A chicken in every worthy pot…

Let’s jump right on in, shall we?

A year ago most folks would have thought that the outcome of the presidential election was going to hinge on the war and that economic concerns would be left to state and local campaigns…but a lot can change in a very short time. Now that everyone and their dawg is waking up to the economic trauma that has been in the works for years (wince), campaigns are scrambling to develop messaging around the economy that they won’t turn into policies they’ll have to eat should they get elected.

This bitch is always concerned about the economy. I don’t know a lot of folks with a safety net and months of savings…my circle is made up of working, hard working Americans (wink). When prices go up and income remains flat we all feel that shit and struggle to adjust. The same is true of the organizations that I volunteer with - money gets tight and folks are no longer able to make donations.

A recent news report on the increased use of gleaning by food pantries got a bitch thinking about those people who are feeling the squeeze for the first time. Many people now face hunger who never thought they’d be in that situation. The number of Americans receiving food stamps is at a record high as folks struggle to pay for housing, utilities and fuel only to find themselves unable to put a meal on the table. I would hope that this new economic reality would at least help bridge the gap of understanding that exists between the haves and have nots, but too often news reports center on the notion that hunger isn’t supposed to happen to “these people.”

You know who I’m talking about…educated, working, clean, articulate, solid people aren’t supposed to be on food stamps. Right? Those working, hard working Americans have kept their side of the bargain and they deserve better…they’ve earned a full stomach and a roof over their head…misery is the wages of sloth!

And who is hunger for…who deserves poverty? Oh yeah, those other people…those lazy people…those willfully ignorant people who aren’t happy unless they are asking for a hand out or getting a free ride.

Right?

Wrong.

Most of us could be at risk in a matter of weeks if not days. A job gets cut…a child gets sick…a car breaks down…a bill comes due…and suddenly you’re short the money for groceries with no available credit and no one to turn to. With so many of us are living paycheck to paycheck, slight shifts can have a huge impact on our lives and our ability to survive without some manner of assistance.

Yet even now…even with more Americans applying for food stamps or visiting food banks they use to donate to, losing their homes or having to adjust where they live to fit their new economic reality and cutting back on everything but the basics…even now the idea persists that hunger is what you get when you don’t do the right things and that poverty happens to those lazy people who deserve it.

Sigh.

I used to think that the trick to spinning economic policy was to make the masses believe in the possibility of there being a chicken in every pot.

But mayhap the actual trick is to make them believe that those with empty pots don’t deserve chicken…

Crossposted from The Angry Black Bitch.

Sphere: Related Content

Revolutionary Consciousness

We like to demonize revolutionary consciousness as some sort of Marxist nation building concept. The idea of conscious choice to revolution, framed by communist concepts, must be bad, since everybody learned at the knee that commies were unsavory.

Of course, the epitome of revolutionary consciousness was Jesus Christ. Now, there’s a guy who stirred a nation (actually nation after nation) to action. He woke up minds, got people asking questions, shook up the status quo. He did this not by force, but by personality. Very, very scary concept to those who despise inspection and crave hierarchy.

Probably why there was such a concerted effort to build a religious hierarchal structure of biblical proportions. These damned revolutionaries, messing up a good thing.

Same wool, different eyes.

This country is coming up on something huge, and I don’t think we’re talking about it in any meaningful fashion. I’m talking about food, being hungry, and desperation. We’re far enough removed from the Great Depression that we can somehow romanticize men leaving families they can’t support to ride on trains and watch their dignity roll away from them like so much track. There is some level of lewd satisfaction in women trading sex for food, for other women to be held up as worthy for feeding hobo’s from their farm kitchens. We create pictures to sum up an era we didn’t experience.

We have no personal benchmark for the pinch of an underfed belly.

Read more

Sphere: Related Content