Press Release: Don't Throw 25,000 Children Off Welfare and Into the Streets

Michigan Welfare Rights invites the public to join us at this Press Conference on September 8, 2011 at noon (press release below)  to denounce the upcoming welfare cuts against children. You are also invited to speak up about about other major state issues that your family is facing due to cutbacks by politicians and this wretched economy.

 

Local organizations and elected officials who oppose the cuts are invited to participate in this press conference, too.

Download Press Release

Contact Maureen Taylor, State Chair, MWRO for more information (313) 964-0618.

There are Only 2 Classes in America

The Middle Class is a fallacy the Rich created to inspire the bottom to dream, to strive, to in fact work harder (for their employers) toward the goal of someday achieving their same status and heights!

Oh, I understand why they’re fighting to remain Middle Class, and I forgive them. As when you fall, it seems like the ground is coming up to meet you. Those who think they're Middle Class hope that by being in the middle, they are protected from hitting the bottom. It’s because the bottom is rapidly coming up to meet them!

Instead, they realize that what they’ve been taught all their lives has been proven to be a lie. In fact, it is causing a myriad of medical problems -- physical and mental -- and the lies are just another avenue for the Rich to continue (still at our expense) to line their pockets, as we continue to starve and die!

WAKE THE HELL UP PEOPLE! The WORKING CLASS is and CAN BE the MOST POWERFUL WEAPON EVER WIELDED against the CAPITALIST SYSTEM!! We just need to accept that we are who we are, and the process of taking back what is ours anyway can begin in earnest! We NEED to GET 'ER GOIN' FOLKS, the TIME HAS COME!!

1) THE RICH...

2) The WORKING CLASS = ANY class which HAS to exchange LABOR (physical or mental cerebral) for a living wage.

(Working Class hyphen everybody else!)

WORKING CLASS-Information Technology (IT)
WORKING CLASS-Medical
WORKING CLASS-Educational
WORKING CLASS-Skilled Trades
WORKING CLASS-Factory/Assembly line
WORKING CLASS-Social Worker/Public Service
WORKING CLASS-Municipal/State/City worker
WORKING CLASS-Food Service
WORKING CLASS-Cashier/Counter help
WORKING CLASS-Stock/Warehouse worker
WORKING CLASS-Private Owned-Airlines/Trains/Bus Lines wkr
WORKING CLASS-STAY AT HOME MOMS (Work without SALARIES!)
WORKING CLASS-Self Employed(Entrepreneurial/Cottage industry)
WORKING CLASS-Working poor (2-3 jobs still not enough to maintain self/family)
WORKING CLASS-Unemployed (no jobs are available!)
WORKING CLASS-Permanently unemployable (mentally ill, disabled/unable)

Ann Grimmett
STOP the INSANITY!! (studying as we all should!)

Image from AlJazeera

We're a Hungry and Broke Nation

A recent news story declared the U.S. a "Food Stamp Nation" after reporting that 46 million people -- or 15% of the population -- receive food stamp assistance. Moreover, 40% of these recipients are people with jobs but their jobs don't pay enough to live on. This might be remarkable in some corners but not here.

When the Smiley-West Poverty Tour rolled into Detroit on August 8th, they pointed out that conversations about family poverty in the U.S. are not on anyone's radar. In fact, as welfare recipients know well, people avoid talking about the poor unless they've got something disparaging to say.

While Washington politicians mull over which low income programs to cut next, we know SNAP (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program) -- aka food stamps -- will be on the table. It doesn't matter that there's been an increase of 74% in food stamp recipients since 2007 due to the economic calamities that these scoundrels created.

You see, Washington politicians don't know what it's like to live on meager part-time, minimum wage jobs with no benefits, or how to make ends meet on inadequate disability, veterans or unemployment benefits. These so-called leaders have never had to decide between buying food for their children or paying their light bill. And forget about going to the doctor for annual exams -- what's that?

Politicians don't know how to create living-wage jobs either. Michigan has been hit especially hard during this recession (we know it's really a depression). The state's unemployment rates continues to be high at 10.9%, and in the Detroit metro area it's 12.5% (download PDF). 

Our neighbors to the south in Alabama continue to have food security worries worse than us where 1/3 of Alabama residents are on food stamps. Plus, from 2006 to 2008, Michigan is one of 10 states (IL, KY, ME, MO, OR, TN, WA, WV, MI and DC) that continue to have significantly higher participation rates in SNAP.

Despite the criticism, food stamps keep low income families fed and alive, and they help support what few jobs we have left in our communities. Don't let any politician choose between corporate tax breaks for their friends or food for your family.

Image from NewsOne.

Coddle the Rich, Mistreat the Poor

This Sunday, The New York Times printed an opinion piece by Warren Buffet penned, "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich." The billionaire investor took the extraordinary step of outing fellow billionaires by openly acknowledging that his filthy rich class of friends receive such extraordinary tax breaks from the federal government -- many of which they didn't ask for and don't need -- that they think its time to give some back, pay a little more. He candidly states:

"These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places."

Nice friends, indeed.

Meanwhile, a recent study on the effects of the recession and national foreclosure crisis on the well-being of children found that their financial insecurity is resulting in long-term health consequences. Researchers concluded that "low-income children will likely suffer academically, economically and socially long after their parents have recovered," in part, due to unstable environments and often changing schools.

It's a travesty how services and assistance for low-income families continue to be slashed while mega-rich billionaires rake in tax breaks that they don't need or want. Sadly, the poor will always be scapegoats for greedy, postulating politicians looking to fill their own pockets.

We agree that Warren Buffet and his billionaire friends have been coddled long enough and they should pay their fair share of taxes. But theirs is no crisis of conscience. They know history and the consequences that ensue when poor people continue to be mistreated, suffer and grow desperate. London knows this well, too.

Image from janinsanfran, Creative Commons

Maureen Taylor on Mark Steiner Show

"Do the volatile financial markets, weak economy, rising inequality, and global protests mean that capitalism is failing us?  Do we need a new system, or just reform of our current economic structures?"

Listen to The Mark Steiner Show on the nature and the future of capitalism. This August 15, 2011, podcast includes discussion and analysis by Maureen Taylor, State Chair, MWRO; and Sam Pizzigati,  author of Greed and Good, a book on the looting of the U.S. from the top.

Taylor and Pizzigati discuss whether capitalism in the U.S. is fundamentally flawed or simply in need of reform, plus the role of technology and the state of workers. The Mark Steiner Show is broadcast on WEAA 88.9FM, Baltimore, Maryland.

Listen to the podcast or download the mp3.

Image from The Mark Steiner Show.

Why We March June 2012: Welfare Recipients Are Expendable

The foundation on which society rests has been changed forever.

Picture Leonardo DiCaprio perched on the balcony of the Titanic, holding on to Rose's hand as the ship which has broken in half, stands straight up just before it goes into the the icy waters.  He yells out, "THIS IS IT!!"

Today, the State of Michigan shouted out the same thing: Letters went out across the State alerting all Family Independence Program (FIP) recipients that they may have reached the limit of welfare support.  A second letter will go out at a later date to select which families will be culled out of cash assistance forever -- along with a second note informing them where to go for the limited help they still may qualify for.

Governor Rick Snyder has determined that $64m dollars can be saved if MI stops caring for poor families. The death warrant was signed by the Governor on August 9th, 2011, shoving some 14,000 poor families -- all with minor children -- into some kind of "hell" where they will be killed off a little at a time.

These first 14,000 will be followed by more and more until all the poor families who have been on welfare assistance for 4 years are kicked out. They are on a train headed toward the concentration camps of wont:

First stop, Public Shelter Avenue where some get off and seek living arrangements in local shelters.  Girls go to the left, boys go to the right...train keeps moving toward its final destination.

Next stop, Foster Care Junction where some of the children are taken away from mostly mothers too poor to care for them any longer.

Third stop, Suicide Canyon where some moms so stressed, saddened and crushed by the loss of their home, their property, their support, will decide they are "bad" parents and the children would be better off without them. Or, some of the older children in these stressed families -- separated from friends, separated from school activities, can't go to the Prom -- will consider suicide-pacts as a viable option.
 
Fourth Stop, Murderer's Cave where some will resort to inward violence like we are witnessing on Channel 2,4, and 7 daily -- shootings, knifings, clubbings, killing in every shape and form committed by people already on the edge.

Final stop, the Burning Fields where the message is clear: it costs too much money to keep your family alive. Governors across the nation are examining this strategy that saves State dollars. 
 
The ASSEMBLY TO END POVERTY has called for a National MARCH ON WASHINGTON, June 30th 2011. Get involved asap. Email endpoverty2012@gmail.com, or call: (313) 964-0618.  There are 323 days left. Do Something!!! 

Image from State of Michigan

Why We March June 2012: Politicians Live High on the Hog at our Expense

The foundation on which society rests has changed forever.  Let’s take a look at these elected officials that live high on the hog at our expense.

How can Federal elected officials, even those who call themselves “our friends,” make recommendations on the future of our lives as they keep collecting checks written in six-figures? Sure, they all claim heritages of immigrant forefathers, grandpa and grandma couldn’t even speak English, blue-collar histories of remarkable fortitude that produced this or that politician. But how has this now given them the “right” to live well at our expense? They all have health care, clinics where they work, free gas, free trips for themselves and their families, and other perks that would make the average working family blush with shame.

A fireman in Lansing, MI, who was distraught about attacks on his pension stood alone and away from the others in front of the Capitol Bldg. with a sign that read, “It takes elected officials 5 years to earn a pension. It takes me 25 years to get mine.” Could that be true? 

Pensions under attack, stabilized salaries under attack, haven’t heard one politician step up and demand that their salary be cut in half, have you?  Many believe that poverty and wont are all right for much of the country as long as they are not included in this statistics. 

Technology again has an answer for us based on common sense: we don’t need high-paid politicians to rule and lord over us because we can construct gadgets to do a better job, and we don’t have to pay gadgets at all.  Some workers, somewhere are already thinking about ways to collect government statistics, how to glean information and make appropriate adjustments based on those facts.  How hard is it to construct a computer generated devise that can manage the needs of the many, and not the needs of the few?

Food would cost this much based on the average salary in a particular neighborhood.  Gas would cost this much, based on the same criteria.  Utilities would be capped at a percentage of the earned income per household, maybe around 5-6% of the total household income.  Housing, the same standard rule, new cars and used cars, and everything else we need to purchase, etc.  What would happen if we passed a national referendum capping what House & Senate members, Governors, Mayors, County Commissioners, City Council Persons and the rest of the lot were able to earn on our dime?

THE ASSEMBLY TO END POVERTY is calling for a NATIONAL MARCH ON WASHINGTON, June 30^th, 2012.  Get involved – call: (313) 964-0618 or email endpoverty2010@gmail.com. You have 326 days left to get busy!  

Image from WillBlogForFood

Why We March June 2012: Corporations Define What's Important

The foundation on which society rests has been changed forever. Visionaries from all sectors of working society must now caucus and take those necessary steps to ensure that the planet lives despite this vicious corporate assault that knows no end.

From where should advice come to help guide our steps? When you want to learn about domestic abuse, don’t go to the partner who rules with violence – the solution offered will be skewed. The remedy for slaves will not be found at the dinner table of the Master’s house.  All the Master can suggest are ways to protect and continue the system of slavery.

Why do we allow the water carriers for these corporations to define what is important to us? 

Your arms held up the debt ceiling and as soon as President Obama signed the joint agreement the stock market plunged. All this drama was supposed to avoid a bond-rating decline but the country’s rating was lowered anyway.

You and your colleagues get laid off and the stock market goes up because that means your former “company” is now leaner and meaner.  How is that logic working out for you and your family, especially since unemployment pays so close to what you were earning – RIGHT?  

Exxon/Mobile earned 41% more in profit over this last quarter than the quarter before. We are talking billions in profit yet the employee roster shows a consistently steady decline in Exxon workers over the last six years. If they keep more money, they will trickle it down to new workers, remember? 

The “haves” are sitting on $1 trillion dollars of ours in bank accounts/cash/under the mattress money and they won’t hire workers because they can’t see what will happen five years from now?  HOGWASH!!  If you take direction and advice from these sick people you will need psychotropic drugs to manage your schizophrenia and bi-polar manifestations. 

ASSEMBLY TO END POVERTY has called for a MARCH ON WASHINGTON, June 30^th, 2012 to raise this poverty question for the final time.  Get involved in some way – endpoverty2012@gmail.com, or call: (313) 964-0618.  You have 328 days left to get busy. 

Image from ClipArtist.net through Creative Commons 

Detroiters Speak Out at Poverty Tour

Today, members of Michigan Welfare Rights Organization and others joined forces and met Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornell West’s "The Poverty Tour" with our point of view.

The session was electric with some 200-300 residents in attendance. A loud and well organized small group came to shout down the speakers with cat-calls of "sell-out and traitor" being slung toward both Tavis Smiley and Prof. West but they each held their own.

Prof. West started his remarks by commenting on the many fundraising and public events he sponsored for President Obama and recanted how he had remarked early on in the campaign that he would not be silent should the President falter.

The anger from some in the audience was about the false rumor that "The Poverty Tour" is being sponsored by the Tea Party or some Republican operatives; and that the intent of the Tour is to denounce Pres. Obama. Many people stood at the microphones to speak. When it was our turn, we all suggested to those loud folk that since we voted the President in we had every right to criticize what we didn't like and will continue to do so.

Dr. West talked about “too much Geitner,” “too much Larry Summers,” and “too much Ben Bernanke” -- all operatives working in Wall Street and for Wall Street.

We all agree and wish that our dear President had selected others to fill those seats. The loud group represents the antithesis to what we are all about. Class warfare was introduced and some folk wanted to turn the fight into ‘do you or don't you support the President?’ That is not the fight. They were summarily shouted down by those who came to describe both the plight of the poor and the fight of the poor.

We won a political victory because we were able to demonstrate through our comments that the poverty issue was systemic and needed to be solved in a systemic fashion. The level of anger also exists because people are looking for answers to their problems, most immediate and some long term.

Answers were in short order so some people left unfulfilled. The answer of course is that systematic poverty based on the rise in technological production means that a new system must be created where the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Folks are almost ready to hear this message as the only conclusion.

MWRO, one of the founding members of THE ASSEMBLY TO END POVERTY, announced the March On Washington set for June 30th, 2012. Both Tavis and Prof. West were very warm and receptive to MWRO so they left on their way to Akron with a belly full of Detroit and the ASSEMBLY! 

Image from The Poverty Tour

Why We March June 2012: Trickle Down Theories Don't Work

The foundation on which society rests has changed forever.

You do the math.  President Bush and others concocted a deal that awarded $900 billion dollars to Wall Street, to hedge fund operators, and to lending institutions because they were "too big to fail."  This was supposed to jump-start the economy again as these mega-companies were going to take our tax dollars, and "trickle down" our money to us in the form of loans and jobs. We are still waiting. At that time there were 5.1 million people receiving unemployment benefits.

You do the math.  Give each person on unemployment $50,000 with conditions. You must deposit this sum in one of these identified banks, not in 24 hr-check-cashing spots. No taxes would be paid from this amount, and the family would immediately stop receiving State unemployment benefits.  This check would cover one year.

Another condition would be that the check must be negotiated within 30 days or it reverts back to the Treasury Dept.  The American worker would have jump-started the economy over night by making  "mom and pop" expenditures...cars, house payments, clothes, healthcare, restaurants, dry cleaners, beautyshops, vacations, etc. Many of us would have found jobs with spending up, and we would have been in even better shape. You secure a job, you keep that $50,000 so you can keep going and keep the economy going.

The following year, those same families would receive a check for $35,000 each with the same conditions but taxes would be paid from total annual incomes.  In the third year, that same group would receive $15,000 each -- with the tax clause included. In total, some 5,100,000 individuals with families that might add up to more than 20,000,000 people would receive $510B over three years which is what should have happened.

A handful of greedy corporate dogs shared $900B of our money but nothing trickled down. Our way would trickle up and over a grateful nation as we would have created conditions of survival and people could see a way to thrive and keep going and growing the country!

The ASSEMBLY TO END POVERTY is calling for a Workers March on Washington, June 30th, 2012.  We March on D.C. because we want to eliminate poverty and not the poor.  We can and we will do this great thing.  Get involved - (313) 964-0618. endpoverty2012@gmail.com.  You have 331 days left.  

Image from Zaius Nation, through Creative Commons share.

Cynthia McKinney in Benton Harbor October 2011

The NAACP Benton Harbor 2nd Annual Freedom Fund Dinner invites you to meet with featured speaker Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman and 2008 Presidential Candidate.

October 8, 2011 at 7pm (doors open 6pm)

Lake Michigan College
2755 E. Napier Ave.
Benton Harbor, MI 

$50 dollars donation (includes dinner)
200 tickets total - reply soon!

Contact Rev. Edward Pinkney 269-925-0001, banco9342@sbcglobal.net

Support MWRO's friends at BANCO.

Make checks to:
NAACP-BH
1940 Union St.
Benton Harbor, MI 49022

Image from AllThingsCynthiaMcKinney

Why We March: DTE Shut Offs

The foundation on which society rests has forever changed.  

In September-October of 2010, it was revealed that DTE Energy -- the largest energy provider in Michigan -- had 80,000 utility customers in Detroit's Wayne County alone without either lights or gas, and winter hadn’t begun yet.

The concept of the worthy poor is being trotted out as corporations identify who we should feel sorry for and who deserves the pains connected with poverty. It's your fault if you selected the wrong husband, the wrong wife, the wrong nationality, the wrong career, the wrong parents, etc.

Summer storms cross the State, knocking out energy services to 1000’s and the nightly news shares the stories of the beleaguered families suffering.  Not one word is written about those who live without utilities night after night because they can’t pay the rising costs. 

We are “trained” to see a difference between the one group and the other. No one should have to live thru winters without heat or lights. No one should face living without water.

 

The Assembly To End Poverty is calling for a March on D.C., June 30^th, 2012 to end poverty, and not the poor.  Get involved…endpoverty2012@gmail.com. You have 333 days left. 


Image capture from Kenny Snod video.

National Poverty Tour Comes to Detroit

On Monday, August 8th, 2011, something very critical is happening in Detroit.

The 15-city POVERTY TOUR: A CALL TO CONSCIENCE is making a stop at City Hall. PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley and Princeton Professor Cornell West have coordinated this national effort to shine a light on the plight of the American poor.

MI Welfare Rights has been invited to attend and, we in turn, invite you to come and share your thoughts about the rising poverty that we all see happening in Detroit. With the threat of 12,600 welfare families being cut off of benefits effective October, 2011, we are in the front seat as we see our meager standard of living being driven down.

Read Poverty Tour statistics on U.S. poverty.

Meet us at the Detroit Coleman A. Young Municipal Center (aka City County Bldg) in the Auditorium on Monday, August 8th at noon sharp until 2pm. This Tour has made appearances all over the country as they document everywhere else what is happening here.

See you there! 

Video: "Tavis tells the Truth about Poverty in America," CBS commentary found on Poverty Tour website.

Why We March: Announcing the Workers March On Washington

Beginning today, August 1, 2011,  we will begin the first of many posts about preparation for the national Workers March On Washington, June 30, 2012. As a proud member of the Assembly to End Poverty, MWRO is actively organizing thousands of workers and low-income people to speak out and demand an end to poverty!

For the next several months, we will keep you posted with regular reports, analyses and commentary on why we must march. While we gather momentum toward this great march, we know that the heart of this work lies in the stories, testimonials and experiences of poverty from every person in the U.S. that we meet along the way.

We know that the foundation on which society rests has changed forever. Science has advanced technology very fast, making workers more productive than ever before. Fewer human beings are needed to produce. In Michigan, we live in a State that’s been hit very hard by this new world order. Yet, political operatives have suggested that mothers on welfare with children be separated from their benefits and forced into the work market. The first 12,600 public assistance families will be eliminated effective Oct. 1^st, 2011. 

In the worst job market, in the worst housing market, with family violence spiraling out of control, the answer is to push women and children into deeper poverty? The State will save $64 million by eliminating payments to this group.  What is the worth of a human being?

The Assembly To End Poverty is calling for a Workers March On Washington, June 30, 2012. We march on D.C. because we want to eliminate poverty, and not the poor. We can and we will do this! 

Get involved, contact:  EndPoverty2012@gmail.com.  You have 335 days left.

Image courtesy of Creative Commons (Berd)