Hard Times: April 2009 Archives

This photo was taken in April 2008, at a displacement camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) called Nyongera, which is located near Rutshuru, in North Kivu province. I was in the DRC to conduct an assessment mission with Refugees International, focused on the situation for displaced Congolese people who have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the long running conflict in the eastern part of the country.

The day we visited the camp it had been raining, and the ground was thick with mud. After weaving our way between the huts where the displaced live, made from banana leaves and plastic sheeting which barely keeps out the rain, we ended up at this market, where displaced Congolese people were buying and selling goods along with local people.

The most remarkable thing about this photo however, is that none of what you see exists any longer. Last fall, a rebel group took control of the Rutshuru area and ordered all of displacement camps, including Nyongera, to be destroyed, forcing the people who had sought shelter and safety there to flee elsewhere.

In January 2009, I again visited the area where the Nyongera camp had stood. Now there is only an empty field, with no trace of any huts or market. I spoke with some of the displaced people who had been forced out of the camp -- they told me that they want to return home, but they still did not feel safe.

Until there is sustained political engagement by the US and other governments in the region to deal with the underlying causes of the conflict in eastern DRC, civilians like the displaced Congolese who were pushed out of the Nyongera camp will continue to bear the brunt of the ongoing violence.

I was so riled by a sentence in Maureen Dowd's column, "The Aura of Arugulance," I wanted to drop everything and go shopping.

Actually, I just wanted to go pricing in order to disprove this statement: "organic food is an expensive luxury item, something bought by those who have the resources." Dowd quoted from an article called "Alice in Wonderland" in National Review Online.

The author of that piece, Julie Gunlock, spent her time deriding the chef Alice Waters, who, among other things, spent a decade campaigning for an organic garden at White House organic. Gunlock portrayed food activists as -- you've heard it before -- East Coast (or, in Waters' case, Berkeley) elitists who look down upon the trough-eating commoners.

In Gunlock's opinion, advocates like Waters won't admit that organics are luxuries that are priced out of most people's reach. She writes, "in this economic downturn, when about one in eight adults is currently out of a job and looking for work, many families are not just cutting back on luxuries, but are reassessing their food budgets and trying to save every penny they can."

Well, I certainly understand that. In fact, I am that one in eight adults without a job. I have been for nine months now. Yet my partner and I, who each spend no more (and usually well less) than $40 per week, buy mostly organic groceries.

To demonstrate how that's done -- and to point out a fallacy in Gunlock's argument -- I went to a Meijer supermarket in suburban Illinois to compare prices for organic or vegetarian foods and their conventional or meat-based counterparts. The result? The total for an array of organic products was two dollars less than the conventional options. You can read the item-by-item breakdown on my blog.

It is a frequent phenomenon that history is reduced to a few big points in a simple connect the dots.

The truth is that there are many histories that deserve not only remembrance but documentation as well. Over the last several decades there has been a movement to foster history from the peoples' perspective; this has largely been promoted by historians such as Howard Zinn as well as organizations like the American Social History Project In recent years, the blogosphere has exploded to become so encompassing and personal, we might think that the peoples' voice is louder than ever.

Indeed, it was the blogosphere that connected me to a journalist on a mission to preserve a history that was on the verge of extinction. Elaine Weiss, author of Fruits of Victory, has been working to uncover, document and proclaim the amazing history of the Women's Land Army.

The Women's Land Army?

Exactly.

In case you had any doubt that Fox News is a right wing network, just take a look at this montage of coverage on the so-called "tea parties" that conservatives across the country have been planning for weeks to protest President Obama's tax policies. The planning came to a boil last Wednesday (aka Tax Day).

Tea, in this case, is an acronym: Taxed Enough Already. And the parties have become something of a sensation from Maine to Southern California. As this article from AlterNet argues, if only Fox devoted this level of intensity to its coverage of Iraq and previous elections (namely, the 2000 fiasco), it might be worth calling a "news network."

Still, even Fox executives must recognize the irony behind promising "fair and balanced journalism" while flashing images of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly on the screen.

The clip is less than two minutes long, but it manages to make the same point as Robert Greenwald's 2004 documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, which takes the network to task for its coverage of the Bush-Kerry election.

The history of the world is the history of those who control the land. Just ask any Native American, if you can find one. Ask an Israeli, or a Palestinian. Better yet, ask any of the former residents of Starrett City in Brooklyn, or the current residents of Stuyvesant Town or Independence Plaza North in Manhattan. These are all Rent Stabilized Housing Complexes that recently lost protection under existing stabilization laws and whose residents were forced to fight an expensive and grueling battle against not only greedy and well-represented landlords but against corrupt and collusive government agencies.

These types of battles fly largely under the radar because most people are far more interested in the daily ruminations of the octomom or in A-Rod's persistent philandering. But the things that change our way of life the most are often the things that we only notice in retrospect, once they no longer exist. The Housing Wars being fought in New York (and in many other American cities) are arguably just as important as the battles being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq. The results will change all of our lives in ways we never dreamed possible. It is class warfare of the highest order. And the winners of these battles will end up deciding what our cities -- and by extension, our country -- will look like for many years to come.

History is written by the winners. One group's ideology defeats another one and then that group spends decades and centuries asserting its dominance. In the case of the Housing Wars, it's very clear what the sides are. On one side, ruthless, avaricious landlords; one the other, all the rest of us. The wild card in all of this, and the thing that you should take notice of, in particular, is what side the government -- your government, our government -- is on.

The FOX television network is known for a peculiar combination of biting, super-smart satires and mass-appeal entertainment. It's the network that brought us "The Simpsons," "Family Guy" and "Futurama" but also such reality "classics" as "American Idol" and "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire."

Now it's taking on the economy, or rather, capitalizing on it through a new reality show in which people at various companies will have the opportunity to lay off their co-workers.

Clearly, this falls in the latter camp. "Someone's Gotta Go" will be like the inverse of the network's pre-bust hit "The Apprentice," in which competitors vied for a post in one of Donald Trump's companies. In this show, the competitors already have jobs, but their work and salaries will be scrutinized by their peers until one unlucky soul gets the boot.

If this seems like a sick joke to you, you're not alone. Indeed, the show almost sounds like something the network's more satirical shows would dream up as a parody.

These hard times have unfortunately led to an uptick in criminal activity. Bank robberies have increased (as have FBI rewards for capture). All forms of identity thefts are also on the rise nowadays. According to the U.S. Secret Service, credit card skimming is one of the financial industry's fastest-growing crimes. Reports of card skimming operations are all over the news. Oftentimes the thieves attach a false front to the card reader of the ATM, capturing your card number and transmitting it wirelessly to a waiting partner. Another method of choice among the thieves is to hide a tiny camera on the ATM to transmit the numbers. This week Gizmodo brought it closer to home, publishing a harrowing account of finding a card skimming operation at Chase Bank in Manhattan in the East Village:

Sean Seibel was inside a local Chase bank where he inserted his ATM card into one of two side-by-side automatic teller machines. When the machine told him it could not read his card, it took him a bit of jiggling to get his card back. He tried it a couple more times and got the same results. Before trying the other machine, he inspected the slot of the current ATM he was using and realized that it had a false plastic cover attached to the slot. The amazing thing about the cover was that the translucent green plastic matched the card reader slot perfectly, meaning that it was made specifically for Chase ATMs. After snapping a few photos with his iPhone, he alerted the branch manager and explained what happened.

As he was leaving, Seibel remembered reading about card skimmers having small cameras in the proximity in order to read PIN pad activity, so naturally, he went back to the ATM to inspect, which is where he found an extra mirror attached to the vandalized machine that the other ATMs didn't have. Drilled into the mirror was a tiny pinhole with a camera inside, directed at the PIN pad. Seibel alerted the branch manager again and asked Chase why they hadn't inspected the ATM after he had warned them the first time. Chase honestly replied that they hadn't thought of it because they had never encountered that sort of thing before.

Has anything similar ever happened to you? In 2008 European ATM fraud attacks were up 149%. Be sure to carefully check your credit and banking statements. Scrutinize every charge and refute any unauthorized charges within 30-60 days. Call your bank/credit card company immediately if you notice anything fishy.

[Image: Gizmodo]

There's no avoiding the bad news from the Department of Labor... especially now, as I consider myself an embedded journalist on the front lines of this world wide economic crisis: I was recently laid off from my job.

And this weekend I had to do my mandatory visit to "Unemployment."

In spite of the fact that I had already been pleasantly surprised by the convenience and ease of the online registration, as well as the prompt setting up of direct deposit (or the NYSDL -- branded debit card you can opt for) to receive your benefits, I still viewed this appointment with the same enthusiasm one musters for a root canal or tax audit. I don't know where my preconceptions stemmed from, but I was not looking forward to this!

Once there however, I was so inspired by everyone at Unemployment that I almost wanted to work there!

As you'd expect, business is hopping. The "customer" group was large -- as dense and eclectic as the at Apple Store during the holidays... But everything was very well organized and the staff was very helpful, professional and well informed.

I thought I knew everything I needed to know about navigating this storm, but I picked up some very useful insights and information. The NYSDL website is robust and has loads of links; they also provide a printout with many, many additional useful websites, as well as a schedule of free workshops and seminars they offer on everything from resume writing to career changing and interview rehearsal! Other tidbits to drill deeper for: testing and application fees for government jobs are waived for those receiving benefits (it's the US government that is currently doing the most hiring), and possible financial aid for certain training courses and local NYC Workforce 1 Resource Centers -- actual offices set up to help and provide necessary tools.

So three cheers to the NYSDL! Thank you for all your work in the effort to get us all back to work!

You don't have to be George Soros to "have a very good crisis," as the billionaire philanthropist and businessman told the Daily Mail last week. Of course he is, you say -- he's George Soros!

Us everyday folks can weather the storm just as well as the uber-rich, for whom the "crisis" might steal a few zeroes from their bank statements, but who can still rest easy in one of their many stately homes. We may not have the most expensive beds money can buy, but that doesn't mean we should be losing sleep.

In this video from the New York Times online, a black 92-year-old survivor of the Great Depression and the Jim Crow South recalls how his community banded together those 80 years ago to help each other survive the ordeals of the 1930s.

With grandfatherly wisdom, Peter G. Holden reflects on growing up in Raleigh, North Carolina until 1942, when he moved to New York. He describes the spirit of respect and cooperation that not only pervaded the South, but crossed color lines as well. If you didn't have money, he says, it didn't matter if you were black or white. Everyone was in the same boat, so they were compelled to help one another however they could.

Holden's story reminds me of the experiences of a man from Georgia -- the country, not the state -- I knew in 2005 who talked of the financial hardships that befell that country after the Soviet Union was no more. He had a family to support but no income for years on end. How did he do it? Neighbors, he told me. When he was in need, there was no question -- people with means helped. And when he was (relatively) flush, he helped them.

Call it communism, socialism, or whatever "ism" you want. I call it humanism, and I'm glad to know it still exists in little pockets of this monument of capitalism known as the United States.

[Image: Jonata Bolzan for Wikimedia Commons]

What's more American than apple pie? Complaining about your job. Everyone seems to do it. And when we come home from work, what do we do? Watch TV shows and movies about other people who hate their jobs, too.

But hold on a second. I suspect you've heard about the financial crisis that's shuttering businesses across this country, resulting in the highest unemployment rate in a quarter-century. Today 13 million people are out of work -- 8.5 percent of the population.

Last week, on my way to the restaurant that pays my health insurance and provides stability during shaky times, I had the unhappy experience of stumbling upon a line outside what I'm guessing was a job fair. Hundreds of people in suits and holding portfolios and resumes snaked around an entire city block -- a sight I haven't seen since election day, when record numbers of New Yorkers turned out at the polls to (mostly) elect Barack Obama.

It was a humbling moment, and it made me appreciate not only the restaurant, but each of my other employers as well. The schools that allow me to teach their students, the film and media organizations that hire me for freelance gigs, and of course, the good folks at Kenneth Cole for providing such a unique opportunity to write about important issues for this blog.

I propose we have an Employer Appreciation day. Enough whining, enough kvetching, enough biting the hands that feed us. Let's take a moment to acknowledge them for giving us the privilege of work -- now more than ever.

Make no mistake, I'm still a Marxist at heart, but having survived a miserable stretch of joblessness during the last recession, I can say with certainty that's it's better to be an employed Marxist than an unemployed Marxist. Even Marx, who died dirt-poor, supported by a small stipend sent to him by his former writing partner, Friedrich Engels, who retired from theorizing about capitalism and labor to run the family textiles firm (oh, the irony!), would probably agree.

[Image: Waldo Jaquith for Wikimedia Commons]

"With the bad economy, banks aren't the only ones downsizing" is how this clip is introduced. The US auto industry is struggling (Detroit's unemployment rate has hit 22%). The retail and manufacturing sectors continue to drop jobs. Newspapers are going digital. And, according to the president, legalizing pot won't grow the economy.

And how is the economic downturn affecting families on Main Street?

If it is possible, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to find notes of levity through the thick of this bad economy, leave it to the FunnyorDie crew. The latest casualty of the economic downturn, according to them: little kids? WTF.