The below is a bulletin I recieved on MySpace from A Crazy Idea:
A Crazy Idea and Youth Against Poverty have teamed up to form a coalition to end poverty in America, and they need your help!
The numbers are staggering. Today 37 million Americans live in a state of poverty, hunger and hardship. That’s more than last year, More than ever before. But one by one, working together, we can reverse the trend. For the fourth consecutive year, the poverty rate and the number of Americans living in poverty both rose from the prior years. Since 2000, the number of poor Americans has grown by more than 6 million. The official poverty rate in 2004 (the most current year for which figures are available) was 12.7 percent, up from 12.5 percent in 2003. Total Americans below the official poverty thresholds numbered 37 million, a figure 1.1 million higher than the 35.9 million in poverty in 2003. The U.S. Census Bureau defines poor families as those with cash incomes of less than $15,067 a year for a family of three or $19,307 for a family of four. (U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004) On average, more than one out of every three Americans – 37 percent of all people in the United States – are officially classified as living in poverty at least 2 months out of the year. (U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004)
The number of Americans living in severe poverty – with incomes below half of the poverty line – remained the same at 15.6 million. (U.S. Census Bureau, Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004)
A single parent of two young children working full-time in a minimum wage job for a year would make $10,712 before taxes – a wage $4,355 below the poverty threshold set by the federal government. (U.S. Department of Labor; U.S. Census Bureau.) About 40 percent of poor single-parent, working mothers who paid for child care paid at least half of their income for child care; an additional 25 percent of these families paid between 40 and 50 percent of their incomes for child care. (Child Trends, 2001.)
More than two-thirds of all poor families with children included one or more individuals who worked in 2003. Whats more, family members in working-poor families with children typically worked combined totals of 46 weeks per year.
We can end this now! As Americans we have a duty to stand up for those citizens who are suffering in our own country. Learn more on how you can change your own country and change the world. Get involved! Some tips on where to start: Write a letter to your local newspaper, alerting the editors to the information you’ve learned about poverty in America, and what is being done to eliminate it. Submit an article to the newsletter published by your church, synagogue, mosque or house of worship about poverty in your community, and about successful initiatives that are bringing long-term results. Follow local politics, and tell your local elected officials that you support policies aimed at permanent solutions to poverty in your community and your nation. Question candidates on their plans to address poverty in your state and nation, vote your conscience — and hold politicians to their promises if elected.
This fall more than 500 children in Thailand will be part of a pilot program for “quality testing and debugging” of the $100 laptop. The One Laptop Per Child program, which is supplying the computers, is the brainchild of tech guru Nicholas Negroponte, who has spent the last several years developing and refining the technology. The computers run on the free Linux operating system and use flash memory instead of a standard hard drive. When access to the electrical power grid is unavailable, the computers can be powered by either a foot pump or a hand crank.
So far, Brazil, Argentina, and Thailand have expressed interest in purchasing the computers, and Nigeria has already bought the first 1 million. India, which had originally expressed interest, declared the computers to be “pedagogically suspect,” and has decided not to participate in the first round of purchasing.
This is a perfect example of good business in practice. The foundation of free-market economics and business is mutually beneficial trade and production, such as the production and distribution of these laptops.
Thanks to http://www.nextbillion.net/ for this story. NextBillion.net brings together the community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers, and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.
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Posted by
Scott Hughes |
Categories:
Poverty News |
In a world of plenty, huge numbers of people go hungry. Hunger is more than just the result of food production and meeting demands. The causes of hunger are related to the causes of poverty. One of the major causes of hunger is poverty itself.
There are other related causes (also often related to the causes of poverty in various ways) including the following:
- Land rights and ownership, Diversion of land use to non-productive use
- Increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture
- Inefficient agricultural practices
- War
- Famine
- Drought
- Over-fishing
- Poor crop yield
- Lack of democracy and rights
- etc.
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Poverty/Hunger/Causes.asp
by Scott Hughes
I had a friend recently ask me why I called myself an atheist. She said, “you seem to have such a big heart.” Apparently, she thought that there was something oxymoronic about a benevolent atheist. (In her defense, it turned out she thought I was a Satan worshiper, not an atheist. 
)
As a history buff, a news junkie, and a political activist, I certainly must acknowledge all the helpful and philanthropic accomplishments of religious people and religious institutions. One must commend what religious people and religious institutions have brought to this world – in terms of education, healthcare, nourishment, housing and unity.
Even though I acknowledge these achievements, the idea that religion could possibly have a monopoly on philanthropy shocks me in its absurdity.
I could reject the suggestion of a link between religion and philanthropy on the basis that religious people have committed great atrocities in the name of religion. However, humans have committed great atrocities in the name of many non-religious ideas as well – Namely communism and nationalism. The fact of the matter is that humans commit atrocities, religious or not.
Despite that cynical point, I think it’s manifestly false to say that the only reason a human would be kind is because a god or gods told the human to. Yes, mankind is far from perfectly benevolent. However, mankind is equally far from perfectly callous.
The reason I help people is not because a god told me to. The reason I help people is not because I believe such actions will get me into heaven. The reason I help people is not because I believe it is moral. I don’t even believe in god, heaven, or morality.
I help people because it makes me feel happy. I believe that I am not the only person who receives this pleasure. In fact, most (if not all) of humanity takes pleasure in helping each other out.
Love may be a deep emotional connection that’s hard to define, but I think it�s a secular word. Philanthropy literally means love of people. There is nothing necessarily religious about loving people. People, religious or not, love other people. Are we not all philanthropists in our own light?
I’m a cynic; don’t get me wrong.
It may seem that the abundance of social conflicts between mankind are incompatible with the theory of mankind’s inherent philanthropy. However, this seeming incompatibility quickly vanishes when one remembers that people often engage in self-destructive and foolish activities.
If one can accept that a person would harm themself due to their own self-destructive folly, one can equally accept that a person would harm the object of their love due to the same self-destructive folly, even if that object is all of humanity.
What religious people may call sin, I call foolishness. What religious people call good, I call wise.
Whether you are religious or not, let me ask you to do something that will make you happy. Remember that inside of you and every person is a quintessential love. This quintessential love conflates the self with humanity. Fundamentally speaking, to say one loves oneself and humanity is redundant. Whether you believe this love is endowed by a godly creator or not, let yourself act on that quintessential love. By helping others you help yourself. By pleasing others you please yourself. Let yourself be at one with humanity.
About The Author: Scott Hughes owns and operates Millions Of Mouths – a website dedicated to ending hunger. Read more articles like this at the hunger and poverty blog on MillionsOfMouths.com:
http://millionsofmouths.com/blog/nfblog/
You may republish this article so long as you keep all links intact and keep the “about the author” footer.
For those with an interest in hunger, poverty, and the social science thereof, I’ve compiled a list of books and reading materials. You can easily buy any of these books from Amazon instantly, so I recommend you get one, two, or a few. Here’s the list:
And, that’s it for now, but I’ll post more as I read them or they are recommended to me. If you want to add any other books to the list please do by using the comment function. (Hit comment below the post.)
Remember, collective ignorance and neglect allows hunger, poverty, and social injustice. The spread of knowledge and rational discussion are the most quintessential part of the solution, and books epitomize the spread of knowledge.
Scott Hughes
Although I am not personally a religious man and prefer to look at hunger as a practical secular problem, religious people and institutions have worked diligently in the cause to end hunger.
A powerful TV documentary presented by the National Council of Churches USA (NCC), “Hunger No More: Faces Behind the Facts,” takes an unflinching look at the persistent problem of hunger in the 21st century and offers solutions. It is available to NBC television network affiliates beginning September 10.
Most of us don’t often ask where our next meal is coming from. But for millions of Americans and nearly a billion people worldwide, such food insecurity is a daily reality. The documentary approaches hunger from the perspective of faith, declaring that hunger is more than a social issue.
“It is a moral issue that needs immediate resolution,” says Burton Buller, president of Mennonite Media, who produced the program in collaboration with the NCC.
This one-hour, closed-captioned special, presented by the NCC in partnership with the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission, will be telecast by NBC affiliates nationwide, beginning on Sunday, September 10. Interested viewers should call their NBC station and ask when the program will be broadcast locally.
A study guide for the program or more information is available online at councilofchurches.org/hunger.
http://www.wfn.org/2006/08/msg00155.html
Peace, Scott Hughes
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Posted by
Scott Hughes |
Categories:
Poverty News |
In a recent video added to YouTube, Stephen Colbert talks to professor Jeffrey Sachs about his book “The End of Poverty“, or why eradicating poverty might be more effective in fighting terrorism than the military. (The Colbert Report, March 2, 2006)
See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUdc7atFiHg
With a Ph.D. from Harvard University, Jeffery Sachs is an American Economist who has done extensive work in the fields of hunger and poverty. He wrote many books including The End Of Poverty. Jeffery Sachs has advised institutions such as the World Bank, World Health Organization, the IMF, the United Nations Development Programme, and the OECD. He is currently the director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and of the United Nations Millennium Project. He works as a professor in Columbia’s Department of Economics, School of International and Public Affairs and Department of Health Policy and Management.
You can buy Jeffery Sachs book, The End Of Poverty, by clicking here
by Scott Hughes
Sure, those who want to end world hunger also happen to often want to end war. Sure, sympathetic activists sympathize with both causes – the fight against hunger and the fight for peace. However, the reason war and hunger are linked is not just that these two movements happen to be motivated by similar sympathy. There is also an inherent link that conflates both war and hunger into an irreducibly complex problem. Although in the abstract these two problems – war and hunger – may seem like separate humanitarian issues, in practice they are just opposite sides of the same two-faced monster.
In our world, almost no social issue can be studied without understanding the context of social stratification. Both war and hunger are no exception.
The international community is an unofficial federation of oligarchies – meaning that most (if not all) of the wealth and power is in the hands of a few. Factually speaking, a few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the worlds poorest 2.5 billion people [1]. While the 200 richest people in the world have over $1 trillion [2], half the world – nearly three billion people – live on less than two dollars a day [3]. Financial statistics such as these just scratch the surface, as the value of paper money is just a social construct. The actual issue is the underlying social system that systemically keeps the power and wealth in the hands of the few. Of course, this oligarchy is enforced by the strong arm of the law – i.e. war.
The tiny minority of people who have the power make the choices regarding war. It’s not surprising that the leaders – the rich and powerful few – choose to go to war, because war makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. For example, the oil war in Iraq cost the average U.S. taxpayer over $2,300 dollars [4], but Big Oil keeps announcing record-breaking profits. (Dick Cheneys partner-in-crime, Halliburton, is rolling in dough.) Unfortunately, that creates a mutually causal relationship: The few are given the power to send the people to war through oligarchic social stratification; And, war further stratifies the social classes.
As if the devastation of war wasn’t enough, social stratification also causes poverty & hunger. The world has enough resources to feed, clothe, house, and employ the entire world. The problem isn’t caused by a lack of resources, but rather by social inequality – the powerful few using war to hoard the wealth, so they can plate their bathtubs gold while children die of starvation.
Of course, war makes the poor poorer in many ways. It’s the working-class – who struggle to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their families – that pay for the war, both financially and with their lives. For example, while thousands of United States working-class soldiers have died in Iraq and tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousand) Iraqi civilians died in the Iraqi war, the Bush twins happily swipe their credit-cards in an upscale retail mall.
The victims of war aren’t only abroad. Rather, war makes victims of the taxpayers. Despite the prevalence of hunger, poverty and debt, the leaders have no qualms about taxing (i.e. stealing) the working and lower classes to fund their wars. The U.S. spends $420 billion a year on “defense” [5]; And, that’s NOT including the cost of actual wars, such as the Iraq war which cost well over $300 billion (so far) [6]! (That $300 billion could have fully funded anti-hunger efforts for 12 years!) Thus, when adding in other countries, the world spends well over $1 trillion on “defense” every year. Instead of helping the masses, those taxes are spent to hurt the masses, increase poverty, and increase hunger.
See, the rich leaders don’t care about the working-classes. When these leaders get money (by stealing it from the working-class through taxation), they use it violently, carelessly, and selfishly, which causes harm to the working and lower class. In contrast, when the working-class gets to keep their own money, they spend it in ways that benefit their communities. For example, unlike when rich people steal money through taxation, a working-class person may have opened up a school in a poor neighborhood, or a bank that sells home-loans to local young couples. Working-class people benefit from peace, and thus the hungry benefit from peace. It’s the rich who benefit from war – at the expense of the working classes and lower classes.
As Immortal Technique said, “We act like we share in the spoils of war that they do. We die in wars; we don’t get the contracts to make money off ‘em afterwards! We don’t get weapons contracts… We don’t get cheap labor for our companies…We are cheap labor! Turn off the news and read.” [7]
The expenses on the working-class and lower-class people are horrid; from both the bombs that violently blow people into pieces, to the starvation that tortures people to death.
It seems no one is cold-hearted enough to say that hunger isn’t a huge problem. However, it seems some people may think that war is a necessary evil. These people don’t make sense, because hunger and war come together, and both fuel each other. Justice and peace don’t come at the barrel of a gun. And, as long as the people keep letting their leaders waste their money on wars and “defense”, hunger will still plague the earth.
I always say justice and peace in that order, because justice precedes peace. There will never be peace without first justice. Similarly, I always say freedom before justice. There will never be peace so long as children starve.
In the same way that both hunger and war have the same causes, they both have the same solutions. For example, education is a method to lift entire communities out of poverty. Indeed, there is a direct correlation between education and quality of life. In the same respect, wouldn’t education reduce violence and war? If student loans and quality schools were available to all children – regardless of race, sex, ethnicity, nationality, geographical location, sexual preference, and etcetera – can anyone really suggest that war would ensue? Of course not.
Unfortunately as newint.org points out, less than one percent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen [8]. Perhaps, George Carlin was right when he said that the true owners of this world don’t want an educated populace.
There are many activist organizations working under the name Food Not Bombs. Despite the commendable work of these activists, all the leaders of the world give the people is bombs, not food, not education, not solutions. Our leaders do not care because the hunger and war that plague this world do not plague them.
For those of us that do care, we must remember to attack both hunger and war as one large overarching problem. We must take a radical (meaning literally at the root) observation. Henry David Thoreau once said: For every thousand hacking at the branches of evil, only one is hacking at the root.
Let us find the root of this irreducibly complex problem – both hunger and poverty. Radically speaking, let us rid the world of both poverty and violence, of both hunger and war.
About The Author: Scott Hughes owns and operates Millions Of Mouths – a website dedicated to ending hunger. Read more articles like this at the hunger and poverty blog on MillionsOfMouths.com:
http://millionsofmouths.com/blog/nfblog/
Sources:
[1] panos.org.uk
[2] Human Development Report 2000, p. 82 at hdr.undp.org
[3] povertymap.net
[4] nationalpriorities.org , answers.yahoo.com
[5] http://borgenproject.org/Defense_Spending.html
[6] http://costofwar.com/index-world-hunger.html
[7] From the afterword of the song The 4th Branch
[8] http://www.newint.org/issue287/keynote.html
I’d like to take this time to point out that there will never be peace without freedom & justice for all. Freedom and justice are prerequisites of peace. There will never be peace so long as innocent children starve, so long as hard working people are poor, and so long as people are judged, not by the content of their character, but by arbitrary means. The below is a bulletin I just recieved on MySpace, from my friends Lucy and tat tvam asi :
It is the obligation of thinking people on this planet to weigh the implications of a future without co-existence, to ponder the underlying causes of today’s conflicts, to encourage efforts aimed at addressing these complexities and to promote similar thoughtful consideration by others.
Humanity arrives together at the beginning of this new millennium in an age where the knowledge of weapons of mass destruction is but a click away. And we live in a world where terrorism is viewed by some as a legitimate response to the perceived economic and cultural assaults they face.
Everyone… every women, every man… all people of all faiths and all races must find a way to embrace each other’s differences, and search for compromise and a way to co-exist. The alternative is an unthinkable future for our children.
With problems so complex and entwined, what can be done? The solution depends on us all, and it starts with you.
Peace.org intends to create a resource for people interested in contemplating, participating in, and contributing to sustainable peace and co-existence.
coexistence@peace.org
by Marilyn Barnicke Belleghem M.Ed
Why Be A Volunteer? What is in it for me, to volunteer my time and energy?
Volunteering allows me to be part of a group of respected, well meaning people who serve others. In my volunteer work, I find like minded people who share my vision to be part of a happier well functioning community. Personal relationships don’t work, people work at having good relationships. Giving is part of making relationships work.
When I started volunteering, I was intimidated at the wealth of skills and abilities among the volunteers. I met many hard working people doing meaningful work. I also found appreciation for my skills. There was a great sense of conviviality, lots of laughs and stories galore. When I thought I couldn’t manage the work load, I found amazing support from other volunteers. I came to realize it was partly my independence and as an eldest daughter my characteristic of taking on too much and not wanting to ask for help.
Every part of life asks us to make an investment in time and often money. Where we invest determines how our life evolves. My investment in volunteering, has included:
• by being on a board,
• attending and presenting at meetings and conferences,
• driving and shopping with and for others,
• reading, writing and distributing literature,
• stuffing envelopes,
• making phone calls,
• canvassing,
• managing fund raising events,
• selling at fundraisers,
• listening to the frustration of others and offering support and advice,
• and more.
What do I get from volunteering depends on what I give. Being a volunteer has enriched my life by bringing satisfaction when goals are reached, introducing me to new and interesting people, giving me opportunities to learn new skills and helping me have a sense of being a part of the solution to the problems in life. I cannot imagine my life without the wonderful experiences I have had as a volunteer.
About The Author: Marilyn Barnicke Belleghem M.Ed., is a registered marriage and family therapist in private practice in Burlington ON Canada and author of books on personal growth through travel. For more information www.mbcinc.ca
