Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa , joined by former Senator John Edwards, and ACORN members ( check whether there are other specific allies who need to be mentioned here ) announced a new $100 million revolving loan fund for affordable housing construction. The announcement followed a roundtable discussion on the affordable housing crunch in Los Angeles –a problem that touches both renters and homeowners. Mayor Villaraigosa, Senator Edwards, and other elected officials heard testimony from ACORN members including Alvin Clavon, a South L.A. resident at risk of foreclosure; Donna Rodriguez, a middle income renter whose housing costs amount to half her income; and Sonya Renee, a Section 8 tenant who was evicted when her landlord stopped accepting housing vouchers.

From the Center for American Progress

The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program is a federal block grant that assists low-income households with energy costs by providing funding to the 50 states and other jurisdictions to operate home energy assistance programs. New legislation, the Warm in Winter and Cool in Summer Act (S. 3186), was introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) earlier this year.
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A new Gallup poll shows 49 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is split between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’ About a third of Americans place themselves into the category of the ‘have not.’ And an overwhelming 84% of Americans have a very negative view of the American economy — a sharp increase from the 55 percent who held this view in 2006 and the 41 percent who held this view in 2004.

Read the complete poll results here.

Dozens of grassroots community organizations gathered at the Hartford Boys and Girls Club, along with Hartford Mayor Eddie Perez, Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz, and a number of state legislators. Over 120 people attended a roundtable discussion and press conference in support of an increase in the Connecticut minimum wage – recently raised by the state legislature, which overrode Governor Jodi Rell’s veto. Later in the day in Bridgeport, over 250 residents and local elected officials took part in an event at the site of a new residential development, highlighting the need for more affordable housing in the area. Speaking to reporters, Marilyn Ondrasik, the executive director of the Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition, said that, “Addressing poverty needs to start right here, right now.”

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Minimum wage activists joined together on July 11 in Newark to help launch New Jersey’s Raise the Wage campaign. The state’s Minimum Wage Advisory Commission led by Governor Jon Corzine’s labor commissioner has called for substantially increasing New Jersey’s minimum wage and adjusting each year based on the cost of living so that it does not fall in value again. The Raise the Wage coalition, led by the National Employment Law Project and New Jersey Policy Perspective and made up of over 20 advocacy groups, community organizations, and workers groups, echoed the Advisory Commission’s recommendations. It is calling for increasing New Jersey’s minimum wage to at least $8.50 per hour and adjusting it each year so that it keeps up with the rapidly rising cost of food, gas and necessities.

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The New York City Coalition Against Hunger, World Hunger Year, the Food Bank for New York City, and City Council member Bill de Blasio joined Half in Ten at the Yorkville Common Pantry in Harlem on July 9. The Yorkville Common Pantry is one of the 1,200 food pantries and soup kitchens in the City that serve 1.3 million New Yorkers each year. Joel Berg, the Executive Director of the NYCCAH, told the Epoch Times, “Poverty in the U.S. and New York are unacceptable…In a society with as much wealth as modern America, hunger should be doubly unacceptable. Read more »

On the morning of July 8, former Senator John Edwards introduced the Half in Ten campaign to over a thousand young progressive activists, in his keynote address to the Campus Progress National Conference in Washington, D.C. Encouraging the students to get involved in the effort to cut poverty in half in ten years, Edwards asked each of the attendees to sign up on www.halfinten.org, and to encourage ten friends to do the same. Attendees responded warmly to his challenge that “the voices of a generation must join together for a great call for change…that next battle to right our country’s great injustices must be led by you,”.

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The Associations for Community Reform Now (ACORN), an organizational outlet for low- and middle-income families for over three decades, held its biannual national conference in Detroit on June 22 and 23. Predatory loans and the foreclosure crisis were a major focus of the event, and thousands of attendees were also introduced to the Half in Ten campaign. Co-sponsored by ACORN, along with the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the Coalition on Human Needs, the new effort aims to reduce poverty by half over the next ten years.

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Speaking before activists and community leaders at North
Philadelphia’s Thankful Baptist Church, Senator John Edwards launched
the Half in Ten campaign by calling on Congress, the presidential
candidates, and all Americans to make the fight against poverty a
priority.
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On April 25, 2007, the Center for American Progress’ Task Force on Poverty, co-chaired by Peter Edelman and Angela Glover Blackwell, released its recommendations to cut poverty in half in the next ten years. “From Poverty to Prosperity: A National Strategy to Cut Poverty in Half” outlines the fourfold goal of promoting decent work, providing opportunity for all, ensuring economic security, and helping people build wealth.
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