KALAMAZOO, Mich., Nov. 16, 2006 - Kalamazoo City Mayor Hannah McKinney, a professor of economics and business at Kalamazoo College,, is pictured on the cover, and featured in the cover story of the October 23, 2006 issue of CQ Weekly, entitled “New Perspectives on Poverty.”

For the article, author John Cochran, profiles several grassroots, highly pragmatic new ideas by various cities, large and small, to lift people out of poverty. And Kalamazoo is one of those cities, in large part because of the leadership of its mayor.

The article specifically mentions the public-private partnership that brought the full service grocery store, Felpausch Food Center, into Kalamazoo’s Northside neighborhood. That effort was led by local activist Mattie Jordan-Woods (pictured on the magazine’s cover along with McKinney). The initiative combined money from federal government, state, city, and private foundations and citizens and was implemented without the creation of a new government agency.

The new store allows Northside families to avoid the higher costs of shopping at stores far from their residences and the higher prices of vital staples sold at corner convenience stores, thereby preserving precious income that would otherwise be lost to the “high cost of being poor.” More than that, the store provides valuable first-work experiences for local youth and has already begun to attract movement of other businesses into the neighborhood.

The CQ Weekly article also mentions other efforts to eliminate poverty locally: the “Kalamazoo Promise,” a privately funded endowment providing tuition coverage for all graduates of the Kalamazoo Public Schools to any public university of community college in the state, and Kalamazoo’s “Poverty Reduction Initiative,” a group of public and private organizations working together to provide employment services, job training, and housing assistance for low-income families.

McKinney closes the article. “‘I think we’re creating a grassroots level movement to put poverty back on the national agenda,’ McKinney said. ‘But I think we’re doing it in a less ideological, more pragmatic way. These are Americans,’ she said. ‘The American dream is being lost at the local level. And we have to work together to restore it.’”