Inequality

Land Loss Has Plagued Black America Since Emancipation

July 20, 2020 Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone, The Conversation. Strategize! Inequality, Land Rights, Racism, Slavery

Underlying the recent unrest sweeping U.S. cities over police brutality is a fundamental inequity in wealth, land, and power that has circumscribed black lives since the end of slavery in the U.S. The “40 acres and a mule” promised to formerly enslaved Africans never came to pass. There was no redistribution of land, no reparations for the wealth extracted from stolen land by stolen labor. June 19 is celebrated by black Americans as Juneteenth, marking the date in 1865 that former slaves were informed of their freedom, albeit two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Coming this year at a time of protest over the continued police killing of black people, it provides an opportunity to look back at how black Americans were deprived of land ownership and the economic power that it brings. An expanded concept of the “black commons” – based on shared economic, cultural and digital resources as well as land – could act as one means of redress.

Where Do We Go from Here?

July 13, 2020 Howard Brand, Information Clearinghouse. Strategize! Democracy, Inequality, Racial disparities, Worker Rights

Identity politics currently is in the forefront of the United States political agenda, and things do look quite dismal in regard to wealth, opportunity, and quality of life of a significant number of minority workers—but this is also the case, when we look closely, for a large segment of the overall population of our country. The question I see is where do we want to go and how can we change the situation? It is quite clear to me that the current ruling class has no intention of giving up their ruling position without a concerted fight. The ruling elite (the capitalist class or rich people as a class, not individually) have fought throughout the history of its existence—about 350 years, for its ruling position. I think the choice for us is this: Parity or Emancipation?

Covid Recovery And Radical Social Change

July 11, 2020 By Christos Zografos, The Ecologist. Strategize! Anti-capitalism, COVID-19, Inequality

I share the hope that the pandemic serves as a wake-up call for mobilizing action for radical societal change, and I don’t think that those who see fragments of this happening in commoning or solidarity practices during this pandemic are either naïve or only see part of the picture. But I am troubled by the signs that the inequality wagon might have a long way before it derails, which I see side-by-side with those other hopeful signs. Still, the care and vulnerability vision I sketched could provide a basis for a more hopeful outlook. Keeping in mind that pain better not be romanticized, valuing care and embracing vulnerability as central to life could begin with seeing the existence of those most vulnerable and marginalized not only as a source for recording misery and pain but also as a deeply political challenge: a source of models of human existence that defy whiteness fantasies of impermeability and containment that are bound to correspond to and elevate the few.

A Decade Of Research On The Rich-Poor Divide In Education

July 8, 2020 By Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report. Educate! Education, Education Funding, Inequality, Systemic Racism

Education inequality is not just a divide between rich and poor but also between the ultra-rich and everyone else. In 2020, a Pennsylvania State University researcher documented how the wealthiest school districts in America — the top 1 percent — fund their schools at much higher levels than everyone else and are increasing their school spending at a faster rate. The school funding gap between a top 1 percent district (mostly white suburbs) and an average-spending school district at the 50th percentile widened by 32 percent between 2000 and 2015, the study calculated. Nassau County, just outside New York City on Long Island, has the highest concentration of students who attend the best-funded public schools among all counties in the country. Almost 17 percent of all the top 1 percent of students in the nation live in this one county.

Pandemic Capitalism: Pervasive Inequality Is A Chosen Catastrophe

July 8, 2020 By Chris Oestereich, Open Democracy. Create! Capitalism, COVID-19, Inequality, Recession

The current flavor of ‘no holds barred’ capitalism sits at this precipice. For years, it has extracted everything within its reach. It has exploited our natural resources and damaged our ecosystems. It has claimed our time and effort, and even our hopes and dreams. All these things have been treated as resources to be mined for a system that’s systematically designed to benefit the few. The main idea underpinning the current version of capitalism is blindingly simple: you only have to remember one thing - that your job is to maximize profits. And you only have to accept one lie - that in doing so, you benefit the collective. That might be tough to swallow, but there’s a good trick involved: buying in uncritically allows you to believe that your self-interest is benevolent. That so many people are willing to do so is captured by Upton Sinclair’s famous quip, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Report: White Supremacy Is A Pre-Existing Condition

June 24, 2020 By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Chuck Collins, and Omar Ocampo, Institute for Policy Studies. Educate! COVID-19, Inequality, Racial wealth divide, Racism

For months now, a deadly pandemic and deep recession have pummeled the U.S. economy. Yet even as tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs, U.S. billionaires saw their collective wealth increase by leaps and bounds. At the same time, the Movement for Black Lives has drawn attention not just to police brutality against Black Americans, but to systemic racism more broadly. A huge cause and consequence of that systemic injustice is the underlying racial wealth divide — the financial legacy of centuries of white supremacy. Even before the pandemic, we found that median white families had literally dozens of times the net worth of median Black and Latino families. The pandemic is supercharging that inequality, with the skyrocketing wealth of the largely white billionaire class putting most Americans, especially people of color, further and further behind.

Over One Million People View Poor People’s Assembly And Moral March On Washington

June 23, 2020 Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org. Resist! Inequality, Poor People's Campaign, Poverty, Racism

President Trump drew a smaller crowd than he expected for his rally this past Saturday, but that wasn’t the case for the Poor People’s Campaign. Well more than a million people viewed the campaign’s Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington via Facebook that same day. Many more viewed MSNBC and C-SPAN simulcasts and two repeat broadcasts over the weekend. According to organizers, the three and a half hour event was “the largest digital and social media gathering of poor and low-wealth people, moral and religious leaders, advocates, and people of conscience in this nation’s history.” The virtual rally lifted up people who are living the interconnected injustices that have been the campaign’s focus for the past two years: systemic racism, poverty and inequality, ecological devastation, and militarism and the war economy. Many spoke of how the Covid-19 pandemic has only deepened existing inequalities.

The Secret Reason Billionaires Love A Pandemic

June 22, 2020 Lee Camp, Consortium News. Educate! Billionaires, Class war, COVID-19, Inequality

Most billionaires don’t work harder, don’t think harder, and don’t know more. They have nothing over your average person except: a) luck b) sometimes inheriting a fortune and c) being more sociopathic. So I guess you could say they’re extraordinary on the sociopathy front. They are more willing to crush other humans to get what they want and thereby they are more able to get what they want. Billionaires in the U.S. have seen their fortunes skyrocket, increasing by 12.5 percent since the pandemic began. The Institute for Policy Studies released a study “showing that, in the eight weeks between March 18 and May 14, the country’s super-wealthy have added a further $368.8 billion to their already enormous fortunes.”

The Uprising Is Only Beginning: Building Power To Win Our Demands

June 14, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. Newsletter Abolish Police, Capitalism, Community control of police, Defund the police, Inequality, Police violence, Racism, Rebellion2020

The current uprising against police violence and racism is just beginning. It is rapidly shifting public consciousness on issues of policing, violence against Black people and others, and systemic racism. The movement is deepening and becoming broader as well as putting forward solutions and making demands. The confluence of crises including recent police violence, the COVID-19 pandemic, and economic collapse along with the ongoing crises of lack of healthcare, poverty, inequality, homelessness, personal debt, and climate plus awareness of mirage democracy in the United States have created a historic moment full of possibilities. If we continue to organize and build power, the potential for dramatic change is great.

George Floyd, Coronavirus And Inequality Stealing Black Lives

June 14, 2020 By Susan Smith Richardson, Public Integrity. Educate! Climate Change, Inequality, Police violence, Rebellion2020

Several Black protesters have said, “If the police don’t get you, the coronavirus will.” Floyd pleaded for mercy as Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into his neck until Floyd could no longer breathe. His death triggered the protests of the past week. But the issues that have driven people to the streets are the same as those identified in the 1968 Kerner report. Over the years, the report has become a benchmark for racial progress. Though it is typically cited for indicting a white, paternalistic perspective in the news media, it also proclaimed “white racism” as the catalyst for the unrest, condemned police brutality and proposed destroying structural barriers to racial equality.

Black And Minority-Owned Businesses Are Denied Virus Relief Funds

May 29, 2020 Ama Nundoo, Face 2 Face Africa. Educate! COVID-19, Inequality, Racism, Small Business

Many Black and Latino business owners say they are on the verge of losing their businesses because they are currently out of work due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, that may not be the only reason because according to a new survey, these two minority groups have also been side-lined and are barely benefiting from the Paycheck Protection Program and other government aid efforts. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is a part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act that is intended to provide some form of financial aid to small business owners who are finding it hard to function amid the coronavirus pandemic. Nonetheless, Black and Latino small business owners are on the losing end of the scale, according to the survey conducted by the Global Strategy Group for two equal-rights organizations, Color of Change and UnidosUS. From April 30 to last Monday, a total of 500 business owners and 1,200 workers were interviewed, according to the New York Times.

Covid-19 Profiteers Are Making A Killing

May 26, 2020 By Amber Colón Núñez, In These Times. Educate! Capitalism, Corporatism, COVID-19, Inequality

It’s clear that the 1% are playing by an entirely different set of rules. Profiteering on Covid began almost as soon as the crisis hit. In March, third-party sellers on Amazon began jacking up the prices on hand sanitizer. Sniffing out the opportunity for a windfall, profiteers bought out scarce supplies at grocery stores and resold them at exorbitant rates. It wasn’t long before Amazon curtailed the practice by banning new listings for masks and sanitizer. But Amazon happily continued to turn its own profit: The company’s earnings increased by $33 million every hour of the first quarter, even as its warehouses suffered coronavirus outbreaks and workers walked out over unsafe conditions. Bezos, the world’s richest man, has accumulated an additional $25 billion since the beginning of this year, putting him on track to become the first-ever trillionaire.

Connecting The Dots Between Environmental Injustice And The Coronavirus

May 18, 2020 By Katherine Bagley, Yale Environment 360. Educate! COVID-19, Environmental Justice, health, Inequality

While cities and towns across the United States are wrestling with the devastating impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, none have been hit harder than low-income and minority communities. Places like Detroit, Chicago, and St. James Parish in Louisiana, plagued by decades of economic inequality and pollution in impoverished neighborhoods, have experienced some of the country’s highest mortality rates from the virus. Recent studies have shown a link between high levels of pollution and an increased risk of death from Covid-19. Sacoby Wilson, an environmental health scientist at the University of Maryland, believes the coronavirus has cast a spotlight on largely unnoticed segments of society, from low-income people in polluted neighborhoods to residents of nursing homes and prisons, to workers in the nation’s meatpacking plants

The Decade Of Transformation Is Here: Remaking The Economy For The People

March 29, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance Newsletter COVID-19, Economic Democracy, Inequality, Recession, Workers Rights and Jobs

The pandemic, economic collapse and the government's response to them are going to not only determine the 2020 election but define the future for this decade and beyond. People are seeing the failure of the US healthcare nonsystem and the economy. The government was able to provide trillions for big business and Wall Street without asking the usual, "Where will we get the money?" However, the rescue bill recently passed by Congress provides a fraction of what most people need to get through this period. Once again, a pandemic will reshape the course of history. Last week, we wrote about the failings of the healthcare system and the need for a universal, publicly-funded system. This week, we focus on the need to change the US economic system.

Five Ways Using Stimulus Funds For Energy Efficiency Would Reduce Inequality and Protect the Planet

March 24, 2020 By Basav Sen, Inequality.org Create! Energy, Inequality, New Economy

I am getting some serious 2008 flashbacks these days. Our economy is going into what could become a serious recession, and our political overlords want to use it as an excuse for even more handouts to big banks, big oil, big airlines, and assorted other industries who already have too much. Meanwhile, communities and workers impacted by the downturn get only “trickle down.”

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