food stamps
GRITtv: Sept 1 2010
President Obama might have declared the combat mission over in Iraq this week, but thousands of troops and contractors remain behind in that country and troops are still moving into Afghanistan. In his speech, Obama struck a note of conciliation with President Bush, and echoed a refrain that's grown familiar now: move forward, don't look back. But Bill Fletcher, Jr. notes that Iraq wasn't a case of a war gone bad with good intentions--it was begun illegally, and handled wrong from the start. Fletcher joins us from Washington, D.C. via Skype to talk about the "end" of the war, Glenn Beck's march on Washington, and the growing popular resistance to the rhetoric from the Right. Fear-mongering and Islamophobia have returned to the headlines and the TV stations in the US, and recently here in New York a cab driver, Ahmed Sharif, was violently attacked by a passenger who asked if he was Muslim. Nine years after 9/11, why are the culture wars once again an issue for the Right? As Glenn Beck appropriates the rhetoric and actions of the Civil Rights movement and rumors continue to fly about President Obama's religion, we talk to Bhairavi Desai of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, and Lee Fang from Think Progress about the resurgence of xenophobia and fear, and the corporations that back it. Finally, Laura notes the best way to fight Tea Party voters is to empower previously disenfranchised people to vote as well.
Email this pageGRITtv: The F Word: Fight Tea Party Voters With Fresh Voters
Candidates have been in their districts, making nice to likely mid-term voters. They're more scarce than general election voters, and typically a more polarized bunch. What if there were more of them and more low-income people, particularly women, were in the mix? In a country where 131 million people voted in the 2008 presidential election, a few million more voters sprinkled across the states, just might make a difference. In a handful of swing states, voting rights groups have sued and won voting rights for hundreds of thousands of low-income people, two-thirds of them women, in the last few years. Distributed by Tubemogul.
GRITtv: The F Word: Today's Secrets Are In Plain Sight
Daniel Ellsberg was on the show last week and he left me thinking about secrecy. Ellsberg, of course, was the man who released the top secret Pentagon Papers on secret decision-making during the wars in Cambodia and Vietnam. He got me wondering: What are the Pentagon Papers of today? We've got the torture memos, the Abu Ghraib photos...some of them. What about the scandals hiding in plain sight? Like the numbers we discuss on the show: 6 million Americans have no income aside from food stamps and growing numbers of them sell their food stamps at a loss to get cash to pay the rent and heat. Or the 16.4 million adults and 7 million children who suffer from asthma-a rising trend over the past two decades. According to Science Daily, "Those most at risk--low income, medically underserved, and African-American and Hispanic children--have the least access to preventive care and the most visits to the ER." What about the number of workplace injuries that are on the rise despite the loss of factory jobs? They're habitually underreported, according to the New York Times (who would know...). What do all these things have in common? They're not secrets to a large portion of the U.S. population. They define our reality, explain a lot of what's going on, yet they're rarely discussed. Today's biggest "secrets" don't require a top-secret hiding or marking "confidential." They just require politicians, a press corps, and a public paying no attention at all.
The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.
GRITtv: Why Would You Sell Your Food Stamps?
In a recent article for ColorLines, Seth Wessler reported on one woman's struggle to support her family when cash benefits from the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program -- the one that replaced welfare under Bill Clinton's 1996 welfare reform -- run out. "Selling Food Stamps For Kids' Shoes" was the title of the article, and it creates a stark picture of the impossible choices more and more families are forced to make in the continuing recession. Wessler joins us in studio, along with Irasema Garza, president of Legal Momentum, Wanda Fossett with Community Voices Heard, and via Skype, Carmen Cordero, welfare rights activist with the Hartford-based group Vecinos Unidos. They discuss food stamps, poverty, and why this might be the best opportunity we have to rebuild the social safety net.
GRITtv: The F Word: Not Just Jobs Needed Now
In advance of the president's jobs' summit , economist Paul Krugman is finally calling for government jobs. "It's time for at least a small-scale version of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration" writes Krugman. He says it "would offer relatively low-paying (but much better than nothing) public-service employment." That's probably not what the Obama administration has in mind. They and Congress seem set instead on relying on the private sector and re-asserting Democrats' fiscal conservative bona fides before next year's vote. If the economy is stabilizing as the Fed insists it is, it's stabilzing at a frightful place. The rate of job losses is slowing, but huge numbers of working Americans are paid so little they can't afford to eat and feed their families. It's not just jobs the nation needs, it's jobs with justice -- the sort government can create not by thinking petty and small, but thinking big. The best thing that could happen at the president's jobs summit with CEOs is for him to declare a massive government jobs program at genuinely living wages, and for him to demand that private employers shape up. -- Laura Flanders
GRITtv: Nov. 30, 2009
We are joined by Rick Rowley, Han Shan, Margrete Strand and Eddie Yuen to discuss the alliances built in Seattle 10 years ago and where the movement is now. Lori Wallach fills us in on the World Trade Organization. David Solnit joins us from San Francisco to fill us in on where the movement is going now. Excerpts from Rick Rowley and Jill Friedberg's film "This Is What Democracy Looks Like," shot during the Seattle protests. And for World AIDS Day, video from Avert.org, raising consciousness for the need for universal access to lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention and care.
