3 Years Without a Raise: Campaign for Higher Minimum Pay Launches

3 Years Without a Raise: Campaign for Higher Minimum Pay Launches - Working In These Times

American Crisis: U.S. Poverty On Track To Rise To Highest Since 1960s

U.S. Poverty On Track To Rise To Highest Since 1960s
USA Today: U.S. Poverty on track to rise to  highest since 1960s
Number of People Living in Extreme Poverty Up 50% Since 2000
Poverty Tracker: 46.1 Million Americans in Poverty
Poverty in the 50 years since Michael Harrington's "The Other America"
Half a Century of Poverty in America 
Demos: 50 Years Since the Other America Conference

The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

Why are American politicians ignoring the growing numbers of poor people and refuse to address the issue of poverty?

See Poverty In America-50th Anniversary of THE OTHER AMERICA

The Truth About the Deficit

Sen. Bernie Sanders explains the deficit "problem"

Happy 100th Birthday to Woody Guthrie

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WOODY GUTHRIE!

Today is the Centennial (100th) Birthday Celebration of Folk Legend Wood Guthrie.  Celebrations have been organized around the world.

Democracy Now! Has had several great segments on the life, politics and music of Woody Guthrie:;

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/12/on_woody_guthries_centennial_celebrating_the

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/7/4/woody_guthrie_at_100_pete_seeger

Top 10 Woody Guthrie Songs (The Nation)

DSA has been commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Michael Harrington's classic book THE OTHER AMERICA, on poverty in America, and the Centennial Celebration of Woody Guthrie's life and music ties right in.. Both Harrington and Guthrie focused on the plight of the "underclass" in America.

Guthie  left Okemah Oklahomoa during the Great Depression and Great Dust Bowl that drove millions of poor workers and farmers west to California, and trekked his  way to California where he got involved in the working people's groups and associations, and started singing songs about the lives and people he watched struggle against Big Business and capitalism.

Woody Guthrie's music, from This Land is Your Land, Do Re Mi, to Hard Travelin' and All Your Fascists, is about how working class poor people deal with the class struggle between labor and capital… 

Learn more about Woody Guthrie at the Woody Guthrie Website

Hope to see you at our meeting today, 2 PM at Caritas Village (2509 Harvard Ave)

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50 Years Since The Other America: Watch Conference Live- July 10th

50 Years Since The Other America | Demos

Fifty years ago, Michael Harrington's classic exposé The Other America shed light on widespread poverty in the United States and helped pave the way for reforms that have improved the lives of millions of Americans. But with millions of people still living below the poverty line even before the latest recession hit, inequality rising, and millions out of work, there is much more to do.

Join us for a national conference on U.S. poverty in the 21st Century. Leading researchers, practitioners, and journalists will assess how economic and policy trends are affecting poverty today, and will discuss promising new policies and strategies for lifting and keeping Americans out of poverty. We will probe what low wages, low job growth, demographic and cultural trends, and budget-cutting plans mean for Americans trying to move into the middle class.

This national conference is a joint project of Demos, The American Prospect, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy

See Memphis DSA's Poverty In America: 50th Anniversary of The Other America 

Happy IndependencevDay-Harrington on Patriotism

Happy Independence Day - Uprising

“It was as a socialist, and because I was a socialist, that I fell in love with America. In saying that I am not indulging in romantic nostalgia about youthful days on the road but rather underlining a crucial political truth. If the Left wants to change this country because it hates it, then the people will never listen to the Left and the people will be right. To be a socialist–to be a Marxist–is to make an act of faith, of love even, toward this land. It is to sense the seed beneath the snow; to see, beneath the veneer of corruption and meanness and the commercialization of human relationships, men and women capable of controlling their own destinies. To be a radical is, in the best and only decent sense of the word, patriotic.”

– Michael Harrington, Fragments of the Century

Woody Guthrie at 100: Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg, Will Kaufman Honor the "Dust Bowl Troubadour"

Woody Guthrie at 100: Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg, Will Kaufman Honor the "Dust Bowl Troubadour"