Class – Page 9 – Feministe

South Central Farm to Forever 21?

This just in: Turns out the former site of the South Central Farm – where low-income, indigenous/immigrant Latino farmers grew food in the midst of a toxic industrial area for 14 years before being evicted two summers ago in one of the saddest, most maddening examples of private business interests trumping community and environmental good that I’ve ever personally witnessed – is being developed as a Forever 21 warehouse.

You know, that clothing company that was the subject of a national boycott for exploitative labor practices a few years ago? Turns out LA’s supposedly progressive mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa – who campaigned at the then-flourishing farm several years ago and claimed to support it, only to fail to find a way to help save it despite massive community (and celebrity) support, clear social and environmental benefits, and his own celebrated promises to “green LA”—“has received nearly $1.3 million in contributions and commitments from Forever 21 and its executives over the past two years.”

The former site of the South Central Farm has sat vacant for the past two years. The South Central Farmers are now growing food at a new site about an hour outside of LA. They sell food at several farmers’ markets in the area, and they recently set up a CSA.

(Background: A few years ago, I wrote several articles about the South Central Farm for the late and lamented NewStandard, including this history of how the community has used the land since 1985.)

Linky linky

’cause I’ve been collecting these stories for a couple days.

Fellow guestblogger Renee hits one out of the park: No More Penis Envy. I think I scared my cats laughing so freakin hard.

I am not sure if Nezua is guestblogging this summer but I am sure some of you remember him from last year. He wrote a piece this weekend on age, power, culture, authority and respect that takes a little longer to chew on, but the flavor is rich and the savor lingers long.

A bunch of parents in Fairfax County, Virginia, raised $125,000 to sue the school district for reworking the boundaries so as to integrate the local schools (on an economic basis). The kids were assigned to South Lakes High School, but the parents wanted them to go to the richer Oakton High. It will surprise precisely none of you, of course, that OHS is also whiter. (SLHS: 46% white, 20% black, 16% latin@ and 11 asian. OHS: 67% white, 11% black and latin@.) They argue on the basis of SAT scores for the schools overall, but here’s the thing: when you run the results for white kids in both schools, the SAT outputs are, respectively, 1730 and 1734. This is true on a general basis; in schools that are socioeconomically diverse, minority and poor kids do much better, and white kids do about the same. But, well, what do you really think those parents were suing over? Were they fighting for the right kind of education? Or were they fighting for the right kind of people?

Sir Charles taps into his righteous anger:

So much of the general public, including most of us in the blogosphere, are completely removed from the danger and physical difficulty of this kind of work. That’s why you hear people talking about raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 — they have no idea what it’s like to hump it on a construction site for 30 or 40 years, no idea what it is like to pick up and lay down cinder block, one after the other for eight hours a day in 90 degree heat or 30 degree cold, no sense of what it takes to walk the iron or hoist re-bar or climb ladders and scaffolding when you’re 58 years old and your back is bad and your knees are screaming and your body is just broken down. It’s easy for some asshole editorial writer or some glibertarian blogger to talk about working until you are 70 — but my feeling on this is that if the heaviest thing you lift every day is a cup of coffee or a bulky file — just shut the fuck up on this subject.

Preach it, brother.

And let’s wish Cara a happy belated birthday! She thought she was going to get away without mentioning it here, but ha-ha! I will catch up several days later and use my guest-blogging privileges to bring it to light! Take THAT, Cara! (Happy birthday, too. ;))

I have a post coming up that’s riffing off of the complaints in that post. In the meantime, let’s break out the little tooty toys and party hats, and I’ll go get the trick candles…

Elitism

I find that this charge, leveled against political candidates and other public figures, is not talking about the kind of elitism that separates a snob from “regular Americans” (you know, the white ones [/sarcasm]). When media figures and others of high stature complain of a figure’s “elitism,” they don’t mean, “He thinks he’s better than you” — what they actually mean is, “He thinks he’s better than us.” They are upset because a public figure dares think himself important without paying due respects to the other members of the upper classes.

John McCain and Barack Obama are both elites. So are all the media figures crying about elitism. Whether they sip wine or chug beer, the both of them are far removed from the sort of life I lead, you lead, your neighbors lead, your coworkers lead, your families lead. It doesn’t make a goddamn drop of difference to any of us whether either of them turns his nose up at other figures in the same high class they already occupy. It just hurts the feelings of those higher figures who have toxic levels of self-importance.

They think they can determine what matters to me. I have news for them — they don’t have a fucking clue.

Blacks, Latinos, and the precariousness of “middle class”

Today I listened to a segment on Democracy Now! about a new report that’s out from Demos and Brandeis University on the state of the Black and Latino middle class in the United States. The study, entitled “Economic (In)Security: The Experience of the African American and Latino Middle Classes,” finds that three-out-of-four Black and four-out-of-five Latino middle-class families are economically insecure and at high risk of slipping out of the middle class. From the report, which can be downloaded as a PDF from the Demos website:

African-American and Latino families have more difficulty moving into the middle class, and families that do enter the middle class are less secure and at higher risk than the middle class as a whole. Overall, more African-American and Latino middle-class families are at risk of falling out of the middle class than are secure. This is in sharp contrast to the overall middle class, in which 31 percent are secure and 21 percent are at risk. Specifically:

Only 26 percent of African-American middle-class families have the combination of as- sets, education, sufficient income, and health insurance to ensure middle-class financial security. One in three (33 percent) is at high risk of falling out of the middle class.

Less than one in five Latino families (18 percent) is securely in the middle class. More than twice as many (41 percent) of Latino families are in danger of slipping out of the middle class.

African-American middle-class families are less secure and at greater risk than the middle class as a whole on four of the five indicators of security and vulnerability [named by the report as assets, education, housing, budget, and healthcare]. Latino middle-class families are less secure and at greater risk on all five indicators.

Jennifer Wheary, a senior fellow at Demos and one of the co-authors of the report, elaborated on Democracy Now!:

And what we found was when we compared the situation of white middle-class families to African Americans and Latinos, there were vast differences. You know, and what was astounding to us was really looking at—these are, you know, African American and Latino families that, by all sense and purposes, have achieved the American dream, people who, you know, have two earners, two professional earners in the household, you know, maybe are trying to own a home or do own a home, you know, very—have achieved all the aspirations that we typically go for. But even among those people, when you look at, you know, where they’re weak economically, we found that about two-in-five Latino middle-class families are in danger of falling out of the middle class. They’re so financially vulnerable, don’t have assets. Maybe somebody in the household is uninsured. And one-in-three African American middle-class families are also in danger, so vulnerable, so weak, that they’re in danger of falling out of the middle class.

I haven’t read the report yet, but when I do, I fully expect to cry. In fact, as I listened to the segment on the bus home today, I actually found myself tearing up; not only because the larger injustices behind what I was hearing, but because it hit a very personal chord.