Poverty

Beyond Ferguson And Staten Island, So Much Cause For Outrage

December 22, 2014 J.J. Goldberg, www.forward.com Educate! Economic Justice, police brutality, Poverty, Racial Justice

Start with this: Poverty kills, too. And like police shootings, it targets the weakest. But unlike police shootings, the number of deaths from poverty isn’t a mystery. There’s considerable research on it, from places like Columbia University, the University of Chicago, the Social Security Administration and the Centers for Disease Control. The most straightforward figure comes from a 2011 Columbia University study: 291,000 a year. You read that right. Two hundred ninety-one thousand. To borrow a phrase from the Ferguson protests, where’s the outrage? By way of comparison, heart disease, America’s top killer, causes some 600,000 deaths yearly, one in four total deaths, according to the CDC. Next comes cancer at 575,000. Respiratory disease is third at 143,000, followed by stroke and accidental injury.

Report: When Women Flourish…We Can End Hunger

November 30, 2014 Staff, http://hungerreport.org Educate! Hunger, Poverty, Women

The 2015 Hunger Report, When Women Flourish…We Can End Hunger, released today by Bread for the World Institute, identifies the empowerment of women and girls as essential in ending hunger, extreme poverty, and malnutrition around the world and in the United States. “We have made great strides in reducing hunger and poverty at home and around the world, yet women continue to be treated like second-class citizens,” said Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World. “Progress towards women’s empowerment has been slow due to discriminatory laws, unpaid work caring for the family, and traditions that demean their capacity as decision makers.” “Eliminating barriers and empowering women around the world is key to ending hunger in our time,” said Asma Lateef, director of Bread for the World Institute. “We must not tolerate discrimination against women and instead, demand a comprehensive approach to women’s empowerment that includes applying a gender lens to all programs and policies.”

United Nations Calls For An End To Industrialized Farming

November 27, 2014 Maryam Henein, www.truth-out.org Create! Food and Agriculture, GMOs, Hunger, Industrialization, Poverty

In 2013, the United Nations announced that the world's agricultural needs can be met with localized organic farms. That's right, we do not need giant monocultures that pour, spray and coat our produce with massive amounts of poisons, only to create mutant pests and weeds while decimating pollinators and harming human health. Don't believe the hype: We do not need genetically modified foods "to feed the world." From my experience, many of these - how shall we say it - "worker bees" (i.e the GMO salesmen) who spread this propaganda, actually believe conventional tactics are necessary to ensure food security. They've drunk the Kool-Aid and cannot envision another possibility. The changes threaten their very existence.

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Managed Democracy, Expendable People

October 26, 2014 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Climate Change, Criminalization, Democracy, Ferguson, Fracking, Homelessness, Michael Brown, Oil & Gas, Poverty

As the elections draw near, the plutocracy and crisis of democracy become more visible. There are reports of ‘dark money’ in record amounts influencing races. An obvious example of this took place in Richmond, CA, home of a large Chevron refinery, last week when Chevron funded a ‘new non-profit’ that hosted a ‘civil rights icon’ to stump for pro-business candidates. Steve Early called him “big oil’s reverend for rent.” We’ve written before about the studies which show that the interests of the wealthy are represented in our public policy instead of the needs and interests of the public. For example, on October 19, several IRS whistleblowers exposed that corporations are being allowed illegally to avoid paying billions in taxes while individuals and small businesses are punished. And Drs. Bruno and Burns describe how Coca Cola has infected medical associations and undermined reform. Sheldon Wolin wrote about this in “Democracy, Inc.”

7 Cities Expose What Gentrification Is Doing

October 25, 2014 Zak Cheney-Rice, www.mic.com Educate! Gentrification, Housing, Poverty, Racism

Twenty-five years ago, the term "gentrification" was largely unfamiliar to the average American. Today, you can't talk about cities, race, rent or overpriced coffee without bringing it up. It's a hard phenomenon to measure, yet most agree its harbingers include the rapid influx of young, well-to-do white people into once low-income neighborhoods, often in the inner city, usually populated by people of color. The rest is history. Said people show up, the area is flooded with resources, property value goes up and many former residents are forced to move out. We've seen such systems before, those which literally move poor people around, in and out of their homes, at the behest of the wealthy. It's usually called "colonialism." And it's not an inaccurate comparison. This dynamic came to a head last week when a group of Dropbox employees in San Francisco's notoriously gentrifying Mission District tried to kick a group of local kids off a soccer field they had reserved.

Plutocrats On The Defensive Against Social Justice Movements

October 25, 2014 Joshua Hoffman and Keyan Bliss, www.occupy.com Organize! Capitalism, Poverty, Wall Street, Wealth Ineqaulity

What is it like to be a billionaire in the United States? According to billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins, wealth is a burden made "unbearable" by people of lesser incomes when they demand equality. That was the narrative published by the corporate news machine at the Wall Street Journal. Taking time away from maintaining the world's largest luxury yacht, Perkins compared progressive movements seeking social and economic justice to the horrific persecution of Jews by Nazi Germany. Sensible people were quick to denounce such ludicrous comparisons with the Holocaust. But Perkins's fellow oligarchs continue endorsing the narrative of a "hard-working" class of wealthy people "under siege" by a "lazy" class of poor people. According to billionaires like Sam Zell and Wilbur Ross, they are being targeted by poor people jealous of what they have and incapable of working as hard as they do.

Intergenerational Trauma & The Bakken Oil Fields

October 20, 2014 Winona Laduke, www.indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com Educate! Energy, Environment, Fracking, Indigenous Rights, LandRights, Law, Oil & Gas, Poverty, Water

For me, this story began at Lake Superior, a place that is sacred to the Anishinaabeg, the source of a fifth of the world’s fresh water. I rode my horse with my family, my community and our allies, from that place, Rice Lake Refuge, to Rice Lake, on my own reservation. Those two lakes are the mother lode of the world’s wild rice. Those two lakes—in fact, the entire region—are threatened by a newly proposed pipeline of fracked oil from what is known as the Bakken Oil Fields of North Dakota, from the homeland of those Arikara people. The pipeline proposed is called the Sandpiper. We rode, but we did not stop. Driven to go to the source, we traveled to North Dakota. That is this story. Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara territory lies along the northern Missouri River, a land of gentle rolling hills, immense prairie diversity and the memory of 50 million buffalo.

The Other Spotlights On Fighting Hunger

October 15, 2014 Rekha Basu, www.desmoinesregister.com Create! Food and Agriculture, Hunger, Poverty, Sovereignty

The World Food Prize is being awarded this week at a glitzy event that draws international dignitaries to Iowa and showcases Norman Borlaug, the Iowa native who founded the Green Revolution. Also being awarded are the Food Sovereignty Prize and Strong Feisty Woman Award, which honor grassroots efforts to fight hunger. These other awards also challenge the premise of the World Food Prize, with its reliance on high-yield, genetically modified seeds. These groups, which include Occupy the World Food Prize, say the GMO model can actually increase hunger, and the goal should be to make it easier for people to produce food. The difference in approaches is well illustrated by the people being honored.

Protesting The Bank That Should Never Have Been Born

October 12, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Neoliberalism, Poverty, World Bank

As part of the Our Land Our Business campaign to abolish the exploitative Doing Business Rankings, actions to protest the World Bank were held around the world on October 10. In some places where the security state is harsh such as in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and DRCongo, the actions revolved around social media and teach-ins. In London, England and India, protesters held signs outside of World Bank offices. A large protest was held in Washington, DC close to the World Bank Headquarters where the annual meeting was being held. About 75 protesters gathered at Rawlins Park for a spirited rally which was emceed by Kymone Freeman of Washington's We Act Radio.

World Bank Denounces Fraudulent Activist Press Release

October 10, 2014 World Bank Staff, worldbank-press.org Organize! Poverty, World Bank

Activists impersonating the World Bank released a fraudulent press release yesterday announcing a plan to abolish the institution by 2030, in line with goals to end extreme poverty. This claim is entirely false and in no way represents the views, policies, or intentions of the World Bank Group. "This sort of childish prank helps no-one," said Pedro Alba, Vice President for Budget, Strategic Planning & Performance Review. "The World Bank Group has a proud history of fostering the economic growth of nations over many decades. We needn't tie our own jobs to amorphous global goals to prove our commitment to eradicating the poorest of the poor. We encourage all media outlets to ignore this attempt to discredit us." The fake announcement targets the #EndPoverty2030 campaign, a hopeful and pragmatic vision designed to engage the public that is in no way meant to suggest a binding commitment.

Join The Call-In Targeting The World Bank

October 8, 2014 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Poverty, World Bank

The World Bank is a ‘development’ organization that distributes money it makes from Wall Street investments and grants from wealthy nations to less-wealthy nations. In order to get these loans, nations have to score well on the Bank’s Doing Business rankings. Scoring well usually means making their legal and economic environments as friendly as possible to multinational corporations (i.e., loosening regulations). These loans end up incentivizing unethical/environmentally-destructive policies and undermine the ability of smaller, local producers to survive. Call in to the numbers above tomorrow and demand answers from the World Bank’s representatives. Together, we will expose the Doing Business ratings system as the threat to families, farms, communities.

We’d Have Revolution If People Understood This

October 8, 2014 Dennis Trainor, Jr., www.acronymtv.wordpress.com Resistance Report Guaranteed income, Poverty, wealth inequality

Martin Luther King, Jr. was working towards a guaranteed basic income for all when he was killed. Wealth inequality, neoliberalism, the actions of the Federal Reserve, along with the greed and theft of the global elite have made the call for a guaranteed basic income for all even more urgent in 2014 than in the 1960s. David DeGraw, interviewed here by Dennis Trainor, Jr. of Acronym TV claims the alternative is a violent revolution. In his new book, The Economics of Revolution, DeGraw writes: “Having that much wealth consolidated within a mere 1% of the population, while a record number of people toil in poverty and debt, is a crime against humanity. For example, it would only cost 0.5% of the 1%’s wealth to eliminate poverty nationwide. Also consider that at least 40% of the 1%’s accounted for wealth is sitting idle. That’s an astonishing $13 trillion in wealth hoarded away, unused.”

World VS Bank: Break Wall Street Exploitation Of Global Community

September 30, 2014 World VS Bank, www.ourlandourbusiness.org Resist! Neoliberalism, Our Land Our Business, Poverty, World Bank

On October 10th, join arms with us in a global stand for our future. We will turn our furious love on the World Bank; that critical link in the chain between Wall Street and the “developing world”. All over the world, from Dakar to Washington DC, from Mexico City to Delhi, we will be gathering, demonstrating, speaking, writing, exposing. We will do everything in our considerable power to stand against the World Bank’s insane, suicidal prescription for development that puts the growth of corporate power above all else; that ignores the truth of how the world is fed by ordinary people on small farms, not corporations; and that denies the science of how our fields, our rivers, and even our bodies are being poisoned by industrial farming whose only true beneficiaries are the 1%.

America’s Growing Food Inequality Problem

September 4, 2014 Roberto A. Ferdman, www.washingtonpost.com Educate! America, Food and Agriculture, Inequality, Poverty

Income inequality isn't the only gap the U.S. needs to mind these days; the country is amassing a sad and expensive discrepancy between what its poor and rich eat. America's wealthiest people are eating better, while its poorest are eating worse, concludes a new study published this week in The Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine, which measured the quality of diets among American adults between 1999 and 2010. "Socioeconomic status was associated strongly with dietary quality, and the gaps in dietary quality between higher and lower SES [socioeconomic status] widened over time." the study said. On the one hand, the analysis found that the American diet, on the whole, improved during the observed period. "Our study suggests that the overall dietary quality of the U.S. population steadily improved from 1999 through 2010," the study said, suggesting that Americans are likely responding to recent nutrition education efforts. That's consistent with a number of macroeconomic food trends, including America's shift away from soda.

Expanding World Of Poverty Capitalism

August 29, 2014 Thomas B. Edsall, www.nytimes.com Educate! Austerity, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Poverty, Racism

In Orange County, Calif., the probation department’s “supervised electronic confinement program,” which monitors the movements of low-risk offenders, has been outsourced to a private company, Sentinel Offender Services. The company, by its own account, oversees case management, including breath alcohol and drug-testing services, “all at no cost to county taxpayers.” Sentinel makes its money by getting the offenders on probation to pay for the company’s services. Charges can range from $35 to $100 a month. The company boasts of having contracts with more than 200 government agencies, and it takes pride in the “development of offender funded programs where any of our services can be provided at no cost to the agency.” Sentinel is a part of the expanding universe of poverty capitalism. In this unique sector of the economy, costs of essential government services are shifted to the poor.

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