Update: The PBS Weekend News Hour program has been moved from Sunday, January 12th to Saturday, January 11th, at 6pm. 

Last year, after several months of advocacy by Tri-State and allies including the Welfare to Work Commission, LI Jobs with Justice, Vision Long Island and others, Suffolk County announced it would expand bus service on Sundays. Now that effort is getting some attention: On Saturday, January 11, Sunday, January 12 PBS Weekend News Hour will feature the story of how the work of advocates and elected officials secured additional state and federal funding to help Suffolk County to achieve that service expansion.

To mark the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s call for a “war on poverty,” the PBS Weekend News Hour will launch a series of reports on contemporary poverty in America with a profile of suburban poverty in Suffolk County.  The report will air locally during the Weekend News Hour broadcast on Saturday Sunday, January 11 12, 6 p.m. on WNET Channel 13. The PBS story draws on the 2012 Welfare to Work Commission’s report, Struggling in Suburbia: Meeting the Challenges of Poverty in Suffolk County that was drafted by Dr. Richard Koubek , Chair of the Commission and Community Outreach Coordinator for LI Jobs with Justice.  The PBS story will focus on how poverty is pervasive but largely hidden in Suffolk County, thereby causing unique hardships for suburbanites struggling to make ends meet. The story will also assess the difficulty enacting pubic policies to address suburban poverty while profiling two success stories that grew out of the Welfare to Work Commission’s recommendations: Sunday bus service and additional state funding for child care. Sunday bus service was achieved through advocacy by the Commission, LI Jobs with Justice, Vision Long Island and the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.