We spent a good deal of time with the news media yesterday, catching up on what the President, Romney, and our fellow New Yorkers and other public figures are doing. The prevailing stories of the day were whether or not Mitt Romney lied about how long he was at Bain Capital; whether the reputation of [...]
This essay appeared in El DiarioLaPrensa on July 3, 2012 Joel Morales hung himself in his family's apartment in an East Harlem housing project one month ago. He was twelve. This event seemed a senseless tragedy to some. Despondent relatives and an angry community blamed rogue, evil children. Hoping to avoid a future tragedy, some [...]
Recently, Rick Santorum, Republican party candidate, declared that Puerto Rico would be required to make English its main language if it were to become a state. Just as Santorum’s culture is cemented in his use of English, the Puerto Rican experience has Spanish at its core. The reaction to Santorum’s statements (which he attempted to [...]
Have others who know how important the federal Food Stamp program is had enough of Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum's endlessly ignorant verbal attacks on the Food Stamp program? Santorum has made several comments that prove he is atrociously ignorant of how the program works, who gets the Food Stamps, and ignorant of how it [...]
I've watched the GOP debates, including the latest, South Carolina. The practical and intellectual content is about as hot as a wet pickle. The content is smoke and mirrors: nothing about banking systems, foreclosures, justice, the dismantling of free speech via the National Defense Reauthorization Act, or the poverty that creates the need for the [...]
Yesterday my trainer made a comment that we the attendees are trying to better ourselves, as opposed to those "sitting home on welfare." It is interesting that so many people who consider themselves very egalitarian, who would never dream of insulting someone because of their skin color, will regularly bash the poor. I spoke to [...]
I've seen so much in the past year as a caseworker in rural New York to confirm my belief: the government and the banks seek to cement the poor into perpetual poverty. The sacrifice of 20% or so of the population is necessary so as to preserve the fear that motivates most of the rest [...]
Americans like believing that the solution to every social and economic problem is job training. Outsourcing? Job training. Economically depressed neighborhoods? Job training. Impoverished single mothers? You guessed it. We’re job training ourselves silly. We even have a bill in Congress called the Seniors Offering Quality Child Care Act, HR 335. Why should all those [...]
In March of 2011, a Brazilian Senator named Eduardo Matarazzo Suplicy handed a letter to the President of the United States at a dinner in Brazil. The letter was from members of the U.S. Basic Income Guarantee Network (US BIG), and the intention was to introduce Obama to a smart, efficient and just economic idea [...]
Boy, was I relieved to hear the good news when Obama spoke to us about the debt crisis. There are no poor people in the United States anymore! There were a lot when he was campaigning in 2008, and he talked about poverty often. The 2010 census results said that 14.3% of Americans live at [...]