Social Welfare Action @ Eastern Michigan University

Hero and Civil Rights Pioneer Rosa Parks Dead at 92

    On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Parks refused to obey a public bus driver's orders to move to the back of the bus to make extra seats for whites. Rosa was tired of being treated as a second-class citizen and held her ground. She was arrested, tried, and convicted for disorderly conduct as well as for violating a local ordinance.
    The very next night, 50 leaders of the African American community, headed by relatively unknown minister Martin Luther King, Jr. gathered to discuss the proper actions to be taken after Mrs. Parks' arrest. What ensued next was the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The entire black community boycotted public buses for 381 days. Dozens of public buses stood idle for months until the law legalizing segregation in public buses was lifted. This event helped spark many other protests against segregation. Through her role in initiating this boycott, Rosa Parks helped make other Americans aware of the civil rights struggle.
    In 1956 Parks's case ultimately resulted in United States Supreme Court's ruling that segregated bus service was unconstitutional. (Taken from wikipedia)

In contrast to our last post, a mug shot we can all be proud of....

From Poverty Reform to Program Funding Cuts

Where are the advocates? Where are the social workers? What are the Democrats doing? People thought that electing Howard Dean as the chairman of the Democratic National Convention would make some waves but even in light of the recent Republican debacles the conservatives have us chasing our tails and too overwhelmed to push any issues effectively.

Check out this piece on how the conservatives are turning hurricane rebuilding into another reason to turn the screws on the poor.
Jason DeParle writes in his NYT article Liberal Hopes Ebb in Post-Storm Poverty Debate:

Conservatives have already used the storm for causes of their own, like suspending requirements that federal contractors have affirmative action plans and pay locally prevailing wages. And with federal costs for rebuilding the Gulf Coast estimated at up to $200 billion, Congressional Republican leaders are pushing for spending cuts, with programs like Medicaid and food stamps especially vulnerable.

"We've had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks," said Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal advocacy group in Washington. "We've gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasn't actually happening."

Submitted and Edited By Josh Wilkins

Too poor to have access to healthy foods

Donna Gordon Blankinship of the AP highlights a freequently ignored issues in her story "Poor Have Difficulty Eating Healthy Foods"

Cossey, a 43-year-old community college student, and her son, Andrew, survive on food stamps, trips to the food bank, and a state program for pregnant women and their children that provides essentials such as dairy products, fruit juice and cereal.

She knows they should both be eating more fruits and vegetables. But the foods on the government's new food pyramid are too expensive. Boxed macaroni and cheese costs less than a dollar to feed the whole family; a fresh chicken breast and steamed vegetables cost about $2.60.

For further reading on the abuse of poor people, business and nutrition look at the following which talk about how the fast food industry prey upon people who can not afford higher quality food.
Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock
-Josh Wilkins

Polio back in Somalia

Polio has reappeared in Somalia, three years after the World Health Orginazation declaired the country free of the desease.

A 15-month-old girl in the Somali capital Mogadishu was confirmed to be infected by the paralysing disease on Monday, the head of the United Nations' health agency's campaign against polio, Dr Bruce Aylward, said in Geneva.

The WHO has not determined how the infant had caught polio, but suspects it might have come from Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden, where 400 polio cases have been reported, Aylward said.

"With Somalia, 19 countries have been reinfected in the last 24 months," he said.

Read more about this story at Aljazeera

116,000 workers sue Wal-Mart for denying lunch breaks

Lawyers representing about 116,000 former and current Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees in California told a jury Monday that the world's largest retailer systematically and illegally denied workers lunch breaks. The lawsuit covers former and current employees in California from 2001 to 2005.

NYT by the AP

Workers in 6 countries file suit against Wal-Mart for worker abuse

Workers in six countries that include Bangladesh, Swaziland, Indonesia, China and Nicaragua filed suit in Los Angeles on 8/13/05. The suit is filed under California's Unfair Business Practices Act. The workers are claiming that Wal-Mart is able to keep prices so low due to unfair and unjust labor practices such as sweatshop labor, unpaid over time, human rights violations, unpaid lunches, forced work off the clock and other such practices.

CNN by the AP   The Age - Australian News  NYT - Reg Required