The Friendly Black Hottie.

Say it with me folks:

My uncle was one of the top surgeons in the country. He was upper middle class definitely. When he got cancer, his insurance didn’t cover all the treatments he would need and after 5 years he drained his savings on cancer treatments (while still working most of that time) and eventually died because he couldn’t afford the expensive treatments that might have saved him.

If you are upper middle class and you get sick, it will likely bankrupt your family. It’s fucked.

For all of the idiots in the notes ^

Honest to god - even if you make 6 figures a year? you're closer to poverty than true wealth. Check your shit and remember who your real allies and enemies are guys.

A 6 figure income is a lot right? That’s say: 223,000 dollars a year Which is 112 dollars an hour. Most people would consider that upper middle class. That’s enough money to have a nice house, go on fun vacations. That’s slight more than the average doctor makes.

223,000 dollars is what Jeff Bezo makes in a minute

the well-off and the rich are not the same. 

how do yall feel about nonblack people who live in or grew up in predominantly black and poor areas using that to defend their use of ghetto/nigga/any other anti-black thing they do?

being in the vicinity of black people doesn’t make you black or make your history identical to ours at all. slavery, jim crow, and housing discrimination all led to the projects & the subsequent poverty. those conditions are explicitly linked to our poverty. immigrants and other poc have different historical events directly tied to their impoverishment too. if being poor & black doesn’t give us the right to coopt the jewish, latinx, asian, etc experience then i don’t see why breathing my air bestows them with 500+ years of oppression they’re so desperate

You know what makes me mad? I used to work at Pizza hut and everyday we would have to throw away perfectly good pizza or potato wedges or garlic bread in the bin because it was the wrong order or the customer had changed their mind. They made us bin the whole thing. We weren’t allowed to put it aside to eat from or take it home (we all earned minimum wage so it’s not like we culd afford pizza that expensive a lot). But what makes me even madder is that they could easily give that to the homeless or poor. Like, if a homeless person came into the store, we could have easily given him one of the 20 or so pizzas that we would be binning every single day anyway. Imagine all the pizza hut stores in the world. Imagine each and every one throwing away on average 20 pizzas a day. Imagine how many people that would feed. Fuck corporations man.

Capitalism is violence.

Grocery stores almost always throw out food when it reaches the expiration date, and most of them destroy it so no one can take it from the dumpster and eat it. Literally, destroying food so no one gets to eat without paying for it. My local Stop & Shop does this.

c a p i t a l i s m    i s    v i o l e n c e

Not buying from sweatshops would do nothing to improve the lives of the workers so it’s probably best to not waste energy on shopping “ethically” and concentrate on organising our own workplaces and communities.

Over the past decade, factory and sweatshop workers across East and South Asia have been militantly organising. Their unions are getting stronger, they are taking direct action against bosses and militias, and they are gaining better wages and working conditions all the time.

To boycott the products they make, when no union or sweatshop workers are calling for a boycott, doesn’t strengthen their struggle, it’ll weaken it.

Nike or Primark, whatever you buy you’re buying from exploited workers. And that includes the first world primark shop workers and delivery people. You cannot boycott capitalism under a globalised capitalist system.

Boycotts lead to less profits lead to already exploited workers being laid off. Unless they call for a boycott (in which they’ve hopefully prepared for the fallout) you’re only added more exploitation and starvation. It’s a fucking terrible tight-rope act that was purposefully designed to weaken solidarity and direct action.

^^^^^^^^^^^^ Sad truth.

“A person of good intelligence and sensitivity cannot exist in this society very long without having some anger about the inequality - and it’s not just a bleeding-heart, knee-jerk, liberal kind of a thing - it is just a normal human reaction to a nonsensical set of values where we have cinnamon flavored dental floss and there are people sleeping in the street” ~ George Carlin

This man was a pure genius.

I follow @KristyT on Twitter and she let me know about a project that she created with @tiffani (#DetroitWater) to help Detroit residents with their water costs. Their website is detroitwaterproject.org and there you can confidentially donate to cover a person’s bill. 

Detroit has the highest percentage of Black residents compared to any other major U.S. city, and as I wrote about in Black In The 99%, race is most certainly forever intertwined with class and poverty; these cannot be extracted from each other, especially in a country where its very financial system and imperialistic power would not exist without enslavement and genocide. There is no way to extract the economic violence being committed upon Detroit residents from racial histories. 

According to RH Reality Check, "in Detroit, the cost of water is nearly twice the national average, and approximately half of the city’s customers owe outstanding balances on their water bills. But let’s situate this against a broader historical and sociopolitical backdrop. By 2011, half of Detroit’s working-age population was unemployed, and only 27 percent had full-time work. Nearly one in five Detroit residents were below the poverty line. Approximately three in five children were living in households headed by single mothers (see Rose Brewer’s article on the prison industrial complex). Moreover, these statistics are significantly worse for the city’s Black and Latino residents.” 

People simply cannot go without water and while this entire situation is larger than just “unpaid bills” but are acts of violence against these residents amidst larger economic and racial disenfranchisement, with the recent 15 day suspension on the human-made drought, hopefully no other excuses can be used to harm these people if they’re able to pay the bills. This isn’t about lack of “personal responsibility” creating negligence over a “luxury” but about systemic poverty, capitalism, privatization and WATER. 

Again, if you want to support Detroit residents through a confidential donation via this fundraiser created by two thoughtful Black women, visit: detroitwaterproject.org.

*upper middle class fucker voice* But you have [one nice thing] so how are you poor 

Some years ago, a good friend of mine got denied benefits— I think it was food stamps— because she had a car. Not an expensive or fancy car, but still a car. It was considered an asset, so she wasn’t poor enough.

Without the car, she would have no way to get to her job. Y’know, that thing you think people are just lazy if they don’t have one? She would have no way to get her kid to school and/or daycare so that she could work. She would have no way to go and get food. Some cities have public transit. Some don’t.

And let’s say she sells the car. Gets a few thousand for it. Ten thousand, at the outside; it was an old used car. That pays rent and buys food for… how long, do you suppose? Anyone out there living high on the hog at ten thousand dollars a year? Let’s say she got twenty thousand! That’s still a one-time sum. What’s she supposed to do when that runs out? I guess live on the assistance that she now qualifies for, which doesn’t actually cover all the living expenses, which is why she needed the job that she needed that car to get to.

Our system is designed to trap people in poverty and keep them there— and then punish them for needing the benefits that we required them to become “poor enough” to “deserve”.

___

This.

You’re not allowed to save when you’re on benefits of any kind. It counts as a resource. So people who don’t know will get on your case about not saving for emergencies, or constantly buying things - not understanding it’s BUY or LOSE whatever little income is helping you pay rent and afford groceries.

And that in some cases? There’s the thinnest hope that if you sell that tv second hand, or that game system, it just MIGHT cover a future emergency if depreciation isn’t too awful.

There’s even a phrase for it among the govt workers. “You need to spend down or you’ll lose everything.”

Have you ever come across a homeless individual and felt totally uncomfortable?

You see them and you know they are in need, but you are not sure what to do. You know that handing them money is not the best thing. But, you also see that they clearly have some needs. Their lips are chapped. They are hungry. They are thirsty. They are asking for help.

How can you help?

Here is a simple idea - blessing bags.

This was such an easy project. We are now going to keep a few “Blessing Bags” in our car so that when we do happen to see someone on the streets who is homeless, we can hand them a Blessing Bag. I first learned of these bags from my friend, Julie. I am using the picture of her bags (see above) because the ones we took were taken in horrible lighting and turned out really grainy and hard to see what is inside of them.

If you’d like to make your own Blessing Bags, this is what you would need:

Gallon size Ziplock bags

items to go in the bags, such as:

chap stick

packages of tissues

toothbrush and toothpaste

comb

soap

trail mix

granola bars

crackers

pack of gum

band aids

mouthwash

coins (could be used to make a phone call, or purchase a food item)

hand wipes

you could also put in a warm pair of socks, and maybe a Starbucks gift card

Assemble all the items in the bags, and maybe throw in a note of encouragement. Seal the bags and stow in your car for a moment of providence.

This would be a great activity to do with some other families. Each family could bring one of the items going into the bags (ex: toothbrushes). Set up all the items around a table and walk around it with the ziplocks and fill the bags.

http://kwavs.blogspot.com/2011/05/blessing-bags-how-to.html

oh man i wanna do this

mee tooo. im bout to go to the dollar tree and rack up or a wholesale store.

All these reblogs make me so happy to see. So many amazing people on tumblr

random acts if kindness

please include a couple pairs of socks actually! Socks are among the most highly desired clothing item for homeless individuals

I

This is good. There is a lady living in her car not far from my house and I want to give her something. I will add a crossword puzzle book in there too with a pencil, just cause.

Russian proverb (via analyticalmuslim)

They could keep it the same price AND pay their employees a living wage AND they would still be billionaires.

The Wal-Mart business plan proves nothing trickles down. The entire supply chain has been squeezed to benefit the Walton heirs.

#raisethewage

"Happy" World Cup, Brazil.

(Here are some sources.)

I really like soccer, but I love people first.

Photo: Police is “relocating” people from slum to “somewhere” over the rainbow.

World Cup for whom? Not me.

just a reminder why this

isn’t cute

I’m just gonna leave this here.

like it truly amazes me that these countries engaging in this deliberate infringement on human rights can just WASTE money on developing anti-homeless shit like spikes, barred benches, or timed seating, but not spend any of that to FIX their homeless problem by either building shelters, coming up with programs to help, or increasing benefits. The idea that people are homeless by choice, or just ‘too lazy’ needs to fucking end. Most homeless are either disabled veterans, people with mental illness, LGBTQ youth/individuals whose families have abandoned them, or, my personal favorite, entire fucking families with children who have been displaced. Seriously, these people are not a burden, our worlds globalized capitalist structuring is.

Former Homeless Man Helps The Homeless - Video

One love.

:)

WHERE ARE THE NOTES?!?!?!

I LOVE seeing stuff like this!!!!

Respect

this is just beautiful

No I’m not crying. Blessingsssssss

Boost!!!

The true meaning of paying it forward. May God see this man’s heart and continue to bless him.

REAL SHIT