Hello Allies!
ALLY RESOURCES
Allies are intentional friends that come along side our participants (Circle Leaders) in our Circles Program. Allies and Circle Leaders meet twice a month and check in weekly by phone or email with each other. Current allies can find resources below and here.
What we are reading & processing
Broke in America by Joanne Samuel Goldblum & Colleen Shaddox
Broke In America outlines systemic ways that poverty keeps households, individuals, and families in a state of poverty that can't be broken. With up-to-date, data, facts, and perspectives, the authors give the reader a clear understand of outside forces under-resourced individuals can't control yet, control them.
Recommended by Amanda
Eula Biss On Being Podcast - Krista Tippett
From On Being,
'You can’t think about something if you can’t talk about it, says Eula Biss. The writer helpfully opens up lived words and ideas like complacence, guilt, and opportunity hoarding for an urgent reckoning with whiteness. This conversation was inspired by her 2015 essay in The New York Times, “White Debt.” '
Recommended by Leslie emphasis on opportunity hoarding
$2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer
$2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America by Kathryn J. Edin & H. Luke Shaefer
$2.00 A Day details the lives of some of the poorest households in America. Readers are given a stark reality to the hard decisions that must be made to keep families afloat. The two authors also touch surface-level on how children are affected by these decisions. We recommend this book in hopes the reader opens their mind to the realities of poverty and living poor in America.
Recommended by Franklin College's Creative Writing Course
A Day at the Food Pantry
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
On a day early this fall, outside Council of Peoples Organization, a food pantry in Brooklyn, stood a long line of New Yorkers. Many had been there hours before opening. Among their number: A pregnant single mother, a 14-year-old whose parents had recently lost their jobs and many who were turned out of their jobs or unable to work because of the pandemic.
Like many other pantries in the city, this one has seen its demand rocket this year. Once it saw around 60 clients a week, according to its executive director, Mohammad Razvi. Now that number is in the thousands.
With the year drawing to a close, many of New York’s pantries — often run with private money — face a funding crisis.
In today’s episode, Nikita Stewart, who covers social services for The Times, and the Daily producers Annie Brown and Stella Tan spend a day at the Council of Peoples Organization pantry speaking to its workers and clients.
Recommended by Amanda
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Evicted tells the story of both a white and black neighborhood in Milwaukee, WI. Desmond follows eight families through their journey of finding stable housing and how the eviction system creates a cycle hard to break. It is long and includes statistics, but really gets to the heart of the problems related to evictions.
Recommended by Leslie & Amanda