Pandemic

Most American Homeowners Are ‘House Poor’

December 16, 2021 Jason Lalljee, Business Insider. Educate! Debt, Finance and the Economy, Housing, Pandemic

In a recent survey, 40% of homeowners with mortgages said they work second, full-time jobs to afford housing expenses. A majority of the 1,002 people surveyed by Consumer Affairs feel like they can't afford their housing expenses, and did not anticipate the extra costs of upkeep when they bought their homes. The report comes amid record surges in US home prices, also finding that more than a third of respondents are incurring extra credit card debt to pay their bills. Despite these challenges, homeowners ultimately prefer owning a home to renting one. The survey found that although 40% of people rely on second, full-time jobs to ease the costs of homeownership, nearly 100% of "house poor" homeowners have taken on side gigs to offset home costs.

Barbados: The Long Road To The Republic

December 12, 2021 Richard Drayton, Black Agenda Report. Resist! Barbados, Caribbean, Colonialism, Pandemic

On November 30, 2021, on the 55th anniversary of its political independence, Barbados will become a republic. It is commonly assumed this was some sudden decision by Mia Mottley’s government. The most bizarre suggestion came from British voices, who asserted this had to do with Barbados tilting to China. But the roots of this change go back decades, and are anchored in the politics of the wider Caribbean. Forbes Burnham’s decision in 1970 to proclaim the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, and Eric Williams’s push towards the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in 1976, are the key precedents. Both were underpinned by the politics of what I have called ‘secondary decolonization’, for which, in the long 1970s, the global Black Power moment was central.

WHO Stands With African Nations And Calls For Borders To Remain Open

December 1, 2021 World Health Organization , Black Agenda Report. Educate! Africa, COVID-19, Pandemic, WHO

As a growing number of countries impose flight bans on southern African nations due to concerns over the new Omicron variant, World Health Organization (WHO) urges countries to follow science and the International Health Regulations (2005). Travel restrictions may play a role in slightly reducing the spread of COVID-19 but place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods. If restrictions are implemented, they should not be unnecessarily invasive or intrusive, and should be scientifically based, according to the International Health Regulations which is a legally binding instrument of international law recognized by over 190 nations. This week, nations will be joining a special session of the World Health Assembly, organized by WHO to discuss how to collectively prepare and respond better to pandemics, building on their commitments to the International Health Regulations.

Not Everyone Is Feasting

November 30, 2021 Sasha Abramsky, Truthout. Educate! COVID-19, Food and Agriculture, Food Insecurity, Pandemic

As the COVID pandemic upended the economy in the spring and summer of 2020, tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs and became ever more vulnerable to hunger. In consequence, the country’s network of food banks saw a sudden spike in usage. Just prior to, and at the start of the pandemic, food banks distributed 1.1 billion pounds of food in the first quarter of 2020. By the fall of that year, they were handing out 1.7 billion pounds. Since then, that dizzying increase has leveled off or fallen somewhat in many places, but that doesn’t mean the country’s no longer suffering an epidemic of food insecurity. To the contrary: Large food banks around the country are still reporting far higher levels of need — and of food distribution to attempt to meet that need — than was the case prior to COVID.

Student Loan Payments Resume Soon, But Working Borrowers Aren’t Ready

November 18, 2021 Ayelet Sheffey, Business Insider. Educate! Higher Education, Pandemic, Poverty, Student Loans

On February 1, 2022, the relief student-loan borrowers have had since the start of the pandemic will be stripped away and they will be thrown back into repayment — whether they're ready or not. And most of them are not. The Student Debt Crisis Center, in partnership with Savi — a social impact technology startup — released the results of the fourth installment of the Student Debt x COVID-19 series on Wednesday examining the impact of the pandemic on student-loan borrowers. It found that although student-loan company communication to borrowers has improved since June, 89% of fully-employed borrowers say they do not feel financially secure enough to resume payments in a few months. One in five of the respondents said they will never feel financially-secure enough to restart their student-loan payments.

These Billionaires Received Taxpayer-Funded Stimulus Checks

November 9, 2021 Paul Kiel, Jesse Eisinger and Jeff Ernsthausen, Pro Publica. Educate! Bailout, Billionaires, Economic crisis, Pandemic

In March 2020, as the first wave of coronavirus infections all but shut down the U.S. economy, Congress responded with rare speed, passing a $2.2 trillion relief package called the CARES Act. The centerpiece of the law was an emergency payment to over 150 million American households that needed help. Congress used a simple filter to determine who was eligible for assistance: The full $1,200 was limited to single taxpayers who’d reported $75,000 a year or less in income on their previous tax return. Married couples got $2,400 if they had reported less than $150,000 in income. Money was sent automatically to those who qualified. Ira Rennert, worth $3.7 billion according to Forbes, did not appear to need the cash infusion offered by the CARES Act.

Mutual Aid Goes Mainstream

November 9, 2021 Lucia Geng, Dissent Magazine. Organize! Colleges, Food Security, Mutual Aid, Pandemic

Last spring, within hours of the University of Chicago’s announcement that classes would be held online, students created a Facebook group to coordinate mutual aid efforts. Even with finals right around the corner, UChicago Mutual Aid came alive with activity. Students eagerly offered and accepted support in the form of advice, essential supplies like food and moving boxes, and spreadsheets listing leads on resources like housing. What I witnessed at my college was just one example of the many mutual aid networks, both college-based and non-college-based, that sprung up across the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Mutual aid, a radical practice that has been undertaken by marginalized groups for decades, became a mainstream buzzword almost overnight.

What A Peaceful Build-Up That Evades Ecological Breakdown Would Look Like

October 5, 2021 Nina Koevoets, Waging Nonviolence. Create! climate crisis, Ecology, Pandemic, Peace

Sooner or later other events in this transition period that we’re in will also follow, to further increase the awareness of the seriousness of the climate crisis and possible extinction of our own species. But we have to act fast and get more people to join those already imagining and working on solutions. How can this happen? The first step is to understand the need for a cultural change, because the root cause of our dire current situation lies there. To be more specific: it lies in the unsustainable globalized Western culture. Therefore, changing course can only be achieved by a cultural transformation: we need to address our ways of thinking and change our habits and collective behavior — the way we organize ourselves as societies.

It’s A Wage And Workers Rights Shortage

September 6, 2021 Lane Windham, The Hill. Resist! Finance and the Economy, Pandemic, Unemployment, Worker Rights and Jobs

As we approach Labor Day, America’s working people are deep into a protracted general strike. Millions are refusing to go back into low-wage, no-benefits jobs that require they abandon dignity and rights at the workplace door. Their struggle has brewed for 40 years as wages stagnated, benefits vanished and public policy offered working families little reprieve. Employers complain that too few people are returning to work, but America’s “labor shortage” is really a shortage of good wages and workers rights on the job. Recent jobs reports show an uptick in the numbers of workers returning to work, but payroll tallies are still more than 5 million shy of pre-pandemic levels.

After Supreme Court Ruling, A Tsunami Of Evictions Is Set Overwhelm US

September 1, 2021 People's Dispatch. Resistance Report Eviction Moratorium, Housing, Pandemic, Supreme Court

Following a Supreme Court ruling that ended the moratorium, evictions are resuming in the United States. Eugene Puryear talks about the impact of this judgement on millions who might face a housing crisis even as the pandemic continues to rage on The Supreme Court of the United States has struck down the moratorium on evictions of tenants. Evictions are set to resume in many parts of the country from today. The ruling has left millions of Americans at risk of losing their shelter during the pandemic. Eugene Puryear of BreakThrough News talks about the judgment, its impact on the people, and the response of movements across the country.

Hotels Don’t Waste A Crisis

August 26, 2021 Saurav Sarkar, Labor Notes. Resist! Hotel workers, Labor Unions, Pandemic, Worker Rights

Javier Gonzalez used to send money every two weeks to his 85- and 90-year-old parents in his home country. He had to stop because his employer, Boston Marriott Copley Place, terminated Gonzalez and 230 of his co-workers last September, after temporarily laying them off at the start of the pandemic. They made up more than half the hotel’s workforce. Gonzalez is one of 500,000 hotel workers in the U.S. and tens of thousands in Canada who have lost their jobs since Covid hit. Pre-pandemic, there were roughly 1.7 million hotel and motel workers in the United States and 156,000 in Canada. Gonzalez worked as a lead supervisor in the utility department. Despite the title, he wasn’t management; he helped clean the kitchen and organize banquets at Boston’s second-biggest hotel.

Learn From The East – A Major Lesson Of The Pandemic.

August 23, 2021 John V. Walsh, Popular Resistance. Educate! China, COVID-19, Pandemic, Public Health

The world is now in the throes of another wave of Covid-19, with another surge in infections, sickness and deaths, this time due to the more infectious and apparently more lethal Delta variant. Are there lessons to be learned from the previous waves of Covid-19 that might help us now? There are, and they were evident long ago, but in the West, they have been largely ignored. Up to now, for example, the US has suffered over 617,000 deaths; China in contrast has suffered fewer than 5,000 deaths in a population four times as large as the US. Could there not be some lessons that might serve us in the West now and in the future? In the US and throughout the West, the response to China’s success has all too often been to ignore or deny it.

Billions In Rent Assistance Money Withheld From Millions Facing Eviction

August 19, 2021 Chase Lawrence, WSWS. Educate! Evictions, Finance and the Economy, Housing, Pandemic

Out of the $46.5 billion in funding provided for rental assistance under two bailouts enacted in December 2020 and March 2021, the vast majority has not been distributed, with only an estimated $3 billion of the funds being distributed as of August 3 according to CNBC, while millions are at risk of eviction or foreclosure. According to the Eviction Lab, in the six states and 31 cities tracked by it, 480, 456 evictions have taken place during the pandemic. In just those areas alone, 6,108 evictions were filed in the last week. This is in spite of the announcement on August 3 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the extension of the eviction moratorium to October 3 for counties “experiencing substantial and high levels of community transmission levels.”

How The West Is Keeping The Covid-19 Pandemic From Ending

August 6, 2021 Robert Scheer and Achal Prabhala, ScheerPost.com. Educate! COVID-19, Global South, Health Care, Pandemic

Even though thousands of Covid-19 vaccines are being administered daily, the delta variant of the coronavirus is wreaking havoc around the world. This is in large part, say activists like Achal Prabhala, due to wealthy countries’ reluctance to address global vaccine apartheid and put an end once and for all to the pandemic. Prabhala, the head of AccessIBSA, has written numerous articles for the New York Times, The Atlantic, Project Syndicate and elsewhere, advocating for equitable distribution of vaccines, their recipes and technologies. Most recently, he and several other activists spoke to In These Times about the many different ways rich countries, like the U.S., can proactively address vaccine shortages in most of the world.

Six Months Of The Biden Administration

July 20, 2021 Patrick Martin, WSWS.org. Educate! Biden administration, Finance and the Economy, Pandemic, Trump

Six months ago, Joseph Biden was inaugurated president of the United States, under conditions of unprecedented crisis of US capitalism and the entire social and political order. His predecessor, Donald Trump, did not attend the ceremony, signaling his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election. Only two weeks before, on January 6, Trump’s supporters had stormed the Capitol and temporarily halted the congressional certification of state electoral votes. The aim of the attempted coup was to stop the transfer of power and establish a personalist dictatorship. In the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, it was Trump’s “Reichstag moment.” When Biden took office, 400,000 people were dead from the COVID-19 pandemic, while millions were unemployed.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources