In the News
Discussions of income inequality frequently focus on the extremes — the poor versus the ultra-wealthy. However, as the reaction of voters in both parties should have reminded everyone last year, many places between the two poles are hurting and need attention.
Discussions of income inequality frequently focus on the extremes — the poor versus the ultra-wealthy. However, as the reaction of voters in both parties should have reminded everyone last year, many places between the two poles are hurting and need attention.
Think about it. Food unites families, friends and neighbors as they join together to experience a delicious meal, often filled with lively conversation.
Food is at the center of our daily lives. Food is nourishment. Food is sustenance. But more than this, food is the cement that sets a foundation for strong neighborhoods within our communities.
Last year, amid the heated presidential primaries, national news outlets took a break from the contest to cover a public education issue that rarely gets attention. School teachers in Detroit, barred by state law from going on strike, staged a series of "sick outs" (where so many teachers call in sick that it forces the schools to shut down) to protest the condition of their dilapidated, underfunded schools. On one day in mid-January, 64 public schools were closed—more than half in the city—as teachers rallied together for more resources.
In early February, Temple University hosted a small gathering where urban development experts Ira Goldstein and Paul Brophy told politicians about Philadelphia's middle neighborhoods. These neighborhoods are where about 45 percent of our population lives, mostly-stable areas at risk because they're not getting privately developed like Center City and not so blighted that they receive government funding.
Meet Diane Richardson, achiever of the American dream.
A Penn State graduate and the owner of a business that helps homeless veterans, Richardson followed a common trajectory for a child of the civil rights-era black middle class: She grew up in working-class neighborhoods alongside mostly black neighbors, and attended college, which was followed by a few years of working and saving while living with her parents. Then marriage and the search for a home of her own.
In the United States there are 39 "sanctuary cities" that shelter illegal immigrants to help them avoid deportation. Philadelphia is one such sanctuary city, with many of its churches and the local government now challenging the new direction on immigration policy in the face of the threat to remove federal funding. tate Representative and civic leader Dwight Evans told ITV News it's about inclusion. "We don't want to exclude people. And I always tell people 'we may have come over here on different boats but we're in the same boat now.'"
A number of local Congress members have weighed in on President Donald Trump's decision to order a missile attack on Syria.
U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Pa.), U.S. Rep. Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen (R-AS) and U.S. Rep. Rod Blum (R-Iowa) recently joined together to introduce H.R. 1702, the Small Business Development Centers Improvement Act of 2017. The Act is a bipartisan bill that amends the Small Business Act to improve the SBDC program nationwide.
When it looked like the Republican health-care bill would come to a vote, freshman Rep. Dwight Evans said at a town-hall meeting Sunday in Philadelphia, he was ready to vote against it. The Trump administration's proposed budget? Terrible for America's cities, said Evans. And when it was revealed that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had met with Russia's ambassador before the election and hadn't disclosed that fact at his Senate confirmation hearing, Evans called for the attorney general to resign.