I first saw this video on the Facebook page of a friend I consider to be wildly apolitical. Now it's been seen 3.5 million times, and been written up by Ezra Klein, Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic...that's right, a video about wealth inequality has gone viral.

We've been talking about wealth inequality for years, so it's really exciting to see someone else reframe information that's been out there and use new methods to drive the attention of the public to a critical issue.

Updated 3/4/13: The deadline for proposals to present at NCTC's annual conference in September is coming up this Friday March 8th. See the details below and contact NCTC with any questions.

The National Community Tax Coalition (NCTC) is holding its 9th national conference in New Orleans September 10-13, 2013. This year’s conference centers on advancing, sustaining and growing the community tax preparation and asset building field. In particular, the conference will focus on the role the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) field and asset building community more broadly can play in shaping best practices, research priorities, and policy implementation.

Editor’s note: The National Council of La Raza, the National Urban League, and National CAPACD hosted an event,“The Attorneys General Settlement and Communities of Color: Exploring the Challenge and Promise of Principle Reduction,” Wednesday at New York University’s Constance Milstein Center in Washington, D.C. The following is a reflection on the event, the National Mortgage Settlement, and its impact on communities of color.

Judging by the audience’s response to the keynote speaker at Wednesday’s event, the implementation of the National Mortgage Settlement leaves a lot to be desired. The audience, in large part consisting of housing advocates from such diverse and reputable institutions as the Center for Responsible Lending and the National Urban League, enthusiastically engaged the speaker, whom many see as the public face of the settlement’s slow and unsatisfactory implementation process. The keynote speaker, Joseph Smith, the court-appointed monitor at the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight and the individual charged with fulfilling the expansive promises of the settlement, was met with tough questions from advocates whose daily work is the securing of fair mortgages for financially troubled families in their communities. Despite his defensive position, he took the criticisms generously, because, he explained, the very purpose of these events is not only to allow community stakeholders and housing advocates to hear about the progress of the settlement, but also to allow the monitor to hear from concerned community members about problems of implementation in the field. To this extent, the event was a success.

Editor's note: This blog post, authored by Eliza French, originally appeared on New America's In the Tank blog.

America is a nation of paradox. In a country where more than one in three people are obese, one in six are food insecure. A single state, Mississippi, leads the nation in both obesity and hunger. A Place at The Table, a documentary about hunger in America that premieres March 1, traces the stories of those who struggle with hunger across America. On February 25, New America NYC hosted a pre-release screening of the film and a conversation afterwards with co-directors Lori Silverbush and Kristi Jacobson, executive producer Tom Colicchio, and  Linda P. Fried, dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.