This week we have another heart-warming story from our St. Louis Community. A man named Jake Austin runs a special service, a Shower the People truck, that offers free showers and other hygiene services to homeless people in the St. Louis area. We’re often reminded of how the homeless and other poor people need food, and what an excellent job so many of the food pantries do. We recognize that if a person has shelter, they have overcome some of the barriers to homelessness, but far from all.

There are still people who are literally living on the streets and what they face is incomprehensible, especially in the wealthiest country in the world. To eat and to find clothing, some actually engage in dumpster diving. But what then?

That’s where Austin and his cohorts come in. In a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story on “Shower the People,” Austin said, “Hot water and soap are wildly underrated in the world. You don’t realize what it means to you until you don’t have it.”

That resonated with Austin, who bought a truck he found on Craigslist for $5,000 and started Shower to the People.

Tangibly, the truck is equipped with two shower stalls and moves to different neighborhoods. Intangibly, it’s equipped with a ray of hope for many of the region’s homeless.

When it began operations a year ago, it offered showers two days a week. Now it’s four, with plans for more growth, Austin said. “We don’t have clients, we have friends and neighbors, and I’m excited about our growth.”

This is another “feel good” story for St. Louis. Fortunately, we’re fed a steady diet of them because we have Channel 5 (NBC affiliate) “on our side” [that’s their slogan] and Channel 4 (CBS affiliate) “never stops watching out for you” [their slogan]. With those two agents as our allies, we should have an army of charitable people and organizations that ensure that we never have people in our community who are hungry, homeless, or so left out in the cold that they have not showered in two months.

It was not a television station that broke the story of the “Shower the People” to us. It was St. Louis’ flagship daily newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. And they certainly care about us. No words could provide a greater call to action than Joseph Pulitzer’s platform, written on April 10, 1907.

I know that my retirement will make no difference in its cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

Joseph Pulitzer clearly got it. He talks about broad societal change to ensure that justice takes the lead over charity. He sees the well-being of citizens as a major concern of government and that responsible government must provide a safety net to protect all in need.

Perhaps it was inevitable as time went on the Post-Dispatch would have to trim its sails a bit to appeal to readers who were not nearly as progressive in thought or action as Pulitzer. At the time that he wrote his platform, there were nearly a dozen daily newspapers in St. Louis, so the Post-Dispatch could securely cater to the progressive niche.

As the Post worked to broaden its appeal, it had to seek out advertisers that were not comfortable with words like “never lack sympathy with the poor” or “always remain devoted to the public welfare.”

The TV stations crow about the great service they do for our community and the newspaper does indeed find time to provide some in-depth coverage to real acts of charity. But what is lost is how far we are from the words of Pulitzer’s platform.

A just society with a responsible government would never have need for a shower truck, much less homeless shelters or food banks. The society would recognize what is in Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience3 and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

It is appropriate that we now cheer for Jake Austin and others who bring us the “Shower the People” truck. It is also appropriate that we cry that we are as far from justice as we are in 2017. No amount of “being on the side” of our charities will make up for a commitment to a solid government social and economic safety net. Whenever we cheer for the charity, let’s remember the omission of justice. And whenever the television station or newspaper tells us of the charity, let them remind us of the injustice that gave cause to the charity.

The post Charity: It feels so good it hurts appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I recently had two experiences which crystallized why I think that so many Americans, particularly younger ones, do not understand the importance of the federal government to a progressive agenda.

Our non-profit was working with a group of high school students. We visited a homeless shelter in St. Louis, hopefully in a way that was not intrusive to the residents. As we were leaving, we asked the public information official who had given us the tour what suggestions for solving homelessness in America she might give to Senator Claire McCaskill, if she had an opportunity to speak directly to the senator.

The official thought for a moment and then said that she would tell Senator McCaskill that homelessness is a serious problem and more people need to care about it. I found the answer to be disappointing because caring without a strategy can only get us so far. American history has shown us that charity can only put a dent in solving safety net issues. Local governments do not have the resources and states have neither the money nor in many cases, the inclination.

Following the tour, we returned to the school and I mentioned to the students that I was somewhat disappointed in the shelter official’s response. I asked them what suggestions for solving the homelessness problem would they have for Senator McCaskill.

Having looked at other charities over the course of the year, they were convinced that the answer meant government involvement. But then when we pressed the issue, they said that local government would be best because those officials would best know the community. When we cited that St. Louis is poor and would probably not have the money to successfully address the issue, they then said that homelessness would best be solved by the state of Missouri.

Knowing how resistant the state of Missouri has been in recent decades to being part of a solid social safety net for the less fortunate of its citizens, I was initially disappointed and even frustrated. Didn’t these students know that the programs that have come closest to addressing the needs of those in poverty have come from the federal government? The ability to think with compassion and to provide resources has historically been much greater in Washington, DC than Jefferson City, MO.

But as I thought about it, why should these students know it? When in their lives have they experienced a national government in Washington that is fundamentally committed to promoting economic as well as legal justice? Perhaps a few were born in the waning days of the Clinton Administration so their only real experience with a Democrat in the White House has been Barack Obama.

They know that Obama fought for racial, gender and ethnic tolerance. They know that he accepted climate change, that he was not bellicose in foreign affairs. But they know little about his economic policies. If they began to research what steps he had taken to improve the economy, they would find that his legacy is largely framed by big bailouts; first for Wall Street and then for the automobile industry. While the auto bailout saved and even increased blue-collar jobs, the Wall Street measures basically made the rich wealthier, kept the middle class stagnant, and put those in poverty at a further distance than ever from top earners.

They did not hear Barack Obama proposing the creation of a huge safety net as FDR did in the New Deal. They did not hear him calling for the expansion of that net as LBJ did with the Great Society. They did hear Obama advocate affordable medical care for all Americans, but they knew that the final product was riddled with inadequacies.

In short, they had no idea what progressive government would look like.

It’s not just the students. A teacher has to be close to seventy years old to have lived through the Great Society with awareness. Educators don’t like for history or social studies teachers to be challenged with the question of “how can teach about something that you never experienced?” Obviously, all teachers, all human beings are limited by how much they have personally experienced or witnessed in life. But why is it that so many teachers and students are acquainted with the story of the Star-Spangled Banner than they are of the fight for workers’ rights?

We have a myopic view of the world that those who are not progressives are happy to see us have. What students can’t imagine is hard for them to desire or advocate.

How do we solve this? The easiest, but highly unlikely way, would be for America to elect another Bill Clinton or Barack Obama and once in office, have them turn from moderate to progressive. Better would be to elect the likes of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warner (although about twenty years younger for both). In the absence of that, all who are progressive need to do all that they can to expose students and teachers to the New Deal and the Great Society. And don’t do it in a boring way. Make it fun and meaningful. It’s a tough chore, but our backs are against the wall and we have to act with that knowledge in mind.

The post A Skewed View of Washington, DC from the Heartland appeared first on Occasional Planet.

“Climate change is not just about statistics. Climate change is not just about science. Climate change is about human rights.”

– Ursula Rakova, Founder and Director of Tulele Peisa

Behold the ravishingly beautiful Carteret Islands—an atoll of six low-lying islands not far from Papua, New Guinea, in the southwest Pacific Ocean. The Carteret Islands are more than eight thousand miles away from where I sit as I write this post, and, incredibly, some of them are disappearing. Not long ago a distance of thousands of miles would have made it easy to overlook the human and environmental tragedy unfolding on Carteret—but not anymore. The age of information sharing has made it possible to witness firsthand the stories of how people’s lives are being upended by the effects of global warming and climate change—even in the most remote of places like Carteret.

The Carteret Islands have been inhabited for more than one thousand years. But now, as the land is being swallowed by the rising sea, the islands’ communities are grappling with an uncertain future.

It’s been said that the Carteret islanders are the world’s first official climate-change refugees. Through no fault of their own, they have become the first wave in what scientists predict will become a tidal wave of global dislocations and humanitarian crises caused by global warming and environmental degradation.

Forced to abandon their ancestral homelands due to food shortages, rising sea levels, sinking shorelines, and the dangers of storm surges and king tides, the islanders face life-altering choices resulting from economic and political decisions beyond their control. In the video below, their anger and sadness is heartbreaking. The choice for them is clear. They can stay and watch the islands shrink and slowly disappear. Or they can evacuate, “leaving their values and conscience behind,” and try to rebuild their community on mainland Bougainville. Either way, the islanders bear a deep burden of loss.

In “Sisters on the Planet: Carteret Islands,” a video produced by Oxfam New Zealand, we meet Ursula Rakova, hero and founder of Tulele Peisa, a community organization supported by the Carteret Islands Council of Elders. With little to no government funding, Ms. Rakova decided to develop and implement an evacuation plan for Carteret’s three thousand inhabitants. As of the filming of the video, Ms. Rakova had managed the successful migration of one thousand seven hundred of her fellow islanders, even while continuing the essential work of documenting the history and traditions of the vanishing islands of the Carterets.

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If charity was the answer to our problems, then there would be no homelessness in America, no poverty in general. We would have a much better health care system and school systems that truly met the needs of children and society’s common good. But this is not the way that it is, much to the chagrin of Republicans.

The United States is a charitable nation, and as previously reported in Occasional Planet, Republicans are far more charitable than Democrats. But as our recent Occasional Planet public opinion survey shows, the issue is not that Democrats are stingy, rather it is that they see government as the best way to address problems like hunger.

Occasional Planet asked* a random sample of 550 Americans, “In your opinion, what is the best way to address hunger in America?”

Slightly more saw government assistance rather than charity as the preferable way to solve hunger, however nearly six in ten said that both avenues are of equal value. But as we break it down to various demographic or affiliation groups, we find a clear pattern.

You can see inside the red ellipse that Republicans are almost ten times as likely as Democrats to think that charity alone is the best way to address hunger in America. Inside the blue ellipse, we see that Democrats are about 2 ½ times as likely as Republicans to think that the best way to address the issue is through government assistance. On all counts, Independents expectedly fall in the middle.

Party affiliation involves a choice. But are demographic factors behind the party affiliations the cause of these differences? First a look at gender:

Even without the ellipses, you can see that the differences are negligible. What about race and ethnicity?

The differences between what Caucasians and minorities think is statistically insignificant.

When it comes to income level, we do see one significant difference:

Respondents who live in households with annual incomes of less than $50,000, have only about a third as much confidence in charity as those making over $50,000. This is particularly interesting because the “blue respondents” (those from households with incomes under $50,000 per year), are the very people who are frequently on the receiving end of both charity and government assistance. With only 7% of the blue respondents thinking that charity is the best way to address hunger, it is pretty clear that those who know best do not think that the job can be done best through charity alone.

So here is what we learned from this survey on addressing hunger in America:

1. Most Americans think that the way to address hunger in America is through a combination of charity and government assistance.
2. The people in our society who are the poorest and most likely to be recipients of charity and government assistance do not have very much confidence in the effectiveness of charity alone.
3. By a factor of ten, Republicans are more inclined to favor charity as the sole solution to hunger in America than Democrats are.
4. Perhaps most importantly, this may be why charitable giving by Republicans is greater than that of either Democrats in the United States or Europeans as a whole. However, the Democratic view that government assistance is a much better way to solve hunger than charity is very consistent with the strong support that Bernie Sanders has received in his presidential bid.

Bernie has touched many nerves in the electorate, and this survey clearly demonstrates that one of them is that his own party is much more supportive of government programs than with voluntary charity.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

The post Addressing hunger: Republicans say charity; Dems say government appeared first on Occasional Planet.

You can tell a lot about a society by what its citizens compliment themselves about. You might also learn a great deal about a society’s insecurities by what citizens say to make themselves feel good.

The United States is perhaps the most charitable nation in the world. According to the 2014 World Giving Index, the U.S. actually tied with Myanmar (you can use that factoid to win some points, somewhere, somehow). The U.S. is the only country that ranked in the top ten of each of the three categories: (a) the percentage of people who donate in a typical month to charity, (b) volunteer time and (c) help a stranger.

This is much to gloat about, but is it possible that this positive trait covers up shameful statistics for the United States?

We are proud of the money and sweat equity we give to food panties. According to the non-profit Feeding America, the U.S. has 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs that provides food and services to people each year. But our pride is possible only because according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, one in six people in America faces hunger. If wealth were distributed in the United States so that all people had the financial resources to feed themselves, then there would be no need for charity to be a source of food for our citizens. America would be less charitable.

More than 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness each year. The figure is nearly 580,000 each night. Thirty-five percent of the homeless population are families with children,  the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population. Twenty-three percent are U.S. military veterans. Yet hundreds of churches and other non-profit organizations run shelters for the homeless. Americans are indeed very charitable towards these organizations, but it is no substitute for a nation in which every citizen has sufficient income or wealth to have a roof over his or her head. We make charity possible by failing to insist that government fulfill its obligation to provide a basic standard of living for all Americans.

It is basically Republican politicians who stand in the way of providing a livable safety net for American citizens. They oppose: raising minimum wages, offering a guaranteed income, expanding Social Security and Medicare where necessary, fully funding health care for veterans, and providing even minimal health care for many poor people in states that resist Medicaid expansion. Who benefits from Republican obstinacy? Three sectors of our society:

1. American business, which pays lower taxes because we do not fully fund a safety net. At the same time, business brag about their charitable donations, even though they are far smaller than would be their fair share in providing a livable level of income for all Americans.
2. Churches and other religious organizations, who benefit from the holes in the safety net. Churches can take the lead in charitable enterprises. But if the government was taking care of all Americans, religious institutions would be largely stripped of their charitable functions. That in turn would likely be a disincentive for many Americans to join or remain members in religious organizations.
3. Wealthy people in the United States, who can brag ’til the cows home about how charitable they are, even though the amount that many give is far less than what would be their fair tax in a society that cared for its poor, its infirm, its children, and its senior citizens.

I previously wrote  about how Republicans are more charitable than Democrats and Europeans. They love to brag about it. They and the causes that they support receive ongoing adulation from Americans, particularly from mainstream media outlets. What is not said is that it’s all a good economic deal for Republicans. They are able to pay less and brag more. Regrettably, this may be too difficult a concept for most Americans to understand.

The post Americans are too charitable appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Great news from the humanitarian ideas department. In 2006, Doug Sharp, of Des Moines IA, put together a team of architects with the goal of designing a sturdy home, made of  lightweight materials, that would be easy to ship and could be built in one day by one family. All this for as little money as possible.

Sharp intends his Abod project to be philanthropic, rather than a personal moneymaker.

Abod’s tiny homes address an international need, says the Abod website:

The need for safe, sanitary and durable housing is global. It’s the first crucial step for improving the health, safety and quality of life for millions of people living in poverty, as well as victims of natural disaster.

GLOBAL POVERTY Today, a billion people—32% of the global urban population—live in urban slums. The United Nations projects that if no serious action is taken, the number of slum dwellers worldwide will increase to 2 billion over the next 30 years. Adequate housing is vitally important to the health of the people as well as the world’s economies. Abod is an affordable, flexible solution that could serve as a foundation for a healthier micro or even macro community to emerge.

ECONOMY 1.2 billion people in the world experience “income poverty,” meaning that they live on the US equivalent of less than $1 US per day . And in Africa, households need an average of 12.5 times their annual income to buy a house, making it a nearly impossible achievement.

Creating factories in countries and communities that adopt the Abod housing solution would not only help the housing crisis, but also create jobs for local people and boost economic development. Good housing in communities in turn attracts economic investment, contributes to potential education systems, and promotes positive community development.

NATURAL DISASTERS Natural disasters like typhoons, earthquakes and hurricanes create the immediate need for housing on a massive scale, particularly in countries already plagued by inadequate housing and poor construction. Often times, when disaster strikes in a country already gripped in debt, its government is unable to help its people, leaving families to sink or swim. Since the Abod can be constructed in one day, it could help provide quick relief to some when the need arises.

HEALTH With poverty often comes infectious disease, due to overcrowding, lack of access to healthcare services, and lack of immunization. An estimated 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, and millions die each year. Each year also brings 350-500 million cases of malaria, and 1 million deaths. And according to UNICEF, 24,000 children die each day . A stable micro community built of Abod units could provide just the stability and sanitation needed to combat disease in impoverished area

As reported on Inhabitat:

Highly affordable and flexible in design, each shelter can be can be customized to fit each owner’s particular needs. Everything from kitchen and toilet units to end walls, loft expansions and special doors can be added to the core structure.

Mostly constructed out of corrugated metal, a translucent plastic panel can be used to incorporate natural lighting – a boon for slums that typically lack decent access to national electricity grids. Gutters incorporated into the shelters ensure that rainwater is directed away from the tiny homes to improve sanitation and a number of the houses can be linked together to create a small community… The first Abod community was constructed just outside of Johannesburg as a test pilot.

According to the Abod website, the tiny homes have the following characteristics and advantages:

Compact and cost-effective to deliver. By truck, ship or plane, the lightweight home can be delivered onsite for quick and easy assembly. • Readily manufactured in large quantities. All components are made from stock materials. • Quick and simple to assemble. An entire single unit structure can be completed in one day by four people. •High-quality, enduring structure has a projected low cost via mass manufacturing.

Secure and permanent yet easily moved: This is especially vital where land can only be leased, not owned. The Abod is designed so that if an owner doesn’t like where it was first placed, or has to move, they can quickly and easily disassemble, relocate, and reassemble the home. • Low fire risk: The Abod is comprised of primarily non-combustible materials, so the risk of fire is minimal. • Exceptionally load bearing: The Abod is designed to reflect the catenary arch which is the most stable form in nature. • Exceptional weather shielding: Integrated rain gutters direct water away from structure.

Abod is a high-concept example of a wider, tiny-home movement. Earlier ideas for micro homes sprang more from people interested in scaling down and minimizing their lifestyles. Abod, and other humanitarian projects like it, such as one in Austin, Texas, focus on tackling the problems of chronic homelessness and slum living. Yes! Magazine recently reported on a tiny-home village for homeless people in Olympia, Washington.

As someone who is frequently outraged by politicians’ disregard for poor people, it’s nice, for a change, to find practical projects aimed at helping, rather than punishing economically down-and-out folks. They’re not necessarily government programs, but they offer an excellent model that awaits a new era of progressivism in government.

The post Micro-sized houses with potentially huge impact around the world appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Many of my friends have been incredibly generous with donations of food, money, toiletries and blankets to the St. Louis Homeless Winter Outreach volunteers.  These volunteers go out on really cold nights to find people without a place to sleep indoors.  Can you imagine sleeping outside with temperatures near zero?  I can’t imagine how painful it must be to be that cold.  I complain when I’m outside just for a short time without gloves on.  My hands actually hurt.

How much more must it hurt to be out in the cold wind day and night all winter.  My friend Tina told me today that there seems to be “an explosion” of people trying to survive outdoors.  She doesn’t know where they are all coming from.  Some may have been trying to get through the worst of the winter inside abandoned buildings, but temperatures even inside can be life threatening.  On Tuesday night, the Winter Outreach volunteers were out until 11:30 p.m. taking people to shelters.  They found men huddled on the grates near the Savvis Center with no blankets.  The one shelter in a city-owned building took in over 100 people that night.  That’s not even counting the other temporary shelters in churches and the New Life Evangelistic Center.

There was a letter in the Post Dispatch on Monday by someone very concerned about the damage being done to low income people by our state legislature and the U.S. Congress.  The Republicans in the state legislature refuse to expand Medicaid, while the Congress is cutting food stamps and unemployment compensation.  Every time I open the paper or watch the news there is a story about income inequality.  The facts are clear.  The richest people in the U.S. have done phenomenally well while  working and middle class families have had to learn to make do with less and less.  Many of the homeless are actually working full time but don’t make enough money to pay rent, utilities, etc.  If they have family or friends with a couch or extra bed, that’s like heaven next to living under a bridge.

This is outrageously inhumane in the richest country the world has ever known.  There have to be better ways to protect our fellow citizens than relying on a handful of volunteers to search for people freezing outdoors and taking them to temporary shelters where they have to leave again in the morning.  The City of St. Louis relies on volunteer organizations to staff their emergency shelter and provide food.  I’m really not in a position to know why the City can’t budget for emergencies like this, but it seems like it should be a top priority.  I know they get millions of dollars from HUD to provide services for the homeless.

The TV weather forecasters tell us to “bundle up” when we “head out the door in the morning.”  I wonder if they ever think about people who don’t have the means to “bundle up” and don’t even have a door.  If there were more attention by the media to the plight of the homeless, we would surely see more effort by the decision makers to find solutions to this problem.

The bottom line for the Winter Outreach volunteers is to keep people from freezing to death.  That’s a pretty grim mission statement.  Tina said they work so hard to get people into shelters because they don’t want to pull back a pile of blankets and find a frozen corpse.

Is this what has become of us?  We mark our progress as a society when no one freezes to death?  What happens when the volunteers find their first body?  Will the goal then be to avoid letting five people freeze to death?  Or ten?  This is what happens when we allow our elected leaders to serve and protect the robber barons and leave the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

Every cut in programs that serve the poor “trickles down” and causes terrible pain.  You might say it’s death by a thousand cuts.

Let’s stop rationalizing and blaming the victim.  That’s what the Republicans want us to do.  If a child starves or has to huddle under blankets all night in an abandoned building, the hard-hearted politicians say it’s the parents’ fault for not making better choices.  That’s a cop out and a lie.  We’ve also been fed the story that homelessness is such a complex problem that no one can solve it.  Well, we can start by making sure everyone has the minimum of a warm place to sleep and a hot meal.

The post Invisible and hurting appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Tragically, we have become accustomed to seeing pictures of deplorable living conditions in many parts of the world:

We pity the people subjected to the hunger, disease and degradation of those places. We thank whatever deity we may believe in, or the stars, or the luck of the draw that we’re not in those pictures. We tell ourselves that, if we ran the world, such places would not exist, and we occasionally fork over a few dollars to international organizations who are doing something about it.  And, of course, we believe that, because we live in a country touted as “the greatest in the world,” we wouldn’t let that happen here.

But we do.

Fresno, California–the American city with one of the highest per capita rates of homelessness in the U.S.–is our own, homegrown poster child for the kind of pitiful living conditions we mistakenly think are reserved for third-world countries.  Recently, Fresno city officials began evicting homeless people from encampments that have sprung up around the city. They are fewer in number than the homeless and displaced populations living in tents and shacks in other countries, but they are, in fact, our own economic refugees. Some are being relocated into subsidized rental apartments, but there’s not enough city,state or federal funding to help everyone. The next stop for most is…who knows?

The world has a homelessness problem. And let’s not pretend that America is the exception to that rule.

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Check out below the first sentence of an article in the Aug. 13, 2013 St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

ST. LOUIS • The city has received an additional $1 million in federal money for homeless services.

Could that million dollars have come from the state of Missouri?  No, it doesn’t work that way.  Only the federal government has the resources to address domestic issues and we would be wise to remember that.  Time to forget the states’ rights stuff.

The post Federalism that works appeared first on Occasional Planet.