#mandated poverty

[chargetheintruder]

This is just sad, but I have to mention it.

Because this just plain SHOWS YOU how America treats our most frail, poor and downtrodden. We show up, do the LEAST and then refuse to change a thing, for DECADES. Read this. Read the whole thing. This is happening NOW in the 21st century, so yeah, if you have a conscience you either need to be angry or deeply ashamed, if not both.

The short of it is, if you end up elderly and too frail (from bad health) to live on your own, you go in a nursing home on Medicaid. A condition of this is that ALL income you have goes towards the nursing home bill, and you ONLY get a monthly allowance. That allowance is expected to cover everything from new clothes and shoes to denture supplies to the occasional vending-machine grade snack, for a whole month. It started at $25 a month in 1972 and was only raised ONCE in to $30 in 1987. Those are minimums: a few states have raised it to $40 but not much more. Alaska has raised theirs the most--and keep in mind that this is ALASKA we're talking about here, where warm clothes are at a premium for everyone. You would expect the northern-most state of the Union, and the one with the most spare petroleum money, and the least population, to do more.

But the point is that most of our most impoverished and frail elderly live in deliberate and mandated EXTREME want. These are people who can't afford a pen and paper to write letters home with. They can't afford their own toothbrushes and toothpaste (or denture goods that work). They're basically forced into beggary for every last thing at the end of their lives.

And you wonder why some people choose to die instead of living like that. This shit's depressing even for someone younger to deal with. I get that. But this really and truly shows you how cheap and back-biting America has become. Nobody cares. Nobody gives a fuck. If we did we would have done right by these people in the first fucking place, instead of doing the LEAST and letting conservatives ruin that.

Yes, other people suffer similar kinds of mandated poverty in the United States. I'm not here to invalidate any of that. I'm just pointing out one of the most extreme versions of a phenomenon that America really needs to give up on. We really need to stop trying so hard to betray and destroy our own people.

[headspace-hotel]

What i've been learning thru my research is that Lawn Culture and laws against "weeds" in America are deeply connected to anxieties about "undesirable" people.

I read this essay called "Controlling the Weed Nuisance in Turn-of-the-century American Cities" by Zachary J. S. Falck and it discusses how the late 1800's and early 1900's created ideal habitats for weeds with urban expansion, railroads, the colonization of more territory, and the like.

Around this time, laws requiring the destruction of "weeds" were passed in many American cities. These weedy plants were viewed as "filth" and literally disease-causing—in the 1880's in St. Louis, a newspaper reported that weeds infected school children with typhoid, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

Weeds were also seen as "conducive to immorality" by promoting the presence of "tramps and idlers." People thought wild growing plants would "shelter" threatening criminals. Weeds were heavily associated with poverty and immortality. Panic about them spiked strongly after malaria and typhoid outbreaks.

To make things even wilder, one of the main weeds the legal turmoil and public anxiety centered upon was actually the sunflower. Milkweed was also a major "undesirable" weed and a major target of laws mandating the destruction of weeds.

The major explosion in weed-control law being put forth and enforced happened around 1905-1910. And I formed a hypothesis—I had this abrupt remembrance of something I studied in a history class in college. I thought to myself, I bet this coincides with a major wave of immigration to the USA.

Bingo. 1907 was the peak of European immigration. We must keep in mind that these people were not "white" in the exact way that is recognized today. From what I remember from my history classes, Eastern European people were very much feared as criminals and potential communists. Wikipedia elaborates that the Immigration Act of 1924 was meant to restrict Jewish, Slavic, and Italian people from entering the country, and that the major wave of immigration among them began in the 1890s. Almost perfectly coinciding with the "weed nuisance" panic. (The Immigration Act of 1917 also banned intellectually disabled people, gay people, anarchists, and people from Asia, except for Chinese people...who were only excluded because they were already banned since 1880.)

From this evidence, I would guess that our aesthetics and views about "weeds" emerged from the convergence of two things:

First, we were obliterating native ecosystems by colonizing them and violently displacing their caretakers, then running roughshod over them with poorly informed agricultural and horticultural techniques, as well as constructing lots of cities and railroads, creating the ideal circumstances for weeds.

Second, lots of immigrants were entering the country, and xenophobia and racism lent itself to fears of "criminals" "tramps" and other "undesirable" people, leading to a desire to forcefully impose order and push out the "Other." I am not inventing a connection—undesirable people and undesirable weeds were frequently compared in these times.

And this was at the very beginnings of the eugenics movement, wherein supposedly "inferior" and poor or racialized people were described in a manner much the same as "weeds," particularly supposedly "breeding" much faster than other people.

There is another connection that the essay doesn't bring up, but that is very clear to me. Weeds are in fact plants of the poor and of immigrants, because they are often medicinal and food plants for people on the margins, hanging out around human habitation like semi-domesticated cats around granaries in the ancient Near East.

My Appalachian ancestors ate pokeweed, Phytolacca americana. The plant is toxic, but poor people in the South would gather the plant's young leaves and boil them three times to get the poison out, then eat them as "poke salad." Pokeweed is a weed that grows readily on roadsides and in vacant lots.

In some parts of the world, it is grown as an ornamental plant for its huge, tropical-looking leaves and magenta stems. But my mom hates the stuff. "Cut that down," she says, "it makes us look like rednecks."

[wilwheaton]

Frederick Douglass, who was born into Southern slavery, described the South as “a little nation by itself, having its own language, its own rules, regulations, and customs.” Fewer than 2000 families — six-tenths of one percent of the Southern population — owned more than 50 enslaved people and ruled the oligarchy that we call the Confederacy with an iron fist. The 75 percent of white people in the South during that era who did not own any enslaved persons generally lived in deep poverty. Women had no rights, queer people were routinely tortured and murdered, education for both enslaved Africans and poor whites was generally outlawed, religious attendance was often mandated, and hunger and disease stalked all but those in the families of the two thousand morbidly rich planter dynasties. Modern-day Red states are doing their best to recreate that old Confederacy, right down to state Senator Kathy Chism’s new effort to return the Confederate battle flag to Mississippi's state flag. Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence have both emphasized their presidential pledges to restore the names of murderous Civil War traitors to American military bases, celebrating their armed defense of the “values” of the Old South. Today’s version of yesteryear’s plantation owners are called CEOs, hedge and vulture fund managers, and the morbidly rich. They use the power of political bribery given them by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court — with Clarence Thomas’ tie-breaking Citizens United vote on behalf of his sugar daddy Harlan Crow — to lord over their Red states, regardless of the will of those states’ citizens.

Why are red state 'welfare queen' oligarchs allowed to mooch off of blue states?

[cozycoffeereads]

Today’s disability topic is how America forces disabled people into poverty.

Today’s particular topic is how SSI keeps disabled people poor.

Let’s first go over what SSI is. Supplemental Security Income is a program that provides monthly payments to disabled people and elderly people who meet the financial qualifications.

SSDI stands for Social Security Disability and eligibility is based on work credits. This is for people who used to work before becoming disabled. We will not be discussing this today.

Here are the facts:

The average SSI payment in January of 2023 is $553 per month.

Disabled people on SSI also cannot have more than $2000 in savings and assets. This is severely limiting.

This is not enough to even cover basic needs. How can someone live based off those payments? Disabled people who live with someone such as a caregiver, family member, or partner receive reduced payments and risk losing their benefits.

Disabled people cannot marry without losing their SSI or losing financial assets.

Here is an eye opening article about forced poverty:

https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2022/01/government-mandated-poverty/

Also check this article by The Hill called “Lifeline for people with disabilities forces them to live in poverty”

https://thehill.com/opinion/congress-blog/3702528-lifeline-for-people-with-disabilities-forces-them-to-live-in-poverty/

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Advocates are calling for more regulation around maximum temperatures in rental housing units. Some municipalities in B.C. have mandated minimum temperatures in rental homes but there are no existing rules for maximum heat levels. Following the heat dome in 2021, when more than 600 people died, extreme heat events have become a health issue as well as a housing one. Emily Rogers, the director of operations with Together Against Poverty, said it is time to look at how hot it has to be before a landlord must install something to keep the heat down. “The burden of action should be on the landlord in terms of equal temperatures,” she said, adding that could mean providing an air conditioner or fans. “At the end of the day, it’s the landlord’s responsibility to provide a home that ‘s safe — and that includes extreme heat.”

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[all-socialism-is-democratic]

I don't know if I said this already, but I'm saying it again.

I'll never understand why Liberals recognize that poverty, crime, and racism are systemic issues, not don't get that people not voting is a systemic issue, not a matter of personal responsibility.

When there are only two parties, neither of which represents the interests of half the population, half the population just is not going to vote. End of story.

Liberals act like ending the two-party duopoly is impossible, but it's not. Most Americans are sick of it, but they were taught by their government-mandated high school Civics class that duopoly is good and you can't change the system. And they believed it!

Imagine if your favorite Liberal party disappointed you (say by failing to protect abortion rights, or letting the Supreme Court turn Fascist, or losing multiple times to a corrupt convicted felon), so you could vote for one of the other two or three Liberal parties! Imagine how nice that would be!

Stop acting like fundamental change is bad and impossible. It's neither. Our problems REQUIRE fundamental change. And you're never going to get it from the Democrats.

[djuvlipen]

Child Removal from Low-Income Romani Families Raises Severe Human Rights Concerns in Bulgarian Child Welfare System

Recent cases in Bulgaria have shed light on significant human rights issues within child welfare practices, particularly affecting vulnerable, low-income families, mainly of Romani origin. The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) and the Equal Opportunities Initiative are supporting two important legal proceedings representing two different families: the Marinov and Kovachev families. Both highlight crucial issues regarding family rights and potential injustices within Bulgaria's child protection system. The removal of children from their families by child protection services is deeply concerning—mainly when it is based on poverty alone and occurs without clear explanation, substantial justification, or properly informing the family. While this practice should aim to protect children, it frequently fails to address the root causes of family struggles, leading to discriminatory practices, human rights abuses, and unnecessary trauma for both children and parents.

Marinov Family

The Marinov family—parents Andrey and Ivanka and their four children—faced a challenging situation when the children were removed on the grounds of poverty and placed in a Family-Type Accommodation Centre (FTAC). Andrey recently applied for legal recognition of their guardianship of three of the children, while the youngest was already recognised at birth. On August 1, 2023, the eldest child returned to live with his grandfather without informing his parents, prompting them to seek help from the Second District Police Department in Sofia to locate their son.

On January 12, 2023, police found and detained the eldest child at a Home for Temporary Accommodation of Minors in Sofia. Andrey was informed that his four children would be transferred to back to the FTAC. Child Protection employees took the other three children from Ivanka, who claims she was misled—they told her the children would be taken to the Second Regional Police Department for pickup after an hour rather than informing her of their placement in the FTAC.

The parents filed a complaint with Sofia City's Administrative Court, and a child rights lawyer was hired to represent them. In April 2023, the lawyer discovered an administrative order placing the children in FTAC for 3 years and mandating the parents to attend sessions to improve their parenting skills. The lawyer raised concerns that bias regarding the family's ethnicity and economic status affected the officer’s decision on parental skills sessions after just a single home visit, concluding that the family’s living conditions were below the poverty line.

During this time, their eldest son reported instances of abuse and harassment at the FTAC, both towards himself and his siblings. On July 11, 2024, the Marinov family initiated legal actions with the Elin Pelin District Court to reintegrate the children into their family. Social Services supported the reintegration, and after open hearings on August 5, 2024, the court ruled in favour of the family on August 29, 2024. The lawyer's request for immediate execution was granted, paving the way for the family's reunion.

Kovachev Family

Aleksandar and Elena are young parents struggling to keep custody of their newborn son, Stefan. Despite Aleksandar’s willingness to care for his child and partner, authorities placed Stefan in a “Mother and Baby Unit,” effectively separating the family. Aleksandar encountered significant obstacles in obtaining legal recognition of his child, with authorities refusing to accept his declaration of paternity. The Shumen Social Service Directorate (SSD) cited concerns about his ability to provide the necessary living conditions and resources despite Aleksandar’s expressed intention to care for both mother and child. Social services employees allegedly threatened Aleksandar with imprisonment for his relationship with Elena.

An appeal against the SSD's order was filed, leading to ongoing court proceedings, and transferred to the Razgrad Administrative Court, where a hearing was held on June 12, 2024.

This case brings to light several societal and legal issues, including the rights of young parents, the welfare of children born to minors, and the balance between state intervention and family unity. Initially, the Razgrad Court decided against Aleksandar on June 26, 2024. The case is now pending appeal before the Supreme Administrative Court. The ERRC is exploring ways to escalate the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Both cases highlight biases and discrimination in procedure, a lack of regard for family rights protection, and a focus on punishing racialised poverty often over the children's best interests within child welfare systems. They also shed light on the myriad pitfalls and barriers faced by Romani parents and their children as they navigate the child protection system.

The economic situation of a family alone does not affect parental abilities. These cases emphasise the urgent need for reform in child welfare practices to better align with human rights standards and the best interests of children and families. Only through such reforms can Bulgaria create a system that truly protects and supports its most vulnerable citizens, particularly low-income Romani families. The ERRC remains committed to advocating for families' rights and ensuring that legal processes effectively uphold these rights, regardless of racialised poverty.

The names of individuals and families were changed in this article to protect their anonymity.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

John Knefel at MMFA:

President-elect Donald Trump is planning to appoint Russ Vought, a Christian nationalist who has plotted to remake the federal workforce in MAGA’s image, to serve as his administration’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, according to CBS News. Vought held the same position during Trump’s first term. Since leaving office he has been a leading architect of Project 2025, a sprawling plan to provide staffing and policy options to the next Republican administration. In his role at Project 2025, Vought was instrumental in ensuring that decimating the ranks of federal civil service became a conservative priority. He wrote the second chapter in Project 2025’s policy book — Mandate for Leadership — titled: “Executive Office of the President of the United States.” In it, he argued that “a President today assumes office to find a sprawling federal bureaucracy that all too often is carrying out its own policy plans and preferences—or, worse yet, the policy plans and preferences of a radical, supposedly ‘woke’ faction of the country.”

As part of his anti-woke crusade, Vought has repeatedly defended and promoted Christian nationalism, at one point calling for an “army” of right-wing activists with “biblical worldview” to staff the next Republican administration. He wrote an op-ed for Newsweek in 2021 with the headline “Is There Anything Actually Wrong With 'Christian Nationalism?’” More recently, Politico reported that a document from the Center for Renewing America — a MAGA-aligned think tank Vought founded — listed “Christian nationalism” as a top priority for a second Trump term. While at the helm of the Center for Renewing America, Vought has been outspoken in his advocacy of Schedule F — a scheme to reclassify career civil servants as political appointees. Trump attempted to implement Schedule F in the waning days of his first term, but its effects were blunted by his loss in 2020. If his incoming administration moves forward with the plan, which seems all but inevitable, as many as 50,000 career staffers could be replaced with MAGA loyalists. (Some other estimates put the number closer to 20,000.)

[...] As a hardline conservative, Vought has pushed to implement harsh austerity measures throughout the country. The Washington Post reported that Vought advocates for eliminating trillions of dollars of reductions in “anti-poverty programs such as housing, health care and food assistance.” He has called for massive cuts to Medicaid and floated future cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Toward that end, Vought and his colleagues at the Center for Renewing America are leading proponents of a radical interpretation of executive authority that claims the president can unilaterally refuse to spend money allocated by Congress. Known as the “impoundment” power, Vought and his fellow travelers assert that a 1974 law that mandates presidents spend money Congress has allocated — passed after President Richard Nixon refused to spend federal funds for clean water and schools — is unconstitutional. This theory, if Trump acts on it, would centralize budgeting power within the Oval Office and tilt the balance of power between the president and Congress even further towards the executive branch.

Project 2025 architect Russ Vought will head up the Office of Management and Budget under Donald Trump once again, just like what he did in his first term.

See Also:

CBS News: Trump taps Russ Vought, one of the authors of Project 2025, to lead budget office again

[metamatar]

i think no fault divorce is great but it doesn't solve the problems with marriage.

some context: it sucks that indian feminists oppose no fault bc they are conservatives who think the marriage is the site to rescue women from poverty. right now divorce law in india requires married couples to prove (1) abuse, (2) failure to fulfill conjugal duties (oh yes this also means the court can sometimes require women to try to fulfill their conjugal duties, like a bit of state mandated marital rape) or (3) atleast a year of physical separation to get a divorce that both parties consent to (obvious economic barrier to get proof, difficult to do with children). ofc most middle class couples in india just lie about it and get divorced anyway. note the the historical interest the state has had in preserving the marriage form. india's status quo has long been the norm, no fault divorce is very new in the west, and couples can be required to attend mediation when they have children to fix their relationship even when both agree to divorce in many countries.

despite this, the cultural message in the pro marriage crowd to women alienated by the failure of the institution to grant them promised safety, much less satisfaction, is that no fault or other forms of divorce by mutual consent are now easy to access. so marriage is no longer a fraught or dangerous question for women in a heterosexual relationship, the party most likely to be in a subordinated position both during and after a marriage. this is a liberal fantasy that ignores that it is not merely the marriage contract itself that creates the duties, responsibilities and relationships of domination and economic dependence but the marriage as social form. so even if breaking the contract was easy, breaking up a marriage is not.

[jwood718]

A series of links led me to this: Southern Poverty Law Center's article and list of anti-LGBTQ+ groups active in the United States, and their influence on legislation in this country and internationally, and the increasing anti-trans rhetoric, and action, purveyed by them.

SPLC pulls no punches when calling-out people and groups that promote hate in the name of anything else (parents' rights, Christianity, etc) and the same goes here. The list is accompanied by a map featuring how many anti-LGBTQ+ groups are active in each state.

Some highlights:

"In 2023, the number of anti-LGBTQ hate groups listed by SPLC increased by about one-third, to 86. This is the highest number of anti-LGBTQ groups SPLC has ever listed. The increase is largely the result of the activities by groups often described as 'family policy councils,' which operate at the state level in ways that mimic the national organizations Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom...

...the weaponization of pseudoscience as a tool of trans suppression and the targeting of fundamental freedoms like free speech, expression, and assembly through book and drag bans has become a more prominent feature in recent years...

In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation published its 'Mandate for Leadership,' a 900-page handbook that lays out the implementation strategy of its presidential transition plan known as 'Project 2025.' The project represents a dramatic reshaping of the federal government by recruiting and vetting conservative ideologues for positions in a hypothetical 2025 Republican presidential administration. It also represents a dramatic confirmation of the anti-science and anti-LGBTQ focus of the contributors to the plan. Namely, on page 1 of the Mandate for Leadership, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation claims that 'children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.' By page 5, Roberts claims, 'pornography' is 'manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children' and argues that such manifestations be outlawed. Roberts also argues that 'the people who produce and distribute [such materials] should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.'"

And of course it gets better. I didn't know, but am not surprised to read, that anti-trans rhetorical hate has now been morphed into a version of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory: children, including children of gay or lesbian couples, "...are being replaced or 'transed' against their will by gender-affirming health care and LGBTQ-inclusive educational curricula."

Fuck: anything to rile up people and get them to vote in autocracy.

Full story

[leguin]

In several states, along with raising chickens, cows and hogs, corrections departments have their own processing plants, dairies and canneries. But many states also hire out prisoners to do that same work at big private companies. The AP met women in Mississippi locked up at restitution centers, the equivalent of debtors’ prisons, to pay off court-mandated expenses. They worked at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen and other fast-food chains and also have been hired out to individuals for work like lawn mowing or home repairs. “There is nothing innovative or interesting about this system of forced labor as punishment for what in so many instances is an issue of poverty or substance abuse,” said Cliff Johnson, director of the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi.

[gatheringbones]

[“All five of the women Steve Wright killed in Ipswich in 2005 – Paula, Anneli, Gemma, Tania and Annette – were dependent drug users. This detail, pulled out many times in the media over the following decade, is worth mentioning – though not because it allows us to allocate blame to ‘junkies’ or see their deaths as an inevitable and unfixable result of perceived fecklessness or self-destruction. Drugs, and the way the law shapes the lives of people who use them, are of direct relevance when examining why these women were working on the street and why they were vulnerable to Wright’s attack. Ending the war on drugs is a sex workers’ rights issue.

In Britain, a significant majority of criminalised sex workers (particularly those working outdoors) have experiences with drug dependency. The most significant link between these two circumstances is money. Drugs can be expensive: for many people, selling sex is the only way to afford the drugs they need, and the level of their dependency dictates the amount they will need to work.

Sex workers who use drugs are subject to the criminalisation of both drugs and prostitution, and these policies and consequences manifest similarly. Criminalising drugs not only creates even more risk of police attention and a criminal record, it also makes them illicit and therefore dangerous. As with soliciting laws, laws that mandate the arrest or dispersal of people engaged in drug use in public spaces lead to more clandestine behaviours, which can mean more dangerous drug usage, particularly rushed and risky methods of injecting. Arresting local dealers (who often use drugs as well) pushes people to buy drugs from unfamiliar sources and prevents them from making better informed decisions about the transaction. Taking a risk on a dodgy-seeming client because you need the money is a gamble; so is using a prohibited substance which may be mislabelled, ‘cut’ with other things, or of unknown potency. In both situations, lack – whether of money or of safer drugs – pushes people into risk, and the risk you’re willing to take grows the more you lack. The desire to avoid withdrawal – or poverty – changes people’s behaviour in powerful ways.

People who use drugs also have their safety measures destroyed by the police (much like sex workers). Groups of people keeping watch over each other while they’re high are vulnerable to arrest, as are those carrying their own clean, sterilised equipment. Both sex workers and drug users face discrimination in the media, in courtrooms, in healthcare, in dealing with social services, and in formal employment – doubly so for those who fall into both categories. Sex workers who use drugs are intensely vulnerable to violence because they fear arrest on two counts – as the tragic case of Bonnie Barratt, who was murdered in London in 2007, shows. Before her death, they had noticed a particular client becoming rougher and more violent; despite this, they all felt unable to report him or ask for help. This was with good reason; Bonnie herself was arrested more than thirty times prior to her murder.

Both groups are forgotten by politicians, even the more progressive of whom are rarely prepared to die on the hill of reforming drug and sex work laws in favour of those who use drugs or sell sex. When commentators engage with the topics of drugs and sex work, it’s easier to summon the contemptible figures of the Pimp and the Dealer (or better yet, blame the evils of sex and heroin themselves!) than to examine the structural context of prostitution and drug use. Examining these contexts would mean answering for the way that governments – not individual villains – are failing two of the most vulnerable groups of people in society. As already noted, many people who use drugs sell sex to get money to pay for drugs. Sex workers who take drugs often do so to cope with the trauma of work that is often exacerbated by criminalisation. Examining this two-way connection between sex work and drug use renders people who use drugs and sell sex as ultimately rational, logical actors who are responding to their environment.

This is a perspective that many people find challenging. (Even language pushes up against it. Rational people are often described with words that mean ‘not using drugs’: sober, clear-headed.) But thinking of sex workers who use drugs as people who are trying their best to survive in a bad situation is necessary. It pushes the public to think of them not as flawed or failing, but as dealing with the big and small ways that society is stacked against them. It also helps to identify the big and small changes that would make them safer, like safe injection facilities, clean needles, safe red-light areas, affordable housing, and an end to destitution. Most starkly, prescription opiates would free people from long hours on the street to afford drugs, and instead connect them with healthcare and other services – giving them the knowledge and resources to manage their use safely.”]

molly smith, juno mac, from revolting prostitutes: the fight for sex workers’ rights, 2018

[mariacallous]

Last month, Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), said that the agency had reached a “breaking point.” After Israel accused 12 agency personnel of involvement in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, 18 states announced in January that they would suspend funding to UNRWA, including its two top donors: the United States and Germany. On Saturday, the U.S. Congress barred funding to the agency through March 2025.

Although Lazzarini has dismissed 10 of the employees (the other two are dead), and the U.N. promptly launched an investigation into the allegation, most donor states have refused to resume funding until the investigation is finished. The European Commission, Sweden, and Canada have released some of their pledged funds, but the agency continues to exist “hand-to-mouth” amid the very real risk of being forced to shut its doors.

Now that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has outlined his postwar plans for the Gaza Strip, which include closing UNRWA, the agency’s future looks even more unstable. Yet to shutter UNRWA would be a betrayal of Palestinians. The agency, which provides essential services to 5.9 million Palestinian refugees, has been a stopgap for almost 75 years as the international community has failed to find a durable solution for Palestinians.

UNRWA—which I worked for between 2019 and 2022—cannot solve the root causes of Palestinians’ dispossession, but for decades, it has managed to address the symptoms. It has also become Palestinians’ only effective representative on the international stage. In the absence of a political solution, the international community owes it to Palestinians to ensure that UNRWA remains operational amid one of the worst humanitarian crises in its history.

UNRWA originated as a makeshift solution to a thorny problem. After the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 displaced around 750,000 Palestinians, the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) passed two crucial resolutions. The first, Resolution 194, enshrined Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and established the U.N. Conciliation Commission for Palestine to promote a durable solution for Palestinians. The following year, Resolution 302 set up UNRWA as a subsidiary organ of UNGA to conduct “direct relief and works programmes” that would incentivize Palestinians to settle in neighboring countries.

The fact that UNGA endorsed two such differing approaches just a year apart reflects the deadlock that diplomats faced. Months after the Conciliation Commission for Palestine was founded, it came to a dead end; the only solution acceptable to Palestinians was return—a solution that Israel would not consider. Diplomats had to come up with an alternative.

In September 1949, the U.N. sent an Economic Survey Mission to countries to which Palestinians were displaced. The mission concluded that “relief and public works” programs would “increase the practical alternatives available to refugees, and thereby encourage a more realistic view of the kind of future they want and the kind they can achieve.” The implication was clear: Palestinians should be encouraged to stay in their host countries, such as Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

UNRWA was thus established in 1949 with a yearlong temporary mandate to serve “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” Aid workers quickly began providing rations to 950,000 refugees, and the agency offered a modest income to the Palestinians who assisted in the delivery of relief.

Yet diplomats’ dreams of turning beneficiaries into well-integrated, self-sufficient employees soon faded. Palestinians, relegated to overcrowded camps, faced high levels of poverty, malnutrition, and disease. In any case, refugees would not give up on returning home. Nor would Arab states encourage integration within their borders. From their perspective, doing so would allow Israel to evade its responsibility to Palestinian refugees.

They also feared upsetting delicate sectarian balances. In the case of Lebanon, the 100,000 predominantly Sunni Palestinians it hosted constituted around 10 percent of the country’s population, leaving its sectarian power-sharing system based on a 1932 census dangerously out of date.

With the political avenue dead and no Palestinian state established, UNRWA soon took on a role that diplomats had not foreseen. The agency grew to become a quasi-state, delivering services that a government would normally provide. Today, UNRWA is the backbone not just of Gaza and the West Bank, but also of Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, providing education, maternal care, social work, university scholarships, camp infrastructure, and vocational training. It employs 30,000 Palestinian refugees, providing a lifeline amid economic deprivation.

Despite its outsized role, UNRWA remains strictly a relief agency, unable to fix a problem far beyond its mandate. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, an agency mandated to aid every refugee population except for Palestinians, advocates for durable solutions for refugees. It defines these as integration in the host country, resettlement in a third country, or return home. But UNRWA has no power to advocate for a durable solution for Palestine refugees.

In the words of Ardi Imseis, who worked in the UNRWA’s legal division before becoming a legal scholar, UNRWA has taken “a development approach to what is a legal issue.” It provides relief and employment to people whose dispossession and exile cannot be resolved through humanitarian assistance. UNRWA’s narrow mandate means that it can never work itself out of a job: A political solution must be found first—until then, UNRWA duct-tapes over the cracks.

Although its weak mandate simply perpetuates the status quo, the agency faces regular political attacks. Those who wish to prevent Palestinians from returning often criticize UNRWA, whose existence serves as evidence of Palestinians’ protracted exile.

“Israel would like there to be an existential threat to UNRWA because they mistakenly think if you get rid of UNRWA then you suddenly get rid of the [nearly 6 million] refugees and their right to return,” former UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness recently told Reuters. In December 2022, when UNGA renewed UNRWA’s mandate until June 2026, 157 member states voted in favor; Israel objected; the United States, Canada, and eight other countries abstained.

UNRWA’s detractors have only ramped up the pressure in recent years. Pro-Israel pressure groups such as IMPACT-se and U.N. Watch (which has no affiliation to the U.N.) frequently release so-called research reports that resort to tactics such as filming students outside of UNRWA schools and using the children’s statements about their villages of origin in historical Palestine as evidence of alleged propaganda in the agency’s educational system. Monitoring the Facebook pages of UNRWA employees—many of whom work sporadically on day-laborer contracts and live in active conflict zones such as Gaza or Syria—also provides ample fodder for detractors.

Palestinians have also demanded more of UNRWA—namely, to push for the right to return. Yet they have no way of influencing the agency’s priorities, and in any case, UNRWA is unable to meet these demands. Because it is not a state, it cannot advocate for a political solution for Palestinians on the international stage or collect taxes and fund their strategic priorities. Its temporary relief and works mandate can only be altered by UNGA. That Palestinians haven’t lost all faith in UNRWA shows how poor their political prospects are.

UNRWA’s response to the pressures it faces on both sides is to reaffirm its neutrality. It is the only U.N. agency that has a “neutrality team,” which monitors staff conduct, vets all personnel and beneficiaries, inspects the use of its buildings, and seeks to ensure that the curricula taught in UNRWA schools cannot be perceived as biased.

My experience at UNRWA was that in practice, resources focused on neutrality can verge on the absurd given the agency’s dire financial straits. When I worked on neutrality, I was frequently challenged by my Palestinian colleagues about the millions of dollars spent on related processes—for example, quarterly inspections of schools and health clinics for graffiti that could betray any preference for a party to the conflict—while services for refugees were cut. (I reached out to UNRWA for comment but received no response.)

After a pressure group accused UNRWA of promoting jihadism in its schools, I was tasked with scanning thousands of lesson plans for words with the Arabic root j-h-d. I produced reams of talking points to explain to donors the distinction between the word mujtahid (“hard-working”) and jihad (“struggle,” but often taken to mean “holy war”). As I worked on these sorts of projects, often late into the night, it often occurred to me that the money and time poured into neutrality would better be spent on rations in Gaza and Syria.

The agency-wide obsession with neutrality is, however, understandable: Every accusation of bias can harm UNRWA’s ability to provide basic services. UNRWA frequently faces suspensions of funding after poorly evidenced attacks on the agency, followed by periods of costly reform. After then-U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew funding from the agency in 2018, citing the need for reform, it was plunged into financial crisis and experienced months in which it failed to pay staff salaries.

Palestinians thus live in constant fear of budget cuts to discretionary, voluntary assistance from donors. Indeed, UNRWA has been mired in financial crisis since its inception: Its first report to UNGA in 1952 concluded that “[r]elief cannot be indefinitely provided. This is an inescapable and significant fact, for the time is rapidly approaching when voluntary contributions for the provision of relief for the Palestine refugees will no longer be forthcoming.”

The news of UNRWA employees’ potential involvement in the Oct. 7 attacks is extremely serious. Yet given the severity of destruction in Gaza, donors’ hasty decision to suspend funds cannot be divorced from the broader politicization of UNRWA.

The irony of this is that UNRWA’s woes are of the international community’s own making. In the absence of any conciliation process—nothing has filled the gap of the ill-fated U.N. Conciliation Commission for Palestine since the 1950s—UNRWA has proven an easy target for critics from all parties to the conflict.

However, without a peace process, there is also no exit strategy from UNRWA. The international community has promoted the agency as the service provider of all relief and employer of thousands of Palestinian refugees. No humanitarian actor can fill the gap; UNRWA provides logistics, storage, and transport to other nongovernmental organizations and U.N. agencies. Moreover, if UNRWA were to close, its 30,000 personnel and their family members would soon be added to the list of aid agencies’ beneficiaries.

After refusing for decades to take Palestinian statehood seriously—15 of the states to withdraw funding have not recognized the state of Palestine—the decision now to cut UNRWA’s funding is an illogical stance as good as a death sentence. It is the international community’s duty to follow through with its humanitarian assistance until a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is achieved.

[f1ghtsoftly]

I actually think it’s strategically stupid to ask women to forgo male protection and male financing without any kind of organized feminism to catch them. Feminists passionate about separatism need to educate themselves on the barriers women face when exiting misogynistic communities and family structures.

And no, just because you made it out doesn’t mean others can. There are scores of women behind you who didn’t make it. Who went insane from abuse, who developed addictions to cope, who are financially trapped, who experienced worse misogyny in the labor market then in a het relationship. Stop villanizing women acting in their own self interest and start organizing to give women BETTER OPTIONS.

I shouldn’t have had to choose between cosigning conversion therapy or staying in a misogynistic industry, my best friend shouldn’t have had to choose between homelessness and a dad who raped her, my first lover shouldn’t have to choose between a life of financial precarity and the sex industry and I cannot overemphasize that we were all rich lucky white women from the states. What’s it like for women of color? Women from states with worse education systems? Disabled women? What kind of rock are you living under where women aren’t doing the best they can to be financially secure and as free as possible *especially* in a cost of living crisis. And again, please don’t come at me with the “those criticisms are only white women with no problems who just CHOOSE” the women I am talking about are from wealthy white suburban families with boats and big retirement accounts we *are* the women you’re talking about. Just look at what happened to Brittney Spears and Rose McGowan, even “luckier” women who had huge parts of their lives destroyed because they took a stand for their own freedom. Were they just not “tough enough”? Get it through your fucking heads, no woman has an easy time of it, no women just “chooses” to comply with patriarchy for fun. We have three options, be kept precarious and in constant fear of male violence in the labor market, to participate in the running of the very system that oppresses us by allying with men or quit and try to become male ourselves. No women makes a “wrong” choice because all of these options are fucking terrible.

Women en masse aren’t unfree because they get stupid facial fillers or have boyfriends, women getting stupid facial fillers and having boyfriends is a symptom of how unfree women are and many women correctly see how allying with the right men can deliver them from poverty or financial insecurity.

Even middle class women with access to jobs that can pay the bills typically need to cosign a level of institutional patriarchy in order to do so, they become “administrators” to capitalism and are rewarded at the expense of their integrity. Think about all the teachers in the south who are forced to go along with anti-LGBTQ mandates, think about therapists who have to “diagnose” traumatized women with diseases that will stay in the medical records in order to get their insurance to cover therapy, think about the kind of misogynistic abuse women in tech or science take. GET.A. GRIP. IT SUCKS FOR EVERYONE.

And honestly, and I truly mean this, if you genuinely believe you are somehow better or stronger then most women who don’t “get it” I really question your commitment to women and to the project of feminism. It *is* delusional behavior to think that you aren’t one sexual assault, one lost job, one string of unlucky experiences away from trying to stockholm syndrome yourself into accepting male domination in a “relationship” or in the workplace. Without having to decide between sexual assault in a shelter or crashing with a “bf” who rapes you.

Without developing structures that can support women’s autonomy *we’re all* vulnerable to male predation and acting like it’s easy or even possible for women to shake that off not only shows an astounding lack of compasison but a naive and childish belief that your spirit is somehow above breaking. It’s not.

Like seriously please take it from me there is a limit to how much material, spiritual and physical abuse someone can take and so so so many more women then you think are dealing with horrible scary shit from the men in their lives and you can’t always tell what’s happening from behind a screen (or even in person). Even women who really, really annoy me or who are abusive themselves are reacting to male abuse in their own lives so please stop making the barrier to feminism contingent on doing the very things patriarchy makes it hardest to do.

PLEASE focus instead on making it easier for women to live away from men, on removing the ties between women’s financial security and their relationship to the men in their lives, on making women safer in public, on supporting mothers financially and with women’s labor.

It’s not reformism, it’s not choice feminism it’s accepting the reality of where we’re at and choosing to build women only infrastructure that will carry us to a post patriarchal future. That’s what doing the work is. It’s acknowledging where we are realistically as a society and committing to getting us where we need to go.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Drawing on the life of the 13th-century itinerant preacher St. Francis of Assisi, Boff argues that we must reconfigure how we think about democracy. Because humans are a part of the created world and our lives depend on complex systems in which nonhuman creatures play integral roles, we need a type of political and spiritual philosophy that draws those nonhuman creatures into the democratic equation. Boff calls this “cosmic democracy” in his book Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Democracy is about being ruled by people rather than being ruled by monarchs or despots. But because our lives are intertwined with the world we live in, humans need to forge political alliances with nonhuman creatures in dynamic ways. In the U.S., Democrats and Republicans barely managed to negotiate the debt ceiling so that the government could have a functioning budget. But humans need to realize that we’re failing in negotiations with our environment and, as a result, we are facing climate catastrophe. Mandating space to conserve and rehabilitate dwindling species, cutting emissions, and learning to use the land in a sustainable way are critical steps to contributing to a lasting union between humans, nonhumans, and the planet. In his book Francis of Assisi, Boff notes how Francis tried to forge this lasting union “with all things.” Thomas of Celano, a 13th-century monk and one of the earliest biographers of Francis, said that Francis “called all creatures his brothers and sisters, like one who had arrived in the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Francis recognized that to be close to Jesus, one had to be close to the things that were considered to be the lowest in the social order. That meant taking a vow of poverty and even recognizing the sun, moon, animals, rocks, and plants as “siblings.” From this perspective, democracy is something that emphasizes the rule of the people but also considers the vast web of interconnected nonhuman species that are necessary for the survival of our planet. Boff’s Francis-inspired cosmic democracy isn’t just about striving for clearer and more direct democracies; it’s also about cultivating a new spiritual practice focused on recognizing that human life relies on nonhuman life and the environment. Can we reorient ourselves in the world so that we can hear the cries of the poor and the cries of creation? Can we factor their cries into our politics?

[coquelicoq]

Portland police can ticket and arrest homeless Portlanders who reject a shelter offer as of July 1.

In its latest attempt to dust off a practice deployed by the city for decades, Portland City Council prohibited public sleeping under threat of criminal and civil penalties May 8. Homeless service providers and legal experts said the ordinance and its enforcement system are counterproductive if the city wants to end homelessness and poverty.

“These problems will get worse with local and state politicians continuing to choose police and jails over real solutions,” Sandy Chung, ACLU of Oregon executive director, said. “Portland’s electeds are choosing to impose public sleeping bans and fines instead of creating more temporary shelters and affordable housing.”

Those found in violation of the ordinance are subject to seven days in jail and a $100 fine. While there are no lawsuits against the city for the new ordinance as of July 1, it’s likely to face its day in court eventually as legal advocates gather information about enforcement.

[...]

Offering shelter prior to arrest or citation is an attempt to stay in the good graces of state law, which requires all local ordinances governing survival activities — like sitting, lying or sleeping — to be objectively reasonable. The state law featured prominently in a successful legal challenge to a similar 2023 ban. ORS 195.530 essentially codified Martin v. Boise. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruling found it’s unconstitutional for municipalities with inadequate available shelter space to level civil and criminal penalties against homeless people for sleeping in public.

[...]

Shelter space is scant in Portland.

There are 2,692 county- and city-funded shelter beds, according to the county, and at least 11,153 people experiencing homelessness in Multnomah County. Despite county- and city-funded shelters being 92.5% full each night on average in March, almost half of the homeless population — 5,398 — remain unsheltered.

The current lack of shelter for those seeking it out makes service providers bristle at a particular facet of enforcement that may actually reduce broader shelter availability.

“We have an ongoing agreement with our County partners that sets aside congregate shelter beds for the Mayor Wheeler's Street Services Coordination Center team to utilize during outreach,” a city FAQ on the ordinance says.

It’s unclear the exact number of shelter beds reserved for enforcement, but Portland Commissioner Carmen Rubio said the county holds 100 beds vacant for the SSCC. The Joint Office of Homeless Services did not answer questions at the time of publication.

The city and county holding beds open for the purpose of enforcement makes little sense to Katie O’Brien, Rose Haven executive director.

“It isn't solving anything,” O’Brien said. “It may be breaking up camps that are disruptive, and that they have a desire to break up, which may be valid, it may not be. But by doing that, they're just taking a bed away from somebody else.”

O’Brien said clientele at Rose Haven, a daytime service provider for women, children and gender-diverse people, often lack shelter access despite their best efforts.

“It’s going to create a greater shortage for people like Rose Haven serves, who’ve been seeking and desiring this shelter and would be more successful in the shelter,” O’Brien said. “They want (shelter). They’ve chosen this. They’re looking for this, as opposed to people who are mandated to go in, and they’re not gonna stay.”

Lauren Armony, Sisters of the Road systemic change program director, told Street Roots holding beds open for emergency situations is an existing practice, but holding beds open to enforce the ordinance is counterproductive.

“It’s a bad practice,” Armony said. “I don't think we can count it as available shelter if it is being withheld from people who already want it. You'll be turned away if you wait in line, but if you talk to a cop, maybe they'll take you there?”

Involving police to coerce people into accepting shelter offers hints at elected officials buying into a particular myth Armony and O’Brien encounter — that of the “service-resistant” homeless Portlander. The concept banks on the idea that a significant number of homeless Portlanders choose unsheltered homelessness over available services.

“It’s not what we’re seeing here at Rose Haven,” O’Brien said. “We’re seeing thousands of people a year, hundreds of people a day, who are coming to us not being able to find the necessary shelter for themselves. So that doesn’t align with the people that we know and work with every day. And it isn't to say there isn't a population of people who may not want shelter. But I think that that portion of people is very small compared to the amount of people that we see who can't get in anywhere.”

[...]

Armony said most “service-resistant” people who don’t pursue emergency overnight shelter are actually holding out hope for a more permanent solution or have previously felt betrayed by authority. Armony described “service resistance” as a “myth.”

“Most people are like, ‘I’ll just wait until I get housing,’” Armony said. “But then they just don’t know how to go out and get housing. That’s the issue. It just seems really uninformed and paternalistic to assume that people don't know what's best for them or what they want.

“Most people want housing.”

[...]

Bowman said the city will determine what’s “reasonable alternate shelter” based on individual circumstances.

[...]

The city positioning its workers and police officers as the arbiters of what’s reasonable for an individual makes service providers uneasy.

[...]

O’Brien said what may seem reasonable on paper may be entirely unreasonable to an individual, such as people with trauma who may not feel safe in a congregate shelter, which is the only type of bed the county holds open for the SSCC.

Armony said the total instability of congregate shelters, which only offer a bed for one night and typically require homeless Portlanders to leave all but a couple of bags behind, often makes them unreasonable for the individual.

“People are like, ‘OK, I’m getting this offer of shelter, but that means I generally need to give up most of my possessions or have to limit my number of possessions to get one night in the shelter or two nights in the shelter,’” Armony said. “It’s not an ongoing shelter. It’s not guaranteed, whereas their tent may be a better guarantee of actual shelter and stability.”

3 July 2024