Al Jazeera English: Tavis Smiley Calls 'Poverty' Greatest Threat to Democracy

AlJazeeraEnglish

 

Speaking to Al Jazeera's Tony Harris, Tavis Smiley, US talk show host and author, says the US presidential election this year has been dominated by money.

Smiley says the 46 million people living at or below the poverty line in the US should now be regarded as a matter of national security for Washington.

The greatest threat to American democracy ... one per cent of the American people cannot continue to own and control 42 per cent of the wealth

Smiley says though poverty figures showing a growing gap between the rich and poor in the United States, were released in September, there has been "no real conversation about poverty" neither in this election, nor in the 2008 election.

Diane Ravitch: The Real Enemy of Failing Schools is Poverty

Left of Black S3:E3 | Where Are the Discussions About Poverty and Youth Violence in the 2012 Presidential Race?

Left of Black S3:E3 | October 1, 2012

Where Are the Discussions About Poverty and Youth Violence in the 2012 Presidential Race?

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype  journalists Rahiel Tesfamariam and Mychal Denzel Smith in a discussion of youth violence and poverty in the United States and the lack attention given to these issues in the 2012 Presidential Election.

Tesfamariam is founder & Editorial Director of the on-line magazine Urban Cusp and a blogger and columnist for The Washington Post and The Root DC, and Smith is a freelance writer, social commentator, and mental health advocate whose work has been seen at The Atlantic, The Nation, The Guardian, Ebony, Huffington Post, The Root and The Grio.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

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Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in  @ iTunes U

Poverty, Youth Violence and the Anniversary of The Occupy Movement on October 1st Left of Black

Poverty, Youth Violence and the Anniversary of The Occupy Movement on October 1st Left of Black

As the 2012 Presidential Election season went into high gear, several issues, notably the poverty rate in the United States and the apparent rise of youth violence in American cities like Chicago, were nowhere to be found on the agendas and talking points of either Presidential candidate.

With the anniversary of the Occupy Movement as backdrop, journalists Rahiel Tesfamariam and Mychal Denzel Smithjoin Left of Black via Skype, to discuss these and other issues, including Jay Z’s dismissive remarks about the goals of The Occupy Movement and Mitt Romney’s now infamous comments about the so-called “47%.”

Tesfamariam is founder & Editorial Director of the on-line magazine Urban Cusp and a blogger and columnist for The Washington Post and The Root DC, and Smith is a freelance writer, social commentator, and mental health advocate whose work has been seen at The Atlantic, The Nation, The Guardian, Ebony, Huffington Post, The Root and The Grio.

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Left of Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on the Ustream channel: http://tinyurl.com/LeftofBlackhttp://tinyurl.com/LeftofBlack. Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitter conversation with Neal and featured guests while the show airs using hash tags #LeftofBlack or #dukelive. 

Left of Black is recorded and produced at the John Hope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University.

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Follow Left of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlack

Follow Mark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackMan

Follow Rahiel Tesfamariam on Twitter: @RahielT

Follow Mychal Denzel Smith on Twitter: @mychalsmith

50 Cent Discusses World Hunger with Marc Lamont Hill on HuffPost Live

HuffPostLive

Curtis Jackson (50 Cent) discusses growing up in the 'hood, eating cheese sandwiches and experiencing other hardships before he rose to fame with HuffPost Live's Marc Lamont Hill.

William Julius Wilson: Ending Poverty Is Possible

Jay Z Talks About Poverty and #Occupy with CNN Money

Closing Cabrini-Green

photo courtesy of Ronitfilms.com


When the last tenant moved out of Chicago's notorious housing project, it signaled the end of an era and raised questions about the future of displaced tenants -- and public housing itself.

Closing Cabrini-Green
by Sylvester Monroe | The Root.com

When the last tenant moved out of Chicago's notorious housing project, it signaled the end of an era and raised questions about the future of displaced tenants -- and public housing itself.

Sometimes, moving is a happy event. Sometimes it's not. Last week, when Annie Ricks and five of her children left the 11th-floor apartment in the dilapidated, 15-story high-rise complex where she has lived for the past 22 years, it was a media event. And Ricks, the last tenant in Chicago's notorious Cabrini-Green public housing project, was not happy.

"I didn't want to leave, but I didn't have a choice," she said in an interview with The Root, while sitting among a sea of boxes in the kitchen of her newly renovated Chicago Housing Authority apartment on the other side of the city. Indeed, the 54-year-old mother of eight from Alabama didn't have a choice about leaving Cabrini. The building where she lived is scheduled to be demolished early next year. She moved there about a year ago, after another Cabrini building, where she had lived for 21 years, was also torn down.

Ricks successfully challenged the housing authority's order to evacuate the building by the end of November. She wanted to move to a rehabbed apartment in a low-rise building, but it was not ready. When Ricks was finally forced to vacate last week after CHA officials decreed that the high-rise building was no longer inhabitable, she was first offered a home in a Cabrini rowhouse apartment. But Ricks was concerned about gun battles between "the reds," residents of the red brick apartments, and "the whites," who live in Cabrini's high-rise towers, an ongoing rivalry fueled by gang and drug violence. "That would have put my kids in jeopardy," she said.

Instead, she was forced to choose between two low-rise CHA properties on the South Side. She also has the option of returning to Cabrini next year when more units are rehabbed. "It was the Dearborn Homes or Wentworth Gardens," she said. "I settled for this one [in Wentworth] because it was not a high-rise." But she said the new apartment is too small.

Though it is completely renovated, with new kitchen appliances and bath fixtures, it has only three bedrooms, compared with the five she had in Cabrini. As a result, Ricks' oldest daughter and her baby son, who lived with Ricks in Cabrini, had to move to their own apartment in a different complex. Ricks also said that the low-rise building hallways are too narrow to get her queen-size bed into the apartment. "I just feel like they didn't try hard enough to accommodate me," she said.

Annie Ricks' frustration and unhappiness are not unusual as the CHA and others struggle to improve the physical living conditions of hundreds of thousands of poor and low-income families stuck in substandard public housing across the country. At one point, 15,000 people lived in Cabrini-Green before deteriorating conditions, gang and drug violence, and other crime earned the 58-year-old complex a reputation as the most notorious of Chicago's dangerous housing projects and transformed it into a national symbol of inner-city warehousing of America's largely black and brown urban underclass.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root.com

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Sylvester Monroe is a native of Chicago and frequent contributor to The Root.

Religious Scholar Obery Hendricks on 'Our' Responsibility to the Poor

Columbia University Professor Obery Hendricks argues leaders have a biblical responsibility to help the poor.

The Voters Have Spoken-- The Nightmare Continues for America’s Poor

special to NewBlackMan

The Voters Have Spoken--The Nightmare Continues for America’s Poor
by Mark Naison

The results of the election are in, and they offer nothing but bad news for America’s poor. Even before this election, the United States was the most unequal nation in the advanced world, with the highest percentage of income going to the top one percent of its population, and the largest percentage of its population living in poverty; but the results November 2 assure that this will continue for many years to come

The Republicans who swept into power in State governorships and the House of Representatives are determined to resist all tax policies which redistribute income; cut subsidies to beleaguered state governments, and reduce outlays for programs – from food stamps to housing to health care- which provide a safety net to poor workers and families. While they will not achieve all they set out to do in cutting federal entitlements, they have the power to prevent any moves toward progressive taxation by the federal government and to institute austerity plans at the state level which lead to layoffs of state workers and cuts in vital services that working class and poor people depend on

Since there is no chance that the private sector will generate enough jobs to funnel income into poor neighborhoods any time soon, much less compensate for the services about to be lost, we can expect to see an increase in the Recession generated misery that is already wreaking havoc with poor workers and families

As someone who works closely with schools and community organizations in the Bronx and spends a good deal of time driving through and walking through Bronx neighborhoods, I have already been receiving alarming reports about the fraying of the social fabric and growing desperation among the people

Here are some of the things I have been hearing , none of which give me cause for optimism about where we are heading.

More and more people being forced into homelessness by foreclosures on apartment buildings and homes and by rising rents and declining services in public housing.

Rising levels of violence in families and neighborhoods, resulting in a sharp increase in the murder rate and the return of “mugging” as a form of income acquisition for desperate young men and women, making everyone less safe on streets and subways.

More fights and violent incidents in schools, and more abusive behavior toward teachers, as young people feel stress of the economic crisis on their families and caretakers

Young mothers turning to prostitution to help them and their children stay in apartments whose rents they can barely afford.

More vicious attacks on vulnerable groups- particularly gays and recent immigrants- by groups of young men and women.

The average middle class or wealthy New Yorker, who lives in neighborhoods segregated by income if not race, doesn’t see these signs of a frayed social fabric, unless they work or do business in a poor neighborhood, but it is only a matter of time before the violence and desperation being spawned will spill over into the entire city.

Humanitarian considerations, and a sense of justice, dictate that we try to do something about rising levels of desperation among poor New Yorkers, and poor Americans generally, but we will find out soon enough that if we continue to beat our poorer citizens down, it will lead to patterns of behavior that will not be o easily contained, and will undermine our own sense of security, and our safety in public places

We are all about to reap what we have sown.

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Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of three books and over 100 articles on African-American History, urban history, and the history of sports. His most recent book is White Boy: A Memoir.