Newswires: Poverty | WOMBLES - News, Information for anarchist direct action

Bank of England Warns Families to Expect Fall in Living Standards

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:20:05 +0000

More Recovery news. Via: Telegraph: Families have been warned by the Bank of England to expect an effective pay cut in the coming months because of the economic climate. In a blunt warning issued in a key report, the Bank also said that it is too early to conclude that unemployment has peaked. It said that although thus far [...]

Open Letter to My Friends Regarding the Pittsburgh Freedom School

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:16:20 +0000

First Published to the NEAN and Northeast-SDS Lists. Open letter to my friends, First, I love you all. The fact that I know I have you to back my ass up has kept me from doing many irrational things Joe Stack-style (with a better communique). The lessons and experiences we have shared have given me the strength to pull through months of homelessness, tragedy, poverty, anger, frustration, and the depths of my existence. A few men from SDS, NEAN, and IWW recently have been voicing concerns about the Pittsburgh Freedom School idea that a few of my dearest organizer friends and I cooked up to bring a bunch of groups and radicals together in Pittsburgh for a weekend of trainings. Contrary to some reactions, the PFS is not the G20. Whatever your opinion is of the PFS idea, although most of them have been positive, I encourage you to contact me personally instead of (or at least before) launching accusations and criticisms of this very dear project of ours. Especially PLEASE don't try to barbecue me and the idea on list servs in front of hundreds of my friends before you've talked to me. That's not fair and I can't tell you how much that hurts. read more

World Rainforest Movement, Bulletin 152

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:07:20 +0000

The World Rainforest Movement’s latest Bulletin, Women on the March, offers several unheard stories on the struggles of indigenous, peasant, working and unemployed women around the world, the social pains they endure, and their efforts to empower and organize themselves for social justice, equality and the preservation of life. Stories in the Bulletin include: Food sovereignty [...]

Kgopotso Khumalo on the LPM & Public Participation' in Johannesburg

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 16:40:00 +0000

Click here for pictures. Kgopotso Khumalo on the LPM & Public Participation' in Johannesburg Kgopotso Khumalo Landlessness and access to basic services in South Africa remains a 'pipe-dream' for many poor communities who remain marginalised by leaders who are meant to protect them. When one takes a closer look at Protea South, an informal settlement area in the core of Soweto, one is met by a large number of unemployed residents, many of which are the youth. Lack of electricity, water and sanitation services have also rendered the area both smelly and unliveable. But this is the place where most communities are unified through struggle for land, housing and basic services. read more

WaPo: Unemployment rate for young veterans hits 21.1 percent

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The unemployment rate last year for young veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars hit 21.1 percent, the Labor Department said Friday, reflecting a tough obstacle that combat veterans face as they make the transition home from war.

Baltimore Worker Center Says Tourist District Shouldn't Grow on Poverty Jobs

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:52:16 +0000

Baltimore needs a jolt. Poverty conditions for workers in the city’s Inner Harbor, a premier tourist and entertainment district, are threa...

Southern Poverty Law Center Takes Aim at Camp FEMA & Others

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:02:00 +0000

In its Spring 2010 Newsletter and a recent article about Colorado Public Television, SPLC appears to be becoming a mouth piece for an out-of-control government.

April 15th: Raise The Rates - Rally and March on the McGuinty Government

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 21:47:41 +0000

Thursday, April 15th 12Noon Allan Gardens Park (Sherbourne and Gerrard) free meal -Raise Welfare and Disability rates by 40% -Stop the attacks on the Special Diet -Defend Public Services In 2003, the Liberals were elected on the promise of change'. Those empty promises have done nothing to end poverty. The reality is that poor people in Ontario are worse off than we were 15 years ago. And now, things are about to get even worse. read more

Solidarity with the PCS strike

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:41:40 +0000

LCAP members visited the picket lines of workers from the Public and Commercial Services Union outside Hackney Jobcentres. We support the strike and stand with them against the government’s attacks on staff compensation. We know that the attacks on workers compensation are part of the same attack on the welfare system that threatens unemployed workers’ [...]

Antiracist-Antifascist rally in Amerikis Square (Athens): February 24 at 6 pm

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:55:00 +0000

Antiracist-Antifascist rally in Amerikis Square (Athens): February 24 at 6 pm SOLIDARITY TO THE IMMIGRANTS! There has been an effort by a fascist “citizens group” formed by extreme right wing racists and nazis, with the police in the leading role, to establish a type of Apartheid in the square of Agios Panteleimonas. Now, a new racist experiment is attempted in Plateia Amerikis (Amerikis Square). In this neighbourhood, where locals and immigrants have been living together for years, coexisting in their daily life, in the streets, in schools, in squares and public spaces, racists and the state are trying to artificially create a field of racist brutality and police occupation. In the reality of the financial, social and political crisis, the state and the bosses are launching and attack against the whole of society, intensifying exploitation and oppression. Immigrants and refugees, as the poorest and most excluded part of society, are the ones on whom this attack is focused in the most cruel way: Many are murdered in the borders, imprisoned in concentration camps, tortured in police stations. Living in the country, they are facing the most savage exploitation by the bosses. And they are hostages of the anti-immigration policies of the greek state which divides them into "legal" and "illegal". A perfect example is the new bill on citizenship that is defining which children have rights and which don’t! This way it is justifying the repression and manhunt of refugees and immigrants without papers while it promotes the incorporation of a small number of immigrants under the condition that they submit. In this context, the state has every interest in spreading racism within the society. Through a racist campaign by the media, the state is trying to force “national unity to save the greek economy” and it is targeting immigrants as a “threat to security and stability” in order to cultivate fear, class divisions and social cannibalism, so that in conditions of poverty the oppressed will be turned against each other, against the most oppressed among us, and not against the real enemy: the state and the bosses who are looting our lives. This way the state intensifies police repression to force its anti-social policies, especially after the social revolt of December ’08 where locals, refugees and immigrants met in the barricades, giving only an image of the future the bosses will have to face. The state itself is breeding racist groups through its policies and it is supporting them through its official repression forces. This is what happened in Agios Panteleimonas neighbourhood, where the police covered the locking of the playground, arsons against places of prayer for Muslim immigrants, attacks in which immigrants were beaten and stabbed by racists. These racist groups are presented as “local citizens committees” in order for the state to give the image that police brutality against immigrants is supposedly a “popular demand of society”. And it is also using these groups to attack against people and spaces of social struggle that fight in solidarity and against fascism. In mid December ’09, a fringe of “citizens”, mainly members of LAOS ultra-right party, showed up in Plateia Amerikis asking that the place will be “cleansed and evacuated”. Their gathering ended ingloriously, and Th. Plevris, a fascist member of LAOS in the parliament, left immediately, when dozens of people went to the square and declared that racists and misanthropists are not welcome in the neighbourhood. This effort of a hate committed to be established was also presented in “Eleftherotypia” newspaper, supposedly progressive. In an article published on 31 December ’09, under a heading saying that Plateia Amerikis is “a bomb about to explode”, a fake image of the neighbourhood is presented and the real motives of the racists are obscured by a discourse about cleanness and degradation problems of the area. Ultra-right conservatives and neo-nazis, with the blessings of the police, think that they can turn this multicultural neighbourhood of Athens, where locals and immigrants have a tradition of living together, into a field of intolerance and racist hatred. They think that they will be allowed to assault refugees and spaces of self- organization and social struggle (social centres, housing squats, parks). Never! Like in every neighbourhood, locals and immigrants, we are people who live together everyday, in our workplaces, in schools, in the squares. We share common problems (unemployment, work exploitation, devastating way of life in an urban jail, without sufficient green and free spaces, control and repression). And we will fight together for a world of equality, having solidarity as our weapon and having as only enemy the enemies of freedom for all people. - No racist and no fascist will define which people are allowed to live together in the neighbourhoods, to hang out in the squares and to walk in the streets of the city. - No consent to the racist policies of the state against immigrants. - No tolerance to the fascist – racist gangs. EVERYONE TO THE RALLY IN AMERIKIS SQUARE Wednesday, 24 February at 6 pm Anarchists, Anti-authoritarians, Antiracists, Antifascists from Athens neighborhoods

CONGO: All that glitters...

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:09:43 +0000

Decades of gold mining should have given Congo a ticket to prosperity. Instead, it is trapped in a cycle of violence and poverty.