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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 24, 2014)
December 24, 2014 $lort lattò (Observer Page 7 Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. Kids Please do not shut down this resource by L anetta G arner The Family Preservation Pro gram, located in Oregon's Cof fee Creek Women's Correctional Facility, is scheduled to be shut down at the end of the year. The program is desperately needed to help women and their chil dren. The prison claims there are other programs, but if you look closely, you will find the other programs serve very few women or children and most of them are annual events rather than on-going programs. Not a single woman who has been in this program has reoffended upon her release. Please do not shut down this program. Four years ago I had a baby when I was is in prison. I'd barely had time to hold my little girl in my arms before they took her from me. For three years, I didn't get to see her. I missed her first smile, her first step, her first three birthdays. I never got to hold her little hand in mind, never got a chance to dry her tears. I could only hope and pray that she was loved, that she was cared for, that if she had bad dreams at night, that somebody would be there to comfort her. Finally, I got into a program at Coffee Creek prison that helps families. The program, called The Family Preservation Program, has been in operation for 4.5 years and served more than 100 women and children in a number of ways. Mothers learn parenting skills, something many of us never had a chance to learn because our own parents were unable to care for us or had problems of their own that were so enormous they didn't have anything left for us. The program made all the ar rangement so our kids could visit us twice a month. Unless you've been separated from your chil dren, you can't really imagine how much that means. Not just to us, but also to our kids. They worry about us when we're in prison. They're afraid we'll be hurt or that we don't have enough to eat or that we have to sleep on cement floors. With all these worries, kids are vulnerable to emotional problems. They might not do well at school. But when they get to see us every other week, and they can see that we're doing okay, their worries are lifted. The time we spent with them is helping these children stay is precious not just because of connected to their moms. It is the emotional connection, but helping moms becom e good because during this time, we have mothers, which will pay off for activities together that build the mother, the child, and the strong bonds. community when she is released In the life of the program, not from prison. a single woman who has been This program helped me im re le a s e d fro m p riso n has measurably and it will continue reoffended. And now the pro to help other women who have gram is going to be shut down m ade serious m istakes and because of funding issues. ended up in prison. It has given I'm out of prison now. I have many families a second chance. a job. I'm in transitional housing It has helped children know they now, but will soon have my own are loved and kept them con place and my daughter and I will nected with their mothers. live together at last. Please help me keep this pro The issues of children of in gram going by signing my petition carcerated parents are w ell to ask the people who made the documented and now 1 out of 8 decision to close it, to keep it open. children in the United States has Lanettta Gamer isfrom Port a parent in prison. The problem land. You can sign her peti is so huge that Sesame Street tion by visiting the website now has a character on it whose p etitio n s.m o veo n .o rg /sig n / parent is in prison. This program keep-a-prison-program. Gap Between Rich and Poor is Too Big to Ignore Even the Fed Chair suggests it’s un- American by E mily S chwartz G reco and W illiam A. C ollins T hree years after the O c cupy m ovem ent first directed long-overdue attention to the s c o u rg e o f in e q u a lity in A m erica, the g u lf betw een rich and poor has gotten too big for even the Federal Reserve to ignore. As Federal Reserve C hair Janet Yellen recently pointed out, h alf of us now own a m ere 1 percent of A m erica’s house hold wealth. On average, the low er h alf of all U.S. households com mand m erely $11,000 in net w orth — th a t’s w h at’s left when you subtract all form s of debt from your hom e equity, savings, and other investm ents other 95 percent inched up by (if y o u ’ve got any). less than 10 percent. Put another way, h alf o f us You m ight expect that com possess next to nothing. m unities o f color are suffering How about at the top? F am i fro m m ore in e q u a lity than lies in the top 5 percent on whites. Y ou’d be right. average have $6.8 m illion to D em ographers have docu th eir nam e — nearly tw ice m ented a gaping racial wealth what they possessed a quarter divide. A ccording to the Pew o f a century ago. Research Center, for exam ple, W ith a contrast that stark b lack A m erican s are th ree it ’s hard not to agree with tim es m ore likely than w hites Y ellen’s suggestion that the to live in poverty, and Latinos n atio n ’s inequality could be are 2.6 times more likely. T ypi dow nright un-A m erican. cal white and A sian-A m erican “I think it is appropriate to households, m eanw hile, have ask,” she said at a recent con m ore than 11 tim es the net ference on econom ic opportu w orth o f m edian black and nity and inequality at the Fed Latino households. eral Reserve Bank o f Boston, The num bers get even m ore “w hether this trend is com pat ludicrous at the very top. The ible with values rooted in our top 0.1 percent o f A m ericans n atio n ’s history, am ong them now controls 22 percent o f the the high value A m ericans have n a tio n ’s w ealth, econom ists traditionally placed on equality Em m anuel Saez and G abriel of opportunity.” Z ucm an found. T h a t’s ju s t Incom e, w hile not quite as about the same share as the concentrated in the pockets of bottom 90 percent. the few as w ealth, is also g et Why should policymakers fo ting more skewed. cus on inequality? One answ er A fter correcting for infla is that by crim ping consum p tion, the Fed found that the tion, inequality is a key factor incom e o f the w ealthiest 5 per behind the failure o f the U.S. cent o f households soared by econom y to fully recover from 38 percent betw een 1989 and the G reat Recession. 2013, w hile the incom e o f the That could explain why de spite sunny forecasts and sink ing gas prices, the shopping frenzy at brick and m ortar s to re s th a t now s ta rts on Thanksgiving turned out to be a bit of a dud this year. Lackluster holiday spending by the masses should surprise no one. As Brendan V. Duke and Ike Lee lamented in a recent Center for American Progress report: “When households do not have money, retailers do not have custom ers.” Emily Schwartz Greco is the managing editor of OtherWords, a non-profit na tional editorial service run by the Institute fo r Policy Stud ies. Otherwords columnist Wil liam A. 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