While COVID-19 is having wide-ranging impacts on every corner of our society, no one is more impacted by this crisis than women, particularly women of color. Women dominate the industries most affected by the pandemic, including making up two-thirds of frontline workers in West Virginia and the majority of employees in industries who’ve seen job losses across our state and the country. At the same time that women are dealing with the economic crisis, they are also bearing the bulk of household and care work.
Prior to COVID-19, women spent 37 percent more time on unpaid care work than men. Now, with the loss of normal care structures like schools and day cares continuing even as our economy begins to reopen, women are bearing an even larger share of household and care work, making it difficult for them to balance care responsibilities and work or to even return to their jobs at all. This challenge – how to financially provide for their families and to care for them – is particularly difficult for single moms and women-headed households.
Read more in Kelly’s blog post.
Ryan Brij Stewart is WVCBP’s summer intern with the Shepherd Higher Education Consortium in Poverty. For the next 8 weeks, he will support our work through research examining the complex nature of poverty.
He is a government and philosophy major at Hamilton College in Central New York where he is a co-captain of the mock trial team. He loves delving into the weeds of different policy issues, whether it be health care or green energy, though the issue he cares most about is criminal justice reform, particularly prison reform. When thinking about less serious issues, Ryan loves cooking and bakes the best chocolate chip cookies you’ve ever had.
If you believe that #BlackLivesMatter and are hurt, shocked or at a loss because of these recent unjust acts, read this letter from our partners at Our Future West Virginia. Learn how you can take steps to be not just an ally but an accomplice and conspirator in the fight against oppression. Read more here.
Click here for a list of anti-racism resources mentioned below.
As West Virginia moves forward with reopening in the wake of the COVID pandemic, its jail and prison systems saw a troubling spike in confirmed cases of infection. This week, after continuing pressure from the WV Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, Governor Justice moved to expand testing at all of the state’s correctional facilities.
Please read more from Policy Outreach Director Seth DiStefano in this week’s Charleston Gazette-Mail and West Virginia Metro News.
2019 feels like a very long time ago. Here is our recap of our accomplishments from last year. Thanks for being a Budget Beat reader!
For more information on the impact of the pandemic on West Virginia’s economy, safety net, unemployment resources, and more, please visit our special website page.
COVID-19 has forced the nation into an unprecedented emergency. The current emergency, however, results from a deeper and much longer-term crisis – that of poverty and inequality, and of a society that has long ignored the needs of 140 million people who are poor or one emergency away from being poor.
In 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many others called for a “revolution of values” in America and sought to build a broad movement that could unite poor and dispossessed communities across the country. Today, the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has picked up this work. People across the nation have joined under the banner of the Campaign to confront the interlocking evils of systemic racism, poverty, climate change and ecological devastation, militarism and the war economy, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.
They are coming together to demand that the 140 million poor and low-income people in our nation – from every race, creed, gender, sexuality and place – are no longer ignored, dismissed or pushed to the margins of our political and social agenda. Add your voice by attending the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington Digital Justice Gathering, on June 20, 2020.
The Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington will be an historic, generationally transformative digital event using the internet and the airwaves to drive the vision and agenda of our communities into the heart of the national narrative.
History teaches us that it is exactly in moments like these that a movement of the many is necessary to force the nation into action. In the midst of pandemic, economic collapse, climate change, and more, the key to real and lasting change lies within our communities – within our ability to come together in new and bold ways.
Register here.
The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy seeks an energetic and dedicated Executive Director to advance the Center’s mission to use research and policy analysis, strategic communications, and leadership and outreach to improve the well-being of all West Virginians. Founded in 2007, the Center has a reputation for producing creditable, timely, relevant, and accessible policy analysis on important state and federal issues such as criminal justice reform, fair tax and budget policy, affordable health care, labor policy, and other social and economic policy issues. Candidates should have a deep understanding of public policy and strong leadership skills to continue Center’s growth and development. Ted Boettner, the WVCBP’s founding Executive Director, plans to step down this summer.
Read full job description. Deadline to apply is June 1, 2020.
