Ohio
Earlier this month, I was in Dallas for the official launch of Sojourners' next Justice Revival.
Yesterday afternoon, after devastating the Texas coast, the remnants of Hurricane Ike tore through Granville and the rest of Ohio, uprooting centuries old trees and downing power lines with hurricane force winds. More than one million Ohioans lost power, and some of us may be waiting for up to a week for power to be restored. In central Ohio where I live, 455,000 remain without power at this time. The schools here are closed, and many of us are without water due to well and septic systems [...]
"Vote Out Poverty! Vote Out Poverty!" shouted the diverse group of clergy and faith leaders as they marched in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, at our ecumenical public witness event last October. That was the last time I saw Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) in person; she stood on the podium in the crisp October sunshine waiting for the crowd to arrive.
We had invited several [...]
Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones was a Cleveland original. Stephanie never cared about “style points.” She only cared about passing public policy that served the common good. No one matched her passion, energy, or voice for the poor and vulnerable. Everyone wanted her on their side. She was ever present in her 11th Congressional District and was tireless in her advocacy for victims of predatory lending, the uninsured, the unemployed, and children. The news [...]
The people of Ohio won a big victory over the predatory payday lending industry this June when a new state law banned the sky-high interest rates that had trapped many poor Ohioans, as Tom Allio describes in the August issue of Sojourners. Below, Allio, who is chair of the coalition of faith-based consumer, labor, and human services groups that won the [...]