Living In Poverty: "It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it."

[kpete]

Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. It's why you see people with four different babydaddies instead of one. You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long-term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long-term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it.

http://killermartinis.kinja.com/why-i-make-terrible-decisions-or-poverty-thoughts-1450123558
via:
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2013/11/25/11120/472



New Thanksgiving: Billionaires Gorge as Many in America Near Starvation

A Dumpster Diving Thanksgiving for Many Americans
1. Scrounging to Survive and Heartlessness

Beverly is a middle-aged homeless woman who survives day-by-day on the streets of Chicago. I learned about her from my friend Joe, an advocate for the homeless and a volunteer at a community kitchen on the city's north side. He first noticed Beverly huddled in a theater exitway on a frigid November morning, cup in hand, a pair of crutches leaning against the door behind her. He gave her a little money, and she responded with a smile and a quiet "thank you." They talked a little bit; she seemed eager to share a few minutes of conversation. She mentioned that she hadn't eaten that day. Since they were too far from, and it was too early for, the community kitchen, Joe offered to buy her a meal. Her favorite was chili, at a lunch spot around the corner.

Charles and David Koch are both members of the .00001%. That's a group of twenty individuals who have a total net worth of over a half-trillion dollars, about $26 billion each. One of David's residences is at 740 Park Avenue, in the most exclusive area of Manhattan. The doorman at the 740 building had this to say about David Koch: "We would load up his trucks - two vans, usually - every weekend, for the Hamptons...multiple guys, in and out, in and out, heavy bags. We would never get a tip from Mr. Koch. We would never get a smile from Mr. Koch. Fifty-dollar check for Christmas."

http://truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/18334-new-thanksgiving-billionaires-gorge-as-many-in-america-near-starvation

[Ilsa]

1. Revolutions can be born when

All hope is lost except for what can be taken by force.

[Brigid]

2. A banner from an 1884 Thanksgiving Day protest in Chicago:

"The turkey and champagne on the tables of our gratefull [sic] capitalists are very cheap -- we paid for them!"

I spotted this in a photograph used in an account of this incident in a PBS documentary. Unfortunately I cannot find the photo online.

[antiquie]

3. This is close:

One thousand men stood shivering in the drizzling rain in Market square yesterday afternoon in answer to a call made upon the Socialists to meet and express their reasons for not giving thanks to the Lord on the National day of thanksgiving. Around the speakers’ stand, which consisted of half a dozen empty chicken crates plied one on the other, were grouped banners and rudely-constructed shields bearing such inscriptions as “Our capitalistic robbers may well thank their Lord that we, their victims, have not yet strangled them”; “Thanks to our ‘Lords,’ who have the kindness to feast on our earnings”; “Shall we thank our ‘Lords’ for our misery, destitution, and poverty?”; “The turkeys and champagne upon the tables of our ‘Lords’ was purchased by us”; “Why we thank? Because our capitalistic brothers are happily enjoying our turkeys, our wines, and our houses.”

http://glessnerhouse.blogspot.com/2012/05/upcoming-nato-summit-recalls-protest.html

[enlightenment]

4. I'm not familiar with the image,

but the event was the "Black Flag" demonstration on Nov 28 (?) 1884 in Chicago.

http://www.marxists.org/subject/anarchism/pubs/1129-alarm-theblackflag.pdf

[Brigid]

5. Yes.

And then they marched up Prairie Avenue, where the rich lived, ringing doorbells. Naturally, no one answered. Then, as now, severe economic inequality is a recipe for social unrest.

[enlightenment]

8. A recipe, yes -

but I wonder if Americans have lost what little taste they had for direct action. At this point, what is needed is a large-scale general strike, but I just don't see it happening.

[Laelth]

6. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[JEB]

7. Eat the rich!

I'll take my Koch marinated and then slow roasted until falling from the bone. Tasty.

[byronius]

9. A smart and orderly society would ban hoarding, and evil rich fucks who play with the machinery.

I'm a 99%er. 99% tax rate on incomes over ten million.

Koch problem solved.

[raging moderate]

10. Yes. It is almost impossible.

But I think a poor family MUST find and hold on to some kind of dream, defiantly: a farm, a store, a job, a business, something. You have to get very bitterly determined to find some kind of wormhole to slither through, some sort of kind people to help you up out of the muck, a lot of people giving a little help can be made to add up. The whole world was once homeless, by our standards, most people living hungry in ineffective shelters of various kinds. Things improved because they insisted on making it better, and did not give in or give up. You have to live in your dreams and on your dreams, and pretend you don't feel your stomach trying to eat itself. You have to find little counter-propaganda mantras to say to yourself silently, over and over. You have to NOT listen to the TV or the radio, which spew filthy lies designed to trap you through your social pride and physical appetites. You are part of a vast army, a soldier in a vast struggle. You have to remember that, if you fail, you will die knowing that you are one of the real champions. Even if nobody ever finds out about it, you have won part of the victory that will eventually come to the wretched of the Earth and therefore that victory is partly your victory. My mother must have looked totally ridiculous sitting with her four children in our shabby three-room slum apartment, after our bread-slice and rice "supper," sometimes in our coats, reading books aloud with us and talking about how we should "walk with your heads held high like kings and queens because you know you do not steal" and "make a better life for yourself WHEN you go to college." My childhood felt like a nightmare I couldn't wake up from. Yet we all DID go to college, at least for a year. Three of us made it (our youngest brother cracked up; I guess he had too much pain, too young; he spent his last years in a shelter I found through kind people). Books were our escapism and our escape route, and you could get them free at the public library. And you could sit in the warm library for hours, as long as you behaved yourself. Incidentally, the library has or can obtain for you a practical book on ANY subject you can possibly imagine: bookkeeping, computer wiring, raising chickens, car engine repair, foot reflexology, living on the streets. I know; I worked for interlibrary loans in the Chicago Public Library when I was young.

[gopiscrap]

12. welcome to DU

[JNelson6563]

13. Well said and welcome to DU!

[FirstLight]

14. oh boy, so much to say...

First, the blog post is spot on in some ways and not at all right in others...but everyone's poverty experience and comping mechanisms are different. That said, I've been living on the edge for the bulk of my adult life and while I haven;t always been on welfare or food stamps, it sure as hell seems like it's been that way. My mom was just lamenting to me how easy it used to be for me to get a job ...I had to point out that she was referring to the 90's when the economy was booming and I was 20 years younger and hotter and could easily walk into something. Now I am 43, partially disabled and overweight...having a great personality and years of experience means dick in this economy.

In thinking of the .001% I have mixed reactions to their extravagance...some of it is jealousy, some of it rage...but mostly I think about how awesome it would be to suck them dry and redistribute wealth to the rest of us...I tried to figure out the math once, I think it cam out to be like half a million EACH. Wow, how much things would change if that day ever happened. and yet, how many of us who have been in poverty would blow the wad in record time on nothing of importance because we are just not equipped to handle it....?

anyway, that's the tip of the iceberg in my thoughts on this...thanks for the links and post.

[Threedifferentones]

15. This shit is so true and it is heartbreaking.

I have never been flat out broke to the point of eviction or having to scavenge, but even being down to my last few hundred buck,s and running over all the "what ifs" that could send me over that edge to destitution, was so scary it took over all my thoughts and all my time.

The fact of the matter is that many Americans who work hard and spend frugally still find themselves living more like they are in the "third world" than the richest country on Earth, and it really is all because a tiny number of privileged assholes would rather squeeze food out of hungry kids than forgo another yacht.

And even that ignores how we got to be such a rich country; the history of slavery, exploitation and imperialism behind our success is enough to make my skin crawl.

[CFLDem]

16. How sad, to live without hope.

Even sadder it is increasingly becoming more Anericans' reality.