Tag: poor

television

30 Millions Americans Can Be Considered "Working Poor"

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The term “working poor” should be an oxymoron. If you work full time, you should not be poor, right? Unfortunately, more than 30 million Americans — one in four workers — are stuck in jobs that do not pay the basics for a decent life. Read that again. One in four – g-d damn! Then again, when the minimum wage hasn’t moved above $5.15 an hour since 1997, what do you expect..
A new POV special on PBS titled “Waging a Living” chronicles the day-to-day battles of four low-wage earners fighting to lift their families out of poverty. Its on PBS tonight at 10 PM. If you missed it, or can’t TiFaux it in time, I’m sure like other great PBS programming you’ll be able to watch it online. When I hear a hard working mother say, “I was brought up to believe in the “American Dream” that if you work hard you’ll be successful. I’ve worked hard my whole life and I’m still stuck. There’s no “American Dream” anymore.” I just want to cry.

politics

These People Are Not Refugees, They Are American Citizens

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Rep. Carolyn Kilpatrick from Detroit, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus just said in a speech aired on CNN,

“We come to you this morning as a sense of urgency. First of all, these people are not refugess, they are American citizens. They pay taxes, they raise their families, they help America grow and I wish the media would called them American citizens and not refugess which relegates them to another whole status.“

Well, well said. I will be noting which channels and media outlets refer to these people as refugees from now on. See also said that Detroit is offering to airlift out 500 families immediately and to house and feed them. That is probably around 2000 people. While that isn’t a whole lot, if a few more cities did the same we would have one issue resolved immediately.

politics

Margins Of Society at Center of Tragedy

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Now this is where the story gets really political: many of those still stuck at the center of this tragedy are people who for generations had been pushed to the margins of society. Poverty exhibits a bizarre sense of equality – the poor, white and black, are now equally suffering. Here are just a few views on this aspect of the southern situation:

  • Mark Naison, a white professor of African-American Studies at Fordham University in the Bronx wrote, “Is this what the pioneers of the civil rights movement fought to achieve, a society where many black people are as trapped and isolated by their poverty as they were by segregation laws? If Sept. 11 showed the power of a nation united in response to a devastating attack, Hurricane Katrina reveals the fault lines of a region and a nation, rent by profound social divisions.”
  • “We tend to think of natural disasters as somehow even-handed, as somehow random,” said Martin Espada, an English professor at the University of Massachusetts and poet of a decidedly leftist political bent who is Puerto Rican. “Yet it has always been thus: poor people are in danger. That is what it means to be poor. It’s dangerous to be poor. It’s dangerous to be black. It’s dangerous to be Latino.””Everything is God’s will,” said Charles Steele Jr., the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta. “But there’s a certain amount of common sense that God gives to individuals to prepare for certain things.” That means, Mr. Steele said, not waiting until the eve of crisis. “Most of the people that live in the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable are black and poor,” he said. “So it comes down to a lack of sensitivity on the part of people in Washington that you need to help poor folks. It’s as simple as that.”