A “Commission On Poverty” Excludes the Real Poverty Experts — the Poor

Jacqueline S. Homan, author: Classism For Dimwits and Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie

A blog featuring a new book with book tour dates showcasing accolades, professional accomplishments, and Ivy League status by Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar Richard E. Rubenstein advertised his newly formed National Action Commission on Persistent Poverty (NAC).

Rubenstein, a George Mason University professor and director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs, is keenly worried about the poor. But is it for poor people’s well-being, or is it upper-middle class fear that an increasingly restive mob of the disenfranchised may lay siege to middle/upper classdom at any moment?

Rubenstein’s article begins by acknowledging that persistent poverty in the US is a “national tragedy”, but he describes this “tragedy” in terms that reaffirm middle class America’s contempt and fear of the poor.

He referred to growing inequality and abject poverty as an “increasingly bitter and dangerous social conflict between mainstream Americans and the poor” — implying that the poor are what Charles Loring Brace once called the “dangerous class” that America’s properly pedigreed and college-degreed need to subordinate in order to protect the “nice, good” middle class. The poor are once again painted as a smoldering menace, as the socially inadequate “Other”, rather than an oppressed class deserving of concern for their lower life expectancy rates and higher maternal and infant mortality rates, which now surpass those of many Third World countries, thanks to the past 30 years’ War On the Poor.

Rubenstein’s proposal for “what to do about the poor” is to set up an elite commission and secure funding from undisclosed sources — various trusts and charitable foundations. His blog page shows a link to the Cato Institute, an ultra-right-wing think tank that is no friend to America’s women or the poor.

The funding would go towards paying commission members and staff a stipend for their research-gathering and policy-formulating. The NAC is to be, in Rubenstein’s own words,

“composed of eminent citizens and aided by a professional staff… [and]…renowned experts on poverty, social conflict, and relevant key policy issues, as well as high-profile public figures capable of offering and promoting important ideas.”

This implies that poor “nobodies” are incapable of offering and promoting any important ideas.

NAC ‘s mission statement pledges to “hold hearings, facilitate community dialogue and conduct research in a series of US cities and rural locales over a period of 18 months, beginning in Chicago in the summer of 2011.”

NAC members will give Congressional testimony as “experts” and the group’s activities will shape and influence the national discourse on poverty leading up to the 2012 presidential elections, and the strategic formulation of social and economic policies that will impact the poor — for better or worse.

Yet, not one member of this esteemed panel of “poverty experts” is someone in poverty who would be a real poverty expert and less likely to harbor antagonistic class biases against the research subjects (poor people) than those who have fancy degrees, impressive titles, and “important” jobs. America’s true poverty experts never seem to get a chance to earn any stipends for our life experience — not even those of us in poverty who incurred unaffordable student loan debt just to earn a Bachelors degree from a non-prestigious state college in order to be “worthy” of a chance for a job.

So, once again, a commission is formed by the powerbrokers of privilege for the specific purpose of shaping social and economic policies and influencing government on poverty issues. And as usual, the poor are excluded from the great table of diversity — our voices censored, our needs proxied, and our ideas dismissed or outright ignored. Very few in the middle/upper-middle class care what we think, if they even acknowledge we think at all.

Conventional “wisdom” holds that poor people aren’t “smart enough” to be included in any important decision-making where our own lives are concerned, otherwise we wouldn’t be “losers” that are summarily dismissed as “uneducated” with nothing of value to offer. That’s why we’re never invited to join the ranks of comfortably-off policy-making “experts” in the Commissariat — and thus have some power and control over our fate.

Any “commission on poverty” that is wholly manned and driven by those who have benefited from capitalism’s cruel system of unearned social class privilege smacks of elitism. The exclusion of poor people as the real poverty experts from NAC is really about one — and only one — thing: neutralizing the poor as a political bloc in order to preserve and perpetuate the exact same system of unearned privileges that create inequality, poverty, and conflict.

Rubenstein downplays the enormity of the crisis. As someone who wears his Harvard Law School and Oxford University degrees and Rhodes Scholarship like bling, Rubenstein revealed his muted contempt for poor people in his article, saying,

“While the poor often act in ways that threaten or anger more comfortable Americans, the latter commonly blame them for their plight, advocate ineffective solutions, or deny that the problem exists…On both sides of this conflict, people feel pain, confusion, fear, and rage.”

Welfare Reform and the elimination of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) that used to provide subsidized employment for society’s most disadvantaged, which enabled them to get a toehold on the jobs ladder and springboard into middle classdom, was more than simply the result of “advocating for ineffective solutions” to poverty — they were policies of Benign Neglect aimed squarely at the poor with malice and a priori knowledge that harm would result.

What Rubenstein calls “advocating ineffective solutions” is really a euphemism for premeditated social holocaust, spearheaded by his academic peers whose earlier poverty studies (and department chairs) were funded by well-heeled powerful think tanks promoting the “culture of poverty” claptrap that socially engineered the public like Pavlov’s dog into hating the poor.

Rubenstein’s claim that people on “both sides of this conflict feel pain” compares apples to oranges. There is no comparison for the pain experienced by those who have suffered the loss of all their teeth before age 35, getting abscessed teeth pulled one at a time (often without pain relief — the poor are all “druggies”) for lack of access to dental care; to the pain of some hurt feelings of those who have never known such deprivation (while being told that it was their fault for “not trying hard enough”).

There is no comparison of dying from hypothermia (or in a house fire from unsafe alternative heating methods) as a direct result of utility cut-offs due to poverty (while being labeled “energy thieves”) to some bruised egos suffered by the comfortably off; or the pampered class’s discomfort with poor people’s anger and colorful vocabularies.

To compare the suffering of lifelong deprivation due to the economic terrorism that poverty inflicts on its victims to some ruffled middle class feathers of those chiefly responsible for carrying out the oppression that has inflicted irreparable harm to the oppressed is academically dishonest and morally bankrupt. There is no comparison.

We do not need a commission unaccountable to the public that is “comprised of 12-15 eminent public figures” spearheaded by someone trumpeting his Ivy League curriculum vitae all over cyberspace as if he was auditioning for Jesus in order to “resolve” this “conflict.” We need a socio-economic system in which nobody has to suffer preventable pain, disability, or death for lack of access to good medical care or lack of other necessities conducive to valuing the human rights and dignity of America’s economically excluded whose social and economic claims are equally valid to those of America’s fortunate sons.

Rubenstein and company would have more credibility if: (1) they included real poverty experts on their commission with paid stipends and let their testimony be heard before Congress, and; (2) if they had not waited for 30 years of irreversible carnage from the War on the Poor before finally charging out of their Ivory Towers like the 7^th Calvary to save the day.

Classism For Dimwits

Feeding the Poor — An Act of “Terrorism”

Jacqueline S. Homan, author: Classism For Dimwits and Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie

Last week when I had the pleasure of speaking with 53 year-old Keith McHenry, the founder of Food Not Bombs, the true depth and degree of the establishment’s malevolence and contempt for the poor was made vividly clear. Unemployed since 2003, he has been living in his van after all of his resources ran out during his futile struggle against long-term unemployment.

McHenry, a computer graphics designer by profession, was fired from his job at United Way after being blacklisted by Raytheon, a well-heeled defense contractor. He did not know why he was abruptly let go after getting stellar reviews from his superiors for his performance.

It took another year or two before McHenry landed another job — another non-profit organization, Radio For the Blind in Tucson, Arizona. He was terminated from that job, for reasons that had nothing to do with his work performance or ability to fit in with the office culture. His supervisor called him into her office one morning and apologetically told him she had to let him go.

McHenry and other key employees of Radio For the Blind are listed in company emails that routinely go out to the non-profit’s corporate contributors. Many of Radio for the Blind’s corporate donors are the same companies that give to the United Way, one of them being Raytheon.

This apparently led to the phone call from Raytheon to Keith McHenry’s supervisor, the managing director of Radio For the Blind. She explained, “I got this call from the vice president of Raytheon wondering why you work for us when you’re on the blacklist. He said, ‘Didn’t you know he [McHenry] was on the list and you’re not allowed to hire him?’ “

The “transgression” that landed Keith McHenry on the list was his starting up the secular humanitarian group Food Not Bombs back in the 1980′s. This humanitarian organization is listed by the FBI as one of the most prominent “terrorist” groups in the US, for the “crime” of feeding the poor through direct actions such as setting up a folding table in public parks and offering delicious, hot prepared vegetarian meals free of charge to anybody who is hungry, or simply curious about the friendly activists with Food Not Bombs and their promotion of ethical eating, the humane treatment of animals and sustainable living.

Food Not Bombs was the only group that dared to cross the line by getting food to survivors of Hurricane Katrina when the Red Cross and other “official” charities were denied entrance to the sealed off flooded city of New Orleans. Food Not Bombs volunteers fed everybody, including FEMA personnel, police, and National Guardsmen.

Food Not Bombs gets organic vegetarian food donated from supermarkets and places like Rainbow co-op, and other local stores. Each local chapter of Food Not Bombs is democratically organized and run. There are chapters in approximately 1,000 cities around the world, involved in the humanitarian work of sharing food and community spirit with people. So how is it that the FBI, the CIA, and other components of the national security state decided to target Food Not Bombs for harassment and label it as a terrorist organization?

Simply put, Food Not Bombs embarrasses the establishment by doing what they do: feeding poor people for free without sermonizing them. Even if it means committing an occasional act of civil disobedience, like violating local ordinances capriciously enacted and aimed specifically at the poor and homeless; such as “progressive” San Francisco, the home of Nancy Pelosi — the liberal heart of America — which gentrified its poor out of the only homes they could afford and then criminalized them for being homeless by enacting a law that forbids anyone from sitting or lying down in the public parks.

Three members of the Philadelphia chapter were arrested on charges of terrorism for feeding the poor. Eric McDaniel got sentenced to 19 years in prison on trumped up fabricated charges during a direct action community meal in San Francisco. Bill Rogers died under mysterious circumstances after he was accused of burning down a Colorado ski resort. Keith McHenry was arrested for serving food in San Francisco with Food Not Bombs for “assault” and “criminal conspiracy to serve food in violation of a court order.” He narrowly escaped life imprisonment under the Three Strikes Law after the charges were dropped when Amnesty International and the UN got involved.

When Eric Montanez with the Orlando, Florida chapter cooked up and served vegan cuisine to the hungry homeless “tent city” residents — most whom are middle-aged long-term unemployed casualties of America’s social holocaust — he was arrested for violating a local ordinance that criminalizes the poor as well as those who want to freely share food with the poor.

Food Not Bombs currently operates in 12 countries worldwide without humiliating, patronizing, or lecturing the needy people they serve; but only in America does the group face resistance and repression. That is par for the course in the “land of the free.”

America is a “Christian nation” that wears its “pro-life” patriotic morality as a fashion (fascist?) accessory — like its “freedom” and “democracy” that it peddles to the world the way Hitler sold Nazism. May our Statue of Liberty rest in peace.

Fox’s Fake Liberals Are Neocon Lapdogs

 

Jacqueline S. Homan, Author: "Divine Right: The Truth is a Lie", "Classism For Dimwits", "Eyes of a Monster", and "Nothing You Can Possess"

The “American Dream” was always a nightmare. You cannot get ahead unless others around you are poor — often directly as a result of your efforts to get yours. They say democracy is two wolves and one sheep deciding what’s for dinner, but capitalism is a few wolves deciding how many captive sheep to devour. It is against this backdrop of faux democracy that corporate-owned media trots out its own “favorite son” wearing the liberal label on his sleave: Alan Colmes, the “liberal” star of Fox’s Hannity & Colmes, and his new Internet site, Liberaland.

But is Alan Colmes really liberal? He admitted having a personal liking and admiration for Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter.

I’ve been told by affluent pseudo-liberals that “I’m not being fair” in stating that Alan Colmes is really a flavor of neocon-lite and criticizing him for lacking the balls to admit it. I’ve been told that since I’ve never worked in TV or talk radio, I couldn’t judge Alan Colmes for being either a wimpy excuse for liberalism or a neocon apologist. But how does a self-proclaimed liberal working in TV and radio justify liking Rush Limbaugh — a misogynist class bigot who made his pile beating up on the poor for the last three decades; especially on poor women whose advocates he labeled as “feminazis?”

Alan Colmes likes neocon religitard Ann Coulter, too. Maybe that’s because she’s thin, blonde and has big boobs. And maybe that is somewhat excused for a rich, successful, famous male “star” — affluent men finding hot-looking, thin, WASP blonde Barbie types physically attractive. It’s the upper class WASP Barbie ideal of thinness, big boobs, and perfect hair that is our nation’s standard of beauty and “worthiness” in a society where women are valued only on looks. Ever wonder why that is, and why only affluent women can afford cosmetic surgery to fix what genetics, nature, and life’s circumstances bestowed?

Classism, like religion, is a memetic viral infection

We all know how invidious the whole system of unearned privilege and class stratification is, and that it is set up to promote a pretentious sociopathic middle class who is willing to stomp on the poor and keep the poor at the bottom and censor their voices. We all know that selling out on one’s principles plays a role in winning life’s comforts, class status, social prizes and rewards in this country.

For the past 30 years, the media and academia launched a multi-pronged assault on those at the bottom of the pile: poor women. This has gone unchallenged because everyone felt it was perfectly OK to beat down poor women with the “personal responsibility” cudgel…until now. The sudden change in tide is largely due to the fact that a lot of downwardly mobile middle class people are now “feeling the love” of the same victim-blaming that has always been disproportionately meted out to those on the very bottom socio-economic rung. The Underclass have always been on the receiving end of this backhand of “tough love” as opposed to a helping hand up.

"Classism For Dimwits" by Jacqueline S. Homan

The corporate media shamelessly peddled classism like a drug dealer hawking his wares, enticing the unwitting masses into a collective addiction.

The corporate media’s talking heads of questionable credibility and biased pseudo-intellectuals paid by billionaire-funded conservative think tanks have all set the “undeserving” poor up as the enemy, as “less than”, as “the Other, and as “trash” who are living undeservedly large off the largesse of good, hardworking middle class people that played by all the rules (that the rich contrived).

The sea of professionals who romanticize, fetishize, and demonize the poor took up the baton on cue and led the parade in poor-bashing. Their Ivy League PhD’s gave them credibility, quasi-celebrity status, and public worship for every word of their insipid drivel amounting to how we need to “fix” the defective poor and whip them into line to get with the middle class program and not look, sound, or act so…well…poor.

Who turned the tide of public opinion of compassion and support for the poor with social reforms such as FDR’s New Deal and Johnson’s Great Society programs into sentiments of social Darwinism culminating in the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 — the crowning achievement of the Reagan Revolution, which epitomized and legitimized the idea that “greed is good?”

Whose fault is it that the majority of the American public got conned into the myth of the “ownership society” where stepping on others’ necks to get ahead was OK, and that the “undeserving” poor should just go suffer quietly out of sight and dumpster-dive for food  as social safety nets were gutted?

Who spoke out for poor people’s economic human and civil rights these past 30 years while poor women and children were offered up like sacrificial scapegoats for misery and pain on the altar of the Almighty Dollar by pundits, clergy, and TV personalities? Who popularized the practice of stigmatizing the poor and calling that “entertainment”, and what do you think happened?

The result is a society of “Me, I, Mine” that emerged, producing a class of sell-outs, cheaters, liars, and backstabbers who will screw over anyone else they can in order to get theirs because they’re expected to have the “right” image and the “right” homes in the “right” neighborhoods where they/their progeny can make the “right” friends in order to be “worthy” and deserving of a chance for increasingly scarce good jobs.

Here’s a thought: how about we stop making excuses for this dysfunctional status quo.  Helping someone who is very poor and downtrodden — who is reaching out in desperation asking for help because there isn’t really “all this help out there” from all these government agencies and private charities — isn’t “someone else’s responsibility.” Be the change.