littlemissmartypants
littlemissmartypants's JournalRev. William Barber on the Political Power of Poor People: 'We Have to Change Our Whole Narrative'
DEC. 5, 2019
Rev. William Barber on the Political Power of Poor People: We Have to Change Our Whole Narrative
By Sarah Jones
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/rev-william-barber-on-the-political-power-of-poor-people.html
Reverend William Barber speaks to the press in 2016. Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images
Not long before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. announced the formation of the Poor Peoples Campaign. The project would eventually unite poor whites from Appalachia with farmworkers, indigenous people, and black civil-rights activists. After Kings death in 1968, the campaign marshaled a significant mobilization in Washington, D.C., and then went quiet until 2017. Revived by Reverend William Barber and Reverend Liz Theoharis, the renewed Poor Peoples Campaign continues the mission set out by King and his allies so many decades ago. Its ambitions are broad: On its website, it says it intends to lift up and deepen the leadership of those most affected by systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and ecological devastation. It goes on to state, bluntly, that people should not live in or die from poverty in the richest nation ever to exist.
Since its revival, the multiracial, interfaith campaign organized six weeks of civil disobedience last year in addition to bus tours of impoverished communities. Earlier this year, the campaign also hosted several Democratic candidates for president, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris, at a forum so they could answer questions from activists. (Another candidate, Pete Buttigieg, spoke at Barbers Goldsboro, North Carolina, church in recent days.) In June 2020, the campaign intends to organize a march in Washington, D.C., to coincide with its first ever Poor Peoples Assembly, which will train the nations attention on poverty and related issues ahead of the presidential election. That work serves the campaigns principal goals: to force a more honest conversation about the state of inequality in America, and to make sure that conversation leads to substantive political change.
The new Poor Peoples Campaign builds in part on the Moral Mondays movement, which began in 2013 as a series of demonstrations against the policies of North Carolinas then-governor, Pat McCrory. Barber, known to many as one of the lead organizers of the Moral Mondays protests, spoke to Intelligencer two weeks ago about the Poor Peoples Campaign, the upcoming election, and the obstacles in the way of a more equitable American future.
This interview has been edited for clarity and condensed for length.
Polling suggests that Americans tend to think of themselves as middle class, even if their household incomes are low. But historically, the Poor Peoples Campaign has fractured that myth by emphasizing poverty. Why is it so important for struggling people to understand themselves as poor or working class?
This campaign is being built from the bottom up. It is poor people, impacted people saying its time for us to unite together and transform the reality that they do not have to be. And they were the ones that told us we need to make this clear: that in this nation, a nation that gives trillions of dollars of tax cuts to benefit 75,000 or 100,000 people, there are also 140 million poor and low-wealth people. Some of them are three- or four-hundred dollars from pure economic destruction. Many of them are also living on the street.
Snip...
Much more at the link.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/rev-william-barber-on-the-political-power-of-poor-people.html
Keith Haring, documentary
Tinariwen, Amadjar
Tinariwen (Tamasheq: ⵜⵏⵔⵓⵏ, with vowels ⵜⵉⵏⴰⵔⵉⵡⵉⵏ, pronounced tinariwen "deserts", plural of ténéré "desert"[1]) is a group of Tuareg musicians from the Sahara Desert region of northern Mali. The band was formed in 1979[2] in Tamanrasset, Algeria, but returned to Mali after a cease-fire in the 1990s.[3] The group first started to gain a following outside the Sahara region in 2001 with the release of The Radio Tisdas Sessions, and with performances at Festival au Désert in Mali[4] and the Roskilde Festival in Denmark.[5] Their popularity rose internationally with the release of the critically acclaimed Aman Iman in 2007. NPR calls the group "music's true rebels",[6] AllMusic deems the group's music "a grassroots voice of rebellion",[7] and Slate calls the group "rock 'n' roll rebels whose rebellion, for once, wasn't just metaphorical".[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinariwen
Bobby Gentry, Ode to Billy Jo
But it's not all bad either.
The plaintiffs could still appeal to the North Carolina Supreme Court, and although its 6-1 Democratic majority is no guarantee of success, there could still be hope for a more favorable outcome based on what happened in 2016: A federal court struck down the GOP's original gerrymander in February of that year, and it was redrawn that month, with the primary being delayed until June. The state court in this most recent case cited the desire to avoid disrupting the March 2020 primary schedule, but officials could theoretically delay the primary if that ruling were overturned on appeal.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ALSO:
House Dems just got a huge insurance policy to help them keep their majority: elections analystPublished 9 hours ago on December 2, 2019By Brad Reed
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/12/house-dems-just-got-a-huge-insurance-policy-to-help-them-keep-their-majority-elections-analyst/
Under this new plan, Dems are virtually guaranteed to pick up #NC02 (Raleigh) and #NC06 (Greensboro/Winston-Salem). This is a huge insurance policy for Speaker Pelosi/Dems' 17-seat majority - before the 2020 election even starts.
Technically, House Rs need to pick up 19 seats (counting Rep. Justin Amash (I)'s #MI03) to win the majority back in 2020.
But this new NC map & four R retirements from majority non-white districts mean they may actually need to flip 25+ Dem seats.
That's huge for Dems.
You can read more in the Wasseran Twitter thread starting here:
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1201566864784199681?s=19
Breaking: NC court rules new GOP-drawn cong. map will stand. New map replaces current 10R-3D plan w/ an 8R-5D breakdown. But, ruling will disappoint Dems, who sued for additional opportunities.
*Dems could still appeal to NC Supreme Court but candidate filing opens today. https://t.co/6KTQRpLpyN
Thanks so much for sharing this! ❤ nt
I was just thinking about her and this song's been running around in my head. I love her.
Thanks for the post douglas9. ❤
And a classic example of violence against women.
https://www.thehotline.org/is-this-abuse/abuse-defined/power-and-control-wheel/
It's actually remarkable how much of the wheel parallels our current state of affairs. Just substitute "she" & "her" with "the American people" and it's amazingly revelatory.
Bill Withers, Lovely Day
Lyrics
When I wake up in the morning, love
And the sunlight hurts my eyes
And something without warning, love
Bears heavy on my mind
Then I look at you
And the world's alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
A lovely day
When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
When someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way
Then I look at you
And the world's alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
A lovely day
When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
When someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way
Then I look at you
And the world's alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
A lovely day
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: William Harrison Withers Jr. / Skip Scarborough
Lovely Day lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Royalty Network, Golden Withers Music
You Can "Catch" Stress Through a TV Screen
Couch potatoes bewarecharacters in distress are hazardous to your health.
BY SIMONE M. SCULLY
ILLUSTRATION BY FRANCESCO IZZO
http://m.nautil.us/issue/31/stress/you-can-catch-stress-through-a-tv-screen
Your heart rate speeds up, your breathing quickens. Your muscles tighten. Your stomach ties itself in knots. All of these changes are symptoms of the condition called stress.
When animals, including humans, are under acute stress, their bodies respond with a powerful neurochemical chain reaction. Glucose, the fuel for our cells, is released into the blood from storage sites in our body, notably the liver. The elevated heart rate increases circulation of the energy-enriched blood to the muscles. Any long-term body processes not immediately necessary, such as digestion, growth, and reproduction, are slowed down. Immune defenses are enhanced, ready to respond to bodily injury, and our senses are sharpened.
The major purpose of this response, says psychiatrist and stress researcher Kristen Aschbacher, is to help redirect energy away from less critical functions in order to devote them to survival functions. Stress gets you ready to react.
But a recent study published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology shows that the stress response is not just experienced by those directly in a crisis: It can be contagious. You can catch it from seeing other people under stress, even if youre watching a stranger on a video screen. This phenomenon is called empathetic stress.
The study looked at pairs of total strangers along with romantically involved couples that had been together for at least six months. One person from each pair was subjected to the Trier social stress test, where they were given a fictitious job interview, then asked challenging arithmetic questions in front of a panel of supposed behavior analysts. The other member of the couple simply observed the test, either via a one-way mirror or a video transmission.
Snip...
More at the link.
http://m.nautil.us/issue/31/stress/you-can-catch-stress-through-a-tv-screen
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