by Susan Rowe [courtesy of Blog for America]

UNNATURAL CAUSES: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? is a seven-part documentary produced by California Newsreel and aired nationally on PBS in late March and early April 2008.  This is a story about health, but it's not about doctors or drugs. It's about why some of us get sicker more often and die sooner in the first place. UNNATURAL CAUSES sheds light on mounting evidence of how inequities in our lives - the jobs we do, the wealth we enjoy, the neighborhoods we lives in - can get under the skin and disrupt our biology as surely as germs and viruses.  

by Robert in Monterey [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

The California Budget Project's report, A Generation of Inequality: The State of Working California, 1979-2006, has already started to grab public attention, such as a front-page article in the SF Chronicle.

It's about time. Although neoliberalism has been hurting working Californians since 1979, it's been in the last few years that the situation has become dramatically worse. Low wages, poor job growth prospects, and soaring costs of living are killing the California Dream for millions of residents of this state.

Below I offer an overview of the report, and some suggestions on what we can - and should - do about the growing crisis.