Colorado’s Half in Ten campaign has been working closely with the state legislature’s economic opportunity and poverty reduction taskforce to make gains for low-income families. Half in Ten’s state partner 9to5: The National Association of Working Women’s Colorado chapter has already trained dozens of members to contact their state representatives on the eight bills introduced to the state legislature to fight poverty.

Colorado organizer Bridget Kaminetsky will be meeting with 9to5 members across the country this weekend to educate them about the Half in Ten campaign. Kaminetsky spent March and April holding meetings with organizational leaders across the state to educate them about the Half in Ten goal, and together they are developing a plan to reach out to members via email, the web, tabling events, and trainings on specific legislature goals such as the reauthorization of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

9to5, National Association of Working Women hosted a meeting of the Colorado Half in Ten statewide coalition this month to share the campaign’s top policy priorities and begin discussing ways Colorado can build out the movement to end poverty in the state.

Those attending the meeting included representatives from a wide and diverse group: service providers who run food and shelter programs, employment specialists, mental health counselors, economic justice activists, and faith leaders. They agreed to focus on three main concerns:

• Incorporating current actions and advocacy efforts into a broader campaign to cut poverty in half in Colorado during the next decade
• Developing a plan to reach even more community leaders with the coalition’s antipoverty message
• Reframing poverty by talking about how many issues intersect, including hunger, home foreclosure, faith, child care, education, and jobs

The coalition will soon begin to conduct an online and social media marketing campaign around raising awareness of the Half in 10 work in Colorado.
To get involved, email bridget@9to5.org.

The Half in Ten campaign recognizes that we won’t cut poverty in half by 2020 without grassroots activists across the country calling for change. With that in mind, we are working with coalitions in several states to make the half in ten goal a reality.

The Colorado chapter of 9to5, National Association of Working Women, is partnering with the Half in Ten campaign to raise awareness of poverty in Colorado and the policy solutions that can help us ensure economic security and opportunity for all. We plan to educate thousands of directly affected Coloradans about the Half in Ten campaign, and reach out to activists, coalition partners and elected officials to build support for the Half in Ten goal. Through public events, workshops, leadership development, and grassroots organizing, we hope that women and their families all across the state will jump on the train headed towards a just and economically sound Colorado. Read more »

This January, Half in Ten joined with the National Employment Law Project,  NELP, to urge Congress to include urgent reforms to the Unemployment Insurance system in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or ARRA.  The antiquated unemployment insurance system had failed to ensure equal benefits for low-wage workers, part-time workers, workers who left work due to “compelling family reasons,” and long-term unemployed individuals.  Low-wage workers are only one-third as likely to collect unemployment benefits, even though they have double the chances of being unemployed.  For this reason, UI reform was one of the 12 steps that the Center for American Progress Task Force on Poverty identified to cut poverty in half in ten years.

Congress listened to advocates, and included unemployment reform in ARRA, allocating $7 billion for the project. And these reforms have begun to reach unemployed workers across the country.  Earlier this week, the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a report (PDF) detailing the “unprecedented wave” of unemployment insurance reforms that has swept across the country since the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) became law on February 17th, 2009.   Read more »

The economy has taken a serious turn for the worse for workers and their families. There has been a significant surge in unemployment, and Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, and Ohio are some of many states that have been hit particularly hard.

The nation’s unemployment rate reached a five-year high of 6.1 percent in September. Nearly 10 million Americans were officially unemployed last month and still actively looking for work. Unemployment claims are now at a seven-year high, with nearly 500,000 workers applying for benefits every week.
Read more »