Poverty – Page 11

Poverty Has a Woman’s Face

But women are fighting back:

Women Thrive Worldwide has more info on the feminization of poverty. Women like Leticia and Betilde are doing the day-to-day work of surviving, and are helping other women in their communities do the same. But this is not an individual problem, and it shouldn’t be treated like one. World-wide poverty should be a priority for every government — but it should especially be on the radar screen in the richest country in the world.

Reproductive Tourism

This kind of out-of-control globalization, wherein wealthier women are able to rent the wombs of poorer ones, makes me extremely uncomfortable.

I’m certainly sympathetic to the plight of couples who can’t conceive for whatever reason. And it certainly makes sense for women to voluntarily carry someone else’s pregnancy if it means making a lot of money. But I think it’s possible to be skeptical of this situation without passing judgment on the people involved in it, most of whom are doing the best that they can in tough circumstances.

An article published in The Times of India in February questioned how such a law would be enforced: “In a country crippled by abject poverty,” it asked, “how will the government body guarantee that women will not agree to surrogacy just to be able to eat two square meals a day?”

One could argue that surrogates are simply providing a service like any other. But I’m not sure that we want to turn reproduction into a service industry. The inequalities here are so stark — and the carrot of thousands of dollars so tempting for women in a country with astounding poverty rates — that writing if off as purely business is inadequate.

“Surrogates do it to give their children a better education, to buy a home, to start up a small business, a shop,” Dr. Kadam said. “This is as much money as they could earn in maybe three years. I really don’t think that this is exploiting the women. I feel it is two people who are helping out each other.”

Mr. Gher agreed. “You cannot ignore the discrepancies between Indian poverty and Western wealth,” he said. “We try our best not to abuse this power. Part of our choice to come here was the idea that there was an opportunity to help someone in India.”

In the Mumbai clinic, it is clear that an exchange between rich and poor is under way. On some contracts, the thumbprint of an illiterate surrogate stands out against the clients’ signatures.

Thoughts?

Kill them to kill part of yourself

Earlier this week there was an update in the death of Sanesha Stewart: apparently the man who is suspected of killing her — let’s be clear, he was dragged from her apartment early in the morning, covered in her blood — had known her for quite some time. That doesn’t seem to fit with his claim (and the media’s original lurid story) that he was shocked to find out that Stewart was trans and flew into a homicidal rage as a result. Sadly, I wasn’t surprised to hear this at all.

Most Feministe readers will agree that the “trans panic” defense is bogus, and that one’s own fear or disgust of queer or trans people is hardly an excuse for violence or murder. But a lot of these “panics” are suspicious on more levels than one. In similar killings in the past, there’s been evidence that suggests the murderer knew very well that the victim was trans, and may have killed her in order to erase the association between them. The revelation in Stewart’s case brought to mind the aptly titled 2003 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, “Disposable People.” Washington DC activist Earline Budd, who’s dealt with her own share of transphobic violence on top of fielding more than a dozen calls a month about other trans people being assaulted, sums it up well:

Budd, like many transgender activists, believes the “discovery crime” motivation is often bogus. Most transgendered people are up front with potential sex partners about their identities and anatomies, she says — and even in cases where they’re not, “how can you say that’s an excuse for killing somebody or beating them up?”

Bella Evangelista’s murderer, Antoine Jacobs, is reportedly considering a “panic defense” when he goes to court.

According to Sgt. Brett Parson, head of Washington’s GLLU police unit, Jacobs told police he and Evangelista “were engaging in sex for hire, he liked it, the act was completed, they parted ways, and some of his friends said, ‘Hey, man, that’s a dude,’ and he returned and shot her.”

Budd suspects that Jacobs simply got embarrassed when his friends found out he’d been with Evangelista, who was well known as a transgendered woman in the neighborhood where Jacobs lived.

“This was all to show off for the guys,” she says. “He came back and confronted her, and when she turned around to walk away, he pulled out a gun and shot her and just continued to shoot her. In the back. And that’s a panic defense? Come on now.”

Something’s missing here

Via Amanda comes this op-ed claiming that the poor really aren’t so poor, because they have stuff. Stuff like TVs and VCRs. Sure, the lower fifth of earners spend more than they take in, but that means they’re better off!

The top fifth of American households earned an average of $149,963 a year in 2006. As shown in the first accompanying chart, they spent $69,863 on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, health care and other categories of consumption. The rest of their income went largely to taxes and savings.

The bottom fifth earned just $9,974, but spent nearly twice that — an average of $18,153 a year. How is that possible? A look at the far right-hand column of the consumption chart, labeled “financial flows,” shows why: those lower-income families have access to various sources of spending money that doesn’t fall under taxable income. These sources include portions of sales of property like homes and cars and securities that are not subject to capital gains taxes, insurance policies redeemed, or the drawing down of bank accounts. While some of these families are mired in poverty, many (the exact proportion is unclear) are headed by retirees and those temporarily between jobs, and thus their low income total doesn’t accurately reflect their long-term financial status.

So, bearing this in mind, if we compare the incomes of the top and bottom fifths, we see a ratio of 15 to 1. If we turn to consumption, the gap declines to around 4 to 1. A similar narrowing takes place throughout all levels of income distribution. The middle 20 percent of families had incomes more than four times the bottom fifth. Yet their edge in consumption fell to about 2 to 1.

You know, one reason that sales taxes are considered regressive is that they affect poor people disproportionately — because you need a certain amount of purchased goods to survive, it’s unfair to take a huge relative chunk out of the incomes of poorer people. That 7% bites a lot more when you consider the relative size of the tax vis-a-vis a poor person’s income. It’s also one reason, the mewling of John Aravosis aside, that if you’re going to stimulate the economy via rebates-that-aren’t-really-rebates, you put the money into the hands of people who are not only likely to spend it, but likely to have already tightened their belts and put off purchases because things were getting tight.

So, you really can’t look at the fact that poor people spend all that they have — and more — and conclude that they’re not doing all that bad after all because they’re spending all that they have — and more. In fact, most people would consider the fact that they have to beg, borrow or steal to be a problem. A bellwether, even.

Sanesha Stewart is dead and I have only tears and frustration for her

A man named Steve McMillian apparently stabbed Sanesha Stewart to death on Saturday morning. Who was she? She lived in the Bronx. She was tall and femme and well-liked by her neighbors. She was a client at the law project where I volunteer, but I never met her myself. Some of my colleagues helped her get her name legally changed more than a year ago. None of the above mattered at all to the news media, which handled this tragedy with the appropriate combination of sensitivity, respect for the victim, and a very cold eye for the man who the police dragged from her apartment, covered in her blood.

Oh no… wait one second and back up. There was no respect and no cold eye, none at all. I must be imagining some completely different universe where young trans women of color aren’t automatically treated like human trash. Where we all live, business as usual is to make a lot of comments about what the murder victim dressed like and looked like, reveal what her name was before she changed it, automatically assume she’s getting paid for sex, and to make excuses for the alleged killer.

And please note: “Cops: Ex-con slays Bronx transsexual ‘hooker'” is not the original headline of this NY Daily News article. The original one was “Fooled john stabbed Bronx tranny,” until pressure from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation got them to change it. They are still suggesting that people take action by writing to the editors–follow that link for more details.

The Daily News also published a follow-up story in which Sanesha’s downstairs neighbor insists that she wasn’t getting paid for sex; the Daily News doesn’t offer any proof for their earlier assertion that Sanesha Stewart was a “hooker,” other than “police sources.” And as many trans people in New York City will tell you, the NYPD assumes that almost any young, Black or Latina trans woman walking around on the street, or going into an apartment building with a guy, is getting paid for sex work. Profiling is constant; women have been arrested around here simply for having a gathering in someone’s apartment, apparently it’s too suspicious. I mean why would any normal person want to hang out with one of THEM, right?

I don’t know if Sanesha Stewart was doing sex work or not, and I don’t think it really matters, other than the fact that the usual assumptions are being made. I don’t know what else to say. This kind of thing always leaves me at a loss for words, there’s not much to do but sit, and cry, and wonder how long it will be until the next murder. Until the next young, poor or working class, Black or Latina trans woman is murdered just for being trans, and then mocked by so-called journalists before her body cools.

Worst of all is the fact that even the newer article ends with a hint of what will undoubtedly be part of the next chapter of this story: the “tranny panic” defense.

Ramel C., 37, said McMillan had a girlfriend. He said his life-long friend must have been shocked to discover he was with a man.

“I’m not saying that’s a reason to kill anyone,” he said. “But I’m sure he was in some type of turmoil or shock.”

(Right, because no guy with a girlfriend has ever slept with or dated a trans woman.)

Read this, and then go look at some of the comments on those stories and the other news sources that megan_julca rounded up. The “trans panic” defense was used in the trials following the murder of Gwen Araujo, and those murderers got reduced sentences. We still live in a place and time where people think it’s “perfectly understandable” that someone would flip out and want to kill a trans woman just because they find out she’s trans. And those are the people who claim not to condone violent criminal reactions! Others are happy to step right up and say (at least on the anonymous Internet) that they’d react the same way and do the same thing. Trans people take the blame; trans people should be the ones walking around with prominent badges of shame, so all the “normal” people don’t make the wrong assumption. The question nobody ever seems to ask is, why would you automatically assume that the person you’re on a date with isn’t trans?

Why I Miss Ms. Lauren ‘Round These Parts

Because she writes stuff like this, and it totally blows me away.

This is your brain. This is your brain on Ayn Rand. Any questions?

Thought the whining of Aravosis was bad? Check out Megan McArdle on the economic stimulus package, and why she agrees with the GOP that food stamps shouldn’t be included:

1) The poor don’t need more food. Obesity is a problem for the poor in America; except for people who are too screwed up to get food stamps (because they don’t have an address), food insufficiency is not.

2) Food stamps only imperfectly translate into increased cash income, meaning that the poor will spend . . . more money on food…

5) The economy doesn’t need a food sector more distorted by daft government programs than it already is. If you want to give money to the poor, give it to them. Even if they spend it all on drugs, it will hardly be much worse than spending it all on increasing their already astronomical obesity rates.

See, if we give poor people food stamps, they’ll just buy food with them! And they’re already fatty fat fat! But if we give them money, they’ll just buy drugs. Which is better, because at least the drugs won’t make them fat.

Remember, kids: she gets paid for these fine opinions. Welfare for poor people is bad, but wingnut welfare? A-OK!

H/T: teratologist, who rightly notes that it’s getting really hard for the Onion to keep up.

GOP’s Ideology over Sound Economics

It’s no big secret that Republicans seem to take great pleasure out of screwing poor people in this country. They usually manage to justify it economically, arguing something along the lines of “personal responsibility” and saying that helping the poor will be an economic burden on everyone else. The Republican ideal is, supposedly, a strong economy. It’s interesting, then, to be in a situation where a market crisis threatens everyone’s financial security, and the most effective provisions in the stimulus package give some aid to lower-income people — and Republicans oppose those provisions because aiding low-income people would be contrary to GOP values:

Changes reportedly made last night in the stimulus package would reduce its effectiveness as stimulus. Although the package includes a reasonably designed tax rebate, the two most targeted and economically effective measures under consideration — a temporary extension of unemployment benefits and a temporary boost in food stamp benefits — were zeroed out, apparently at the insistence of House Republican leaders.

The two respected institutions that have rated stimulus options in recent days — the Congressional Budget Office and Moody’s Economy.com — both give their two highest ratings for effectiveness as stimulus to the two measures that were dropped.

One point of contention, it seems, is that House Republicans want to focus on business tax cuts and tax rebate checks. But tax rebate checks wouldn’t be sent out until June, and business tax cuts won’t do a whole lot of good if consumers have significantly less spending power. Food stamps and unemployment insurance, on the other hand, would inject greater consumer spending power into the economy now, and we could see improvement in a month or two. Instead, the plan is to provide $50 billion dollars in business tax cuts, while excluding unemployment insurance and food stamps.

But it’s not just a matter of different values; it’s an issue of cold, hard cash and economic gain:

Economy.com found that for each dollar spent on extended UI benefits, $1.64 in increased economic activity would be generated. For each dollar in increased food stamp benefits, $1.73 in new economic activity would be generated. No other options rated as high.

Read More…Read More…

Whoda thunk it?

Seems that if you give poor people the means to pay for fresh, healthy food and access to fresh healthy food, they buy fresh, healthy food.

New Orleans police enforce the “no poor folk in NOLA” rule

hat tip, Beautiful Also Are The Souls of My Black Sisters:
Image description: several people surround a woman who is being tended to on the ground by two women and a man. The woman on the ground has her mouth open and appears to be crying out. There are various people running past and milling about–at least one appears to be holding a camera–media perhaps? In the background are metal police barricades and more people behind the barricade. (AP Photo/Cheryl Gerber)
New Orleans police officers subdue protesters at the New Orleans City Council meeting where the council is expected to vote for the demolition of housing projects in the city of New Orleans, Thursday, Dec. 20, 2007.
Image description: a large white cloth banner is draped over a metal police barricade. On the banner are the words STOP the DEMOLITIONS. HOUSING IS A HUMAN RIGHT. Several men, who are most certainly protesters, stand behind the barricade. In the background are New Orleans city buildings.

Police used chemical spray and stun guns Thursday as dozens of protesters seeking to halt the demolition of 4,500 public housing units tried to force their way through an iron gate at City Hall.

One woman was sprayed with chemicals and dragged from the gates. She was taken away on a stretcher by emergency officials. Before that, the woman was seen pouring water from a bottle into her eyes and weeping.

Another woman said she was stunned by officers, and still had what appeared to be a Taser wire hanging from her shirt.

Image description: a middle aged woman wearing a dark blue jacket with white stripes is lying on the grass. She appears to be weeping and in great distress. A man is behind her supporting her head, while a woman kneels in front of her with what appears to be gauze. This woman has been pepper sprayed, apparently directly in her eyes, and the man and woman with her are very probably rescue workers.

From the BBC:

New Orleans City Council has voted to demolish 4,500 public housing units despite violent protests against the development project earlier on Monday.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to replace the units, which were damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, with new mixed-income housing.

But critics say the development will restrict the stock of cheap housing.

Earlier, police used pepper spray and stun guns on the protesters when they tried to get into the council chamber.

Several people were treated for the effects of the pepper spray. It is not known if any of the protesters were arrested.

Following hours of debate and clashes outside the meeting, New Orleans City Council voted in favour of the government’s plan to replace the decades-old structures damaged by Katrina to be demolished.

What the fuck was the City Council thinking? Money talks, folks. For some, money is the only thing they listen to. Shame, shame, shame.

Police in action:

Image description:Several cops in blue uniforms stand behind the iron gate that was used to lock protesters out of the City Council meeting. The third cop from the left is holding a can of pepper spray and spraying it out toward the crowd of protesters.

Ok, these are the poor black, brown, and white dispossessed residents of New Orleans fighting for their lives. Their lives. And a hearty “fuck you” and relegation to moderation to anybody who tries to justify what the Rich Men are doing to poor people down there.

While reading about the housing protests over the last couple of weeks, I keep thinking of something brownfemipower said in comments over at her place:

This might be a good conversation to have, not a lot of people recognize that there’s a difference between protesting and civil disobedience. Or that the u.s. hasn’t seen true civil disobedience since the 60’s and 70’s with the various power movements and the queer movement. Or the environmental movement that shut down nuclear facilities. I was going to talk about how we’re seeing the beginnings of some great movement making with youths, about how they shut down citibank recently, and about how the zapatistas shut down major freeways, and how the immolokee workers have won unprecedented victories through civil disobedience and cultural movement making—I was going to talk about all sorts of things, because I thought–well, let’s see if we can find a way to bring these worlds together.

This is important, because there is a cynical strain of thought out there that all that protesting and milling about and getting arrested is just a waste of time. Tell that to the woman with pepper spray in her eyes. Tell that to the cops. Tell that to the City Council, which was so rocked and intimidated by the power of angry people with a righteous cause that they had to hide behind an iron fence and police with weapons.

This is getting coverage all over the place, so I’ll just provide some links and let them tell the rest of the story:
For more great photo coverage
Is This What Democracy Looks Like?
Protesters clash with police over New Orleans demolitions
Common Ground Collective has been a great source for on the spot coverage
New Orleans Indy Media
The Redstar Perspective

*crossposted at Super Babymama