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MAKING CONTACT

Transcript: #50-99 Surplus Population or Marginalized Poor?
December 15, 1999

Program description, guest contact information and audio files at http://www.radioproject.org/archive/1999/9950.html

Phillip Babich: This week on Making Contact......

Anuradha Mittal: Right now we can say the richest one percent of the population owns 40 percent of the entire nation's wealth. And I think we are not seeing those figures in the other, you know, corporate owned media, because we're basically questioning, and saying that when we talk about economic boom, millions of people do not have a fair share in the boom.

Muhjah Shakir: People are generally dissatisfied just because they know that they are being screwed over by this government. They know that, you know, that they are paying taxes and they know that much of their tax dollars are being spent in activities that they don't support, like these various wars...

Phillip Babich: In the United States, the rich and poor are as far apart as ever, with a gap wider than that of any other industrialized country. At the same time, we hear how the economy is booming with the stock market reaching unprecedented levels. On this program, we take a look at the continuing struggle for economic human rights in a time of perceived prosperity. I'm Phillip Babich, your host this week on Making Contact, an international radio program seeking to create connections between people vital ideas and important information.

In 1996, President Clinton signed the so-called Welfare Reform Bill, which put a time limit on welfare benefits. In October 1999 the Clinton administration claimed that the legislation has been a success, pointing to a drop in the welfare rolls and a dip in the number of people living below the poverty line. But according to the government's own statistics, such rosy claims obscure the reality of poverty in the United States. Today, there are over 34 million people living in poverty, including over 10 million children. Cuts in welfare, which accounts for about 1% of the federal budget, come at a time when the military budget continues to increase and corporations continue to receive lavish tax breaks and subsidies. The most conservative estimates put corporate welfare at $167 billion dollars annually -- others put the total closer to $450 billion dollars a year. Anuradha Mittal is policy director at the Institute for Food and Development Policy, also known as Food First. And, she is co-editor of the book America Needs Human Rights. Mittal tells correspondent Matt Martin that only the wealthiest in the United States are reaping the benefits of the current economic boom.

Matt Martin: In your research for this book, what did you find to indicate that poverty and hunger not only persist in this country but are actually deepening?

Anuradha Mittal: Well, we don't have to go too far, if we look at the United States Department of Agriculture. It just came out with a report about two months ago now. It states that in the last one year, we've seen the number of people or Americans who do not have access to adequate food has increased. Till last year that figure used to be 30 million Americans, and now we are talking about 36 million Americans do not have access to adequate food, and this includes 14 million children. Also we have seen reports of increase by more than a million people who have no access to health insurance. Currently 44.3 million Americans, according to official figures, have no health insurance in the country, and these numbers we see have increased while we are talking about a booming economy.

Matt Martin: Make more concrete what it means when you say people don't have access to food.

Anuradha Mittal: What it means is when I say that people do not have adequate access to food, it means increasing number of families, working families, are unable to make ends meet. So we are talking about families of children going to bed hungry. We're talking about increasing numbers of people outside the soup lines, actually people who have one or two members in the family who are working. So we're not talking about people who are just, you know, medically are not well, or otherwise are lazy, or whatever, who are standing in the soup kitchen lines. We are talking about families who are having to make a tough choice between paying the rent, or putting something on the table to eat. We're talking about families not having nutritious food to eat; are they getting by the USDA standards what they require?

Matt Martin: Now you say that these...you base your arguments on the official studies. Are there things going on that they don't capture, that are not being shown in those statistics?

Anuradha Mittal: Well, yes. For example, if you look at the poverty figures, you know, according to the census, figures are the 41 million Americans who live below the poverty line. And we are using official figures to make, because those figures are pretty strong statements in a booming economy. But let's not forget how those poverty figures are calculated. Those figures are calculated by a measurement that was set in the '50s. It was assumed that a family living on a thrifty budget, spends about one-third of the family income on food, and so they could work out the poverty line (on) what that would be. And since then figures have been adjusted, keeping in mind inflation and the rest. But a family no longer spends only one-third of the family budget on food. So when we are talking about a family of four in'94 is able to live, you know, $15,000 a year, that's actually not true. Let's look at...it doesn't take very much. Or when we talk about employment figures, and we talk about the lowest unemployment in the last 29 years, those figures are not saying the people are employed for $7 an hour or $70 an hour. They're not talking about ...these are jobs that come with benefits, such as medical benefits and the rest. So these are very false figures which are not presenting the true image. They're not talking about the number of people, seven million people, who have stopped looking for a job, because they cannot find a job that pays a living wage. So these figures can be very false, can be very misleading, and do not present the true status of the state of the union.

Matt Martin: Describe some of the positive policies the government might take to facilitate some of those human rights you are discussing.

Anuradha Mittal: Well, around the country we are seeing a movement for a living wage. And the government, if it support that...you know, right now they're talking about...the Republicans, who would like to see, you know, minimum wage increase by $1 over three years. Democrats are talking about an increase of $1 over two years. Now, let's be realistic. Both of them are pretty pathetic. We have to talk about each city council, each district, saying what's a real, fair living wage for families. You know, so that people can feed themselves and clothe themselves and shelter themselves. And if the government supported that movement around the country, that would be, you know, basically respecting the right to food and respecting economic human rights.

Matt Martin: What are some of the domestic policies that you think have put us in the situation we're in now?

Anuradha Mittal: Well, again, we don't have to go back 50 years. Let's just talk about the Welfare Reform. You know, August 22, 1997, sorry 1996 when President Clinton signed the Welfare Reform, with one stroke he did away what very little was left of economic human rights in this country. You know, half of those cuts made in Welfare Reform come from food stamp programs. Now, that constitutes only one percent of the federal budget, and yet the government decided to balance the budget on the backs of the poor. Never mind the amount of money that is spent in defense, you know, on the fighter planes and the rest. Right now we can say the richest one percent of the population owns 40 percent of the entire nation's wealth. And I think we are not seeing those figures in the other, you know, corporate owned media, because we're basically questioning, and saying that when we talk about economic boom, millions of people do not have a fair share in the boom. It's the richest one percent that seems to be benefitting more and more and getting richer at the expense of the rest of the population in this country. One in five children is growing up in poverty. And while we are talking about human rights around the world, claiming to be moral leaders, we have to look at the human rights implications of this, you know, poverty among children. We have to look at the human rights implications of increasing hunger, increasing poverty among the people in this country.

Matt Martin: You say, and I quote, "The very survival of our democratic system depends on breaking out of the narrow confines of conventional political views." How does conventional political thinking block awareness and action on poverty and hunger?

Anuradha Mittal: Again I refer to the case of Welfare Reform, it was representatives from Cato & Heritage Institute, the right wing think tank, that played a key role in telling the government that we need to make these cuts, which are not really going to balance the budget...as I said, they constitute 1.1 percent of the federal budget, and it's not very much. But when I say that statement, what I really mean is, the time has really come for the progressives to stop fighting this rear guard battle and putting out the fires. The time has come to basically reshape the political environment, using the framework of human rights. When we talk about social safety net, when we talk about health care and social security, when we have those debates...those debates should be based not on arguments of economic efficiency, but they need to be based on the arguments of human rights for all.

Matt Martin: Are we seeing those movements emerge in the United States? Can you give examples of people who are taking economic human rights and bringing that to the public?

Anuradha Mittal: Well, one very good example of that is the campaign that we coordinate here, Economic Human Rights: The Time Has Come, which is a movement of over 200 groups across the country which are very diverse range from trade unions to women's organizations to immigrant groups, to community-based groups, to policy think tanks. I can think of also poor people's movements, such as the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, which is a movement of poor people. They have marched from Philadelphia to New York, demanding the basic economic human rights, to shelter and food, in these, you know, wonderful economic boom times. I can think of the movement of the black farmers, who are challenging the racial practices of the USDA, which has basically made them almost extinct in this country now. And recently we were on an economic human rights bus tour which brought the progressive members of Congress together with the grass roots movement, and they visited the soup lines kitchens. They went to the hospitals, which have seen massive cuts. We took them to schools to see the impact on education. We took them to the farmers, you know, farms have seen closures thanks to the global economy and practices of the USDA. And this was very important for them to see and learn, so when they draught the policies in Washington, DC, they have the perspective of the grass roots, as well as the framework of human rights, when they draught those policies. So this is a movement which is kind of, slowly building. And it's not just building on the grass roots, it's coming together with the progressive members of the Congress. And it's only going to grow strong.

Matt Martin: Thank you, Anuradha. This is Matt Martin, speaking with Anuradha Mittal, policy director at the Institute for Food and Development Policy. She's co-editor, along with Peter Rosset, of the new book, American Needs Human Rights.

Laura Livoti: You're listening to Making Contact, a production of the National Radio Project. This program can now be heard across the United States and Canada, South Africa and around the world on Radio For Peace International shortwave. You can also hear us on the Internet. If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, please give us a call. It's toll free: 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tape and transcript orders. That's 800-529-5736. We also welcome comments and suggestions for future programs.

Phillip Babich: In sterile terms, free market economists refer to those left out of the economic picture as "surplus population." While federal support for low income people diminishes, and real wages remain stagnant, tens of millions of people in the United States are finding themselves in this category. Muhjah Shakir, a human rights activist working as the west coast coordinator of the Jericho Amnesty Movement, says that one way the U.S. government is managing this population is by fortifying the U.S. prison system.

Muhjah Shakir: I think to a certain extent a lot of the opressed communities in this country are becoming dispensable. You know, they're no longer needed. They're not needed to work in the industries, in the plants. We've seen downsizing every day, we're seeing a great number of layoffs in almost all of the companies here, you know, big companies here in the United States. And so those things are going overseas and they're able to make tremendous profits off of the very miniscule, you know, wages that they pay. And then with free trade, you know, they literally are getting over, big time. So what's the need for these poor people here in the United States? You know...they're dispensable. So let's lock 'em up. Let's create jobs for sort of the lower middle class people in these rural communities to sort of lull them, and to pacify them. They now have a place where they can work. And in many cases the notion of these black people, or people of color, perhaps in their own way of thinking, there is a rationale for it. You know, if in any way they are the victims of the mentality here in this country, which is a very racist society historically. So, many people that live in rural communities, ( my assumption, you know, certainly a gross generalization,) is that... they don't feel badly about, you know, working in a camp of misery. They feel justified in some way.

Phillip Babich: You're talking about some jobs at prisons, where rural communities in the midwest, for example take on contracts for new prisons.

Muhjah Shakir: That's right. And of course, here in the State of California, we lead the nation in the growth industry in the prison system. You know, we've certainly built, I don't know, how many new prisons in the last five years? But quite a few, I think. At least five. You know, new prisons...and of course guards are being paid very well. And teachers are being paid very little. There's a great, you know...it defies all logic, even, when you really look at, what is it that this says about where people place value? I come to this work out of a deep concern. I believe that if you look at sort of the lowest element in society, lowest, weakest, most vulnerable, that's a good way to sort of measure a country's or a society's values and principals and quality...you know, quality of life... or really look at human rights. And so when we look at, you know, the overall conditions in this country in terms of health care, old people, the disabled, young people, youth, and then oppressed nationalities, people of African descent, and other people of color, you begin to see a pattern of disparity. You see conditions that really parallel those in what we call developing countries.

And so out of that kind of perspective and out of that concern, I began to relly look at prisons in particular. And how I found myself involved in prisons is another story. But nevertheless you see this tremendous growth, you know, in the prison system. And the prison system is connected with the justice system...we actually call it the injustice system. And its law enforcement bodies, where Churchill called them 'agents of repression.' But through the courts, and through the laws that get enacted, and the various propositions we see that these most vulnerable populations are being railroaded into captivity, essentially. And they're being railroaded, or criminalized, in the public's mind's eye, through the media and all kinds of psychological games that get played out in our society, that makes these populations appear to be either criminals or people who are failing because in some way there's some fault in their character. And so all these kinds of things get played out. And the growing prison system is definitely connected to an economic growth. We now understand that prisons are on the stock market, you can actually....and they're all being privatized.

Phillip Babich: So you think, looking at the prison population, what the prison population consists of, is a good barometer for looking at perhaps the economic and political system in this country?

Muhjah Shakir: That's exactly right.

Phillip Babich: I'm wondering...you also had a background for being an activist for political prisoners in the United States. And I'm wondering if you can connect some of the struggles that political prisoners you are aware of had been engaged in, with the struggles that are going on today, that are addressing this very question. That is, the economic system and how this relates to the remianing impoverished population in the United States.

Muhjah Shakir: Well, political prisoners grow out of a movement, you know. And most of these movements and people who were involved in them started off as, you know, as community activists, in some cases working in non-profit organizations that were basically trying to provide some kind of community service. And many of those groups were pushed into increasingly militant stances, and so those individuals who were singled out and either framed, in some cases actually murdered...there also were people who left the country...because during the '60s and '70s there was a great attempt to prevent the rise of what J. Edgar Hoover said at that time was the rise of a black messiah. So even people like Martin Luther King, Kwame Nkrumah, the late Stokely Carmichael, certainly Malcolm X. Every progressive organization from the most peaceful to the most militant was targeted for basic neutralization. The Black Panthers, being on the militant end of the continuum, experienced the greatest impact of this counter-intelligence program.

So those people who were targeted grew out of a movement that basically was trying to service their communities, and as those organizations began to evolve and grow, they began to take on the character of legitimate human rights struggles, liberation struggles, in the case of both the indigenous people...there's Leonard Peltier of the American Indian Movement (AIM)... certainly there were, I think, up to 15 Puerto Ricans that were recently released, who were fighting for Puerto Rican independence...there's a whole host, we don't know how many Chicanos or Mexicans are incarcerated because of the immigration laws. And the problems that occur at the border. And that certainly is because of economics, to some extent.

And then in the African Community also, there was was a tremendous Black Liberation Movement that was at its height during the '60s, and so again, more of these movements looked at our general condition, which included the economic condition, because economics is a driving factor, you know, in how free people are to develop themselves, to create institutions, to have dignity, you know, to be able to provide what's needed. You know, it's a human right to have food, to have a decent home, to be safe. So, many of these freedom fighters, this is what they were about. They were about trying to provide the service, they were about standing up for what they believed was an inalienable right as well as a god-given right to, you know, I think the Constitution or the Bill of Rights talks about, even as an American citizen, that if you're ever in a situtation where there's oppression, you have the right to resist that. You have a right to discard the government and get a better one. So these kinds of ideas were really inspiring and motivating these freedom fighters, these activists. So now they were targeted, and some of them have been in prison for 20 years.

Phillip Babich: Lastly, where do see hope in the United States?

Muhjah Shakir: Well, I see it in these budding activists. I see it all around me. I believe that when I take kind of a historical perspective, you know, I know the saying that every great nation has risen and fallen, and I don't think that the United States can continue on the present course for too much longer. I'm not sure what too much longer means! But I just don't see this cycle going on forever, and with the growing dissatisfaction both internally as well as externally. I'm looking at what's going on in the rest of the world, and how I think the United States is really being perceived internationally. I don't think they're making a lot of friends, and haven't been for a long time.

When I look at that and I look at how people are...you know the discourse that's taking place, and even though it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of unity out there, I am hearing people talk about the need for folks to come together. And with Mumia's campaign (Mumia Abu Jamal) who is a political prisoner who is on death row, seeing how his campaign has grown. I mean, I've been doing political prisoner work for about 15 years now, and I can remember even when I first started, that people had no understanding, I mean very few people had knowledge about who these people were, why they were there, and what they stood for. And even fewer people supported them. Even if some folks knew about them, that the whole idea that they had been criminalized so much, that they lost, in a lot of ways, mass support. So when I first started doing this work, you know, you were lucky if you could get, you know, a hundred people to come out for something. And now we see that at least the notion of political prisoner, I mean largely, I mean this country next admits that it even has political prisoners. And there was a time when the average American didn't think that we had any political prisoners. But I doubt that now. I rather doubt that.

Phillip Babich: What's the official number of political prisoners?

Muhjah Shakir: We're saying 150, but that list is expanding every day. We get letters from people who are talking about their cases. We're even beginnning to expand our own way of conceptualizing what a political prisoner is. Because there are so many ways that you can look at the social conditions that kind of, that are created, that cause people to, you know, is a political, it's a socio-political problem, phenomena, a socio-political-economic. And so in some ways one could really say that large, large sectors of the prison population, that they are political prisoners, in some way. And that those people that are there because of some specific involvement in organizations, and they were specifically targeted, we like to think of them as prisoners of war you know, and those are international definitions that are ascribed to people all over the world. And so we say, why shouldn't our people also be able to carry that title, that criteria. Because under internationsl law if you are a political prisoner, there's a certain way that you should be treated within the prison system. You know, people shouldn't be tricked, or people shouldn't be lied to, that these people are criminals, or that they're social criminals.

Phillip Babich: Well, I've been speaking to Muhjah Shakir. Muhjah, thanks for joining us at Making Contact.

Muhjah Shakir: Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here.

Phillip Babich: Muhjah Shakir is west coast co-coordinator of the Jericho Amnesty Movement.

That's it for this edition of Making Contact: A look at poverty in the United States. Thanks for listening. Laura Livoti is our managing director. Peggy Law is executive director. Stephanie Welch is associate producer. Our senior advisor is Norman Solomon. David Barsamian is national producer. Shereen Meraji is production assistant. Din Abdullah is archivist. And I'm your host and managing producer Phillip Babich.

If you want more information about the subject of this week's program, call the National Radio Project at 800-529-5736. Call that same phone number for tapes and transcripts. Making Contact is an independent production. We're committed to providing a forum for voices and opinions not often heard in the mass media. If you have suggestions for future programs, we'd like to hear from you. Our theme music is by the Charlie Hunter Trio. 'Bye for now.