Posts Tagged ‘poverty’
Mississippi is the Fattest State — but Why?
10:48 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Food| Health| Mississippi| society · 1 Comment
1 Jul 2009
The state of Mississippi has won a top ranking on a list it would probably prefer not to be on at all: the obesity list. According to a new study by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, adult obesity rates increased in 23 states last year, and Mississippi takes the cake, so to speak, in being obese. The Houston Chronicle reports:
• Mississippi had the highest rate of adult obesity, 32.5 percent, for the fifth year in a row.
• Three additional states now have adult obesity rates above 30 percent, including Alabama, 31.2 percent; West Virginia, 31.1 percent; and Tennessee, 30.2 percent. Ohio ranked 10th with an adult obesity rate of 28.6 percent.
• Colorado had the lowest rate of obese adults, at 18.9 percent, followed by Massachusetts, 21.2 percent; and Connecticut, 21.3 percent.
• Mississippi also had the highest rate of overweight and obese children, at 44.4 percent. It’s followed by Arkansas, 37.5 percent; and Georgia, 37.3 percent.
• Following Alabama, Michigan ranks No. 2 with the most obese 55- to 64-year-olds, 36 percent. Colorado has the lowest rate, 21.8 percent.
What’s perhaps more alarming to me is that Mississippi’s children also lead the nation in obesity. Not surprising (if parents aren’t eating well or exercising, neither are their children) but alarming. And beyond alarming is that Colorado, at nearly 20%, is the U.S.’s “leanest” state.
But to invoke a post by La Macha from earlier this year, as alarmed as we might be by statistics, we need to look at the causes of this problem. Beyond just the superficial “you eat too much junk food” analysis, these statistics have everything to do with access to healthy food, education and everything that goes along with living in impoverished areas or belonging to a traditionally oppressed group.
Instead of just being alarmed, we need to examine the causes and talk about answers to incredibly hard questions: like, is good nutrition really an option for everyone? And what “should” struggling famiilies eat if they only have access to fast food? Aside from the fact that some areas lack access to fresh food, when you are sweating to make ends meet and a bag of organic salad that serves 2 costs $4.99 while you can get a bucket of KFC for the whole family for the same price…is this really even a choice anymore?
What do you think?
Via / Chron.com
Shakira
3:39 pm By la Macha · Celebrities| Colombia| Health| children · 2 Comments
6 Mar 2009Oprah needs to wake up and pay attention to our lovely Shakira. While Oprah is busy funding her single well-meaning, but ultimately highly problematic school for girls, Shakira is taking on poverty by empowering communities through education. And I think Shakira is doing a much better job of it:
To travel with multi-million-selling pop star Shakira is to travel behind tinted windows, on private planes and on Shakira time – always at least an hour behind schedule and always stopping for autographs and photos. It involves long waits while she has hair and make-up touch-ups before emerging from cars, planes and buildings.
But at the centre of the superstar entourage is a young Colombian who is disarmingly friendly and passionately eloquent about education.
And education was the reason we travelled with Shakira to the north-west border province of Choco, deep in the Colombian jungle. It is remote and poor.
Why is Shakira seemingly easily doing what Oprah is struggling to achieve? They both have highly ambitious noble goals–but Shakira is setting her work within communities. That is, she is empowering entire communities *including girls and women* to better fight their way out of poverty (a near impossible feat especially when a government seems absolutely adamant in doing nothing to help).
Oprah, on the other hand, removed girls from their communities–which is always going to cause problems. Girls are going to miss their families, families are going to miss their girls–and that doesn’t even get into the issue of sexism and misogyny that might influence a parent to come take his/her child back home, get angry at Oprah, or even cause moments of danger within Oprah’s school itself.
When girls (and women) have the resources, knowledge and support to stand up for themselves at home, they generally will. And if they don’t, at least they have the resources, knowledge and support to keep themselves safe in bad situations. When they are stuck in some strange building with some strange girls being led around by some strange woman with a camera–where does the empowerment come from? How brave are grown ups when it comes to standing up for themselves when they have to do it alone, by themselves, and in a strange place?
(on a side note, Shakira is so beautiful without all her makeup!!!)
Bailout fails, somehow I don’t think that’s a good thing…
12:06 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · economy · Comments Off
30 Sep 2008
So I’ve been following the economic crisis issue for a while now, and I’m sorry to say I have no more idea what’s going on now than when I started following it. Apparently I’m not the only one who is confused:
Follow up on John LaBruzzo’s Plans to Sterilize Poor Women
5:07 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · New Orleans · 6 Comments
29 Sep 2008
VL reported here last week about Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo’s efforts to create legislation that would pay poor women $1000 to have their tubes tide. At the time, a commenter noticed that many women of color and poor women may actually want the sterilization, to which I replied that it is frustrating that “help” for poor people always comes in the form of sterilization rather than challenges to economic structures (such as $1000 scholarships for school, more jobs, raising the minimum wage, etc).
Women’s Health & Justice Initiative and the New Orleans Women’s Health Clinic (both located in Louisiana) put out talking points to address LaBruzzo’s plans. The address the issue of “consent” in a very important way:
Mental Health Crisis Leads To Taser Death
11:35 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Health · Comments Off
25 Sep 2008ABC is reporting the story of Iman Morales, a man who was experiencing a mental health crisis and was tasered to death rather than helped. Apparently his mother called the police for help after he wandered naked out onto a fire escape. The police showed up and after Morales ‘poked’ one of the police officers with a florescent light bulb, they tasered him. Unfortunately, after an hour of trying to convince the man to come down, the police had ‘forgotten’ to put precautionary inflatable foam or netting down to break Morales’s fall. Morales suffered extreme head trauma from landing on the sidewalk and died.
L.A. Moves to Ban Fast Food from Poor Neighborhoods
1:55 pm By Maegan La Mala · Food| Health| Los Angeles| society · 3 Comments
30 Jul 2008
Who woulda thunk it: L.A. is setting a health standard that is admirable — the city is trying to do something about an obesity crisis affecting one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. The idea is great, but I am skeptical it will work.
The local city council is banning fast food outlets in the less than privileged neighborhood of South L.A.:
A law that would bar fast-food restaurants from opening in South Los Angeles for at least a year sailed through the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday.The council approved the fast-food moratorium unanimously, despite complaints from representatives of McDonald’s, Carl’s Jr. and other companies, who said they were being unfairly targeted.
Councilwoman Jan Perry, who has pushed for a moratorium for six years, said the initiative would give the city time to craft measures to lure sit-down restaurants serving healthier food to a part of the city that desperately wants more of them.
“I believe this is a victory for the people of South and southeast Los Angeles, for them to have greater food options,” she said.
More than 44 million live in poverty in Mexico
27 Sep 2007
The Secretary of Social Development of Mexico, Beatriz Zavala Peniche, appeared before Mexican legislators to announce a striking statistic: 44,700,000 Mexicans are now living in poverty, more than 14 million of which live in conditions that can be described as extreme.
Malnutrition continues to a problem in rural areas, and Zavala Peniche announced a program that would provide vitamin-enriched milk to children living in these communities. Special programs are also being put in place for seniors older than 70, who will be entitled to receive 1000 pesos ($91) bi-monthly to help them get by.
The Secretary said that the biggest problems Mexico faces now are inequality and social exclusion.
Via / El Financiero
Image: Maurizio Ramos – UNICEF
Thousands of children abandoned in the streets
11:42 am By Maegan La Mala · children| mexico| society · Comments Off
14 Aug 2007
Even the casual visitor to Mexico’s capital city will notice an abundance of children working for a living in the streets as windshield cleaners and street performers at stop lights. Many are accompanied by their families, but others are completely alone. Mexico City’s La Jornada newspaper reports that poverty and hopelessness in the capital have led many families to abandon their children in the streets.
With severe psychological damage, anemia and addictions to various drugs, as well as histories of abuse and violence, close to 3000 children are attended to in the 30 public and private institutions which assist minors who are abandoned in the street or at risk of being abandoned. In the majority of cases it’s the parents, immersed in precarious economic situations, who abandon them.The Insitute for Assistance and Social Integration (Iasis), part of the Mexico City local government, says that in 28 of these institutions they assist children who are completely alone and helpless due to family poverty.
Food for Thought : 1 in 20 Latinos Hungry
11:58 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Food| Health · Comments Off
20 Dec 2006
While many Latino families in the United States are cooking up huge holiday meals, a staggering number of Latinos are going hungry.According to the National Council of la Raza 5% of Latinos in the U.S. are hungry and one out of 5 or 20% do not have access to nutritious food. Such statistics are expected in so called third world nations. The fact that these numbers exist here, among our neighbors should be a reminder of the third world within that exists.
Via / Univision.com
Image Via / CAFOD
A moving story brings victory for janitors
5:42 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Health| Justice| Labor · 1 Comment
24 Nov 2006A group of janitors in Houston have won a tentative case for higher pay and health insurance, helped by the SEIU (Service Employees International Union). The win comes after the moving testimony before attorneys and executives during which one Salvadoran janitor, Ercilia Sandoval (see video), told her story of battling cancer without health coverage:
Last September Sandoval began feeling worn out on the job. She scrubbed bathroom fixtures through headaches and fevers, emptied trash cans with sore arms and a tight back. Lacking health insurance, she couldn’t afford to see a doctor. Nearly a year passed before she forked over $200 for a consultation. A mammogram confirmed her worst fears: She suffered from advanced-stage breast cancer. Yet hospitals in Houston wouldn’t treat her because she was uninsured. She waited two months to be approved for state disability coverage. In June, doctors finally began chemotherapy treatments but say she probably has only a few months to live.
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- Mangos With Chili Presents Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead in the Bay Area Tonite & Nov. 15th
- Vigil for Marcelo LuceroThis Evening in Patchogue, Long Island, NY
- VL At The Cine: The Fourth Kind
- Rihanna interview
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- Remembering Marcelo Lucero : One Year Later, The List of Hate Crimes Grows Longer
- Rihanna Speaks
- A Message To Maine
- Maine Voters Said Yes on 1 and Yes to Marriage Inequity
- New York City Wakes Up to Four More Years of Bloomberg
