NY Times Article

Cut in Food Stamps Forces Hard Choices on Poor

By Mac William Bishop
Bryan R. Smith for The New York Times

Cutting Back on Food Stamps: After Congress cut monthly benefits for food stamp recipients, families in the Bronx must make hard choices with reduced food budgets.

By KIM SEVERSON and WINNIE HU
Published: November 7, 2013

CHARLESTON, S.C. — For many, a $10 or $20 cut in the monthly food budget would be absorbed with little notice.

Stephen Morton for The New York Times

Leon Simmons of Charleston, S.C., who on Monday had $5 left in food stamps for the month.

Bryan R. Smith for The New York Times

Ingrid Mock, center, at a food pantry in the Bronx on Monday. "I try to get most of the things my daughter eats because I can hold the hunger," she said.

Stephen Morton for The New York Times

Volunteers serving lunch this week at the Neighborhood House soup kitchen in Charleston, S.C.

But for millions of poor Americans who rely on food stamps, reductions that began this month present awful choices. One gallon of milk for the kids instead of two. No fresh broccoli for dinner or snacks to take to school. Weeks of grits and margarine for breakfast.

And for many, it will mean turning to a food pantry or a soup kitchen by the middle of the month.

"I don't need a whole lot to eat," said Leon Simmons, 63, who spends more than half of his monthly $832 Social Security income to rent a room in an East Charleston house. "But this month I know I'm not going to buy any meats."

Mr. Simmons's allotment from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly called food stamps, has dropped $9. He has already spent the $33 he received for November.

The reduction in benefits has affected more than 47 million people like Mr. Simmons. It is the largest wholesale cut in the program since Congress passed the first Food Stamps Act in 1964 and touches about one in every seven Americans.

From the country kitchens of the South to the bodegas of New York, the pain is already being felt.

Christopher Bean, the executive director of a Bronx food pantry that is operated by a nonprofit organization called Part of the Solution, said that about 60 new families had visited the pantry in the past week because their food stamps had been cut.

They know they will be out of food well before the month is over. "People can do math," he said.

In 2009, people started getting as much as 13.6 percent more in food stamps as part of the federal economic stimulus package, but that increase has expired. The reduction will save the government about $5 billion next year.

Over all, the nation's food stamps program cost a record $78.4 billion in the 2012 fiscal year, according to the Agriculture Department. Although the amount given to each household — a figure that can vary widely depending on a complex formula of income and the number of mouths to feed — has been dropping by small amounts for the past few years, the roster of people seeking assistance grew steadily through the recession.

In the 2010 fiscal year, 40.3 million people were enrolled. Two years later, that number jumped by 16 percent. Just over 45 percent of those getting food stamps are children, according to the Agriculture Department.

Food stamps are likely to be cut more in the coming years if Congress can agree on a new farm bill, which House and Senate negotiators began tackling this week. The Republican-controlled House has approved cutting as much as $40 billion from the program by making it harder to qualify. The Democratic-controlled Senate is suggesting a $4 billion cut by making administrative changes.

To poor families trying to stretch a couple hundred dollars into a month's worth of groceries, all the talk about stimulus packages, farm subsidies and congressional politics means little. It is all about daily survival at the grocery store.

"We'll be on our last $3 at the end of the month," said Rafaela Rivera, 34, a home health aide who earns $10 an hour.

Ms. Rivera's family of four saw their food stamps reduced by $36, to $420 a month. They pay rent and other expenses using her income and her husband's disability check, and they supplement food stamps with bags of fresh vegetables, chicken and other groceries from a food pantry.

"It's going to be hard," she said. "Our last week is going to be tight tight."

Ingrid Mock, 46, a former supermarket cashier who is disabled, was at the Bronx food pantry on Monday stocking up on canned green beans, pasta, ground beef and apples.

Ms. Mock, who has received food benefits for a decade and uses them to help feed her 12-year-old daughter, said her allotment had steadily decreased from as much as $309 about six years ago to a low of $250 this month, which reflected a new cut of $25.

Meanwhile, the price of staples like rice and corn oil have increased. So this month Ms. Mock will make choices. One dozen eggs instead of three, and only $1 worth of plantains. And no coffee or sugar for herself.

"I try to get most of the things my daughter eats because I can hold the hunger — I'm an adult — but she cannot," she said. "They don't understand when there's no food in the fridge."

The cuts are also hurting stores in poor neighborhoods. The average food stamps household receives $272 a month, which then passes into the local economy.

At a Food Lion in Charleston where as many as 75 percent of the shoppers use food stamps, managers were bracing for lower receipts as the month wore on.

At a Met Foodmarket in the Bronx, where 80 percent of the 7,000 weekly customers use food stamps, overall food sales have already dropped by as much as 10 percent.

"I wasn't expecting it to be that fast," said Abraham Gomez, the manager. Losing that much revenue could mean cutting back hours for employees, he said.

Although several pilot programs around the country are designed to help people with food stamps eat better, including one by a Connecticut organization called Wholesome Wave that doubles the value of food stamps used at farmers' markets, Mr. Gomez and others worry that less money for food means resorting to more dried noodles and canned tuna and fewer fresh vegetables and healthier cuts of meat.

Elliot Porter, 46, whose food stamps benefit dropped to $189 a month from $200, is a former property manager who is technically homeless but living with a friend while he goes to college.

At the Met Foodmarket this week, Mr. Porter had to perform a calculation with everything he reached for on the shelves, weighing his personal taste against cost and health.

A nutritionist who is helping him lose weight to avoid diabetes told him to buy a natural brand of peanut butter without sugar. But it cost $4.39. He decided he could afford only the store brand with sugar, which cost $3.79.

His situation may be better than many. During lunch at the Neighborhood House soup kitchen in Charleston this week, discussions about how to cope with cuts to food stamps were not hard to find.

People said they felt desperate. Many stuffed extra bread or cake into their pockets for later in the day, and traded advice on which agencies might be handing out free groceries later in the month.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/us/cut-in-food-stamps-forces-hard-choices-on-poor.html?pagewanted=2&hp&_r=0&pagewanted=all

New York Times Topic Discussion

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/07/the-cost-of-being-an-artist

Boston Globe Article

Early struggles gave Martin Walsh a solid underpinning
By Andrew Ryan
| Globe Staff

September 02, 2013

Barry Chin/Globe Staff

Martin Walsh at a senior services center.

First in a series of profiles of Boston's 12 mayoral candidates.

The cancer ravaged Martin J. Walsh when he was a husky 7-year-old with bold red hair that would all fall out. They held a special First Communion for him on Christmas Day because doctors didn't think he'd live until spring.

Years later an errant bullet hit Walsh one night on Dorchester Avenue, grazing his left leg when he was 22 and had developed a taste for alcohol. Before long he would hit bottom as an alcoholic and embrace sobriety, a turning point that gave his life focus.

Today, Walsh is a candidate for mayor of Boston as the contest enters the frenzied, post-Labor Day sprint to the preliminary election Sept. 24. He remains calm amid the tumult of the race. He is smiling, always smiling, because Walsh says he has yet to have a bad day on the campaign trail. Alcoholism, bullets, and cancer can give a man perspective.

"Subconsciously, it builds up strong character," Walsh, now 46, says of the cancer, as he squirts ketchup on a sausage-and-egg sandwich at McKenna's Café, a Savin Hill diner that is essentially his kitchen. "When you look back on it, it's part of my story. Not my political story, it's part of my story of who I am."

Walsh courts voters with the relentless enthusiasm of a golden retriever fetching a tennis ball. He goes back and back and back again, smiling as he approaches strangers with his palm open, almost forcing them to shake his hand.

"Marty Walsh, running for mayor," he says quickly, swallowing the contraction "I'm" as he reaches for another hand. "How're ya buddy? Marty Walsh, running for mayor."

The story of Walsh's campaign — and really the man himself — begins with labor. His father was a laborer. Walsh remembers his uncle running in a union election to be business manager of Laborers Local 223. It was the bumper stickers that got him.

Barry Chin/Globe Staff

Martin Walsh receives a high five from Maria Bruno, 11, as he introduces himself during a campaign stop at the Franklin Hill community playground.

"I thought to myself, 'I want to run,' " recalls Walsh, just a boy then. "I want my name on a bumper sticker."

He joined the union at age 21, working briefly in construction before taking a job with Local 223 as a benefits officer. He ran in 1997 for state representative and won.

While serving in the Legislature, Walsh became president of the union local. He rose to lead the Boston Building Trades, an umbrella group that represents unions of ironworkers, electricians, and others. The job paid $175,000 a year and gave him a 2012 Jeep to drive, but Walsh resigned and gave up the perks to run for mayor.

When did he decide he would run for mayor?

"I don't know," Walsh says, "when I was 10?"

Unions have used membership dues to donate more than $250,000 to his campaign. The amount eclipses total fund-raising of almost half the 12 mayoral candidates, but accounts for only a quarter of Walsh's war chest. His campaign says he has raised $862,000 from individuals.

Some candidates have sworn off outside money, but Walsh has refused. Unions and groups supporting his bid have also spent more than $200,000 independently on fliers, paid canvassers, and television ads.

The support could help Walsh advance to the final election Nov. 5, but labor could also become a liability. Critics have questioned whether, as mayor, he could fairly negotiate union contracts.

Walsh says he would have the upper hand in negotiations because unions listen to their own. "If somebody wants to attack me on labor, bring it on," he says, describing himself as an unabashed champion of working people, but whose base is much broader than that.

"If I didn't have the labor support I have, I'd still be in the position I am today," Walsh says.

Walsh is more than labor, supporters say.

"He's an exceptional guy," says Dennis Forde, 43, who served with Walsh as an altar boy at St. Margaret's in Dorchester and has contributed to his campaign. "I always thought he would do something major in his life."

Walsh has been a Little League coach and a founding board member of a charter school. He has a 16-year record as a legislator.

Last month, a woman wearing hospital scrubs as she passed through the turnstile at the Fields Corner T stop thanked him for securing state funding for AIDS treatment. He has support in the gay community because he aggressively opposed an attempt to overturn same-sex marriage, a surprising stand for the devout Catholic, whose efforts drew criticism from a priest on the altar.

BARRY CHIN/GLOBE STAFF

Walsh spoke with people at the Kit Clark Senior Services Center in Dorchester during a recent day of campaigning.

Walsh is a jumble of paradoxes. He is a guy's guy who can talk about a back-breaking job as a laborer, keeps a framed photograph of a workman's gnarled hands, has Patriots' season tickets, and is suspicious of food beyond the Irish standard of meat and boiled potatoes.

But he keeps an antiseptically neat home, loves hydrangeas, and has an affinity for paper products because he worked in an office-supply store during high school.

"I love stationery," Walsh says. "Some guys love going to Home Depot, which I do. But I love stationery stores."

His most defining issue may be his struggle with alcohol. Walsh says he hasn't had a drink since April 23, 1995, but recovery requires helping others overcome their own addictions. His phone rings after dark and on Christmas. It's people looking for support, second chances, and beds in treatment programs.

Walsh says he does it because people did it for him. And now, the recovery community includes some of his strongest campaign supporters.

He stayed largely out of trouble when he was drinking, Walsh says. He offers that he was arrested at age 22 when he mouthed off to a police officer and was charged with disorderly conduct, which was dismissed without a finding. (He was also charged with disorderly conduct as a new state legislator at a UPS picket line.)

The shooting on Dorchester Avenue occurred at 2:50 a.m. on March 17, 1990, according to court records. Walsh says he and several friends had spent the night downtown at Bennigan's, a chain Irish-themed bar and restaurant a block from Boston Common. They got a ride back to Dorchester and were walking home when an acquaintance pulled up in a car. The guy had just been in a bar fight, Walsh and others would later learn.

Moments later a second car arrived. A man named John Barsamian, 22, pulled a gun and fired six shots, according to court records. Two of Walsh's friends were hit in the legs. A bullet grazed Walsh in the left leg. Barsamian had been the other man in the bar fight. He pleaded guilty to attempted murder and went to prison. Years later, he showed up in Walsh's State House office looking for a job.

"I shut the door," Walsh recalls, "and I said, 'How about starting with an apology?' "

Barsamian died in 2005 after years of drug abuse, according to his death certificate.

"It's part of my story as an alcoholic," Walsh says, "If I wasn't drinking that night, I wouldn't have been walking down the street at 2 a.m. My sobriety has rounded me out. I was always somebody who cared about people, but it gave me focus."

The cancer was Burkitt's lymphoma. It started in November 1974 with fatigue, stomach pains, and weight loss. Doctors performed exploratory surgery and found the disease everywhere.

"They gave him six months," says his mother, Mary J. O'Malley Walsh, 71, who still speaks with a soft lilt from her native Ireland. "They really didn't have any hope for him."

Walsh endured years of radiation, chemotherapy, spinal taps, and needle pricks. He missed most of second and third grade and had to repeat fifth grade. A 1979 benefit at the Victory Road armory raised money for the family. His mother prayed, asking God to spare her boy and vowing to take him to holy shrines at Knock in Ireland and Our Lady of Lourdes in France.

Walsh recovered and visited the shrines. He's a miracle, his mom says.

"He's a good son. And I think he'll make a fantastic mayor. He cares for people."

Andrew Ryan can be reached at andrew.ryan@globe.com Follow him on Twitter @globeandrewryan.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/09/01/martin-walsh-drive-become-mayor-was-forged-challenges/8R0YiSW4m5UwG7vFcFnJ3M/story.html

Boston Globe Article

Martin Walsh's battles with adversity struck a chord
By Michael Levenson
Globe Staff

November 06, 2013

JESSICA RINALDI FOR THE GLOBE

Martin J. Walsh celebrated with supporters at his victory party at the Park Plaza Hotel.

He is the boy who wore a wig to school when his hair fell out from chemotherapy, the college dropout who went back for his degree in his 40s, the recovering alcoholic who once took a bullet to the leg after a long night of drinking.

The struggles that shaped Martin J. Walsh's life also helped him become the next mayor of Boston, allowing the lawmaker to bond with a diverse array of voters in a city that prizes resiliency and the ability to recover from adversity.

His rise to power was fueled by the upward arc of his biography, by the story he told of a working-class kid from Savin Hill whose battles help him relate to the ordeals faced by people from Mattapan to Hyde Park.

Like Mayor Thomas M. Menino before him, he blazed a more personal style of politics that was ultimately more visceral in its appeal than any policy paper or pressing concern pushed by his opponent, John R. Connolly.

He emphasized his blue-
collar upbringing on the first floor of a three-decker, along with his roots as the son of Irish immigrants and his background as a laborer who once busted sheet rock for a living.

He touched on the theme of redemption in his victory speech Tuesday night.

"For this son of immigrants, you've made Boston a place of comebacks and second chances," Walsh declared to hundreds of jubilant supporters at the Park Plaza Hotel. "My life story is made possible by this city."

He has promised some changes as mayor, if not a wholesale break from the Menino era. He plans to abolish the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the agency that has shaped commercial real estate development in the city for decades and has served as a lever of power for Menino.

Walsh plans to diversify the leadership of the Police Department and has hinted he may appoint a person of color to replace Commissioner Edward F. Davis, who resigned last week after seven years.

Walsh has also pledged to focus on schools, an issue that Connolly embraced as the thrust of his campaign. A supporter of charter schools, Walsh says he will also establish ninth and 10th grade academies in the city's high schools, to ensure that fewer students fall through the cracks.

Walsh's roots in the labor movement are deep, which meant they were both a wellspring of campaign cash and field support, but also a source of controversy. Walsh is the president of Laborers Local 223 and was until April head of the Boston Metropolitan District Building Trades Council, which represents more than 35,000 workers in 16 trades in Greater Boston.

Walsh's father was also a member of Local 223. His uncle was for years its leader. These days, Walsh's cousin, Martin F. Walsh, is the union's business manager. Another cousin is the office manager. Though he distanced himself from his labor background during the campaign, there were signs of union pride Tuesday night: Labor banners festooned the balconies around his victory party, including one from Local 223.

Walsh, 46, still lives in Savin Hill, where he was raised by a father who worked as a laborer and a mother who had dinner on the table at 5 o'clock sharp, seven days a week.

As a boy, Walsh attended St. Margaret School, became an altar server, and played floor hockey at the community center near his home on Taft Street. But his childhood was defined by his diagnosis at age 7 with Burkitt's lymphoma, an aggressive form of cancer that spread to his pancreas and bowels. Sapped of energy, he missed most of the second and third grade and repeated the fifth. Burkitt's often responds well to chemotherapy, however, and Walsh's eventually did. When he was 11, a scan revealed that he was free of the disease. To mark his recovery, Walsh's mother took him to the shrines at Knock in Ireland and Lourdes in France.

After graduating from Newman Prep, a private school in the Back Bay, he attended Quincy College and Suffolk University, dropping out after a year and a half. Following in the footsteps of his father and his uncle, he spent two years as a laborer, before ditching his work gear for a desk job in Newton, working as a collection agent for the laborers' pension fund.

It was around this time that he started drinking heavily. Walsh acknowledged that he drove drunk, blacked out, and was once thrown out of a Bruins game. In 1990, he was hit in the leg by an errant bullet after a night out with friends. It was not until 1995 that he entered a detoxification program on Cape Cod and got sober. Two years later, he was elected to the Massachusetts House. His union career began flourishing.

In 2001, he became recording secretary of Local 223 and union president in 2005. Frustrated that he never finished college, he got his bachelor's degree from Boston College in 2009. Two years later, fellow union officials elected him general agent of the Boston Building Trades Council. The job paid him $175,000, on top of the $76,000 he earned as a state representative, and furnished him with a Jeep with gasoline.

In that role, he emerged as one of the most influential figures in Boston's construction industry, a labor leader with deep political connections who could help developers secure financing for projects, hammer out contracts for union workers, and navigate neighborhood opposition to projects. He held the position until April, when he resigned to run for mayor.

Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/11/06/walsh-bio/0wtRBdbQDYX5pZPa2eGTGJ/story.html

NFL Updates

Bears' Marshall: Bullying not limited to Dolphins
November 6, 2013, 3:00 pm

Jonathan Martin didn't go AWOL from the Miami Dolphins because of a hazing situation with teammate Richie Incognito for purposes of shining a light on the ugly specter of bullying. But that's what the young tackle has done, and bringing the practice out in the open can hopefully end it somewhere for someone else.

Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall played with, likes and stays in touch with Incognito and a number of Dolphins, teammates before Marshall was traded to Chicago. But Marshall's first thoughts on Wednesday were with the victim.

[RELATED: Hunter Hillenmeyer admits he was bullied during Bears days]

"You have to be sensitive to the fact of the kid Martin, what he's going through," Marshall said. "Prayers definitely for him. A serious situation. That's something I understand, something I've been through, I wish him the best and hopefully he's getting the care that he needs."

Coach Marc Trestman established from the outset of his time in Chicago that there would be no serious hazing on his Bears watch.

"I've been in places where there's been hazing and I've been in places where there has not been hazing," Trestman said. "I told the team the first night when you haze somebody, you take their ability to help you win. Everybody's here to help you win… .

"We're not talking about taking a helmet and walking off the field with a helmet. We're talking about other things. The words you use, the way you act, the things you say, affect people from all different backgrounds and places."

No blaming the victim

Unlike some pundits who effectively blamed the victim by citing his failure to speak up or stand up to a bully, Marshall did not blame the victim. Incognito was/is popular with teammates, meaning that Martin would have risked further ostracizing had he gone after Incognito, and Martin also would have risked taking a beating in the process, worsening the situation.

Marshall also said that the Incognito-Martin situation was not isolated to the Dolphins.

[MORE: Marshall raises mental health awareness with green shoes]

"Sometimes I feel like the NFL, to protect the brand, or the logo of the team, we do things for the publicity," Marshall said. "Unfortunately, it's the culture of the NFL. Here, it's different. We look at rookies different. You have to earn your stripes, earn your place on the team, or earn your place in the NFL.

"As far as crossing that line, disrespecting guys, demeaning guys; that just doesn't happen here… . Coach [Trestman] just said, 'hey, we're going to nip that in the bud, I want guys to focus on football and everyone just focus on their job and not a rookie night or what the guys might do to me the next day."

Cultural differences

Marshall suggested that cultural behavior ingrained at early ages might be reflected in Martin enduring the situation rather than seek help. Where little girls are comforted when they fall down, little boys are urged to "shake it off, you'll be ok. Don't cry.'" Marshall said.

"So right there from that moment we're teaching our men to mask their feelings, don't show their emotions. And it's that times 100 with football players. Can't show that you're hurt. Can't show any pain.

[RELATED: Brandon Marshall sports Cutler shirt, announces, 'He's back']

"So for a guy that comes in a locker room and shows a little vulnerability, that's a problem. So that's what I mean by the culture of the NFL. And that's what we have to change. What's going on in Miami goes on in every locker room; but it's time for us to start talking, maybe have group sessions where guys sit down and talk about what's going on off the field. What's going on in the building. And not mask everything. Because the worse it goes untreated, the worse it gets… .

"But it's time for us to take a look at some things we can do that's proactive, potentially start with maybe some group sessions, some group therapy, or some other innovative things that's out there."

If he's well, there's obviously talent there to be developed. And at $6,000 a week, it's worth a shot.

http://www.csnchicago.com/bears/bears-marshall-bullying-not-limited-dolphins?p=ya5nbcs&ocid=yahoo