Bill Moyers: How America Forgot Its Poor

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/bill-moyers-how-america-forgot-its-poor

It's just astonishing to us how long this campaign has gone on with no discussion of what’s happening to poor people. Official Washington continues to see poverty with tunnel vision – “out of sight, out of mind.”

And we’re not speaking just of Paul Ryan and his Draconian budget plan or Mitt Romney and their fellow Republicans. Tipping their hats to America’s impoverished while themselves seeking handouts from billionaires and corporations is a bad habit that includes President Obama, who of all people should know better.

Remember: for three years in the 1980’s he was a community organizer in Roseland, one of the worst, most poverty-stricken and despair-driven neighborhoods in Chicago. He called it “the best education I ever had” and when Obama left to go to Harvard Law School, author Paul Tough writes in The New York Times, he did so, “to gain the knowledge and resources that would allow him to eventually return and tackle the neighborhood’s problems anew.” There’s a moving line in Dreams from My Father where he writes: “I would learn power’s currency in all its intricacy and detail” and “bring it back like Promethean fire.”

Oddly, though, for all his rhetorical skills Obama hasn’t made a single speech devoted to poverty since he moved into the White House.

Five years ago, he was one of the few politicians who would talk about it. Here he is in July 2007, speaking in Anacostia, one of the poorest parts of Washington, DC:

[nightscanner59]

1. When Daddy Bush made his "thousand points of light" remark..

I was a student in San Francisco awaiting my grant funds. Not enough money to both eat and have a place to sleep, jumped on MUNI to golden gate park and slept on a quiet bench until it started to rain. But, until it fogged over those "points of light" overhead weren't much help.
GHB and the gipper appeared to make bashing the poor a new fun sport that's been popular with GOP'ers ever since.

[noel711]

2. Thank you Bill MOyers for remembering Roseland...

that tiny community on Chicago's south side....

I grew up there; a wonderful place to grow up with a
terrible reputation...

Every city's 'Roseland' needs to be kept in the public attention.

[woo me with science]

3. It is an OUTRAGE.

Over a MILLION American schoolchildren homeless.

SECOND HIGHEST CHILD POVERTY RATE in the developed world....better only than ROMANIA.

Middle class DEVASTATED. FORTY PERCENT of our wealth gone.



This is a much bigger national emergency than 9/11. 9/11 was considered URGENT. We got speeches, bullhorns, national days of observance, urgent new legislation, And an entire new way of life.

This is BIGGER. And what do we get from Washington?????? Any urgency whatsoever? Anything even APPROACHING the urgency of 9/11. No. We get nonchalance. Actually, we don't even get nonchalance. We get active protection of the thieves and we get our own government, under a DEMOCRATIC President, targeting those who protest the theft.

Why?

Because it wasn't a recovery. It was a restructuring. Not only are there no urgent plans on the horizon to address and reverse and punish this theft, we are on track for a new Bipartisan Grand Bargain of Austerity after the election.


When will we have had enough?

[xchrom]

4. I'm w/ you, woo.

But as long as centrists think it's in their best interests to borrow from the 'other side' - use their ideas to plug holes and prop up the system - I think you're also prophesying the future.

[woo me with science]

5. They are not "centrists."

They use that word to court actual centrists by pretending that's what they are, but this is no centrist movement. This is a top-down infiltration of our party, bankrolled by the right-wing, corporate one percent.

Indefinite detention, "kill lists" and drone wars, pre-emptive war as administration doctrine, spy centers for mining or surveillance of all phone calls and email without a warrant, internet IDs and internet-censoring measures like ACTA, military drones in American skies, coordinated violent crackdowns against peaceful protesters, strip searches for any arrestee, bailouts and settlements for corrupt banks, and austerity budgets in an economy that has already impoverished its middle class.....

These are not moderate or centrist positions. Not by a long shot. They are extreme corporatist, neocon, and police state policies, not "centrist" or moderate at all

[xchrom]

6. i've stated here before that i think 'centrists' are the radical force driving american politics.

i think it's self evident.

[woo me with science]

7. I do understand what you are saying, but I think it's important

to call out the use of that label, because the labeling is part of the deception that allows this outrage to continue. Many voters perceive "centrist" to mean what it implies it means....something in the center, between fringes....something moderate. There is a connotation of reasonableness there, designed to appeal to independent voters.

The policies coming out of Washington are extreme and leading to the destruction of our civil rights and corporate fascism. They are not centrist by any reasonable definition of the word, and I think we should call out the misuse of that word wherever it occurs.

[xchrom]

8. i can't disagree with you.

not sure what there is to do about it.
'the people' should have been very, very pissed after the 08 crash and it's solutions.

they don't SEE their loss of equity and savings as the theft it was.

another thing i noted very early on -- very peculiar this equity loss -- practically targeted right at the middle -- sucked right out from under them.

[woo me with science]

9. Well, correcting the propaganda is one thing to do...

You are right that too many people don't SEE their loss of equity and savings as the theft it was. They don't see it because we live immersed in the corporate propaganda, their language, and their explanations of what has happened. We are constantly told that "the economy had a downturn," as though it was an unavoidable weather event rather than the result of deliberate policy.

"Very peculiar this equity loss --practically targeted right at the middle..."

That would make a great OP, fleshed out. Exactly the kind of thing needed to get people thinking outside the boxes that have been built for them...

People need to hear these things. We need more public pushback against the passivity-inducing propaganda that we are steeped in every single day. We truly live in the Matrix when it comes to people understanding what is being done to them, and challenging the labels and the utterly fictitious assessments we are constantly fed of what really happened is the *only* way we will get this country to wake up enough for us to have a chance at demanding real change.

I apologize for going into lecture-rant mode again. I know you know all this already, in depth, and that you do this every day....trying to wake people up. Your OP's are invaluable to DU in that regard. I hope you do it elsewhere, too, out where others who are still drowned in propaganda can see. I have been thinking about something someone told me a while back: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=1191059

Waking up America is important. Thanks, xchrom, for this OP and for everything you write.

[xchrom]

10. You're way more well spoken than I am, woo.

We need to know who our allies are.

[woo me with science]

11. No, I'm not,

but thanks. Yes, we do need to know.

[marmar]

12. k/r

[tama]

13. Which America?

America of Wall Street and all the politicians and media they own?

Or America of OWS and other grass roots movements, friends and relatives?

[qwlauren35]

14. So what do we do about it?

Other than force it into our party platform...