MOORE, Okla. -- Minutes before the tornado hit, Scott Lewis raced to his son’s elementary school in this suburb south of Oklahoma City. His son’s third-grade classmates were lined up against both sides of a hallway, covering their heads with their hands.

Some were crying as teachers tried to...

MOORE, Okla. -- Around 10 a.m. Wednesday, two days after the tornado, Darius Joseph and his friend Brandon Dick set out for the disaster zone that used to be their neighborhood to see what they could salvage from the rubble.

Their eyes searched for contours of geography they could...

Poverty is soaring in the suburbs.

According to a new book from the Brookings Institution, the suburban poverty rate in America has climbed by 64 percent over the past decade, more than twice as fast as the poverty rate in urban areas.

Nearly 16.5 million people...

Vicente de Jesus Garcia says he had a bad feeling when he arrived at a Harlem housing project three years ago to deliver a pizza. He didn't like the looks of the place, so he told the customers to meet him outside. As he waited, a group of men pulled...

Fast-food and retail workers walked off the job in Milwaukee, Wis., on Wednesday, prompting labor organizers to speak of "spreading unrest" in the service industry.

The strike followed similar one-day walkouts over the last two months in Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York, as well...

As Mother’s Day approached, Charlene Fletcher, mother of two, found herself occupied with the needs of other families, attending to the crush of shoppers last week at the Walmart in Duarte, Calif., where she works.

On Mother’s Day itself, she would be in the store, making sure shoppers had one...

A few hours before the cops clapped handcuffs on him, James Cannon, a student at the University of Minnesota, was feeling better than ever about his prospects for the future: He'd just handed in his last college paper and was looking forward to a well-paying career in the medical field.

The Kentucky Fried Chicken where Joseph Barrera works stands at a busy intersection in the working-class Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up, down the street from some auto body shops, a few rice-and-beans joints and a White Castle. Until the day Barrera found himself mopping up the grease that had...

NEW YORK -- At an outdoor basketball court in Greenwich Village this week, Peyton Bell, 66, was talking about Jason Collins.

"I support him," he said emphatically. "It's good for a male to come out."

Bell, who played basketball in high school and college, and now mostly comes...

CHICAGO -- When Chris Thomas, 25, started working at the Nike store in downtown Chicago in 2008, he made $10.15 an hour -- at least a few dollars short of what he'd need to move out of his parents' house in Oak Park, Ill.

Over the next two years, his...

Labor groups are predicting that hundreds of Chicago-area fast-food and retail workers will walk off the job for a one-day strike on Wednesday, just weeks after similar strikes hit New York City.

The would-be striking workers are affiliated with the Workers Organizing Committee of Chicago, which has...

A week after hundreds of fast-food workers went on strike in New York City, organizers and workers say enthusiasm has grown for their efforts, despite some experts' doubts that the drive will lead to the goal of a $15 minimum hourly wage.

At a Domino's on Manhattan's Upper...

For three years after chronic back pain finally caused her to leave her job waiting tables, Julia Juan says she tried to find work that her body could handle. At one point, she spent $30,000 on a food truck thinking that she could manage a job that didn't require her...

NEW YORK -- When Juana Alvarez's 14-year-old daughter contracted a blood infection five years ago, Alvarez took her daughter to the hospital, leaving her newborn baby at home with her husband, Abel. Abel took two days off from his pizzeria job to stay home with the baby, a decision that...

NEW YORK -- Among those fighting for the recognition of gay marriage, the prospect of the Supreme Court striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act prompts hopes for equal treatment: The same medical insurance and retirement benefits companies and the government now offer to married straight couples could soon...

After her partner gave birth to triplets in 1998, Chris Crespo began paying closer attention to the employee benefits offered by her company, major accounting firm Ernst & Young.

"I wanted to make sure that there was coverage for my children," said Crespo, an accountant who lives in Western Pennsylvania...

Antonio Ware describes fashion as something he simply can't do without.

"It's like water," he said recently. "It's like eating. It's something I just can't turn off."

He'd like to get a degree from a fashion school, maybe launch his own styling business. But on a recent Friday he...

Emmett Pinkston served in the military for 30 years, first in the Marines, then in the Air Force, then in the Army. He helped coordinate security for President George W. Bush during the G8 Summit on Sea Island, Ga., in 2004, and worked as an intelligence analyst in Iraq from...

BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- If President Barack Obama succeeds in raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour, Abby Charles, a baker at a branch of the Mrs. Fields Cookies franchise, will see her hourly pay go up by $1.50.

As she took a break from rolling out...

Mayor Mike Bloomberg is going head to head with the NRA in Illinois.

MoveOn.org is jumping into the fray in Ohio.

And as my colleague Christina Wilkie reports, the NRA has branded Obama's State of the Union speech fraudulent manipulation.