Thursday, February 5, 2015

WORLD POVERTY NEWSLETTER #3

OMNI
WORLD/US POVERTY, ECONOMIC INJUSTICE, NEWSLETTER #3, February 4, 2013.
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice,
(#1 May 3, 2012; #2 August 30, 2012)

What’s at stake:  At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day

Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:  http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/   For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and ecology movement and an informed citizenry as the foundation for change.  Here is the link to the Index:  http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/

Related topics:  Capitalism, Climate Change, Corporations, Economic Justice,
Equality, Inequality, Failed States, Imperialism, Militarism, Occupy Wall Street, Rich and Poor, Social Justice, Wars,


Contents World Poverty Newsletter #3   see Poverty USA Newsletters
World and US Poverty
UN World Food Statistics and Programs
Global Issues Facts and Figures
Google Search
Film The Line, Poverty in the US 2012
Shipler, The Working Poor
 
Resistance to Poverty, Economic Injustice
Fulbright, Priorities
Folsom, Resistance by the Unemployed
Kristof and WuDunn, A Path Appears, Book
PBS Documentary, “A Path Appears” by Nicholas Kristof  and Sheryl WuDunn
Sharma, Teach a Woman to Fish
Waskow, Isaiah Understood, Big Banks Part I
McGuigan, Architecture for the Poor
Harvey Kaye, We Must Reproduce the Generation That Fought for the Four Freedoms
United Nations Programs for Poor, Hungry, Homeless, Displaced


Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us All
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Poverty Facts and Stats
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·         by Anup Shah
·         This Page Last Updated Monday, January 07, 2013
·         To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print version:
1.    Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
http://cdn1.globalissues.org/i/poverty/wdi-2008/2005-poverty-levels-bar.png
At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.Source1
2.    More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.Source2
3.    The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.Source3
4.    According to UNICEF, 22,000 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.”Source4
5.    Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
If current trends continue, the Millennium Development Goals target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed by 30 million children, largely because of slow progress in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.Source5
6.    Based on enrollment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls. And these are regarded as optimistic numbers.Source6
7.    Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.Source7
8.    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.Source8

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WORLD POVERTY, Google Search, Feb. 4, 2015, part of p. one
thp.org/.../know-your-world-facts-about-hunger-pov...
The Hunger Project
One in eight people go to bed hungry every single night. Know more about world hunger & join us in stopping it once and for all.
www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty
World Bank
Latest news and information from the World Bank and its development work on poverty. Access facts, statistics, project information, development research from ...
https://www.dosomething.org/.../11-facts-about-global-po...
Do Something
Nearly 1/2 of the world's population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty, that's less than ...
www.poverty.com/
See a brief, simple display about world poverty. Animated maps show how often people die of hunger, AIDS, malaria, and preventable diseases.
www.worldhunger.org/articles/.../world%20hunger%20facts%202002.ht...
by YOU CAN - ‎Related articles
2014 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics. World Hunger Education Service. (Also see World Child Hunger Facts). This fact sheet is divided into the ...

WORLD HUNGER, Google Search, Feb. 4, 2015

www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
World Food Programme
Every year, authors, journalists, teachers, researchers, schoolchildren and students ask us for statistics about hunger and malnutrition. To help answer these ...
www.wfp.org/hunger
World Food Programme
Hunger Statistics ... There are 805 million undernourished people in the world today. ... There is enough food in the world to feed everyone and no scientific ...
www.worldhunger.org/articles/.../world%20hunger%20facts%202002.ht...
by YOU CAN - ‎Related articles
2014 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and StatisticsWorld Hunger Education Service. (Also see World Child Hunger Facts). This fact sheet is divided into the ...
https://www.dosomething.org/.../11-facts-about-world-hun...
Do Something
13.1% of the world's population is hungry. That's roughly 925 million ... Sources. 1. "2013 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics." WorldHunger.org.
www.stophungernow.org/learn/hunger-facts/
Stop Hunger Now
805 million people in the world do not have enough to eat. This number is ... One in every nine people on our planet go to bed hungry each night. FAO, The State ...
www.stopthehunger.com/
Help solve world hungerstatistics, facts, myths, third world hunger clock, and detailed information on causes, effects, and solutions to end world hunger.
thp.org/.../know-your-world-facts-about-hunger-pov...
The Hunger Project
One in eight people go to bed hungry every single night. Know more about world hunger & join us in stopping it once and for all. ... World Food Programme HungerStatistics · UN AIDS Report on the Global Epidemic, 2013 · IFAD Rural Poverty ...
www.fao.org/hunger/en/
Food and Agriculture Organization
For the purposes of this report, hunger was defined as being synonymous with chronic undernourishment. ... Hunger statistics ... The State of Food Insecurity in the World raises awareness about global hunger issues, discusses underlying ...




“THE LINE,” POVERTY IN THE US 2012, FILM SHOWN AT OMNI.  Tuesday October 2, 2012, 7:00 pm at OMNI Center

Produced by the progressive Christian organization Sojourners and others, the movie features stories of Americans from all walks of life. Their stories show that poverty is not just for the lazy and weak.  This is a nation-wide event being shown at 1000+ locations across the country.

The Line is a groundbreaking documentary chronicling the new face of poverty in America. As Sojourners CEO Jim Wallis puts it, "more and more of our friends are in poverty — in the pews, in our workplaces — through no fault of their own, and they are slipping below the poverty level."  This event hopes to bring people together to consider how to meet this challenge.

Trailer for "The Line"  http://thelinemovie.com/
Please share this invitation with friends and parishioners.  This early announcement is to allow postings in church publications, if possible, and to the Ministerial Association list if you don't mind, Leslie.  If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email Gladys at gladystiffany@yahoo.com .



Can't Win for Losing
By Ron Suskind
Published: February 15, 2004
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THE WORKING POOR:  Invisible in America.
By David K. Shipler.  319 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $25.
THE phrase ''working poor'' doesn't carry much weight in this fractious political season. It slips by in a campaign speech, with nothing much to grab onto as it passes. It suffers from a kind of blunt-edged simplicity -- a collision of enormous, rounded terms that, by the lights of American exceptionalism, should not be joined. Both political parties quietly agree that it is an ugly, unsettling combination -- that any American who works steadily should not have to suffer the barbed indignities of poverty. But Americans do -- millions of them. There are 35 million people in the country living in poverty. Most of the adults in that group work nowadays; many of them work full time. And while there are heavy concentrations of African-Americans and white single women in the mix, the group is every bit as diverse, and diffuse, as the nation is.
Which presents a central problem for David Shipler in his powerful new book, ''The Working Poor: Invisible in America'': how do you write a treatise on something as vast and many-hued as an ocean, a forest, the sky? Shipler knows this and, somehow, proceeds undaunted. A former New York Times reporter, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his book ''Arab and Jew,'' and then managed to wrap his arms around the classically obstreperous topic of race in America with ''A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America.'' This is what he's become known for: tackling the unwieldy.
Of course, Shipler has plenty of company in writing about fault-line issues of the American experiment, like race, class and the nature of opportunity. But it is an area populated in the past decade or two by writers -- like Alex Kotlowitz in ''There Are No Children Here'' or, more recently, Barbara Ehrenreich, who chronicled her personal journey as a low-wage worker in ''Nickel and Dimed'' -- who incline toward the power of personal narrative. In the first few chapters of ''The+Working+Poor,'' Shipler shows, inadvertently, why so many journalists have made that choice. He lunges forward at the book's start with some sweeping judgments, like ''the rising and falling fortunes of the nation's economy have not had much impact on these folks'' and ''the skills for surviving in poverty have largely been lost in America'' -- both debatable issues -- and introduces a racially+diverse, thinly+connected army of poor workers, some appearing for just a paragraph or two. Parts of an early chapter titled ''Importing the Third World'' read like a dissertation on sweatshop cash flows.
I suggest that readers -- and this is clearly one of those seminal books that every American should read and read now -- stick with it. Shipler, like the man who pays to wrestle a behemoth at the county fair, is just trying to get leverage on an indomitable opponent. By the fourth chapter, just a third of the way, his strategy takes shape: he's wearing down the giant. Shipler's subjects, many of whom he spent nearly seven years following with meticulous empathy, begin to reappear in the text. Their stories start to deepen, mixed with complex insights that Shipler interweaves judiciously. In the chapter ''Harvest of Shame,'' he deftly shows how government crackdown on illegal immigrants creates ''migration within the migration,'' as an army of immigrant workers races from strict-enforcement states like Ohio to more lenient ones like North Carolina, and notes that ''when a migrant stops moving . . . he starts to enter America.'' There are employers like Jimmy Burch -- a North Carolina farm owner -- who co-signs loans for new trailers for his workers. He has an interest. His workers do, too. He says he's ''never been burned'' with a default -- not yet. Shipler never shies away from noting the employer's power, but by embracing complexity, and trusting the reader to be up to the task, he burns off the easy illusions of hero versus villain that so often addle journalism.
Doing+that frees the writer to ask a set of questions off+limits to many practitioners of what is called ''poverty literature.'' Kevin Fields, a beefy 280-pound African-American man, with a shaved head, gold earring and a felony conviction for effectively fighting off a street gang, is virtually unemployable. Men with a similar arrest record, but different profiles, have less difficulty. ''Violence,'' Shipler points out, ''has a longstanding place in many whites' images of blacks. So, if you are black, if you are a man, if you are large and strong, or if you have a prison record, you are likely to be perceived as a person with a temper, a vein of rage.''
Half of all poor families are headed by single women, and, in a chapter titled ''Sins of the Fathers,'' Shipler doesn't flinch from delving into how many struggling women were sexually abused as children. The evolving estimates show the outlines of an epidemic. Kara King, a white New Hampshire mother, was molested by her father, who told her ''that's the way a father and a daughter are.'' The effects -- ''a paralyzing powerlessness'' that ''mixes corrosively with other adversities that deprive those in or near poverty of the ability to effect change'' -- are visible each time Kara and her family appear in the book.
·         2 
Ron Suskind's latest book is ''The Price of Loyalty.'' He is the author of ''A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey From the Inner City to the Ivy League.''



RESISTANCE TO POVERTY

J. William Fulbright, Useless, Immensely Expensive Moon Exploration
50 YEARS AGO May 5, 1963 NEW YORK - Sen J. William Fulbright, of Arkansas, said last night that landing a man on the moon may be a “glamorous scientific feat” but that it would have little appeal to the uncommitted peoples of the world who bear the burdens of hunger, disease and poverty. Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, “It is strange to me that in a world which bears an intolerable burden of hunger, disease, poverty and animosity among its peoples, we should devote the best minds of both the western and Communist world to achieve a landing on the moon where, to my knowledge, no solutions to our problems await us.” 
What Was the purpose of landing a man on the moon?  --Dick


FRANKLIN FOLSOM, Impatient Armies of the Poor: The Story of Collective Action by the Unemployed, 1808-1942. http://www.enotes.com/topics/impatient-armies-poor
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Impatient Armies of the Poor Summary
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The crisis of being unemployed in the United States goes back to the earliest decades of the republic. In 1807, President Thomas Jefferson urged the establishment of an embargo on all American exports in an attempt to free United States shippers from interference by Great Britain and France, then locked in the struggle of the Napoleonic Wars. Whatever its impact upon the nations of Europe, Jefferson’s embargo soon created casualties in the United States. In New York City and elsewhere, American sailors lost their employment and demanded of the local authorities bread and jobs, not private charity or the poorhouse. Other workers soon joined the sailors in their plight. A few jobs were created, some food was provided, and some jobless went to debtors’ prison; others were encouraged to find better days on the western frontier. In time, the embargo was canceled, the economy improved, and many of the formerly unemployed again found work. As America continued to industrialize and urbanize, however, the problem of unemployment remained, reaching crisis proportions during the years of economic panic and depression: 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1907, and most tragically during the years of the Great Depression that began in 1929. It is the story of the unemployed that Franklin Folsom tells in Impatient Armies of the Poor.

Folsom has had an extraordinarily full literary life. A native of Colorado, he was a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford in the 1920’s. He has worked as a college instructor and as a director of adult education, and he served in the merchant marine during World War II, but throughout his long life he has been primarily a free-lance writer. Folsom has written numerous books, sometimes in collaboration with his wife, Mary Elting, on such varied topics as archaeology, the West, baseball, geography, language, children’s stories, Christopher Columbus, and the Soviet Union. The problem of the unemployed, however, is among Folsom’s greatest interests and concerns. During the 1930’s, he was personally involved in various unemployment organizations, and he states in the epilogue to Impatient Armies of the Poor that he began the manuscript in 1936 and pursued the topic during his own periods of unemployment during the next half century. Few literary works have had such a long gestational period.

Although a work of history, Impatient Armies of the Poor also partly a personal memoir of the author’s involvement in some of the events of the 1930’s. Folsom tells the story of the unemployed from the early nineteenth century, but half the volume concentrates upon the years of the Great Depression. The book is organized chronologically, and Folsom’s literary approach is primarily narrative rather than analytical. His focus is on the unemployed, and he tells of their struggles and difficulties in the face of economic disasters brought about by conditions beyond their personal control: industrialization, the swings of the business cycle from boom to bust and back again, the economic system of capitalism, and the prevailing ideologies of American society, which have extolled individualism and permitted government aid to business and industry but denied it to workers and the unemployed.

This is history written from the bottom. Although many individuals, from presidents to hobos, have played parts in the story of America’s unemployed, Folsom’s study concentrates upon what the great anonymous body of the unemployed have done to help themselves. In his opinion, to concentrate upon the achievements of individuals is to miss the story of how unemployment has affected vast numbers of Americans. Written without resort to academic phraseology and lacking the analytical frames of reference now common in the writing of social history, Impatient Armies of the Poor is a passionate portrayal of persons, groups, and classes often left out of traditional history, which usually focuses on the elite and the powerful.

Folsom’s approach is different. He argues that the initiative that might eventually have led to government action on local or national levels has come not from the top, even among those in power sympathetic...



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 ABOUT THE BOOK ABOUT THE BOOK ABOUT THE AUTHOR PRAISE  READER'S GUIDE EVENTS http://www.randomhouse.com/book/225292/a-path-appears-by-nicholas-d-kristof-and-sheryl-wudunn
Synopsis
An essential, galvanizing narrative about making a difference here and abroad—a road map to becoming the most effective global citizens we can be.

In their number one New York Times best seller Half the Sky, husband-and-wife team Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn brought to light struggles faced by women and girls around the globe, and showcased individuals and institu­tions working to address oppression and expand opportunity. A Path Appears is even more ambitious in scale: nothing less than a sweeping tapestry of people who are making the world a better place and a guide to the ways that we can do the same—whether with a donation of $5 or $5 million, with our time, by capitalizing on our skills as individuals, or by using the resources of our businesses.

With scrupulous research and on-the-ground reporting, the authors assay the art and science of giving, identify successful local and global initiatives, and share astonishing stories from the front lines of social progress. We see the compelling, in­spiring truth of how real people have changed the world, upending the idea that one person can’t make a difference.

We meet people like Dr. Gary Slutkin, who devel­oped his landmark Cure Violence program to combat inner-city conflicts in the United States by applying principles of epidemiology; Lester Strong, who left a career as a high-powered television anchor to run an organization bringing in older Americans to tu­tor students in public schools across the country; MIT development economist Esther Duflo, whose pioneering studies of aid effectiveness have revealed new truths about, among other things, the power of hope; and Jessica Posner and Kennedy Odede, who are transforming Kenya’s most notorious slum by ex­panding educational opportunities for girls.

A Path Appears offers practical, results-driven advice on how best each of us can give and reveals the lasting benefits we gain in return. Kristof and WuDunn know better than most how many urgent challenges communities around the world face to­day. Here they offer a timely beacon of hope for our collective future.



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"A Path Appears" to Fight U.S. Poverty by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.  Feb. 2, 2015.
The new PBS film shows how our U.S. work can break the cycle of poverty by reaching children early. Tune in Feb. 2 to join Save the Children Artist Ambassador Jennifer Garner on a visit to rural America.  Transform a Young Child's Life.   See http://apathappears.org/
Second in a series of obstacles to people around the world to realizing their potentially.  The first dealt with gender: the problems women face.  Kristof and WuDunn are the authors of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.





“Every citizen and lawmaker should read this book.” – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter 
Women Thrive Worldwide

Teach a Woman to Fish is the powerful story of women and girls around the world who are struggling to break free from poverty, violence, and inequality—and the important ways individual people from Managua to Lahore to Fayetteville are changing the world.

It’s the story of Women Thrive Worldwide, the essential work we do, and the amazing people whose voices we work to make heard.
Buy the Book
Teach a Woman to Fish will be released June 10, but you can pre-order it online now at any of these booksellers…



Teach a Woman to Fish is filled with the inspiring stories of women around the globe who are working to break free of poverty, violence, and inequality. It’s a must-read for anyone who cares about making the world a better place.
More Advance Praise for Teach a Woman to Fish

Melinda Gates, Co-Chair and Trustee, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation:
“In Teach a Woman to Fish, Ritu Sharma shows us what unites women around the world: devotion to their families, pride in their children, and a willingness to sacrifice for a better future.”

Former U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe, Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center:
“Ritu Sharma paints a remarkably personal and poignant portrait of both the enormous challenges and the boundless resiliency of women living in some of the world’s poorest regions.”

Raymond Offenheiser, President, Oxfam America:
“With a storyteller’s eye and an advocate’s passion, Ritu Sharma takes us on a personal journey that lays bare the simple injustices that rob women of their rights and dignity while offering a contrasting vision of aid interventions and policy reforms that unlock their potential for leadership and liberation.”
Initial print runs are limited, and every book purchased supports our work on behalf of women and girls. Please reserve your copy of Teach a Woman to Fish onAmazon.com or Barnes & Noble today.

Want to learn more about Teach a Woman to Fish? Visit us online at:

http://womenthrive.org/teach 



Sheltering The World
Photo © Keith Collie

A Roof of One's Own

March 2013

How good design is expanding the options for social housing.

By Cathleen McGuigan, Editor in Chief, Architectural Record
In October 2008, Architectural Record published a groundbreaking issue, Design With Conscience. A year ago, in March 2012, we cast a light again on architects engaged in humanitarian projects around the world, in a much-praised issue, Building for Social Change. By looking at a library and community center on the fringes of Medellín, Colombia, a school in Rwanda, and a neighborhood performing-arts space in Richmond, California, we explored a variety of ways that good design can have a major impact on people and places with few resources—what's been called architecture for the other 99 percent.
Cathleen McGuigan, Editor in Chief
Photo © Michael Arnaud
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This month we take up a related, and especially daunting, topic: urgently needed new models for social housing, especially in rapidly expanding global cities, not only for those living in poverty but also for working people trying to find affordable options in urban areas where land values and housing shortages have sent rents soaring.
In the history of modernism, architects have played a big role in designing solutions for such problems. No model has been more influential than Le Corbusier's towers-in-the-park from the 1920s. Widely adopted during the wave of urban renewal in America and Europe in the 1950s and '60s—and later attacked as the perfect incubator for crime and other social ills—high-rise public housing has been exported everywhere, particularly to China, where forests of cheaply built residential towers march depressingly from the centers of its mega-cities toward the horizon.
The most damning symbol of the high-rise as housing for the poor is, ironically, a skyscraper never intended for that purpose: Torre David, a mirrored glass office building in Caracas that was left abandoned and unfinished after a banking crisis in 1994. Since 2007 it has been home to a community of 3,000 squatters, with its own elaborate and controversial social structure. RECORD contributing photographer Iwan Baan documented life in this unforgettable makeshift dwelling in Torre David, a book that the Financial Times named one of the best of 2012.
Many experts no longer believe that public-housing towers should necessarily be toppled. Instead, architects are collaborating with professionals in housing and social services to design new residential buildings or renovate existing structures in ways that provide better security and more light, common spaces, recreational amenities, and facilities for support services.
Today it's clear that no single typology offers a universal solution; rather, social housing must reflect local conditions and cultures. In Singapore, where more than 80 percent of the population lives in government-built housing, urban density dictates towers. But because of the tropical climate, new high-rise public residences designed by the firm WOHAcan feature gardens and open community spaces gracing the roofs, the ground, and the lofty levels in between. In La Valentina Station, in mostly low-rise Sacramento, California, David Baker, an architect who's built dozens of social-housing projects over the years, designed a four-story subsidized apartment complex that fits neatly into the scale of the cityscape. He also artfully juggled the budget to specify a few luxe materials—such as the water-jet-cut Cor-Ten for the ornate balcony fronts—to create housing that doesn't scream “affordable” but looks market-rate. Like the project in Singapore, it was planned to be close to mass transit.
Such projects are symbols of hope, but the reality of the global housing crisis is grim. According to the United Nations, 3.5 billion people now live in urban areas, with more than 1 billion of them in slums or informal settlements. (To put real faces against these staggering statistics, read Katherine Boo's gripping account of Annawadi, the “slumbai” next to Mumbai's international airport, in her book Beyond the Beautiful Forevers, winner of last year's National Book Award for nonfiction.) The complexity of the issues surrounding these makeshift communities—migration and population growth, public health, economics, corruption and governance—is beyond what architecture and planning alone could ever address. But architects are expanding their reach, using their creativity and problem-solving skills in broader collaborations with experts from social science, government, finance, and NGOs. Whether bringing good design to large-scale public housing or devising incremental interventions in the world's most challenged settlements, these architects are making a difference every day.


From: Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Date: Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 8:22 AM
Subject: Praying with Our Legs, Part 1: Big Banks
To: jbennet@uark.edu
The Shalom Report
 Praying with Our Legs, Part 1:  Big Banks
https://theshalomcenter.org/content/praying-our-legs-against-big-oppressive-banks
 On the first day of Rosh Hashanah, last week, I was picketing a bank in Berkeley, California --  “praying with my legs” in a way that reminded me of one modern prophet and one ancient prophet.
The modern prophet was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who coined that phrase about his own legs after marching alongside Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama.
The ancient prophet was Isaiah. On Yom Kippur about 2500 years ago, Isaiah walked into a crowd that felt good because (having fasted for about 18 hours already) it felt bad. He called out that merely refraining from food and drink was not the point. God, he said,  intended the Yom Kippur fast to involve feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, and – intensely political, not reducible to “charity”  -- striking off the handcuffs put on prisoners by those in power.
Many in the crowd around Isaiah got angry at this shattering of their internal “spiritual” high.  But Isaiah called out that it was impossible in the eyes of the One Who Breathes all life to get spiritually high without first going low -- breathing deeply with the lowly, the poor, the desperate, the humiliated.
And the rabbis, 500 years later, enshrined his words to be read on every Yom Kippur morning. They wanted to make the lesson unforgettable. But turning the disturbance into liturgy tamed it. Made it easy to mutter and forget. It takes new effort to make Isaiah’s vision real.
So last week, on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, which was also the first anniversary of the Occupy movement, we gathered in Berkeley proclaiming “Occupy Rosh Hashanah,” on behalf of the desperate poor and the humiliated former middle class, outside the branch office of a huge bank, Wells Fargo, that has thrown people out of homes and jobs.
Four Jewish-renewal-oriented rabbis  —Michael Lerner, David Jonathan Cooper, Phyllis Berman, and I — led about 200 members of The Shalom Center, Beyt Tikkun, Kehilla, the “Jewish Contingent of Bay Area Occupy,” and others to take a joyful part in Occupy Rosh HaShanah on the streets of Berkeley. 
Rabbi Phyllis Berman (my life-partner and co-author) and I had been invited to join Rabbi Lerner in leading services at his shul in Berkeley. As we prepared, The Shalom Center originally proposed  we do an Occupy Rosh Hashanah action on that day, after the morning prayer service; Tikkun worked out the action plan.
It felt, indeed, like a tiny but true slice of Isaiah’s chutzpadik  crowd-shocking intervention on that Yom Kippur so long ago.
We urged people to move their money from banks that are global corporate oligarchies to local credit unions or community banks. We shared specific information about how to Move Our Money. We leafleted passers-by, greeted old friends and met people we had never known.  We sang and laughed along with Cantor/ Song-writer Linda Hirschhorn, and a serious/funny Occupella Choir.  [To read the entire article go to https://theshalomcenter.org/content/praying-our-legs-against-big-oppressive-banks  ]
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[Folsom, Kristof-WuDunn, Ritu Sharma, the social housing projects, the religious projects show how individuals and local groups can make a difference   However, since poverty and the patriarchy are international problems requiring international organization and cooperation, we must also turn to the achievements of FDR’s New Deal, the European and world social democracies, and the many agencies of the United Nations.  –Dick]




August 14: Time to Reinvigorate the Fight for the Four Freedoms.   AUGUST 13, 2014.  Campaign for America’s Future.          
Harvey J Kaye
HARVEY J KAYE
This Thursday, August 14, marks 69 years since the surrender of Imperial Japan – and with the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II coming up next summer we are sure to see significant efforts around the country during the next twelve months to once again honor the memory and legacy of the Greatest Generation.
Just as we have many times before, we will undoubtedly celebrate “the Spirit of ’45” and tell those who remain of that generation that we will never forget or forsake all that they accomplished. And yet the sad truth is that we have already forgotten and forsaken what they – our parents and grandparents – did in the face of the worst economic and social catastrophe in American history and the global march of Fascism.
If we want to properly honor the generation of the 1930s and 1940s – the generation that for all of its faults and failings carried out a revolution between the 1930s and 1970s and created the first-ever Middle-Class Nation – we need to better remember what they did. Indeed, if we want totruly honor those men and women, we need to renew the struggles they undertook to enhance American life. We need to remember that our parents and grandparents not only saved the nation from economic ruin and political oblivion and turned it into the strongest and most prosperous country on earth, but also accomplished all of that – in the face of powerful conservative, reactionary, and corporate opposition – by making America freer, more equal, and more democratic than ever before.
Now, when all that they fought for is under siege and we too find ourselves confronting crises and forces that threaten the nation and all that it stands for, we need to remember that we are the children and grandchildren of the most progressive generation in American history. We are the children of the men and women who articulated, fought for, and endowed us with the promise of the Four Freedoms.
Led by President Franklin Roosevelt, our parents and grandparents didn’t beat the Great Depression of the 1930s by limiting government, lowering the taxes of the rich, and deferring to the captains of industry and consciousness. They made America, as FDR hoped they would, “fairly radical for a generation.” They raised the taxes on the rich and subjected big business to public account and regulation. They empowered the federal government to address the needs of working people and established a social security system. They mobilized and organized labor unions. They fought for their rights and broadened and leveled the “We” in “We the People.” They expanded the nation’s public infrastructure and improved the environment. And they cultivated the arts, refashioned popular culture, and expanded educational opportunities. Doing so, they imbued themselves with fresh democratic convictions, hopes, and aspirations – and fortified themselves to meet their “rendezvous with destiny.”
And when they went into battle in December 1941 against Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, they did not give up their democratic hopes and aspirations. They not only went “All Out!” in the war effort. They also continued to fight for the Four Freedoms at home. Despite continuing antidemocratic opposition, they expanded the labor, consumer, and civil-rights movements, subjected industry and the marketplace to greater public control, reduced inequality and poverty, and further transformed the “We” in “We the People.” Moreover, they endorsed the prospect of new initiatives to expand freedom, equality, and democracy at war’s end – most notably their four-time-elected President’s call for a Second Bill of Rights, an Economic Bill of Rights to assure jobs, food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education, and recreation for all Americans. Admittedly, a conservative congressional coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats (sound familiar?) blocked the enactment of these social-democratic rights. But they could not prevent the enactment of the GI Bill of Rights – the greatest public welfare program in US history, a program that enabled 12,000,000 young Americans to better themselves and the nation.
At war’s end in 1945, the military issued a Victory Medal to every man and woman who served in uniform between 1941 and 1946. And on the reverse of that medal was inscribed “FREEDOM FROM FEAR AND WANT – FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND RELIGION.” That’s what they fought for – and continued to try to secure and assure when they responded to the popular challenges of the 1960s and passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, launched a War on Poverty and created Medicare and Medicaid, reformed immigration, and enacted laws to protect the environment, workers, and consumers.
The question is “What have we done?” For 40 years now we have seen the forces of reaction set the public agenda in America. We have seen Republicans besiege our parents’ and grandparents’ achievements and Democrats fail to adequately defend them. And we have failed to mobilize to stop them. What are we going to do?
For a start, it’s time to remember. It’s time to remember what conservatives don’t want us to remember and liberals have all too often forgotten. As the great progressive radio producer and writer Norman Corwin wrote for national broadcast on August 14, 1945: “Remember [the fallen] when July comes round… They’re dead as clay for the rights of men/ For People the likes of you/ And they ask that we do not fail them again/ Tomorrow, tomorrow.
It’s time to remind ourselves and our fellow Americans of all that our parents and grandparents, the most progressive generation in American history, accomplished – and how did they did it. And let’s remember what they came to remember: That the only way to truly secure American democratic life is to enhance it.
But it’s not only time to remember. It’s also time to act. Our fellow citizens are already stirring. The making of a progressive populist majority is underway. Let’s honor our parents and grandparents in the fashion they deserve. Let’s make America “fairly radical for a generation.”
Harvey J. Kaye is professor of democracy and justice studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and the author of the new book “The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great” (Simon & Schuster). Follow him on Twitter: @harveyjkaye./em>


UNITED NATIONS ORGANIZING AGAINST POVERTY, Google Search, Feb. 2, 1015
www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml
United Nations
GOAL 1: ERADICATE EXTREME POVERTY & HUNGER. Target 1.A: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1.25 ...
www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/Goal_1_fs.pdf
United Nations
UNITED NATIONS. GOAL 1. FACT SHEET. WHERE WE STAND. Extreme povertyrates have fallen in every developing region. Globally, the MDG target on.
www.un.org/en/events/povertyday/
United Nations
The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty has been observed every year since 1993, when the United Nations General Assembly, by resolution 47/196 ...
www.unrol.org/article.aspx?article_id=26More than one billion people live in extreme poverty, surviving on less than one dollar a day. The world's poor suffer from a lack of adequate shelter, health care, ...
www.unesco.org/new/en/social-and.../international.../poverty/
UNESCO
Poverty. Reducing poverty has become an international concern, yet there is no ... As part of the goal of eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, United Nations ...
undesadspd.org/Poverty.aspx
Poverty entails more than the lack of income and productive resources to ensure ... The Second United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty ...
web.undp.org/poverty/
United Nations Development Programme
For the first time in UN history, UNDP is providing real-time financial transaction ... Economic growth will not reduce poverty, improve equality and produce jobs ...









Contents #1
Film: The End of Poverty?
Colbert Report
Programs for the Poor
Jubilee USA
Barbara Ehrenreich: Criminalizing the Poor
Cornel West: War on the Poor
Wolff, Redistribution of Wealth
Abramsky, the Poor 2012
Isserman on Michael Harrington
Books

Contents #2  August 30, 2012
ONE
Two Fayetteville Africa Projects
Sarah Fennel, Restore Humanity
Joanna Pollock, Green Village Foundation
Wallis: Bible, the Poor, and Role of Government
Wallis: Poverty
Grayson: Increasing Poverty USA
Schecter: Anti-poverty Groups by the Rich
Sharpe: US Decline
Abramsky: Poverty Epidemic
Corporate Takeover

Nader: Demand $10 Minimum Wage

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