Poverty...it's not sexy

[nadinbrzezinski]

But when you discuss SS, it's poverty, when you talk Medicare, it's poverty, union busting, poverty...

It is quite frankly around you, all around you.

I will spend the day again among working poor trying to improve their condition. I will spend my day among people who are being heroic, and will help to start change.

But they are poor, so really, it is not sexy...

[cvoogt]

1. and we're lucky

.. here in the US of A. Our poverty looks like middle class to so much of the world. So much of India could only dream of being poor in America. I hope one day we can solve not only our own poverty, but worldwide poverty.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. that is a rw talking point

And a tool of opression. Havinf an empty fridge, and not being able to afford more than cheao stsrches is low level malnutrition, for example

[cvoogt]

24. thanks

I had no idea that was a RW talking point. How did you know that? Geez.
If you have an empty fridge, at least you have a fridge. Low level malnutrition is still better than full-on malnutrition. We have trash pick-up services, for example, but much of the world lets their livestock eat their trash (including plastic etc), and then they eat their livestock. It's all relative and it's all bad.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

37. Dude, I have seen the same conditions here in the US that you speak of.

We are in no better shape than many a poor country is. It is just hidden slightly better.

[cvoogt]

40. I hear ya

I have not seen enough of the US to evaluate properly, I guess. I do agree it is well-hidden here. I know when I lived in downtown Atlanta I made myself face it and try to help out, rather than trying to ignore it. So much of the rest of America just confines it to certain areas of the city, or suburbs, or even deports homeless folks en-masse under some pretense. Disgusting and despicable, what happened in 1995 prior to the Olympics in Atlanta (they cleared out all the homeless in advance of the Olympics).

[deutsey]

47. Until recently, we also had a much better social safety net,

which is essentially in tatters now.

As a result, I don't think the poverty here is going to remain hidden for very long.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

48. I don't think so either.n/t

[cvoogt]

27. tool of oppression?

How exactly? I don't have any agenda, other than having witnessed poverty here and abroad, and having had visceral reactions to it wherever I have gone. In India last month, I wanted to help, and hated not being able to help everyone, but took comfort in helping the few people I could help. Same here. There are some homeless folks in my area and I give them some of my groceries sometimes. A drop in the bucket but better than nothing I guess.

[nadinbrzezinski]

32. Ok, let me explain this as basically as I can

Our propaganda machine has this great message that we are number one. Nothing happens in the US that is just as bad as the rest of the world. We have it better...american exceptionalism, city on the hill, how dare you think otherwise? This is where it becomes a tool of oppression. It leads to people not questioning anything, and to the manufacturing of consent.

I cover labor, I cover poverty issues. I have not gone as far as Eirerbarch and done undercover for a nickel and dime story. But I talk to people who at the lowest levels of society are FINALLY starting to get tired and gone on ... wait for it, HUNGER STRIKE, demanding the most basic of respect.

This is bubbling up now, because the right wing media talking point, that our poor are better off, nothing to see here and worry about, is sounding pretty hollow anymore.

This is how it is a tool of oppression. I hope this makes some sense.

[cvoogt]

33. Yeah, I know about all that

and buy none of it. I love America, and want it to live up to its promise. I don't, however, love blindly. I am coming at this from a different, non-RW angle. You don't know me, and I don't know you. I grew up mostly lower middle class, for a while below or at the poverty line. I see life for the fleeting thing that it is, and value all lives. So, I think I may have heard about the RW talking point about the poor here being better off (I think Rachel Maddow covered it at one point), but I draw a completely opposite conclusion. Whereas the RW uses this as a reason to not do shit about the poor, I say; we're in a better position to take care of our poor than many nations are, so why on earth don't we?

[nadinbrzezinski]

35. Because they are lazy bastards, and not among the chosen few

That is Calvin at it's best. I hate to put it in these terms, but these attitudes did not start today... and they are ideologically driven and have, many at times, nothing to do with good business practices.

Raise minimum wage to a living wage, instant stimulus, more consumption, more income to corporations. This still makes zero ideological sense.

[cvoogt]

39. It's not laziness

Or callous indifference even. At the very tippy-top I think the Randians are true believers and think their Darwinist attitude will lead to a 'pure' America full of creative and well-paid and well-deserving individuals. The selfish bastards running corporations think 'money now is always better than money later' which leads to short-tem economic decisions such as advocating for lowering or eliminating the minimum wage (thanks to Costco for not following that mold!).

Calvin was a dangerous radical and he unfortunately infected so much of the founding of the US. I wish the Christians in the US would follow Jesus more than Calvin, but then they'd be following a Middle Eastern radical, and we can't have that.

There are companies who see beyond income, beyond just profit. They are still few and far between but the corporate social responsibility movement is gathering steam. I hope it doesn't get hijacked by the evil corps who want to use it only to improve their own image and profits - there is a lot of that going on.

So much of this makes me think of John Lennon; "I'm sick and tired of hearing things about short-sighted narrow-minded hypocritics; all I want is the truth."

[sabrina 1]

6. Really? One of five American children go to bed hungry every night.

Malnourished children do not grow up to be healthy adults.

You need to visit some of America's poorest areas before saying they 'look like middle class to so much of the world'. Maybe we could solve the problem of poverty in the rest of the world if we had some laws in place that required that major Corporations like Walmart eg, abide by the same labor laws they would have to abide for here when the outsource jobs to third world countries and pay them so little wages they cannot feed their families.

'We' may be lucky, but there are too many Americans who are not.

[midnight]

13. A point that needs to be at the front of the entitlement and tax cut for the wealthy discussions....

[nadinbrzezinski]

19. Need to sit down

And write today's story, talked with a county board of education member and how this low level malnutrition affects learning.

Here is a fun fact, according to this board member, the most successful education programs involve food and health care, including access to a dentist. (Paging PCintrrn, he would smile I am sure)

But first I need some water.

[cvoogt]

21. I have been poor in America.

I speak from experience. I was lucky in that I had the immigrant experience, in a way. We were at or below the poverty line for the first 5 years that we were here, but we did alright after that. But I know there is enormous inequality and it kills me that our tax dollars go to fund wars abroad and barely help the poor among us. We had times when my birthday present was a happy meal toy, or we had gas spill in the trunk of the car and get in the groceries, but we still ate the bread even though it tasted like gasoline. I know: I've been there.

I have also been to other parts of the world and seen what goes on there. It breaks my heart EVERYWHERE. In Atlanta, the homeless got shoved out of the city, out of sight, out of mind, because the Olympics were coming. When I was there I would sometimes take a homeless person to a local eatery, or give them bagels from the local gas station. Not that I could really afford to (I was in debt myself) but I sure as hell could afford it more than they could.

That said, the poor among us are still better off than the poor in some other parts of the world, and I don't care if anyone thinks it's a RW talking point because I am the farthest you can get from RW. When Bush got selected in 04, I moved to Amsterdam in part because I thought the US had lost its collective mind. I dearly wish we could adopt a more socialist and equitable system, like what Holland had until they started making things more free-market, of late. I wish Obama would be much more liberal in his actual policy-making.

In the US I have never seen a 6 year old girl hawking her 6 month old sister as her own daughter in the hopes of receiving a nickel, or homeless folks missing several limbs asking for money for food, or eight year old boys drinking gasoline while selling napkins to stranger. I'm sure others have but my point is it is much more prevalent elsewhere and things are relative. That isn't diminishing anything about the situation here in the US. Both are dire, but elsewhere it is simply more widespread and more severe. I just got back from India and Ethiopia so maybe my opinions are coloured by those recent experiences, since they affected me deeply.

[nadinbrzezinski]

34. It is not that you think it is a RW talking point

It is a meme, like other better known RW talking points, that become part of the general culture and the accepted reality, even if that reality is not well real. They are quite insidious by the by. The goal, well you see, our poor have it golden, why do you complaint?

As to your last paragraph, I met an eight year run away kid trying to get a buck. I got that kid lunch, talked to him, something nobody had done. He was a run away, trying to get city services FAST, was like impossible.

And just because we do not have a six year old doing that, yet, does not mean it will not happen.

What you experienced was a different form of poverty, that is all. I served as a Paramedic in Tijuana for ten years. I saw things in the ciudades perdidas that would shock most americans, well except in the Catskills, and Appalachia. (Or my aforementioned East County.)

But food insecurity is going up, we have a malnutrition crisis, it is really ugly. You experienced it, so I don't have to tell you.

Some of the things we have found in common, for example, are what fire firefighters consider just shacks. Well those shacks, trust me, pass any kind of inspection, never would happen, are homes for some of my East County denizens. I would love to do a photo essay of the face of poverty in the US. I have no issue showing the truly ugly.

So no, we do not have a six year old passing her kid sister... yet... just wait at the pace we are going. And the reaction here will be the same, since I grew up in Mexico City where you saw that regularly, people will just walk around it like nothing happened.

So no, we don't have kids with Vitamin A deficiency, or rickets, we have lower forms of malnutrition. For the record, we will again, if we do not reverse the current trends.

As to fascism, welcome to globalization.

[cvoogt]

36. Seen poverty in Appalachia

Know what you mean. Last month I got pickpocketed by an 8 year old high on gasoline .. in Addis Ababa. Still shocked and affected, partly because I have a son around that same age. I got my money back, because my taxi driver caught the kid and punched him in the jaw until he told him where he'd hidden the money. I didn't even care about the money after the first punch landed, but I had nowhere to go .. was dependent on the taxi driver.

I have seen how people just ignore it ... all around the world, including NYC, Atlanta etc. Suburbanites will drive into town and instinctively roll up their windows and lock the car once they get off the highway. In Atlanta I saw a guy with a gunshot entry/exit wound in his head... buying beer to self-medicate. Nobody did a damn thing - including me, sad to say. If I saw it today, I hope I would handle it differently. Most of all I feel so powerless to change things for the better.

I find it so ironic that the right eschews Darwinism when it comes to science, but embraces when it comes to social justice and economics.

[cvoogt]

41. not golden

I certainly don't ascribe to that. What I don't get about the RW is their insistence on relying on charity over the common good, err, welfare / socialism. I guess the latter are dirty words.

We are the proverbial frog in a frying pan. The gap between rich and poor is growing rapidly, and the rich mostly don't care or actively despise the 'others'. The West in general is in a position to take care of the needy, and in liberal Europe that does happen, though less than it used to, but somehow I think our American individualism and Calvinist roots continue to make that hard to achieve here, when we could do (and have done) great things here given the collective willpower. Instead we're contemplating cutting SS benefits - WTF?

[sabrina 1]

46. Very good post and you sound like a wonderful person.

I know that there are parts or the world where the poverty is killing children, such as Afghanistan eg. Parents are selling their children to wealthy people to protect them from dying. Many die anyhow, it is a tragic situation. Imagine if we had spent all that war money on the people there, how much more effective it would have been for us and for them.

As for pushing the homeless out because of the Olympics, that happened in NYC also, under Giuliani, that time so that his rich friends wouldn't have to see them as he 'cleaned up the city'.

What is so sad is that what we spend on wars could probably take care of the entire world's hungry people but there is little incentive in this country to do that.

I don't blame you for leaving when Bush was installed in the WH. Many of us would have done so too if we could have.

Thanks for your post, sorry if I came across as being angry, but we are very used to the Right here attempting to diminish the poverty and inequality here. That was no excuse though for me to react the way I did. I agree with what you say.

[cvoogt]

25. good point

I would LOVE for Walmart to follow some kind of labor laws. Even our own US labor laws suck, but they're better than what those corpo-fascists are doing abroad.

"I" am certainly lucky. I'm half American but had the immigrant experience, and we were poor for first few years. I'm not so dense as to be impervious to the existence of poverty all around me and I won't ever forget what it was like, and help out where I can. In relative terms we still had it pretty good (we had a microwave!), so it makes me appreciate just how 'lucky' we were.

[Cleita]

8. That was true back in the fifties. Today our homeless are no better off than

the homeless in any third world country. I see no difference in our homeless sleeping on the streets of our cities than the homeless sleeping on the streets of India's large cities.

[etherealtruth]

12. Sorry, I posted your sentiments (almost exactly)

... prior to reading through all the responses. My immediate reaction to the post in question was visceral ... I felt I had to respond immediately. Then I read all the responses.. sorry.

[Cleita]

15. No need to apologize. The more posts. The more reinforcement of the truth. eom

[nadinbrzezinski]

20. Alas, I am not even speaking of homeless

One of the great myth is that our working poor are dong better 'cause you know, they got a tv, and a microwave and a fridge.

Well, the reality is that I saw fridges and TVs and microwaves in the Ciudades Perdidas in Tijuana. The reality is that poverty is rising at explosive rates, in for example suburban areas. Oh and I have seen the same level of poverty here in the San Diego East County as the Ciudades Perdidas, with dirt roads and everything.

In fact, one reason for us to replace the 4x4 truck with the jeep is...I need to be able to drive up those same dirt roads, many a times chasing type 3 engines.

But the our poor do better than theirs is a powerful talking point.

I now need to write the short interview about that subject for ECM, (one connection as to why the strike matters to the East County), for the boss...and them the rest of the day's coverage.

[cvoogt]

22. I agree

Poverty is rising everywhere, and fascism is to blame. Corporations now exert such power on government that I don't see how it can't be called fascism. That being said, the working poor in the US do by and large have it better than those in many other parts of the world, but that doesn't make any of it OK. I have seen poverty rise in my own suburban area, where I would never have expected it. I have been dirt-poor before, for many years. I've had family and family friends in the same boat, without even electricity, no running water. It takes a lot to shock me, but India and Ethiopia shocked me, beyond anything I have seen in the US. Maybe because it was just a different form of poverty, or maybe because it was worse - I don't really know which. I've been a witness to a homeless man getting amputated for the third time due to gangrene in Atlanta, but thankfully he had anesthesia. I wonder if all the limbless homeless folks in Delhi had anesthesia. Anyway my point is it is ALL bad, and I wish we could make a more significant dent in it EVERYWHERE.

[Win-the-fight]

28. The Fascists Koch Brothers and Goldman Sachs are responsible for poverty everywhere

They lobbied our government to start speculating on our fuel....how much does that cost the poor in gas, heat, increased food prices?

How Koch Became An Oil Speculation Powerhouse
From Inventing Oil Derivatives To Deregulating The Market
http://thinkprogress.org/report/koch-oil-speculation/

Getting Rich Off The Poor: How The Koch Brothers Wealth Grew 43% Since 2010
http://www.politicususa.com/koch-brothers-wealth.html


meanwhile Goldman Sachs started speculation on our food....directly hitting the poorest once again.

These assholes affect worldwide food prices so they are causing millions to starve worldwide..because of our government and our stock market.

It is our responsibility to demand they end speculation on our commodities and fuel.. for the whole world's sake.

[cvoogt]

30. They pulled a slow one on us

Over the course of a few decades our nation has been turned into one ruled by corporatists. And now our taxes go to helping those corporations out, and funding wars that in turn help those corporations some more. It's welfare, just not the kind we should be supporting.

[nadinbrzezinski]

31. Because it was a different form of poverty

that is why it shocked you.

[etherealtruth]

10. Oh for the love of Pete

.... there's a whole lot of difference in being hungry in the slums of Kolkata than there is living under an overpass and being hungry in Detroit ... this is only true if one is spouting right wing talking points.

I too would like to see an end to world wide hunger/ poverty, but I sure as hell am not going to diminish the suffering that goes on right here in America!

[cvoogt]

23. hmm

I don't know what the RW talking points are since I don't follow any of that, I just react to what I have experience personally. Don't think I am diminishing anyone's suffering; it's all bad. In some place it is just more widespread and more extreme than in the US. That is just a fact. The difference between living under an overpass in the US and living under an overpass in Agra (let's say) is in the US you may be able to get your gangrene leg amputated WITH anesthesia in emergency care, whereas in Agra you might not have that 'luxury'. I've seen some pretty shocking poverty in the US, but more shocking in India, Ethiopia etc, plain and simple. Doesn't make the suffering in the US any less significant. If you are the one living through it, it's bad and society should be there for you to help you out. I'd like to see humanity get beyond just individual countries helping out their own poor, and band together to improve conditions for poor around the world. I'll settle for #1 any day, and even that is asking too much, perhaps.

[Aristus]

14. ...

[Lady Freedom Returns]

38. +1n/t

[zappaman]

2. Water...It's not dry. n/t

[ananda]

4. Also, being poor is not something people like or want.

..

[pintobean]

5. So, you're hiring

and paying fair wages?

[sabrina 1]

7. I imagine if Nadin had a business she would pay fair wages. But that would

be a drop in the bucket of what is needed to address poverty. Or do you think that in order to try to do something about poverty everyone needs to start their own business? Not everyone can afford to do that.

But those who can, like Walmart, eg, should have to pay a livable wage. One thing people can do is try to change the laws so that Big Corps do not get tax breaks or subsidies when they go to other countries and pay workers so little they can barely survive. Electing candidates who, eg, would vote to apply the same labor laws to American Corps who go to third world countries, as they would have to abide by here. This would either force them to pay more to their work force abroad, or hire Americans and pay them a livable wage.

[Tumbulu]

9. Excellent post (nt)

[cvoogt]

26. I am

In fact. I could have outsourced and paid super low wages, but insisted on hiring locally and paying at least twice the minimum wage.

[midnight]

11. K&R

[JDPriestly]

16. Thank you. Nadine, you are my hero.

You put your feet where others put their mouths.

Thanks so much.

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. Trst me, the heroes are the ones going on a hunger strike

I report, so others learn.

[Beacool]

17. No, it isn't.

Poverty is scary.

[woo me with science]

29. All those poor people are just "poutragers."

throwing hissy fits.

"I want a pony! I want food and shelter!"

The real level of compassion of the Third Way element of our party is no longer being concealed. The mask of pretending to care about the same issues we do has dropped, and their vicious contempt for the responses of seniors and the poor to this assault on our already tattered safety nets is on full display.

This is the attitude that claims to represent our party now. Don't think that people aren't paying attention.

[TheKentuckian]

42. Fuckin A!

[Lady Freedom Returns]

43. I hear so many on the other side, and some on our side, talk about how bad it is not...

that people are not going hungry and there is plenty of help.

I just want to take them to the streets to see first hand.

I would grab my pack again to take some of those people to see what it is for real.

I would allow them to bring two sets of cloths. One they are wearing and one other. I would let them use my "Obama Phone" as they are known. They can not have more than... Oh I'll be nice, $10. No Credit or Debit Cards. And a Blanket and a pack.

1 month to get the full effect. But they would change their minds in a week or less.

[nadinbrzezinski]

44. Mayor Maureen O'Connor many decades back

decided to know what was the situation in San Diego, so she did that for a weekend... she went to the shelter, she went to the canyons, you know the drill.

Her rewards from the voters back then was to be voted out, damn progressive, commie even.

She did lay the seed. I am telling you, I am seeing that plant start to bear fruit.

Been posting here quite a bit of it...

http://nadinabbottblog.wordpress.com/

And also add this.

http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/node/12938

I do not share the experience of actually being in the streets, but after ten years as a medic I saw poverty, never experienced it, first hand. So these days, I try to cover these issues, labor and poverty are connected.

[Lady Freedom Returns]

45. Being a Medic, I have no dout that you saw more than your fair share.

I remember that it was the EMT people that showed the mot concern for the street people in Joplin MO, Springfield MO, and even here in Tucson AZ.

I remember seeing some EMT's out giving blankets out on their time off in the winter in Springfield. I have even seen EMT's here in Tucson passing out water trying to keep the street people hydrated.

Medics, Nurses, ER Doctors. They see the hardness.