So You Need to Get Food from a Food Pantry The annual inflation rate has hit 8.5%. We are all feeling it. Last week, gasoline went up 30 cents a gallon in one day! But some people feel it more than others. If your income is very limited, one of the places where you have flexibility is in obtaining food. Throughout the St. Louis area, you will find free food in Food Pantries. Negotiating the rules and practices of Food Pantries can take some savvy. Some Food Pantries are open...
The “Free Government Phone” program. What would Jesus think? Yes, you can get a free government cell phone – if you are already on a low income support program such as SNAP (Food Stamps), Medicaid, SSI, veterans pension and survivors benefit programs , some tribal-specific programs or 135% below federal ...
How Can the Digital Divide Be Eliminated? The Covid Pandemic and the subsequent closures highlighted how necessary digital access is. How many people do you know who had Thanksgiving Dinner in 2020 with family on Zoom? Think of the digital access, knowledge and finances that were necessary to do that. And digital access, knowledge and financial resources were ...
Where are you on the digital divide? Like it or not, the digital age is here. You have learned to use the computer and the internet or someone else is doing it for you. Without your “smart” phone, tablet or computer, you miss out on a range of information, educational, employment and communication avenues. Imagine what it must be like for those without financial resources, knowledge or the infrastructure to be part of the digital age. According to the St. Louis Digital Divide Report...
Did you know that, according to the American Immigration Council, immigrants make up 5 percent of the labor force in Missouri and are important in a range of industries? 25 percent of immigrant workers are in life, physical, and social science occupations with approximately 44 thousand in healthcare, social assistance, accommodation, and food service jobs. Undocumented immigrants comprised 2 percent of Missouri’s workforce in 2016. Immigrant-led households paid $1.9 billion in...
Did you know that immigrant children ( defined as all children of all immigrants—refugees, asylum seekers, recipients of DACA or of special temporary status, unaccompanied minors, and first generation Americans who are US citizens by birth living anywhere in the US) represent 19.6 million children, nearly 25% of all children living ...
Did you know that the wait time for a green card allowing legal entry into the US was nearly twice as long in 2018 than in 1991 ( when quotas were first implemented)? According to data from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, the share of those waiting more than a decade increased nearly tenfold, and many immigrants already wait more than 20 years because of the quota system. The US ranks in...
In 1891 Pope Leo XIII wrote in his encyclical Rerum Novarum that all people have the right to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families. Every person has the right to receive from the earth what is necessary for life: food, clothing, shelter. It is not God’s will that some of his children live in luxury while others have nothing, nor does the native population of a country have superior rights over the immigrant. As we have seen ...
Thank you Thanks to those who have read my thoughts and refrained from throwing them back at me. My hope has been to be enlightened, as to enlighten, to be encouraged, as to encourage, and to be open to see Christ in others, as to have them see the Christ in me. I believe that everything has two explanations. The scientific and the spiritual. I also believe that God intended us to ...
Autherine Juanita Lucy (October 5, 1929 – March 2, 2022) After attending public school in Shiloh through grade ten, she attended Linden Academy in Linden, Alabama. She graduated in 1947, and went on to attend Selma University in Selma for two years, after which she studied at...
Presidents Day reminds us of what our founders set down for us with this great experiment called America. They were brilliant but imperfect people. Many were ...
“We lived a few blocks from the dens on Rankin; that’s where they kept the floats for the parade. We were little kids then and we were excited about the floats. I won’t lie about that. The parade was good, and my mother would take us to see it on Olive Street close to Grand. We would stand in the front row and look and wave at the guys on the floats. A lot of people from the south side would come over, so it wasn’t an all-black crowd. We would wave at the clowns and they would cross over ...
“I remember when I got my first job after I got out of school. I had taken up machine shop in high school. I could read a micrometer and various gauges and I was armed with my stuff. I was going to show the Personnel Director my credentials and he said “You won’t need any of that. You go to the porter gang”….. and so I began working at ...
“They didn’t wait to see what kind of neighbors you were. They didn’t know Chris was a veteran of World War II, a Tuskegee Airman, or that I was a schoolteacher. They don’t care – they see color – and that’s it. People don’t want to get to know you.” (In 1957, Ernestine Newman and her husband Chris bought...
“You could go to Walgreens and buy things but you couldn’t sit down, so you would get your ice cream, jellybeans or hot peanuts, take it out and go into the park and eat it. The reason everybody liked to go there was because you could look into...
“We are part of a history marked by tribulation, violence, suffering and injustice, ever awaiting a liberation that never seems to arrive. Those who are most wounded, oppressed and even crushed, are the poor, the weakest links in the chain. Because of their poverty into which they are often forced, they are victims of injustice and inequality of a throwaway society that hurries past without seeing them and without scruple abandons them to their ...
“ One in six children in the U.S. are living in poverty. Children born or raised in poverty face a number of disadvantages, most evidently in education. Poverty reduces a child’s readiness for school because it leads to poor physical health and motor skills, diminishes a child’s ability to concentrate and remember...
As defined by HUD, housing is considered affordable when it costs a household no more than 30% of its income. Poor families spend more than 60% of their income on housing while lower middle class spend nearly 40%. The wealthiest people spend less than 20%. If people spend ‘too much’ on housing they may not be able to...
January is National Poverty Awareness Month. “There are five key factors that impact poverty - economic and family security, education, food and nutrition, health, housing and energy. We call these the five elements of poverty. When there is a struggle in one of these areas, the other areas in a person’s life suffer.” Missouri Community Action Network. Reflection: Since the areas of...
“The Magi didn’t have a smooth trip, but they had resources to fall back on. They had each other. They had a star. They arrived in Jerusalem, and the scribes and chief priests helped them to locate Bethlehem as the place where they should go. The journey we all take to the Lord is a long one......we’re on that journey our whole life. What about people who don’t...