“The predatory activities of local governments give new meaning to that tired phrase “the cycle of poverty.” Poor people are more far more likely than the affluent to get into trouble with the law, either by failing to pay parking fines or by incurring the wrath of a private-sector creditor like a landlord or a hospital. Once you have been deemed a criminal, you can pretty much kiss your remaining assets goodbye. Not only will you face the aforementioned court costs, but you’ll have a hard time ever finding a job again once you’ve acquired a criminal record. And then of course, the poorer you become, the more likely you are to get in fresh trouble with the law, making this less like a “cycle” and more like the waterslide to hell. The further you descend, the faster you fall — until you eventually end up on the streets and get busted for an offense like urinating in public or sleeping on a sidewalk.”
— Barbara Ehrenreich (via azspot)
Thomas Kennington
Great Britain 1856-1916
Homeless 1890
oil on canvas
170.0 x 152.0 cm___
Homeless, 1890, is one of a series of works in which Kennington depicts the plight of women and children who were impoverished or destitute. Subjects such as these gained popularity during the 1870s and 1880s, partly as a result of the increasing influence of illustrated journals, which regularly commisssioned artists to provide images of ‘real’ life.
In Homeless, the square-brush technique used by Kennington in painting the wet pavement and the river, and his focus on subtle tonal variations rather than on colour - as in the soft grey light illuminating this scene - were among the characteristics adapted by British artists from French sources at the time.
“Cities- in spite of their stagnant or negative economic growth, and without necessary investment in new infrastructure, educational facilities or public-health systems- have simply harvested this world agrarian crisis. Rather than the classical stereotype of the labor-intensive countryside and the capital-intensive industrial metropolis, the Third World now contains many examples of capital-intensive countrysides and labor-intensive deindustrialized cities.
“Overurbanization,” in other words, is driven by the reproduction of poverty, not by the supply of jobs. This is one of the unexpected tracks down which the neoliberal world order is shunting the future.
”
— Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (via augustuscarmichael)
“Poverty is not simply having no money — it is isolation, vulnerability, humiliation and mistrust. It is not being able to differentiate between employers and exploiters and abusers. It is contempt for the simplistic illusion of meritocracy — the idea that what we get is what we work for. It is knowing that your mother, with her arthritic joints and her maddening insomnia and her post-traumatic stress disordered heart, goes to work until two in the morning waiting tables for less than minimum wage, or pushes a janitor’s cart and cleans the shit-filled toilets of polished professionals. It is entering a room full of people and seeing not only individual people, but violent systems and stark divisions. It is the violence of untreated mental illness exacerbated by the fact that reality, from some vantage points, really does resemble a psychotic nightmare. It is the violence of abuse and assault which is ignored or minimized by police officers, social services, and courts of law. Poverty is conflict. And for poor kids lucky enough to have the chance to “move up,” it is the conflict between remaining oppressed or collaborating with the oppressor.”
— Megan Lee (via sociolab)
(Source: docs.google.com)
