How big is the 1%?
The organized right justifies its draconian policies toward the poor with moral arguments. Right-wing think tanks and blogs, for instance, ponder the damaging effect on disabled poor children of becoming “dependent” on government assistance, or they scrutinize government nutritional assistance for poor pregnant women and children in an effort to explain away positive outcomes for infants.
The willful ignorance and cruelty of it all can leave you gasping—and gasp was all we did for decades. This is why we so desperately needed a movement for a new kind of moral economy. Occupy Wall Street, which has already changed the national conversation, may well be its beginning.
The willful ignorance and cruelty of it all can leave you gasping—and gasp was all we did for decades. This is why we so desperately needed a movement for a new kind of moral economy. Occupy Wall Street, which has already changed the national conversation, may well be its beginning.
A moral economy for our own time would certainly take on the unbridled accumulation of wealth at the expense of the majority (and the planet). It would also single out for special condemnation the creation of an ever-larger stratum of people we call “the poor” who struggle to survive in the shadow of the over-consumption and waste of that top 1 percent.
The Workers’ Collaborative unites native-born, African American and immigrant workers to oppose the denial of access to employment on any unfair grounds, whether they be immigration-related excuses, or immoral racial barriers, or background checks which are inhumane and degrading. We believe that deauthorizing any worker from employment not only is immoral but pushes that worker into an underground, often exploitive working situation which lowers the standards for all workers. We support policies which promote equal rights and full employment for all workers. Immigration reform is an important step towards stopping the criminalization of poor workers, especially those of color.
Chicago Workers’ Collaborative is an Illinois non-profit organization that unites low-wage workers so we can receive the proper respect and treatment in exchange for our important labor. We educate about workplace rights, provide critical services to our members, and mobilize to gain full access to employment for all workers, especially immigrants and African Americans. The CWC presently is working on the following initiatives:
- Collaborating with the Illinois Department of Labor and the Illinois Attorney General’s office to improve enforcement of state labor laws.
- Growing the membership of our Chicago and Northwest Suburban Worker Service Centers by providing critical Assistance to our members.
- Aiding our worker members to locate the best legal assistance for employment-related issues.
- Working with law enforcement authorities in arresting the perpetrators and helping the victims of human traffiicking.
- Bringing together African-American and Latino workers to end the criminalization of our people, including Comprehensive Immigration Reform, so we may all work and participate in our community as equals.
STOP is a community organization that builds the power of residents on the Southside of Chicago to impact the forces and decisions that affect our lives. We fight for human rights to racial and economic justice through organizing, popular education, and leadership development amongst people most directly affected by issues like gentrification, displacement, incarceration and criminalization of youth of color and health cuts.
For the past five years, STOP has fought back against the war on the poor through tenant, youth and healthcare organizing, action research and education, alliance building, and collaborating with tenant associations, youth and community organizations, and labor unions from around the city and nation. Our accomplishments include stopping the displacement of over 600 low income and working class black residents, bringing immediate redress to human rights violations occuring in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center and stopping the closure of four southside mental health clinics.
For the past five years, STOP has fought back against the war on the poor through tenant, youth and healthcare organizing, action research and education, alliance building, and collaborating with tenant associations, youth and community organizations, and labor unions from around the city and nation. Our accomplishments include stopping the displacement of over 600 low income and working class black residents, bringing immediate redress to human rights violations occuring in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center and stopping the closure of four southside mental health clinics.
The Homeless Youth/Police Relations Task Force is a group of youth, service providers, congregational representatives and other local residents who seek to make the Lakeview community reflective of their values. The Task Force works to make Lakeview a welcoming place to the homeless, runaway and otherwise at risk youth who come here.
The Homeless Youth Task Force is currently working on a few fronts. Leaders have been working for years to improve the way that police treat homeless, LGBT and at risk youth. Currently, we have been working on the issue of how the police treat transgender individuals. As the police policy is inadequate, LAC member institutions and allies have been crafting a policy and will be bringing it to the police by the end of 2010. We have a commitment from several police officials to work on the CPD-wide policy, as well as on local police training and implementation.
The task force is also working on the issue of youth shelter beds. As there are only 189 designated youth shelter beds in Chicago, and the adult shelter system can be particularly hazardous for young adults, age 18-24, we are working to gain an emergency shelter for that age group
“Gender JUST (Gender Justice United for Societal Transformation) is a multi-racial, multi -ethnic, and multi-generational grassroots organization of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer, and Allied (LGBTQA) young people, LGBTQA people of color, and LGBTQA grassroots folks developing leadership and building power through organizing.
The goals of Gender JUST are to hold LGBTQA communities accountable around race, class, gender, age, religion, disability, size, and all factors necessary for a multi-dimensional and powerful movement & to move the LGBTQA struggles forward by organizing through a racial, economic, and gender justice framework.
Gender JUST organizes around the call for a world where all races, classes, sexual orientations, and gender identities are free to express their gender and sexuality, without institutional barriers, economic or legal consequences, or fear of repercussion.
Northside Action for Justice is a grassroots organization made up of low and moderate income people working together for community empowerment and social and economic justice. Action for Justice supports the basic human rights of men and women, addresses the root causes of poverty, promotes community development without displacement and mobilizes members for mutual support and campaigns for social and economic justice. NA4J is a member-driven direct action organization with a focus on community issues while working in coalition with housing, labor, religious, civil rights, peace and other progressive organizations.
The fact is that Malthusian thought has exerted a disturbing, and sometimes deranging, fascination since Thomas Robert Malthus published his original treatise An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). With what looked like irresistible logic, Malthus argued that population growth, which people had regarded as a sign of human flourishing, was a harbinger of “misery and vice.” That’s because humans would, unchecked, breed like blowflies, and their “redundant population” would exhaust whatever subsistence was available. There was ample reason to dread what Malthus, courting another sort of redundancy, called “the future fate of mankind.”
Advertisement
It followed, as night followed day, that measures to help the “common people,” like the poor laws, would only increase their overall distress, even if they “alleviated a little the intensity of individual misfortune.” Suddenly, the moral order was turned upside down: Helping people was really hurting them, and vice versa.
“
| — |
Kwame Anthony Appiah, How come Jonathan Franzen—like many novelists before him—is haunted by Malthus? The history of reasons we don’t just give money to the poor is long and strange. |
