Follow the money

I’ve been hoping for years that Swillburg, to mention only one city
neighborhood on my list, would get substantial “targeted investment” from
higher levels of government.

            And lo and behold, as the season of
good tidings peaked, the government took out its checkbook, wrote a big one
($25 million), and presented it in Swillburg.

            The last preposition is crucial. The
presentation was not to Swillburg.

            You might say the $25 mil was a
little too narrowly targeted. It was a Lotto payout to one man who’d bought his
winning ticket in a neighborhood bar. The check was literally a big one: an
oversized bank draft made for a photo-op, and also designed to suck in the
myriad losers whose ticket purchases fill the kitty.

            Wouldn’t you know it, the winner
lives not in the neighborhood but in Brighton, at least for the time being. But
the bar owner got $25,000 as a secondary prize. And Swillburg had its flicker
of fame — which is good, if it brings more people to the eternally
up-and-coming South Clinton-South Goodman area.

            Nothing personal. I wish the winner
all the best. But I wonder about our urban areas and how lotto-capitalism fails
them.

The signs of
failure are everywhere. And they make for a sobering end-of-the-year appraisal.

            In mid-December, the US Conference
of Mayors issued a report on hunger and homelessness this past year in 25
cities. Overall, the report said, requests for “emergency food assistance” went
up 19 percent. Requests for “shelter assistance” in the 18 worst-off cities
went up by the same percentage. Almost half those seeking emergency food were
members of families, and more than a third of the adults were employed. And as
usual, people of color bore the greatest burden: “The homeless population is
estimated to be 50 percent African-American,” says the report.

            Yet with all this pain, the
resources to fight these problems actually became scarcer in more than half of
the 25 cities.

            We’ve all seen the lines at the
Lotto counter. Less obviously, people are queuing up for a shot at affordable
housing. And it’s clear from the Mayors’ report that even cities in the
better-off parts of the country are struggling. In Denver, for example, the
average wait for public housing is 24 months; the wait there for Section 8
vouchers (another ticket to a decent place to live) is six months. Salt Lake
City’s stats are in the same league — though it has even longer Section 8
waits. Miami, though, is the standout. The average wait there for public
housing is 84 months, and it takes an average 60 months to get a voucher.

            What about our part of the country?
Oddly, no New York cities were surveyed. But there were some Rust Belt
analogues to Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, etc. Take Philadelphia: A 24-month
wait for public housing, and the same length of time to get a Section 8
voucher. Or Trenton, New Jersey: again, a two year wait for public housing.

            But by gum, we’ve got bombs. What
else is an up-and-coming, or is it a downward-hurtling, empire to do?

            Late news reports indicate War
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is threatening North Korea even as his minions are
preparing for all-out war against Iraq. Of course, the threat is issued the
customary way — by assuring the peace-loving nations of the world that
there’s “no plan to attack,” as an AP report recently phrased it.

            Pretty soon we’ll strike Baghdad,
then watch its shelter assistance stats go stratospheric.

Drop the final
“o” from
Lotto and you get another scandal: the man who praised segregation. (Trent also
claimed he fell into a trap set by political enemies. He must have been
thinking of some very old enemies from around here — like Frederick Douglass
and Harriet Tubman.) Lott is the personification of the pit the US is digging
for itself.

            Our fearsome leaders are cruising
toward disaster on a global scale. The powderkegs multiply, even apart from
Korea and Iraq. Look at US policy vis-à-vis Israel/Palestine and Palestinians
in the West Bank and Gaza. You might it call it our external urban policy —
fitfully supporting the Bush-designated “man of peace” Ariel Sharon and his
brand of colonialism.

            “Christmas is canceled in the
streets, if not the churches, of Bethlehem,” said a recent Times of London report. A Franciscan cleric at the Church of the
Nativity told the Times: “Across the
world billions of people will be celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, but
here, at the center of all this attention, Christians cannot celebrate. We
don’t have the money and it is not right with people in such miserable
circumstances. Our main concern is not decorations, it is getting food for the
people.”

            The people of Bethlehem — on whom
Israeli occupation forces impose collective punishment for the crimes of
individual Palestinians and minority factions — aren’t alone. Edward Said,
writing in Al Ahram Weekly just
before Christmas, said the Palestinian unemployment rate is now 65 percent.
More than 40 percent of the population, he said, “is malnourished, and famine
is now a genuine threat.”

            Of course, things don’t look much
different in Iraq, what with a decade of murderous US-enforced sanctions, never
mind what may happen after an invasion.

            Hunger here, hunger there…

            (By the way, kudos to Sean Penn, and
retroactively to Jane Fonda, with whom the rabid right wing is now comparing
him. It’s always encouraging when individual Americans speak honestly and take
some risks for justice.)

My wrap-up
wouldn’t be complete without some hopeful news. And there’s actually plenty of it.

            My favorite is the up-and-coming
“anti-globalization” movement.

            Better to call it the global justice
movement. A lot of younger people, especially, are forging ties with industrial
workers, farmers, students, and human rights advocates around the world. The
manifold aim is open borders, cross-cultural understanding, environmental
sanity, and fair rather than “free” trade. You can judge the movement by the
mass media coverage, which — though regularly dismissive, contemptuous,
clueless, uninquisitive, or absent — has failed to discredit it.

            The common wisdom is that this
movement is disorganized, leaderless. And for sure, it’s anti-hierarchical. But
it’s actually a network of groups that make New York State’s sleight-of-hand
fundraising schemes — like Lotto — look more pathetic than shell games.

            One such group, the California-based
Global Exchange, has been a leader in merging political campaigns with
bread-and-butter issues. For example, the group trains a searchlight on human
rights abuses in Colombia, which continue partly because of Bush administration
enthusiasm for military aid and the “war on drugs.” But Global Exchange has a
very bread-and-butter approach, too: The group is waging its own style of war
against unfair coffee and chocolate trade practices, through education as well
as direct support for companies that give Third World producers a decent
return.

            When you come down to it, that’s
what most people want: a chance to participate in the economy and get rewarded
justly for their work.

            But that’s a radical proposition in
a country that increasingly takes from the poor and gives to the rich — or
the nouveaux riches.

This article appears in Jan 1-7, 2003.