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Poverty - Blog Posts
This isn’t right. It’s time to raise the wage.
Sign the petition now.
Hard to rise, and harder to fall: Poor college grads stay poor about as much as rich high school dropouts stay rich.
Likely because half our nation worships wealth regardless of where it came from.
Image by Worley Dervish.
After all, if generous aid to the poor perpetuates poverty, the United States — which treats its poor far more harshly than other rich countries, and induces them to work much longer hours — should lead the West in social mobility, in the fraction of those born poor who work their way up the scale. In fact, it’s just the opposite: America has less social mobility than most other advanced countries. And there’s no puzzle why: it’s hard for young people to get ahead when they suffer from poor nutrition, inadequate medical care, and lack of access to good education. The antipoverty programs that we have actually do a lot to help people rise. For example, Americans who received early access to food stamps were healthier and more productive in later life than those who didn’t. But we don’t do enough along these lines. The reason so many Americans remain trapped in poverty isn’t that the government helps them too much; it’s that it helps them too little.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/opinion/krugman-the-hammock-fallacy.html?ref=todayspaper (via shhaauun)
Minimum-wage jobs are physically demanding, have unpredictable schedules, and pay so meagerly that workers can't save up enough to move on.
In November, Congress cut food stamps for nearly 50 million people, and even more cuts are on the table.
While the right-wing has worked hard to smear SNAP recipients, here are stories of real, live people who have been affected by cuts to the government program that they depend on to...
The number of Americans who are poor enough to qualify for food stamps has increased by a disturbing 30 million in the last 13 years. In 2000, 17 million Americans were receiving food stamps; in 2013, the number is 47 million. Hoping to stir up racial tensions, far-right AM radio talk show hosts and Fox News wingnuts try to paint food stamp recipients as strictly or mostly people of color. But the facts don’t bear that out. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, roughly half of food stamp recipients are non-Hispanic whites (in Ohio, it’s around 65%). So when Republicans vote to cut food stamps, many of the people they are hurting are white. OnSeptember 19, Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to slash billions of dollars from the U.S. food stamp program during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s description of Obama as the “food stamp president” was obviously designed to inflame racial tensions and paint African Americans as freeloaders, but Gingrich neglected to mention that many of the people he considers freeloaders are actually white. When Republicans and the Tea Party contribute to hunger by attacking food stamps, people of color aren’t the only ones who suffer: Republicans are physically harming their own base. Slashing food stamp benefits won’t harm the Koch brothers or JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, but it will definitely harm poor whites in a place like McDowell County, West Virginia, which is 94% white (according to the U.S. Census Bureau), rural and has a life expectancy of only 63.9 for males and 72.9 for females (according to a report that the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington released in July 2013). If life expectancy is any indication, the economic conditions for white males in McDowell County aren’t much better than the economic conditions in Haiti, where, according to the World Health Organization, males have a life expectancy of 62. In contrast to McDowell County, that study showed a life expectancy of 81.4 for males and 85.0 for females in Marin County, California—which is affluent and heavily Democratic.
Owsley County, Kentucky is another example of a place that is predominantly white (97.6%), heavily Republican (Romney won 81% of the vote in Owsley County in 2012) and full of poverty. Bloomberg News has reported that in 2011, 52% of the county’s residents were receiving food stamps—which Rep. Hal Rogers, the Republican who represents Owsley County, voted in favor of slashing. From Kentucky to Mississippi to West Virginia, Republicans who were elected by an abundance of poor whites have voted in favoring of cutting food stamps.
There is no shortage of data on life expectancy that shows a downward trend for poor whites. In September 2012, the New York Times reported that poorer white males were dying much younger than more affluent white males: according to the Times, life expectancy had fallen to 67.5 years for the least educated white males compared to 80.4 for the more educated white males. And theTimes reported that life expectancy was 73.5 for the less educated white females compared to 83.9 for the more educated white females—which is also bad news for the GOP because even though white males are more likely than white females to vote Republican, white females are more likely to vote Republican than African American or Hispanic females. And depriving either white males or white females of access to food and healthcare certainly isn’t going to help them live longer.
I don't shop at Wal-Mart at all, and I don't shop on "Black Friday"--I'm just not into consumerism and corporatization. I encourage everyone to enjoy a day off work (if you get one) and spend time (on your family, your friends, or yourself) instead of money this Thanksgiving weekend.
I NEVER shop here anyway, but still, you shouldn’t either…
The real frauds are those who, in the face of facts, still choose to believe that individuals receiving a little over a hundred dollars worth of aid a month are greedy mooches yet take no issue with corporate welfare doled out to already thriving “people” to the tune of billions. Welfare queens exist, but you’re not going to find them in housing projects.
I had a feeling this guy was going to take the honors today.
Asshole of the Day, November 19, 2013: Tom Brower
by TeaPartyCat (Follow @TeaPartyCat)
Hawaii state Rep. Tom Brower has decided who deserves to have possessions and, more importantly, who doesn’t. And despite being a lawmaker, he decided the law wasn’t enough, so he has been going around town smashing the possessions of the homeless with a sledgehammer. Really.
Much like Batkid, Hawaii has found its own superhero. Except that instead of protecting the powerless from harm, he roams the streets with a sledgehammer and looks for homeless people in order to literally smash their possessions.
Remarkably, this vigilante isn’t just some random Hawaiian, but five-term State Rep. Tom Brower (D).
Noting that he’s “disgusted” with homeless people, Brower told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about his own personal brand of “justice”: “If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.” Brower has waged this campaign for two weeks, estimating that he’s smashed about 30 shopping carts in the process.
You see, he’s disgusted with homeless people, so that justifies his actions in his own mind. And he’s such an asshole that he thinks telling a newspaper is going to make him a hero. Let’s hope Hawaiian voters see him for the bully he really is.
After we posted the nomination of Rep. Brower, this reply came from Twitter which sums it all up:
@assholeofday Compassionate to homeless? No. Returned carts to stores that paid for them? No. Destroys property? Yes. Just a common criminal
— Heather (@SunLovingMama)
November 19, 2013
Just a common criminal. And we hope this asshole of the day is locked up.
Full story: http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/11/19/2966371/hawaii-homeless-smash/
Ugh!
This is an elected representative smashing a homeless person’s possessions with a sledgehammer. Worst person ever?
tbh we really need to have a conversation about digital poverty cos assuming all students have both their own laptop and a reliable wifi connection stinks of classism
Cinderella is (still) a heroine
Recently Keira Knightley mentioned that she doesn't allow her children to watch Cinderella, because "she did nothing and waited for a man to save her". Because she isn't "feminist" enough. Emma Watson too made about the same comments a few years back when she rejected the role of Cinderella. To be honest, I was extremely disappointed with both actresses's interpretation of the character, a bit more with Watson, because she is a UN ambassador for women. Cinderella is a domestic slave in a male dominated society. She's an orphan, her remaining(all female too! ) family appears to be financially unstable, and yes, she's a servant. Do you know how many women are actually in the same position today? MILLIONS. Moving on, with one of my favourite quotes about Cinderella: she didn't ask for a prince. She asked for a dress and a night off. She had every right to be at that ball, she even worked hard to be there, and yet her stepmother and sisters still found a way to sabotage her. Enter deus ex machina: the fairy godmother. Because social services didn't really exist at the time. She gets to the ball, she has fun, she even gets to meet the prince, and yet when her time is up, she just goes home. She doesn't beg anyone to take her in, she doesn't ask the prince to save her. Why? Maybe she's still too traumatised and scared to actually escape. Maybe she thinks she isn't worth that much anymore. So, home she goes, back to cleaning and cooking. This is where I'll stop narrating. This is enough. This is a story that has been true, is still true, and sadly will be true for countless young women. So, Keira and Emma, please tell me: what is a "strong woman" supposed to do when faced with poverty, abuse and has no access to education, welfare or even just a better job? Why does Cinderella have to be a role model, when she is in fact a victim? All these women in sweatshops, in the fields, in the kitchens of rich men's mansions, would really like to know: I'm I not "good enough" as a woman?
I think this is important for me to say, especially as someone who is far below the poverty line and disabled myself.
Now is the time to get fat, especially for people who are going to be put at risk by tariffs and restrictions on food stamps.
Now is the time to learn how to forage and how to use herbs to prevent and treat simple ailments.
Now is the time to learn first aid, how to stitch wounds, how to prevent a bullet wound from killing someone.
Now is the time to make plans to help disabled folks who can't run or defend themselves.
Now is the time to build muscle if you are physically able.
Now is the time to learn how to mend or create clothing.
Now is the time to try and transfer to physical media, and to transfer important information into something physical.
Now is the time to learn media literacy and how to decipher fake news.
Now is the time to understand that being a doomer will help no one, especially not yourself.
Things are going to shit. Prepare yourself as well as you are able. Don't spend your time worrying about impending doom, that won't help you. But what will help you is being prepared for things to go wrong. Start being more loving to the people who deserve it. Start taking care of yourself so that if at some point you can't, you'll have more time to change that fact. Start being hopeful. Start being angry if you aren't already. Start forgiving yourself, because you are your biggest ally. Start learning. About yourself. About how to support yourself. About the world. I love you, and we will all get through this via the aid of ourselves and others.
I want to write about the pain of it all, I want to write about the people I qued with outside of food banks; there was an old man who looked like a wise wizard with his long white hair, he waited for a small portion of pasta most days and offered me advice on the best times to turn up, there was a group of polish men with cans of alcohol shared between them, who at first assumed I was polish aswell and tried to talk to me, but all I could say was Przepraszam, nie wiem Polski the old man told me to stand next to him after that, there was also a brother and sister who where both addicted to heroine, most days they seemed to be going through intense withdrawals. We would all wait in a old medieval churchyard, some sat on toppled headstones while others leaned against stone angels with their faces covered. I want to write about what complete isolation and poverty does to you, how eyes don't meet yours and voices talk over you. But when I do, the room goes quiet and people look away, suddenly i feel the need to awkwardly laugh and say so yeah anyway.
More information on the foreign agent law.
"The world’s most primitive people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a small amount of goods, nor a relation between means and ends. Above all it is a relation between people.” - Marshall Sahlins
Photo by Megan Laws
Drive to vegas from Los Angeles there’s room an room beyond that this isn’t on the ride to Vegas path yuo take mountain in Hemet or near it HUD .gov no one’s seen it they haven’t seen it no one can 41,000 Holmes in Los Angeles we can build better want New flavor yuor need a 2 story grocery stores just see that it’s real never gonna fit in the ones we got
brick and fence poles cover the earth this should be houses they are renewable
Drive to vegas yuo an employee share same rest room drive any where just one of the many lines don’t let suck hit u in the face there’s room box life should be illegal apartments mobil manufactured there’s a jiant house on this block we arnt changing shape we can get on top of it .. write my name don’t vote like any one wants we people that yuo an me now short might look up to yuo no one coming ten years he will be ten we can get out an away from all this yuo werk at McDonald’s to me yo an yuo yuo just saved that guys life an yuo yuo would never yuor a tiny nurse or paper pusher or counter jockey an yuo teach kids yuor their first non parent adult Figure then yuol hav to find me … we the people learn it do it
Academic Elitism: an institutional issue
Sorry for being so rant-y lately, but the elitism of university has been a problem for me from the exact moment I accepted my scholarship with a signature and a handshake in high school. (The scholarship was later revoked due to state up-fuckery, but that’s another story, and I was already in too deep by the time they told me).
My parent’s house was only an hour north, my younger sister had already claimed my room, but I was excited. I was in the furthest dorm building, because that’s where the scholarship kids went, it was like a poor kid diversity hall, every few doors was someone from a completely different background, but we were all poor except our Swedish RA, and there was an odd pride in that. We all had various scholarships: robotics, dance team, nerds like me, etc. (not the football or hockey athletes though, they had their own dorm next to the library for… reasons, lol).
But being the last hall, it wasn’t actually full, most of us had entire rooms to ourselves, often whole suites; our hall was co-ed, but rooms were only occupied at every-other, staggered down the corridor. Only the front two halls were used, the back two closed off for construction or codes or something. We had to hike up the hill for dining halls, which was fine until snowdays that shut the whole campus down (and I mean west Michigan ones, with 4+ feet of powder and ice underneath). I had an old computer my dad got me for graduation and I didn’t know it was old until my peers started calling it a dinosaur. I had to use the library computers to write and print papers, and most places I went, I ran into the other scholarship kids. We didn’t talk much, just a head bob here and there, awareness at our similarities and an annoyed spite at being thrown together this way. It was lonely for everyone.
I had a purple flip phone I’d gotten only that calendar year (2009) and was still learning to text with (abbreviations? instant messaging? what?). My roommate had come down from Alaska to live near her dad, we’d talked in the summer, but I never saw her. I moved my things in and her stuff was on her side, I texted her about going to turn in paperwork and when I came back, there was a note on my bed and all her things were gone, she couldn’t do it, had never been away from home for even a night. She left a few mismatched socks and a bag of junk pens that I resented for years.
Social media was mostly a way to talk to people across campus and exchange homework and party times/locations. We posted over-edited photos of our food and still jogged with our mp3 players and ipods. But within two years, I had to trade in my computer three times and upgrade to a smartphone to keep up with the expectations of communication. Professors would cancel classes by emails an hour out, and if I was on campus, I simply didn’t get the message, running between classes with 19 credit hours and three jobs. Work would call in or cancel my appointments (tutoring) and I needed to be able to communicate at the rate of my peers, so though it wasn’t something we could easily afford, my parents let me get the smartphone and my dad helped me find computers that could keep up with writing papers and researching without having to go to the lab, which saved so much time.
There was little understanding for my suffering. I didn’t have a car, I had to call my parents and organize a time to get home or take the train which was more expensive than waiting around on an empty campus. They were often things that even the wealthiest students had to deal with, but there were so much more of them for us, more stress, more problems, more solutions, more consequences, and in some ways, more determination.
I spent plenty of breaks holed up in my room, but when the swine flu/H1N1 outbreak happened, guess where they quarantined students?
In our hall.
Not the back one that was closed. In the room attached to my suite.
After half a semester alone, suddenly strangers shared my bathroom. I never saw them, I would just hear the formidable click of the bathroom lock followed by the shower. A week later I got a blue half-sheet note in my mailbox about quarantines. The other kids were as pissed off, as we watched kids escorted in with blue masks and were told to just get cleaning wipes from the front desk –they ran out in a week.
We were the recyclable students, brought in to trade scholarships for university grade averages. Many of my friends were struggling with scholarship qualifications and gpas (which only encouraged my continual obsessive perfectionism and involvement).
We were expendable.
I didn’t understand the elitism then, or I did, but I’d twisted it in my head from years tossed between private and public schools. I was an invader, I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I wanted to be. I understood that I didn’t deserve it, that I had to work harder to stay. I completed Master’s coursework for my Bachelor’s degree, finishing two BA programs (anthropology and English: creative writing) and 2 minor programs in philosophy and world lit, lead several campus groups and volunteered with honor’s societies. I spent hours on campus every day, running home just to go to one job or the other. I slept about four hours a night and I still romanticize it because I loved it. And I was good at it. It was a closed system, easy to infiltrate, easy to watch and observe and follow, to feel protected from the world, but there were always ways that I came up short.
I didn’t have leggings or Northface fleeces or Ugg boots or name brand anything (except a pair of converse I got in 8th grade from my Babcia). I had old high school sweats and soccer shirts, hand-me-down clothes from sisters and cousins that mix-matched a style I thought was unique but I now understand screamed I don’t really belong here. Example: I went to propose an independent study to a professor I really admired and I panicked about what to wear. I still cringe at the memory, gahhhhhh, but I pulled on what I thought was a decent dress because it had no rips or stains or tears and though I’d picked it up from a clearance rack, it was the newest thing and therefore the best. But in retrospect, it was definitely a “party” dress, I grabbed a sweater, hoop earrings that had always been beautiful in my neighborhood, and heels I never wore otherwise, and presented my idea. This old professor was just like “um…did you dress up for me?” Clearly spooked by red flags and I realized my mistake. Saved by quick thinking I clarified “no, I have a presentation later,” and being a familiar face in the social sciences department, I let him assume I was dressed up as something. I just went in my sweats and t-shirts after that, got a haircut that tamed the wavy frizz and learned the importance of muted tones, cardigans, and flats.
I made a lot of interesting friends in the process, people who also stuck out from the American Academic culture: exchange students, older (non-traditional) students, rebels, and other poor kids. But that also meant that we all evolved during our time there, so friendship was quick and fleeting as we adapted or dropped out or remained oblivious, lost in our studies and dreams of changing the world or our lives.
I had no idea how to approach the dining halls because I could only afford the bronze plan that was included with my room+board scholarship. I could enter the hall ten times per week, with four included passes to the after-hours carry-out (this was an upgrade from the free high school lunch I was coming from). I met other kids on this plan and their dorm rooms had fridges and microwaves and shelves of ramen and mac’n’cheese. Mine was sparse, my fridge had jugs of water from the filtered tap in the common room, and though it had a shared kitchenette, it always smelled bad or was being used and the nearest grocery store was Meijers which was a 15-20 minute drive from campus. I used so much energy dividing up my meals and figuring out how to sneak food from the hall for later or just learn to not eat, which is another story involving malnutrition, broken bones, and the American Healthcare System.
We like to summarize the college experience with fond struggles. I went back to my old high school to watch my younger sisters’ marching band competition that first year (it’s MI, and they were good). My old art teacher (not much older than we were but she felt so much older at the time, also her maiden name was Erickson and so was her fiance’s so she didn’t “change” her name and that blows my mind to this day), anyway, she stopped me to ask how school was going, and I was not prepared to be recognized in anyway and stammered out something like “oh, yeah, stressful. Fun, cool, yeah,” like the eloquent well-educated student I was. And she said, “oh, I loved it, don’t you love it? Everything’s so charming, and being poor? Oh man, it’s hard for a while, but it’s so good to go through.”
I was dumbfounded at her reference to poverty as a thing to go through when you’re a student. I again had to remember that I was infiltrating places where people weren’t just marginally more well-off than I was, but far beyond, in a place where they couldn’t comprehend an alternative, couldn’t conceive of surviving poverty, of not having a reliable place to fall if you mess up, parents who couldn’t support you if things went wrong, who couldn’t save you from having to drop out if scholarships were canceled because the money just wasn’t there.
Talking with my parents never worked, and I recently found this video by The Financial Diet about Boomer shame in being poor, where many Millennials were united by it and it was #relatable. But all this is to say that there are so many layers and ways we develop in higher education that are often overlooked by the romantic nostalgia of the elite expectation. What we demand from education vs. what it offers us in return is rarely equal for students coming from poverty, and it starts with that first sacrifice of looking at money and deciding it has to be worth it to do something bigger, and that education is a necessary piece of that goal.
Now I live near Brown University, I’ve been to Harvard when we lived in Boston and recently took a trip to Yale with bold expectations. I am friends with several people who work at these places and I hear the same things: so many students are in a place where their obsessions are considered more important than the larger world, an argument that Shakespeare is a woman is more important to prove than the greater issues of sexism in society as a whole, while others are trained to look at data and the world as a pocketable fact-book, going to conferences and week-long summits and then off to D.C. to make important decisions about places they’ve never been to, for people they’ve never met, about problems they’ve never experienced.
It’s not new. It’s not romantic. It’s not nostalgic. It’s just sick.
I was horrified at New Haven. I have read so many social science reports and papers and experiments and academic bullshit that has come from professors at Yale with a big badge of ivy-league validation. So much of this research was focused on homelessness and culture clash and socio-economics in America, as that was my “dissertation” that got me discounted master’s classes for my BA in Anthropology. Anyway, my point was that I thought this noble, proud university that put out so much research was going to be situated in something of a utopia, where their research is put into practice. Obviously, I was wrong, but I didn’t expect how wrong. (I had also started reading Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House, so… there’s another thing).
My observations were validated by employees of ivy-league schools, who have watched over the past 2 decades as they grow more and more reclusive, hiding away from the public except through a few, probably well-intentioned, outstretched hands that do little to contribute to the world outside the university itself. These ivory towers are built by poaching: environments, observations, resources, research, and yeah, even students.
I love academia. I will sit in a library for hours just pulling down tomes (and putting them back in their proper locations like a dork) and drawing connections just for fun. But right now, I’m a bit bitter and spiteful and angry.
When something like Coronavirus sneaks up on us, we have a tendency to throw the most expendable people under the bus as quickly as we can, and all I can think about is my shadow of a suite-mate sneezing and coughing with swine flu for two weeks, at how I refused to use my own bathroom and listened to my hall-mates’ advice about showering at the rec center a mile away as we all collectively locked our bathroom doors and were left there by the university to get sick without insurance to help with any foreseeable costs.
It’s not the same now, they’ve rebuilt the entire section of the campus, it’s odd to see it, I wonder where they put the expendable kids. Or maybe they don’t accept them anymore. I’ve worked in college admissions since then, and it is a scary industry of politics and preference and hidden quotas and image-agendas. Not all schools are industry monsters, but when you’re expendable, they sure do feel like it, whether you graduate summa cum laude with two degrees, six awards, and five tasseled ropes around your neck or not.
I wish I had a positive message. I wish I was in a place to help people who feel expendable or like they can’t keep up with communications because of technology or language or network or environment. But I don’t have much right now. For all its posturing and linear progression, academia needs to create profit. All I can do is yell about this existing.
If you are feeling expandable in university, I can tell you you’re not alone. I can let you rant about all the small ways your peers don’t get it, whether its an accent they shit on or ceremonies you don’t have the right clothes for or textbooks you share with a friend to cut costs but then they hoard them. I can relate to you about guilt and that sneaking panic that fills you with anxiety at night as you question yourself and wonder if it’s worth it at all, if it’s necessary, if it’s okay to be expendable to follow something that feels bigger. I can validate your doubt and tell you that you’re not actually expendable, you’re a bridge.
I’m sorry it still works like this. I wish we figured out how to change it by now, I wish I had secret shortcuts to tell you about, that there was more accountability or hope, but I’m not seeing it lately. I hope you do. <3
I know that the blm is very, very important to report on but other major new networks, news journalists are unaware of another crisis that is taking place in Yemen. Please share, reblog these pics to get there attention ‼️.
18/70 shelter
My friend Ingrid and her husband are homeless right now and have not been eating well. Please send what you can to help them get nutritious food and stay sheltered! 🩷
PayPal: @IngridG1983
Venmo: @ingrid-gvaz (last 4 of phone number is 1859)
Cashapp (partner’s account): $freckleking87
