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Poverty

The Police May Pull The Trigger, But It’s The System That Kills

June 16, 2020 Richard E. Rubenstein, Transcend. , , ,
Fifty years ago this year, I published my first book, entitled Rebels in Eden – an exploration of mass political violence in America focusing on the uprisings that had by then incinerated substantial portions of the inner city communities of Los Angeles, New York, Newark, Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, as well as scores of smaller towns and cities.[i] Those riots were far more destructive than anything experienced in the protests following the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery by police and ex-police officers. The sixties uprisings killed several hundred people (almost all Black civilians), injured more than 12,000, and caused billions of dollars in property damage.

‘This Is Not What A Food Bank Was Designed To Do’

June 15, 2020 By Maya L. Kapoor, High Country News. , , ,
“You have so many people that have been displaced from work, you have so many single moms with children at home, and you have so many isolated seniors, that the demand for services has just gone through the roof,” Blake Young, the organization’s president and CEO for 15 years, said. Before the coronavirus pandemic, the organization served approximately 150,000 people each month. In April and May, that number went up to more than 300,000 people. But the worst may be yet to come, thanks to the ongoing recession. Regional food banks, which are designed to be safety nets, not main sources of food, fear that they won’t be able to meet the swelling need.

Poor Neighborhoods Are Only Getting Poorer

June 2, 2020 Marie Patino, CityLab. , , ,
The latest maps of coronavirus cases in the U.S. confirm much of what we already know about the economics of location: People in poor neighborhoods have it worse. Health care isn’t as accessible, the ability to socially distance is less, and many residents fall into the role of essential workers, unable to work from home. What new research shows is that number of poor neighborhoods in metropolitan areas has actually doubled from 1980 — and most existing low-income areas only fell deeper into poverty.   In two reports released by the Economic Innovation Group this month, researchers Kenan Fikri and August Benzow analyze poverty data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau between 1980 and 2018.

Chris Hedges: The Treason Of The Ruling Class

June 1, 2020 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
The ruling elites no longer have legitimacy. They have destroyed our capitalist democracy and replaced it with a mafia state. What the Roman philosopher Cicero called a commonwealth, a res publica, a “public thing” or the “property of a people,” has been transformed into an instrument of naked pillage and repression on behalf of a global corporate oligarchy. We are serfs ruled by obscenely rich, omnipotent masters who loot the U.S. Treasury, pay little or no taxes and have perverted the judiciary, the media and the legislative branches of government to strip us of civil liberties and give them the freedom to commit financial fraud and theft.   The loss of control over our system of rulership, the misuse of all democratic institutions, the electoral process and laws to funnel money upwards into to a handful of oligarchs while stripping us of power, ominously means that the ruling elites can no longer claim the right to have a monopoly on violence.

Mutual Aid In Public Housing Continues After Housing Authority Pushback

May 23, 2020 By Sarafina Harper, The Real News. , , , ,
In early April, Baltimore City’s Housing Authority threatened Reverend Annie Chambers with arrest and eviction for distributing food to her neighbors at Douglass Homes, citing a policy barring non-government organizations from giving food donations to public housing residents. Rather than stopping Chambers’ mutual aid initiative, the incident led to widespread support for her work. Chambers says that the Housing Authority has not interfered with a giveaway since and that the public attention has resulted in an increase in donations. ”We have not had any trouble from them since. People called The Housing Authority from Washington, New York, Philadelphia and Virginia,” Chambers told The Real News Network. “Senator [Mary] Washington and the Teachers Union called the Housing Authority. Many single individuals have called the mayor and The Housing Authority on our behalf.”

As The World Battles COVID-19, Greece’s War On Migrants Rages On

May 22, 2020 By Spyros Galinos, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
For many years, a silent war has been waged along Europe’s borders, but this war has left the majority of the continent’s population seemingly untouched. This contrast has become even starker in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which it has become clear that the sensibility to life that is being so widely touted does not extend to everyone; the thousands of migrants amassed on both sides of the European border are, apparently, exempt from it. Those who manage to cross into Europe end up confined in modern-day concentration camps. Subjected to appalling living conditions, they face complete uncertainty about the future and are, moreover, stripped of their most fundamental rights. At the same time, their presence is used by governments to push through policies that galvanize national(ist) unity and broader interstate competition. Policies that are currently implemented as part of the global campaign against COVID-19 treat migrants as collateral damage.

Racial Health And Economic Disparities Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin

May 17, 2020 By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and Sally Sim, Inequality. , , ,
In Baltimore, like in the rest of the United States, Covid-19 exacerbates racial inequality and economic marginalization. The legacy of discrimination and the continued corruption and disenfranchisement take shape in the city’s biggest issues – homelessness, food insecurity, crime, poverty, and lack of access to resources. Covid-19 magnifies these issues and shows that they cannot be fixed without systemic change. The Baltimore Brothers, a nonprofit organization serving the city’s most vulnerable people, have been providing food and necessary resources to the communities who aren’t reached by local agencies or state government. After a devastating shooting on March 17, the Brothers fed the community for 3 days straight after watching the city fail to provide any kind of social aid.

Low Income/Simple Living As War Tax Resistance

May 8, 2020 National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee. , , ,
There are many methods of war tax resistance. Each accomplishes a different set of goals and involves a different level of personal risk. This pamphlet explores ways to eliminate your U.S. federal income tax by keeping income low and by using legal tax-reducing measures. It shows you how to find your “tax line” — the level below which you will have no federal income tax at all. It also describes some benefits and challenges of low-income tax resistance, and shows how you can reduce or eliminate other tax payments in similar ways. This is the 5th in a series of Practical War Tax Resistance pamphlets produced by the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee (NWTRCC). You can find a listing of other NWTRCC publications at the end of this pamphlet along with a resource list for further reading on the art of simple living.

COVID-19 Will Double Number Of People Facing Food Crises

April 22, 2020 World Food Programme. , , ,
The COVID-19 pandemic could almost double the number of people suffering acute hunger, pushing it to more than a quarter of a billion by the end of 2020, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today as it and other partners released a new report on food crises around the world. The number of people facing acute food insecurity (IPC/CH 3 or worse) stands to rise to 265 million in 2020, up by 130 million from the 135 million in 2019, as a result of the economic impact of COVID-19, according to a WFP projection. The estimate was announced alongside the release of the Global Report on Food Crises, produced by WFP and 15 other humanitarian and development partners. In this context, it is vital that food assistance programme be maintained, including WFP’s own programmes which offer a lifeline to almost 100 million vulnerable people globally.

The Self-Centered Rich Country Response To Pandemics And Crises Is Wrecking Poor Countries

April 20, 2020 Tamara Pearson, Counterpunch. , , ,
I’m squatting on a round piece of concrete, and a 72-year-old man is sitting in the gutter, his walking stick beside him. He tells me that after being deported from the United States, he has been hiking the streets of Mexico City trying to find somewhere to stay. But all the refuges are closed due to the pandemic, including the one we’re sitting outside of, where I volunteer. He has run out of insulin for his diabetes and says he can’t walk anymore. I’m aware that he may not survive much longer. He’s the fifth person that day that I have to turn away and I can’t stand it. Back in the migrant refuge, we organize working groups and events to add structure to the empty days and try to prevent tension building up. It’s bad enough that many of the refugees here have fled violence, only to wait months for their visas, to now be stuck inside because of the quarantine, unable to work, even informally.

Brazil: Favela Residents And Indigenous Communities Among Those Most At Risk Of COVID-19

April 15, 2020 Alexander Main, CEPR.net. , , , ,
As of noon on April 8th the total number of Covid-19 positive cases reported by Brazil’s health ministry exceeded 14,000 and the number of deaths exceeded 700. This is, by far, the highest number of reported cases in Latin America (though Ecuador has a greater number of reported cases and deaths on a per capita basis).  The actual number of cases is likely many times greater, given that the current rate of testing for Covid-19 in Brazil is still very low – 258 per million, compared to 3,159 per million in Chile, 6,423 per million in the U.S. and 10,962 per million in Germany. In São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, and the hardest hit urban area in the country, the local health secretariat is reportedly only providing tallies for severe cases of the virus.

COVID-19: Killer Of Black, Brown And Poor Of US And Haiti

April 14, 2020 Dady Chery, News Junkie Post. , , ,
We are supposed to be thinking this week about the health disparities in the United States based on race and ethnicity, since the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, and even USA Today are going on about it. This is the hot topic presumably because of a recent analysis of the demographics of COVID-19 deaths by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Such an analysis, however, cannot be found. Instead, the public health departments of several US states simultaneously published their COVID-19 racial breakdowns. One cannot help but suspect that this orchestrated and sudden discovery of the institutional racism of the US is nothing but an election-year ploy to sway Black and Hispanic voters from one to another of two political parties that care nothing about them.

Total System Failure Will Give Rise To New Economy

April 14, 2020 Pepe Escobar, Information Clearinghouse. , , ,
Nobody, anywhere, could have predicted what we are now witnessing: in a matter of only a few weeks the accumulated collapse of global supply chains, aggregate demand, consumption, investment, exports, mobility. Nobody is betting on an L-shaped recovery anymore – not to mention a V-shaped one. Any projection of global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020 gets into falling-off-a-cliff territory. In industrialized economies, where roughly 70% of the workforce is in services, countless businesses in myriad industries will fail in a rolling financial collapse that will eclipse the Great Depression. That spans the whole spectrum of possibly 47 million US workers soon to be laid off – with the unemployment rate skyrocketing to 32% – all the way to Oxfam’s warning that by the time the pandemic is over half of the world’s population of 7.8 billion people could be living in poverty.

Spain Is Moving To Establish Permanent Basic Income

April 13, 2020 Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider. , , ,
Spain is moving to implement a permanent basic income as a measure to help workers and families battered by the coronavirus pandemic. Nadia Calviño, the country's minister for economic affairs, told the Spanish broadcaster La Sexta on Sunday evening that the government was planning to introduce the cash handouts as part of a barrage of policies meant to help people get back on their feet. She said enacting basic income was "mostly aimed at families, but differentiating between their circumstances." Calviño didn't offer a specific date as to when basic income could be rolled out in the country. But she said the government hoped it would become "a permanent instrument." "We're going to do it as soon as possible," she said. "So it can be useful, not just for this extraordinary situation, and that it remains forever."

Half A Billion People Could Be Pushed Into Poverty By Coronavirus

April 11, 2020 Oxfam.org. , , ,
The economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic could push half a billion more people into poverty unless urgent action is taken to bail out developing countries, said Oxfam today. The agency is calling on world leaders to agree an ‘Economic Rescue Package for All’ to keep poor countries and poor communities afloat, ahead of key meetings of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and G20 Finance Ministers’ next week. Oxfam’s new report ‘Dignity Not Destitution’ presents fresh analysis which suggests between six and eight percent of the global population could be forced into poverty as governments shut down entire economies to manage the spread of the virus. This could set back the fight against poverty by a decade, and as much as 30 years in some regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and North Africa.
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