The 88th Anniversary: What have we forgotten? August 26, 2008

Today is the 88th anniversary of (some) women’s suffrage in the United States.  Speaking to this fact, and connecting it to HIllary Clinton’s run for the White House is problematic, since both can be read as emblematic of the “whiteness” of American feminism.  Nonetheless, Susan Faludi’s reflections on this and on the fact that Hillary Clinton is speaking tonight at the Democratic Convention have some important points. 

In fact, there’s lots in her article that is worth remarking on, but her central point is particularly important.  That is, there’s a cycle that feminists are experiencing again.

Suffrage was, like Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, not merely a cause in itself, but a symbolic rallying point, a color guard for a regiment of other ideas. But while the color guard was ushered into the palace of American law, its retinue was turned away.

In the years after the ratification of suffrage, the anticipated women’s voting bloc failed to emerge, progressive legislation championed by the women’s movement was largely thwarted, female politicians made only minor inroads into elected office, and women’s advocacy groups found themselves at loggerheads.

Among other things, the flapper succeeded the feminists, eerily like those young women today who think that the US is “post-gender.” 

Today, the United States ranks 22nd among the 30 developed nations in its proportion of female federal lawmakers. The proportion of female state legislators has been stuck in the low 20 percent range for 15 years; women’s share of state elective executive offices has fallen consistently since 2000, and is now under 25 percent. The American political pipeline is 86 percent male.

Women’s real annual earnings have fallen for the last four years. Progress in narrowing the wage gap between men and women has slowed considerably since 1990, yet last year the Supreme Court established onerous restrictions on women’s ability to sue for pay discrimination. The salaries of women in managerial positions are on average lower today than in 1983.

Women’s numbers are stalled or falling in fields ranging from executive management to journalism, from computer science to the directing of major motion pictures. The 20 top occupations of women last year were the same as half a century ago: secretary, nurse, grade school teacher, sales clerk, maid, hairdresser, cook and so on. And just as Congress cut funds in 1929 for maternity education, it recently slashed child support enforcement by 20 percent, a decision expected to leave billions of dollars owed to mothers and their children uncollected.

Again, male politicians and pundits indulge in outbursts of “new masculinist” misogyny (witness Mrs. Clinton’s campaign coverage). Again, the news media showcase young women’s “feminist — new style” pseudo-liberation — the flapper is now a girl-gone-wild. Again, many daughters of a feminist generation seem pleased to proclaim themselves so “beyond gender” that they don’t need a female president.

I  can’t verify all her facts, so please pitch in if you have other documented data.

Iowa’s “Open-air prison” for women and children August 20, 2008

According to Democracy Now, an immigration raid ended up with 400 people arrested at a meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa.  What happened to the families of those carted off?

And for those left behind–namely the wives and children of the men taken away–the town has been turned into what some have described as an open-air prison. Dozens of immigrant women remain in Postville without status or a means of support. Many of them are even forbidden from leaving and have been made to wear electronic monitoring bracelets.

According to the broadcast, the government helpfully supplied packets for those picked up, with scripts for them to use when entering their pleas and so on.  There was a problem, though.  The scripts presumed they were guilty of a series of crimes, including fraudulent use of government documents, identity theft and so on.

Why not just suppose them guilty, now that Habeas Corpus and all that no longer applies to non-citizens in the US, does it?

“Some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution” August 19, 2008

You know something good must be going on when you get a defense like that, huh? Reader Nicole sent us this story about an Arkansas town that’s dealing with a high crime rate by imposing a curfew. The authorities insist that it’s for citizens’ own good and that they’re sure the citizens would agree. After all, “at 3 o’clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law” (from Councilman Eugene ‘Red’ Johnson, probably not named for his politics). Yup, that’s right, someone’s deciding what time these people have a right to be out on the street. And, as Nicole points out, this is (of course) an impoverished area, where many people work night shifts and do indeed have a “reason” to be out on the streets. (Or would Red rather have them go on welfare? Nope, didn’t think so.) Surely there are better ways to deal with high crime rates than this.

After writing this, I learned JJ had already written on this. But since we’re drawing out different things, I figured I’d put mine up too!

What is choice or autonomy without options? August 15, 2008

Lots of pathologies limit alternatives.  Certainly, abusive situations can do this when, for example, an abused women finds herself caught in a relationship since leaving may involve real risks to her and her children’s lives.  Some people use their anger to stop things, leaving others without reasonable alternaitives. (Thanks to KW for a recent reference that describes this dance.)  And there’s the tragic situation of borderline personality disorder sufferers, whose behavior is particularly apt to bring about the abandonment they so fear.  

We might think of violence in a neighborhood as not very analogous to individual pathologies or pathological acts, but it can have very similar effects.  If bullets whiz around your neighborhood, you really should want to go out less.  So what is the solution?  How about bringing in the armed police?  Well, see what you think of what doing that looks like in practice:

HELENA-WEST HELENA, Arkansas (AP) - Officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in a U.S. neighborhood plagued by violence that’s been under a 24-hour curfew for a week.

On Tuesday, the Helena-West Helena City Council voted 9-0 to allow police to expand that program into any area of the city, despite a warning from a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas that the police stops were unconstitutional.

Police Chief Fred Fielder said the patrols have netted 32 arrests since they began last week in a 10-block neighborhood in this small town on the banks of the Mississippi River long troubled by poverty.

The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost.

“Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I’m fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here,” Mayor James Valley said. “The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.”

However, such stops likely violate residents’ constitutional rights to freely assemble and protections against unreasonable police searches, said Holly Dickson, a lawyer for the ACLU of Arkansas who addressed the council at its packed Tuesday meeting. Because of that, Dickson said any convictions coming from the arrests likely would be overturned.

There is a curfew in effect, one that all evening service workers, for example, will run afowl of.

There are multiple levels at which alternatives have been lost. Removing the police would restore some, but is that a good alternative? What do you think?

(Many thanks to NG for the story.)

Angie Zapata August 11, 2008

We are a bit late in responding to this trajedy. Angie Zapata was an 18 year old Latina transgender women. She was beaten to death by a man to whom she”d given oral sex.

I strongly recommend you not go to youtube to see the comments on this clip. Too many people seem to think murderous rage is a justifiable response.

From Brownfemipower:

An arrest was made in the murder of teenager Angie Zapata. Allen Ray Andrade admitted that he beat Angie with a fire hydrant after he discovered she was transgender. Allegedly, he admitted to police that after he beat Zapata, he thought he “killed it.”

One expects it was a fire extinguisher - jj.

You know the story… August 7, 2008

 A young person in graduate school hears a very inspiring lecture about saving the world.  And then drops out of school and goes off to help severely disadvantaged people.  Well, now that young person can keep a multi-media record and it’s pretty cool too.  There’s even a psychic dog who warns of floods.

If you look at the project photos on the right hand side of the opening page, you’ll see a picture  of our friend Kathy Ward.

Shawn, the young person, is a wonderful model, but any graduate students who decide to follow him will PLEASE not mention us as the origin of your information!  We’re considered subversive enough already.

The Feral Child August 7, 2008

The Feral Child is an object of fascination for many theorists.  The very idea of one raises speculations about what the human being apart from  civilization would be like.  But the actuality can be horrible, tragic, sickening.

Florida’s St. Petersburg Times recently published a long story on a child who seems to have had little social contact for the first five or six years of her life.  This is a very difficult story to read, and even some actions of the remarkable people who have provided her with a home may raise questions in some minds.  From her closet full of fluffy dresses and her Miss Kitty accoutrements to the couple’s other child, who has had serious sacrifices asked or imposed on him to accommodate her, the ending we see may contain signs of other problems.  And it is also the case that we have little idea how she will develop. 

More background information, a slide show, audio interviews can be found here.

UN recognises rape as weapon of war July 31, 2008

The UN has finally acknowledged that rape is used as a weapon of war by voting unanimously in favour of a resolution to classify it as such. Rape has long been used as a means of terrorising and humiliating one’s enemies. It affects not just the people who are raped (most often women and girls), but also the communities to which they belong. Hurting someone is always a means of hurting their family and the wider community of which they are a member. But rape is particularly effective due at least partly to the way in which women and their sexuality are viewed. The norms governing women’s sexual behaviour are typically more stringent or more strictly enforced than those governing the sexual behaviour of heterosexual men. More significantly, deviance from these norms is often held to bring dishonour upon the entire community of which the woman is a part. This Amnesty article has more information about the use of rape as a war tactic. Here also is an article analysing the Rape of Berlin in 1945 and its connection with constructed gender identities. And here is the BBC news report on the UN resolution.

It’s also worth remembering that women in war zones are not just at risk of rape from the warring factions, but also the peacekeepers sent to protect them. Here is an old Guardian report on the issue.

Stalking is neither fashion nor style July 31, 2008

A perfectly decent story about an important memoir of being stalked (understandably, not many of these have been written). But, NY Times, it’s IN THE WRONG PLACE.

More on women and the US economy: UPDATED July 28, 2008

Today’s NYT letters to the editor have a number of authoritative voices discussing women and the economy.  Here are some of the facts we should know about:

… low-income women and women of color … face multiple barriers to economic security: race, gender and class.

Today, despite decades of struggle for job access and pay equity, women are paid 77 cents for each dollar a man makes; the disparity is worse for African-American women, who earn 62 cents, and Latinas, who earn 53 cents.

Nearly 10.5 million women are single parents (as compared with 2.5 million single fathers). For them, opting out for any reason — like motherhood or education — is not viable.

.Sara K. Gould/President and Chief Executive/Ms. Foundation for Women

…

To the Editor:

…

These women (single women who are heads of household) have about one-half the income and less than one-third the wealth of other households. They make up 62 percent of the 5.8 million American families with children in poverty and are more likely to hold subprime mortgages. Many women from this category would like to leave the work force in order to take care of children or other family members but simply cannot afford to do so.

…

Linda Basch/President, National Council for Research on Women

 

To the Editor:

There is another compelling reason that women are leaving the work force: in addition to an unfriendly economy, many face a hostile work environment that fails to accommodate care-giving responsibilities.

Many women have jobs that do not offer paid sick days that we can use for ourselves or our children, no flextime, and only unpaid family and medical leave.

In addition, the Supreme Court took us backward last year in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, which made it more difficult for victims of wage discrimination to win justice by limiting when lawsuits can be filed.

…

 Debra L. Ness/President, National Partnership for Women and Families

 

UPDATE:

NOW invites you to take action now to get legislation through to help women and families.

Women’s Work Choices: Post-feminism or Brutal Economics? July 27, 2008

In her post on girls’ abilities in mathematics, Jender said:

Prediction: if this comes to widely accepted, expect lots more stories about how girls are innately predisposed not to like doing stuff that involves maths– gotta explain the dearth of women in science and maths in such a way that nobody has to worry about it.

Turns out, no surprise, that that pattern of explanation is showing up elsewhere.  Judith Warner in the NY Times remarks:

It has happened like clockwork. In the past two economic downturns, as job losses have forced women out of the workplace, a sort of angel has appeared to guide their way and re-label their unfortunate circumstances as virtuous “choice.”

Economists, sociologists and other academics who rigorously track workplace trends and work-life issues have been saying for years that this self-realized creature with her new, post-feminist home and hearth priorities, is a chimera.

So why or in what ways are being forced out?  Warner’s explanations:  Child-care costs equal one’s take home salary, the workplace is hostile, and/or one is let go.  And recently the latter has become a particularly serious factor:

While prior recessions tended to spare women’s jobs relative to men’s, that trend has been reversed in the current downturn, thanks in part to women’s progress in entering formerly male industries and occupations, and in part to the fact that job sectors like service and retail, which still employ disproportionate numbers of women, have suffered disproportionate losses. And this — not a calling to motherhood — accounts for the fall, starting in 2000, of women’s labor force participation rates.

I can’t wait for the hiring figures for 2009 in philosophy to come out.   Ours isn’t even a formerly male occupation.

There are two particularly nice features of Warner’s report.  First, she stresses that the picture of women’s choices is being construction by in part ignoring the research of “economists, sociologists and other academics.”  You know how that goes; let’s ignore the elites and say what we feel is true.  Secondly, she links to a very recent congressional report that puts paid to the myth of choice and calls for some sensible remedial measures.

 

Male Veto For Abortion in Ohio? July 26, 2008

In teaching about abortion, one position the students *here* find so appalling as to be barely worth discussing is the idea of a male veto for abortion decisions. But in Ohio, a bill mandating this is being considered. Planned Parenthood of Ohio writes:

One year ago, State Rep. John Adams (R-Sidney) introduced one of the most outrageous pieces of legislation we have ever seen. House Bill 287 would require a woman to have the written informed consent of the prospective father of her fetus before being allowed to have an abortion.

That’s right… If the man says “No,” there will be no abortion.Period!

This bill may actually be scheduled for hearings in the coming weeks. To raise awareness about this offensive bill, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of Ohio is partnering with ProgressOhio, an outreach organization that builds awareness of legislative issues.

You’re not going to believe this… HB 287 also requires that, if the identity of the prospective
father is unknown, a paternity test must be performed to determine his identity so that his consent could be obtained prior to performing the abortion.

What is left unsaid is that prenatal paternity testing: cannot be performed until at least the 10th week of pregnancy, near the end of the first trimester; is an invasive procedure using a long needle through the abdomen to collect fetal cells; is expensive - up to $2,000 per test;
and poses a potential medical risk. The practical effect of the paternity test requirement would
prevent some women from obtaining an abortion during the first trimester.

Once paternity is established, if the man says “No,” there will be no abortion.

Even worse if… If the pregnancy resulted from rape, the woman would be required
to provide a police report proving it. If the pregnancy resulted from incest, the woman would be
required to provide a paternity test or a police report. If the woman chooses not to identify the prospective father (perhaps out of fear for her own physical well-being), her only recourse would be to continue the pregnancy against her wishes or have an illegal abortion, a first degree misdemeanor.

To sign a petition against it, go here. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)

Italy and Roma July 24, 2008

Probably unbeknownst to most Americans, one of the most discriminated-against groups in Europe is the Roma. And Italy has become, especially recently, an especially bad place to be Roma. Berlusconi has recently launched a campaign to fingerprint all of Italy’s Roma population (and nobody else). But what seems to finally be waking people up to how bad things are is what happened on a beach in Naples. According to reports (for some questionning of them, see the links here), four Roma sisters went swimming despite lack of knowledge of how to swim. Two of them drowned. Many people failed to even try to help. Their bodies were laid on the beach. Then everybody got back to sunbathing– not allowing a couple corpses on the beach to interfere with their holiday. Photos were taken of holiday-makers sunning themselves by the bodies. I’m not posting them here, as I feel that might be disrespectful– but they serve to show the extent to which the Roma have been dehumanised in the minds of many Italians (and others). I’m so very depressed by this.

Some Muslim Blogs July 18, 2008

I was looking for advice on how to be a good wife  - though not with the intention of following it, of course - and I came  across Ijtema and then the Indian Muslim Blog.  Since until about 2  hours ago I was totally unaware of these sites, I can’t really evaluate them.  I discovered the second by searching for discussions of the first, and I haven’t gotten any further.

So why mention them?  Well, because many of the views expressed are not ones white Western feminist encounter all that often and arguably we should be aware of them.  For example, we are all happy to combat rumors about Obama being a muslim.  Some members of the muslim community have, as we might imagine, a different take on what is going on.  The perspective motivating the first blog is surely itself important:

Ijtema is the Arabic word for “congregation” or “gathering”. The aim of the editors at IJTEMA is to gather together the best of the Muslim blogosphere in one place, as a showcase of what we truly believe to be, real Muslim voices, and real Muslim talent.

Why are you doing this?

Because we have no choice.

The mainstream media seems to have an agenda: to propagate the idea of a supposed ‘Clash of Civilisations’. The most vocal elements on both sides of the camp - those who are for or against this idea - are mainly non-Muslim; it seems that the Muslim community has lost its ability to reach out. In the meantime, a handful of media moguls gets to choose what the West (or, in fact, the rest of planet Earth) hears about Islam, and our Ummah. And sure enough, the likes of Bin-Laden (who, incidentally, are disliked by most of Muslim World) come across loud and clear.

Another fact is that  these seem to me good examples of the diversity of viewpoints that are excluded from much in our media.  A somewhat startling example of this is the Christian Biblical basis for pacificism that Jeremiah Wright expresses:

The press declared him totally unacceptable before anyone might have this important discussion, one that challenges the ‘Christian’ president’s justification for war.

OK, now it is true that the first blog contains a link to an attack on white Western feminism that none of us will judge accurate.  And what I’ve noticed most about the second are the links to poetry in a tradition I know little about.  But clearly it also has many discussions of global politics, and I expect some of it is  quite different from our daily fare.

So see what you think!

Abortion and the Web July 11, 2008

Women in countries where abortion is restricted are using the web to obtain abortifacient medications. There are some significant safety concerns, and it also looks like there’s considerable variation between various services. But Women on the Web sounds like a very responsible organisation. It looks like it is generally legal to use this service, even if abortion is illegal where one is located. A very interesting and important use of the web to help women who really need help. (Thanks, Mr J!)

Buy goats! July 5, 2008

According to Nicholas Kristoff in the NY Times, Beatrice Biira graduated this year  from Connecticut College because of a goat.

Here’s part of the story:

… in Niantic, Conn., the children of the Niantic Community Church wanted to donate money for a good cause. They decided to buy goats for African villagers through Heifer International, a venerable aid group based in Arkansas that helps impoverished farming families.

A dairy goat in Heifer’s online gift catalog costs $120; a flock of chicks or ducklings costs just $20.

One of the goats bought by the Niantic church went to Beatrice’s parents and soon produced twins. When the kid goats were weaned, the children drank the goat’s milk for a nutritional boost and sold the surplus milk for extra money.

The cash from the milk accumulated, and Beatrice’s parents decided that they could now afford to send their daughter to school. She was much older than the other first graders, but she was so overjoyed that she studied diligently and rose to be the best student in the school.

Beaytrice was an excellent student and started to win scholarships that took her finally to Conn College. Kristoff says:

When people ask how they can help in the fight against poverty, there are a thousand good answers, from sponsoring a child to supporting a grass-roots organization through globalgiving.com. (I’ve listed specific suggestions on my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground, and on facebook.com/kristof).

Free Speech and Hate Speech July 3, 2008

There’s a thoughtful discussion in a recent New York Review of Books entitled “Free Speech and the Menace of Hysteria.”  Though he passes by without comment the title’s term  that associates the womb with a mind out of control (groan), Jeremy Waldron does provide an interesting review of a book by Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate.  A later comment by Perry Link summarizes a point Waldron argues for:

In his excellent essay “Free Speech and the Menace of Hysteria” [NYR, May 29], Jeremy Waldron shows how, in the United States over the last two hundred years, the state came to be viewed as sufficiently stable that it “did not need the support of the law against the puny denunciations of the citizenry.” To subject the state to “free trade in ideas” is by now seen as carrying little risk and as having considerable advantages for democratic rule. Next, Professor Waldron argues that the case is not parallel for vulnerable minorities—such as, in our society today, Muslims from Asia or Latinos in the Southwest. Here the hate speech that might appear in the marketplace can bring grievous and irreparable harm, and perhaps should be restricted by law.

Link also argues that there is a serious problem about who employs the restraint.  I hope both the article and the comment are  available electronically.  It could be used to set  up a good discussion.

Stanley Fish v. Feminist Theory & Cognitive Neuroscience June 30, 2008

Whew!

The connection is a matter of conjecture, but three things are not:

1.  Stanley Fish’s remark in the NY Times about how boring the run-up to the elections is turning out to be.  And his comment:

 It’s often been said that once a woman or an African-American wins the presidency, the obstacles attached to gender and race will just fade away. They already have. I’m not saying that no one will vote against Obama because he’s black; but everyone gets voted against for something, and now that we have gotten quite used to Obama, voting against him because he’s black will be just another ordinary exercise of prejudice, not a special or particularly notable one.

Let’s leave aside the extraordinary idea that the obstacles have faded and look at the claim that follows.  Since “everyone gets voted against for something,” a racist vote against Obama is just par for the course? What is so very hard to understand about the effects of racism or sexism? Voting against someone because you do not like the way they stare into the camera is very different from participating in a prejudice that ends up with a group of people most of whom are disadvantaged in comparison with those who escape the prejudice.

2. Feminist standpoint theory holds that those who live as a subordinate group can understand the world in ways not accessible to the normal understanding of the subordinating person. 

3.  Cognitive neuroscience has explored the many ways in which our capacities to, for example, move through a complex environment are grounded in neural connections almost all of which are below our awareness.  This morning I was thinking of an old example of Elizabeth Anscombe’s:  Someone is coming down a stair and stumbles at the end; they say, “O, I thought there was another step” even though no such thought would have occurred to them.  What this captures is the way that our bodies can embodied expectations of which we are usually unaware, but which it seems right to count as expectations about the environment.

So here’s the conjectured connection:  a lot of us have a knowledge of the effects of living as objects of prejudice and we have a deep bodily-based sense of it.  The expectations are often ones that feminists may spend a lot of effort to bring out and understand.  But the understanding itself is so hard to communicate  because it is a matter of connections that are often part of our quite fundamental ways of coping with our environment. 

The chances of Stanley Fish’s getting it are not that great unless he makes more of an effort than he seems to have done so far.  But we’ve tried to help here and here.

“Homosexual-led persecution of church” June 21, 2008

A joke, right? We all know the attitude of many Christian churches is too close to persecution of homosexuals; see here and here, for example.  How could such malign actions possibly be going in the other direction? 

And plenty of religious groups opposed even secular “gay acceptance” activities, thus trying to prevent efforts to diminish the cruel and sometimes lethal persecution gays do suffer.

But, no, some people apparently actually maintain that homosexuals are persecuting churches. And the nature of the persecution is quite ironic. Most persecution is at least ostensibly to get rid of something. But homosexuals are persecuting churches in order to join them and to get them to stop their discriminatory behavior.  As NPR, quoted by the blog linked to immediately above, put it:

In recent years, some states have passed laws giving residents the right to same-sex unions in various forms. Gay couples may marry in Massachusetts and California. There are civil unions and domestic partnerships in Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Oregon. Other states give more limited rights.

Armed with those legal protections, same-sex couples are beginning to challenge policies of religious organizations that exclude them, claiming that a religious group’s view that homosexual marriage is a sin cannot be used to violate their right to equal treatment. Now parochial schools, “parachurch” organizations such as Catholic Charities and businesses that refuse to serve gay couples are being sued — and so far, the religious groups are losing.

When suing for your civil rights is presented as persecuting, watch out! You may well be in the Orwellian land of the far right.

Asylum seekers as valued community members June 16, 2008

Stereotype has it that the British working class is the most likely segment of the population to be racist and anti-immigrant, scapegoating and hating on the asylum seekers. But this heartening article tells a different story.

We had our own little code to warn them it was a dawn raid and to get out. There’s more than one way of getting out of the flats - there’s two staircases and two lifts, so you could play games if you knew how. If we were a thorn in their flesh, then good.”
Sixty-seven-year-old Jean Donnachie flashes a mischievous smile as she describes the tactics she and her neighbours used every day to thwart immigration officers trying to arrest asylum seekers on her estate in Glasgow. A grandmother and former cashier who has lived on the Kingsway for 20 years, she makes an unlikely resistance fighter. But when she talks about how the estate took on the Home Office, there is a gleam of defiance in her eyes.

At first sight, the Kingsway seems an unwelcoming place. Wind whips around the 15-storey tower blocks, the windows in the lobby doors are broken, the corridors are gloomy and bare. Remnants of police incident tape flicker from lampposts and prominent surveillance cameras add an air of menace to its pathways. There is little to dispel the sense that this is one of Britain’s forgotten pockets of poverty.

But when hundreds of asylum seekers were placed there to live - often for years - while their cases were processed, they were warmly embraced. “We had been really going downhill - a lot of antisocial families were being put here. But after a year of the asylum seekers coming, the atmosphere became completely different,” Donnachie says. “These people couldn’t do enough for you, and I thought this was wonderful - it was like going back to when I was a child and you could leave the key in the door and if you needed help someone would come round.”

In the UK, people seeking asylum are often kept waiting for verdicts on their cases for years– during which time they are given a place to stay and subsistence, but not allowed to work. As a result, many have thrown themselves into voluntary work in their communities, become valued and much-loved neighbours. And when the government gets around to deciding to throw them out, the communities are fighting back. This is happening across the country, and community efforts are apparently meeting with at least some degree of success.

An important story, and one that goes against the conventional narrative– that’s what happens when you actually talk to people, rather than just accepting the received wisdom.
Via The F-word.