Thursday, 17 August 2017

Why Rev. William Barber picked Charlotte to launch his campaign to save America’s soul

quote [ In a recent interview with the Observer, the Rev. William Barber, architect of “Moral Mondays” and co-leader of the upcoming Poor People’s Campaign, spoke about Charlottesville, President Donald Trump, Franklin Graham, Charlotte’s poverty, and the campaign to resurrect Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last push for economic justice. ]

An update to this post. Seeing as how the goal is to bring poor people together from across all walks of life, I hope this overtakes the dividing statue debate, for the time being. Personally, I think they should come down, but I don't see it as a productive long term goal.
[SFW] [people] [+6 Good]
[by raphael_the_turtle@2:38pmGMT]

Comments

mechavolt said[1] @ 3:45pm GMT on 17th Aug
"I think they should come down, but I don't see it as a productive long term goal."

Really? Because the primary effect of taking them down is long term. Monuments are trans-generational. These monuments were put up within the last 70 years as a statement against desegregation, and were inherently racist. Today's younger generations don't have that context -- they see monuments glorifying generals and soldiers from the Civil War. The message of racism is obscured, but still transmitted, by "preserving history". Removing the monuments has the long-term benefit of ensuring that message isn't passed on to future generations in the same way.
raphael_the_turtle said @ 4:42pm GMT on 17th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
Taking down the monuments is like playing wackamole. All the while drawing lines in the sand between the people who need to come together to face a future that is already stacked against them regardless of the color of their skin. Is it fair that people of color have to live under these symbols of oppression? Absolutely not. But, if you can get people to come together to attack the root of their common problems now, you'll have a much easier time taking down those monuments when the people who are primarily against doing so have been shown that most of what their racism was based on no longer holds up. Even better when they realize that taking down the monuments becomes something positive they can do for their newfound allies, dare I say it, friends.

Racism doesn't need monuments to flourish as long as there are poor ill-informed people to be taken advantage of. If you want to destroy racism, don't put the racists on the defensive, forcing them further into their fox holes. Find common ground and give them the experiences they need to make their racism obsolete. That's the heart of the Poor People's Campaign.
steele said @ 6:13pm GMT on 17th Aug [Score:2 Insightful]
Watching my facebook, I would even say the racists are less of a problem than the white moderates. I've watched plenty of Hillary supporters here in Florida make the same lame excuses for the statues that Republican voters are making. These people were not taught factual history regarding the south when they went to school. You can throw graphs and articles at them all you like and for most of them it's not going to change what they "know." It's the same issue discussed in The New Jim Crow, we've got a colorblind society where the racism has become institutionalized. This has been made a poor vs poor issue when it should be a poor vs the system issue.
HoZay said @ 6:39pm GMT on 17th Aug
The statues, flags, parks, school and highway names, etc are manifestations of the institution of racism. This is a moment to teach those folks who never gave it a thought, or were mis-educated as to their own history. It isn't a poor v poor issue when you have columns of marching thugs with actual swastikas next to the confederate symbols. Those weren't poor people.
steele said @ 7:23pm GMT on 17th Aug [Score:2 Underrated]
Yes, they are poor people. In an economy where the richest are sitting on a net worth of 90 billion dollars and inequality levels are comparable with the 1920's, anybody who isn't sitting on more than a few million dollars is poor. Wage slaves are not not-poor just because they have AC and a fridge. Couples who have a 250k mortgage and two cars that are only half paid off are not not-poor when all it takes is one bad month to put them in a downward spiral that could easily lead to homelessness within a year. This is the Precariat Class I mentioned during the neoliberal posts.

Educating people is a slow process, it's not going to happen over night. In the meantime, people are taking a with us or against us approach which is going to backfire.

There were only about a few hundred of those tiki torch nazis. Thanks to our medias' zealousness they've been blown up to the point where people are acting like our country is half nazi, half antifa. We're making the nazis seem far more popular than they are, which Trump's puppetmasters have taken full advantage of. This is a recruitment drive and we've been playing into it.
lilmookieesquire said @ 11:02pm GMT on 17th Aug [Score:1 Informative]
Families that make under $250,000 can qualify for housing assistance in Palo Alto CA
steele said @ 11:13pm GMT on 17th Aug
I was trying not to go to the extreme of California, but yeah. These guys look at things from the bottom up, i'm looking from the top down because that's where the pressure that shrinks the dollar's value is coming from. You get a much more accurate picture if you're looking at people's net worth as a percentage of the top dog's.
HoZay said[1] @ 3:54am GMT on 18th Aug
Is that the economy at large, or a fucked-up local housing market?
Like, could they move, and be immediately much better off financially?
lilmookieesquire said @ 5:53am GMT on 18th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
I only have one friend who owns a house. She makes about 150 a year or so and its not the safest neighborhood. People steal her Halloween decorations.

There really isn't a lot of places you can move to in the Bay Area but San Jose is generally the cheapest- but you have to fight traffic to get to work.

All the guys in the restaurants live in San Jose and commute about 1.5 hours or live in a trailer by a park. Literally.

Average Bay Area house price is 650k. Adjusted for inflation my parents bought a house for 780k (about) in Mountainview in 1977 (that's 2017 money though)

Here's a nice blurb in the San Jose mercury news:
"Otherwise, Hake found condos and townhouses, mostly of 1970s vintage and kind of cozy — think 1,100 to 1,300 square feet, mostly, and even smaller in Palo Alto, where the best buy she could find was a 906-square-foot two-bedroom, one-bath condo for $748,000. “But I was surprised you could find anything in Palo Alto,” she said, noting that “it’s really hard to break into that market for less than $2 million.”

She summarized the dilemma of homebuyers: “You’re looking at two options: Go small or go far away.”

bbqkink said[2] @ 7:05am GMT on 18th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
I make $500 a month on Social security and own my home.
Full disclosure so does my wife and $100 in food stamps plus I hustle a few bucks...but it is a different world than what you are used to, my point is my experience is much more common.

Oh and I don't owe anybody anything. Car, Truck, and House all paid for.
lilmookieesquire said @ 7:33am GMT on 19th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
I get that your experience is more common.

But Steele's point, as I understand it, is that the nature of wealth distribution has changed. Money isn't going towards the poor, middle class, or well to do. It's going to, not even executives, but C-suit people that have high hundreds of millions of dollars. Probably billions. People who don't need it. People who consider/treat millions of dollars the way you or I treat $1000.

I went to highschool with the guy that made the "whatsapp" iphone app.

Last I heard, he bought a 22 million dollar house. This guy isn't in the 1% either.

Our country is becoming an oligarchy and this time there isn't going to be a World War to stop it from happening. Americans don't (and probably never had) the unity required to stop that from happening. Automation makes oligarchy easier and communication technology makes it easier than ever to divide people.

Money isn't being put into infrastructure or education.

Foxcon Wisconsin is getting massive tax breaks for what is probably minimum wage factory jobs where unionized people get replaced by robots.

If you were born in 1990 onwards, I am not sure you would be able to own a house/car/truck with no debt. I'm not saying you didn't earn that or work for it. I'm saying, Millennials are spending all their money on avocado toast.

And that's why people are voting for Trump. That's why people are voting for Hilary. That's why people are voting for Johnson. That's why people are voting for Stein.

Because America is the only Superpower in the world. Business is solid.

But people are struggling when there literally is no reason for it to be like that.

People aren't asking for unreasonable things. Americans are just asking for a fair shot at work, healthcare, housing, and maybe a shot at raising a family.

People express it differently; blame different problems; and have different proposed solutions but at the end of the day they just want a fair shot.

Personally I think it's a wealth distribution issue. I think the solution isn't socialism, but Americans need to be given enough jobs and paycheck to have a shot at owning a house and starting a family and not going bankrupt because they have to go to the hospital- and I think that would require only a reasonable level of tweaking the economy.
steele said @ 3:43pm GMT on 19th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
That's most of it. My greater point is ultimately this: A decade or so ago if you had a net worth of a few million dollars you were a person of influence. Now you're either a poor person in California or a Baby Boomer who can afford to retire, if you're lucky. By the time mookie and I reach retirement age, top 10% is easily going to start far into the tens of millions, if not hundreds. For most Americans looking forward there is no stable future available to us. Most people know this, whether they want to admit it to themselves or not. We're all poor people fighting over the crumbs left for us by a few handfuls of obscenely rich that own almost everything; Resources, media, and even our government.
bbqkink said[2] @ 3:32pm GMT on 19th Aug
"the nature of wealth distribution has changed.'

Well no shit. That has been going on since Reagan fired the air tragic controllers and cut rich peoples taxes. The solution to that problem is doing the opposite of what caused the problem in the first place...reform the tax code and empower unions.

I understand that is an oversimplification and that there have been obstacles Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United v. FEC put in the way that give money the advantage over the vote creating the virgining oligarchy you mentioned. The tax cuts have continued making the hill even higher to climb and the attack on unions has made working people even weaker.

But the answer is still the same...politics. And therein lies the problem.
"If you were born in 1990" only 50% voter turn out of registered voters which is less than 1/2 of the population so...less that 25% of 18 to 29 YOs voted.

There are plenty of jobs...what there isn't is plenty of is income. and the only way to turn that around is vote...you see the conundrum.

The other thing people who are millionaires are not poor and have almost no chance of being poor. Your classmate who bought a 22 million dollar house. who owns it, him or the bank? If he owns it outright he may not technically be in the 1 or 2% but he will never be poor.

The problem I have with a lot of people here, is that they are focused on pending disaster and that allows them to poo poo anything in the present that would help turn things around..."why bother if it is all coming to an end?"
It is not to late to fix things now but unless something is done it will be.

It doesn't really mater much to me personally I have 20 years left on earth at tops but you think younger people would be fighting a little harder and not accept it is all going to hell.
HoZay said @ 4:03pm GMT on 19th Aug
If only there was a way for people to influence the direction of economic policy decisions, like paying attention and voting in every election.
bbqkink said @ 4:11pm GMT on 19th Aug
Ya if only....and more importantly how long?
HoZay said @ 4:46pm GMT on 19th Aug
How long to make a difference, or how long to achieve justice?
Every election makes a difference, justice will never come if people don't choose it.
bbqkink said @ 6:34pm GMT on 19th Aug
How long to have the vote. I am willing to bet there is an effort to "suspend" the vote in 2020... I don't think it will be effective but there will be an effort.

And these statues are just a distraction on the national level. They are like the stupid battle flag symbols of hate. The real danger is the coming together of the Clan and the Nazis and the other pin heads who are trying to organize and unite.

If we let them march and carry their offensive flags and symbols it will become evident that what we are seeing today in Boston. aprx. 40 pinheads and estimates of 20,000 counter protestors at the pinheads rally...they are so few as to be inconsequential.

They have done us a favor in bringing this up and making it part of the national dialog so we can expose them for what they are...that is as long as it doesn't take over Democratic politics...because Brannon said it best.

The longer Democrats "talk about identity politics, I got 'em," Bannon said. "I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."

You and I have had this discussion...If we don't start talking about poor vs rich we will lose again.

bbqkink said @ 2:15am GMT on 20th Aug
Here is that full Bannon quote...

“The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
lilmookieesquire said @ 9:13pm GMT on 19th Aug
I'm kind of saying, California isn't exactly a republican stronghold.
Voting is a majority-wins thing.

In 1992, Marvin Simkin wrote in Los Angeles Times, Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch.
HoZay said @ 10:35pm GMT on 19th Aug
I don't know who Marvin Simkin is. Is that supposed to describe the US system?
lilmookieesquire said @ 2:40am GMT on 20th Aug
It's a quote often falsely attributed to Ben Franklin.

It describes direct democracy. But we don't live in a direct democracy. We live in a representative democracy, but at this point I consider it borderline oligarchyish. Too much money by too few people has too much influence to be overcome at this point- 100% millennial turnout or no.

HoZay said @ 4:43am GMT on 20th Aug [Score:1 Insightful]
What's the alternative to voting?
lilmookieesquire said @ 2:44pm GMT on 20th Aug
It's probably the best thing we have in the short term. Education and volunteering are good in the medium to long I think. I'm just being a Debbie Downer in that it's not a cure all.
HoZay said @ 2:48pm GMT on 20th Aug
What I find odd is how many people don't vote and then claim they are disenfranchised.
bbqkink said @ 2:52am GMT on 20th Aug
Oh quit ducking the responsibility there are more millennial than Boomers read the comment I put in the wrong thread. 36% not registered...50% of registered didn't vote...would have swung any election.
bbqkink said @ 8:47pm GMT on 17th Aug
Wow you mind coming back to earth with the rest of us.

"anybody who isn't sitting on more than a few million dollars is poor."

So its you are in the 1% or 2% or your poor...

"This is a recruitment drive and we've been playing into it."

It is the normalizing Nazis that give them power...you confront this shit where ever you find it. You are right this is a recruitment drive but they don't use CNN or even FOX as their form of communication but there are a lot of people who are tolerant and uniformed that need a wake up call who do.
steele said @ 9:01pm GMT on 17th Aug [Score:2]
1% or 2%? What reality are you living in, man?


Net Worth in the United States: Zooming in on the Top Centiles

These are 2013 numbers. Jeff Bezos's net worth in 2013 was 25 billion, Bill Gates was at 67 billion. Both of them are now neck and neck at the 90 billion mark with Bezos slightly in the lead. By now, if you don't have a couple million, you're not even top 10%.
bbqkink said[1] @ 9:13pm GMT on 17th Aug
$100,000 a year is suppose to be 10% cut of so guess a million in assets is not out of line...but poor is a lot lower than that.

+++++EDIT++++

@ 4% is $40 k a year and you never touch the million. far from poor.
steele said @ 9:32pm GMT on 17th Aug
If people had actual stable union work with careers they could depend on for the rest of their life then I would agree with you. But that's not how this shit works anymore and the CPI value of the dollar drops 20-25% every decade. I'm not talking about crushing poverty, but there is no one below 90% that isn't in some way feeling the crunch whether they want to consider themselves poor or not. As I've been trying to point out for quite some time now, our society is not in a stable position. A slight jump in unemployment from driverless cars/semitrucks or fast food kiosks will be like pulling out the lone supporting piece from a jenga tower.
bbqkink said @ 10:05pm GMT on 17th Aug
Ok Lets take the guy who is living off the 40K. He is in danger of slipping into poverty, I know because that is what happened to me. Working and all of a sudden job is gone..only no unemployment and I was 55 years old.

But you are talking collapses and that may or may not happen. But even then a million in the bank will go a long way and that assumes you can't find another way...millionaires are not in danger of being poor in any reality.
steele said @ 10:19pm GMT on 17th Aug
I disagree, but let's get back to original point that started all of this then. How many of those people do you think were millionaires?
bbqkink said @ 10:50pm GMT on 17th Aug
Millionaires? People who have over a million dollars in what kind of assets? liquid? 10 % or less assets like home value business worth @20%
steele said @ 10:54pm GMT on 17th Aug [Score:1 Funny]
Nevermind.
bbqkink said @ 11:45pm GMT on 17th Aug [Score:1 Sad]
You think Millionaires are poor and I'm the funny one?
steele said @ 11:55pm GMT on 17th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
What the hell are you talking about? I think this conversation has become a pointless quagmire, so I'm bailing. Raph clearly finds my despair humourous. Cause he's a dick. :P
bbqkink said @ 7:26am GMT on 18th Aug
Even according you chart 10% of population are worth over 1 mil. you think that number doubles in 4 years?
lilmookieesquire said @ 6:05am GMT on 18th Aug
"What world do you live in?"

YOU CANT EVEN BUY A FUCKING HOUSE HERE FOR ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

YOU CANT EVEN BUY HALF A FUCKING HOUSE.

Jesus Christ man.

250k a year qualifies for HOUSING ASSISTANCE here.

Steele is the crazy professor whom no one believes because he has crazy hair and is running around dropping files- but he's entirely right.
bbqkink said[2] @ 6:49am GMT on 18th Aug
So you think that over 20% of the US population are millionaires?
And 1/2 of the state of Illinois would be on welfare a 1/4 a Mil a year.
1/2 of the US population is poor or low income..."What world do you live in?"
lilmookieesquire said @ 9:15pm GMT on 19th Aug
Where exactly are you seeing that?
bbqkink said @ 10:16pm GMT on 19th Aug
To start with only 35% not even registered and they are a strange group.

Why Are Millions of
Citizens Not Registered
to Vote?


And only 50% of Registered voters showed up.
46.6% didn't vote

25.6% voted for Hillary Clinton

25.5% voted for Donald Trump

1.7% voted for Gary Johnson

Nearly half of Americans didn't vote

Here is an look at just Millennial's

Nearly half of Americans didn't vote — not even for Harambe
lilmookieesquire said @ 2:34am GMT on 20th Aug
I mean, that seems non-sequitur to my comment. I'm not understanding how your reply is related to my comment.

I was talking about the wealth distribution of the American 1% and how single digit millions is no longer "rich" and you're down here talking about the voter turn out of millennials.

Political policy in America is not driven by voter turn out.

It's driven by lobbyists, money, and business.

bbqkink said[1] @ 2:46am GMT on 20th Aug
Sorry wrong thread.

What do you doubt. "single digit millions is no longer "rich"" Bullshit that is rich. it is not mega rich but it is rich. "there are 4.3 million millionaires in the U.S" 326,474,013 people so... And you can live comfortably on the interest income of the million and never touch the million..that is rich.

How many millionaires?

Political policy in America is not driven by voter turn out.
HAHA...That's why the Kochs and the Mercers of the world spend billions trying to buy votes and suspend others ...not worth a thing... HAHA

How the hell do you think those lobbyists, money, and business. spend their money, they spend it BUYING VOTES.




lilmookieesquire said @ 12:58pm GMT on 20th Aug
Political policy in America is created by congress. They create laws.

They drive political policy.

Oh. Sorry, you're right. Wealth distribution must be fine in America. You're right. Silly me.
bbqkink said @ 5:27pm GMT on 20th Aug [Score:-1 Old]
filtered comment under your threshold
bbqkink said @ 10:04pm GMT on 20th Aug [Score:-1]
filtered comment under your threshold
HoZay said @ 9:24pm GMT on 17th Aug
LOL
You can surely do better than redefining poor to include everybody.
steele said @ 9:46pm GMT on 17th Aug [Score:1 Underrated]
I don't need to redefine anything. 6 in 10 Americans don't have $500 in savings. I don't know if you and bbq keep checking out when we talk about this stuff, but it's not a new concept. Most of America is not in a good way.
HoZay said @ 10:57pm GMT on 17th Aug
That doesn't make the Confederate icons a poor v poor issue.

It's the same issue discussed in The New Jim Crow, we've got a colorblind society where the racism has become institutionalized. This has been made a poor vs poor issue when it should be a poor vs the system issue.

I don't see institutional racism as being caused or upheld by poor whites. I see dealing with confederate icons as recognition of modern attitudes toward our fellow citizens. Most of us were raised with some pretty bullshit ideas about straight white superiority, movies and pop culture generally were full of stereotypes of gays, blacks, asians, women, etc, etc. We don't accept that shit as part of the culture anymore, because it's hateful, and diminishes those people who are targeted. Now it's time to clean up these other symbols of hate in the public square.

I get that you see pretty much everything as having an economic solution - public symbols of race hate is not something we should put up with until after the economy is reordered.
bbqkink said @ 12:51am GMT on 18th Aug [Score:1 laz0r]
HoZay said @ 1:33am GMT on 18th Aug
A beautiful speech. I highly recommend watching it. I've read excerpts before, but the whole speech is just excellent.
bbqkink said @ 2:00am GMT on 18th Aug [Score:1 Good]
Don't know if you have seen this....

Activists in Durham County, North Carolina, attempted to surrender en masse at a courthouse on Thursday morning in an act of solidarity with those charged for the act of pulling down a statue of a Confederate soldier on Monday, news reports and social media accounts say. The gesture remained symbolic when law enforcement officials declined to take anyone who hadn't had a warrant issued for their arrest into custody: "Officials at the jail, where the magistrate’s office is located, blocked their entry into the buildings

Activists Turn Selves in Spartacus-Style for “Crime” of Toppling Durham Confederate Statue

Picture of the line .
steele said @ 11:10pm GMT on 17th Aug
Then we're all fucked. #ThumbsUp
bbqkink said @ 7:01am GMT on 18th Aug
"6 in 10 Americans don't have $500 in savings" ...is kinda my point... Poor millionaires?
midden said @ 8:48pm GMT on 18th Aug
Baltimore just took down several this week with little fuss. I think beyond moral considerations, it was probably economically wise as well. How much dose a messy incident like the one in Charlottesville cost? All the police, the cleanup, the repairs, the lawyers.? How about the cost to the city's reputation, the surrounding businesses, neighborhood home prices, insurance, etc? Compare that to a crew quietly relocating a few big bronze castings.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if things get messier n the near future before they get better. I'm sure it wasn't cheep, but probably a smart move by the city council.
raphael_the_turtle said @ 10:18pm GMT on 18th Aug
I was glad to hear it, it was a smart move. But it also wasn't exactly the deep south and the conflict happening elsewhere. Pulling the bandaid off like that without argument makes it a less of an issue. Before the election the democrat way was to call everyone racist if they didn't agree, now they're all nazis. Symbolic steps forward for what may very well be electoral steps back.
midden said @ 10:31pm GMT on 18th Aug
There's also the fact that relocation of some of these monuments was already under discussion well before events in Charlottesville, so it made the decision that much easier and quicker to implement.
steele said @ 4:58pm GMT on 17th Aug
I was tossing and turning most of the night over this shit. Fingers crossed. :D
#LookForTheHelpers
bbqkink said[3] @ 5:42pm GMT on 17th Aug
I have been a fan of Rev. Barber since he started Moral Mondays. Even though It was hard to see any movement especially outside of North Carolina it was the right thing to do and it was movement in the right direction.

I certainly hope this new crusade is effective as well, because the other side is well aware of the stakes and are celebrating the current state of affairs.

++++++++++

“The Democrats,” Bannon said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

Ill defer my comment for one I saw on Reddit

RPDC01

Wow - cutting pretty close to the bone, Steve-o. Real close to the bone.

Reading that will be absolute torture for Bernie. A New Deal Democrat through-and-through, who has been preaching that exact thing to deaf Democrats for decades.

And he has to watch fucking Steve Bannon stumble across economic nationalism, pick it up, and put it on like rented tuxedo jacket. All because the goddamn third-way Democrats nee Republicans threw it away to get Clinton elected in 92.

++EDIT++++

Ironically RPDC01 is a Trump supporter and a Member of r/the_donald

Bannon and a Trump supporter trying to start some shit both hit the truth on the head....strange world we are in.

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