Advocacy Programs

No aspect of urban poverty strikes the same emotional nerve as panhandling. Record numbers of homeless people crowding into shelters doesn’t do it. People lining up outside soup kitchens doesn’t do it. Reports of children showing up for school without having enough of the right food they need to be ready to learn just get … Read more

Food is a basic need. Without it, we can’t survive. Maine is in the midst of a food crisis that is so widespread and complex we can’t always see it. But it is there, and it is profound. First, the good news: We are not starving. Poverty in Maine does not look like Third World … Read more

PORTLAND – On Tuesday night, 452 people stood in line for their dinner at Preble Street — more than twice the number who gathered hours later to call for an end to hunger in the United States. For Donna Yellen, director of the Preble Street Maine Hunger Initiative, those numbers are telling. More than 200,000 … Read more

PORTLAND – The Preble Street Maine Hunger Initiative on Tuesday will host the Portland premiere of a critically acclaimed film about hunger in America. “A Place at the Table,” which was a selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, tells the true stories of three people who don’t know where their next meal will come … Read more

The stock market has recovered. Home prices are starting to recover and jobs numbers are creeping back, if at a glacial pace. But for many Mainers, the Great Recession of 2008 has never ended. If you were poor before the recession, you probably still are. If you were middle-income in 2008, you are lucky if … Read more

AUGUSTA – Acting without debate Tuesday, the Maine House gave final passage to a bill to raise Maine’s $7.50 hourly minimum wage in stages to $9, and sent it to the Senate for a final vote. While the LePage administration spoke against the bill at a hearing last month, it’s unclear what action Republican Gov. … Read more

Brian Barbour, 53, is the latest casualty. The homeless man died Saturday, probably of smoke inhalation after a lit candle set fire to his tent. He is one of dozens of homeless people who have died in Portland in the last few years. This sad report on the unforgiving life on the street makes a … Read more

PORTLAND, Maine – A top U.S. Department of Labor official told a room full of unemployed or minimum-wage-earning Mainers on Thursday that raising the minimum wage, as President Barack Obama and Maine Democrats propose, would not trigger mass layoffs. The event – led by Latifa Lyles, acting director of the department’s Women’s Bureau – took … Read more

Some policymakers act as if they would like to make the poor disappear, as if by magic. Gov. LePage’s budget has many versions of the trick, including a plan to cap state support for General Assistance programs, apparently under the belief that if there were less money to meet people’s needs, there would be fewer … Read more

Augusta – Recipients of MaineCare coverage for childless adults say Governor LePage’s proposal to eliminate the benefit would force many people with chronic medical conditions to go without treatment. Advocates for low-income Mainers and recipients of MaineCare coverage for childless adults held a news conference Monday in the State House to talk about the impacts … Read more