Poverty

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.”

Income Of World’s Top .001% Skyrockets By 636%: Report

December 19, 2017 Staff Educate! Inequality, New Economy, Poverty, Uneven Development

The report, which highlights the growing gulf between haves and have-nots, was compiled by five economists, including scholars Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. Global Economic Inequality is surging, further widening the pay gap between the haves and have-nots, according to a new World Inequality report. The report highlights the growing gulf between the haves and the have-nots, and was compiled by five economists, including scholars Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty. The top .001 percent of earners in the United States, consisting of almost 1,300 households, have seen their earnings skyrocket by 636 percent in the past 12 months. Meanwhile, the average annual income for the bottom 50 percent of earners has stayed constant at US$16,000 over the last four decades, adjusting for inflation.

Inequality In The Twenty-First Century

December 18, 2017 Kaushik Basu Create! Class Struggle, Inequality, New Economy, Poverty

As inequality continues to deepen worldwide, we do not have the luxury of sticking to the status quo. Unless we confront the inequality challenge head on – as we have just begun to do with another existential threat, climate change – social cohesion, and especially democracy, will come under growing threat. MUMBAI – At the end of a low and dishonest year, reminiscent of the “low, dishonest decade” about which W.H. Auden wrote in his poem “September 1, 1939,” the world’s “clever hopes” are giving way to recognition that many severe problems must be tackled. And, among the severest, with the gravest long-term and even existential implications, is economic inequality.

Relative Poverty Rate Increased By 1.3 Points In 2016

November 21, 2017 Matt Bruenig, peoplespolicyproject.org Educate! New Economy, Poverty, wealth inequality

By Matt Bruenig for People's Policy Project - Every year the Census Bureau publishes the official poverty rate and the supplemental poverty rate. The official rate groups all related people in a household into one unit, adds up all the cash income that flows into that unit (except tax credits), and then compares that income amount to a poverty line that varies based on the number of people in the unit. The supplemental rate works similarly except that it takes the cash income concept from the official rate, adds cash-like benefit incomes and tax credits to it, and then subtracts taxes paid, child support paid, child care expenses, work expenses, and medical out-of-pocket expenses. The supplemental rate uses a poverty line that varies geographically and by the number of people in the family unit. In addition to the official and supplemental rates, it can be useful to look at something called a relative poverty rate, which is more commonly used across the world. The relative poverty rate figures provided below are derived in the following manner: Each family’s income is determined by adding cash income, cash-like benefit income, and tax credits, and then subtracting taxes paid and child support paid.

Newsletter – People Act Where US Fails On Climate

November 12, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Climate Change, climate crisis, COP23, Energy, Food and Agriculture, health, Oil and Gas, Pipelines, Poverty, Refugees, Renewable Energy

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. The climate crisis is upon us. It seems that every report on climate conditions has one thing in common: things are worse than predicted. The World Meteorological Report from the end of October shows that Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) are rising at a rapid rate and have passed 400 parts per million. According to Dr. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, "the changes we’re making today are occurring in 100 years, whereas in nature they occur in 10,000 years." The United States is experiencing a wide range of climate impacts from major hurricanes in the South to unprecedented numbers of wildfires in the West to crop-destroying drought in the Mid-West.

World Poverty Increasing With Urbanization

November 10, 2017 Manipadma Jena, towardfreedom.com Educate! Poverty, Urbanization

By Manipadma Jena for Toward Freedom - (IPS) – Rapid urbanization is increasingly shifting the impacts of malnutrition from rural to urban areas. One in three stunted under-five children out of 155 million across the world now lives in cities and towns. Degrading land productivity, deepening impacts of changes in climate, conflict, and food insecurity, poverty and lack of livelihood opportunities are driving mostly the rural poor into towns and cities, with projections that just 13 years from now, 5 billion people will be living in the world’s urban areas. While the urban population is forecast to double within these 30 years (starting in 2000), the area taken over will triple, increasing by 1.2 million square kilometers, says the Global Land Report 2017. Close to 90 percent of urban population and area growth is forecast in Asia and Africa, with the most dramatic changes foreseen in Asia, according to this report from the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). By 2050, 56 percent of Asia’s population will be urban. China crossed the halfway mark in 2012, India will in 2050. This major shifting of the character of a population, the character of its economic activity, from being predominantly rural to becoming urban is seen to catapult – particularly China and India – to global economic leadership. But its urban growth engines could be riding on a huge malnourished rural migrant population.

How It Became A Crime To Be Poor In America

November 9, 2017 Peter Edelman, theguardian.com Educate! Criminalization, Poverty, United States

By Peter Edelman for The Guardian - In the United States, a system of modern peonage – essentially, a government-run loan shark operation – has been going on for years. Beginning in the 1990s, the country adopted a set of criminal justice strategies that punish poor people for their poverty. Right now in America, 10 million people, representing two-thirds of all current and former offenders in the country, owe governments a total of $50bn in accumulated fines, fees and other impositions. The problem of “high fines and misdemeanors” exists across many parts of the country: throughout much of the south; in states ranging from Washington to Oklahoma to Colorado; and of course in Ferguson, Missouri, where, in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown, revelations about the systematic criminalization of the city’s poor black residents brought these issues to national attention. As a result, poor people lose their liberty and often lose their jobs, are frequently barred from a host of public benefits, may lose custody of their children, and may even lose their right to vote. Immigrants, even some with green cards, can be subject to deportation. Once incarcerated, impoverished inmates with no access to paid work are often charged for their room and board. Many debtors will carry debts to their deaths, hounded by bill collectors and new prosecutions.

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