Category Archives: class warfare

How Barak Fails the Working Class

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The media would like us all to think that the working class isn’t voting for Obama because he’s an arugala eating, latte drinking, non-bitter elitist.

Note to the media- we working class people know about Starbucks. We drink lattes too. We don’t think Hillary spends her days shopping at Walmart and eating at MacDonalds. We don’t care if our next president is someone we can have a beer with.

And note to Obamabots- it’s not just the white working class that doesn’t trust Obama. It’s the Latinos and the Asians. It’s pretty much everyone but the African Americans (and we can’t fault them for voting for someone who looks like them).

Obama cannot win the working class because Obama has NO FRICKEN IDEA what we need. His ideas all center on making things easier for business. We know that benefits to businesses usually involve less protection for us. Less job protection, less retirement protection, less wage protection, fewer benefits, more hours, etc.

We, the working class, need wages that will pay our housing, gas, and food costs. We need health insurance that doesn’t cripple us. We need a country with a future. We need another industry boom that creates living wage jobs. We need education that is affordable for ourselves and our children. We need a real way to save for retirement. We need options for our young people above and beyond becoming fodder for the war machine. We need schools in our neighborhoods that prepare kids, not warehouse them.

Yes, there is part of us that remembers Bill Clinton. But what so many people fail to realize is that the working class has been in a recession since Bush took office in 2001. We have never had an upward swing under Bush. But under Clinton we got raises. When Clinton was president, my income doubled every year that I worked full time. I actually made it to the middle class. I had a house and a car that was paid for and ran. I could pay for childcare and rent and utilities.

Since Bush took office, my income has decreased by 30% every year until it hit half the poverty level. And I’ve been stuck there since. That is 7.5 years of poverty. That more than half my kid’s life.

We trust Hillary not just because we remember Bill, but because we know she actually thinks about our plight. We know that she has the big wonkish brain to find solutions that actually help us.

Hope and change are lovely ideas, but we can’t feed our kids hope and change. We can’t pay for college with hope and change. We can’t by food on hope and change credit. We want solutions. We want to count. We want our kids to have a shot at the American dream, though for the last 8 years it’s become obvious that we are the new feudal class. Our Lord and Employer may change, but there is no way for us to improve our lot anymore.

We don’t care if the person with the right ideas drinks lattes or coffee regular. We don’t care if that person drinks Bud or Burgundy. And we want someone who understands that we aren’t just bitter, we are angry. We got promised the American dream only to have our homes foreclosed on. We know we’ve been fed a load of shit. We want someone to make the promise reachable again. We know Hillary has the not only the chops to do it, but the desire to. Barak is just feeding us another load of hopeful shit, but we know the taste already.

Dis.gus.ting

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From How the World Works

The key figure is 2.3 million — the total number of homes that are empty and for sale. That adds up to a vacancy rate of 2.9 percent, which is the highest, reports Bloomberg, “since the bureau started keeping count in 1956.” 2.2 million homes were vacant and for sale one year ago

.According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Second Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, released in March 2008, “the total number of homeless persons reported on a single night in January 2006 was 759,101.”

Assuming that number bears some reasonable relation to reality, that would mean there are 24 unoccupied homes for every homeless person in the United States.

The Kid and I, just after Georgie stole the White House in 2000, wound up homeless. For two years we couch surfed with various friends and family and occasionally (but thankfully not often) slept in our car. The only reason we have housing now is that I lucked into a program that fast tracked me into a Section 8 voucher. Those types of programs have been massively cut now. If we were homeless now we would be staying at the tent city (Hooverville) that temporarily set up in a vacant lot down the street. Families live there. Women with children live there. And we have 24 unoccupied homes for every single person in those camps.

I am so ashamed of our country.

The Practical Side of Privilege

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I have a deep dark secret to confess. I use my privilege to my advantage and to the advantage of my child. And I have no idea how to fix that without causing harm to one or both of us.

Maybe this would be better explained with examples.

Example One

I live in a poor, working class, mostly black neighborhood. We are not here as part of some early gentrification scouting project. We’re here cause we are just as poor as our neighbors. But even though we are equals in poverty, I know that my voice will carry more weight than the voices of my neighbors.

I get harassed on the street a lot. (See here, and here, and here for starters). Some might say that I am getting harassed cause I am a white woman in a black neighborhood, but I think it’s more that men use whatever means they can to assert privilege. Wealthy men can do that through economic threats. Poor men do it through violent threats (I am not saying wealthy men aren’t also violent, but they generally have better ways of threatening women than with cat calls). I don’t think street harassment is a racial problem, in other words. I think it is a class problem. I do know that the black men who harass me in my neighborhood are PISSED cause I’m not afraid of them (more than a few have yelled that I am supposed to be afraid of the big black man when I have gone off on them for their sexist acts).

So back to my own practical bits of privilege. I always feel much better when I confront harassers than when I let it go. And during my tenure in this neighborhood I have gotten much more assertive. Part of that is because I know that as an educated sounding, white, middle class looking (though dirt poor) soccer mom type- the police will always believe me over a black man. Always. If it comes down to violence I know that in those situations I will win. Period. So I get to be a strong angry feminist with an entire racist police force to back me up. But only here. If I were to go north a few miles, my class status and gender would render me as the unbelievable one.

So, how do I give up that little bit of privilege in a world full of violence and anger directed at me? I know it’s there like a loaded handgun waiting for the time I need to fire it.

Example Two

And then there is my child. My brilliant but poor white male child. Because of the neighborhood we are in and because my child is so white he makes paper jealous, he’s nearly been robbed on at least 3 occasions by neighborhood kids. They think (mistakenly) that cause he’s white he must have money. On one occasion the Kid was pushed around pretty brutally and I called the police. The kids that did it were my kid’s age and because they were trying to rob him while threatening him with violence, these three 10 year old black kids could have been charged with felony assault. Because we are white, our complaints would have been taken seriously. But these were kids being brats, not felons. I told the officer we didn’t want to press charges but we did want to scare the shit out of these kids and their parents. He went to their house and did just that. It was sobering, to say the least, to think that these kids who did something thoughtless and stupid and bullying, could have their lives ruined for it at 10. (None of this means to diminish my own kid’s pain- bullying is wrong regardless of skin color).

In that case, had I let anger and vengeance overtake me instead of reason, those kids would have been seriously harmed by my privilege. And I know that the officer took a case of extreme child bullying more seriously because it was reported by an educated sounding, middle class looking white mom. If I had been black and the bullies were white, that wouldn’t happen. If I had been any shade of brown that wouldn’t have happened.

But how can I give up that privilege when it works towards protecting my child?

Example Three

I’ve written about the problems of race and class divide at my son’s school before. The Kid has a mild motor skills problem that has made him eligible for special education assistance at school. Last year he started middle school and was supposed to have one hour a day of a special study skills class as part of our IEP (individual education plan, basically a contract between the school and I saying what services they will provide). He didn’t get study skills class until May, and then only because I threatened to sue. Last year he faltered hard in his classes. When they did put him into a study skills class , he was ignored because he is quiet and will hide in a corner reading a book. The things that were supposed to happen like homework help and time management planning were ignored. It was more a free hour of nothing time for him.

This year, he is in a different study skills class, one created especially for the gifted (mostly white) kids. He has a teacher who actually pays attention to him and he is improving this year. His counselor has apologized over and over because they just didn’t have the Advanced Placement Study Skills class last year.

I know that he is actually getting help this year because he is in the mostly white class with children from wealthy families. I know that the black and brown kids in his study skills class from last year deserve just as much help and attention as my kid does but they aren’t getting it. And I am afraid to complain about it. I am afraid that if I call them out on this that my kid will go back to being warehoused instead of taught.

So how do I give up that bit of privilege when it will ruin my child’s education?

This is what is meant by systemic ___ism. We can work in bits and pieces to make changes, but until you break the entire privilege system it won’t do any good. Practical necessity will interrupt. Now with those cat callers on the street, if we did away with sexism and racism and classism, then they wouldn’t be yelling to begin with. And those kids picking on my Kid, well they wouldn’t have singled him out for his skin color (this is not a reverse racism rant- it’s the reality of being a minority in your neighborhood) and that police officer would have taken our complaint seriously because it deserved serious treatment and not because of my race and class. And the Kid’s school, well all the kids would have access to all the help they need regardless of whether they are gifted and white or poor and brown.

In the mean time, I can acknowledge my privilege. I can try to give up any non-necessary ways my privilege is used. But it’s always there, like a magic security blanket, keeping me from the worst of it.

For Jovial- The Seesaw Power Structure Myth

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Here’s why your “But what about the menzzzzzzzzzzzz!” whine don’t fly.

Imagine our current power structure is a seesaw. On one side you have those with power, on the other side you have those without power. There are fewer people with power than without, so that side is always up. And what the powerful fear most is that enough of the other people will make their way over to the other side, and tip the balance in the opposite direction.

This idea can be applied to all sorts of isms- sexism, racism, classism, ageism, ableism, etc.

In regards to sexism, on one side are men, the other women. The fear from the men is that feminists want to swing the seesaw in their favor. That they want to create a matriarchal society to replace the patriarchy. If they didn’t have some idea of how crappy they treat women in this scenario, then they wouldn’t be so afraid of being on the receiving end of that treatment.

The same thing is true with blacks and whites, hence fear of the angry black man.

But that is not what we want. What we want is to do away with the fulcrum, the structure that keeps the seesaw seesawing. Once that fulcrum comes down, guess what? We are all on a level playing ground. That is what we want. We want the lines between groups dissolved so that what matters is the individual, not the sex or race or whatever of the person.

Now Jovial, I know you are just chomping at the bit (crossed arms comment- puh -lease! You do know that kind of stance is a position of weakness right? It’s a way to mimic aggression while protecting your heart. ) for me to say “OMG- you’re right, I’m a total misandrist and I have been all wrong this whole time. Not all men are part of the patriarchy.”

Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.

You think that by calling out sexist behavior I am stereotyping men. Nope, society stereotypes you for me. I am just telling you that it’s just as stupid for you all to fall into those stereotypes as it is for us. I am also trying to tell you that what you think is a set in stone biological difference between the sexes is a giant crock of shit. But you are so busy holding on to your man-power and crossing your arms like an angry frat boy that you can’t see YOU’RE FALLING INTO THOSE STUPID STEREOTYPES.

You say recession while we say depression

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What does it mean when the Fed and the bankers work over the weekend to lower interest rates and to keep a major investment back from going under?

That we are up shit creek my friends, without a paddle. We are just a few Bush idiocies from Hoovervilles my friends. Hang on to your hats, it’s going to be a bumpy ride into poverty for a lot of folks. Those of us who are frequent poverty fliers will say that this is the worst we’ve ever seen it. And there is no help on the way us, for banks yes, but for us, no.

So my little chickadees, since this is becoming the all Hillary all the time blog, do we really want a president with little experience in handling a major crisis? Who likes to use Republican economic ideas (cause yeah- they got us this far RIGHT?)

Nope, I want Hillary. And I want her to come out swinging for social programs like the second coming of Roosevelt. She already has a long history of working to improve the lives of women and children, the people hit hardest and most often with poverty. And we’re all familiar with what the economy was like under the other Clinton (Your’s truly was actually a member of the middle class AND could afford dental work. Shocking I know).

Poverty is not a game for the faint hearted

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Via Shakes comes the story of an over privileged doochenozzel who thought he would prove to the world that poor people really are poor because they are lazy and don’t understand the value of hard work and savings.

Let’s start with a few things the asswipe forgot on his way to playing poor.

1) He’s a dude, a young, single white dude with no children. When looking at the census numbers, women between 18 & 64 with children are 30% more likely to be poor than a man in the exact same situation. Elderly women are are 2.7 times more likely to be poor than elderly men.

The numbers are even more disturbing when looking at race. Overall, 22% of Black men and 26% of Black women live in poverty. For whites, only 9.1% of white men are poor.

So before we even look at things like education, he starts out with a greater likelihood of being able to earn a living than virtually everybody else in the country.

But that’s not all folks. He starts with a college education. Some of us (me, hello) have been working on a college education for about 12 years now because we do not have the funds to both support ourselves and attend school full time. Financial aid, for the poorest of us, barely covers tuition and books. It is not uncommon for students to work full time (or more) and attend school full time. And when that is the situation and somethings gotta give (like say your boss threatens to fire you because your class schedule is interfering with his work scheduling) it is usually school that goes first. An education is great but it’s damn hard to get an education while homeless, so basic needs get met first. That’s simple human psychology. I would love to introduce the doochnozzle to Maslov’s pyramid, but since he already has a college education I am sure he knows about it.

So he’s a young single white dude with an education. And he’s healthy, in no small part due to the fact that he probably had things like health care and good dental work up until he decided playing at poverty was a solid plan. Do you know how many days of work I have missed because of an abscessed tooth? More than a week. If I had dental coverage I could get it root canaled and crowned, or even just pulled. But I don’t have it. And neither do most people in poverty.

And let’s not forget, it’s not like he’s really poor. He had a credit card with him for emergencies. He had a way out of awful anytime he chose. He could quit a job if his boss was a dick. Some of us don’t have that option, especially poor women who are sexually harassed (oh that’s another one I have experience with multiple time over). And if worse came to worse, say if he didn’t have the money to pay his car insurance and it lapsed and he got pulled over and arrested for it, well he still has Mom and Dad and his credit card to bail him out.

Poverty means there is no out. There is no back up plan, there is no benevolent savior, there is no way to save for a rainy day when you’re $300 in the hole every month for just basic living expenses. Poverty is awful because it is finite for the individual in it. The myth of the bootstrap is just that. The tokens of exceptionalism that are occasionally trotted out in front of us are no different from the Catholic church telling feudal peasants that if they were good they’d get rewarded in heaven. Poverty is not an individual disease, it is a cancer on the society that creates it. Only massive changes to that society will cure it.

So Mr. Doochnozzle, you start out with a shit ton of privilege and you end with no real knowledge of what poverty looks like.

RQ Cooks plus how the poor get their party on

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So payday isn’t till Thursday and the fridge still hasn’t been restocked since our little electricity debacle. I’m scrounging around to keep us fed this week and resorted to the poor man’s meat- beans!

I have this awesome recipe for Cuban black bean soup, but I was missing one key ingredient- a large can of tomatoes. So I did what any good cook will do and improvised. I used a large can of enchilada sauce instead and it turned out quite tasty. I also skipped the sherry vinegar and a few other things cause I don’t follow directions well. Sue me.

So Cuban Black Bean Soup (spicy and vegan till you add the cheese- woot)

vegetable oil
1 pound black turtle beans, washed and picked over but not soaked
2 stalks of celery, diced
1 large yellow onion
2 carrots, diced
1 28oz can of enchilada sauce
2 bay leaves
pepper
salt
dash of favorite hot sauce (I like Tapatillo)
cheese, sour cream and/or chopped scallions for garnish

Preheat oven to 325. In a stock pot, sweat onions, celery and carrots in oil for about 3 minutes. Throw in enchilada sauce, beans, bay leaves and dash of hot sauce. Bring to boil. Cover pot and braise in oven for 2 hours.

Puree about 1/3 of the soup in a food processor (or if you have one of those handy immersion blenders, use that and know that I am JEALOUS AS ALL GET OUT)

Add salt and pepper to taste, garnish with cheese and scallions.

Now- how the poor get their party on.

Being friends with a whole bunch of poor struggling artsy types, we’ve decided to have a Soup Swap Party at my house next Saturday. Everyone brings a big pot of their fav soup and some take home containers. Then we all get together with some wine (okay a shitload of wine) and taste soups and take leftovers home so for the price of one meal we get many. I think I’m going to do Cheddar Chowder. It’s equal parts cheese, potatoes and bechamel sauce and 100 percent rich yummy goodness. I’ll post the recipe next week.

Fuck You Nancy Pelosi!

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Thanks for once again shafting the poor in a rush to agree with the preznit. (Even more details here)

Thanks to a temp job last summer, our income for the year is at a whole whopping 69 percent of the poverty level. Who Hoo! Last year is was less than half the poverty level for 2 people, so I guess this is a step up.

People who make up to 130 percent of the poverty level are usually eligible for food stamps. You would think that anyone under the poverty level would just be eligible for the whole amount. It’s not like we can go spend food stamp money on beer and cigarettes or even toilet paper, it only pays for food.

So I am about 5000 dollars a year below the poverty line, or I am 416 dollars short every month of what the government says I need just to sustain basic life quality. They could just give that amount to me in food stamps. We could certainly use it and with some extra money we’d try these organics and whole grains everyone keeps talking about :).

But we don’t get that much.

Actually, for a family of 2 the maximum amount of food stamps we could get per month is 278. that would be nice, it might actually cover almost a months worth of groceries if we eat nothing but crap.

But we don’t get that much either.

We get 228 per month. It lasts about 2 weeks if we eat things like fruits and vegetables, whole grains and lean meats, nothing organic or expensive, just healthy. It lasts about 3 weeks if we eat processed crap and hamburger. The price of milk is over 4 bucks a gallon here most of the time, so things like cereal have become a luxury. While food prices rise with the cost of gasoline, food stamp allotments have remained stagnant.

I had a few hopes in the last week or so that the Dems were really going to stick to it and get help for the poor (since we are the first and last victims of recession, we see it coming way before anyone else and we feel it’s effects much longer) while getting a boost for the economy.

But nah. I guess it’s really easy to throw hungry children under the bus in the name of cooperation and bipartisanship. Nice work Nancy. When milk hits 5 bucks a gallon I’m telling my kid that you’re the reason a box of cereal is now as much of a rarity as lobster in our house. I hope the next time you bring a bite of either to you lips, you choke on it you disingenuous fuck wad.