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I think that as the economy gets worse and worse for more and more people, this message will start to have real meaning again, as millions of people who never thought about the issue before, will now suddenly be one step away from it themselves, and unable to get away. After all these years of corporate "government" and "culture," where there is no message--no life--other than "sell, sell," "buy, buy," eroding all our minds and souls, now finally, you can't deny reality anymore; and we owe it all to a couple of hurricanes. I liked your phrasing at the end there, about the rather alarming spread of poverty and near-poverty since the neo-cons came along, "that this is becoming an epidemic and not about class differences, but of economic disparities and social plight." I believe this will be key on how to approach it, to reflect newer realities.
This issue, I think, should be told with more than the usual, standard examples of poverty or economic hardship, so more people can find their own situations there, and identify with it as an issue, and a solution to their own problems. People become poor, or are already, so you have two situations already. There is institutionalized bigotry keeping people from jobs, bank loans to get cars, etc., and there is instant poverty because of medical bills, the loss of a job and lack of good available jobs, poverty because of drug addiction using up all the money, and the need for good, free addiction-recovery programs, and poverty from escaping a violent abuser in your own home, and now having nothing. Some people are poor because they are disabled, and can never hold a job, others are old, sick and alone, once had decent lives, but now can't afford to live. Soup kitchens and other charities report that over the past few years the types of people they see has changed, been added to. Now not only lone adult males, but whole, intact families with children, and old people, over 70, who formerly had been able to survive on their Social Security checks, now, because of price-gouging so common it is not even noticed as a political issue anymore, cannot anymore. Referring to all the types of people affected this way, rather than just one or two stock "poverty" examples, I think escapes the problem that usually happens,where you then have people just blaming the "one group that is always poor," and why don't "they" do anything, etc., and reveals it instead as a situation itself. The condition is the problem (not the people), the people are merely suffering it, not causing it. Next time, it could be you. The more different examples you can give as to how the economic suffering was caused, the more you have to realize that it is not the people causing it--they can't ALL be "lazy," "whining," "stupid," etc.--and that something is going on here, something systematic is wrong. After all, the Census itself reports that one-fourth of all people working full-time jobs at minimum wage are homeless--the problem doesn't get clearer than that.
This situation rips the mask off many things: the criminality of the Bush-Halliburton Administration, stealing tax dollars and funneling it all to their corporate friends, while our country sinks, actually getting rid of jobs in this country; the complete, fantasy-world incompetence of neo-cons running things, from Iraq to the "response" to the hurricane victims, on and on. It also rips the mask off of the corporate media, pretending to be middle class, "hip," and popular, and now you now clearly that they are all just rich capitalist mouthpieces and propagandists. The horrific contrast of (the pictures of) Bush strumming guitar and having cake with McCain at a party while people were actually drowning, dying, in the Gulf states after Katrina, should never be forgotten. It was another "Remember the Alamo" moment.
The emphasis should be on providing enough examples of different kinds of poverty and near-poverty, with detailed explanations of how hard daily life is, that it becomes a generality to people, and the framework expands from this godawful, commercial "personalized" approach, with one or two people as an example, to instead the grand scale, and you realize again our whole country. This is a huge problem--multiple and complex, but still coherently one issue--and it is all of us, together, one Nation. We have to shift the emphasis to the deregulated capitalism and tax cuts, the culture of corporate greed and arch-conservative anti-Americanism that has brought us here, and keep the focus on the enemy and the problem.
Equally, we have to return to the once commonsense attitude that had a great love for our system of laws and protections, that made us a great democracy; a love of government, not greedy capitalism. An example I like to use is that of Affirmative Action laws. When Republicans pretend that Affirmative Action is "racial quotas," they do that for a reason, and it is to turn opinion against black people as some kind of a "drain" on the system, and against Affirmative Action laws, as some kind of undeserved privilege (which also makes you forget rich non-tax-paying people's undeserved privilege). Most people who file discrimination lawsuits under Affirmative Action are white women. Affirmative Action also covers disabled people, the elderly, even Viet Nam veterans (1967), and many other groups. If you realize how many people benefit from these laws, you change the focus, and instead it just becomes a region of law that covers and protects us all. You can love these things as an "infrastructure of civilization," no less than the infrastructure of streets and highways, plumbing and electricity, schools and police and fire departments, that we love and need as a first-rate society. These things are "our friends," and life would be a lot more grim for us all if we didn't have these laws.
A point should be made, especially now, that this economy, even this world, should not just be for the throat-slashing, stock-owning capitalist for whom the greed for money is the only thing driving them, and the rest of us who have our jobs in proportion cannot make it. The issue is not limited and overlaps with many other issues. It should be kept focused, but enough kinds of examples given, that the majority of Americans will eventually recognize themselves, and agree. The corporate era is over; we can't take it any more.
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