opinions/editorials
Guest Columnist
By Lee A. Daniels
The American Dream Lives! It’s the current American reality that’s become a nightmare for millions upon millions whose lives, occupations and economic stability once seemed to embody it. A new survey released Thanksgiving week by the Washington Post and the Miller Center, a nonpartisan, public policy-focused affiliate of the University of Virginia, offers fresh evidence that Americans overwhelmingly still hold fast
to the positive beliefs that in the 20th century helped project the buoyant optimism of the American character. For example, 85 percent of Americans think that being able to attend college is at least a part of the American Dream; and 87 percent feel that way about home ownership. A nearly equal proportion – 86 percent – consider that doing better than their parents is part of the American Dream; and 61 percent claim that the idea of the American Dream is meaningful to them
personally, while another 18 percent say it’s not meaningful to them but is to other people. However, the true importance of the survey, which has been conducted since the 1970s, is that it’s the latest document to plumb the impact of the economic crisis – the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 – that’s pushed many Americans into desperate circumstances. In significant measure, that calamity has eroded not just to their financial resources but also their hopes about the present
Guest Columnist
and the future. More than 60 percent say they worry the economy’s unsettled condition will cause them to be laid off, the largest proportion of concern that question has ever produced. Nearly half, 48 percent, said they feel less financially secure than a few years ago; and 66 percent expect it’ll be harder for people like them “to get ahead” in coming years; while a total of 73 percent say they’re somewhat or very dissatisfied about the country’s economic situation. Only 39 percent believe their children
will be able to better the family’s current standard of living; another 24 percent believe their children’s circumstances will roughly match theirs; but 28 percent believe their children will be economically worse off. Not surprisingly, lower-paid workers worry far more than those higher up the wage scale about losing their jobs or running out of money to pay their rent and other necessities before the end of the month. That truism
See Daniels on Page 37
By Marian Wright Edelman
Preventable Hunger in Our Land of Plenty While many American families gathered around the Thanksgiving table last week, some of us combined this year’s traditional dinners with Hanukkah feasts, a too quiet group was left out of the national celebration. The nearly 49 million Americans, including nearly 16 million children, living in food insecure households struggled to afford the food they need. These families didn’t have the luxury
of choosing between apple or pumpkin pie this holiday season but continue to face choices about paying for groceries or rent, heat, electricity, medicine or clothing for their children as they do each month – choices no family should have to make in our nation with the largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world. Congress will be choosing how many of these desperate families and children in need to cut from life-giving and life-sus-
taining federal nutrition programs. In the middle of this season of gratitude for plenty, Congress has put the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, often called food stamps) on the chopping block while leaving largely intact subsidies for rich farmers and even some non-farmers. With the decision deadline just weeks away, Congress is working to bridge the gap between two dramatically different Farm Bill proposals that both include un-
Guest Columnist
just funding cuts for SNAP. The Senate Bill cuts $4 billion from SNAP over 10 years while the House bill slashes more than $40 billion – denying food to as many as 6 million people, including children, seniors, and veterans. The House proposal would also drop 210,000 children from school meals and cost our economy 55,000 jobs in the first year alone. Any agreed upon Farm Bill cuts to the already meager SNAP food benefits will come on top
of the $11 billion cut over the next three years that already began on November 1 and affected every single SNAP recipient. This recent cut was equivalent to a week’s worth of meals for a 9-year-old. SNAP benefits now average a mere $1.40 per person per meal. Imagine preparing your family Thanksgiving meal on that budget. SNAP lifted 2.2 million children out of poverty in 2012
See Edelman on Page 37
By James Clingman
‘Prisonpreneur’: From Cells to Sales According to the 13th Amendment, slavery in this country has not been fully abolished; there is an exception that says if one is duly convicted of a crime he or she can be enslaved. Read it for yourself; don’t take my word for it. So, if you have been enslaved by either doing a crime or because you are in prison for something you did not do, why not learn how to turn your enslavement into a profit by study-
ing to become a business owner? When you are released, you will have your business plan in hand, ready to meet the world of entrepreneurship head-on. For two decades now I have written and spoken about that “exception” in the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and advocated a literal boycott of prisons especially by Black men, who make up a disproportionately high percentage of those incarcerated in this country. How do we boycott prisons? Just refrain from doing some
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something or do something and ricans became “Intrapreneurs,” sell it to someone? A few years as Juliet E.K. Walker describes in ago, I wrote an article titled, her book, The History of Black “Prison Profits.” Well, a profit Business in America. Despite can be generated by prisoners, their lack of physical freedom, a profit they can keep in their they leveraged their knowledge, pockets rather than have it ap- and even their services in some pear on some corporation’s Prof- cases, in exchange for a plot of it &Loss statement. If prisoners land from which they could earn would build up their brains the profits that would end up being way they build up their muscles, used to purchase their freedom, they would come out with a new and the freedom of others. They did not succumb to the condiskill set as well as a new body. We can do as our ancestors did tions under which they were held; during their enslavement period See Clingman on Page 37 in America. Many enslaved Af The Washington Informer December 12, 2013 - December 18, 2013 21 of the stupid things we do that result in prison time. It’s bad enough that we have many who have been wrongly convicted and incarcerated – why volunteer to be a slave? We cannot keep complaining about the “prison industrial complex” and refusing to do our part to put it out of business by abstaining from crime. For those already imprisoned in what has become “Incarceration Nation,” why not use the time you have there to research ways in which you can make