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
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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
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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Facts and Stats
Poverty Facts and Stats
Author And Page
Information
·
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.
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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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 Statistics. World 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
hunger: statistics, facts, myths, third world hunger clock, and
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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 ...
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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
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
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
Summary (Literary Masterpieces, Critical Compilation)
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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...
A Path Appears http://www.randomhouse.com/book/225292/a-path-appears-by-nicholas-d-kristof-and-sheryl-wudunn
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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.
Save the Children HomeMy Sponsorship Login
Make a Donation.
Become a Child Sponsor.
"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
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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
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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. 
Teach a Woman to Fish is filled with the inspiring stories of women around the globe
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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 |
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Photo © Keith Collie
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A Roof of One's Own
March 2013
How good
design is expanding the options for social housing.
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 MedellÃn ,
Colombia , a school in Rwanda , and a neighborhood performing-arts space
in Richmond , California
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
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 Sacramento , California Singapore
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 BanksDate: Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 8:22 AM
Subject: Praying with Our Legs, Part 1: Big Banks
To: jbennet@uark.edu
The Shalom Report
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
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
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
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
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
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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