Say it like you mean it, "We're In Charge!"
Last night, I finally got around to seeing Hustle & Flow, and I am so sorry it took me so long. As happy as I was with the Oscars choice of Crash as best picture (I don't think I ever agree with them, but I can be pleased with them--and I take issue with Stephen King who oversimplified the movie way too much in his newest Entertainment Weekly column), Hustle & Flow deserves it more than any of the contenders. What it does brilliantly, which I think is at the heart of what needs to happen when we talk about politics in America, is that it manages to illustrate how class and race work together and separately in dividing America, and, most importantly, it finds its glimmer of hope without prettying up any significant aspect of the picture.
Where does the hope remain at the end of the movie? It's not in the system, which pits the successful against the unsuccessful. And it's not in the virtuous individual--everyone's morally pretty tangled here and our protagonist's weaknesses are tied so closely to his strengths that there's no certainty he'll survive his stint in prison much less whatever's waiting for him on the other side. But it does lie in the dream, the vision--a vision voiced by DJ Qualls, a geeky white kid who firmly believes that everyone has a right to contribute their verse to the future, and a vision that ties Anthony Anderson's "middle class" future to our family of protagonists. The real hope lies in the women, played by Taryn Manning (Nola) and Taraji P. Henson (Shug), who hold things together and keep the dream alive.
Proverbs 29: 18 says, "Where there is no vision, the people perish." It's an often repeated refrain in the Bible, and perhaps it is as close to the central lesson of the Bible and any other religious scripture. We have to be able to see something worth living for in order to live a life worth living. It's harder than it sounds, and I think it's something most of us struggle with every day. A friend of mine commented not long ago that my blog was depressing, and that threw me for a loop because I don't see it that way, but it also made it clear to me that vision is the thing we all need to come back to time and again.
No doubt the best thing I've seen that's been written about Hustle & Flow was written by Kevin Gray, a South Carolina political activist and a contributor to Holler If You Hear Me, the blog that more or less dragged me into this little experiment in the first place. His essay has just been reprinted at Black Commentator, and I think it does a much better job than I'm doing suggesting the political significance of this movie as well as a vision of how we might begin to change the dynamics that suspend all of us in some aspect of the struggle defined by the movie.
To put it simply, the apathy and despair people feel about the politics of our society are rooted in the reality that the system is designed not to work in the interest of the individual, or the little guy, but in the interest of wealth. The end to apathy and despair comes with accepting the fact that the real hope lies in the prisoner talking to his prison guards about their hip hop ideas at the end of the movie, the prostitute taking charge and pimping her people's music to whatever radio stations she can reach--each person finding a role that contributes to a larger social revolution where our talents are welcomed and nurtured because they are helping to unlock the potential of others. In many ways, the music industry (for instance) works in the exact opposite way today--talented people are a threat to less talented people with position and fans who promote the music for free are sued for working outside of the industry's control. (The RIAA can call it stealing all they want, but the industry doesn't care about stealing--it's done that for years; it does care about who's doing the "stealing.")
Anyway, last night, after the movie, I was heartened to read an article by about the U.S. Social Forum's plans for regional social forums to take place this summer. 60 organizations, including "The Ordinary People's Society from Alabama, the Miami Workers Center and the Mississippi Workers Center, as well as the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, Black Workers for Justice from North Carolina, the Homeless POWER Project from Nashville, the Georgia Citizens Coalition on Hunger and the Atlanta Metro Task Force for the Homeless" plan to meet this summer to make a regional plan for next year's national U.S. Social Forum conference. Their vision? "Another South is Possible" Their strategic goal? To build a movement for social justice like nothing this country's seen at least since the Civil Rights Movement.
In their despair, people ask me all the time why there is no movement to actually change things in this country. Here are people laying the bricks. Why not get in touch to lend a hand?
As DJay and Nola say in Hustle & Flow, "We're In Charge." We are. And the sooner we join hands at the wheel, the better.
Danny
Kevin Gray's great piece on Hustle & Flow can be found here--
http://www.blackcommentator.com/175/175_think_gray_crossroads_race_class_art.html
More about "Another South Is Possible" can be found here--
http://www.peoplestribune.org/PT.2006.03/PT.2006.03.7.html
Friday, March 17, 2006
Saturday, February 18, 2006
There's a Way.... Where's the Will?
"Where's the Love?" --Black-Eyed Peas
"Martin Luther King had a dream, Aaliyah had a dream, Left Eye had a dream" -- The Game
I received these statistics (posted below) on world poverty today. My last post was "The All-American Hate Crime," and they support the point in endless ways. If we want to end hate crimes, we should regularly study these statistics and think about what they mean.
Consider how easy it would be for America to take the lead in turning all of these statistics around. Also, consider how the statistics show that we run in the other direction. I don't "blame America first." I love America. I love America because it stands for a dream of equality and justice. But I also love it enough to want it to grow up and make me proud.
What's pretty plain no matter how you slice it (because all the real power in the world lies in the hands of a fraction of 1% of the population) is that there's 99 kids on the playground who don't know how to end the tyranny perpetuated on behalf of the 1. That's not a call for violent revolution; it's a call for us to simply step up and put the runt in his place. The technological revolution is already here, and so's the violence--it's in the statistics.
Some day, hopefully soon, we'll look back at this era and wonder what took us so long to wake up to our potential. Our music tells us the same thing over and over again--because without it, without some piece of the vision, we couldn't sing. As a great man once sang, "I'm not the only one."
Danny
Shocking summary of facts on world poverty--why do we tolerate this?
Poverty Facts and Stats - Global Issueshttp://aolsvc.weather.aol.com/main.adp?location=USAZ0068Poverty Facts and StatsAuthor and Page informationSkip this section and go straight to the main contentby Anup Shah
This Page Last Updated Saturday, June 11, 2005
This page: http://www.blogger.com/.To print full details (expanded/alternative links, side notes, etc.) use the printer-friendly version: http://www.blogger.com/Consider the following poverty statistics
Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day. source 1
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined. source 2
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. source 3
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen. 4
51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations. source 5
The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation. source 6
The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money. source 7
20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s goods. source 8
The top fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct investment — the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%. source 9
In 1960, the 20% of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% — in 1997, 74 times as much. source 10
An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about: 3 to 1 in 1820
11 to 1 in 1913
35 to 1 in 1950
44 to 1 in 1973
72 to 1 in 1992source 11
“The lives of 1.7 million children will be needlessly lost this year [2000] because world governments have failed to reduce poverty levels” source 12
The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants. source 13
A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people. source 14
“The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4 per cent of global exports.” source 15
“The combined wealth of the world’s 200 richest people hit $1 trillion in 1999; the combined incomes of the 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries is $146 billion.” source 16
“Of all human rights failures today, those in economic and social areas affect by far the larger number and are the most widespread across the world’s nations and large numbers of people.” source 17
“Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.” source 18
According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year. source 19
For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980].
For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980).
Among the findings:
Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalization.source 20
“Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity.” source 21
The richest 50 million people in Europe and North America have the same income as 2.7 billion poor people. “The slice of the cake taken by 1% is the same size as that handed to the poorest 57%.” source 22
The world’s 497 billionaires in 2001 registered a combined wealth of $1.54 trillion, well over the combined gross national products of all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa ($929.3 billion) or those of the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and North Africa ($1.34 trillion). It is also greater than the combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity. source 23
A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World. source 24
Consider the global priorities in spending in 1998--
Global Priority $U.S. Billions
Basic education for everyone in the world 6
Cosmetics in the United States 8
Water and sanitation for everyone in the world 9
Ice cream in Europe 11
Reproductive health for all women in the world 12
Perfumes in Europe and the United States 12
Basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world 13
Pet foods in Europe and the United States 17
Business entertainment in Japan 35
Cigarettes in Europe 50
Alcoholic drinks in Europe 105
Narcotics drugs in the world 400
Military spending in the world 780 source 25
Number of children in the world 2.2 billion--
Number in poverty 1 billion (every second child)
Shelter, safe water and health--
For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:
640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)
Children out of education worldwide 121 million
Survival for children--
Worldwide,10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy)
1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation
Health of children--
Worldwide,2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized
15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom)source 26
The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world “rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.”
In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s assets in 2004. source 27Notes and Sources1)
This figure is based on purchasing power parity (PPP), which basically suggests that prices of goods in countries tend to equate under floating exchange rates and therefore people would be able to purchase the same quantity of goods in any country for a given sum of money. That is, the notion that a dollar should buy the same amount in all countries. Hence if a poor person in a poor country living on a dollar a day moved to the U.S. with no changes to their income, they would still be living on a dollar a day.
In addition, see the following:Ignacio Ramonet, The politics of hunger, Le Monde diplomatique, November 1998The 9th International Anti-Corruption Conference Plenary Address by James Wolfensohn, August 2000March recognizes the billions living on less than two dollars a day, EarthTimes.org, October 24, 2000
The poverty lines: population living with less than 2 dollars and less than 1 dollar a day from PovertyMap.net provides two maps showing the concentration of people living on less than 1 and 2 dollars per day, around the world.
Also note that these numbers, from the World Bank, have been questioned and criticized. The World Bank has been criticized for almost arbitrarily coming up with a definition of a poverty line to mean one dollar per day (of which they say there are about 1.3 billion people). That figure and how it has been chosen has been much criticized by many, as shown by University of Ottawa Professor, Michel Chossudovsky in the previous link.
In addition, in the United States for example, the poverty threshold for a family of four has been estimated to be around eleven dollars per day. The one dollar a day definition then misses out much of humanity to understand the impacts. Even the two dollars per day that I have pointed out here, while affecting half of humanity, also misses out the numbers under three or four, or eleven dollars per day. These statistics are harder to find, and as I come across them, I will post them here!
More fundamental than that though, for example, is a critique from Columbia University, called How not to count the poor. The report describes an ill-defined poverty line, a misleading and inaccurate measure of purchasing power equivalence, and false precision as the three main errors that may lead to “a large understatement of the extent of global income poverty and to an incorrect inference that it has declined.” (Emphasis added).
This allows the World Bank to insist that the world is indeed “on the right track” in terms of poverty reduction strategy, attributing this “success” to the design and implementation of “good” or “better policies”.
But the statistic is not lost on some of the most prominent people in the world The New York Times in one of their email updates, in their Quote of the Day section, for July 18, 2001 provided the following quote: “A world where some live in comfort and plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day, is neither just, nor stable.” — President Bush
See also James Wolfenson, The Other Crisis, World Bank, October 1998 who said: “Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity.” (See also note 21 below.)
Koffi Anan, UN Secretary General, in a speech on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, 17 October 2000, said “Almost half the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day, yet even this statistic fails to capture the humiliation, powerlessness and brutal hardship that is the daily lot of the world’s poor.”
2) Ignacio Ramonet, The politics of hunger, Le Monde Diplomatique, November 19983) The State of the World’s Children, 1999, UNICEF4) State of the World, Issue 287 - Feb 1997, New Internationalist5) See the following:Holding Transnationals Accountable, IPS, August 11, 1998Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power, by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh, Institute for Policy Studies, November 20006) The Corporate Planet, Corporate Watch, 19977) Debt - The facts, Issue 312 - May 1999, New Internationalist8) 1998 Human Development Report, United Nations Development Programme9) 1999 Human Development Report, United Nations Development Programme10) Ibid11) Ibid12) Missing the Target; The price of empty promises, Oxfam, June 200013) Global Development Finance, World Bank, 199914) Economics forever; Building sustainability into economic policy PANOS Briefing 38, March 200015) Human Development Report 2000, p. 82, United Nations Development Programme16) Ibid, p. 8217) Ibid, p. 7318) World Resources Institute Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems, February 2001, (in the Food Feed and Fiber section).
Note, that dispite the food production rate being better than population growth rate, there is still so much hunger around the world.
19) See the following:Progress of Nations 2000, UNICEF, 2000;Robert E. Black, Saul S Morris, Jennifer Bryce, Where and why are 10 million children dying every year?, The Lancet, Volume 361, Number 9376, 28 June 2003. (Note, while the article title says 10 million, their paper says 10.8 million.)State of the World’s Children, 2005, UNICEF (this cites the number as 10.6 million in 2003)Note that the statistic cited uses children as those under the age of five. If it was say 6, or 7, the numbers would be even higher.20) The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: Twenty Years of Diminished Progress, by Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, Egor Kraev and Judy Chen, Center for Economic Policy and Research, August 2001.21) James Wolfenson, The Other Crisis, World Bank, October 1998, quoted from The Reality of Aid 2000, (Earthscan Publications, 2000), p.1022) Larry Elliott, A cure worse than the disease, The Guardian, January 21, 200223) John Cavanagh and Sarah Anderson , World’s Billionaires Take a Hit, But Still Soar, The Institute for Policy Studies, March 6, 200224) Maude Barlow, Water as Commodity - The Wrong Prescription, The Institute for Food and Development Policy, Backgrounder, Summer 2001, Vol. 7, No. 325) Consumerism, Volunteer Now! (undated)26) State of the World’s Children, 2005, UNICEF27) Eileen Alt Powell, Some 600,000 join millionaire ranks in 2004, Associate Press, June 9, 2005
www.rockrap.com
"Where's the Love?" --Black-Eyed Peas
"Martin Luther King had a dream, Aaliyah had a dream, Left Eye had a dream" -- The Game
I received these statistics (posted below) on world poverty today. My last post was "The All-American Hate Crime," and they support the point in endless ways. If we want to end hate crimes, we should regularly study these statistics and think about what they mean.
Consider how easy it would be for America to take the lead in turning all of these statistics around. Also, consider how the statistics show that we run in the other direction. I don't "blame America first." I love America. I love America because it stands for a dream of equality and justice. But I also love it enough to want it to grow up and make me proud.
What's pretty plain no matter how you slice it (because all the real power in the world lies in the hands of a fraction of 1% of the population) is that there's 99 kids on the playground who don't know how to end the tyranny perpetuated on behalf of the 1. That's not a call for violent revolution; it's a call for us to simply step up and put the runt in his place. The technological revolution is already here, and so's the violence--it's in the statistics.
Some day, hopefully soon, we'll look back at this era and wonder what took us so long to wake up to our potential. Our music tells us the same thing over and over again--because without it, without some piece of the vision, we couldn't sing. As a great man once sang, "I'm not the only one."
Danny
Shocking summary of facts on world poverty--why do we tolerate this?
Poverty Facts and Stats - Global Issueshttp://aolsvc.weather.aol.com/main.adp?location=USAZ0068Poverty Facts and StatsAuthor and Page informationSkip this section and go straight to the main contentby Anup Shah
This Page Last Updated Saturday, June 11, 2005
This page: http://www.blogger.com/.To print full details (expanded/alternative links, side notes, etc.) use the printer-friendly version: http://www.blogger.com/Consider the following poverty statistics
Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day. source 1
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined. source 2
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. source 3
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen. 4
51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations. source 5
The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation. source 6
The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money. source 7
20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s goods. source 8
The top fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct investment — the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%. source 9
In 1960, the 20% of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% — in 1997, 74 times as much. source 10
An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about: 3 to 1 in 1820
11 to 1 in 1913
35 to 1 in 1950
44 to 1 in 1973
72 to 1 in 1992source 11
“The lives of 1.7 million children will be needlessly lost this year [2000] because world governments have failed to reduce poverty levels” source 12
The developing world now spends $13 on debt repayment for every $1 it receives in grants. source 13
A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people. source 14
“The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4 per cent of global exports.” source 15
“The combined wealth of the world’s 200 richest people hit $1 trillion in 1999; the combined incomes of the 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries is $146 billion.” source 16
“Of all human rights failures today, those in economic and social areas affect by far the larger number and are the most widespread across the world’s nations and large numbers of people.” source 17
“Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.” source 18
According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”That is about 210,000 children each week, or just under 11 million children under five years of age, each year. source 19
For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980].
For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980).
Among the findings:
Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalization.source 20
“Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity.” source 21
The richest 50 million people in Europe and North America have the same income as 2.7 billion poor people. “The slice of the cake taken by 1% is the same size as that handed to the poorest 57%.” source 22
The world’s 497 billionaires in 2001 registered a combined wealth of $1.54 trillion, well over the combined gross national products of all the nations of sub-Saharan Africa ($929.3 billion) or those of the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and North Africa ($1.34 trillion). It is also greater than the combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity. source 23
A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World. source 24
Consider the global priorities in spending in 1998--
Global Priority $U.S. Billions
Basic education for everyone in the world 6
Cosmetics in the United States 8
Water and sanitation for everyone in the world 9
Ice cream in Europe 11
Reproductive health for all women in the world 12
Perfumes in Europe and the United States 12
Basic health and nutrition for everyone in the world 13
Pet foods in Europe and the United States 17
Business entertainment in Japan 35
Cigarettes in Europe 50
Alcoholic drinks in Europe 105
Narcotics drugs in the world 400
Military spending in the world 780 source 25
Number of children in the world 2.2 billion--
Number in poverty 1 billion (every second child)
Shelter, safe water and health--
For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:
640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)
Children out of education worldwide 121 million
Survival for children--
Worldwide,10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy)
1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation
Health of children--
Worldwide,2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized
15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom)source 26
The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world “rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.”
In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s assets in 2004. source 27Notes and Sources1)
This figure is based on purchasing power parity (PPP), which basically suggests that prices of goods in countries tend to equate under floating exchange rates and therefore people would be able to purchase the same quantity of goods in any country for a given sum of money. That is, the notion that a dollar should buy the same amount in all countries. Hence if a poor person in a poor country living on a dollar a day moved to the U.S. with no changes to their income, they would still be living on a dollar a day.
In addition, see the following:Ignacio Ramonet, The politics of hunger, Le Monde diplomatique, November 1998The 9th International Anti-Corruption Conference Plenary Address by James Wolfensohn, August 2000March recognizes the billions living on less than two dollars a day, EarthTimes.org, October 24, 2000
The poverty lines: population living with less than 2 dollars and less than 1 dollar a day from PovertyMap.net provides two maps showing the concentration of people living on less than 1 and 2 dollars per day, around the world.
Also note that these numbers, from the World Bank, have been questioned and criticized. The World Bank has been criticized for almost arbitrarily coming up with a definition of a poverty line to mean one dollar per day (of which they say there are about 1.3 billion people). That figure and how it has been chosen has been much criticized by many, as shown by University of Ottawa Professor, Michel Chossudovsky in the previous link.
In addition, in the United States for example, the poverty threshold for a family of four has been estimated to be around eleven dollars per day. The one dollar a day definition then misses out much of humanity to understand the impacts. Even the two dollars per day that I have pointed out here, while affecting half of humanity, also misses out the numbers under three or four, or eleven dollars per day. These statistics are harder to find, and as I come across them, I will post them here!
More fundamental than that though, for example, is a critique from Columbia University, called How not to count the poor. The report describes an ill-defined poverty line, a misleading and inaccurate measure of purchasing power equivalence, and false precision as the three main errors that may lead to “a large understatement of the extent of global income poverty and to an incorrect inference that it has declined.” (Emphasis added).
This allows the World Bank to insist that the world is indeed “on the right track” in terms of poverty reduction strategy, attributing this “success” to the design and implementation of “good” or “better policies”.
But the statistic is not lost on some of the most prominent people in the world The New York Times in one of their email updates, in their Quote of the Day section, for July 18, 2001 provided the following quote: “A world where some live in comfort and plenty, while half of the human race lives on less than $2 a day, is neither just, nor stable.” — President Bush
See also James Wolfenson, The Other Crisis, World Bank, October 1998 who said: “Today, across the world, 1.3 billion people live on less than one dollar a day; 3 billion live on under two dollars a day; 1.3 billion have no access to clean water; 3 billion have no access to sanitation; 2 billion have no access to electricity.” (See also note 21 below.)
Koffi Anan, UN Secretary General, in a speech on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, 17 October 2000, said “Almost half the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day, yet even this statistic fails to capture the humiliation, powerlessness and brutal hardship that is the daily lot of the world’s poor.”
2) Ignacio Ramonet, The politics of hunger, Le Monde Diplomatique, November 19983) The State of the World’s Children, 1999, UNICEF4) State of the World, Issue 287 - Feb 1997, New Internationalist5) See the following:Holding Transnationals Accountable, IPS, August 11, 1998Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power, by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh, Institute for Policy Studies, November 20006) The Corporate Planet, Corporate Watch, 19977) Debt - The facts, Issue 312 - May 1999, New Internationalist8) 1998 Human Development Report, United Nations Development Programme9) 1999 Human Development Report, United Nations Development Programme10) Ibid11) Ibid12) Missing the Target; The price of empty promises, Oxfam, June 200013) Global Development Finance, World Bank, 199914) Economics forever; Building sustainability into economic policy PANOS Briefing 38, March 200015) Human Development Report 2000, p. 82, United Nations Development Programme16) Ibid, p. 8217) Ibid, p. 7318) World Resources Institute Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems, February 2001, (in the Food Feed and Fiber section).
Note, that dispite the food production rate being better than population growth rate, there is still so much hunger around the world.
19) See the following:Progress of Nations 2000, UNICEF, 2000;Robert E. Black, Saul S Morris, Jennifer Bryce, Where and why are 10 million children dying every year?, The Lancet, Volume 361, Number 9376, 28 June 2003. (Note, while the article title says 10 million, their paper says 10.8 million.)State of the World’s Children, 2005, UNICEF (this cites the number as 10.6 million in 2003)Note that the statistic cited uses children as those under the age of five. If it was say 6, or 7, the numbers would be even higher.20) The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: Twenty Years of Diminished Progress, by Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, Egor Kraev and Judy Chen, Center for Economic Policy and Research, August 2001.21) James Wolfenson, The Other Crisis, World Bank, October 1998, quoted from The Reality of Aid 2000, (Earthscan Publications, 2000), p.1022) Larry Elliott, A cure worse than the disease, The Guardian, January 21, 200223) John Cavanagh and Sarah Anderson , World’s Billionaires Take a Hit, But Still Soar, The Institute for Policy Studies, March 6, 200224) Maude Barlow, Water as Commodity - The Wrong Prescription, The Institute for Food and Development Policy, Backgrounder, Summer 2001, Vol. 7, No. 325) Consumerism, Volunteer Now! (undated)26) State of the World’s Children, 2005, UNICEF27) Eileen Alt Powell, Some 600,000 join millionaire ranks in 2004, Associate Press, June 9, 2005
www.rockrap.com
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
The All-American Hate Crime
"Where the poor have now become the enemy"--Iris DeMent
Yesterday, I was called upon by a colleague to write letters in support of an initiative to make sure that my college's anti-discrimination policy includes language protecting the rights of everyone despite sexual orientation. I, of course, am supporting this work, and I am also biting my tongue until March 9th when this is decided one way or another because one of the tools being used against the organizers is the notion that opening the doors to sexual orientation is going to result in an unrealistically long list of groups claiming discrimination.
Still, I have been interviewed innumerable times by diversity committees on campus, sat in on their meetings and petitioned my grievances and never, not once, had them do anything to address another concern even more pervasive. They give lip service then turn around and ignore it.
What I always bring up is the issue of class. There are innumerable ways in which students on this campus face hostile environments and bigotry if they are from poor or lower income homes, and this is made doubly and trebly insidious by the fact that many of my county's poor are white and because the stereotype of the county is that everyone here is relatively comfortable. It's not true. 40,000 people in my county alone, as many people as ever lived in my hometown (before downsizing) live at or below what the Federal government calls the poverty line (which is a ridiculously conservative estimate in real economic terms). Many more live in economic desperation, and of course at the community college where I work, a greater percentage than the county as a whole struggle with poverty to try to put themselves through school.
Just last year, despite petitions of support and the voiced sympathy and concern of a number of school guidance counselors I talked to, I watched a student friend of mine lose her financial aid because of the small amount of life insurance money she inherited (less than enough to pay for her remaining tuition) when her father died. I've had innumerable students bounced from my rolls and then have to plead for me (not that they had to plead to me, but that was the dynamic) to let them back into class because their tuition check bounced--standard operating procedure. It's a regular thing to hear hate speech about people on welfare from some students assuming that no one in ear shot is on welfare (although almost always one of their fellow students is and, sometimes, lets them know).
I certainly raise these issues with my classes, but there is no language--even in our toothless anti-discrimination diversity committee mission statements--that takes a stand on discrimination against the poor. And, of course, that's because our entire society is based on discrimination against the poor. It's American to declare the poor the enemy. We can't address this without addressing economic justice issues, and we won't address fundamental economic justice issues because it is "un-American" to do so.
I, of course, don't believe that's the part of the American identity that should go on living, any more than racial slavery should (and, believe me, I'm not naive enough to think that's over), but that's the reality of the identity as it currently exists--that identity promoted by all conventional two-party politics.
People talk about hate crimes being on the rise without ever addressing this issue. I listened to a 15 minute broadcast about the church burnings in Alabama without hearing any one once suggest this was some sort of significant common denominator. But what do 10 churches in the area of Bibb County, Alabama have in common? They are all poor.
What did the three homeless men beaten (one to death) by white thugs in Florida have in common?
What do the vast majority of the victims of Hurricane Katrina have in common?
The victims of Hurricane Delphi in Detroit?
The 45 million Americans without medical insurance (not to mention the many who die from medical neglect and inadequate insurance coverage)?
The 2269 service men and women who've died in Iraq (not to mention the minimum estimate of 28, 427 civilians who've died since the war started)?
They're almost all poor, and we discriminate against the poor as a matter of course.
Until America seriously rises up and demands economic justice for all, this will be the one category of hate crime all but universally sanctioned by our government--and by my workplace--leaving none of our hands clean.
Until "poor-on-poor crime" is understood as a symptom of genocide just as it's understood when we talk about "black-on-black" crime, then we haven't made a baby step out the back gate toward this reckoning.
But I'm biting my tongue until March 9th.
I wonder how many Americans will die for being poor between now and then?
"Where the poor have now become the enemy"--Iris DeMent
Yesterday, I was called upon by a colleague to write letters in support of an initiative to make sure that my college's anti-discrimination policy includes language protecting the rights of everyone despite sexual orientation. I, of course, am supporting this work, and I am also biting my tongue until March 9th when this is decided one way or another because one of the tools being used against the organizers is the notion that opening the doors to sexual orientation is going to result in an unrealistically long list of groups claiming discrimination.
Still, I have been interviewed innumerable times by diversity committees on campus, sat in on their meetings and petitioned my grievances and never, not once, had them do anything to address another concern even more pervasive. They give lip service then turn around and ignore it.
What I always bring up is the issue of class. There are innumerable ways in which students on this campus face hostile environments and bigotry if they are from poor or lower income homes, and this is made doubly and trebly insidious by the fact that many of my county's poor are white and because the stereotype of the county is that everyone here is relatively comfortable. It's not true. 40,000 people in my county alone, as many people as ever lived in my hometown (before downsizing) live at or below what the Federal government calls the poverty line (which is a ridiculously conservative estimate in real economic terms). Many more live in economic desperation, and of course at the community college where I work, a greater percentage than the county as a whole struggle with poverty to try to put themselves through school.
Just last year, despite petitions of support and the voiced sympathy and concern of a number of school guidance counselors I talked to, I watched a student friend of mine lose her financial aid because of the small amount of life insurance money she inherited (less than enough to pay for her remaining tuition) when her father died. I've had innumerable students bounced from my rolls and then have to plead for me (not that they had to plead to me, but that was the dynamic) to let them back into class because their tuition check bounced--standard operating procedure. It's a regular thing to hear hate speech about people on welfare from some students assuming that no one in ear shot is on welfare (although almost always one of their fellow students is and, sometimes, lets them know).
I certainly raise these issues with my classes, but there is no language--even in our toothless anti-discrimination diversity committee mission statements--that takes a stand on discrimination against the poor. And, of course, that's because our entire society is based on discrimination against the poor. It's American to declare the poor the enemy. We can't address this without addressing economic justice issues, and we won't address fundamental economic justice issues because it is "un-American" to do so.
I, of course, don't believe that's the part of the American identity that should go on living, any more than racial slavery should (and, believe me, I'm not naive enough to think that's over), but that's the reality of the identity as it currently exists--that identity promoted by all conventional two-party politics.
People talk about hate crimes being on the rise without ever addressing this issue. I listened to a 15 minute broadcast about the church burnings in Alabama without hearing any one once suggest this was some sort of significant common denominator. But what do 10 churches in the area of Bibb County, Alabama have in common? They are all poor.
What did the three homeless men beaten (one to death) by white thugs in Florida have in common?
What do the vast majority of the victims of Hurricane Katrina have in common?
The victims of Hurricane Delphi in Detroit?
The 45 million Americans without medical insurance (not to mention the many who die from medical neglect and inadequate insurance coverage)?
The 2269 service men and women who've died in Iraq (not to mention the minimum estimate of 28, 427 civilians who've died since the war started)?
They're almost all poor, and we discriminate against the poor as a matter of course.
Until America seriously rises up and demands economic justice for all, this will be the one category of hate crime all but universally sanctioned by our government--and by my workplace--leaving none of our hands clean.
Until "poor-on-poor crime" is understood as a symptom of genocide just as it's understood when we talk about "black-on-black" crime, then we haven't made a baby step out the back gate toward this reckoning.
But I'm biting my tongue until March 9th.
I wonder how many Americans will die for being poor between now and then?
Thursday, February 09, 2006
What's the Point?!
Teaching skepticism, Stephen Colbert and the Grammies
I had some kind of watershed moment in class today when I asked my students to tell me why they were doing their assignment, in this case a response to an article they'd read. I asked them where they might read or write a "response essay" in the real world (which is understood as anywhere but school without me having to explain it).
They said--
letters to the editor,
book, movie, music reviews,
editorials,
legal opinions and dissents,
reports on proposals at work,
scientific review of science reports,
on and on.
What I've been trying to get at this semester in Comp II is that writing is largely a process of call and response. Someone calls--through an article, book, movie, song, editorial, legal argument, proposal or report--and we respond, often in writing. It's all one big conversation, and learning to be a better writer is learning to be more effective in that conversation.
Now, today, we were talking about why your response essay should probably respond to more than one point in the original article, more than simply the idea of the original article, for the response to have any real integrity. I said "probably" because the writing itself can pay off even if the response is misguided.
I used Stephen Colbert as an example. Since most of my students don't watch the show (a majority of college students today share no such pop culture common denominators), I explained that Colbert's comedy largely revolves around the fact that he doesn't bother reading the news, he just reacts to headlines that he may not even understand. In this spoof of political punditry, he encourages his viewers not to read either so that they can be happy together in their self righteous ignorance. He calls his audience "the heroes" and he tells them "you get it," and so he makes the audience feel good about themselves and they worship him in return.
That's the joke in a nutshell. One of the wonderful happy accidents of the show is that occasionally he can actually get something right because he's just dancing in the dark anyway. But the usefulness of the example for my class was to talk about how we ain't gonna make it with the smart readers with this kind of an approach. Colbert assumes we know that and makes use of it to satirize all the talk idiocy that all but wags the dog in politics today.
When I could see my students and I were on the same page with this. (We were talking; I wasn't just spouting off the way I am here.) I said that's why I wanted them to respond to more than one point in the original article, not because I say so. And my point was, really, "think skeptically about my class and make your choices only when they make sense to you. You may not have this freedom in every class, but you need to do it in here to make this class work."
And I mean that. I want them to get the point if they're going to do something. If the point's not clear, I want them to argue with me. Otherwise, I can't do my job.
Maybe that's why I was so frustrated by so much of the Grammies last night. I didn't know what was causing this vague dissatisfaction that went on all evening--with a handful of exceptions--but it has become more clear to me today....
I rarely got the point.
A) What's the point of giving a series of lifetime achievement awards if you are going to do it so thoughtlessly that each one feels like a snub?
B) What's the point of "honoring" Sly Stone with a bunch of musicians who seem incapable of coming together as any sort of family, much less a family stone, and what's the point of dragging Sly out in the light and then not checking his mics so he didn't appear incompetent? (see A.)
C) What's the point of "honoring" one of the greatest record makers of all time, Richard Pryor, with an awkward, accidental silence and then cutting the spot altogether for the sake of time constraints or whatever? (see A)
D) What's the point of cobbling a tribute to New Orleans with a tribute to Wilson Pickett and not giving enough time for either? (see A)
E) What's the point of giving half a dozen more awards to U2? (I can't say anything about the Atomic Bomb album because I haven't heard a song that makes me want to get it yet, but I get why Kanye West's "Late Registration" matters and matters deeply and hasn't left my CD player for long since it came out in the summer.)
F) What's the point of honoring Green Day again for the same music Green Day won for last year?
G) What's the point of having Madonna dance with Gorillaz' ugly animated cartoons?
H) What's the point of having Mary J. Blige come out to sing "One" with you and then being so unresponsive to her that the Twoness of the evening felt more pronounced than before the song started, on an evening when the gulf (more class than race) felt wider than I ever remember it feeling before.
What did seem to have a point was Jay-Z with a John Lennon t-shirt on, as my brother pointed out, referencing Danger Mouse, which was then made complete with Paul's presence in the Linkin Park set. (The point of using "Yesterday" for that, of all songs, "Yesterday," was .... uh .... more obscure.)
What had a point was Paul choosing to play "Helter Skelter" just to show that song in a new context and to show himself in a half forgotten light.
What had a point was Kanye's reworking of "Gold Digger" around rival marching bands, if only because it was so damn fun but also because it provoked thought about the cultural resonance of everything playing across the stage all night.
What had a point was having Sam Moore and Allan Toussaint featured on that stage (could have used more of that).
What had a point was Bruce Springsteen stepping aside to let Katrina survivor Irma Thomas take the mic during the Wilson Pickett tribute.
Bruce scored a double by focusing the audience on Iraq for three minutes and punctuating that with "Bring 'em home!"
What had a point was Alicia Keyes and Stevie Wonder breaking into "Higher Ground" to celebrate the King vision of possibility.
If ever a night needed such a focus....
Teaching skepticism, Stephen Colbert and the Grammies
I had some kind of watershed moment in class today when I asked my students to tell me why they were doing their assignment, in this case a response to an article they'd read. I asked them where they might read or write a "response essay" in the real world (which is understood as anywhere but school without me having to explain it).
They said--
letters to the editor,
book, movie, music reviews,
editorials,
legal opinions and dissents,
reports on proposals at work,
scientific review of science reports,
on and on.
What I've been trying to get at this semester in Comp II is that writing is largely a process of call and response. Someone calls--through an article, book, movie, song, editorial, legal argument, proposal or report--and we respond, often in writing. It's all one big conversation, and learning to be a better writer is learning to be more effective in that conversation.
Now, today, we were talking about why your response essay should probably respond to more than one point in the original article, more than simply the idea of the original article, for the response to have any real integrity. I said "probably" because the writing itself can pay off even if the response is misguided.
I used Stephen Colbert as an example. Since most of my students don't watch the show (a majority of college students today share no such pop culture common denominators), I explained that Colbert's comedy largely revolves around the fact that he doesn't bother reading the news, he just reacts to headlines that he may not even understand. In this spoof of political punditry, he encourages his viewers not to read either so that they can be happy together in their self righteous ignorance. He calls his audience "the heroes" and he tells them "you get it," and so he makes the audience feel good about themselves and they worship him in return.
That's the joke in a nutshell. One of the wonderful happy accidents of the show is that occasionally he can actually get something right because he's just dancing in the dark anyway. But the usefulness of the example for my class was to talk about how we ain't gonna make it with the smart readers with this kind of an approach. Colbert assumes we know that and makes use of it to satirize all the talk idiocy that all but wags the dog in politics today.
When I could see my students and I were on the same page with this. (We were talking; I wasn't just spouting off the way I am here.) I said that's why I wanted them to respond to more than one point in the original article, not because I say so. And my point was, really, "think skeptically about my class and make your choices only when they make sense to you. You may not have this freedom in every class, but you need to do it in here to make this class work."
And I mean that. I want them to get the point if they're going to do something. If the point's not clear, I want them to argue with me. Otherwise, I can't do my job.
Maybe that's why I was so frustrated by so much of the Grammies last night. I didn't know what was causing this vague dissatisfaction that went on all evening--with a handful of exceptions--but it has become more clear to me today....
I rarely got the point.
A) What's the point of giving a series of lifetime achievement awards if you are going to do it so thoughtlessly that each one feels like a snub?
B) What's the point of "honoring" Sly Stone with a bunch of musicians who seem incapable of coming together as any sort of family, much less a family stone, and what's the point of dragging Sly out in the light and then not checking his mics so he didn't appear incompetent? (see A.)
C) What's the point of "honoring" one of the greatest record makers of all time, Richard Pryor, with an awkward, accidental silence and then cutting the spot altogether for the sake of time constraints or whatever? (see A)
D) What's the point of cobbling a tribute to New Orleans with a tribute to Wilson Pickett and not giving enough time for either? (see A)
E) What's the point of giving half a dozen more awards to U2? (I can't say anything about the Atomic Bomb album because I haven't heard a song that makes me want to get it yet, but I get why Kanye West's "Late Registration" matters and matters deeply and hasn't left my CD player for long since it came out in the summer.)
F) What's the point of honoring Green Day again for the same music Green Day won for last year?
G) What's the point of having Madonna dance with Gorillaz' ugly animated cartoons?
H) What's the point of having Mary J. Blige come out to sing "One" with you and then being so unresponsive to her that the Twoness of the evening felt more pronounced than before the song started, on an evening when the gulf (more class than race) felt wider than I ever remember it feeling before.
What did seem to have a point was Jay-Z with a John Lennon t-shirt on, as my brother pointed out, referencing Danger Mouse, which was then made complete with Paul's presence in the Linkin Park set. (The point of using "Yesterday" for that, of all songs, "Yesterday," was .... uh .... more obscure.)
What had a point was Paul choosing to play "Helter Skelter" just to show that song in a new context and to show himself in a half forgotten light.
What had a point was Kanye's reworking of "Gold Digger" around rival marching bands, if only because it was so damn fun but also because it provoked thought about the cultural resonance of everything playing across the stage all night.
What had a point was having Sam Moore and Allan Toussaint featured on that stage (could have used more of that).
What had a point was Bruce Springsteen stepping aside to let Katrina survivor Irma Thomas take the mic during the Wilson Pickett tribute.
Bruce scored a double by focusing the audience on Iraq for three minutes and punctuating that with "Bring 'em home!"
What had a point was Alicia Keyes and Stevie Wonder breaking into "Higher Ground" to celebrate the King vision of possibility.
If ever a night needed such a focus....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)