Bob CollinsA gift shop in Bemidji that raised money for the poor of Eastern Uganda is closing, and that’s bad news for the homeless of Bemidji. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: Poverty
Residents of a 30-unit apartment complex are being thrown out because too many police calls came from residents there. Not all residents, probably, but everyone goes because the city has yanked the rental permit of the building owner. Read more →
West St. Paul and South St. Paul have passed ordinances limiting the housing options for people who are low-income and disabled. One politician insists it’s not discrimination. Read more →
It’s a shameful feeling you might get when you read the story of Brian Johnson and his friends, who are surrounded by old bikes in the woods along the Mississippi River in La Crosse, Wis. Read more →
At least in the short term, Corey Jacob, the homeless Rochester man whose van was smashed on Good Friday when it was hit by a drunk driver, is going to be OK. Read more →
The Salvation Army has reversed a decades-old policy and will no longer bar people who’ve been drinking from its shelter in La Crosse, the La Crosse Tribune reports. Read more →
If you want to feel like a slacker then proceed through the link to Boyd Huppert’s story on Danny Pham, who not only believes in making new year resolutions, but keeping them.
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The percentage of people making more than their parents dropped to 58 percent by 1992 from 92 percent in 1970. By 2014, it stood at 50.2 percent. Read more →
A Rochester area woman is planning to do her part to ease hunger in her area by borrowing the idea of Little Free Libraries and using it for food instead.
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Sometimes you just have to stand for something.
Stacy Yannazzo Koltiska, a school cafeteria worker in Pennsylvania’s Canon-McMillan School District, stands for something: feeding kids without shaming the poor. Read more →
She and her young daughter have been trying to move out of the apartment she and Philando Castile shared. But when she inspected it, and sounded almost as bad as the place she desperately wanted to leave, the Washington Post says.
But it’s the section about another person who was in the car that is the most compelling — Dae’Anna, the four-year-old. Read more →
On Saturday, artists and volunteers at the Weisman Art Museum Collective at the University of Minnesota are going to pick up trash along the Mississippi River. They will create some sort of installation to show how our everyday actions are affecting the river. In one section, someone has beat them to it. Read more →
The Pioneer Press’ Frederick Melo today tells the amazing story of Florence Matadi, the mother of Olympic runner Emmanuel Matadi who is competing for Liberia in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.
You won’t see her in the audience, nor mentioned by the announcers at the Games.
She’s mostly lived out of her car in St. Paul.
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Of those who defend freedom and protect our civil rights, no group is less appreciated than the public defender, a fact which allows governors to starve the system, denying rightful legal representation to the poor who are charged with crimes. Read more →
The former Bloomington city attorney, who had refused to back down from prosecuting members of Black Lives Matter for their occupation of the Mall of America in December 2014, is now pushing back against some critics of the group’s positions. Read more →