Poverty

Baltimore’s ‘Downward Spiral’ Of Poverty, Disinvestment, And Policing

February 12, 2024 Mansa Musa, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Baltimore, Disinvestment, Maryland, Police, Poverty, Public Health

The crisis of mass incarceration is about more than the conduct of police officers—it’s a question of public expenditures, and how pouring taxpayer money into incarceration at the expense of other, more humanizing ventures takes a toll on society at large. As public schools and public health programs across the nation grapple with a host of preventable problems arising from underinvestment, state and local governments across the nation spend over $200 billion each year on prisons, jails, and police. Now, a new report from the Justice Policy Institute, “The Right Investment 2.0”, takes a detailed look at the “downward spiral” low-income, predominately Black and Brown communities across Maryland are forced into by this imbalance in public expenditures.

Report Lauds Effects Of Guaranteed Income For Struggling Families

February 6, 2024 Chris Walker, Truthout. Create! Boston, Guaranteed income, Poverty, Social safety net, Universal Basic Income

A guaranteed income program in Boston, Massachusetts, which began in the summer of 2021, resulted in numerous positive outcomes for recipients, highlights a recently published study by the groups that organized the program. Camp Harbor View and UpTogether, the organizations that dispersed the payments, privately funded the program from a group of 107 donors. Around $750,000 was raised in total, which was given out to 50 families around the Boston area. The families who were chosen to receive funds didn’t already qualify for social safety net benefits, as the program was designed to help those who were “too rich to be poor and too poor to be rich.”

The Rich Get Richer While Global Poverty Deepens

January 17, 2024 Tanupriya Singh, People's Dispatch. Educate! Billionaires, Davos, Neoliberalism, Poverty, wealth inequality, World Economic Forum

The wealth of the world’s top five richest men has more than doubled since 2020 while 4.8 billion people, or 60% of humanity, have been further impoverished. At this rate, while it could only take a decade for the world to have its first trillionaire, it will take 229 years to ensure that no person is living in poverty. These findings are part of a new report titled Inequality Inc. published by Oxfam International, released on the eve of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “We’re witnessing the beginnings of a decade of division, with billions of people shouldering the economic shockwaves of pandemic, inflation and war, while billionaires’ fortunes boom.

Violence In Ecuador Is Result Of Deliberate Dismantling Of The State

January 12, 2024 Ricardo Perez, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! criminal gangs, Drug Trafficking, Ecuador, Guillermo Lasso, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Neoliberalism, Poverty, Violence

The systematic violence which has immersed Ecuador is the product of a process of deliberate destructuring of the rule of law derived from policies implemented by the last three neoliberal governments, warned Jorge Paladines, an academic at the Central University of Ecuador and a professor of law and political science, in an interview with Sputnik. That, today, Ecuador is in a situation of internal armed conflict, that the country has been plunged into a state of emergency, and that a live television program was interrupted by armed men, is not the result of spontaneity or chance.

Guatemala: President-Elect Promises Radical Changes For The Country

January 5, 2024 Alejandra Garcia and Bill Hackwell, Resumen English. Create! Coups, Elections, Guatemala, Poverty

Guatemala’s president-elect, Bernardo Arévalo de León, will take office on January 14 with high expectations for radical change. It remains to be seen if his ambitious plan will succeed, but for the time being, any of decisions will be a step forward in a country that is 44% Mayan and where more than 50 percent of the population lives in conditions of extreme poverty. In statements to the foreign press, Arevalo indicated that the first action he will take upon assuming power will be to revoke “irresponsible” and “absurd” decrees of the outgoing government of right wing President Alejandro Giammattei.

Crisis In The Democratic Republic Of Congo

December 30, 2023 Eugene Puryear, Liberation News. Educate! Africa, DR Congo, History, Imperialism, Internal Displacement, Poverty

Since 1996, at least 6 million people have been killed in successive conflicts in the eastern portion of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The same conflicts are largely responsible for the 6.9 million internally displaced people in the DRC today, one of the world’s largest populations of IDPs. Successive waves of violence have unfolded against a backdrop of a desperate struggle for the $24 trillion of mineral wealth embedded in Congolese soil. Despite immense wealth, nearly 60 million people — 64% of the country — live on less than $2.15 a day. One in six people living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa are living in the DRC.

For Human Rights Day: Poor People’s Struggle To Survive In The USA

December 11, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Democrats, Elections, Housing, Human Rights, Poverty, Republicans, United Nations

Sunday, December 10, was the International Human Rights Day to mark the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948. Clearing the FOG spoke with human rights defender Cheri Honkala. A founder of the Poor Peoples Economic and Human Rights Campaign and the Poor People's Army, Honkala talks about the worsening situation for poor people in the United States. She also describes the protests that will be taking place at the Republican and Democratic Party's national conventions this summer, an update on her arrest and conviction at the Office of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, DC and her new book, a guide on how to take over vacant houses.

Finance Minister: How US Sanctions Impact Nicaragua’s Poor

December 11, 2023 John Perry, CovertAction Magazine. Educate! Migration, Neoliberalism, Nicaragua, Poverty, Sanctions

Despite the enormous damage caused by U.S. intervention, Nicaragua’s economy has improved dramatically under the rule of Daniel Ortega, a leader of Nicaragua’s 1979 socialist Sandinista revolution who has been in power since 2007. Nicaraguan Finance Minister Iván Acosta gave an interview detailing how Nicaragua fits the broader pattern by which sanctions negatively impact working class people and the poor while doing little to affect a change in government policy. U.S. sanctions have been applied against Nicaragua based on the false claim that Ortega committed grave human rights abuses, when his government largely reacted with restraint to the violent political uprising in 2018 which caused Nicaragua’s GDP to decline by over 4%.

People Have Taken Action UK-Wide Over Fuel Poverty

December 4, 2023 Steve Topple, The Canary. Resist! Class Struggle, Energy, Poverty, United Kingdom (UK)

Campaign groups Fuel Poverty Action, Unite Community, and their allies held nationwide protests this weekend, carrying out ‘Warm Ups’ to demand action on fuel poverty. People occupied British Gas offices, protested outside Scottish Power, and engaged their local communities. However, not everyone was receptive to the groups’ demands. Security at a South London shopping centre removed activists, simply for ‘warming up’ – albeit with a rather large banner reading ‘Cold Homes Kill’. Fuel Poverty Action has carried out Warm Ups for over a decade. Activists enter buildings or public spaces in order to warm up as a group. They do this on the grounds of being unable to do so at home due to unaffordable energy prices and the poor conditions of housing.

APEC Summit In San Francisco Met With Mass Protests

November 14, 2023 People's Dispatch. Resist! APEC, Fossil Fuels, Oligarchs, Poverty, San Francisco, Working Class

10,000 people took to the streets on Sunday, November 12 to protest the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Meetings taking place in San Francisco this week. The APEC summit will run from November 11 to 17. The protest took place following a 1,000-person APEC counter-summit on November 11. The mobilizations have been organized by the No to APEC Coalition, which represents almost 150 organizations across the United States. “APEC is the epitome of all that is wicked and corrupt in our society today,” said Simon Ma, a family doctor and member of the anti-imperialist Korean-American organization Nodutdol. He described APEC as a “cabal of billionaires and politicians scheming behind closed doors, trying to come up with new and innovative ways to further exploit the working class of our planet.”

UN Decries Amazon, Walmart, DoorDash For ‘Shameful’ Wages

November 3, 2023 Michael Sainato, The Guardian. Resist! Amazon, DoorDash, Low wages, Poverty, United Nations, Walmart

The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has called on the CEOs of Amazon, Walmart and DoorDash and the US government to address allegations that top US corporations pay such low wages that they trap workers in poverty, forcing them to rely on government-assistance programs to survive. Olivier De Schutter has written to the three major US corporations and the US government, requesting responses to numerous allegations. They include a 2020 US Government Accountability Office report that found Amazon and Walmart were listed among the top 25 employers with workers relying on the supplemental nutrition assistance program (Snap), formerly known as food stamps, or Medicaid in nine states studied, with Walmart ranked first and Amazon ranked sixth.

How The International Monetary Fund Continues To Shrink Poorer Nations

October 27, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Debt, International Monetary Fund, Neoliberalism, Poverty, Privatization

From 9 to 15 October, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank held their annual joint meeting in Marrakech (Morocco). The last time that these two Bretton Woods institutions met on African soil was in 1973, when the IMF-World Bank meeting was held in Nairobi (Kenya). Kenya’s then President Jomo Kenyatta (1897–1978) urged those gathered to find ‘an early cure to the monetary sickness of inflation and instability that has afflicted the world’. Kenyatta, who became Kenya’s first president in 1964, noted that, ‘[o]ver the last fifteen years, many developing countries have been losing, every year, a significant proportion of their annual income through deterioration of their terms of trade’.

New Report: The Failed Southern Economic Development Model

October 22, 2023 Chandra Childers, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Economic Development, Poverty, Racism, The South

Many states across the Southern United States employ an economic model that prioritizes business interests and the wealthy over ordinary citizens. This model—which we refer to in this report as the “Southern economic development model”—is characterized by low wages, low taxes, few regulations on businesses, few labor protections, a weak safety net, and vicious opposition to unions. The model is marketed as the way to attract businesses into Southern states, with the implicit promise that this will lead to an abundance of jobs and shared economic prosperity for all Southerners. The reality is this economic development model is fundamentally flawed as a strategy for improving living conditions for most Southerners.

Why China’s Rapid Rise Is Terrifying The United States

October 4, 2023 Alan MacLeod, MintPress News. Resistance Report China, Life Expectancy, New Cold War, Poverty, US Imperialism

There is no doubt about it: China is rising. Whether it sparks hope and interest or fear and worry, it is impossible to ignore the country’s rapid economic and social transformation. Just a few decades ago, the words “made in China” were a synonym for bad quality junk. But today, China leads the world in all manner of high-tech industries, including photovoltaic cells, semiconductors, 5G communications technologies, and electric vehicles. Along with rapid economic growth has come a huge increase in living standards. By 2018, China overtook the United States in average healthy life expectancy, and wages are soaring.

Venezuela To Launch China-Backed Poverty Elimination Program

September 29, 2023 Andreína Chávez Alava, Venezuelanalysis. Create! China, Poverty, Socialism, Venezuela

Caracas, September 21, 2023 (venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan government has announced a new social program focused on fighting poverty and inequality, which will be supported by China’s International Poverty Reduction Center. On Monday, during his weekly TV program, President Nicolás Maduro said that the “Social Equality and Happiness Mission” was “almost ready” to be launched and its main purpose is to “optimize the fight against inequality, against poverty and to build a more harmonious country.” Although Maduro did not give details, he stressed that the social program will work alongside the Chinese anti-poverty center.

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