Poverty

Three strikes

Policing, Poverty, Race, US politics
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Lakisha Briggs was a victim of domestic abuse, having been beaten unconscious by her boyfriend. When a neighbour called the cops, the boyfriend went to prison for assault. And then the police served notic to her landlord to evict her and her 3-year old son or lose his rental licence. The reason? She’d made three 911 calls in four months and a local Norristown, Pa. police ordinance calls for tenants who do this to be evicted.

This turns out not to be an isolated case. A new study by Matthew Desmond and Nicol Valdez
shows the impact of this sort of socalled third party policing on already vulnerable people (PDF):

Recent decades have witnessed a double movement within the field of crime control characterized by the prison boom and intensive policing, on the one hand, and widespread implementation of new approaches that assign policing responsibilities to non-police actors, on the other. The latter development has been accomplished by expansion of thirdparty policing policies; nuisance property ordinances, which sanction landlords for their tenants’ behavior, are among the most popular. This study, an analysis of every nuisance citation distributed in Milwaukee over a two-year period, is among the first to evaluate empirically the impact of coercive third-party policing on the urban poor. Properties in black neighborhoods disproportionately received citations, and those located in more integrated black neighborhoods had the highest likelihood of being deemed nuisances. Nearly a third of all citations were generated by domestic violence; most property owners abated this “nuisance” by evicting battered women. Landlords also took steps to discourage tenants from calling 911; overrepresented among callers, women were disproportionately affected by these measures. By looking beyond traditional policing, this study reveals previously unforeseen consequences of new crime control strategies for women from inner-city neighborhoods.

Currently the ACLU is suing Norristown over this ordinance, arguing that:

These laws violate tenants’ First Amendment right to petition their government, which includes the right to contact law enforcement. They also violate the federal Violence Against Women Act, which protects many domestic violence victims from eviction based on the crimes committed against them, and the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination based on sex.

While Norristown officials argue that “the purpose of the disorderly behavior ordinance is to promote peaceful neighborhoods and discourage frivolous calls to the police.”

Class war by any other name, this is a good example of how the structural inequality in American society and how this is translated in local politics is far more important to the day to day life of a great many working class people, than whatever happens in Washington. These sort of laws don’t even pretend to distinguish between criminals and victims anymore, just recognises nuisances.

How to lie with figures; a handy BBC guide

BBC Bias, Poverty
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So there’s this well meant but kinda touristy initiative to get people in the UK to live on a pound a day for a week to see what living in poverty means. The BBC did a nice propaganda article about how this was totes possible and still eat healthy. Surprise, surprise, this turned out to be a tissue of lies:

Forget the fact that the BBC have posted an article claiming that £40+ of food can be had for less than £5, even if that is the kind of thing you might hope would be picked up in the editorial process. How did Mr Milligan, personally, suppress the massive cognitive dissonance involved in writing the article? How do you persuade yourself to write the subhead ‘Day 4: Amount spent 91p’ when you know that the items listed under it cost a total of £11.80? Even if he believed that readers wouldn’t add the figures together, how on earth did he persuade himself that no-one would spot that the day’s shopping list includes one single item priced at £2.40? I’m astonished he ever thought he could get away with it. I’m pleased to note from the comments that he hasn’t.

If you want to be taken seriously, hurt poor people

Poverty, US politics
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Dean Baker on Obama’s quest to sound serious and how it harms ordinary people:

In societies across the globe, men demonstrate their manhood in different ways. There are many wonderful tracts on the topic. However, in the culture of Washington DC, the best way to demonstrate your manhood is to express your willingness to cut Medicare and Social Security. There is no better way to be admitted into the club of the Very Serious People.

This is the reason that we saw White House spokesman Jay Carney tell a press conference. He told the reporters that President Obama is still willing to cut Social Security benefits by using the chained CPI as the basis for the annual cost of living adjustment (COLA). This willingness to cut the benefits of retirees establishes President Obama as a serious person in elite Washington circles.

What Blair, Brown, Clegg and Cameron have wrought

Poverty, UK politics
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Teenagers with no prospects, no money, no job, education or place to go to other than the night buses, but they’re the lucky ones:

Official statistics on bussing don’t seem to exist, despite a lot of research. However, I did speak to two children’s charities that were very aware of the extreme measures exiled teenagers were taking to stay off the street, particularly at night. “There are so many teenagers in peril,” said one charity worker, “that the ones who have an Oyster card, a jacket, even a place to go for a few hours in the day to change or sleep won’t be seen as a priority by the government, social workers or indeed charities.”

That’s the Britain that New Labour, the LibDems and Tories have build.

Welfare “reform” kills

Health, Life under Capitalism, Poverty, Tories, UK politics
Published on 5 Comments on Welfare “reform” kills

Just some of the people who committed suicide after their (disability) benefits were stopped:

Richard Sanderson, 44, an unemployed helicopter pilot of Southfields in London, who stabbed himself twice in the heart in May. He had been informed that his family faced a £30 a week cut in housing benefit and he feared this would leave his family homeless

Paul Willcoxson, 33, of Corby, Northants, was according to the suicide note he left behind, worried about benefit cuts when he hung himself in April.

[…]

Elaine Christian, 57, of Hull, was worried, according to reports of an inquest in July, about a meeting to assess her disability benefits. She was found drowned in a drain with ten self-inflicted cuts to her wrist and she had taken painkillers.

Now imagine you’re on long term disability benefits, unable to work or even find an employer willing to take you on, knowing that the “reforms” will mean you will lose what little money and assistance is getting you by at the moment. Sign the petition against this “reform” that will end up killing more people.