Monroe Free Library

"The stagnation of living standards for most Americans over the past few decades has been the defining trend of modern life in the United States. Wealth and educational attainment have all slowed to a crawl in the twenty first century, while life expectancy has declined, economic inequality has soared, and the Black-White wage gap is as large as it was when Harry Truman was president. How did this happen in the world's most powerful country? Drawing...

A trio of friends residing in an urban Czech housing project finds that happiness can come from the place where you least expect it in this quirky and heartfelt drama. As the shadow of the country's largest chemical factory looms large over their bleak industrial suburb, Monika, Tonik, and Dasha hold out hope for a brighter future in another place. While supermarket employee Monika's dreams are built around the hope that she will someday venture to...

"Through the stories of five American families, a masterful and timely exploration of how hope, history, and racial denial collide in the suburbs and their schools Outside Atlanta, a middle-class Black family faces off with a school system seemingly bent on punishing their teenage son. North of Dallas, a conservative white family relocates to an affluent suburban enclave, but can't escape the changes sweeping the country. On Chicago's North Shore,...

"A groundbreaking collection of poems addressing how every kind of love--self, brotherly, romantic, familial, cultural--is birthed, shaped, and complicated by the invisible forces of gender, capitalism, religion, migration, and so on. Written in English and combined with a Spanish translation by poet David Ruano, Promises of Gold explores many forms of love and how "a promise made isn't always a promise kept," as Olivarez grapples with the contradictions...

"The United States is more vulnerable today than ever before-including during the Great Depression and the Civil War-because the pillars of democracy that once supported a booming middle class have been corrupted, and without them, America teeters on the verge of the next Great Crash. The United States is in the midst of an economic implosion that could make the Great Depression look like child's play. In THE CRASH OF 2016, Thom Hartmann argues that...

The promise of America is that, with ambition and hard work, anyone can rise to the top. But now the promise has been broken, and we've become an aristocracy where rich parents raise rich kids and poor parents raise poor kids. We've been told that the changes are structural, that there's nothing we can do about this. But that doesn't explain why other First World countries are beating us hands down on the issue of mobility. What's different about...

Learn more about how underserved children rely on the services provided to them in order to have an equal chance at success in regards to children who are secure.

The episode discusses just how important mentors are to a community and features real people who strive to make a difference in the lives of children.