The negative reaction of church leaders in Alabama to the state’s new anti-immigrant law—worse than Arizona!—is discussed in the New York Times (here) and the National Catholic Reporter (here).

by Fred Kammer, S.J.

A new report from the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) puts all five Gulf South states in the “top fifteen” of food hardship for households with children during 2009-2010. Mississippi at 32.5% of households is “number one” among the fifty states (the District of Columbia at 37.4% exceeds all fifty states). Alabama (32.0%) and Florida (30.0%0 follow immediately at “number two” and “number three” among the states while Louisiana (29.0%) and Texas (27.9%) are tied for 6th and 12th, respectively.

by Sue Weishar, Ph.D.

The Justice for Immigrants Campaign of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is organizing a Pray for the DREAM weekend to be held between September 18th and October 9th. Dioceses, parishes and other faith groups are asked to plan events and/or incorporate petitions, homilies, and prayers into Sunday Masses in support of DREAM Act eligible students and youth, with a special emphasis on the weekend of September 25th.

by Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.

The bipartisan debt deal reached between the President and Congress and signed on August 1, 2011, may have averted a catastrophic default on U.S. obligations that would have reverberated throughout the world, but it appears structured in a way that exacerbates the precarious conditions faced by the most vulnerable Americans, including children living in poverty, people who have lost jobs or are underemployed due to the Great Recession, historically disadvantaged communities of color, students, people who are disabled, and seniors.

by Sue Weishar, Ph.D.

by Fred Kammer, S.J.

This month, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has released its new rankings for the KIDS COUNT indicators for the year 2011. At the bottom of the 50 states are Mississippi (50th), Louisiana (49th), and Alabama (48th). Texas (35th) and Florida (36th) again ranked in the bottom third of states.

In early August, Chuck Marr, Director of Federal Tax Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, named five compelling reasons that the new federal “supercommittee” must consider significant tax increases in their decision-making:

In an August, 2011, study from the Migration Policy Institute, authors Marc R. Rosenblum and Kate Brick address the acceleration of migration from Mexico and Central America’s “Northern Triangle” (El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala) from 1 million persons in the 1970s to about 14 million today. They trace U.S. immigration policy across three major migration periods over the past century and how growth and diversification of these immigrant populations have been functions of structural factors, policy decisions, and the interaction between them.

In her new book, The Imperative of Integration, University of Michigan professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies Elizabeth Anderson finds that racial integration is an imperative for racial justice. Her study finds that non-integrationist remedies—such as multiculturalist celebrations of racial diversity or economic investments in de facto segregated schools and neighborhoods or more rigorous enforcement of anti-discrimination law—are insufficient because they fail to address the full range of effects of white-black segregation on group inequality.

In Twenty to One: Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs between Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics, the Pew Research Center reports that the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households. The July 2011 report analyzes newly available government data from 2009.