Sheathing the frigid digit
- Going to jail
- Bloomington Recycles: Fact or Fiction?
- How public is our library?
- Interstate 69
- The Insider's Guide to the Outdoors
- Poverty
- Environment
- Community
- Who owns downtown?
Who owns Kirkwood?
-- The story
-- The list
Who owns the Square?
-- The story
-- The list
Alternative Features
If America’s economic decline continues, local nonprofits that serve those in poverty anticipate larger demands for their services.
Organizations such as Backstreet Missions, Shalom Community Center, Stepping Stones and Community Kitchen expect more people will seek their help in the months ahead.
Community Kitchen is devoted to eliminating hunger in Monroe County by providing meals to the hungry. The agency saw a slight increase in October and expects the numbers to continue to rise.
“It wouldn’t surprise me to see a 10 percent rise in numbers over the next six months,” said Vicki Pierce, Community Kitchen’s executive director.
It's Obama instead of Ol' Bomber. What a relief!
At last, after all these dark and terrible years, we might have a man in the White House who doesn't stoke our fears and look about for enemies to taunt.
The one advantage of that endless election campaign was that it gave us time to see that Obama is obviously sane. How refreshing!
He doesn't immediately brand as an "enemy" any country that disagrees with us. Everything isn't U.S. versus T.H.E.M. He doesn't feed the national paranoia that those Bush Crazies whipped up out of 9/11. He doesn't wave weapons and middle fingers when he's speaking of foreign policy.
As someone wisely noted: when things get hot, you want a cool leader. Obama is warmhearted but coolheaded. That's what we desperately need. If you don't believe that's what we need, look at the last seven years:
I've seen you at rallies cheering for the charismatic junior senator from Illinois. Overheard you in coffee shops discussing Barack Obama's performance at the presidential debates. Spoke with you about the prospects of the Democratic ticket while making our way across campus. And on the morning after this historic election, together we pondered the implications, and the possibilities, of this remarkable achievement.
Truth be told, I'm a little envious. When I cast my first vote in a presidential election, nearly 30 years ago, Ronald Reagan won the presidency, and I was on the wrong side of history. Today, you are on the cusp of what President-elect Obama rightly described as a "defining moment."
The election of 1980 gave birth to the Reagan Revolution: an era marked by rampant militarism, the rise of free market fundamentalism and an ideological attack on the social, economic and political gains of the New Deal and the Civil Rights movement. Today's divisive politics and economic calamity are, in large measure, the legacy of the Reagan years.