White genderqueer with male privilege working through the contradictions of white supremacist capitalist Patriarchy on a neocolonial landscape.
I should keep count of how many people assume I’m poor because I argue against capitalism
People say I can’t be a communist because my dad has a lot of money
People say I can’t…
The flip side is that I grew up in a trailer and I can’t be a communist without being entitled and lazy.
Once one is trapped in poverty, one is exposed to profiling and disproportionate police presence in poor communities. One is also more likely to be subject to the criminal laws which target the homeless. Furthermore, members of the transgender community can face criminal charges simply for living in accordance with their gender identity. For example, they can be arrested for using the “wrong” bathroom, due to suspicious discrepancies in their ID, and even on trumped up charges of solicitation. This flow chart from the Sylvia Rivera Law Project explains the phenomenon well.
The combination of employment discrimination and criminalization particularly impacts queer and trans immigrants. In America’s labyrinthine legal immigration system, finding skilled employment is one of the few paths to legal immigration status. When that is closed off by discrimination, one is far more likely to be an undocumented immigrant. This difficulty is compounded by the structural poverty and criminalization already discussed here, as once an undocumented immigrant is picked up by police, they are likely to be sent to a detention center and eventually deported.
In addition to the risk factors detailed here, evidence from the juvenile justice system demonstrates that once arrested, LGBTQ youth are more likely to be placed in pre-trial detention. According to an article in The Nation:
The road to incarceration begins in pretrial detention, before the youth even meets a judge. Laws and professional standards state that it’s appropriate to detain a child before trial only if she might run away or harm someone. Yet for queer youth, these standards are frequently ignored. According to UC Santa Cruz researcher Dr. Angela Irvine, LGBT youth are two times more likely than straight youth to land in a prison cell before adjudication for nonviolent offenses like truancy, running away and prostitution. According to Ilona Picou, executive director of Juvenile Regional Services, Inc., in Louisiana, 50 percent of the gay youth picked up for nonviolent offenses in Louisiana in 2009 were sent to jail to await trial, while less than 10 percent of straight kids were. “Once a child is detained, the judge assumes there’s a reason you can’t go home,” says Dr. Marty Beyer, a juvenile justice specialist. “A kid coming into court wearing handcuffs and shackles versus a kid coming in with his parents—it makes a very different impression.”
This initial bias makes it clear that queer and trans youth are disproportionately locked up in this country, even before they are given a trial.
…
As we remember those whom we have lost, we need to remember why we lost them and call for equal rights and treatment. Activists now have tools in their hands to help change the way we live and how we can help our homeless. We need to become visible in the places where we are not known and remain visible where we have already been seen. TDOR is a sad day for all, but it also should be the day when we call for better. —
Robyn Carolyn Montague: Transgender Day of Remembrance: A Call to House Our Homeless
(via andythenerd)(via andythenerd)
At the Ali Forney Center we are confronted every day with kids who have been thrown out of their homes by homophobic parents. The kids are devastated to have been cast out like trash and terrified of what will happen to them. Because New York City only provides 250 youth…
(via sabots-are-for-sabotage)
A policy brief recently issued by the National Poverty Center (NPC) reveals that the number of households in the US living on less than $2 a day per person has increased by 130 percent since 1996, from 636,000 to some 1.46 million today.
This means that some 4 million people in “the richest country on earth” (according to US capitalism’s apologists) are surviving on less than $60 a month each, i.e., essentially on no income whatsoever.
Read more.
They always forget to mention who owns the riches when they say we’re the richest country.
(via sabots-are-for-sabotage)
(via eckleburgs-eyes)
Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.
Registering them to vote is like handing out burglary tools to criminals. It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country - which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote. —
Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum, in his column “Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American” for The American Thinker.
I literally do not know what to say this, other than the subtlety used in the past by folks like Vadum is dead. They do not want those in poverty to vote for fear their rich cronies will no longer be able to buy political clout. The richest 1% have 1% of the vote. 99% of the vote belongs to those outside of the top income brackets.
Never fear, Mr. Vadum. Citizens United v. FEC has your back. I’ll tell you what’s un-American: Decrying the empowerment of the impoverished via the last vestiges of the democratic process we have left in this country. To insist that a person is defined by what one owns versus who one is - that’s profoundly un-American.
You sir, are attempting to establish a new aristocracy in this country, a pseudo-royalty if you will. I believe the Founding Fathers might have a bigger problem with that than with the poor voting.
(via cognitivedissonance)
Cost of one Tomahawk cruise missile: Approximately $756,000-$2,000,000 per missile
Congress appropriated $6,734,000,000 for WIC in fiscal year 2011.
Let’s compare these numbers for perspective:
When Operation Iraqi Freedom began, more than 725 Tomahawk cruise missiles had been fired into Iraq by early 2003. That’s an approximate cost of $548,100,000 to $1,450,000,000 - nearly 20% of WIC’s 2011 budget in a matter of weeks.
War is expensive, but for some reason, it’s easier to to write those costs off than the costs of helping families in need. War is also profitable, whereas assisting the impoverished, well, not so much.
(via eckleburgs-eyes)
Photograph of an unknown man during the Depression c.1932
(via capnjazzercise)
Jon Stewart, commenting on Fox News’ infograph claiming that “99% of ‘poor people’ have refrigerators.”
(via reallyfoxnews)
(via lagertha-lodbrok)
Muhammad Yunus
(via stay-human)
(via noleadersplease)
Food Is A Right Campaign fights $127 billion food stamp cuts
“Food Is A Right Campaign demonstrated at 26 Federal Plaza in NYC on Aug. 5, 2011, to spark a movement to save the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program known as S.N.A.P., which provides food stamps to 46 million people in the U.S. The House of “representatives” has passed a bill to facilitate a $127 billion cut over 10 years and to institute a Block Grant stat-administered alternative to the current unlimited benefits.”
(via cuntymint)
