Poverty

50 Years Later, The Poor People’s Campaign Continues

April 9, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Human Rights, Martin Luther King, Poor People's Campaign, Poverty

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Poor People's Campaign, called for by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Although Dr. King was murdered a month prior to the Poor People's Campaign, it happened anyway. Resurrection City was built on the Mall in Washington, DC and people stayed there for six weeks. Fifty years later, widespread poverty exists and the "evils" of racism, capitalism and militarism are still in crisis. Two major campaigns are organizing poor people across the country.

Cook County Data Shows Reforms Haven’t Stopped The Jailing Of People For Being Poor

March 7, 2018 By Sharlyn Grace, Chicagoappleseed.org Educate! Poverty, Prison Industrial Complex, Repression

Last fall, the Coalition to End Money Bond organized more than 70 volunteers to monitor the implementation of General Order 18.8A in Cook County’s central bond court. The order aims to ensure that no one is incarcerated at Cook County Jail simply because they are unable to pay a monetary bond. Today, the Coalition to End Money Bond released its findings in the new report: Monitoring Cook County’s Central Bond Court: A Community Courtwatching Initiative. The information collected in the courtwatching report shows that some positive changes have occurred as a result of recent reforms but that the order has not met its goal.

Resurrection City Participant Considers Current Poor People’s Campaign

February 23, 2018 George Pauk, Popular Resistance Educate! Indigenous Peoples, Poor People's Campaign, Poverty, Resurrection City

My deeply moving experience was to see the Washington Mall filled with African-American and other activists living in poverty conditions. They were on the ground in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln. The cold rains and action turned the ground into deep mud. My memory is strong of the mud and walking on planks to the makeshift and somewhat dismal clinic. Now, many years later, the Poor Peoples Campaign is being resurrected. Another attempt is flinging itself at the government, the churches, and the entire American society -- still divided by class. Poverty has largely become normalized in America. The minds of most have become inured to inadequate food, housing and health care for millions of us. We certainly must have not only a national call, but also national change -- to be morally revived and eliminate systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and ecological devastation.

Disability And Poverty For Adults In 2016

February 22, 2018 By Matt Bruenig, Peoplespolicyproject.org Educate! Disabilities, New Economy, Poverty

In 2016, there were 126.3 million adults between the ages of 25 and 54. Around 7.9 million (6.3 percent) of those adults had one or more of the six serious disabilities tracked by the Census. As you would expect, disability rates start out low for younger individuals and slowly creep up with age. In 2016, 13.4 percent of 54-year-olds were disabled while just 3.5 percent of 25-year-olds were. Disabled people have far higher poverty rates than their nondisabled peers. In 2016, the market income poverty rate for disabled people was 44.4 percent while the disposable income poverty rate (i.e. income that includes benefits like SSDI and SSI) was 28.9 percent. The same figures for the nondisabled were 11.7 percent and 9.7 percent respectively. Remarkably, poverty does not differ that much by disability type with the exception of those who have hearing disabilities.

Understanding How Media Protects The Status Quo

February 11, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance. Newsletter #NoDAPL, Education, Immigration, Media, Police violence, Poverty, Racism

Corporate media outlets in the United States represent the interests of the wealthy elites. They distract the public with meaningless tidbits such as what a celebrity said or did, rather than bringing attention to critical issues. As FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) frequently reports, in the off chance that the media does cover a movement, the coverage is generally biased against the movement. As a result, a useful tactic for getting attention is to go where the media are and present a clear visual message through giant banners and other techniques.

Poverty: American Style

February 10, 2018 By Kenneth Surin, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Inequality, Poverty

In December last year, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Philip Alston, issued a statement on his 15-day fact-finding mission of some of the U.S.’s poorest neighborhoods. Alston, the author of the quoted phrase in the excerpt, is an Australian who is a professor of law at New York University. During his mission, he visited Alabama, California, West Virginia, Texas, Washington DC, and Puerto Rico. Alston’s statement on American poverty and inequality has been overlooked by most of the mainstream media. Alston has a record of consistent impartiality, which makes his statement on American poverty all the more credible. He was critical of China in his report on that country (the Chinese government later accused him of “meddling” in its judicial system).

Poor People’s Campaign: City Of Hope

February 9, 2018 Liam Farrell, TERP. Educate! Martin Luther King Jr, Poor People's Campaign, Poverty, Resurrection City

The pilgrim protesters poured into Washington, D.C., from the farms of the South, the cities of the North, the mountains of Appalachia and the deserts of the West. Carrying hammers, nails and pieces of plywood, America’s poor and forgotten met in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial 50 years ago this spring to build a new monument, albeit a temporary one. Their shantytown, called Resurrection City, was meant to honor the final vision of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., assassinated just weeks earlier in Memphis, and to refocus the country’s conscience onto the plight of its most destitute.

Poor People To March On Washington DC June 2

February 8, 2018 Cheri Honkala, Popular Resistance. Resist! Martin Luther King Jr, Poor People's Campaign, Poverty

On June 2 in Philadelphia PA from the poorest District in Pennsylvania, Kensington, poor families will gather from across the entire country in the largest poor people’s march to Washington DC in the March for Our Lives. Kensington is home to the highest death rate of ANY major U.S. city. In 2016, 64,000 Americans died from opioids - more than in the entire Vietnam War (55,000). In Philadelphia, there were 1,200 overdose deaths last year due to mostly opioids. It has quadrupled the murder rate.

The Kids The World Forgot

January 22, 2018 Ken Hannaford-Ricardi, Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Create! Afghanistan, Education, Peace, Poverty

Every Friday morning, roughly 100 of these forgotten children sit in noisy - sometimes raucous - groups of seven to ten in a large, unheated classroom, discussing and brainstorming human rights - rights few in the international community seem to acknowledge they enjoy. On this thirty degree Kabul morning, some are in shirtsleeves; few have coats adequate for the weather. They are dirty. They are underfed. They are loved. These kids are the smallest microcosm of Kabul's estimated 50,000 "street kids"...

The Invention of Capitalism

January 22, 2018 Yasha Levine, Sustainable Human Minds. Educate! Capitalism, Democracy, Poverty, Workers Rights and Jobs

Our popular economic wisdom says that capitalism equals freedom and free societies, right? Well, if you ever suspected that the logic is full of shit, then I’d recommend checking a book called The Invention of Capitalism, written by an economic historian named Michael Perelmen, who’s been exiled to Chico State, a redneck college in rural California, for his lack of freemarket friendliness. And Perelman has been putting his time in exile to damn good use, digging deep into the works and correspondence of Adam Smith and his contemporaries to write a history of the creation of capitalism that goes beyond superficial The Wealth of Nations fairy tale

Amazon Makes List Of Large Companies With Workers On Food Stamps

January 7, 2018 Mark Williams, Columbus Dispatch Educate! Amazon, Poverty, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

In short order, Amazon has become one of Ohio’s largest employers, after receiving tens of millions of dollars of state tax incentives for building warehouses, data centers and other projects along the way. Now, the online giant has quickly made its way onto another list, one charting the state’s employers with the most workers and their family members who also qualify for food stamps. Amazon ranks 19th on the list of 50 large employers, according to Policy Matters Ohio, a progressive policy group. Amazon had 1,430 workers and family members receiving benefits as of August, the group said Friday. A typical food-stamp beneficiary receives benefits for about two people, meaning Amazon likely has about 700 workers receiving food stamps, more than 10 percent of its Ohio workforce.

100-Year Capitalist Experiment Keeps Appalachia Poor & Stuck On Coal

January 3, 2018 Gwynn Guilford, Qz.com Educate! Appalachia, Capitalism, Coal, Mining, Poverty

The first time Nick Mullins entered Deep Mine 26, a coal mine in southwestern Virginia, the irony hit him hard. Once, his ancestors had owned the coal-seamed cavern that he was now descending into, his trainee miner hard-hat secure. His people had settled the Clintwood and George’s Fork area, along the Appalachian edge of southern Virginia, in the early 17th century. Around the turn of the 1900s, smooth-talking land agents from back east swept through the area, coaxing mountain people into selling the rights to the ground beneath them for cheap. One of Mullins’ ancestors received 12 rifles and 13 hogs—one apiece for each of his children, plus a hog for himself—in exchange for the rights to land that has since produced billions of dollars worth of coal.

Any Shame Around Poverty Lies With Society That Perpetuates It

December 26, 2017 By Sarah Jaffe, Truthout.org Organize! Class Struggle, Inequality, Poverty

It is a really, really exciting development. There are a couple of reasons why it is happening now. The most important is that we are at a crisis point in a lot of ways in our country -- certainly in New York State, as well -- in terms of how a large portion of our population is being impacted by poverty, by racism and other forms of discrimination, by militarism and an economy that revolves around war in a lot of ways, and also, ecological devastation. We are really seeing a point at which if we don't really mobilize and organize in a new way that builds power in a new way and connects people in a new way ... we are in trouble.

A Deep Vein Of Poverty Runs Through U.S.

December 20, 2017 By Emma Niles, truthdig.com Educate! Inequality, New Economy, Poverty, United States

In the United States, one of the world’s wealthiest nations, 41 million people are living in poverty. Professor Philip Alston, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, wants to know why. In a new feature published by The Guardian, Alston leads reporter Ed Pilkington through some of the most impoverished communities in the country: in Los Angeles, San Francisco, small towns in Alabama and West Virginia. The article and photo essay expose “the dark side of the American Dream.” “Alston’s epic journey has taken him from coast to coast, deprivation to deprivation,” Pilkington writes. “Starting in LA and San Francisco, sweeping through the Deep South, traveling on to the colonial stain of Puerto Rico then back to the stricken coal country of West Virginia, he has explored the collateral damage of America’s reliance on private enterprise to the exclusion of public help.”

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