Social Justice

[cadfael]

Last night at my Toastmasters Club one of the speakers promised to give us seven numbers that we would be able to remember, not only until today, but for a lifetime.

The numbers were:

18,800
4
13
½
2
1.3 billion
1

Their explanation follows:

$18,800 is the poverty level. Anyone earning less that that in the United States, with a family of four is living in poverty, and each of the family members must survive on $13 per day.

One half of the world's population earns less than $2 per day. 1.3 billion people on this planet must survive on about $1 per day.

Where do we begin?

Comments

Two Words

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

Soup kitchen.

Or volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.

Or send a donation to Doctors without Borders.

I heard Bono speak last night about his efforts to raise funds for AIDS assistance in the third world. I'm sure he'd be happy to have your help.

I'd bet that the UU congregation you attend is active in social justice work. That's the thing the UUs do best, (and a HUGE part of the reason I joined). There are plenty of outlets if you look for them.

Humanity's problems are so huge that if you let yourself think about them to much you'll be paralyzed and depressed. How do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time. Pick your piece and start munching. You may never see an empty platter where the elephant used to be. You may feel like Sisyphus, rolling the ball up the hill each night, only to find it back at the bottom again the next morning. But social justice is not about that great, happy day when you bring utopia into the world with your own two hands. It's about doing your part to make the world better, without hope of ultimate success, just because it's the right thing to do.

Finally, get your ass to the polls in November.

[krkhst.livejournal.com]

Capitalism is not the answer for sure - some folks talk about needing to devolop and get jobs into these countries. Capitalism is finite, it has a wall, it needs poor people to produce goods cheaply to continue to make profit and expand. Corporations do not have the good of others in mind. When you can, a bite of the elephant could be living as sustainably as possible with goods produced locally and from small businesses....

[andronikos.livejournal.com]

"living as sustainably as possible with goods produced locally and from small businesses", still sounds like capitalism to me. Responsible capitalism, but capitalism none the less.

[krkhst.livejournal.com]

True, but it is as far from capitalism as I can get in the world today since I don't have the money to buy a farm and raise my own food/produce my own clothes/etc. Some areas of the world, before the idea of "helping the poor" really kicked off after WWII did in fact have people with no running water, no fancy clothes, no electricity, and so forth. But they could feed their children. Now, in so many of these countries people are being kicked off their land to build dams for electricity, put in some corporate farm or the like and then they really are suffering. You loan me the money to get started, and I'll go off the grid...

[hypanebliss.livejournal.com]

Depending upon where you live it's possible to live with less though. (Obviously not *that* much less). I found it interesting that one of my coworkers said where they are from in Pennsylvania that $9 for two haircuts is a lot of money. I can't even get A's hair cut for that amount. Our prices even for cutting hair are almost double here as opposed to the East Coast. While there is no way that a person can live on a $1 a day it's also true that my wage would garnish much more if I lived in a different place.

One could even say I could live on less and not have to put up with so much stress too. Just a thought. Perhaps if we didn't allow corporations to dictate our standard of living we could spread the collective wealth out more.

[krkhst.livejournal.com]

Ding! What I mean, corporations are not our friends...

Where does your co-worker get his hair cut?

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

I can't get 2 haircuts in PA for 9$. I expected the cost of living to be a lot cheaper here but I've been dissappointed. It's major, national chains as far as the eye can see. Local businesses have just folded and gotten out of the way.

Of course, you can still get a massive, juicy egg sammich at the local auction house for less than a dollar. But haircuts seem to have standardized prices dictated by supercutz and fantastic sams.

[sabrinamari.livejournal.com]

Pick an area and start plugging away right now. Mine is health care, accessible healthcare for everyone, starting with the many, many families and individuals in the United States who cannot afford to get their most basic, preventative health care needs met and who therefore experience low quality of life, general misery and an early death. For those who are teachers: make sure your students know how bad it is, how very, very bad it is for the poor people who live in your town.

Today was the first day of my 'Social and Ecological Aspects of Health and Disease' class. Assignment #1: Skip the bus and instead, walk the strip of downtown area from Douglass campus to College Avenue Campus. That area is a very poor minority neighborhood. Look at the sidewalks, the buildings and the cars. Study the people that you see: how many young men in their 20s and 30s do you see using walkers and crutches? How many terribly, terribly thin people do you see? How many very young, Hispanic mothers with little children pushing carts with groceries? How healthy do the people look?

Read the signs on the windows of the one available pharmacy. What kinds of diseases do the people in that neighborhood have (diabetes, asthma and hypertension---all diseases that can be controlled with good quality care)? Stick your head in and observe its dusty windows and dirty floors. Then walk past it and enter the lone grocery store. Go to the produce section: what kinds of fresh produce are available for them to buy? Does it look fresh? Is there a wide variety? Do the same thing by the meat counter. Can you smell it? Does the meat look fresh?

Next, go into the FQHC Federally Qualified Health Center) across the street. Look at all the people waiting to see a doctor. They have either have no health insurance at all or they are on Medicaid. What does the facility look like? Who is sitting in the facility? How many people are there? You will see policemen in uniform there. Are there policemen in your doctor's office?

Continue walking along the street until you get downtown. What kinds of businesses do you see? What is available to the people of the neighborhood? look over the dollar stores, the liquor stores, and the tiny bodegas.

Don't judge yet---just look.

Next week, we will begin discussing what they saw, and connect it to racial disparities in health, and why it so hard for poor and minority individuals to stay healthy in the United States.