting things I found today.

Temple Students Raise Awareness For Homelessness http://cbs3.com/local/Temple.Homeless.Homelessness.2.658635.html

Home is sacred, even if it's a tent http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/352050_sharewheel21.html

City officials pledge homeless shelter reform http://www.fogcityjournal.com/news_in_brief/bcn_homeless_shelters_080221.shtml

[apocalypsehow]

11. Excellent resources - thank you so much for compiling this. K & R.

:kick:

[balantz]

12. Thanks Pamela. Hey all, here are some resources for, about and action on homeless peoples:

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/facts.html

http://www.hud.gov/homeless/index.cfm

http://www.endhomelessness.org/section/action/actnow

http://www.nchv.org/get_involved.cfm

http://guide2homelessness.blogspot.com/

[pamela]

13. Those are great, balantz.

I've bookmarked those, too. Thanks for posting them.