World Hunger and Poverty

Today’s poverty-related book of the day is First World Hunger: Food Security and Welfare Politics by Graham Riches.

Here is the overview:

“Hunger and undernutrition are widespread in many advanced capitalist societies. Hunger is now publicly acceptable despite undermining common standards of human decency and abrogating the basic right of people to adequate food as guaranteed in domestic and international law. First World Hunger examines this crisis and the politics and practice of food security and welfare reform (1980-95) in five ‘liberal’ welfare states (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA). Through national case studies it explores the nature and causes of hunger, its neglect by governments, the breakdown of public welfare, the depoliticization of hunger as a human rights issue and the failure of New Right policies and charitable emergency relief to guarantee household food security. Alternative policies and strategies of public action directed at the abolition of hunger are discussed.”

You can easily buy First World Hunger and more at discount prices from BookCloseouts.

I have decided to start a book of the day series on this blog. Each day for the rest of the month, I intend to make a post about a poverty-related book that interests me. I have not read any of these books yet. (If I had, I would have already posted about them when I read them.) I hope to read most of them eventually, but it will take me a while since they will not be the only books that I will be reading.

Better yet, I assume some people reading these posts will purchase and read one or more of the books. From an activist perspective, I think it will be a great way to raise awareness and spread information about poverty. Also, I have a relationship with BookCloseouts, so, when any of you purchase any of these books from BookCloseouts by following the links that I post on this blog, then some of the revenue will help fund this blog.

I will still make my regular blog posts too. These poverty book of the day posts will be extra.

Anyway, today’s poverty book of the day is Loretta Schwartz-Nobel’s book, Growing Up Empty: How Federal Policies Are Starving America’s Children. Take a look at the overview:

“Growing Up Empty is a study of the hidden hunger epidemic that still remains largely unacknowledged at the highest political levels and ‘an unforgettable exploration of public policy, its failures and its victims’ (William Raspberry, Washington Post). Twenty years after Ronald Reagan declared that hunger was no longer an American problem, Schwartz-Nobel shows that hunger has reached epic proportions, running rampant through urban, rural, and suburban communities, affecting blacks, whites, Asians, Christians and Jews, and nonbelievers alike. Among the people we come to know are the new homeless. Born of the “Welfare to Work” program, these working poor have jobs but do not make enough to support their families, such as the formerly middle-class housewife reduced to stealing in order to feed her children, or the soldier fighting on our front lines while his young wife stands in bread lines and is denied benefits and baby formula at a military health clinic. With skillful investigative reporting and a novelist’s humanitarian eye for detail, Schwartz-Nobel portrays a haunting reality of human suffering that need not exist. A call to action, Growing Up Empty is advocacy journalism at its best.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said today, “The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability around the world has reached emergency proportions.”

Rising prices have already raised the costs of the WFP’s current operations from $500 million to $755 million.

I assume the inflation comes from the rising price of energy, which has risen from increased demand and decreased supply.

Food prices have doubled over the last three years, threatening the economic conditions of millions of people throughout the world.

The world has enough resources to end world hunger and poverty, but I believe those problems will continue to get worse if we do not fix the social and political problems that allow them to occur. Like I have said before, if we do not fix our social structure soon, I fear we will end up doomed.

Throughout my unprofessional studies of history and geopolitics, I have come to the conclusion that young people tend to start, push and lead the most effective and positive social movements. For example, consider the hippies, yippies, and such in the United States, namely in the 60s and 70s.

I believe young people tend to have the most compassion and the most principled and honest sense of justice. I believe young people become the most honestly upset by the world’s constant terrors and injustices, such as war, poverty, oppression, political inequality, violence and so forth. In this harsh, corrupt world, perhaps as people get older they tend to become corrupted and institutionalized. Perhaps age breeds complacency and tolerance of the horrible.

Not only do I propose we try to get the youth involved in poverty alleviation and other progressive social movements, but also I propose we try to turn these movements into youth movements.

Like many activists in the United States, I have often asked myself how we can bring back the social awareness and progressive momentum of the counterculture of the 1960s, a time marked by its heavy involvement of young people and their relative free-spiritedness, originality, sense of individuality and lack of corruption.

If you have any good ideas for getting the youth involved or if you know of any organizations already helping the youth get involved, please post about them in my World Hunger and Poverty Forums.

Today, I just started reading the book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine. Not being specifically about poverty, Levine argues in the book that sex is not necessarily harmful to minors, and that trying to keep children ignorant about sex and puritanically abstinent often backfires.

So far, I have only read about two chapters of the book. In the short part that I have read, Levine points out that poverty causes many of the problems associated with sex. For example, poverty increases the rate of teen pregnancy, unwanted births, abortion, rape, sexual assault, child molestation and sexually transmitted diseases. Namely, that happens because poor children have less access to quality education and health services. Also, poverty and poor neighborhoods are conducive to violence and crime, which increases sex crime and sex violence.

While trying to hide sexuality from kids tends to backfire, poverty reduction would actually help reduce the rates of many sexual problems especially among minors.

I cannot fully recommend Harmful to Minors until I have finished reading it, but so far I like it very much.

Even if you have not read the book, you can discuss it and its topics in this thread at the Book and Reading Forums.

I just read a good article by Wendi C. Thomas in which she says that 80 percent of poor Americans have jobs.

The article contains some personal anecdotes about a few poor people. And it aims to help dispel the myth that poor people are lazy and do not want better for themselves.

Wendi C. Thomas also brings up Martin Luther King’s Poor People Campaign. Unfortunately, he was assassinate before the completion of the campaign. According to Thomas, King’s Poor People Campaign demanded more jobs with a decent wage, better unemployment insurance and higher-quality public education to prepare children for the workforce.

She also included a quote by King that is unfortunately still very relevant today:

“Instead of spending $35 billion every year to fight an unjust, ill-considered war in Vietnam and $20 billion to put a man on the moon, we need to put God’s children on their own two feet.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We can now sadly say the same about the war in Iraq!

King’s ideas still apply very much nowadays, and so far we have left his mission utterly unfinished. For that reason, I intend to read The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI, and the Poor People’s Campaign.

Do you know any other good books about Martin Luther King and his campaign to alleviate poverty? If he were alive today, how do you think Martin Luther King would try to eradicate the large amounts of poverty? Please post your answers to those questions and your other thoughts on the subject in this thread at the World Hunger and Poverty Forums.

I wrote a short article on the philosophy forums explaining why I think what is often called ’selfishness’ is actually compatible with kindness. Check it out: Is Selfishness Compatible with Kindness?

I think we can more effectively organize to alleviate poverty if we realize the various ways that kindness and humanitarianism are actually in our own self-interest. In other words, let’s realize that we do not sacrifice our own happiness by choosing to help other people, alleviate poverty, and build a better world for all. Helping others makes us happy!

In a recent article, Arthur C. Brooks, author of Gross National Happiness, pointed out an interesting fact about charity: Most studies have shown that the working poor tend to give away between four and five percent of their incomes, on average, while the rich give away between three and four percent. So-called “middle class” people gave the smallest percentage.

On one hand, I realize that, when a richer person gives a smaller percentage than a poorer person, the richer person may still have given more total dollars. On the other hand, after paying the cost-of-living, richer people have a higher percentage of their income leftover which they could put towards charity.

If I had to guess, I would speculate that poorer people give away more money to charity because they feel more solidarity with other people who suffer economically. Needing help themselves probably causes them to sympathize more with those in need.

Regardless, we all need to organize and work together much more, and do it with the goal of ending poverty and building a better world for all. As I have said before, I doubt charity alone can solve the problem of poverty and economic inequality. More than charity, I believe we need to work together in voluntarily cooperative and mutually beneficial ways, which will most often happen when we realize that poverty alleviation benefits us all.

Today I will post a list of links to relevant blog posts that I received last month. This is called a “blog carnival.” I do one on the first of every month. Please bookmark this page right now so you can come back later and read more posts. Remember the following posts do not necessarily reflect my opinions, nor do I necessarily confirm any information in them. Here they are:

Abdul-Rahim presents Borges Blogue: Militantly Undecided posted at Borges Blogue.

Jamie McIntosh presents The Not-So-Humble Seed posted at Suite101: Organic Gardens blog, saying, “This week the Norwegian government opened the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which will safeguard millions of crop seeds from catastrophes ranging from tsunamis to nuclear war.”

Ian Welsh presents The real reason why the rich see America’s problems differently posted at Firedoglake.

Jean Mosher presents War, Philanthropic and Political Web Sites « Always in Motion posted at Always in Motion.

Robyn J McCleary presents VOLUNTEER PROGRAM posted at Arts and Movie Ramblings.

Joshua C. Karlin presents Fundraising Ideas - Identification posted at Marketing & Fundraising Ideas.

Jackson Kern presents It Begins with a Signature posted at Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Causes: The Alternative Channel Blog, saying, “We can change the lives of others, and in so doing, enrich and embetter our own. It can all start with a signature…check out this inspiring 3-minute clip.”

Ishtar presents » Cash handouts are not helping! Esther Garvi: aka Ishtar News posted at Esther Garvi, saying, “what happens when aid business has money but lacks progressive ideas…”

Tracee Sioux presents Stop Abortion Vote Healthcare! posted at Blog Fabulous, saying, “With healthcare for disenfranchised women on the table we should jump on the opportunity to drastically reduce the abortion rate without criminalizing women in poverty.”

Jackson Kern presents The Power to Feed the World? A Tale of Sustainable Development, BioEngineering, and Citizen Activism posted at Sustainable Development and Humanitarian Causes: The Alternative Channel Blog, saying, “It is a fact that high-yield seeds and other varieties, readily proffered by Monsanto and others, have allowed for intensifications of agricultural cultivation. The consequent reductions of malnutrition have saved many lives and have improved countless others.”

Joshua C. Karlin presents How to Ask For A Major Gift posted at Marketing & Fundraising Ideas.

Michael Bass presents From the Headlines: Home Power and Reason magazines posted at Debt Prison, saying, “I’d wager that half of Zimbabwe will be starving to death this time next year thanks to this type of economic suicide.”

Peter Jones presents Alcoholism and the Indigenous Navajo Native American Peoples: Excellent New Movie posted at Indigenous Issues Today.

Bev Lightworker presents Free Clicks posted at Conscious Flex, saying, “When you first enter this website article, you will see at the top on the left under a section called “Heroes” something that says: “Save The World - One Click At A Time! On each of these websites, you can click a button to support the cause — each click creates funding, and costs you nothing! Bookmark these sites, and click once a day!” Just under the buttons is a HTML code where other can spread the knowledge of this using the HTML code on their website, blog or any HTML code acceptable area. I feel this is a very worthy cause.”

Romeo Vitelli presents Starved For Science posted at Providentia, saying, “A little-known research project in WWII.”

Raymond presents The IRS Economic Stimulus Notice Letter Is A Waste Of Taxpayer Money posted at Money Blue Book.

Susan presents Guest Columnist Susan Jacobs: Medical Identity Theft on the Rise « Doctor Bulldog & Ronin posted at Doctor Bulldog & Ronin.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of this world hunger and poverty blog carnival using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

For those of you not already familiar with the Free Hugs Campaign, I recommend you watch the following YouTube video. I bet it will make you smile:

I love it! It is entertaining and pleasantly funny to watch this random long-haired guy walk around with a sign offering free hugs. More seriously, I feel even a small, mostly symbolic gesture such as giving away free hugs can help alleviate the “social disconnectivity” so common in our current society, which represents the first step in coming together and actually building a better world for all. Millions of people have seen that video, and I assume it has inspired almost all of them.