The New York Times today proclaims: "Throughout the country, businesses grappling with declining fortunes are cutting hours for those on their payrolls. Self-employed people are suffering a drop in demand for their services, like music lessons, catering and management consulting. "
The article continues..."At the end of last month, more than 4.9 million people were working part time, either because they could not find full time jobs or because their companies had cut hours in the face of slack business, according to a Labor Departmeny survey. That represented an increase of 400,000 since November." Peter S. Goodman NY Times
...and last week's St.Petersburg Times in Florida said this: "Income inequality is on the rise in Florida, and likely to grow wider as the economy falters."-- Scott Barancik April 8.
This is news?
We, the wage slaves in retail establishments across the USA have known this for awhile...check out Starbuck's workers struggles at http://www.iww.org/ And WalMart's battles with its workers has been national news for a long time.
As the IWW says, it's time to abolish this unjust wage system that sets a minimum wage that nobody can survive on, and that ties hourly workers' wages to the number of hours worked--making them slaves to the time clock.
Check out my post on 1-13-08 re: Recession?
Yesterday I spotted a young shopper in a well known retail chain wearing a t-shirt I admired. It was dark grey and featured a photograph of President Bush in a circle with a slash through the center. The caption under it read: "You're Fired!"
Meanwhile the workers in this store--especially the workers over age 50--(hmm?) have been getting their hours slashed since January '08. Some are and have been scheduled for as few as one or two days a week. How the $@*# are people supposed to pay their bills when their incomes get involuntarily cut in half--or less? Let them eat food stamps! (Food stamps don't pay the rent.)
The short answer is: The bosses don't care. The corporate bosses don't care. The bosses on WallStreet don't care. The party bosses in Washingtoon (as one of my favorite bloggers http://clapso.wordpress.com calls our nation's capitol) don't care, the pie in the sky preachers don't care. So it's time to fire 'em all. Fire them today, fire them next week, fire them in November. Storm the presidential palace as the Haitians did recently. They fired their prime minister.
And speaking of palaces, the current resident of the Vatican could sell some of that company's treasures and feed a lot of hungry people. How committed are these followers of Jesus to feeding the poor, healing the sick? Show us the money!
Mud pies is what they eat in Haiti. Yeah you heard right. Mud mixed with oil and sugar. And I thought spaghetti and ketchup was bad enough...
New York Times, April 18. "In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute." by Marc Lacey.
I've known a lot of Haitian people. Hard working, devoted to family. They stick together. We could learn a thing or two from them. In the fish processing plant where I worked with mostly Haitian co workers on the night shift, a line leader slapped a Haitian worker. Within minutes of the incident, all Haitians in the plant were assembled, and they were angry. The next day, police were called to the plant-- not by company bosses, but by the Haitian worker's country men and women. The line leader was eventually fired. She had "friends" in high places, but it didn't matter. With the outrage stirred up by her behavior there was no alternative. To keep the peace, she had to go.
There are a lot of so called "leaders" who have to go. They're abusing the people, exploiting the workers. They're not worthy to lead.
Outrage is a good thing, properly channeled. It means you're awake. As someone's bumper sticker said: If You're Not Outraged, You're Not paying Attention."
Just in case the five readers of this blog think this post is about poverty in other countries...chew on this:
"47 million people make less than $10.50 an hour, six and a half, seven, eight dollars an hour before deductions; 45 million people without health care, 18,000 of whom die every year, according to the National Academy of Sciences, because they can't afford health care; 13 million children who go to bed hungry every night; 45 million people in dire poverty; 58,000 people who die from workplace connected diseases and trauma every year, according to OSHA; 65,000 people who can't breathe, and die because of air pollution."
The foregoing statistics were provided by Ralph Nader in a March 24, 2008 Newsweek article as his motivation for running for president.
"I have a very deep well of empathy," Mr. Nader said, citing the above.
Could this be why the major news networks won't let him debate?
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poverty. Show all posts
4.18.2008
11.06.2007
I Know What I Saw
It goes back to the question asked of then Florida Governor Lawton Chiles by a radio reporter. Twyla told me she'd asked the governor, "Why is there poverty?" He never answered her.
The reporter, who has since gone on to change her name to an African one, and additionally changed her career---which is the media's loss-- asked the million dollar question. There is only one answer to that question: there is poverty because there is immense wealth concentrated in the hands of relatively few. An extreme example is the diamond drenched wedding attire of Myanmar general Than Schwe's daughter, while the majority of the Burmese people can barely afford to buy food. Don't think for a New York minute I'm advocating a communist redistribution of wealth. I've heard too many horror stories from people who've fled those countries. A competitive economy is a good thing. It fosters innovation and improvement. Real competition, that is.
I started writing this blog a little over a year ago. Its broad theme was poverty. If poverty was a river, its tributaries would be homelessness, low wage jobs, poor health and unaffordable/inadequate health care. The blog became a journey. I traveled and blogged about what I saw and people I met. I'm not a statistician. There are agencies that collect data and spit out numbers and pie charts. I was interested in the human faces of homelessness, so I focused on a couple of people, real people. I spent some nights in homeless shelters, and some days sitting on sidewalks and in parks, and riding subways. I lived in the cheapest possible accomodations I could find in New York City, a place where I was bitten by bed bugs, and shared bathrooms and showers with ten or more other women, a place where you have no kitchen, no refrigerator, and no microwave. Living this way in the capital of the world is a lot more common than you might think. When New Yorkers are burned out of their homes, and they lose everything, a room in the YMCA is often where the lucky ones wind up--for months, if not years.
There was a delay in the beginning of this journey. Overly long, it seemed to me at the time. In retrospect that delay may have been benevolently intended. Or maybe unintended. The questions-- posed at the beginning, and now answered at the end--I had to find my own answers to. Some people, maybe knowing the answers or sensing the outcome, tried to divert the journey. One was a mentor, I realize now. A mentor who didn't give me any fish but sorta taught me how to fish. By throwing me into the ocean with the right bait.
Write about us, said the women in the Manhattan homeless shelter. The world needs to know. After meeting these women, I knew I had to write about them. Read about them in Refugees of America, In the Chairs, Gimme Shelter, and Ladies and Gentlemen...
I laid this blog to rest in May, one year after its birth. I've made some improvements since then, but with the exception of a few things I get fired up about--most notably the incarceration of Aung San Suu Kyi by the criminals in control of her country--this blog was over in May '07. It was then I understood with no doubt whatsover that home is where you hang your heart. Home is not a geographic location, or even necessarily the place where you were born.
In the past year, I've hung up my coat in many places: in closets, lockers, on the backs of chairs, and on hooks screwed into the wall. A few times, I even slept in my coat. I went back to a city that was my home in the 1970's. It was where I lived, worked, gave birth to my son, and freed myself from a self destructive habit. In our last apartment, on 93rd Street and Second Avenue, we stepped through our front door every morning and passed a disheveled man sleeping on the stoop next door. It was the same man every day, sleeping off a drunk. It was remarkable and memorable because he was the only one. In a city bursting with heroin addicts and methadone clinics, drug dealers, and taverns, I saw very few people sleeping on the streets. I never heard about homeless shelters then. This was New York City in the late 1970's.
In 1979 my lease was up. The landlord sent over his new lease, raising the $170 rent on our studio apartment to more than $400. I had an opportunity to move upstate, when I still had family living there. With my child, we left NYC.
I came back throughout the 1980's to visit a good friend. Her rent, on East 116th Street was $425. She had one bedroom, in a 5th floor walk up. The bathtub in the kitchen with a hinged board covering it, doubled as a kitchen sink. The toilet was in a closet size room with a chain pull flusher. Heat was often nonexistent. It was better than her previous apartment, she said, where two dead bodies had been found in the building. Still, she wouldn't let her two children play outside, where drug dealers sold heroin and crack on the front stoop.
(A side thought: why are so many kids overweight? Maybe because they can't play outdoors as kids used to do.)
Each time I visited NYC through the eighties, I noticed more and more people at subway stations or around parks asking for change, a little help, apparently homeless. It was in the 1980's that I first saw the so-called "bag ladies;" women pushing their worldly goods around the city in shopping carts, or trudging through the streets of New York loaded down with plastic shopping bags. This did not exist on such a scale prior to the eighties. So what happened?
Rent happened. I considered moving back to New York in early 1981. I went down to the city, bought a newspaper, looked at the rents and took about two days to decide the bridge had collapsed, washed away in the current, and there was no way to go back. Conventional wisdom is that the homeless are homeless because they are: lazy, mentally ill, drug addicts, drunks. Let me explode a few myths.
Homelessness is not for the lazy. It take tremendous energy and resourcefulness to live as a homeless person. Try it sometime: dragging your essential belongings around all day, including important papers; keeping yourself--and your clothes--clean, avoiding robbery, avoiding arrest, charging your cell phone--if you have one, getting adequate sleep. Read "In the Chairs," August 2006.
There are mentally ill people among the homeless, but with affordable rent, and community based clinics, the mentally ill wouldn't have to be living on the streets. Poor drug addicts live on the streets. Rich drug addicts live in their own homes. Some people become drug addicts after they become homeless. And "drunks:" I'll never forget the young people living on the streets of Gainesville, Florida who said they drank rum to keep warm at night. Which came first: sleeping outdoors or drinking?
If you are interested in the stories of people who are invisible to the celebrity obsessed mainstream media (msm) but are literally right in your face, and under your nose, scroll back. Read Dawn. Addicts, alcoholics, and sick people have always lived in New York City and in every other city and town in America. The difference is that in the 70's a low wage worker, a retiree or a disabled worker, and that includes veterans--did they not work for all of us?--all could afford a home even if only in a rooming house. Now, even middle class workers like cops, firefighters and teachers have to live in outer boroughs or in New Jersey because only celebrities and millionaires can afford Manhattan rent. Like post-Katrina New Orleans, Manhattan is closed to us commoners. Our tourism dollars are still welcome, however.
Corporate America is not going to raise the pay of American workers to keep pace with skyrocketing rents and mortgages. Does our government have the will to create more subsidized housing --maybe built by unemployed workers who could learn construction trade skills at the same time--so that America's lowest paid workers, disabled workers, homeless vets, and low income retirees can have homes?
Stay tuned.
The reporter, who has since gone on to change her name to an African one, and additionally changed her career---which is the media's loss-- asked the million dollar question. There is only one answer to that question: there is poverty because there is immense wealth concentrated in the hands of relatively few. An extreme example is the diamond drenched wedding attire of Myanmar general Than Schwe's daughter, while the majority of the Burmese people can barely afford to buy food. Don't think for a New York minute I'm advocating a communist redistribution of wealth. I've heard too many horror stories from people who've fled those countries. A competitive economy is a good thing. It fosters innovation and improvement. Real competition, that is.
I started writing this blog a little over a year ago. Its broad theme was poverty. If poverty was a river, its tributaries would be homelessness, low wage jobs, poor health and unaffordable/inadequate health care. The blog became a journey. I traveled and blogged about what I saw and people I met. I'm not a statistician. There are agencies that collect data and spit out numbers and pie charts. I was interested in the human faces of homelessness, so I focused on a couple of people, real people. I spent some nights in homeless shelters, and some days sitting on sidewalks and in parks, and riding subways. I lived in the cheapest possible accomodations I could find in New York City, a place where I was bitten by bed bugs, and shared bathrooms and showers with ten or more other women, a place where you have no kitchen, no refrigerator, and no microwave. Living this way in the capital of the world is a lot more common than you might think. When New Yorkers are burned out of their homes, and they lose everything, a room in the YMCA is often where the lucky ones wind up--for months, if not years.
There was a delay in the beginning of this journey. Overly long, it seemed to me at the time. In retrospect that delay may have been benevolently intended. Or maybe unintended. The questions-- posed at the beginning, and now answered at the end--I had to find my own answers to. Some people, maybe knowing the answers or sensing the outcome, tried to divert the journey. One was a mentor, I realize now. A mentor who didn't give me any fish but sorta taught me how to fish. By throwing me into the ocean with the right bait.
Write about us, said the women in the Manhattan homeless shelter. The world needs to know. After meeting these women, I knew I had to write about them. Read about them in Refugees of America, In the Chairs, Gimme Shelter, and Ladies and Gentlemen...
I laid this blog to rest in May, one year after its birth. I've made some improvements since then, but with the exception of a few things I get fired up about--most notably the incarceration of Aung San Suu Kyi by the criminals in control of her country--this blog was over in May '07. It was then I understood with no doubt whatsover that home is where you hang your heart. Home is not a geographic location, or even necessarily the place where you were born.
In the past year, I've hung up my coat in many places: in closets, lockers, on the backs of chairs, and on hooks screwed into the wall. A few times, I even slept in my coat. I went back to a city that was my home in the 1970's. It was where I lived, worked, gave birth to my son, and freed myself from a self destructive habit. In our last apartment, on 93rd Street and Second Avenue, we stepped through our front door every morning and passed a disheveled man sleeping on the stoop next door. It was the same man every day, sleeping off a drunk. It was remarkable and memorable because he was the only one. In a city bursting with heroin addicts and methadone clinics, drug dealers, and taverns, I saw very few people sleeping on the streets. I never heard about homeless shelters then. This was New York City in the late 1970's.
In 1979 my lease was up. The landlord sent over his new lease, raising the $170 rent on our studio apartment to more than $400. I had an opportunity to move upstate, when I still had family living there. With my child, we left NYC.
I came back throughout the 1980's to visit a good friend. Her rent, on East 116th Street was $425. She had one bedroom, in a 5th floor walk up. The bathtub in the kitchen with a hinged board covering it, doubled as a kitchen sink. The toilet was in a closet size room with a chain pull flusher. Heat was often nonexistent. It was better than her previous apartment, she said, where two dead bodies had been found in the building. Still, she wouldn't let her two children play outside, where drug dealers sold heroin and crack on the front stoop.
(A side thought: why are so many kids overweight? Maybe because they can't play outdoors as kids used to do.)
Each time I visited NYC through the eighties, I noticed more and more people at subway stations or around parks asking for change, a little help, apparently homeless. It was in the 1980's that I first saw the so-called "bag ladies;" women pushing their worldly goods around the city in shopping carts, or trudging through the streets of New York loaded down with plastic shopping bags. This did not exist on such a scale prior to the eighties. So what happened?
Rent happened. I considered moving back to New York in early 1981. I went down to the city, bought a newspaper, looked at the rents and took about two days to decide the bridge had collapsed, washed away in the current, and there was no way to go back. Conventional wisdom is that the homeless are homeless because they are: lazy, mentally ill, drug addicts, drunks. Let me explode a few myths.
Homelessness is not for the lazy. It take tremendous energy and resourcefulness to live as a homeless person. Try it sometime: dragging your essential belongings around all day, including important papers; keeping yourself--and your clothes--clean, avoiding robbery, avoiding arrest, charging your cell phone--if you have one, getting adequate sleep. Read "In the Chairs," August 2006.
There are mentally ill people among the homeless, but with affordable rent, and community based clinics, the mentally ill wouldn't have to be living on the streets. Poor drug addicts live on the streets. Rich drug addicts live in their own homes. Some people become drug addicts after they become homeless. And "drunks:" I'll never forget the young people living on the streets of Gainesville, Florida who said they drank rum to keep warm at night. Which came first: sleeping outdoors or drinking?
If you are interested in the stories of people who are invisible to the celebrity obsessed mainstream media (msm) but are literally right in your face, and under your nose, scroll back. Read Dawn. Addicts, alcoholics, and sick people have always lived in New York City and in every other city and town in America. The difference is that in the 70's a low wage worker, a retiree or a disabled worker, and that includes veterans--did they not work for all of us?--all could afford a home even if only in a rooming house. Now, even middle class workers like cops, firefighters and teachers have to live in outer boroughs or in New Jersey because only celebrities and millionaires can afford Manhattan rent. Like post-Katrina New Orleans, Manhattan is closed to us commoners. Our tourism dollars are still welcome, however.
Corporate America is not going to raise the pay of American workers to keep pace with skyrocketing rents and mortgages. Does our government have the will to create more subsidized housing --maybe built by unemployed workers who could learn construction trade skills at the same time--so that America's lowest paid workers, disabled workers, homeless vets, and low income retirees can have homes?
Stay tuned.
5.30.2007
A Word About Poverty Pimps
Hey Poverty Pimps: the people you're supposed to be helping don't like you. That's because most of you--- you don't help them. You help yourselves.
You, poverty pimps, are people who live off jobs paid for with government grants and taxes and you work in any one of thousands of organizations that are supposed to use the government's dough (that's The People's money--OK?) to lift people out of poverty, move them into "housing," and cure them of drug addiction--what are you doing? What the #%!! are you doing?!!
Since when is a furnished room with a shared bathroom and shared cooking facilities (maybe) a home?
People want to make their own homes, decorate them, plant roots in a neighborhood or community, invite their family and friends over, cook a meal for them. People want some control over their lives, some creative outlet. Warehousing poor people in uniform rooms isn't housing them--it's controlling them. Where do poverty pimps live?
I've lived/talked/walked with homeless folk for awhile, and I learned some things. Homeless and formerly homeless people ONLY: jump in and tell me if I'm wrong, or if you disagree...
With all the money at the disposal of the poverty pimps, The People continue to sleep in subway trains, parks, abandoned buildings--because they can't afford rent. They need better paying jobs or rent subsidies. Take the tax breaks and subsidies away from poverty pimps and GIVE 'EM DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE! Here's a news flash: Most poor people want to work, even those with shaky health. They want good jobs with paychecks they can live on and support a family on. They want to start and run small businesses, and a lot of them have damn good ideas.
Here's another myth buster: Most former welfare recipients who've moved into jobs, either voluntarily or not, are proud of their jobs, proud that they're working, and they don't want to return to welfare, even though they could use a pay raise.
Most poor people don't want freebies. They want opportunities to make it on their own. Real opportunities-- not locked doors, walls, obstacle courses, and bureaucratic mazes. They want respect, and to live with dignity. They don't need your pity--or want it. They don't see themselves as victims and they don't want to wear your victim label. They want real tools they can use in the real world to really better their lives and themselves.
These are my impressions, arrived at from watching, listening and talking with real people. Am I wrong?
Word out.
You, poverty pimps, are people who live off jobs paid for with government grants and taxes and you work in any one of thousands of organizations that are supposed to use the government's dough (that's The People's money--OK?) to lift people out of poverty, move them into "housing," and cure them of drug addiction--what are you doing? What the #%!! are you doing?!!
Since when is a furnished room with a shared bathroom and shared cooking facilities (maybe) a home?
People want to make their own homes, decorate them, plant roots in a neighborhood or community, invite their family and friends over, cook a meal for them. People want some control over their lives, some creative outlet. Warehousing poor people in uniform rooms isn't housing them--it's controlling them. Where do poverty pimps live?
I've lived/talked/walked with homeless folk for awhile, and I learned some things. Homeless and formerly homeless people ONLY: jump in and tell me if I'm wrong, or if you disagree...
With all the money at the disposal of the poverty pimps, The People continue to sleep in subway trains, parks, abandoned buildings--because they can't afford rent. They need better paying jobs or rent subsidies. Take the tax breaks and subsidies away from poverty pimps and GIVE 'EM DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE! Here's a news flash: Most poor people want to work, even those with shaky health. They want good jobs with paychecks they can live on and support a family on. They want to start and run small businesses, and a lot of them have damn good ideas.
Here's another myth buster: Most former welfare recipients who've moved into jobs, either voluntarily or not, are proud of their jobs, proud that they're working, and they don't want to return to welfare, even though they could use a pay raise.
Most poor people don't want freebies. They want opportunities to make it on their own. Real opportunities-- not locked doors, walls, obstacle courses, and bureaucratic mazes. They want respect, and to live with dignity. They don't need your pity--or want it. They don't see themselves as victims and they don't want to wear your victim label. They want real tools they can use in the real world to really better their lives and themselves.
These are my impressions, arrived at from watching, listening and talking with real people. Am I wrong?
Word out.
9.23.2006
Poverty Kills
Like a truck slamming into a Buick, the September 22nd Newsday story struck hard and left me stunned. After a night of downing gin last Friday, 18 year-old Savarin DeJesus returned to her room in an East Harlem homeless mothers' shelter, retrieved her four month old daughter from another shelter resident who had been watching her, and vomited into a bucket of cleaning liquid beside her bed before passing out. When she awoke the next afternoon, baby Niah had slipped off the bed and was face down in a six inch bucket of vomit and cleaning solution next to her mother's bed. The baby was pronounced dead at the hospital, from asphyxiation and/or drowning.
In Manhattan Criminal Court, the 18-year-old mother declared, tearful and trembling, to the judge: "I loved my baby. I want you to know that."
The young mother has been charged with negligent homicide and child endangerment. It's not known whether cribs were available at the East Harlem group home Ms. DeJesus called home. Given the gruesome circumstances of the baby's death, the young mother will no doubt be the object of much hate and criticism , and this story will receive much media coverage, until the next horror story bumps it from first place. Accusations will be hurled, like chairs in a bar brawl--at the "neglectful" mother, at the shelter, at whoever supplied the gin to the 18 year-old underage drinker. There will be questions too, about Niah's father. Who was he? Was he also a teenager? Was he employed? Was he homeless? What about the baby girl's grandparents? Could they have given a stable home to Ms. DeJesus and her daughter? If so, why didn't they?
In court, Ms. DeJesus' lawyer, Kenneth Gilbert suggested she might have moved to the shelter to be near her baby's father.
Eventually, this will fade from memory, like all the other disaster stories about how poverty kills people. Like the one about the kids in Chicago who died in a fire this month because the electricity was cut off and candles were lighting their apartment, which had no smoke detectors. Other than a natural disaster, there's only one reason for the electricity to be cut off, and that reason is lack of money to pay the bill. And there's ultimately only one reason that brings a person to live in a homeless shelter, and that reason is lack of money to rent an apartment or a room. Poverty is an unnatural disaster. Not an act of God; poverty is an act of man against his own kind. Poverty kills, just as surely as fire racing through an occupied home.
And after all the witnesses are heard, and all the pleas and motions are made, baby Niah will still be gone forever, and Savarin DeJesus will get an additional sentence added to the lifelong sentence of knowing that her bad decision, her lapse of good judgment was a contributing cause of the death of the baby she loved.
Are there any of us who, at age eighteen made only "good" decisions? Yeah... that's what I thought.
Because poverty imprisons just as surely as it kills, maybe now finally, Savarin DeJesus will get a more permanent housing situation--at Rikers --where the lights will never be turned off for failure to pay the bill.
In Manhattan Criminal Court, the 18-year-old mother declared, tearful and trembling, to the judge: "I loved my baby. I want you to know that."
The young mother has been charged with negligent homicide and child endangerment. It's not known whether cribs were available at the East Harlem group home Ms. DeJesus called home. Given the gruesome circumstances of the baby's death, the young mother will no doubt be the object of much hate and criticism , and this story will receive much media coverage, until the next horror story bumps it from first place. Accusations will be hurled, like chairs in a bar brawl--at the "neglectful" mother, at the shelter, at whoever supplied the gin to the 18 year-old underage drinker. There will be questions too, about Niah's father. Who was he? Was he also a teenager? Was he employed? Was he homeless? What about the baby girl's grandparents? Could they have given a stable home to Ms. DeJesus and her daughter? If so, why didn't they?
In court, Ms. DeJesus' lawyer, Kenneth Gilbert suggested she might have moved to the shelter to be near her baby's father.
Eventually, this will fade from memory, like all the other disaster stories about how poverty kills people. Like the one about the kids in Chicago who died in a fire this month because the electricity was cut off and candles were lighting their apartment, which had no smoke detectors. Other than a natural disaster, there's only one reason for the electricity to be cut off, and that reason is lack of money to pay the bill. And there's ultimately only one reason that brings a person to live in a homeless shelter, and that reason is lack of money to rent an apartment or a room. Poverty is an unnatural disaster. Not an act of God; poverty is an act of man against his own kind. Poverty kills, just as surely as fire racing through an occupied home.
And after all the witnesses are heard, and all the pleas and motions are made, baby Niah will still be gone forever, and Savarin DeJesus will get an additional sentence added to the lifelong sentence of knowing that her bad decision, her lapse of good judgment was a contributing cause of the death of the baby she loved.
Are there any of us who, at age eighteen made only "good" decisions? Yeah... that's what I thought.
Because poverty imprisons just as surely as it kills, maybe now finally, Savarin DeJesus will get a more permanent housing situation--at Rikers --where the lights will never be turned off for failure to pay the bill.
8.28.2006
Charge This!
Why do people get mired in credit card debt? Is Donald Trump drowning in debt? What about Oprah? I doubt it.
People use credit cards to buy what their incomes can't. For some, it could mean a new car, (can you "charge" a car?) It could mean expensive vacations, designer clothes, pricey restaurants, and other luxuries. For others, putting it on plastic means the difference between buying groceries or not.
Maybe some of us need to lower our expectations to match our incomes. And maybe a lot of banks would lose a lot of profit if everyone cut up their plastic and decided-- going forward into forever-- to live within their means. To buy only what their paychecks could support, and no more.
What would it mean if everyone who charged a doctor's or a dental appointment, or a week's worth of groceries, or a new T.V. just decided to do without all of the above? Or stayed home on their days off because they didn't want to charge gas on the Visa or Mastercard? Would it make a difference? You know it would.
This is how I have lived since 1997. Without plastic: living withing the narrow confines of my low wage jobs. I don't eat in restaurants, unless someone invites me out with them. I don't take vacations. I don't buy electronics. My stereo was a Christmas gift. I don't pay for car washes. The rain does it for free. I buy used CD's and DVDs. My T.V. set was given to me, used. I wear blue jeans that are thirteen years old. I don't have cable or satellite T.V. If I need shoes, I buy them only when they're marked down, or at discount or thrift stores. I drink water only-- no juice, or soda, or iced tea. I dropped all the extras from my phone service. This is how I have managed to survive (barely) on my low wage jobs.
If I had been paid a living wage all these years, I would have spent it on: electronics, new CD's, caller ID, call waiting, voice mail, a bigger apartment, or maybe even a more permanent home, and acupuncture--for my health problems-- because I know it works. I would've made upgrades to my car, had dental work, and made trips to visit out of state relatives -- who died while I was too damn poor to see them. I would have gone on vacations; seen other places in this big, beautiful country. I would have spent money on my family, and that money would have poured into the economy; the one we all have to live in. And I'm not alone.
Multiply me by all the low wage workers who do without necessities, who do without luxuries, who never go on vacations, who never buy cars, who recycle used things; clothes and T.V.'s and anything else they can't afford. Who is really benefiting from all the low wage jobs in this country?
The banks, I'd say, and the landlords. And when all the low wage workers who can't afford to live on their incomes finally max out their credit and default on the payments, the collection agencies benefit.
The banks peddling credit cards, and the collection agencies threatening debtors then create more low wage jobs in their call centers. More low wage jobs to keep the machinery grinding. (That's why they call it grinding poverty.) Until they move their call centers to India, that is. Or inside the walls of U.S. prisons, where the labor is free.
In our present state of affairs, people who do essential work are paid starvation wages. In order to survive, they pay part of their poverty wages to credit mongers that keep them indentured. It is a modified version of debtor's prisons.
You don't believe janitors, farm laborers, meat packers, and retail workers do essential work? Sure. Grow and pick your own food, slaughter and process your own steaks and hot dogs. Shop at Walmart after all the janitorial staff have taken a three day vacation-- just don't use the restrooms. Try to find something to buy at Target when the stockers and cashiers and truck loaders all took the week off-- all at the same time. If you can get through the piles of trash in the parking lots. And if you can find a shopping cart...
Firefighters, paramedics, emergency room doctors and nurses, cops--all are generally viewed as "essential" service providers. You'll get no argument from me about that. But in addition, all work done in our society, for our society, is essential. A hospital emergency room with biohazardous trash all over the floor and dirty bathrooms is not going to be a real healthy place. Vegetables that rot in the fields because there are no workers to pick them are not feeding people. A warehouse full of baby food, diapers, medicines, food and bottled water is not going to benefit anyone if there are no workers to load these things onto the trucks, drive the trucks, unload the trucks at the stores, stock the shelves, and collect money at the checkout lanes.
It's time to rethink "essential" as it applies to work. It's time to restore the "dignity of labor" that Dr. King spoke about. And as the unions say today: it's time to "Make Work Pay." It's time to free working folks from debt peonage. Time to end wage slavery.
I don't trust politics, or most politicians, although I'm seen some stellar exceptions. This is not a political blog. But there are good and bad elements in all things, even politicians. This particular message that came my way is about a senate bill, S.3485, introduced June 8 by Senator Byron Dorgan (ND). A companion bill, H.R. 5635 was introduced June 16 by representative Sherrod Brown. It's titled the "Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act."
If passed, it will for the first time hold corporations legally accountable to respect human and worker rights by prohibiting import, sale, or export of sweatshop goods in the U.S. There's more at http://www.nlcnet.org/
Why should we in the U.S. care about working conditions for people in other countries? I'll tell you why: because the economy is global now, and workers in other countries are our fellow workers. The conditions they labor under directly impact us. Here's why:
In the 1980's a lot of little towns, including in New York state where I'm from, had economies anchored by manufacturing plants. Paper products, digital electronics, Levi's jeans; to name a few. These places, too remote from major cities and seaports to be tourist economies, bled factories during the eighties, when it became cheaper for American corporations to run their operations on foreign soil and pay workers in other countries pennies a day, with no benefits and no OSHA health and safety laws to comply with. Companies moved their plants to Mexico, and when Vietnamese labor turned out to be cheaper, the same companies abandoned Mexico, and moved to Vietnam, or Jordan, or Bangladesh. For global corporations, borders are no deterrent. But you already knew this, right?
I don't need to retell you the story of Detroit and the auto industry.
A one world economy needs a one world set of worker protections. Health and safety standards, and wages people can live on without resorting to credit cards. What corporations do to workers in Vietnam, Bagladesh, and Jordan today, they will do to American workers tomorrow. In some cases, they already have. Tell your representatives you support these bills, and support your fellow workers, wherever in the world they may be. An injury to one is an injury to all.
People use credit cards to buy what their incomes can't. For some, it could mean a new car, (can you "charge" a car?) It could mean expensive vacations, designer clothes, pricey restaurants, and other luxuries. For others, putting it on plastic means the difference between buying groceries or not.
Maybe some of us need to lower our expectations to match our incomes. And maybe a lot of banks would lose a lot of profit if everyone cut up their plastic and decided-- going forward into forever-- to live within their means. To buy only what their paychecks could support, and no more.
What would it mean if everyone who charged a doctor's or a dental appointment, or a week's worth of groceries, or a new T.V. just decided to do without all of the above? Or stayed home on their days off because they didn't want to charge gas on the Visa or Mastercard? Would it make a difference? You know it would.
This is how I have lived since 1997. Without plastic: living withing the narrow confines of my low wage jobs. I don't eat in restaurants, unless someone invites me out with them. I don't take vacations. I don't buy electronics. My stereo was a Christmas gift. I don't pay for car washes. The rain does it for free. I buy used CD's and DVDs. My T.V. set was given to me, used. I wear blue jeans that are thirteen years old. I don't have cable or satellite T.V. If I need shoes, I buy them only when they're marked down, or at discount or thrift stores. I drink water only-- no juice, or soda, or iced tea. I dropped all the extras from my phone service. This is how I have managed to survive (barely) on my low wage jobs.
If I had been paid a living wage all these years, I would have spent it on: electronics, new CD's, caller ID, call waiting, voice mail, a bigger apartment, or maybe even a more permanent home, and acupuncture--for my health problems-- because I know it works. I would've made upgrades to my car, had dental work, and made trips to visit out of state relatives -- who died while I was too damn poor to see them. I would have gone on vacations; seen other places in this big, beautiful country. I would have spent money on my family, and that money would have poured into the economy; the one we all have to live in. And I'm not alone.
Multiply me by all the low wage workers who do without necessities, who do without luxuries, who never go on vacations, who never buy cars, who recycle used things; clothes and T.V.'s and anything else they can't afford. Who is really benefiting from all the low wage jobs in this country?
The banks, I'd say, and the landlords. And when all the low wage workers who can't afford to live on their incomes finally max out their credit and default on the payments, the collection agencies benefit.
The banks peddling credit cards, and the collection agencies threatening debtors then create more low wage jobs in their call centers. More low wage jobs to keep the machinery grinding. (That's why they call it grinding poverty.) Until they move their call centers to India, that is. Or inside the walls of U.S. prisons, where the labor is free.
In our present state of affairs, people who do essential work are paid starvation wages. In order to survive, they pay part of their poverty wages to credit mongers that keep them indentured. It is a modified version of debtor's prisons.
You don't believe janitors, farm laborers, meat packers, and retail workers do essential work? Sure. Grow and pick your own food, slaughter and process your own steaks and hot dogs. Shop at Walmart after all the janitorial staff have taken a three day vacation-- just don't use the restrooms. Try to find something to buy at Target when the stockers and cashiers and truck loaders all took the week off-- all at the same time. If you can get through the piles of trash in the parking lots. And if you can find a shopping cart...
Firefighters, paramedics, emergency room doctors and nurses, cops--all are generally viewed as "essential" service providers. You'll get no argument from me about that. But in addition, all work done in our society, for our society, is essential. A hospital emergency room with biohazardous trash all over the floor and dirty bathrooms is not going to be a real healthy place. Vegetables that rot in the fields because there are no workers to pick them are not feeding people. A warehouse full of baby food, diapers, medicines, food and bottled water is not going to benefit anyone if there are no workers to load these things onto the trucks, drive the trucks, unload the trucks at the stores, stock the shelves, and collect money at the checkout lanes.
It's time to rethink "essential" as it applies to work. It's time to restore the "dignity of labor" that Dr. King spoke about. And as the unions say today: it's time to "Make Work Pay." It's time to free working folks from debt peonage. Time to end wage slavery.
I don't trust politics, or most politicians, although I'm seen some stellar exceptions. This is not a political blog. But there are good and bad elements in all things, even politicians. This particular message that came my way is about a senate bill, S.3485, introduced June 8 by Senator Byron Dorgan (ND). A companion bill, H.R. 5635 was introduced June 16 by representative Sherrod Brown. It's titled the "Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act."
If passed, it will for the first time hold corporations legally accountable to respect human and worker rights by prohibiting import, sale, or export of sweatshop goods in the U.S. There's more at http://www.nlcnet.org/
Why should we in the U.S. care about working conditions for people in other countries? I'll tell you why: because the economy is global now, and workers in other countries are our fellow workers. The conditions they labor under directly impact us. Here's why:
In the 1980's a lot of little towns, including in New York state where I'm from, had economies anchored by manufacturing plants. Paper products, digital electronics, Levi's jeans; to name a few. These places, too remote from major cities and seaports to be tourist economies, bled factories during the eighties, when it became cheaper for American corporations to run their operations on foreign soil and pay workers in other countries pennies a day, with no benefits and no OSHA health and safety laws to comply with. Companies moved their plants to Mexico, and when Vietnamese labor turned out to be cheaper, the same companies abandoned Mexico, and moved to Vietnam, or Jordan, or Bangladesh. For global corporations, borders are no deterrent. But you already knew this, right?
I don't need to retell you the story of Detroit and the auto industry.
A one world economy needs a one world set of worker protections. Health and safety standards, and wages people can live on without resorting to credit cards. What corporations do to workers in Vietnam, Bagladesh, and Jordan today, they will do to American workers tomorrow. In some cases, they already have. Tell your representatives you support these bills, and support your fellow workers, wherever in the world they may be. An injury to one is an injury to all.
7.06.2006
Blueberry Fields 4-ever
Something is wrong inside. I feel it, like that flicker just before the light goes out and the screen gets dark. Something inside is flickering, some energy is running down, and it has been for some time.
So before I go out, I want to be engaged, so to speak. I don't want my light to go out in some dead end job or sitting in front of a T.V.. There is a chain of life. We are all links.
This is what I think about while eating blueberries. One berry at a time. I look at them, fascinated by the color. What other food is this color? Some are sweet, and some are not. I'm mindful of their path to my kitchen. Of how the blueberries came to be in the supermarket where I bought them. Of the labor required to "rake" them. Of the workers, exposed to pesticides and to the elements, working sometimes in extreme heat, bending for hours, at risk for back injuries. I think of the human price that made these blueberries affordable to someone like me. I think of the low wages--especially in the southern U.S., without health insurance or other benefits.
I'm no guilt ridden white liberal, having worked in a succession of low wage jobs without air conditioning. Some of these could be described as sweatshop conditions, and have been so described by some of my co workers. But as an American citizen, I've had a few advantages that my sisters and brothers in the fields do not. Health care, for one. However inadequate and unaffordable. Vacation days. Paid holidays. The ability to change jobs and not be deported. So we are different. But in some ways, maybe not that different.
They work in the fields, in rural areas. Maybe they want to be someplace else. But there they are, for love of family and children, trying to outrun poverty. And in another kind of field--maybe in a downtown high rise or a suburban office park, somebody else labors over paper work, struggles with a heavy mental burden. Maybe they too want to be someplace else, but they stay in the office they have learned to hate, for the love of family and children, trying to outrun poverty. Different fields, different languages. Same motivations. We are all connected. By blueberries, by lettuce, by paper, by pineapple scented candles; by the economic chains that hold us all.
This one's for you, Andrea. Wherever in Mexico you are.
So before I go out, I want to be engaged, so to speak. I don't want my light to go out in some dead end job or sitting in front of a T.V.. There is a chain of life. We are all links.
This is what I think about while eating blueberries. One berry at a time. I look at them, fascinated by the color. What other food is this color? Some are sweet, and some are not. I'm mindful of their path to my kitchen. Of how the blueberries came to be in the supermarket where I bought them. Of the labor required to "rake" them. Of the workers, exposed to pesticides and to the elements, working sometimes in extreme heat, bending for hours, at risk for back injuries. I think of the human price that made these blueberries affordable to someone like me. I think of the low wages--especially in the southern U.S., without health insurance or other benefits.
I'm no guilt ridden white liberal, having worked in a succession of low wage jobs without air conditioning. Some of these could be described as sweatshop conditions, and have been so described by some of my co workers. But as an American citizen, I've had a few advantages that my sisters and brothers in the fields do not. Health care, for one. However inadequate and unaffordable. Vacation days. Paid holidays. The ability to change jobs and not be deported. So we are different. But in some ways, maybe not that different.
They work in the fields, in rural areas. Maybe they want to be someplace else. But there they are, for love of family and children, trying to outrun poverty. And in another kind of field--maybe in a downtown high rise or a suburban office park, somebody else labors over paper work, struggles with a heavy mental burden. Maybe they too want to be someplace else, but they stay in the office they have learned to hate, for the love of family and children, trying to outrun poverty. Different fields, different languages. Same motivations. We are all connected. By blueberries, by lettuce, by paper, by pineapple scented candles; by the economic chains that hold us all.
This one's for you, Andrea. Wherever in Mexico you are.
6.16.2006
Home Sweet Stadium
Hurricane season is upon us again, with the wounds of Katrina still raw. I vividly remember the images of stranded New Orleans residents, some defeated; others demanding answers--and justice--from the t.v. cameras aimed at them. I'll never forget them. We should never forget.
"Don't look to your government for help," some say. " You've got to help yourself." The government already did its part by supporting the stadiums. Stadiums and tax money go together, like corn bread and greens. Oh, I thought the government was the people--that's us, since our tax dollars pay for it. Guess I don't get the concept...
Back in time to Labor Day, late 1990's. We were sitting around a picnic table debating the wisdom of spending tax dollars to help pay for a football stadium in this, a medium sized south Florida city. Voters had just approved a half cent sales tax to help finance construction costs for the new stadium, the baby of a millionaire from a neighboring state. Those same voters didn't seem concerned with the question of why a wealthy out of state developer would need our tax money to build his stadium. And it didn't seem to bother voters that sales taxes are disproportionately paid by the poor/working poor-- the people who are least likely to ever be able to afford a ticket to a football game in that same stadium.
Stadium cheerleaders (forgive the pun) argued that jobs will be created that benefit the poor. Actually the jobs created---mostly low wage, contract, and seasonal jobs with no benefits--will keep the poor poor.
Jump to the present day. A report by the Institute of Medicine published this week concluded that "Emergency rooms are taxed (no pun intended) by the nation's 45 million uninsured, who often have nowhere else to go. Hospitals end up losing millions annually in uncompensated care, which contributes to the shuttering of emergency departments." So spoke Arthur Kellerman, chairman of emergency medicine for Emory University School of Medicine.
Meanwhile back at the picnic, I recall the conversation took a strange turn when a sober, successful military veteran and retired businessman suggested that maybe the extra stadium (we already had one) would be used as a "concentration camp."
Say what? A concentration camp---in America? N-a-a-a-h.
But then I heard about the McCarran Act of 1950, which called for the registration of "communist front" groups, and authorized the construction of concentration camps for the purposes of interning without trial all suspected "subversives," should either the President or Congress declare a national emergency. Our veteran friend was old enough to remember the internment of innocent Japanese citizens during World War II. Other suspected "subversives" in those dark days were union officials--Taft Hartley required all union officials to sign non-communist oaths---and Lucille Ball! Back in the day, Dr. Martin Luther King was also a suspected communist.
Forward to 2005. Hurricane Katrina rips through Louisiana, leaving thousands of poor Black Americans homeless and destitute, and/or dead. With no cars, no money, no homes, and already living on the edge, these displaced country men women and children are herded into stadiums like cattle, in New Orleans and Texas, where they languish without food, water, and sanitation. Maybe our friend was right, and the stadiums are internment camps for the poor. In the flooded streets, bodies floated. In the ruined hospitals, doctors and nurses with impossible jobs, worked around the clock, forced to choose between caring for the emergencies--or the worse emergencies.
A year later, the levee ain't ready for another Katrina, and many New Orleans natives are still homeless, forever cast out from the only homes and communities they knew. It wasn't so much Katrina that displaced them, as it was poverty. Poverty and neglect. When you have resources, you can escape, rebuild, start over. As Gandhi said: "Poverty is the worst form of violence." Funds that should have been used to secure the levees were diverted instead to Iraq. To the war on terrorism. To find the weapons of mass destruction.
It was Congressman Dennis Kucinich who said, "Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction." And so it was. www.kucinich.us
"Don't look to your government for help," some say. " You've got to help yourself." The government already did its part by supporting the stadiums. Stadiums and tax money go together, like corn bread and greens. Oh, I thought the government was the people--that's us, since our tax dollars pay for it. Guess I don't get the concept...
Back in time to Labor Day, late 1990's. We were sitting around a picnic table debating the wisdom of spending tax dollars to help pay for a football stadium in this, a medium sized south Florida city. Voters had just approved a half cent sales tax to help finance construction costs for the new stadium, the baby of a millionaire from a neighboring state. Those same voters didn't seem concerned with the question of why a wealthy out of state developer would need our tax money to build his stadium. And it didn't seem to bother voters that sales taxes are disproportionately paid by the poor/working poor-- the people who are least likely to ever be able to afford a ticket to a football game in that same stadium.
Stadium cheerleaders (forgive the pun) argued that jobs will be created that benefit the poor. Actually the jobs created---mostly low wage, contract, and seasonal jobs with no benefits--will keep the poor poor.
Jump to the present day. A report by the Institute of Medicine published this week concluded that "Emergency rooms are taxed (no pun intended) by the nation's 45 million uninsured, who often have nowhere else to go. Hospitals end up losing millions annually in uncompensated care, which contributes to the shuttering of emergency departments." So spoke Arthur Kellerman, chairman of emergency medicine for Emory University School of Medicine.
Meanwhile back at the picnic, I recall the conversation took a strange turn when a sober, successful military veteran and retired businessman suggested that maybe the extra stadium (we already had one) would be used as a "concentration camp."
Say what? A concentration camp---in America? N-a-a-a-h.
But then I heard about the McCarran Act of 1950, which called for the registration of "communist front" groups, and authorized the construction of concentration camps for the purposes of interning without trial all suspected "subversives," should either the President or Congress declare a national emergency. Our veteran friend was old enough to remember the internment of innocent Japanese citizens during World War II. Other suspected "subversives" in those dark days were union officials--Taft Hartley required all union officials to sign non-communist oaths---and Lucille Ball! Back in the day, Dr. Martin Luther King was also a suspected communist.
Forward to 2005. Hurricane Katrina rips through Louisiana, leaving thousands of poor Black Americans homeless and destitute, and/or dead. With no cars, no money, no homes, and already living on the edge, these displaced country men women and children are herded into stadiums like cattle, in New Orleans and Texas, where they languish without food, water, and sanitation. Maybe our friend was right, and the stadiums are internment camps for the poor. In the flooded streets, bodies floated. In the ruined hospitals, doctors and nurses with impossible jobs, worked around the clock, forced to choose between caring for the emergencies--or the worse emergencies.
A year later, the levee ain't ready for another Katrina, and many New Orleans natives are still homeless, forever cast out from the only homes and communities they knew. It wasn't so much Katrina that displaced them, as it was poverty. Poverty and neglect. When you have resources, you can escape, rebuild, start over. As Gandhi said: "Poverty is the worst form of violence." Funds that should have been used to secure the levees were diverted instead to Iraq. To the war on terrorism. To find the weapons of mass destruction.
It was Congressman Dennis Kucinich who said, "Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction." And so it was. www.kucinich.us
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