<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Alabama Score Card.pdf">Alabama Report Card</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Florida Score Card.pdf">Florida Report Card</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Louisiana Score Card.pdf">Louisiana Report Card&nbsp;</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Mississippi Score Card.pdf">Mississippi Report Card</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Texas Score Card.pdf">Texas Report Card&nbsp;</a></p>

<p>by Edward &quot;Ted&quot; Arroyo, SJ, Ph.D.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Pope Francis&rsquo; recent prayer at the Juarez/El Paso border led to this airborne response to a journalist&rsquo;s question: &ldquo;A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel.&rdquo; These simple words opened up in the blogosphere floodgates of anti-papal as well as anti-immigrant inundations reaching far beyond the Rio Grande&rsquo;s tiny arroyo dividing the U.S. and Mexico.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Many people have legitimate concerns about migration. Maintaining appropriate boundaries, fair and just regulatory measures, respect for the law, the impact of migration on the economy, etc. all call for subtle prudential judgments rather than bombastic generalizations. So often, however, many people of good will seem to forget their own immigrant roots and fail to appreciate the human realities moving 200 million-plus people around today&rsquo;s world.&nbsp;</p>
<p>How might a Christian approach building bridges rather than walls? Global generalizations, and even accurate scientific descriptions of the push and pull factors moving people across political borders don&rsquo;t sufficiently bring home the human realities involved.</p>
<div>
<p>JSRI addresses this gaping divide between rhetoric and reality by facilitating local dialog between recent immigrants and other concerned people, attempting to build bridges of understanding and mutual respect. We gather together immigrants and others in small groups to hear each others&rsquo; experiences and concerns, and also to learn what our church teaches about human dignity, ministering to people on the move, appropriate migration policies, etc. In this we follow the time-tested inductive method &ldquo;see, judge, act&rdquo; advocated by Pope John XXIII in 1961 [1]. &nbsp;Our experience suggests that as we move above and beyond this local experience of dialog, we start with experiences and practices close to home and then build up to advocating national and global policies. Starting with local dialog can humanize the rhetoric and help us better understand the reality.&nbsp;</p>
<p>For many years I offered a university-level course called &ldquo;Social Policy and the Christian&rdquo; using moral theologian Richard McCormick&rsquo;s [2] &nbsp;method of &nbsp;&ldquo;feeling right, thinking right and acting right&rdquo; for more adequately dealing with such social policy challenges. In his article &ldquo;Reading the Signs of the Times&rdquo; [3] Donal Dorr builds on this approach to develop a fuller theological method to guide informed Christian involvement in advocating public policy about urgent issues. Applying such an inductive methodology theologian David Hollenbach recently offered a concrete example of this process in discussing today&rsquo;s global refugee crisis.[4] &nbsp;And our own JSRI colleague Mary Baudouin offers a helpful reflection on our local implementation of such bridge-building in her article &ldquo;Welcoming the Stranger.&quot;[5]</p>
<p>What are we to do, how are we to act? Flowing from the &ldquo;Jesuit&rdquo; in JSRI&rsquo;s mission, we urge an ongoing process of Ignatian discernment beyond the rhetoric, a strategic methodology of careful listening to those concerned, including the excluded, both the victims and those who don&rsquo;t seem to understand, and those who don&rsquo;t agree but are willing to continue the discernment and act to build bridges rather than walls. Welcoming the stranger, a central tenet of the Judeo Christian tradition, calls us too to feel right, think right and act right.&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="https://t.e2ma.net/webview/jeehk/3c17204106ef2e36285af882428ba2cf">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>
</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/indicators-map">Interactive Map &amp; Methodology&nbsp;</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/JustSouth Index 2016_0.pdf"><img alt="" src="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/JustSouth Index Full Cover.jpg" /></a></p>

<p><span class="maroon"><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/JustSouth Index 2016.pdf">Full JustSouth Index Report&nbsp;</a></span></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/About JSRI_Online.pdf">About JSRI&nbsp;</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/JustSouth Index Press Conference Speakers_Online.pdf">Press Conference Speakers &amp; Bios&nbsp;</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/JustSouth Index_ Fr Kammer Statement_Online.pdf">Fr. Fred Kammer, SJ, JD, JSRI Executive Director Statement&nbsp;</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/JustSouth Index_Jeanie Statement_online.pdf">Ms. Jeanie Donovan, MPA, MPH, JSRI Economic Policy Specialist&nbsp;</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/Press Conference Statement Cristi_online.pdf">Ms. Cristi Rosales-Fajardo, Immigrant &amp; Immigrant Activist&nbsp;</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/JustSouth Index_Erika_Online.pdf">Ms. Erika Zucker, JD, Policy Advocate at the Workplace Justice Project</a></p>
<p><a href="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/JustSouth Index_PPT_Final_0.pdf">Press Conference PowerPoint Presentation&nbsp;</a></p>

<p><img alt="" src="https://jsri.loyno.edu/sites/loyno.edu.jsri/files/HCEL FLYER_Final (1).jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 700px;" /></p>

<p>&ldquo;I am an insider serving a life and 20 year sentence at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. Twenty-six years ago I was rendered infamous by the State of Tennessee through a judicial process of &lsquo;thingafication,&rsquo; replacing my identity with a capitalistic signature, 133881. Since then, at 19 years old, my journey towards humanization has been a struggle . . . to know that you are more than a number and not have the support of your family or community environment to prove otherwise can be depressing.&rdquo;</p>
<p>America&rsquo;s Cradle to Prison Pipeline&trade; is a toxic cocktail of poverty, illiteracy, racial disparities, violence and massive incarceration which sentences millions of children of color to social and economic death. Once young people have entered the prison pipeline, to many people they become invisible, just a statistic.</p>
<p>Rahim&rsquo;s pipeline to prison started during a chaotic childhood in poverty and a struggling family. His mother had given birth twice as a teen before Rahim was born. Rahim&#39;s father was never part of his life. His mother worked in a warehouse for minimum wage and struggled to keep food on the table and clothes on her children&#39;s backs while refusing government assistance &mdash; but Rahim says that was a cost later paid by hungry children who started a life of crime in order to eat and dress like their peers. Rahim was eventually expelled from high school, received a juvenile sentence for auto theft and burglary and was sent to a youth detention center. Less than a year after his release he was charged with felony murder after his gun went off during a robbery and a bullet ricocheted off the floor and killed an employee. He was sent to jail and received a life and 20 year sentence.</p>
<p>Three of his brothers have been his cellmates and he has been locked up with a total of five siblings at two different prisons. He writes about his childhood in verse:&nbsp;</p>
<p>Who Am I? Who am I?</p>
<p>Society doesn&#39;t seem to know . . .</p>
<p>You see us in the &quot;now&quot;, our prison condition</p>
<p>Blind to the facts of our mental afflictions</p>
<p>Past decisions made before our 15 second/mindless/crime spree/felony convictions.</p>
<p>The money/the honeys/the madness/materialistic sadness</p>
<p>Thirteen brothers/five sisters, seriously drastic.</p>
<p>Who am I, Who am I?</p>
<p>Choking in poverty, the pain runs deep you see . . .&nbsp;</p>
<p>Who am I, Who am I?</p>
<p>My eyes, my ears, my peers; no difference: 5, 10, 15 to 30 years in prison.</p>
<p>Environmental voices in me, our life and death choices to be, anger and stress forcing me,</p>
<p>Public defenders coercing me, my family and friends divorcing me.</p>
<p>Crying shame, born with crime in my veins . . .&nbsp;</p>
<p>still begging for a new beginning.</p>
<p>In prison, &ldquo;I was determined to survive, upset with myself, angry at the system, and filled with guilt. From jail to prison, I was stripped of my civilian clothing, a symbol that I was no longer fit to be human. My sadness, remorse, and vulnerability I masked with a &lsquo;mean-mug,&rsquo; the look of a cold-hearted convict. Old-heads in prison gave me the game, the knowledge of how to live and avoid death.&rdquo; Eventually Rahim started to realize he was more than the way the system had defined him. &ldquo;After all the growing pains of becoming a man in prison, disciplinary reports, fights, selling drugs, and rebelling in any way that I could to resist the system, I decided to change.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Rahim got a chance to participate in a program called SALT: Schools for Alternative Learning and Transformation, which brings college students together with incarcerated men and women to study as peers in college courses and workshops behind prison walls. It was its own kind of new beginning and for Rahim &ldquo;there was no looking back.&rdquo; He became a leader in the program, facilitating classes and developing community education sessions and mentoring other &ldquo;inside&rdquo; students. &ldquo;My learning has forced me to contend with the realities of American society. I wasn&rsquo;t born a number . . . yet I can&rsquo;t deny that numbers surround me. More than 2,200,000 fill the jails and prisons across the U.S.A. Million dollar contracts are given to private companies to monopolize the market of the prison industrial complex . . . &nbsp;I know that I&rsquo;m more than a number because numbers can&rsquo;t feel, love, breathe or think for themselves. I have dreams, goals, and ambitions.&rdquo;</p>
<p>Last June, Rahim was released from prison and recently celebrated his 45th birthday &mdash; his first outside a prison in 26 years. Rahim received a four-year scholarship to American Baptist College and has become a partner in the Children&rsquo;s Defense Fund Nashville Organizing Team, speaking locally and nationally and facilitating SALT classes inside a juvenile detention center. He believes &ldquo;education combined with community equals a peaceful society,&rdquo; and wants others to believe that they, too, are more than a number &mdash; something he never heard as a child, but something he wants to teach other young people as he focuses on helping them become their best selves:</p>
<p>America the Beautiful, America the Great, America, America,</p>
<p>America, It&rsquo;s not too late.</p>
<p>Who am I? I am you.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdf.childrensdefense.org/site/MessageViewer?dlv_id=46077&amp;em_id=45290.0">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p>Alice Park @aliceparkny<br />
Time.com</p>
<p>The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is recommending that pediatricians start assessing children for their poverty status. The screening begins with a single question &mdash; asking parents whether they have difficulty making ends meet at the end of the month.</p>
<p>One in five U.S. children live in poverty, and the academy says that there is growing evidence that the stress of not having safe and secure housing, regular meals and a stable home environment can lead to significant health problems.</p>
<p>&ldquo;We know children living in poverty have more chronic disease, more severe chronic disease, and have poor early brain development which can impact them when they get to school, and lead to poor academic performance,&rdquo; says Dr. Benard Dreyer, president of the AAP. &ldquo;Pediatricians deal on a daily basis with the intersection between poverty and health and the well being of children. They understand that they actually aren&rsquo;t separate.&rdquo;</p>
<div>
<p>The new recommendation, published in the academy&rsquo;s journal Pediatrics, formalizes the process and make it easier for doctors who aren&rsquo;t sure about how to address the issue. The screening doesn&rsquo;t have to be performed by the doctor, but can be part of a checklist that parents fill out while waiting for their well child visit, or, in larger practices, could be conducted by a quick interview with office staff or social workers.</p>
<p>The recommendation also provides guidelines to help pediatricians connect families who might be struggling to the proper resources, from local housing bureaus to food pantries and job listings. The hope, says Dreyer, is to help the 50% of families who currently qualify for additional support but aren&rsquo;t getting it to access the resources they are entitled to. &ldquo;Many pediatricians are already doing this, and helping families who have been evicted or connecting them to local food pantries. What we want to do is to give them more resources,&rdquo; says Dreyer.</p>
</div>
<p><a href="http://time.com/4251653/pediatricians-should-screen-all-children-for-poverty/">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p>The Times-Picayune By The Editorial Board, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune&nbsp;</p>
<p>The special legislative session hit a seeming stalemate Monday night (March 7) when Gov. John Bel Edwards and Republican House leaders couldn&#39;t agree on a way to fill Louisiana&#39;s remaining budget gap. One of the main sticking points is whether to expand the earned income tax credit, which the governor and House Democrats want to do to ease the burden a higher sales tax will have on poor Louisianians.</p>
<p>Some House Republicans are adamantly opposed because that move would actually cost the state money &mdash; which would mean lawmakers have to find more revenue. That&#39;s a fair argument. But they are making it while clinging to tax credits for wealthier taxpayers and businesses, so they&#39;ve undercut their own position.</p>
<p>The earned income tax credit sounds arcane, but it is a practical way to give lower-income working families a crucial financial boost. The federal credit was enacted during President Gerald Ford&#39;s administration and expanded in the Tax Reform Act of 1986 championed by President Ronald Reagan. Twenty-six states, including Louisiana, offer their own version of the credit.</p>
<p>Basically, it increases the annual tax refund for low-income families by as much as several hundred dollars. That may not sound like much money, but it could allow a family to pay a medical bill, get a car repaired or take care of some other essential expense.</p>
<p>At 3.5 percent, Louisiana&#39;s earned income tax credit is the lowest of any state offering one. Rep. Walt Leger, a New Orleans Democrat, has been trying to get lawmakers to double it to 7 percent. They refused last year during the regular session, but Gov. Edwards has made it part of his agenda. And the argument for it has gotten stronger as the Legislature voted during the special session to increase the state sales tax by at least a penny. Sales taxes hit lower income families harder than wealthier residents.</p>
<p>Now some House leaders want to add even more to the sales tax because they still haven&#39;t solved the entire budget deficit for this fiscal year.</p>
<p>That would be even worse for families, particularly those that are already struggling to pay for basics. Expanding the earned income tax credit at least would minimize the pressure a bit.</p>
<p>Rep. Leger has had an impressive group of allies for expanding the credit: Entergy, the United Way of Southeast Louisiana, the Louisiana Association of United Ways, the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University and AARP Louisiana, among others.</p>
<p>More than 224,000 families in Louisiana have difficulty paying for essentials because of low wages, high housing costs, expensive health care and difficulty finding child care, according to a study released last January by the Jesuit Social Research Institute in Loyola University&#39;s College of Social Sciences in New Orleans.</p>
<p>More than 515,000 tax filers claimed the earned income tax credit on their 2012 Louisiana returns. That indicates how many low-wage workers the state has.</p>
<p>For many families, the annual credit &quot;is the biggest lump sum they get in a year. It&#39;s a lot of money in the pocket (of people) who might be working really hard for $12,000, $15,000, $18,000 a year,&quot; Louisiana Budget Project director Jan Moller said last year.</p>
<p>Despite signals that the tax credit was dead Monday, House Speaker Taylor Barras later said it was still part of negotiations. &quot;As cooler heads prevailed, we were a little clearer on what our options are,&quot; he said.</p>
<p>It is smart to keep the credit in the mix. It would give hundreds of thousands of Louisiana families a little extra money to spend, which would be good for all of us.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2016/03/louisiana_tax_credit.html">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p>BY JASON BERRY, MYNEWORLEANS.COM</p>
<p>In late January, the Jesuit Social Research Institute at Loyola University hosted a screening of The Whole Gritty City, a 90-minute film about the lives of kids, parents and teachers involved with marching bands in New Orleans public schools.</p>
<p>About 60 people attended the screening and discussion period after. Final credits rolled, people applauded and then a silence gathered in Nunemaker Hall; silence as the power of the story settled over the room, the charm and pathos of the children, the discipline of learning music and marching in time as sanctuary from the world of the streets with drugs and guns. As the film moved toward its climax, the scenes of youngsters marching in a Carnival parade were tense, funny, sad and gripping, all of a piece.</p>
<p>The film originally aired in 2014 on CBS, a special edition of &ldquo;48 Hours&rdquo; hosted by Wynton Marsalis. Producer Richard Barber has worked on prize-winning projects at CBS. He spent stretches in New Orleans over several years, working on the film with co-director Andre Lambertson, a cinematographer who has covered child soldiers in Africa.</p>
<p>Visual narratives of this kind run the risk of resorting to visual clich&eacute;s about poverty and violence. TV news, for example, is a nightly show on urban homicide; station footage is available for melding with the filmed sequences to advance the action. The Whole Gritty City uses that technique though in a limited way, while developing textured profiles of a handful of people whose lives advance the larger story of music as a portal for a better life.</p>
<p>Jake Springfield, a New Orleans independent cameraman was the lead shooter and handled sound. A film that goes inside the lives of people in poor homes has to deal with ambience from TV sets, radios, CDs, the trills and crackles of life outside or inside. The sound layers convey how much distraction threads along in people&rsquo;s lives.</p>
<p>One jarring moment comes in the cameo of a single mother whose 13-year-old girl plays in the Roots of Music group. She talks about her own lost childhood, struggling to work, never taking welfare, cutting it so tight financially that for a time she didn&rsquo;t have enough food herself when the daughter did, and the little girl wouldn&rsquo;t eat everything, saying she had enough, wanting Mom to have it. The woman didn&rsquo;t break into sobs, but the resolve as she choked back tears cast a leitmotif as we follow the girl, nicknamed Jazz, learning her horn, marching in time.</p>
<p>L. E. Rabouin high school&rsquo;s revered bandleader Dinerral Shavers was murdered in late December 2006. The city was still on its knees after Hurricane Katrina, the recovery lurched along as the drug culture returned and Mayor Nagin touted &ldquo;the magic of the marketplace&rdquo; to rebuild a broken town. Shavers was also a popular snare drummer in Rebirth Brass Band; he was driving the car with his wife and two kids when a bullet meant for one of his sons crashed into his head.</p>
<p>The film follows one of Shavers&rsquo; prot&eacute;g&eacute;es, a young guy named Skully, finding a path in the marching band away from the raw streets &ndash; and after graduation, a job in a restaurant.</p>
<p>The producers installed small cameras in the homes of several participants to catch improvisational moments. Some of the scenes with the kids hamming on camera, spontaneously commenting on the tiny cosmos they inhabit, rocked the audience with laughter.</p>
<p>The documentary manages to let the story find its momentum without preaching. The absence of a narrator, only the occasional print on screen to advance the timeline and then the different characters we have come to know as life unfolds, give the film an unhurried sense, as tension builds over what will happen to the kids in the three bands and the galvanizing figure of Walker bandleader Wilbert Rawlins.</p>
<p>The Whole Gritty City is one of those rare films that captures a culture in time and in depth. Sad to say, with guns so pervasive, it&rsquo;s likely to be as timely in 10 years as today.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.myneworleans.com/New-Orleans-Magazine/March-2016/The-Whole-Gritty-City/">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>

<p>Bill Quigley</p>
<p>Law Professor, Loyola University New Orleans</p>
<p>Many see families in poverty and seek to help. Others see families in poverty and see opportunities for profit.</p>
<p>Here are six examples of billion dollar industries which are built on separating poor people, especially people of color, from their money, the reverse Robin Hood.</p>
<p><strong>Check Cashing Businesses&nbsp;</strong></p>
<p>Check cashing businesses. Cash a $100 check? At Walmart that will be $3. At TD bank non-customers pay $5 to cash a check from their bank.</p>
<p>Nearly 10 million households containing 25 million people do not have any bank account according to the FDIC. Most because they did not have enough money to keep a minimum balance in their account.</p>
<p>Check cashing business are part of a $100 billion industry of more than 6,500 check cashing businesses in the US, many which also provide money orders, utility bill payments and the like, according to testimony provided to Congress by the industry.</p>
<p><strong>Pawn Shops</strong></p>
<p>More than 30 million people use pawn shop lending services for an average loan of $150. One company, Cash America, has 84 check cashing centers and 859 lending locations in the US, over 260 in Texas alone, extending over $1 billion in pawn loans. In their 2014 annual report they disclose that 30 percent of people never return to redeem the item they pawned and the sale of those items makes up over half of the company revenues. The company paid millions in penalties in 2013 for overcharging members of the armed services and filing inaccurate court pleadings in thousands of cases. The CEO was given $6 million in 2014.</p>
<p><strong>Overdraft Fees</strong></p>
<p>Overdraft fees, when there is not enough money in the checking account or credit card to cover all purchases, is an $11 billion industry for banks, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A recent New York Times article explains how banks sometimes charge overdraft fees even when the customer has enough money in their accounts to cover the purchase and were forced to pay more than a billion dollars for manipulating the order of purchases to maximize the chances that their customers will have to pay extra fees.</p>
<p><strong>Payday Loans</strong></p>
<p>Payday loans are used by people over 15 million times a year and can lead to deep debt problems and usually involve incredible percentages of up to 391 percent according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Pew Charitable Trusts reported pay day loans are a $7 billion dollar a year industry.</p>
<p>The Federal Trade Commission won a $300 million case against two payday lenders who were deceiving borrowers, who, for example, took out a $300 loan thinking it could be repaid for $390 when in fact the lender was charging $975 to pay off the $300 loan. The US Department of Justice indicted former race car driver Scott Tucker on criminal charges for operating a $2 billion nationwide payday loan operation which routinely charged interest on loans for over 4.5 million people of 400 to 700 % per year. The nation&#39;s largest pay day loan company, Advance America, charged nearly 140,000 people in North Carolina annual percentage rates exceeding 450 percent until it was stopped by the state.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/reverse-robin-hood-six-bi_b_9398708.html">MORE&gt;&gt;</a></p>