By: ArziR,
on 7/15/2010
Blog: OUPblog
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Politics, American History, A-Featured, heller, Kennedy, poverty, launching, CEA, Great Society, Lampman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Michael L. Gillette, The Saturday Group, War on poverty, moynihan, gillette, Add a tag
Arzi Rachman, Intern
Michael L. Gillette is the current executive director of Humanities Texas, the state humanities council. Before serving as the executive director, he directed the LBJ Library’s Oral History Program from 1976 to 1991, and then became the director of the Center for Legislative Archives at the National Archives for twelve years after. His new book, Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History, pieces together oral history interviews with former president Lyndon B. Johnson and his team of advisers as they undertook the Great Society’s greatest challenge.
This excerpt is taken from an interview with Robert J. Lampman, a staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 1962 to 1963 who worked in the Kennedy Administration along with Walter Heller, chairman of the CEA. The Saturday Group, called so because of their Saturday “brown bag” lunches, would meet informally (at first) to discuss how they could approach the problem of poverty and solutions that could be brought about with assistance from the government. Their luncheons were the beginnings of a social movement that would become pivotal in giving assistance where it was needed. Their work is still seen today, in the forms of public assistance that we once never had an option of choosing when survival was the only thing that was of importance.
THE SATURDAY GROUP
LAMPMAN: In that period, May to June [1963], somewhere along in there, Heller asked me to take part in writing up the possible meaning of an attack on poverty- lots of different phrases were used-and to meet with a group of people around Washington at the assistant secretary level and pick brains and get suggestions and criticisms of the idea. We dealt with people from the Bureau of the Budget; from HEW [Health, Education, and Welfare Department] (Wilbur Cohen was an assistant secretary, as I recall, at the time); from labor (Pat Moynihan [Daniel Patrick Moynihan] was the assistant secretary [of Labor]); from Agriculture; from Department of Justice.
There were just a few meetings, as I recall. We’d meet for an afternoon once every couple of weeks or something like that. It was all very tentative and very low-key, at least to start with. People were just speaking their minds. It was almost an academic sort of seminar. Indeed, it was interesting how many people there were Ph.D.s or were backed up by a scholar who was associated with the work. And we had represented people from different disciplines. There were people like Moynihan, who was a political scientists; and Cohen, who was an old hand in the income maintenance field but who was especially interested in this as an issue. There were statisticians, and then there were lawyers. People had very different approaches to the whole question.
We would get into discussion about the definition of poverty. What kind of a concept and what kind of a numbers frame would you have in mind? Some people would say poverty obviously means lack of money income. That had the great merit of being something we had some numbers on. We could say how many people there were above and below some line and where they were and so on. But other people said that’s really not what poverty means; poverty is more or sometimes even less than money. It’s a spiritual concept; or it’s a participation-in-government concept; or it’s a lack of some kind of self-esteem, sort of a psychological or im
By: Kirsty,
on 7/7/2010
Blog: OUPblog
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
aid, famine, development, band aid, Live 8, live aid, peter gill, Music, History, Economics, africa, china, UK, Politics, A-Featured, Media, Ethiopia, Early Bird, poverty, Add a tag
Peter Gill is a journalist specialising in developing world affairs, and first travelled to Ethiopia in the 1960s. He has made films in and reported from Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, South Africa, Uganda, and Sudan, as well as Ethiopia. He recently led BBC World Service Trust campaigns on leprosy and HIV/AIDS in India. His new book is Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid, which is the story of what has happened in the country since the famous music and television events 25 years ago.
This third and final part of our ‘Ethiopia Since Live Aid’ blog feature is an original post by Peter Gill, in which he discusses the West’s view of aid and Africa. If you missed it, on Tuesday we read an excerpt from the book, and yesterday we ran an exclusive Q&A with Peter.
This 2010 ‘Summer of Africa’ has been promoted as a moment of transformation – an acknowledgment that the continent may at last be on the move, that it may be beginning to cast off its image as global basket case, ceasing to be a ‘scar on the conscience of humanity,’ in the phrase of former Prime Minister Tony Blair.
It was 25 years ago in July that a great Ethiopian famine and the Live Aid concert which it inspired underlined the physical and moral enormity of mass death by starvation. These events defined popular outrage at the human cost of extreme poverty and began to build an extraordinary consensus around the merits of aid. A generation later, in the teeth of financial gales in the rich world, this consensus is under increasing scrutiny.
Of course aid works and it works at many levels. Charity is an essential characteristic of social relationships. It saves lives and it helps individuals, families, sometimes whole communities to improve their existence. What the big aid flows – from governments and charities – have not done is to change the face of poor societies, to overcome the disgrace of extreme poverty.
Now the western world may have missed its opportunity to fix the problem. It may no longer have the means. It is also far too preoccupied with addressing the processes of how best to deliver aid, and has failed to sort out whether it had the right strategy in the first place.
What went wrong, I believe, is that we kept seeing Africa in our own image – as we would like it to be, rather than as it was. The colonial period may have become history, but the colonial mindset of ‘we-know-best’ has surely persisted. We compounded the error by allowing our hearts to rule our heads in how we spend the aid money. We have been more troubled by the symptoms of poverty than to see where our help was most needed.
Our fortunate way of the life in the West – prosperity allied with liberal democratic forms of government – may be the envy and the aspiration of many in the poor world, but did that give us the right in the name of ‘good governance’ to insist that there are quick and easy steps to achieving it? In the decades after Europe’s helter-skelter decolonisation, was it realistic to ignore the lessons of our own tortured political evolution and demand swift democratic reform as a condition of aid?
Our rich world sensibilities have, rightly, been offended by deaths from preventable diseases and we have, again rightly, poured money into ever more ambitious health initiatives. But we have made little corresponding effort to help African women plan their families by plugging the huge gap in contraceptive needs. Aid expenditure on family planning has actually fallen in the past de
By: shelf-employed,
on 6/26/2010
Blog: Shelf-employed
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
poetry, book review, historical fiction, family life, California, mothers, Civil Rights, sisters, prison, J, 1960s, poverty, Black Panthers, African Americans, Add a tag
If you haven't heard of One Crazy Summer, you will. Rita Williams-Garcia's latest middle grade fiction is getting a lot of buzz, and justifiably so.
One Crazy Summer is set in a poor neighborhood of Oakland, California, 1968. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern (three African-American girls, aged 11, 9 and 7) travel on their own from Brooklyn to Oakland. Their father, against the judgment of the girls' grandmother and caretaker, Big Mama, has decided that it's time for the girls to meet Cecile, the mother that deserted them. With visions of Disneyland, movie stars, and Tinkerbell dancing in their heads, they set off on the plane determined not to make, as Big Mama says, "Negro spectacles" of themselves. This is advice that Delphine, the oldest, has heard often. She is smart and savvy with a good head on her shoulders, and she knows how to keep her sisters in line. Not much can throw her for a loop, but then, she hasn't met crazy Cecile yet. Cecile, or Nzila, as she is known among the Black Panthers, is consumed by her passion - poetry. She writes powerful and moving poems for "the people" - important work, and she is not about to be disturbed by three young girls and their constant needs for food and attention. She operates a one-woman printing press in her kitchen - no children allowed. Instead of Disneyland and the beach, she shoos the girls off daily to the local center run by the Black Panthers. There, in the midst of an impoverished, minority neighborhood, the girls receive free breakfast, kind words, and an education the likes of which they would never have gotten in Brooklyn. Slowly, they begin to understand the plight of "the people" - the Blacks, the poor, the immigrants, even Cecile.
Although this book has several great themes (Civil Rights, sisterhood, community) and well-rounded strong-willed characters, you can read about them in any number of reviews. As for me, with my teenage daughter preparing to take a trip to Europe next month with the Girl Scouts, one thing from One Crazy Summer jumped
Michelle Rafferty, Publicity Assistant
Which is more important: saving the environment or fixing global poverty? Economist Paul Collier argues that we can find a middle ground and do both in his new book The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. A former director of Development Research at the World Bank and author of the widely acclaimed and award winning The Bottom Billion, Collier’s The Plundered Planet continues his life mission of advocating for the world’s poorest billion people.
Collier made a quick stop in NYC recently, in which I was able to ask him a few questions about his new book. In Segment 1 he reflects on the shift in the world’s “passionate concern” from poverty to the environment. To hear more from Collier be sure to check in tomorrow for Day 2 of this week long series!
Michelle Rafferty: In the first line of your book you write: “I grew up before nature was discovered.” Can you talk about watching environmentalism explode over the course of your lifetime and when you realized it would be crucial to your work?
Paul Collier: Yeah, I mean environmentalism came in In the early 1970s.  I remember there was a book of an image of the earth taken from space called The Limits to Growth, and that was the first sort of statement that the environment might constrain our choices. And as a young economist I remember being very irritated by that. I was working on development, how the poorest countries could escape from poverty and this idea that everything was going to be constrained by environment seemed to me just nonsense. And then things moved on.
Personally I married an environmental historian, and so that brought me pretty starkly face to face with environmentalism. And then more recently, especially after I wrote The Bottom Billion, I now do a lot of speaking especially to young people, especially to audiences full of young people. And I realized that whereas I was their age, for me the passionate concern was how to lift people out of poverty. For young people now the passionate concern is how to protect the planet. And so I often get posed the question, that surely we can’t afford for everybody to develop, because if everybody develops the planet will be ruined. And so I realized I had to confront that question seriously, and that’s what the book tries to do.
By: Kirsty,
on 4/13/2010
Blog: OUPblog
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
British history, History, UK, Politics, A-Featured, World War II, poverty, policy, Churchill, evacuees, john welshman, Add a tag
By Kirsty McHugh, OUP UK
John Welshman, author of Churchill’s Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain, blogs about how everyday items like children’s plimsolls can actually say a great deal about the wider issues of poverty and policy during World War II.
You can read John Welshman’s previous OUPblog post here.
Getting friends to read a book manuscript is an interesting process, for often they highlight themes that you are only subconsciously aware of yourself. One who read mine commented that he was struck how much there was about the everyday, including shoes.
And it is true that one of the interesting aspects of the evacuation of September 1939 is the way that it shone a light on aspects of people’s lifestyles that had been ignored in the 1930s. Occasionally commentators such as the Labour MP,  Fenner Brockway, in the book Hungry England, had noted that poor children wore the plimsolls that were sold in street markets. But more often this was ignored. But the theme of footwear cropped up right at the start of the evacuation process. In May 1939, for example, civil servants realised that the clothing and footwear of some children would pose problems. It was thought that while there were unlikely to be problems in London, or in towns in Kent and Hampshire, there would be in cities in the Midlands and the North. A circular issued that month informed parents about the amount and type of luggage to be taken. Each child was to carry a gas mask, change of underclothing, night clothes, slippers or plimsolls, spare socks or stockings, toothbrush, comb, towel and handkerchief, warm coat or mackintosh, rucksack, and food for the day. Parents were told the children were to be sent in their thickest clothing and warmest footwear. Moreover the evacuation practices held in the summer of 1939 confirmed that many children had neither warm clothing nor strong footwear. In Leeds, for instance, while the equipment brought was generally good, and all the children had come with gas masks, ‘the greatest weakness is in the supply of footwear’.
The civil servants realised that the success of evacuation would depend on the weather, since many parents waited for the winter before buying their children new shoes. And footwear was certainly a problem in some of the Reception Areas. In Lancaster in the North West, for example, the Billeting Officer advised parents that the money spent on their frequent visits would be better spent on footwear and clothing for their children. He wrote that:
It is very desirable to give the children every opportunity to settle down happily in their new surroundings; and for this reason parents will be wise not to visit their children too frequently. The money spent in such visits would be better spent on thick country footwear, raincoats, overcoats, or warm underclothing for the children.
The Ministry of Health responded on 2 October 1939 with a circular on footwear and clothing. This announced that £7,500 was to be distributed in the Evacuation Areas as contributions to boot and clothing funds. Moreover while the circular continued to encourage voluntary effort, there were some important shifts as time went
Without a doubt, Slumdog Millionaire was a great movie. But it still surprised me to see this memoir of the nine-year-old slum dweller and budding actress, Rubina Ali with the help of author Divya Dugar. Sale of the book are to help a slum and also fund Rubina's arts training. Even though the Slumdog story is the major story, you will get an idea of slum life in Mumbai. I still have suspicions about her father's financial goals for her. After all, her wages from Slumdog went completely to him, and there is still suspicions that he really did want to sell her. But if she can stay in school until 18 years of age, she and her co-star will receive a lump sum of money from film producers.
Anyway, I think there is a place for this autobiography. After all, how many people do you know whose home has been bulldozed three times?
ENDERS' Rating: A disturbing peek into a slum
By: Katie B.,
on 3/5/2010
Blog: First Book
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
federal government, National Association of Independent Writers and Editors, Words Matter Week, Books & Reading, Authors & Illustrators, Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland, Guys Read, poverty, Literacy Links and Articles, Tim Burton, Add a tag
This Week is Words Matter Week
Check out the Words Matter Week blog, sponsored by the National Association of Independent Writers and Editors for interesting prompts and daily blog challenge questions.
There’s something about ‘Alice’
The Boston Globe features a great article on Lewis Carroll’s book and readers obsession with Alice’s story. In other “Alice” news, Tim Burton’s 3-D movie version opens today!
U.S. Plans New Measure for Poverty
This week the federal government announced it would begin producing an experimental measurement of poverty next year, a step toward the first overhaul of the formula since it was developed nearly a half-century ago.
Fairbanks man works to get boys to read more books
A great profile on Tim Stallard and the Alaska chapter of the Guys Read program, which seeks to encourage and improve boys’ reading levels.
Teaching kids to read from the back of a burro
For hundreds of children in the rural villages of Colombia, Luis Soriano is more than a man riding a stubborn donkey – he is a man with a mission to save rural children from illiteracy.
well, this week marks the national launch of my other baby, Milk + Bookies. i started this non profit in 2004 and it is just now getting off the ground (good things come to those who wait). if you want a new idea for a birthday party or if you know some teens who are looking for a community service project, this is the place to visit: www.milkandbookies.org
there are step by step instructions to throw your own event where you can invite kids to a book store, (or your home) and ask them to choose, inscribe and donate books to local kids who have none.
this is really the same message i share here about giving little ones an experience where they can give back.
the motto: READ, GIVE, GROW.
For Blog Action Day 2009, tall tales & short stories has a guest blog post on behalf of CARE.
 CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. We place special focus on working alongside poor women because, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty. Women are at the heart of CARE's community-based efforts to improve basic education, prevent the spread of HIV, increase access to clean water and sanitation, expand economic opportunity and protect natural resources. CARE also delivers emergency aid to survivors of war and natural disasters, and helps people rebuild their lives.
Climate change is not only about melting ice caps and polar bears. Climate change is about people.
Swinging weather patterns are creating disasters on a scale that human civilization has never before witnessed. For the world’s poorest people – the ones least equipped to deal with its effects – climate change is devastating their crops, livelihoods and communities.
"Climate change is worsening the plight of those hundreds of millions of men, women and children who already live in extreme poverty – and it threatens to push hundreds of millions more people into similar destitution," says CARE International’s Secretary General Robert Glasser. "A concerted international response to this unprecedented challenge is required if we are to avoid catastrophic human suffering."
CARE is working toward a world where poor people can create opportunity out of crises like climate change. But the current reality is that climate change makes poor people even more vulnerable.
For instance, agricultural production will likely decline in the poorest countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Less reliable rainfall will likely affect planting seasons, crop growth and livestock health – and lead to increased malnutrition. In other parts of the developing world, flooding will likely further diminish the quality of already-marginal soil and could cause outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera and dysentery.
Climate change also is hurling many poor families into “Catch-22” situations. For example, they may select crops that are less sensitive to rainfall variation, but also less profitable. As incomes decline and people are not able to eke out a living, children are forced to leave school, assets are sold off to afford essentials, malnutrition rates increase and large-scale migration ensues. The end result? Deepening poverty for tens of millions of people around the world.
What Must Be Done?
At the international level, negotiations to develop a new treaty to guide global efforts to address climate change will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark in just a couple weeks. The United States must help lead those efforts, and forge a strong agreement that caps emissions, stops global warming and responds to the effects already in motion. We must do this for the sake of all of humanity.
What can I do to help?
First, you can make a tax-deductible donation to CARE to help poor families access the tools and education they need to adapt to the effects of climate change, make efficient use of their existing resources and overcome poverty for good.
Second, if you live in the Unites States, you can write your senators and urge them to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, a critical step toward U.S. leadership in tackling climate change. U.S. leadership is critical to making the Copenhagen negotiations a success.
Third, you can join the CARE mailing list to be kept up to date on CARE’s activities and other ways you can take action in the days counting down to Copenhagen.
To donate, take action and join our e-mail list, please visit www.care.org/climate
Today, 15th October, is Blog Action Day to highlight the issues of climate change.
As bloggers we are asked to come together to blog and talk about the serious issue of climate change and how it is and will affect our world.
I am not a scientist, I am not an expert, but as a member of the human race I believe we are destroying our world in so many ways. I cannot talk about climate change with any authority so instead I'd like to direct my readers to some recent articles and reports I have read or seen.
On Channel 4 news they recently ran a report on drought in Kenya and they asked the question - is Kenya and its people 'among the first victims of climate change?'
 The remains of a young elephant which died of thirst.
Photo: Channel 4 news.
You can see Lindsay Hilsum's report by following this link http://www.channel4.com/news/article.jsp?id=3386997&time=160653~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By 2050, 25 million more people will go hungry as climate change leads to food crisis http://www.scidev.net/en/climate-change-and-energy/news/climate-change-will-leave-25-million-more-children-hungry--1.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/30/food-crisis-malnurtrition-climate-change~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The UK's Act on CO2 website http://actonco2.direct.gov.uk/actonco2/home.html~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
now that the kids are in school and have a rhythm going, how about a class project? greg mortenson (author of THREE CUPS OF TEA, a remarkably inspiring book) brings the pennies for peace program to school kids everywhere.
log onto the site, sign up and "By participating in Pennies for Peace you make a positive impact on a global scale, one penny at a time. While a penny is virtually worthless, in impoverished countries a penny buys a pencil and opens the door to literacy."
the site gives step by step instructions for classes to start a penny jar, weave cultural lessons about the middle east into their curriculum and teach philanthropy.
the lesson: with very little effort we can help do something as grand as BUILD A SCHOOL in a foreign country. we can make a difference.
***added bonus: your child feels powerful and you have a cleaner kitchen junk drawer, a cleaner bottom of your purse and a cleaner drink holder in your car!
making family time for EXTRAS is a constant uphill battle, i often feel like Sisyphus. but when you see the effects of "extras" like giving, it seems incredibly worthwhile; the kids are engaged, they feel useful and they carry with them a new confidence.
this summer, i challenge you to THE BOX PROJECT. this non profit pairs you with a family living in poverty in the USA. each month, based on the recipient families needs, you and your family send a box, some months it's filled with food, other months medical supplies and another time may be books and toys - each month might be a combination of all of the above.
i love that it's a scheduled amount of time for your family to set aside each month to focus on others in need. there are letters and pictures exchanged and a real bond forms between the two families.
the lesson: a family just like ours is less lucky than we are BUT we can help.
***added bonus: a project to keep them off of the video games at least one day a month this summer.
the great american bake sale is an organization that helps you put on a (see if you can guess what i'm going to write next) bake sale!!! yay, you guessed right!
they send you a poster, give you the low down on sales, give you an email card to forward to friends and set up an account for you. sure, you could do all of this yourself, but somehow it seems so much more LEGIT.
TGABS (my acronym) gives all of the monies raised to a hunger relief organization in your neighborhood. this morning my son and his "girlfriend", charlotte, made a whopping $33. if i may go one step further, i would like to recommend baking rice krispies treats - they are the EASIEST thing on the planet to make. melt butter, add mini marshmallows, add cereal, stir and pour - THE END.
the lesson: basically it's "business school 101": make a product, market and advertise, sell and donate.
***added bonus: it's really fun, great to eat leftovers and who doesn't love sitting around begging people for a dollar.
By: Meredith Alexander,
on 1/13/2009
Blog: THE ACME SHARING COMPANY
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
global warming, for all ages, recycle, neighborhood project, help find a cure, teaching gratitude, poverty, acme holiday, homeless help, kindness toward others, Add a tag
our new first-lady-to-be is a girl after my own heart. she's a mom of two, supports her busy husband, has understated style and wants everyone to give back. come on, we're 2 peas in a pod!
this monday, january 19th is DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR day and MICHELLE OBAMA'S day to "call to service" the entire country.
the m.o. for M.O. is to get everyone to do ANY kind of community service on monday, (which is also a school holiday, so we'll be looking for things to do). the idea is to "renew america together, one community at a time. it will take ordinary citizens working together with a common purpose to get this country back on track. this national day of service is an important first step in our continuing commitment."
this is an exciting project and one i hope you will consider doing with your families. to find local activities and to learn more about this national day of service, check out the website:
if you can't find anything that speaks to you, please browse the acme sharing archives with over 70 ideas for community service projects to do with your kids.
***extra credit - i would LOVE to hear from you. please let me know how you spent the day, how it affected your kids and what did or didn't work in teaching them the most important aspect of humanity: SHARING.
Interested in the actual educational effects of giving laptops to students? Some interesting conclusions from a paper by Jacob Vigdor entitled Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement (pdf). The study is a North Carolina-wide look at who has access to broadband, home computers and what the test score correlations are with these facts, if any. A few notable pullquotes.
[T]he introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps.
[T]he introduction of high-speed internet service is associated with significantly lower math and reading test scores. Moreover, broadband internet is associated with wider racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps. One interpretation of these findings is that home computer technology is put to more productive use in households with more effective parental monitoring.
Students who own a computer but never use it for schoolwork have math test scores nearly indistinguishable from those without a home computer, while scoring slightly better than reading. Students reporting almost daily use of their home computer for schoolwork score significantly worse than students with no computer at home.
Students who gain access to a home computer between 5th and 8th grade tend to witness a persistent decline in reading and math test scores. There is little evidence that more intensive computer use for schoolwork offsets these negative effects.
Surprised? I was, a little [dweinberger]
welcome to "blog action day" where thousands of bloggers ban together, get a socially responsible topic and discuss it with their readers. think about the impact - how exciting to be a part of this movement that potentially will be read by 10 million people!?!?! the movement, not this blog, just to be clear.
today the blog action day people have chosen POVERTY. 75% of the world's population is affected by poverty and there are thousands of things we can do to help.
just to get the big picture on poverty, here is something to watch and think about.
and if you feel moved to action, here is a good start (plus, who doesn't love Bono???)
the ONE campaign website where you can lobby congress, volunteer, wear ONE gear, join the online community and share info with your friends.
and when you are ready to involve your family, here is a nationwide list of soup kitchens and shelters which are ALWAYS in need of help.
happy blog action day to you all!
October 15, 2008 is Blog Action day, committed to the discussion of poverty.
Where to begin? Causes? Resultant problem? Solutions?
These are just my random thoughts.
I've been a poverty lawyer for more than 30 years. I help low income (and no income) clients get access to justice by having me, a free lawyer, represent them in court. I only handle civil cases, and I work for a private non-profit agency that is one of hundreds of such organizations funded in part by the U.S. government's Legal Services Corporation.
Lawyers are not the first line of defense for poor people. They need food, shelter, clothing, medical care. The children also need free, public, appropriate education. These are critical needs.
But lawyers can help poor people use what little they have to get their basic needs met; can advocate for them to get benefits from programs that may help; and can try to protect them from being cheated out of the basic fairness of being heard when they are involved (or need to be involved) in some litigation.
As with all goods and services needed by the poor, there aren't enough poverty lawyers to do the job. And so we get put into the horrible position of deciding what is a "priority" and whose case isn't important enough for our limited resources.
Some have no sympathy for the poor. They view poverty as a result of laziness or stupidity or personal fault (criminal conduct, bad health habits). There is no doubt that there are lazy and stupid, the criminal and those who don't take care of themselves, among the poor. But these same attributes can be found among the middle class and the rich. These individual traits do explain poverty.
The successful do not want to believe that the system that has allowed them to progress is somehow unfair. There is a resentment by people of means toward the indigent because, if the system is wrong, then their success isn't as meaningful; and a change in the system could also change their own personal fates.
Poverty exists throughout the world, and has existed throughout the centuries. In hindsight, we can easily see that the feudal system kept the masses in poverty and illiteracy --as a system. But we are blinded to the faults of our current economic system.
Our current capitalist system is definitely an improvement over feudalism. We have a larger middle class and some protections for the poor. But there is a staggering discrepancy between those at the top of the economic ladder and those at the bottom, and there is no real way to eliminate the bottom rungs. If those at the bottom manage to move up, someone in the middle will be moving down.
I don't have answers. I don't know what are solutions. (I'm not embracing socialism here because I'm not all that knowledgeable about the ins and outs of such an option.)
I only know that we must keep trying. We must recognize that poverty is with us, not because individuals are weak or bad, but because our system needs improving.
By: Jessamyn West,
on 6/23/2008
Blog: librarian.net
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
library, iowa, cuba, blogz, twitter, libraryjuice, poverty, flood, cedarapids, cubanlibraries, ryandeschamps, Add a tag
As may be obvious, I’m a little behind on my feeds. The good news is that there’s a lot of good stuff there. The bad news is that you may have seen some of it. Here are a few quickie notes that I think merit some attention. My apologies if you’ve all seen them before. My personal goal is to be all caught up on feeds by the time I leave for ALA — Thursday morning — and don’t get behind again. I think it’s doable.
By: Rebecca,
on 5/5/2008
Blog: OUPblog
( Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Health, aids, deaths, A-Featured, Medical Mondays, poverty, Deadly Companions, Dorothy H. Crawford, microbes, virus, infected, cent, saharan, slums, microbe, Add a tag
Dorothy H. Crawford is a Professor of Medical Microbiology and Assistant Principle for the Public Understanding of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. Her most recent book, Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History, takes us back in time to follow the interlinked history of microbes and man, impressing upon us how a world free of dangerous microbes is an illusion. In an excerpt this morning we looked at SARS. The excerpt below looks at the effect of poverty on disease.
It is glaringly obvious from a glance at the figures that poverty is the major cause of microbe-related deaths. On a worldwide scale microbes are still major killers, accounting for one in three of all deaths. But the huge discrepancy in the death rates between rich and poor nations reveals the stark reality. Whereas only 1–2 per cent of all deaths in the West are caused by microbes, this figure rises to over 50 per cent in the poorest nations of the world, and it is in these highly microbe-infected areas where over 95 per cent of the global deaths from infections occur. Most of the 17 million killed by microbes each year are children in developing countries where the link with poverty is clear. It is the poor who are malnourished, live in filthy, overcrowded urban slums and go without clean drinking water or sewage disposal, and therefore they are the ones who fall prey to the killer microbes: HIV, malaria, TB, respiratory infections and diarrhea diseases like cholera, typhoid and rotavirus; all eminently preventable and treatable given the resources.
The spread of HIV is an excellent example of how microbes exploit the poor, striking at the most disadvantaged in the community. The virus emerged in Central Africa and spread silently throughout the  continent in the 1970s, given a head start by its long silent incubation period, and aided by despotic leaders, corrupt governments, civil wars, tribal conflicts, droughts and famines. Carried by undisciplined armies and terrorists, the virus infiltrated city slums, infected commercial sex workers, was picked up by migrant workers and passed on to their wives and families. While malnutrition accelerated the onset of AIDs, breakdown of health-care services in the political turmoil of Africa excluded any possibility of medical support for the millions in need.
Now we are living through the worst pandemic the world has ever known, with 40 million living with HIV, 25 million already dead and around 10,000 dying daily—the equivalent of over three 9/11disasters every twenty-four hours. A third of people living in sub-Saharan African cities are HIV-infected, and while highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has converted this lethal disease into a manageable chronic infection in the West, presently only a tiny proportion of Africans living with HIV receive this treatment; for most there is no hope of obtaining the drugs vital for keeping them alive.
The dynamics of HIV in Africa reflects its mode of spread. As the virus is sexually transmitted gender inequalities mean that women are particularly vulnerable. In general they are poorer and less well educated than their male counterparts, and are often powerless to choose or restrict their sexual partners, or to insist on condom use. Indeed many are forced to exchange sex for essentials like food, shelter and schooling. Now one in four African women are HIV-infected by the age of twenty-two years (compared to one in fourteen men of the same age), and women account for 60 per cent of all those living with HIV.
Over 90 per cent of HIV-positive women in Africa are mothers, and the virus has created 15 million orphans worldwide, 12 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. These children are bearing the burden of the HIV pandemic; they miss school to care for their sick mothers or to earn the family income; the virus has not only deprived them of their parents but their childhood and their education as well.
ShareThis
View Next 1 Posts
|
|
Abe’s Lucky Day
.jpeg?picon=2675)
This is a great topic for kids. Thank you for sharing and for hosting this week.
Thanks for rounding up today!
Hi,
Just wanted everyone to know I have an interview with Shirley Duke today at Wrapped In Foil on the occasion of her 100th blog post. Congratulations Shirley!
Thanks for hosting. (I am intrigued by Packing for Mars from your last post. Can't wait to see that one.)
Ooh, look at that linky thing! Fancy!
I write about nonfiction kids books that DON'T exist on Pink Me today - would love to hear what else people can't find. Thanks for hosting today!
Thanks for taking care of this Monday's event. I've checked out the great selection of books that have been offered and will be looking to add them to the Doucette Library's collection. Great stuff!.
Tammy
Thanks for sharing this, and for the warm welcome to Nonfiction Monday. I can tell I'm going to enjoy it. (By the way, I know my children would be horrified by the "climbing boy" description. They still have a hard time when they get a paper cut :)
Thanks for hosting.
My selection is The History of Counting, written by Denise Schmandt-Besserat and illustrated by Michael Hays.
Janet,
I added your link for you. Thanks for participating.