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Today we have fewer unskilled jobs for the increase in our population, and our minimum wage is far from a living wage. Most jobs for unskilled workers are also part-time and very few offer regular hours. As a result, millions of adults, children and young people experience homelessness each year. In addition, child care vouchers, which subsidize licensed and safe child care while eligible parents are at work, can have wait lists in the thousands. Child care vouchers also require read more…

The refundable taxes paid by the Additional Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit are essential for our nation’s working parents earning low wages.  All of our parents must be able to pay for the healthy start that our children need. Huge subsidies exist for large businesses, yet many of these businesses pay salaries that are not a living wage. This is why refundable taxes are essential. The Child Tax Credit (CTC) was enacted in 1997 with bipartisan support. This read more…

One year ago, my son E. was struggling with language development. The school district evaluated him and the speech language experts felt he was in a grey area where his delay was significant, but not severe enough to get him special education. He qualified for Head Start due to the language delay, but we were not high on the wait-list because of our family income status and college-education. Our pediatrician strongly felt he would benefit from the social interaction and read more…

Our lowest paid laborers, and their children, depend on the food stamp subsidy to avoid starvation. These laborers include some teachers, meal service employees, nurses’ aides, maintenance workers and more. Without food stamps, they will starve. The current administration wants to overhaul the food stamp program, and the legislation proposed may kick even more people off benefits than previously believed. Call or write your Congressmen and Congresswomen today to let them know your opinion. In 1964, Democrats and Republicans worked read more…

The gap between minimum wages and the cost of living is covered by government subsidies. These subsidies include food stamps, school meals, housing vouchers, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and more. Without these subsidies, our laborers and their children would face starvation, homelessness and poor health—and many children could experience abuse and neglect in unlicensed childcare settings while their parents are working. Minimum wages are paid to unskilled and some skilled laborers. Many states use the federal minimum read more…

“I am 17 years of age now and I am a victim of having my home ripped apart due to deportation. My father was taken from my home 11 years ago in front of my face. It’s really something you just don’t get over it. I’m still hurt as if it just happened 2 seconds ago” says one of our citizen children. When citizen children’s parent(s) are detained or deported, they lose the love and guidance of a parent who read more…

Over the past several years, especially since January 2017, executive orders that provide for significant expansion of efforts prioritizing the deportation of all undocumented people in the United States have been issued. Currently, there are more than five million children in this country living with at least one undocumented parent. Unfortunately, there aren’t any protections in place to preserve family units when an undocumented parent is deported, which often leads to children being funneled into the child welfare system. The read more…

Reforming the criminal justice system is a concern at the forefront of many activists’ minds. Since its creation, the American criminal justice system has broken up countless families through its harsh sentencings for relatively minor transgressions. There are generations of mothers and fathers, imprisoned for their transgressions against the law. Oftentimes these mothers and fathers belong to minority communities. Whether intentional or unintentional, there is a trend in the population of the incarcerated. The NAACP details the racial disparities in read more…

Here are some of the choices to be made when developing a health insurance program. Will you offer lower priced insurance or access to costly experimental tests and prescriptions? Will you pay for a patient to have more time with his or her physician, or easier access to urgent or community clinics that are staffed with nurse practitioners? Can less costly health insurance be combined with greater patient satisfaction and better outcomes of the treatment of an illness or accident? read more…

While many schools opt for the use of punitive justice, more and more schools are shifting toward a new method of addressing bad behavior: restorative justice. Instead of focusing on punishment, restorative justice seeks to facilitate communication between “problem” students and their peers. Students have opportunities to confront the consequences of their actions and find and fix the root of the problem. By teaching students how their actions can negatively affect others, schools can prevent future conflicts. In contrast, punishing read more…