Coalition for Community Development in Muskegon Heights Works to Re-Open School Libraries

“Will you read to me?” the small girl with large dark eyes asked politely.

Five-year-old Tunna Gay was standing among other excited kindergartners at Martin Luther King Elementary School's new library. Eyeing the woman who had just entered the library, Tunna approached, holding out the book she had chosen.

Soon other students crowded in to hear the stranger read a story on a bright morning at the Muskegon Heights school.

Around them other women were reading to clusters of children — women who volunteered their time to reopen the school's library that had fallen victim to budget cuts.

Muskegon Heights school officials, faced with deficit spending, were forced to close all the school libraries last year. There was no money to pay librarians, so books were boxed up, library rooms put to other use, and schoolchildren were left without that mainstay of learning.

www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2011/12/closed_muskegon_heights_school.html

State's child poverty rate is shameful

For the first time ever, the federal census of 2010 will produce demographic data for each school district in Michigan. In the past, census figures were available with detail data for all counties, cities and townships, but not for school districts. When the data is fully released for the first time the census will present details on population, poverty, income, etc. for each school district in the state.

Poverty in Michigan has increased in the past decade. Dramatically. In 2009, the U.S. Census estimated that one in five school-age children in Michigan were poor. That's more than 340,000 school age children living in poverty. The final release of the 2010 census will or will not confirm this number. Still, if the census estimates were even close to being right, and if one child living in poverty is a shame, 340,000 Michigan children living in poverty is tragic.

The federal poverty guidelines defines a family of four as being poor if their annual income is $22,050 or less. That isn't a lot of dough to pay the rent or mortgage, buy groceries, put gas in the car in order to get to work or grocery store, let alone buy school clothes and school supplies for the children.

In the past, the best gauge of the number of poor children in a school district was the district's total free and reduced lunch count participation. This data has been available for more than a decade and is published annually by the Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information in Lansing. The federal free school lunch guidelines are only slightly higher than the poverty guidelines. A child from a family of four qualifies for free school lunch (and breakfast in most districts) if the child's family makes $28,665 or less per year.

While it is true that in the United States our poverty is not the same kind of poverty one finds in third world countries, it is also true that a family living on less than $28,665 per year probably isn't living the life of Bill (Gates, Cosby or Clinton).

www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/11/30/opinion/editorials/7508108.txt

Note: source of the above graph:
http://www.project.org/info.php?recordID=467

Friar in Detroit puts soup kitchen on wheels

As reported by the AP:

A Franciscan friar lost the brick-and-mortar headquarters for his Detroit-based charitable operations earlier this month.

But that hasn't stopped Brother Al Mascia from serving the homeless, elderly and others in Detroit.

Mascia raised $4,000 to buy two specially designed tricycles with vendor carts in front and storage trailers in back so he wouldn't miss a beat in serving his clientele.

On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, Mascia pedals into the outdoor waiting area of the Rosa Parks Transit Center on the tricycle.

He comes loaded with hot drinks, sandwiches and fruit, small packets of toiletries and clothing.

Mascia tells the Detroit News he wants the disadvantaged in Detroit "to know that someone is thinking about them."

detnews.com/article/20111124/BIZ/111240393/Detroit%E2%80%99s-Brother-Al-Mascia-puts-soup-kitchen-on-wheels

Class and the courts

There, perhaps, is no moment in life when the difference in class is more apparent than when you are accused of a crime. The wealthy hire the best lawyer they can. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided. But, the kind of attorney you get in Michigan all depends on where you live.

So, imagine this. You’ve been accused of a crime. You know you didn’t do it. But, the police think you did. You cannot afford a lawyer. So, you are appointed a lawyer. In a few counties, it might be someone from a public defenders office. In other counties, your lawyer might be someone who was appointed by a judge- which some see as a conflict. The lawyer got the job because of the judge which puts the lawyer’s independence in question. In almost half of Michigan counties, it might be a lawyer who put in the lowest bid for a contract with the county. Critics say for most counties, not enough resources are provided to a public defense lawyer to put together a proper defense.

“We are out to prove what everybody knows and that is the public defense system in this state is broken.”

That’s Michael J. Steinberg with the Michigan chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has a case before the courts to get adequate legal defense for low-income people charged with a crime.

In a 2008 report, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association found Michigan ranks 44th of the 50 states in public defense funding. That means only five states spend less.

In fact, state government doesn’t pay for public defense. Michigan requires each county to pay the cost. And for most counties, it’s just not a big priority.

http://www.michiganradio.org/post/class-and-courts

Michigan Radio: Bridging the Gap Between Benton Harbor and St., Joseph

We've been talking a lot about class, what it means, and how we define it.

We took a trip to St. Joseph and Benton Harbor. They’re called the Twin Cities, but they're different.

In Benton Harbor forty-three percent of families live below the poverty line.

In St. Joseph it’s six percent.

And, families in St. Joseph earn more than twice as much as their neighbors across the river.

www.michiganradio.org/post/bridging-gap-between-benton-harbor-and-st-joseph

Tallying the homeless Berrien consortium cites progress

Five years into a plan to end homelessness in Berrien County, many people are still without a permanent place to live.

But over that period, a coalition of more than 50 agencies and nonprofit organizations working as the Housing Resource Network of Southwest Michigan made important strides to help people who are on the street or in danger of losing their homes.

The gains were made despite a struggling economy, HRN official Alysia Babcock said during a progress review Wednesday at First Church of God, but a lot of work remains to be done.

A point-in-time count of the homeless in Berrien County in January tallied 594 people. The number included 363 children, 65 disabled people, 25 who had been subjected to domestic violence and 15 veterans.

Babcock, executive director of Emergency Shelter Services in Benton Harbor, presented data showing that homeless children were found in all K-12 school districts in the county.

"That was an eye-opener for us," Babcock told the group of people representing agencies, nonprofits and religious groups that joined to combat homelessness. "These numbers, I think, are pretty shocking."

The count, done at one point of time around the country, may have overlooked some homeless people in Berrien because the winter cold weather drives many into any available building.

www.heraldpalladium.com/articles/2011/11/17/local_news/7315990.txt

Michigan Is One of a few States Raising Taxes on Working Poor

Michigan is among just a handful of states raising taxes on low-income working families while cutting taxes for other groups, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said in a report released Tuesday.

The Washington-based group notes that Michigan, New Jersey and Wisconsin all have scaled back tax credits for low-income workers in recent years while cutting business taxes. In Michigan's case, low-income families will see their tax breaks shrink starting next year by about $260 million annually while businesses will get a $1.1 billion tax break starting in January and a $1.7 billion tax break the year after.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder originally wanted to eliminate the state Earned Income Tax Credit, but agreed to reduce it from 20 percent of the federal credit to 6 percent for tax year 2012. He said earlier this year that the state needed to make cuts to balance the budget and noted no cuts were being made in Medicaid programs providing health care to low-income working families. He also has said the business tax cuts will create jobs.

But the Michigan League for Human Services, which opposed shrinking the EITC, said the change is bad policy.

www.cnbc.com/id/45314876

Additional information and the full report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities can be found at:

www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3620

Class segregation

The divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ is not just a matter of bank accounts. More and more it determines where you live.

We’ve all heard about racial segregation. Whites live one place. Blacks live in another. There are all kinds of ethnic neighborhoods. But in the last 40 years, racial-ethnic segregation has moderated somewhat- although it is still high. But socioeconomic segregation, segregation by class, is on the rise.

“Well, the biggest change is, of course, the shift in the income distribution. We’ve become a much more unequal society in the past three decades."

Douglas Massey is a Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton. He was the lead author of a study about this trend toward class segregation which was published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He says in the past few years, you can really see the shift as people lose their homes to foreclosure and have to move.

“As fewer and fewer people are in the middle and more and more people are in the extremes, housing markets tend to produce higher levels of social class segregation, higher levels of segregation on the basis of income.”

Some people are moving on up and others are moving to the wrong side of the tracks.

In some areas, it gets to the point that teachers, sales clerks, baristas, the guy who puts tires on those nice cars can’t afford to live in the towns where they work. They live in less affluent communities and have to commute to work which adds to their financial burden.

So how did we get to this greater divide between classes? It started with racial segregation.

http://www.michiganradio.org/post/class-segregation

Racial Divide Persists in Michigan's Infant Mortality Rate

For nearly 30 years, Michigan has been reducing its infant mortality rate. Still, as of 2009, a black infant in Michigan is three times more likely to die than a white baby, according to the latest statistics from 2009.

In fact, the mortality rate for black infants in Michigan for 2009 (15.5 per 1,000 live births) is roughly the same today as for white infants in 1973 (15.2). In the last decade, infant mortality rates for white infants have decreased from 5.9 to 5.4.

“We’re glad that our infant mortality rates have gone down, but we are still ranked 40th in the nation, which is nothing to be proud of,” said Jack Kresnak, president and CEO of Michigan’s Children, a nonprofit advocacy group for children and families. “We have a serious issue here. Babies of color are not seeing their first birthdays.”

Since 1973, the infant mortality rate for black infants in Michigan has been cut by about half. In the same period, infant mortality rates for whites have gone down by about two-thirds. The statewide infant death rate in 2009 was 7.5 deaths per 1,000 births. Michigan suffered 881 infant deaths out of 117,309 live births that year, according to figures from the Michigan Department of Community Health.

bridgemi.com/2011/11/racial-divide-persists-in-michigans-infant-mortality-rate/

Paid-leave benefits lagging for working moms in US

New census data show nearly half of working women who give birth are forgoing paychecks to care for their newborns as employers become selective about granting paid leave.

Lower-educated mothers are nearly four times more likely than college graduates to be denied paid maternity benefits, the widest the gap has been over the past 50 years.

The analysis released Thursday by the Census Bureau highlights the patchwork of work and family arrangements in the U.S., which, unlike most countries, lacks a federal policy on paid parental leave.

The study finds that while more companies since the 1960s have been offering paid leave to women for time off for pregnancy, birth and child care, the share of first-time mothers who received such benefits more recently has leveled off.

www.wwmt.com/articles/working-1398140-paid-leave.html