Auburn McCanta is an award-winning writer, poet, political activist and noted blogger. After ten years of working directly with homeless and at-risk individuals, McCanta founded and serves as Executive Director of HASPA, the Homeless Advocates and Service Providers Association, Inc. Her work provides a nonprofit platform for education and support for those who furnish specific homeless service and advocacy.

An Arizonan living in the heart of McCain Country, Auburn McCanta has a unique vantage point from which to launch critical viewpoints and observations as Americans struggle to face today’s economic crisis. McCanta’s fresh and passionate new voice allows readers to see the specific contrast and comparison between vital viewpoints.

Auburn McCanta’s respected and progressive ideas center on the concept that helping the least among us provides benefit to all. Her comments are designed to encourage the notion that we can each be that rising tide to help end poverty and restore dignity.

Blog Entries by Auburn McCanta

Jon Kyl Locks Constituents Out, but Will Arizona Opt Out?

22 Comments | Posted October 29, 2009 | 12:08 AM (EST)


PHOENIX, AZ -- Senator Jon Kyl recently quipped to NBC's David Gregory on Meet the Press, "I'm not sure that it's a fact that more and more people die because they don't have health insurance."

Constituent Shirley McAllister took exception to Sen. Kyl's narrow view and decided...

Read Post

John McCain, Computer Geek

Posted October 24, 2009 | 03:52 PM (EST)


PHOENIX, AZ -- During the 2008 election, Senator John McCain famously admitted he didn't know how to use a computer and was only then learning to use a Blackberry. Preferring to stay out of the 21st century when it came to computers, Senator McCain was clearly no Senator McGeek.

Oh,...

Read Post

The Next Wave of the Flu: Helping the Homeless Could Help Mainstream America Too

Posted April 29, 2009 | 05:59 PM (EST)


Homelessness is an alarming social condition that affects up to 100 million people worldwide. Visions of wretched living conditions and brutalized homeless children made last season's Academy Award winning Slumdog Millionaire a compelling movie. But a happy Bollywood ending isn't the case for most of America's chronically homeless.

As well...

Read Post

Bloated Welfare or Supportive Housing: Opposite Ends of the Homeless World

3 Comments | Posted April 28, 2009 | 09:24 PM (EST)


Recently, the Arizona Republic newspaper reported that the state's Legislators planned to walk away from half a billion dollars in annual federal aid to the working poor, making Arizona the first state in the nation to lose its federal welfare program and assistance it currently provides to tens of...

Read Post

Arizona Mourns the Loss of John McCain

Posted November 2, 2008 | 09:06 AM (EST)


Arizonans are sad. We've lost our hero, our maverick, our straight shooter. There was a time at the beginning of John McCain's presidential bid when he promised to run a respectful campaign befitting his stature and honoring the people he asked to serve. He promised!

Arizonans were thrilled. From...

Read Post

Voting While Disabled: The Real "Functionals" In This Election

Posted October 31, 2008 | 04:51 PM (EST)


For those of us who are mostly home-bound and forced to watch this historic election from the vantage point of our various disabilities, there is one irrefutable truth: Screaming at the television is a form of volunteerism.

Sarah Palin complains often and loudly about not being heard through what...

Read Post

Parents' Racism And Bigotry Rubbing Off On Children This Election

Posted October 16, 2008 | 09:54 AM (EST)


The child is beautiful; seven years old, long blonde hair spilling over her little shoulders, eyes blue and wide as the sky. I was having a long-overdue lunch with her equally-lovely mother. As most conversations go in Arizona, our talk drifted toward the upcoming election. That's when the child -...

Read Post

Arizona Officer Supports Obama for the cause of Law and Order

Posted October 16, 2008 | 09:06 AM (EST)



You wouldn't expect to hear a police officer in his bullet-proof vest, gun-in-holster, badge-wearing full uniform quoting the lyrics of a Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific song. "You've got to be taught to be afraid of people whose eyes are oddly made and people whose skin is a...

Read Post

Arizona's Legislature Slipping From Republicans

Posted October 13, 2008 | 03:50 PM (EST)


Edgar Allen Poe wrote, "Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so." For Arizona Democrats, that couldn't be a more prescient statement. Last week, one of the state's leading Republican strategists warned that the GOP is in "acute jeopardy" of losing...

Read Post

No Home. No Vote. No Way.

Posted October 3, 2008 | 07:36 PM (EST)


This past year, over three million Americans found themselves huddling in doorways or sitting on park benches, while nights were spent in terrifying shelters or under bridges or in taped-together cardboard boxes. Add to this mix hundreds of thousands of foreclosed-upon homeowners, hurricane-ravaged families and vets returning from Iraq and...

Read Post

Hurricane Homelessness

Posted September 23, 2008 | 01:13 PM (EST)



Five million home loans are either delinquent or in foreclosure. Five million! Add to those five million displaced homeowners still more thousands who've just lost their homes and jobs to yet one more hurricane (this one named Ike), and we've got a problem not yet even mentioned -...

Read Post