Elephants in the room: Urban poverty, climate change, and other problems we love to ignore

[marmar]

from Grist:



Elephants in the room: Urban poverty, climate change, and other problems we love to ignore
By Greg Hanscom


In the latest issue of The New York Times Magazine, longtime education writer Paul Tough has an insightful treatise on President Obama’s policies regarding poverty – the issue that, more than any other, holds American cities down, and one that we seem incapable of addressing in any rational, lasting way.

Tough is the author of Whatever It Takes, a book about the Harlem Children’s Zone, a trailblazing program that offers poor kids a web of services designed to carry them out of the ’hood and into the middle class. On the campaign trail in 2007, Obama promised to pour a few billion dollars a year into creating Children’s Zones in cities across the country. Here he is in a speech at the community center in the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C.:

We know this works. And if we know it works, there’s no reason this program should stop at the end of those blocks in Harlem. It’s time to change the odds for neighborhoods all across America.

The proposal, which Obama later dubbed Promise Neighborhoods, sent waves of excitement through American cities. In 2009, dozens of communities hastily compiled proposals to be one of the first 20 test cases.

At the time, I was writing for a magazine in Baltimore, a city that has suffered the whole stew of urban ills, from soaring dropout rates to drug abuse and crime. When Tough came to town to speak about his book, people packed a local synagogue to see him. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://grist.org/cities/elephants-in-the-room-urban-poverty-climate-change-and-other-problems-we-love-to-ignore/

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. We don't like mirrors. We have had answers to all of these and many more epidemic problems

for decades, but we absolutely will not implement them.

We've known for generations of dozens of methods to better educate our kids.
We've known for generations that poverty is far more expensive than eliminating it.
We've known for decades that eliminating the need for a giant military is better and cheaper than maintaining one.
The list goes on and on...

We are the source of all of our problems.

[xchrom]

2. Du rec. Nt

[kenny blankenship]

3. Never mind that crap. Look at these!

Banks saved while America burns. Income and wealth inequality worse than even under Bushler. Doubleplusgood. Thank You, please vote again!

[redqueen]

4. K&R

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R