Disaster "Relief" in New Jersey

Find the article here! http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/4/30/fema-sandy-aid.html

Although Superstorm Sandy occurred a year and a half ago, the people of the states of New Jersey and New York are still suffering. As devastating as the actual event was to the people living in the area, the aftermath and lack of support is the real tragedy. FEMA has just discontinued support although Many people relied on FEMA money after the hurricane to pay their high rents while their houses were being rebuilt. New York and New Jersey promised better support at the time of the incident, but little has been done to help former home owners; many are still paying for expensive temporary housing with little sign of return or aid to rebuild their old homes. These expenses leave very little money to pay to remodel homes to fit state standards, especially for people who were low-income to begin with. The applications for state government aid have been notoriously slow to respond, unclear in their language, and not reaching underserved populations such as non-English speakers. There have been many cases and paperwork lost as well. Clearly something is wrong with the process currently in place.

The Fair Share Housing Center, a legal team based in New Jersey, piloted the "Sandy Bill of Rights," a lists of the rights that people recovering from the superstorm should be entitled to. The legal team is urging the governor to sign the bill of rights to show his true commitment to the people of New Jersey. The rights include:  

-The right to a plain language explanation of the application process for any recovery funds;
• The right to know why an application is rejected and to appeal that rejection with a specified timeframe;
• The right to know current status of an application and position on any wait list;
• The right to access information in English, Spanish, and any other language spoken by impacted communities;
• The right to a review of racial and ethnic disparities in funding and corrections of any problems;
• The right to have funds distributed by amount of damage and not based on political or other considerations;
• The right to transparent information online about how funds are being distributed.

The Bill of Rights acknowledges that government-aided recourses are distributed unfairly, leaving poorer and more disadvantaged people even more at risk and in debt. This Bill of Rights seeks to provide better services to lessen the inequality of the resources distribution and make the modes of doing so more fair.

What do you think? Is this another Katrina? Do disasters and lack of relief reveal government insufficiency? Can grassroots organizations, like the Fair Share Housing Center, make a change in government operations?

Art and Poverty Action

A few months ago, I read an article in The New Yorker about Theaster Gates, an artist from Chicago who has recently garnered a lot of attention by art critics. Gates has degrees in fine arts, religious studies, and urban studies. He has traveled all over the world but seems to be especially interested in working in—and, as the article puts it, “reshaping”—some of the poorest parts of Chicago. He has become famous for “projects aimed at reviving a part of the city—plagued by unemployment and gang violence, its streets pocked with abandoned buildings—that he says has been ‘left to rot’ since the sixties…he has been buying dilapidated houses and turning them into small cultural centers and meeting spaces: ‘places where moments of beauty can happen.’”

What seems especially interesting is that Gates’ work is not simply art for people to look at—he creates space for people to come together and talk: “he encouraged visitors to talk and argue about race and spirituality, and at times brought them to a West Side shoe-shine stand called the Shine King…Gates shined shoes and pressed gallery patrons to do so, too…He brought all of these new people to the Shine King…and gave them a new way of looking at the neighborhood.”

For me, Gates provides an example of how art can be used as a part of poverty action. His work in Chicago seems especially relevant given the recent economic recession followed by huge numbers of home foreclosures. His art not only creates beauty where it seemed to have been lost, but also encourages discussion among some of the most affluent members of society about how to make the poorest spaces feel different—and better.

Here’s a link to Gates’ website: http://theastergates.com/section/29120.html. There are pictures and descriptions of several of his projects in Chicago. I find his work really inspiring and exciting.

Bill de Blasio and Pubic Education

            Ever since I learned about New York City’s new Mayor Bill de Blasio, I’ve been really excited to watch his administration. I especially love his plan to provide universal pre-k education for all four year olds in the city. (His proposal includes increased taxes on the very wealthy in city.) I’m interested in how this program can be understood as one of poverty alleviation. In the United States today, pre-k education is often too expensive for parents to pay for. Moreover, pre-k education is known to have effects on the future success of children.

            But Mayor de Blasio’s ideas about education have recently become controversial. In the past few weeks, he has come under fire for criticizing charter schools. Here’s a link to a New York Times article that explains the most recent developments in the debates between De Blasio’s administration and advocates of charter schools: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/nyregion/de-blasio-strikes-conciliatory-tone-on-charter-schools.html?ref=billdeblasio&_r=0

            Charter schools are “publicly financed but privately run, and are typically not unionized.” They are often thought of as better alternatives to failing public schools, especially in poor areas, but have limited space and cannot accept every child. (Movies like Waiting for Superman depict low-income families who are desperate to send their children to charter schools.) New York’s former mayor Michael Bloomberg “gave charter schools free space in public school buildings, a policy Mr. de Blasio has criticized as squeezing out traditional schools.” The article also explains that de Blasio’s popularity has fallen as a result of a “$3.6 million advertising blitz” by charter school movements. But one reason De Blasio has criticized charter schools is that they are often financed by very wealthy donors (the same people who are financing the ad campaign), and thus may not represent the interests of the poor. De Blasio says that pubic schools should be publicly funded and available to all children, not a select few.

            I wonder whether de Blasio will face trouble because of all the money in the charter school movement. Could his falling popularity make it more difficult for him to change policy effectively? Should be try to be conciliatory with people from the charter school movement? Or should he stand firm in his original stance?

Missing Opportunities

My first attendance to Women's Economic Agenda Project (WEAP) Training left me feeling nauseous, for one reason. Andy Lopez. He is a 13 year old boy, who got shot in Santa Rosa by a Sonoma County police officer for carrying a toy gun.

When this story came up, a woman at the training site raised her hand to speak. And, this story made me feel uneasy for the rest of the training session.

According to her story, a police officer approached a Latino person to take off his shirt and intimidated him because he was wearing a campaign shirt for Andy Lopez at a shopping mall. Someone in the surrounding crowd called a lawyer for help, so the lawyer appeared in the same shirt. Even before the lawyer approached the police officer to argue for the constitutional rights that questions the behaviors of the officer, the officer did not attempt to approach the lawyer. It was not because he was a lawyer; the officer did not know of the status. But, it was for another reason. The lawyer was a white male.

Racial inequality and poverty were issues that had ubiquitously appeared in the media and academic articles. Among the articles, the "Equity" section of "Deeping Democracy: Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance," by Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, states that to make
public action more effective, there must be an inclusion of disadvantaged individuals. However, the society seems to prefer keeping the disadvantaged individuals muted. With such silence, any public actions would not succeed in its deliberative process.

So many campaigns are being carried out for the tragedy of Andy Lopez. However, I am not entirely sure of the direction of these campaigns. These protestants are deprived of opportunities to make their voices heard, like how Andy Lopez was not given a chance to speak for himself.