This is Curtis. This is where Curtis lives, Bankhead Avenue abandoned bridge, Atlanta Georgia, USA. I spoke with Curtis for a few minutes before i photographed him. He had a surprisingly positive attitude despite being destitute. He told me being homeless wasn’t easy but if there were a good place to live, this was it. The bridge provided him solid housing, a tropical climate in a remote location, and nice tourists coming by with cameras and taking pictures of him. With food nearby, and an incredible view of the city, he seemed fairly content with his situation. We judge and shame people for living like this, but Curtis has done a good job turning a bad situation into something he can call his own. If there was a lesson in all of this, its that perspective and a positive attitude can get you though anything.
Day 15 of Black History Month and I’m honoring Gordon Parks. He was an American photographer, musician, writer and film director, who became prominent in U.S. documentary photojournalism in the 1940s through 1970s particularly in issues of civil rights, poverty and African-Americans, and in glamour photography.
So I haven’t eaten anything except for a bowl of soup broth with an egg in it all day because that’s all I had and now I’m out of food and I’m so fucking hungry.
I hate having to beg online but I’m too fucking poor and my art isn’t selling so I have to do something.
If you can help me afford something to eat tonight and wanna donate my cashapp/venmo is $destincramer98/@destincramer98
So I haven’t eaten anything except for a bowl of soup broth with an egg in it all day because that’s all I had and now I’m out of food and I’m so fucking hungry.
I hate having to beg online but I’m too fucking poor and my art isn’t selling so I have to do something.
If you can help me afford something to eat tonight and wanna donate my cashapp/venmo is $destincramer98/@destincramer98
Here’s how it works. Parents of children aged 6 and younger across the country are receiving direct payments of up to $300 per month per child, or $3,600 per year per child. The payments drop to $250 a month for children between the ages of 6 and 17, and phase out for families with higher incomes.
It’s an historic expansion of the original credit that’s already helping millions of working families.
The direct payments are coming because the Child Tax Credit is a refundabletax credit. Normal, non-refundable tax credits simply cut your taxes. But a refundable tax credit, like the Child Tax Credit, helps you even if you don’t earn enough for it to reduce your taxes — so it’s a direct payment to you.
Say you owe $3,000 in taxes. A non-refundable tax credit of $3,600 won’t be worth $3,600 to you. It would just reduce your taxes to zero. So you wouldn’t get the full benefit. And if you don’t owe any taxes to begin with, a non-refundable tax credit wouldn’t do you any good at all since you can’t reduce your taxes to less than zero dollars.
But a refundable tax credit would help you. You’d get the money no matter what, the full $3,600. That’s why this expansion is such a big deal: it ensures that the money gets to lower-income families.
It bears repeating that if the credit is made permanent, and reaches everyone it should, it could cut child poverty in half.
Yet the Republican Party — the so-called “party of family values” — is dead set against it. That’s because the program works.
Every single Republican in Congress voted against the American Rescue Plan, which contained the initial expansion of the Child Tax Credit. You can bet they’re all going to vote against making that expansion permanent as part of the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget plan. It’s obvious: they do not care about helping working families.
Democrats must get this done, no matter how staunch the Republican opposition. In the richest country in the world, it is inexcusable that millions of our children are living in poverty.
For decades, almost all economic gains have gone to the top, leaving working families behind. This historic expansion of the Child Tax Credit is a crucial step towards righting this wrong.
Poverty is a policy choice. Congress must make the Child Tax Credit permanent.
Galerie Polka presents American Realities by Danish photographer Joakim Eskildsen (born in 1971 in Copenhagen).
“One in every six Americans lived below the official U.S. poverty line when Kira Pollack, Director of Photography at TIME Magazine, commissioned me to capture the growing crisis. During thirty-six days spread over seven months in 2011, and mostly accompanied by reporter Natasha del Toro, I traveled through New York, California, Louisiana, South Dakota and Georgia, visiting places that according to census data have the highest poverty rate.
The approximately 50 million poor Americans are a heterogeneous population from very varying backgrounds. Some are newly poor, some are immigrants who have come from humble conditions, dreaming of the American possibilities. Of course, U.S. poverty differs from poverty in developing countries. People living below the poverty line can have physical goods, even work but they are mired in debt, many homes are in foreclosure, and most often, being poor also implies having to resort to the cheapest, most unhealthy and risky lifestyle. Any unexpected occurrence may jeopardize the fragile system and find people living on the streets.
(…) The myth of the American Dream is very strong in the U.S., and it seems people are disillusioned with the fact that it is so difficult to get by today. They said there is no American Dream anymore. This, they said, was the American Reality.”
“There’s one big difference between the poor and the rich,” Kite says, taking a drag from his cigarette. We are in a pub, at lunch-time. John Kite is always, unless stated otherwise, smoking a fag, in a pub, at lunch-time. “The rich aren’t evil, as so many of my brothers would tell you. I’ve known rich people – I have played on their yachts – and they are not unkind, or malign, and they do not hate the poor, as many would tell you. And they are not stupid - or at least, not any more than the poor are. Much as I find amusing the idea of a ruling class of honking toffs, unable to put their socks on without Nanny helping them, it is not true. They build banks, and broker deals, and formulate policy, all with perfect competency. No – the big difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich are blithe. They believe nothing can every really be so bad. They are born with the lovely, velvety coating of blitheness – like lanugo, on a baby – and it is never rubbed off by a bill that can’t be paid; a child that can’t be educated; a home that must be left for a hostel, when the rent becomes too much. Their lives are the same for generations. There is no social upheaval that will really affect them. If you’re comfortably middle-class, what’s the worst a government policy could do? Ever? Tax you at 90% and leave your bins, unemptied, on the pavement. But you and everyone you know will continue to drink wine – but maybe cheaper – go on holiday – but somewhere nearer – and pay off your mortgage – although maybe later. Consider, now, then, the poor. What’s the worst a government policy can do to them? It can cancel their operation, with no recourse to private care. It can run down their school – with no escape route to a prep. It can have you out of your house and in a B&B by the end of the year. When the middle classes get passionate about politics, they’re arguing about their treats - their tax-breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they’re fighting for their lives. Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That’s why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won’t vote. That’s why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us – no walking around National Trust properties, or buying reclaimed flooring. We don’t have nostalgia. We don’t do yesterday. We can’t bare it. We don’t want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in mines, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate, then. That’s why the present and the future is for the poor - that’s the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better, later. We live now - for our instant, hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. You must never, never forget, when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad post-code. It’s a miracle when someone from a bad post-code gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all.”
—
A rant about the divide between the rich and the poor from “How To Build a Girl” by Caitlin Moran(via itsalljustvapourtrails)
“When the rich get passionate about politics, they’re arguing about treats. When the poor get passionate about politics, they are fighting for the lives.”
The words of St James, his injunctions about care and love for the poor would have resonated in the heart and actions of today’s Dominican blessed. For although he is renowned as a painter and indeed is regarded as the patron saint of artists, Blessed John of Fiesole’s own epitaph, carved around his tomb in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in the centre of Rome says: “When singing my praise, don’t liken my talents to those of Apelles. Say, rather, that, in the name of Christ, I gave all I had to the poor. The deeds that count on Earth are not the ones that count in Heaven. I, Giovanni, am the flower of Tuscany.” So, it is fitting on his feast day to remember that Blessed John did not want so much to be remembered for his artistic talents as for his charity, his love of the poor, his unseen deeds which honour Christ on earth in the poor and needy, and which thus redound to his glory in heaven. For as Christ warns in the Gospel today: “What gain, then, is it for a man to win the whole world and ruin his life?” No, it is better to strive for treasure and beauty in heaven through good deeds on earth, as St James says.
And yet this is a side of Blessed John that is often neglected: the aspects which account for his sanctity and his reputation in his lifetime that led to him being called Fra Angelico, the angelic friar. It’s often forgotten, even by Dominicans, that Blessed John was a pious layman and professional painter before he joined the Order; that he had joined a Confraternity that believed in physical asceticisms and discipline; that he was deeply influenced by the teachings and writings on social justice and economic reform advanced by the Dominican Archbishop of Florence, St Antoninus; and that in 1420 he joined the Observant branch of the Dominicans at Fiesole, who were engaged in acts of corporal mortification, severe fasting and asceticism, prayer and study by day and throughout the night, and a strong commitment to poverty. Fra Angelico would become the Prior of St Dominic’s Priory in Fiesole, a convent nestled in the secluded Tuscan hills near Florence, where he painted many altarpieces.
In 1439, St Antoninus, who was then Prior of St Mark’s in Florence, asked Fra Angelico to come to Florence and to paint frescoes of the Passion of Christ and of various Mysteries of the Rosary in the rooms of the friars. Whereas earlier theologians and ascetics had dismissed art and beauty as frivolous or a distraction from prayer and study, St Antoninus affirmed the importance of art in moving souls to devotion, and as an aid to prayer, focusing the mind on sacred things, and helping us to contemplate the higher things of God. Undoubtedly, St Antoninus’s view on sacred aesthetics was a great encouragement to Fra Angelico, and the beautiful convent of San Marco in Florence, which is now a museum of Fra Angelico’s art, is a testimony to the power of sacred art to inspire prayer and devotion. Hence, Dominican churches such as this one, which is full of sacred art especially in our Rosary Chapels, follow the insights of St Antoninus and Blessed John, which is that art and beauty lead us to contemplate divine mysteries with greater efficacy.
Thus many of the friars’ rooms in Florence are painted with images of the Cross and Passion of Christ, inviting them to meditate on the love of the suffering Christ. The words of today’s Gospel would have resonated in the minds of the friars who studied and prayed in those cells: “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me”. Indeed Fra Angelico painted many images of the Crucifixion with St Dominic or a friar clinging to the cross.
However, it is Fra Angelico’s depictions of Our Lady, especially his paintings of the Annunciation, which are probably his most luminous works. A divine light suffuses his paintings, which in their beauty and serenity are the fruit of Blessed John’s contemplation; they are painted sermons which endure and continue to inspire us long after the homilies of contemporary preachers have faded from memory. For as Pope St John Paul II said: “Angelico was reported to have said: ‘He who does Christ’s work must stay with Christ always.’ This motto earned him the epithet ‘Blessed Angelico,’ because of the perfect integrity of his life and the almost divine beauty of the images he painted.”
So today, as we honour Blessed John of Fiesole, we recall not only his art but also his words, his teaching, his inspirations, and the beauty of his life – beautiful because of its integrity and authenticity as a Dominican friar preacher; beautiful because he so closely followed and contemplated Christ and Our Lady; and beautiful because his life shone with good works. May he pray for us, that our lives may also reflect the beauty of holiness.
The tax rise is for the poorest people not the richest, obviously. Tories can’t be pissing off any of those Russian oligarch friends. Also MPs just got a £2000 pay rise because of course.
In the hood it’s all about stacking paper. Getting that money. Hustling. Yet the black community is overcome with poverty. Why? The hood mentality is all about looking good. If you got the right gear, whipping the right car…you that nigga. It doesn’t matter if you live in ya mom basement or living off ya bm. You are a good parent as long as ya kids rockin them Js. Nevermind that they acting up and bringing home bad grades. Nevermind that you screaming in their face, cussing them out everyday. They got what they wanted for Christmas! The concept of building wealth is not understood among black youth in the hood. They do not realize that their behavior is a direct result of social engineering. TV tells them who to be, what to wear, how to talk, what to care about. White corporations take the money we throw at them for petty material things, and build empires with it. While we lay in the slums of our communities poppin bottles, killing each other and pumping our chests. The loudest one is the weakest one in the room. Go on Facebook(Trenton) and you’ll see a bunch of young black youth screaming to the world how great they are. How wonderful their life is. You’ll see a bunch of poppin off. A bunch of holier than thou mentalities. But what you won’t see is unity. What you don’t see is knowledge of self, dignity, self love. But who cares as long as you are driving that benz, right? You can tell how irrelevant a person feels by how badly they need to be seen. And in the hood, everybody wants to be seen.
I feel like this would be a slippery slope towards making it illegal for people to choose to not vote.
that’s already how it is in australia
That’s just so fucked up. :( Do certain medical conditions exempt you?
?????? why is it be fucked up to have compulsory voting? that’s the way it is in most democratic countries? it’s a part of being a citizen, like paying taxes and obeying speed limits? the fine for not voting is only like $50 and because of the compulsory voting law, our country bends over backwards to make it accessible: it’s always on a weekend, lasts most of the day, and is set up at schools and community centers so there’s one within easy reach of almost everybody. you can also mail your ballot or vote early if you’ll be out of the country on the day. like, IT’S EASY TO VOTE, and the penalty isn’t even that ridiculous. i don’t understand why the usa doesn’t have this, except obviously it would make it harder to literally stop minorities from voting.
I think we Americans tend to forget that a lot of other countries don’t actively work to make it harder to vote.
Adding to this here, in Australia you don’t have to vote. Or, more precisely, there’s no way they can tell if you ruined your ballot. You have to turn up, get your name marked off, but you can put a line through the ballot if you don’t think any of the candidates are worth voting for. Or do this:
Or this:
Or this:
You have get your name crossed off (if you don’t want to wear the fine), but you don’t have to make your vote counted if you’re opposed to it.
And it is so, so easy to vote. Stuck at work or on holidays? That’s fine. Do a postal vote. Stuck in hospital? That’s fine. They’ll go to you. Stuck in an old people’s home and can’t get around? Again, they’ll go to you. It’s amazing to me that it’s so hard for so many Americans to actually vote. If you make it compulsory, than at least the government is obligated to provide you with the means to vote.
And look, I get it. Sometimes I don’t want to vote either. But I suck it up, I walk three minutes down the street, and I hope that this year they’re selling lamingtons again. Oh, and I buy a democracy sausage, which, even if all the candidates suck, makes the effort of turning up pretty worthwhile.
ALSO, you can see even on the fucked up ballots that you NUMBER CANDIDATES IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE. There’s no need to calculate whether I would be throwing away my vote on the candidate that I most agree with if they’re not from a major party. I can say, I want that independent person to get in, but if not them, give me Big Party A, and if not them, that minor party person is still better that Big Party B, and I’m not giving any preference to the Lunatic Fringe Party.
Our system certainly has some issues still, but I can show up to somewhere nearby, line up for a few minutes (if at all), vote exactly in line with my values (on paper, leaving a paper trail that can be recounted), and then buy a sausage and some home made cupcakes on my way out.
A country’s voting system matters a hell of a lot and every citizen deserves one that makes it easy to vote and results in a government that is representational and accountable.
And by the way, one time I had a bad asthma flare-up on Election Day and didn’t make it to my polling station. I got my fine in the mail, I filled out the form explaining why I couldn’t vote, no more fine. I would rather have, you know, expressed my preference for who should run my country, but they were cool with the fact that I couldn’t do it that day.
“oh no, what if people actually have to participate in picking the government officials who will impact their lives” jesus christ
For the last time, for everyone who still doesn’t understand: not voting is not a tool of resistance, it’s a tool of surrender.
not voting is not a tool of resistance, it’s a tool of surrender.
In a 2015 study of admitted poachers in the largest park in Tanzania, 4 out of 5 admitted to poaching for food or income. But not all of them poached due to extreme poverty (in need of food and shelter). For many it was a means of supplemental income. In fact only 8% used poaching as their only source of income. by Conservation and Society
You may purchase the book here. The book is about 150 pages written to persuade readers to stop debating and talking passed one another, and instead, take action together. I think I indentify common ground that makes this possible. I synthesize the pro-life and pro-choice positions not by taking the better parts of each and fusing them into a new one, but by dissolving both perspectives and inviting everyone to adopt a fresh perspective that, while accounting for the insights of both, goes further in paying much needed attention to the issues surrounding the decision to have an abortion. It’s a short, insightful, and hopefully persuasive read. Thank you in advance to all who purchase a copy!
Because of the shitty state of the welfare system in this country, I have run out of money five days before I get paid because I have to live on disability. Boris Johnson can spend 10 million redecorating his pad but I get to live below the poverty line and act grateful for it. Urgh.
I rely on UC (welfare) to live, and after spending £10,000,000 redecorating his house Boris thinks it’s ok to cut it by £87 a month, when I already live below the poverty line. How is this acceptable?
