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Economic Justice

Is It Bad Enough Yet?

December 17, 2014 Mark Bittman, www.nytimes.com , , ,
The root of the anger is inequality, about which statistics are mind-boggling: From 2009 to 2012 (that’s the most recent data), some 95 percent of new income has gone to the top 1 percent; the Walton family (owners of Walmart) have as much wealth as the bottom 42 percent of the country’s people combined; and “income mobility” now describes how the rich get richer while the poor ... actually get poorer. The progress of the last 40 years has been mostly cultural, culminating, the last couple of years, in the broad legalization of same-sex marriage. But by many other measures, especially economic, things have gotten worse, thanks to the establishment of neo-liberal principles — anti-unionism, deregulation, market fundamentalism and intensified, unconscionable greed — that began with Richard Nixon and picked up steam under Ronald Reagan. Too many are suffering now because too few were fighting then.

It’s All Tied Together And The Starting Point Barely Matters

December 15, 2014 Mark Bittman, www.nytimes.com , ,
THE police killing unarmed civilians. Horrifying income inequality. Rotting infrastructure and an unsafe “safety net.” An inability to respond to climate, public health and environmental threats. A food system that causes disease. An occasionally dysfunctional and even cruel government. A sizable segment of the population excluded from work and subject to near-random incarceration. You get it: This is the United States, which, with the incoming Congress, might actually get worse. What makes this an exciting time is that we are beginning to see links among issues that we have overlooked for far too long. Everything affects everything. It’s all tied together, and the starting place hardly matters: A just and righteous system will have a positive impact on everything we care about, just as an unjust, exploitative system makes everything worse.

Policing Justice Requires Economic Justice, Part II

December 12, 2014 Matt Stannard, www.occupy.com , ,
While police oppression hurts everyone, it disproportionately hurts people of color, a fact interwoven with police oppression towards poor people. The symbolic and identity-based degradation of people of color is a manifestation of a larger degradation – one of inequality, exploitation, and structured economic injustice. The relationship between police oppression, economic oppression and racism was most supercharged in Ferguson because of the city's now-notorious system of trickle-up wealth extraction through tickets and fines. When stories emerged of this pervasive practice, Ferguson took on the image of a Kafkaesque prison camp for the working class, whose citizens walked in and out of revolving doors, paying the fines that kept this otherwise unviable municipal entity afloat.

Policing Justice Requires Economic Justice, Part I

December 10, 2014 Matt Stannard, www.occupy.com , , ,
The fear generated by our unstable and alienated economy makes the more privileged among us susceptible to the belief that anything less than unconditional support of all police tactics spells danger to public safety. Help from the White House is not promising either. On Dec. 1, President Obama appointed Philadelphia Police Chief Charles Ramsey as one of two co-chairs to head a commission on police demilitarization. But according to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, Ramsey was responsible for several “bloody and abusive crackdowns on protesters” when he was Chief of Police in Washington D.C. The police cannot police the police.
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