This past February, as we have done for years, my daughters and I loaded a crockpot of taco meat, all the fixings, serving utensils, and dessert into the trunk of my SUV. My two busy teens claimed they had too much homework to stay long, so they drove a different car to the nearby town where we’d eat with homeless families.

Starting in the 1890s, churches began to set aside the Sunday before Labor Day as a time for lifting up working people’s voices and experiences. Some pastors even turned their pulpits over to union organizers, who never failed to bring the fire. On Labor Sunday 1910, one Chicago painter matter-of-factly informed his Presbyterian audience, “Some of the worst enemies organized labor has are very ardent church goers.”

The July report by the Council of Economic Advisers uses an alternate way of measuring poverty, based on households’ consumption of goods, to conclude that poverty has dramatically declined. Though this method may be useful for underpinning an argument for broader work requirements for the poor, the much more favorable picture it paints simply does not reconcile with the observed reality in the U.S. today.

I saw her in the month of mumps
puffed up in poverty’s robes,

a woman of fragments,

a shuffling quilt with running threads—
more holes, really, than skein.

You could read history in the headlines
she wore, partial untruths, incomplete

fictions. All of her lovers
failed to match the shoes she put on.

Every child she birthed missed having
national sunshine and two names.

She dodged taxes on her home;
it never had an address to speak of and

moved like wind-spinning, clanking aluminum cans
she chased for pennies.

Her boudoir looked like a butcher’s sleeve;
stolen ketchup packets from McDonald’s
provided ambergris for her perfume.

She was disqualified for any entitlements
except for open dumpsters on eyeless streets.

But mail always waited for her
no postage due; she was the patron

of the discarded; on winter nights the USPS
coated her from the leprous jaws of the wind.

She slept at the homes of three different zip codes
one January; always leaving at dawn’s early light;

she thought the flag needed to be washed.

Sometimes, my great-grandmother used to sleep in the fields — not because she didn’t have a home, but because she wanted to make sure that no one stole her crop. My dad often tells me that she was ready to beat up any thieves that came at the dead of night and I’m sure there were instances where she did. I often picture this moment when I need strength. I think about her petite frame in a cotton sari knowing that she could tackle whatever danger came her way at night. But I also think about how she might have felt fear creep up and how she might have felt anger, too, if she saw someone attempting to sabotage her crop. Because no matter how nurturing and gentle she might have been, she could also feel anger and stand up for herself when she knew she was being wronged.

8. What Amazon Does to Poor Cities

Is any new job a good job? As cities scramble to lure Amazon’s HQ2, a look at what the massive influx of warehouse jobs has changed cities.

9. Nearly 9,000 DACA Teachers Face an Uncertain Future

“Maria Rocha, a teacher in San Antonio, Texas, says it's gut wrenching, but she's trying not to show it in front of her third-graders. … It's even harder, she says, because some of her students are also at risk of being deported.”

10. Groundhog Sees Jungian Shadow, Predicts Everlasting Winter of the Soul

“We aren’t sure what was different this year, usually he either calls for six more weeks of winter or an early spring, not unending self-inflicted spiritual torment.” #2018

The idea that government has an important role to play in human flourishing was made by Pope Leo XIII in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. In it, the pope argued that governments should promote “the common good.” Catholicism defines the “common good” as the “conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”

When Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) accused the non-rich of squandering their money on “booze or women or movies,” my progressive friends quickly denounced him, as they should. Sen. Grassley is clearly suffering from the senility of a political dogma long past its freshness date. But me, I kept my mouth shut.

"Especially in this day and age, we already are living in tough times…I’ve seen people looking to things like film and television as a means of escape, so I have to acknowledge that people are spending their hard-earned money to go to a movie on a Friday night and want some sort of escape....My hope is that along with getting that escape, they will be positively motivated," says the filmmaker.