Departments

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poverty

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    5/3/2022

    The Losers of the Ukraine War? The Global Poor

    by Rajan Menon

    Refugee crises, inflation in the developed world, and constricted access to both credit and grain exports in the developing world are all likely consequences of the Ukraine invasion that will fall on the world's poor. 

  • SOURCE: Religion Dispatches
    4/4/2022

    Honoring Dr. King's Other, More Challenging Dream, 55 Years Later

    King's famous Riverside Church speech on April 4, 1967 marked the leader's decisive opposition to the war in Vietnam and reflected his moral clarity and willingness to take unpopular positions in the pursuit of justice by calling out racism, capitalism and militarism as three intertwined evils. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    1/28/2022

    Reducing Child Poverty Is a No-Brainer even Without Brain Science

    by Mical Raz

    Reducing child poverty is a good in itself; justifying policies to reduce poverty in terms of improvements in measures of cognition or IQ scores makes such programs vulnerable to backlash and risks validating racist and eugenicist arguments about race and intelligence.

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    1/25/2022

    Abortion isn't a "Choice" without Racial Justice

    by Sara Matthiesen

    The recent failure of the broad social spending initiatives of Build Back Better and the impending judicial overthrow of Roe are connected, and signal the need for a movement for reproductive freedom that goes beyond "choice" to address systemic inequalities. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    1/14/2022

    Bronx Fire Shows the Perils and Politics of Home Heating

    by Rebecca Wright

    Landlords and tenants have long fought over the benefits and costs of heat, with municipal codes serving as the referee. This month's deadly fire shows the consequences of regulatory neglect.

  • SOURCE: Perspectives on History
    7/6/2021

    You are Only as Good as Your Sources

    by Bobby Cervantes

    Can researchers reexamine the boundary between journalism and historiography while maintaining the integrity of both? A researcher with a background in both explains how. 

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    4/4/2021

    “The Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World”

    by Liz Theoharis

    Martin Luther King's 1967 Riverside Church address pointed out that the cause nonviolent civil rights struggle required him to challenge the US government to end militarism. Today, the pandemic shows that an ethos of nonviolence must include an active approach to end suffering through global cooperation. 

  • SOURCE: Public Seminar
    3/11/2021

    The United States Is Picking Up Where The Great Society Left Off

    by John Stoehr

    Comparing the recent COVID relief bill to the 2009 bailout of the subprime crisis shows a rapid turn away from the Republican and New Democratic consensus that social welfare assistance must be tied to work and limited to people who are "deserving."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    2/13/2021

    The Way Out of America’s Zero-Sum Thinking on Race and Wealth

    by Heather McGhee

    White resentment is a key political factor in America's stingy public sector; post-WWII support for social welfare, government intervention in the economy, and public investment receded after the civil rights movement demanded "jobs and freedom" for all. It's time to replace zero-sum thinking with a concept of social solidarity. 

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    2/16/2021

    Whose Rights Matter in Pandemic America?

    by Liz Theoharis

    In Cold War America, political movements that challenged the oppression of poverty were suppressed in favor of the formal ideal of civil rights. A leader of the revived Poor People's Campaign first envisioned by MLK before his death says that history must be addressed and undone. 

  • 2/14/2021

    Heed the Cornerman's Cry

    by Mike McQuillan

    The failure to heed the warnings of the Kerner Commission in 1968 – of a society divided by racism and inequality – has led to ongoing suffering and a politics of resentment over an ethic of mutual care.

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    11/9/2020

    Voting Trump Out Is Not Enough

    by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    The results of the 2020 election show that the Democratic Party will fail unless it is willing to abandon a futile effort to woo Republicans to the center and embrace popular policies that meet the needs of Democratic constituents. 

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    11/10/2020

    The Prosperity Hoax

    A 2020 report on global poverty suggests that the problem is getting worse, directly attacking the methodologies the World Bank has used for decades to justify global capitalism as an anti-poverty program.