Free Republic

DENVER — Each morning Yadira Sanchez and her three children awaken to the roar of traffic and the plumes of exhaust that spill from the highway that cuts through their neighborhood. Now, Ms. Sanchez and her family are confronting a plan to triple the width of this state’s main east-west artery, sending tens of thousands more cars by their door. Denver was the fastest-growing large city in America in 2015, with a population of nearly 700,000, and the scene of a tech and marijuana boom that has drawn 1,000 new households a month. But as in other cities, its highways...

With no solution to the food crisis in Venezuela, some people have begun looking for new strategies to make life easier on those that have to eat trash to sustain. Controversial Priest and opponent to President Nicolás Maduro’s administration Father Jose Palmar posted on social media this week about labeling discarded waste so those looking through it for food can do so more easily and “with dignity.” Palmar called on Venezuelans to celebrate Lent by identifying bags where food has been discarded for those with no where else to turn. That way, they don’t have to dig through non-edible items...

Many of us keep asking ourselves why the Black community in America hasn’t made more social and economic progress. Sure, we’ve made individual progress, but as a Black group, we’re really struggling. This isn’t some academic exercise, this is real. By any and every measurement that you want to examine (i.e. wealth, ownership, business rates, marriages, health, incarceration, education attainment, etc.) we are in serious decline, and the decline is moving faster in the negative. If our community was an airplane, we would be falling fast out of the air and near a great crash on the ground that would...

Programs like Joseph Project, the Miss Mary Project create real sustainable success that can blossom into prosperity and change lives. If HUD will use their vast communications network to support those community efforts, we will shrink poverty Since the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has expanded its mandate to enforce these laws by labeling everything that is not equal, from the educational experience and housing, to the relative wealth of your residential zip code, as discriminatory.

Killings across the Richmond region soared in 2016 to the highest level in more than a decade, with African-Americans suffering the greatest loss of life at 81 percent of all victims. Homicides in the region’s four cities, three towns and 16 counties with a collective population of 1.26 million jumped 24 percent, from 98 in 2015 to 124 last year — the highest tally since 2005, when 132 killings occurred, according to a Richmond Times-Dispatch analysis of regional homicide data. The distressing loss of black lives continued at a disproportionately high pace in 2016, with 101 of the 124 victims,...

In a new video, former Planned Parenthood employees reveal they were incentivized to pressure women into getting abortions to meet monthly corporate quotas.In the video from Live Action, Sue Thayer, a former Planned Parenthood manager in Storm Lake, Iowa, explained that if her center met its quota for abortion referrals, employees would be rewarded with pizza parties, paid time off, and other rewards.After administering a pregnancy test to a woman, Planned Parenthood employees would tell her how much it cost and ask how much she would be able to pay towards it. If a woman was unable to pay for a...

As many as 15,000 people are homeless after a huge fire engulfed an overcrowded slum in Manila, destroying thousands of homes and sending residents fleeing with their few possessions. The inferno started in a sprawling slum near the port late Tuesday and raged for about 10 hours, as hundreds of firefighters from across the Philippine capital hauled their hoses across rickety, tin roofs to reach the flames. As the blaze whipped across the squalid area, sending a huge plume of smoke billowing into the night sky, residents ran for their lives carrying refrigerators, religious icons and other valuables. Others, desperate...

The National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a study claiming to have directly disproved any link between minimum wage and job loss. Unfortunately, it has received media attention, including a piece or two by Nick Hanauer, “America’s worst minimum wage pundit.” Fortunately, at least some of the coverage is negative – as it should be. The NELP study is not serious, and it’s also flat wrong. Numerous people have pointed out the primary issue: NELP asked the wrong question. Asking the wrong question is a common but serious error, and can invalidate your result. Here’s a revealing sentence from the...

Despite the fact that the living standards of those in poverty in the United States exceed the standards of the middle class in most countries, recent Democratic presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders tweeted that "America's record is worse than virtually any other country on Earth." "A lot of people have been bad-mouthing Venezuela because of shortages of essentials and their high cost," Sanders said. "But the people are united by their equality. No one is allowed to hoard more than his fair share. And say what you will about Stalin's Soviet Union, but there everyone was guaranteed a job. Even...

Not long after President Donald Trump was sworn in, we happened to run into the Rev. Jesse Jackson on the street. He gave a thumbs-up to Trump’s inauguration speech but said the new commander in chief has much work to do in order to unify a nation riven by a divisive campaign. “The speech was full of hope and inclusion and he reached out to cities in a way they’ve not been reached out to for a long time,” he said. “But with that must come a target, a timetable and a budget.” Trump’s speech hit many of the populist...

The United States Digital Service is a startup at The White House, using design and technology to deliver better services to the American people. www.usds.gov For people who need timely access to critical benefits, interacting with the government can become as time consuming as a part-time job. As William has encountered time and again, enrolling in these programs can be cumbersome, duplicative and at odds with the demands of working and caring for one’s family. In recent years, non-profits, academia and state and federal government agencies alike began studying and experimenting with a shift toward a more family-centered — as opposed to...

Congressman Danny Davis is a Democrat representing Illinois's 7th District, which includes some Chicago neighborhoods hardest hit by gun violence. His own grandson was shot and killed last November. MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: We hear now from Congressman Danny Davis. He's represented the 7th Congressional District since 1996, but gun violence is not just an abstract concept to him. His 15-year-old grandson Javon was killed in a dispute over borrowed clothing last November, and Congressman Davis delivered the eulogy. He was kind enough to host us in his offices on Capitol Hill. Congressman, thank you so much for speaking with us...

2016 will go down in history as the year when the world finally saw sense. Nowhere will this be more apparent than in America’s bold and brilliant decision to elect Donald Trump who, in my view, is set fair to be one of the truly great U.S. presidents. I realise that this isn’t obvious to some people—even those who claim to be on the conservative side of the political argument. But after a recent trip to D.C. for some private briefings, both with his transition teams and with key members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, I came away more confident...

The following is an email from Mark Nugent of Sacramento california who at the age of 16 was forced into the mental health system against his will, branded mentally ill, stripped of his trust fund by his liberal parents and forced on SSI. The SSI program was originally intended for those liberals branded too old or too stupid to work. It pays very little, about $695 a month and to receive it one must not hold assets or property worth more than $2000.  People with disabilities who receive SSI [Supplemental Security Income] payments continue to be the nation’s poorest citizens....

In Rochester, New York, the mayor is making a controversial change to the city’s law enforcement strategy. Normally when we’re talking about crime here I’m dealing with murders, sexual assaults and all of the truly horrible things which unfortunately happen. This one, however, has to do with traffic violations. Wait! Don’t stop reading yet… there’s a point to be made here.Mayor Lovely Warren is preparing to shut down the city’s system of automated red light cameras which record motorists running stop lights and are used to issue tickets. Her complaint isn’t that the cameras don’t work properly or are...

Africa is still battling “transitional periods,” from slavery and colonialism, to neocolonialism and eco-imperialism. Its wars, diseases and suffering will never end until we stop having greedy leaders who only care about their families, cronies and tribal members. The continent has enough natural resources to bring peace, health and prosperity to nearly everyone. And yet 90% of Africans still lack electricity and basic necessities, while corrupt leaders who could help transform our nations embezzle billions and leave parents and children starving and poor. From Rwanda and Liberia to the Sudan and Uganda, we see every day the horrible effects of...

According to Compassion International, approximately half of the population of the entire planet currently lives on $2.50 a day or less. Meanwhile, those hoarding wealth at the very top of the global pyramid are rapidly becoming a lot wealthier. Don’t get me wrong – I am a very big believer in working hard and contributing something of value to society, and those that work the hardest and contribute the most should be able to reap the rewards. In this article I am in no way, shape or form criticizing true capitalism, because if true capitalism were actually being practiced all...

Donald Trump loves the idea of infrastructure. He brings it up all the time. He wants to make an infrastructure bill a priority in his first 100 days as president. And Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have said they’d love to work with him on this."We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals," Trump promised cheering supporters on election night. "We're going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it."The...

After 8 years of prosperity. All of a sudden we are all poor and homeless again.

The “Stolen Land and Hoarded Resources Redistribution, Decolonization and Community Reparations Tour for Mama Earth and its Earth Peoples” was launched last spring by POOR Magazine, led by “Poverty Skola” Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE and fellow race, disability, indigenous scholars Leroy Moore from Krip Hop Nation and First Nations Ohlone warrior Corrina Gould of the Sogorea Land Trust. They plan to resume the tour in the coming months. Along with many local Bay Area community allies, this nationwide tour kicked off in April in the wealthy Pacific Heights neighborhood in San Francisco (Yelamu), later followed by a...