Tag Archives: inequity

In neo-liberal societies, revolution must be the norm

The nature of neo-liberalism, the practice of capitalism, assures inequity in all forms: housing, income, education, recreation, health, transportation…and on and on. Why? Because those with more capital (assets, access to assets and resources to assure more assets, education, housing, income, land, decision-making) have the power to grow power unequally through exploitation of those without. This growth of power is enabled by government’s partnership with private capital fueled by its negligence of the public it is fabricated to serve-inequity.

Therefore the only way to move toward balancing this absurd and evidenced power imbalance is through programs and policies which seek to undo this norm of society. We are then always in a state of revolution: whether we are aware or not we are counter-culture if we agree that the current inequity between the rich and the poor is unjust. We are revolutionaries if we agree that government policies and programs grow power imbalance through public:private partnerships that enable private growth on the backs of the people via tax subsidies and tax evasion. When the growing debt of government is the reason used to cut programs to the public but subsidies to the rich are held up as ushering in economic growth for all, revolution must become synonymous with the breath-it is necessary for all to survive and thrive!

We have allowed ourselves to accept as normal this fuel and outcome of capitalism: neoliberalism and inequity. Are we okay with this or are we ready for shameless revolution in every small and large act? Below are several examples of methods and practices being used to challenge the status quo of big business growth, government-sanctioned subsidies to the powerful, and government neglect.

Enjoy and act!

Freddie Mac challenged in foreclosure in Boston
Freddie in Boston

Cutting through red tape to allow small business start-ups, for everyone?
Small business

Poverty as a disease and how big business causes illness through marketing
Poverty and illness

Poverty is a dis-ease

Coca cola preys on illness

Black women, cancer, and inequity

Rich people don’t create jobs, consumers do
Tax the rich

A budget ahead of its time or finally?
A normal budget

Stipends/subsidies that grow power: from the bottom and from the top
Stipend changes poverty’s path

Tracking subsidies to the rich

Power of corruption in Harlem

Tifs for the rich in Chicago

Organizing for equity
Baltimore airport workers protest

Professors strike

The imagination of the right

Tenants take on landlords through advocacy and court
Baltimore and landlord exploitation

Study Circle Pamphlet: Race and class determine ‘who gets the land’

Dear friends,

The link below will allow access to a web version of a pamphlet developed for study circles addressing community organizing and community rebuilding in Middle East and East Baltimore. The ‘points of reflections’ on the last pages uses the book as a resource.
There is also a print version of this pamphlet which will print into a 2-sided pamphlet, front to back, and can be stapled for convenience. Please be in touch with me if you would like access to the print version.

Please use as a tool on this path of changing the status quo of rebuilding disinvested and abandoned communities for the white and middle and upper classes while neglecting low income and historic communities of color-and the acute and long-term trauma caused by these oppressive and discriminatory practices.

In spirit!

RebuildingMEBaltimore_PamphletWEB_FINAL2.pdf>

Rebuilding Middle East Baltimore:
Race and class determine ‘who gets the land’
Marisela B Gomez
www.mariselabgomez.com

Images: Groundbreaking for Hopkins student housing during 2 rebuilding projects in East Baltimore (1956 Broadway Redevelopment Project, black and white photo; 2001-current Johns Hopkins and EBDI Development Project, color photo). In both, more than 800 households, of low income and African American people, were displaced to make room for Johns Hopkins expansion. The legacy of this history of power imbalance continues today, in the people and the spaces of East Baltimore.

How public:private partnerships contribute to inequity in community rebuilding

Figure 1.roof

Urban redevelopment and neighborhood health in East

Baltimore, Maryland: The role of communitarian and

institutional social capital

critical pub health