The St. Joseph Youth Alliance hopes to convert a warehouse into a youth center for the East Side. The 5,000 square feet of unused warehouse is part of the office space Youth Alliance leases at 3308 Leonard Road.

A 2006 episode of “The Boondocks” called “Return of The King” imagined what it would be like if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t die from an assassin’s bullet but instead woke up from a coma into today’s world.

The early 1960s were uncomplicated times compared to the multi-tasking, perpetually wired society we find ourselves into today. TV had yet to become risque and music had yet to become angry.

Donna James-McCartney has a TV in almost every room of her home. She has two cars, a house full of furniture, a backyard pool, a patio set and playground set. But every TV in her home comes from a trash bin. The cars don’t run. And practically every piece of furniture in her house is a throwaway or garage sale leftover. The rickety above-ground pool, the faded playground set and patio furniture that needs seat cushions in her backyard is stuff nobody wanted. It’s a piecing together of the American dream through a resourcefulness forged by having no money, a husband in prison, no job and a bad mortgage. A struggling effort to make life livable for a family of five.

Need has a new face. It’s not just the usual suspects on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Today they’re right alongside the able-bodied working poor or the victims of a weakened economy. “We’re seeing a need particularly among people that never before found themselves needing assistance. We’re seeing a movement for what we call ‘the working poor,’” said Dave Leyland, executive director of Community Action Partnership.

At 9 a.m. sharp, Dale Canterbury lit a cigarette and pulled up the overhead door on the D & A Auto Repair shop. He leaned against his grease-covered desk, with the names of part stores and customer phone numbers scribbled in ink on the calendar, and watched the early morning haze of Lake Avenue traffic.

It would be easy to ignore the Rev. Jesse Jackson. But he just stands out in that dashiki and platform shoes.

Some Northwood Terrace Apartments residents are upset about restrictions in a new lease agreement. A 10 p.m. curfew for all residents, including adults, is one of the restrictions that’s causing distress for at least one resident. Robyn Kelly said she’s lived at the North Side complex for 18 years and never had any problems with the lease agreements. That’s why she said she signed the new agreement without bothering to read it.

It’s official. Progressive Community Services now provides case management coordination services for developmentally disabled individuals in Buchanan County. And it has the building to prove it.

CAMERON, Mo. — Floyd Duncan spent a year and a half living in a nursing home. For the strongly independent 73-year-old Cameron man, that was a year and a half too long.