Via The Windy Citizen:

Cook County Jail's security, healthcare and living conditions violate the inmates' constitutional rights, according to a recently concluded investigation by the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago.

Follow the link to read the entire article.

Via Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity:

One in Four Americans Fear Hunger as Food Prices Soar, by Max Finberg and Ann Steensland of the Alliance to End Hunger
New polling reveals increasing anxieties about hunger.

Just in: the July 17th Poverty Dispatch from the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Follow the link to read the following stories:

Jobless Benefits - Ohio, New York
Children and Hunger - Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington D.C.
Food Assistance Programs
Child Care Subsidies - New York

"I can't really say what all homeless people are going through because I don't know.  But I don't have to know because a lot of people who helped me didn't ask me my story, didn't ask me what was going on.  It was like, "you need this, fine, I'll get you whatever you need."
  --Kianca Fincher, 2007 CCH Scholarship winner

Just in: the July 10th Poverty Dispatch from the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Follow the link to read the following stories:

Medicaid Funding - Mississippi, Hawaii
Public Assistance Delays - Indiana, Milwaukee, WI
School Lunch Programs and Summer Food Assistance

Via Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity:

New Polling: Poverty Too Little Discussed in ‘08, by Tom Freedman and John Bridgeland
Polling shows voters want to hear more about poverty from their leaders.

Via the From Poverty to Opportunity blog:

This just in: the July 7th Poverty Dispatch from the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Follow the link to read the following stories:

“I got out of prison the last time, and my life was not making sense anymore. I didn’t know who I was, and that scared the hell out of me. Since I was a kid, I wanted everyone to be scared of me, but I was scared of myself. I realized that if you want to be a true gangster, you have to fight yourself, learn who you are, learn to love yourself. I didn’t love myself because I didn’t even know who I was. And you can’t care for other people until you love yourself. It is the love of self that leads to a love and concern for others.

Via Crain's

"Chicago-area working-poor families are struggling to afford one of life’s basic needs: food.

In a survey of 301 working-poor residents of Cook County by the Greater Chicago Food Depository, 61% said their families had faced financial difficulties in securing food in the past year.