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Monica Potts

Monica Potts is a freelance writer, and former staff member of The American Prospect. A fellow with the New America Foundation Asset Building Program, her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Connecticut Post and the Stamford Advocate. She also blogs at PostBourgie.

Recent Articles

Hillary Clinton's New Image: Cool Grandma. Can She Maintain It?

Her attitude—unabashedly feminist, casually in charge—was captured most effectively toward the end of her stint as secretary of state. Can she keep it as a candidate?

Monica PottsJun 25, 2014
Illustration by Steve Brodner
Illustration by Steve Brodner W hen did Hillary Clinton become cool? Was it during her globe-trotting as secretary of state in caftans or with her hair pulled back in an ironically hip scrunchie? Was it when she traded funny letters with the actor Jason Segel? Or when she starred in her own Tumblr meme ? Whenever her ascent began, it reached a peak in March, when GQ published an interview with musician Pharrell Williams . In one of the most convoluted sentences ever recorded in the English language, he not only endorsed Clinton for president in 2016 but also predicted her win, one that would usher in purple-tinted national unity and a worldwide pro-choice matriarchy: “When we are a country and we are a species that has had a Martian Rover traveling up and down the crevices of this planet looking for water and ice, okay, and we’ve had a space station that’s been orbiting our planet for sixteen years—but we still got legislation trying to tell women what to do with their bodies? Hillary...

In an Obamacare Experiment, Maryland Aims to Make Its Poor More Healthy

In the rural area around Cumberland, the obesity rate is almost 29 percent, nutrition is poor and food insecurity is high. With a waiver from the federal government to experiment with preventive care, state officials hope to reverse those trends.

Monica PottsMay 30, 2014
Mik122/iStockphoto
Monica Potts/The American Prospect Residents wait for their turn at a food bank in Cumberland, Maryland. C umberland, Maryland, is in the western handle of the state, sitting atop Virginia near the narrows that once funneled settlers through the mountains and into the West. It’s the biggest city in the area, with about 20,000 people. The railroads were once the largest industry here, and freight trains still rumble through the downtown, past an old sign for the Cumberland Steel Company and a hilly jumble of old red-brick factories, two-story offices, and church spires. Now, as in almost every other rural part of the country, the biggest employer is the local hospital. The hospital, Western Maryland Health Systems, is participating in a statewide experiment that officials hope will control hospital costs and also make the state’s population healthier. The State of Maryland has been trying to control health-care costs since the 1970s, but its efforts are getting new attention because...

Yes, Being a Woman Makes You Poorer

Monica PottsApr 10, 2014
AP Images/Susan Walsh
S enate Republicans blocked the Paycheck Fairness Act yesterday, a bill that would make it illegal for employers to punish workers for discussing wages and would require them to share pay information with the Employment Opportunity Commission. President Barack Obama has already signed an executive order prohibiting federal contractors from punishing employees who talk about their pay. These two actions were pegged to the somewhat made up holiday called “Equal Pay Day” celebrated Tuesday, and were discussed by many in Washington in merely political terms : evidence of attempts by Democrats to woo women voters and a continuing sign of Republicans' “difficulties” with them. Elsewhere, pundits and writers wanted to discuss whether the pay gap really existed. A few years ago, some conservatives and a few liberals began to attack the much-talked-about fact that women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar as untrue, based largely on the idea that the gap itself was mostly accounted for by...

Soldiering on an Empty Stomach

Monica PottsApr 01, 2014
AP Images/Keith Srakocic
S ince the start of the Recession, the dollar amount of food stamps used at military commissaries, special stores that can be used by active-duty, retired, and some veterans of the armed forces has quadrupled, hitting $103 million last year. Food banks around the country have also reported a rise in the number of military families they serve, numbers that swelled during the Recession and haven’t, or have barely, abated. About 2,000 food-stamp recipients listed their occupations as active-duty military in 2012, according to the most recent data from the United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees the food-stamp program. It’s a tiny fraction of the 47 million Americans who receive food stamps on an average month. The military also has its own program designed to provide families with additional money for food so that they don’t qualify for food stamps. Uptake is low—only 427 families used it. Those who work on anti-hunger issues worry that there are more complicated reasons...

Is There Hope for the Survivors of the Drug Wars?

Criminalized and discarded, falling at the bottom of every statistic, they want something better. 

Travis Jones got out of prison in 2007, but he talks about his time there like it ended yesterday. It surprised him, he says, the stuff he missed. He knew he’d long for his family, and his girlfriend, but it was the absence of everyday things that kept him from feeling human. “When you open your refrigerator and that cool air hits you? I missed it like crazy,” he says. “They cut the lights on you, and they flip the switch. Little things like that.”

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