| LIFE-NET NEWS |
| by Ret Z. |
| Covering Poverty Widely in a Net of Many Voices |
| 2004 September 22 | No Profit; No Proceeds |
| Volume 8 Number 15 | All-Volunteer |
| "Give a family a fish, and they'll eat a meal; give them a Net, and they'll have fish for Life." |
| New Photo Book Chronicles Lodz Ghetto of Death |
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This month marked the 60th anniversary of the liquidation of Lodz ghetto, Poland, which in the space of two months saw 74,000 incarcerated Jews sent to their deaths at Chelmno and Auschwitz extermination camps. Of the 230,000 Jews who
lived in Lodz, which before the war was the second largest Jewish community in Europe, less than 900 survived to be liberated by Russian troops in 1945.
The new book Lodz Ghetto Album brings together more than 100 unseen photographs from the thousands of extraordinary images captured by Jewish photographer Henryk Ross during his four years incarcerated in the ghetto. Born in Warsaw in 1910, Ross worked as a press photographer in Lodz, 75 miles southwest of the Polish capital, before he was interned in the ghetto when it was established in 1940, soon after Nazi forces gained control of the city. There, he became one of two official propaganda photographers working under the direction of the ghetto’s department of statistics. But, using equipment he swapped for his limited bread rations, Ross risked his life and used his connections to compile an illicit collection of 6,000 photos cataloguing the true story of the ghetto. The first section, "Public", contains hard-hitting images of the poverty, poor conditions, death marches and random executions that were part of daily life for the vast majority of Jews who passed through Lodz. The images in the other section, "Private", none of which have ever appeared publicly before, show a different side to ghetto life -- well-dressed, healthy-looking families posing happily around dinner tables, and young children playing in the streets. These capture the privileged minority in Lodz -- wealthy Jews and those connected to the Jewish Council that ran everyday life in the ghetto -- who established pockets of relative prosperity amid the destitution and starvation around them. The ambiguity inherent in these photographs may be one reason why Ross chose not to release them before his death in 1991. But, as Professor Robert Jan van Pelt, who led the development of plans to preserve Auschwitz, points out in the foreword, "the differences between the seemingly privileged and the obviously destitute fade in the profound grief that almost all of these people caught in the camera’s eye were shortly thereafter murdered." Source: Totally Jewish |
| Welfare Reform Not Recession-Proof |
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Although the 1996 welfare law has a broad set of purposes and a strong emphasis on work as the method of reducing dependence, it keeps playing the old program's role of assisting needy parents. Albeit with more strings, and time limits in most places.
Of course, 90% of adult recipients are women living with children. Recent poverty data reveal that children account for most of the increase in poverty. Most of those children live in a household with their single mother. While many poor households include a worker, the income they earn doesn't lift them out of poverty. And even though many single mothers went to work in the mid-1990s, the employment rate of single mothers declined from 73% in 2000 to 69.8% in 2003, more than that of the rest of the population. Job loss and slower job growth in industries that employ former welfare recipients likely contributed to that drop. The experts agree: Our poverty measure is out of date. It hasn't been changed to reflect major societal changes, like: The percentage of mothers in the work force has increased significantly since the measure was adopted in the 1960s. For single mothers of young children, work almost always brings child care bills. That takes a big bite out of household income. Isabel Sawhill and Adam Thomas -- colleagues at The Brookings Institution -- looked at the impact of child care expenses on the poverty rate using 1998 data. They found that when income is reduced to reflect these expenses, 1.9 million additional people count as poor. Moreover, the poverty line doesn't reflect increases in housing expenditures, or regional differences in costs. These days many working-poor households spend more than half their income on rent. Hardship among low-income families is even worse than official statistics suggest, making congressional action on social-welfare policy that much more urgent. Source: Women's eNews |
| What If 'The Good Life' Had a Different Definition? |
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Most governments make ongoing increases in gross domestic product a chief priority of domestic policy under the assumption that wealth secured is well-being delivered. Yet undue emphasis on generating wealth, especially by encouraging heavy consumption, may be yielding diminishing returns.
Rethinking what constitutes "the good life" is overdue in a world on a fast track to self-inflicted ill health and planet-wide damage to forests, oceans, biodiversity, and other natural resources. By redefining prosperity to emphasize a higher quality of life rather than the mere accumulation of goods, more attention can be paid by individuals, communities, and governments to the delivery of what people most desire. Indeed, a new understanding of the good life can be built not around wealth but around well-being: having basic survival needs met, along with freedom, health, security, and satisfying social relations. Consumption would still be important, but only to the extent that it boosts quality of life. Societies centered on well-being involve more interaction with family, friends, and neighbors, a more direct experience of nature, and more attention to finding fulfillment and creative expression than to accumulating goods. They emphasize lifestyles that avoid abusing your own health, other people, or the natural world. In short, they yield a deeper sense of satisfaction with life than many people report today. What makes up a satisfying life? In recent years, psychologists studying measures of life satisfaction have largely confirmed the old adage that money can’t buy happiness -- at least not for the already affluent. The disconnection between money and happiness in wealthy countries is perhaps most clearly illustrated when income growth in industrial countries is plotted against levels of happiness. In the US, for example, the average person’s income more than doubled between 1957 and 2002, yet the share of people reporting themselves to be "very happy" over that period remained static. Not surprisingly, the relationship between wealth and life satisfaction is different in poor countries. There, income and well-being are indeed coupled, probably because more of a poor person’s income goes out to meet basic needs. Source: Worldwatch Institute |
| Philadelphia Program Spotlights Broadband Divide |
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As the nation's transformation to a wired society has accelerated, many policymakers have shelved fears of a gulf between Internet haves and have-nots. Internet use at all income levels has risen. The government program known as E-rate helped subsidize the wiring of schools and public
libraries, while recent government efforts have striven to provide broadband to rural areas. Yet a significant digital divide based on income persists, largely affecting the urban poor.
In 2002, more than 75% of US households with incomes of more than $50,000 had Internet access. The share was 38% for those with household incomes of less than $30,000, according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. There are no comparable figures for high-speed Internet access, which typically costs $30 to $50 per month and has been embraced by an estimated 30% of Internet users. With such prices, some researchers worry that it will be even harder for the poor to catch up. "The real issue was trying to get access in the home where it's convenient," said Rey Ramsey, chief executive of the nonprofit One Economy Corp., which pioneered the approach being used in Philadelphia and several other cities. "If the library or learning center closes at 6 and you don't get off work until 8, that's not real access." One Economy's approach: Just as a business might have one Internet connection that is shared by employees, similar networks can be set up in individual buildings, housing developments or neighborhoods. Rather than waiting to scrape together the money for separate broadband accounts, residents can tap into these shared networks for less than $15 a month, much less than the cost of individual high-speed accounts. Broadband brings advantages in addition to all the new entertainment applications, Ramsey argues. His long-term vision is to use the Internet to revolutionize social and educational services, such as homework assistance and helping find jobs, insurance and health care, much of which would require faster connections for video and interactivity. "Maybe the social worker's job changes a little bit," he said. "Maybe they become an information broker ... on child care, housing and other services. We want people to be online, not in line." Source: Washington Post |
| Joy in the Land: Not Without Acts of Service |
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In the opening lines from Parshat Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8), we [Jews] are reminded of the essential nature of our religious connection to the Land of Israel. We are also reminded that ethical religious monotheism and a Jewish national claim to a homeland are tied closely together.
Our tradition makes quite clear that the offerings of the land which we make in gratitude for our having entered it are not enough. By linking ourselves inextricably with Jacob's descent into Egypt and our eventual servitude, we gain for all time the obligation to remember our afflictions and our bondage and to use the land not only for our benefit but for the benefit of the "stranger, the orphan, and the widow" whom we are obligated to feed and satisfy. The land can never been gained for its own sake alone. It is truly acquired only by a people who expect themselves to walk continually in holiness, kindness, and compassion. In these times of great division and strife, as Jews feel mounting pressure to unite behind the notion of protecting Jewish lives at all costs, the Torah comes along to remind us that even when living in the land does not bring immediate joy, it retains the potential to inspire us toward joyful action through protection of the rights of those less fortunate. In this regard, Israel remains a light unto the nations. When we extend our hands to the poor, when we defend the defenseless, and when we remember our own lot as an oppressed minority, we shouldn't ask whether any of these aggrieved groups deserve this treatment, but, "What is our delay in fulfilling what G-d commands of us?" Source: SocialAction |
| Feed Your Alternative Media! |
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A growing sector of the populace has gotten weary of talking suits delivering embedded news stories on a corporate budget. The sterilization of public opinion through the nightly news is no longer effectively sedating American thought. Alternative media has never been so powerful, organized, promising, or important as it is right now. A
ballooning international alliance of environmentalists, fair trade activists, anarchists, and the like, using the World Wide Web and new street technology for immediate updates and
news reporting, is seizing space on the airwaves and in the press.
To keep these channels of alternative access open and expanding with professional-grade reporting and networking, community support for alternative media is crucial, now more than ever. Since we in the alternative media don't receive government funding or corporate sponsorships, we rely absolutely on our audiences for survival. Devoted, unpaid volunteers have gotten us to our current state of media savvy. But volunteer hours do not cover Internet and equipment costs, rent for community media spaces, publication costs, and other expenses. An inflow of cash is essential for us to hold the turf we've taken and to enlarge our boundaries further. Feed Your Alternative Media! We ask that you organize local fundraising benefits during a certain week in October for your favorite alternative news sources. We encourage you to engage in fun and creative activities to benefit alternative media venues that you frequent. Show activist movies for a small admission. Home-make a miniature golf course. Put on a no-talent show. Set up an anarchist carnival. Host a dance contest, a raffle, a plaid party, a haunted house, ... Do whatever you can think of that is fun and that people might pay a buck or two to participate in. By helping with community fundraising and support for alternative media, you take part in the proliferation of a diverse news network based on community goals and needs. Please donate to the alternative media resource of your choice via active fundraising during the week of October 17-23, 2004. [Don't do it for Life-Net News & Radio: We don't solicit donations from the public.] Source: Philadelphia Independent Media Center |
| # LNN # Small # Hauls # |
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| Life-Net News Extra |
| Money for Faith-Based Groups a Campaign Issue |
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Drug addicts in Florida can thank God and a partner in the White House for millions of dollars directed their way.
"We've been out here and doing the work for many, many, many years," said the Rev. Bernie DeCastro, executive director of a coalition called Florida's Faith-Based Association and operator of a halfway house in Ocala. "It's just recently with the faith-based initiative that we've been recognized and we've been invited to come to the table." DeCastro said Florida's Faith-Based Association will get about $17,000 to train other faith-based groups in the state about how to tap federal money without running afoul of the law. The grant was a tiny part of a $20.4 million, three-year grant to a coalition of groups for drug treatment programs in Florida. "Some people think that the money would be used for proselytizing," DeCastro said. The training, he said, will make clear that preaching is not allowed. "If it's not watched carefully, you could have some negative consequences and people are going to raise hell about that," DeCastro said. Indeed, President Bush's efforts to give federal money to faith-based groups that provide social services have caused critics to question mixing government and religion. Such programs, however, are the bedrock of Bush's credibility among Christian conservatives. And, that's a base that Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts is trying to chip away in the last weeks of the presidential campaign. "Some people want to take credit for the faith-based service that you've been doing for years," Kerry told the National Baptist Convention in New Orleans, La., on Thursday. "They want to turn it into a political issue." Kerry, who is Catholic, told AME ministers in July he would continue financial support for faith-based groups. Faith-based groups like the Salvation Army have received federal money for years, but Bush's initiative encourages smaller religious groups to pass their collection plates to the capital as well. The administration has ramped up efforts to fill those plates in recent months while making sure congregations are aware of it. Said the President while accepting the Republican nomination, "Because religious charities provide a safety net of mercy and compassion, our government must never discriminate against them." Source: Herald-Tribune (Florida) |
| Donor Mistrust Worsens AIDS in Zimbabwe |
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Relief workers estimate that fewer than 1,000 Zimbabweans receive antiretroviral drugs free through government or charitable programs, with little hope of expanding that number. In contrast, every neighboring country is giving antiretrovirals to 2 to 15 times as many people -- and planning to expand treatment to tens of thousands
more within a year.
The principal reason Zimbabwe is falling behind is that President Robert G. Mugabe's increasingly repressive government has lost foreign donors' trust that it will fairly or honestly channel money for antiretroviral drugs to those who need it. Major foreign supporters in the battle against the disease -- the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the World Bank, the United States and Britain -- are skirting Zimbabwe or giving it a trickle of aid compared with the torrent they are unleashing on governments they deem more reliable. That, many here say, poses a wrenching question: Is it right to withhold life-saving aid from a population because its rulers are viewed as likely to manipulate that aid for political ends -- or worse, steal it? The plight of Zimbabwe a nation of more than 11 million people, is evident at Harare Central Hospital, where workers say just 23 patients are receiving antiretroviral treatment and no more can be started until next year because of lack on money. It is obvious at the Parirenyatwa city hospital, where, local news reports say, the morgue reeks of bodies of AIDS victims whose relatives cannot afford to bury them. Last Zimbabwean health officials lost in a bid for $218 million from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. One United Nations official said evaluations raised concerns, including whether Zimbabwe's government could be trusted to enlist independent groups in its AIDS fight. Officials from the Global Fund and other relief agencies say they are trying to save as many lives as possible without channeling money to untrustworthy governments. Critics of Mr. Mugabe note that his government has persecuted political opponents, all but shut down the independent media and seized land from white farmers, shriveling farm output and driving the economy into the ground. Source: New York Times |
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