All Together Now – 02.25.16

Eleanor LeCain discusses successful progressive governing (including governing with a gender lens, reducing homelessness and stopping violence) with Helene Schneider, the mayor of Santa Barbara, California and candidate for the US House of Representatives. Followed by a conversation with Ralph Nader on how the left and right can work together to reign in corporate influence on our government.

Lina Breslav – Five Revealing Facts About Homeless Youth

The federal government has set a goal of ending youth homelessness by 2020 with Opening Doors, a strategic plan released in 2010. But as the plan acknowledges, figuring out how many youth are homeless is no easy task. This month, communities across the country will undertake the annual Point-in-Time (PIT) count of homeless adults, families, and youth in an effort to …

Steven Maxwell – Homeless Activists Go Organic And Feed An Entire Shelter With Rooftop Garden

Every activist has read the increasing number of stories where homelessness is being criminalized, as if simply being homeless isn’t punishment enough. However, there is a rising tide among all walks of life that is beginning to view homelessness in a very different light. As a sinking economy and the criminal actions of the banking elite are leading many middle …

CORY DOCTOROW – America’s permanent, ubiquitous tent-cities

Homelessness in America dwindled away after WWII, when the GI Bill and generous social programs seemed to finally get on top of a problem that had been with the country since its inception; but starting with Reagan’s mass de-institutionalizations and cuts to social services, homelessness has only grown, a phenomenon America answered by criminalizing being alive, and pretending not to …

CATHY BUSSEWITZ – Hawaii Governor Declares Homelessness ‘State Of Emergency’

HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii Gov. David Ige has declared a state of emergency to deal with the state’s homelessness crisis just days after city and state officials cleared one of the nation’s largest homeless encampments. The move will help the state speed up the process of building a homeless shelter for families, and the state is considering four possible sites, …

Michael Krieger – Welcome to the Recovery – Homelessness Amongst Students Doubles Since Before the Recession

How’s that recovery going for you? That’s what I thought. Here’s the latest data point from the ongoing oligarch crime spreeshamelessly marketed to the masses as an “economic recovery.” From Five-Thirty-Eight: The number of homeless students in the country’s classrooms has more than doubled since before the recession, according to recently released federal data. That’s an alarming trend, but a new report offers some …

Gary G. Kohls – Collateral Damage From America’s De-Stabilizing, Endless, Post-911 “Wars on Terror”

“Show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care.” – Popular conservative Sun (a British daily newspaper) columnist Katie Hopkins, commenting on the homeless war refugees from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, etc. who are fleeing their militarily de-stabilized and devastated countries after their homes and homelands had been reduced …

Adam Mclean – Half a million California children are homeless

Last November the National Center on Family Homelessness at American Institutes for Research (NCFH) released a report exposing that 2.5 million children are homeless in America. The report analyzes each state in four different areas: the extent of child homelessness, child wellbeing, the risk for children becoming homeless, and the policy efforts undertaken to address homelessness. Child homelessness is endemic in the …

Henry A. Giroux – Schools as Punishing Factories: The Handcuffing of Public Education

The Nobel Prize-winning author Ngugi wa Thiong’o has insisted rightfully that “Children are the future of any society,” adding, “If you want to maim the future of any society, you simply maim the children.” (1) If one important measure of a democracy is how a society treats its children – especially children of color, poor and working-class youth, and those …