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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChris Hedges: Lock Up the Men, Evict the Women and Children
from truthdig:
Lock Up the Men, Evict the Women and Children
Posted on May 29, 2016
By Chris Hedges
Matthew Desmonds book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, like Barbara Ehrenreichs Nickel and Dimed, is a heartbreaking snapshot of the rapacious exploitation and misery we inflict on the most vulnerable, especially children. It is a picture of a world where industries have been created to fleece the poor, and destroy neighborhoods and ultimately lives. It portrays a judicial system that has broken down, a dysfunctional social service system and the license in neoliberal America to carry out unchecked greed, no matter what the cost.
Her face had that look, Desmond wrote. The movers and the deputies knew it well. It was the look of someone realizing that her family would be homeless in a matter of hours. It was something like denial giving way to the surrealism of the scene: the speed and the violence of it all; sheriffs leaning against your wall, hands resting on holsters; all these strangers, these sweating men, piling your things outside, drinking water from your sink poured into your cups, using your bathroom. It was the look of being undone by a wave of questions. What do I need for tonight, for this week? Who should I call? Where is the medication? Where will we go? It was the face of a mother who climbs out of the cellar to find the tornado has leveled the house.
Being poor in America is one long emergency. You teeter on the edge of bankruptcy, homelessness and hunger. You endure cataclysmic levels of stress, harassment and anxiety and long bouts of depression. Rent strips you of half your incomeone in four families spend 70 percent of their income on rentuntil you and your children are evicted, often into homeless shelters or abandoned buildings, when you fall behind on payments. A financial crisisa medical emergency, a reduction in hours at work or the loss of a job, funeral expenses or car repairscan lead inexorably to an eviction. Creditors, payday lenders and collection agencies hound you. You are often forced to declare bankruptcy. You cope with endemic violence, gangs, drugs and a judicial system that permits brutal police abuse and ships you to jail, or slaps you with huge fines, for minor offenses. You live for weeks or months with no heat, water or electricity because you cannot pay the utility bills, especially since fuel and utility rates have risen by more than 50 percent since 2000. Single mothers and their children usually endure this hell alone, because the men in these communities are locked up. Millions of families are tossed into the street every year.
We have 5 percent of the worlds population and 25 percent of its prison population. More than 60 percent of the 2.2 million incarcerated are people of color. If these poor people were not locked in cages for decades, if they were not given probationary status once they were freed, if they had stable communities, there would be massive unrest in the streets. Mass incarceration, along with debt peonage, evictions, police violence and a judicial system that holds up property rights, rather than justice, as the highest good and that denies nearly all of the poor a trial, forcing them to accept plea bargains, is one of the many tools of corporate oppression. .................(more)
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/lock_up_the_men_evict_the_women_and_children_20160529
malaise
(269,254 posts)Rec
JEB
(4,748 posts)Hydra
(14,459 posts)We need a new system.
Jeffersons Ghost
(15,235 posts)onecaliberal
(32,976 posts)But but but, Hillary is going to fix it all.
Hydra
(14,459 posts)If they just worked hard, they wouldn't be there.
^ Current narrative. Subject to change in 5 mins.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)Everyone should have foundations set up to take money from people who want influence in our government.
Hydra
(14,459 posts)The 1% have more money than they can possibly spend due to tax breaks they never should have gotten. They then spend that extra money buying up the gov't. Each dollar they spend gets them roughly $100 back in benefits. Rinse and repeat.
They've pretty much drained the treasury and the economy. Now it's time to kill the cow.
We're probably not going to survive this, but if we do, capitalism will be a bad word for 100 years.
RobertEarl
(13,685 posts)BERNIE
He is the only one who has promised to make things equal. Then maybe we won't be reading about evictions so much, eh?
Hydra
(14,459 posts)But the system will have to go too. FDR made a mistake in saving capitalism- the kicked can is in front of us again. As long as the same mechanisms are still in place, the same result will occur.
But I do think it will happen- Bernie's run is getting change agents into the system. That's the first step.
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)they are just lazy bums who are not willing to work and take responsibility for themselves.
SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)Feeling the Bern
(3,839 posts)Fascism is alive and well in the US, and Americans love it!