Feed items

One million US public school students homeless

September 1, 2010

A report released in July by the advocacy groups National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY) and First Focus reveals the explosive growth of homelessness among public school students during the economic crisis.

Based on Federal data from the US Department of Education, the number of students identified as homeless by public school districts rose by more than 40 percent between the 2006-2007 school year and 2008-2009, to 956,914. The figure has almost assuredly passed one million in the current school year.

That well over one million public school students are homeless is a damning indictment of the entire social order. The staggering growth in student homelessness took place simultaneously with the transfer of trillions of dollars in public funds to Wall Street, overseen by the administrations of former President George W. Bush and current President Barack Obama.

No part of the country was spared. NAEHCY and First Focus found that 70 percent of school districts reported an increase in homelessness since 2007-2008, and 39 percent reported enrolling more homeless students in the first six months of the 2009-2010 school year than in the entire previous year.

Five years since Hurricane Katrina

August 31, 2010

The following is a republication of a series on the fifth anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, originally published in three parts on August 28-31, 2010.

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast of the United States. The world looked on in horror as New Orleans, Louisiana, was struck by storm surges that breached nearly every levee in the low-lying city’s dilapidated system. Tens of thousands of mostly poor, black residents who had been unable to evacuate were trapped by floodwaters without food, drinking water, or rescue.

More than 80 percent of New Orleans, a city of 500,000 people, was submerged. The storm destroyed communities across more than 95,000 square miles of Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. At least 1,836 residents of the region were killed by the hurricane and its immediate aftermath, and many more were never to be found.

As staggering as these figures are, they cannot in themselves reveal the full scale of the catastrophe and its aftermath. Across the region, over one million people were displaced, many never to return, including hundreds of thousands who lost all of their possessions.

Record number of Illinois families on food stamps

August 8, 2010

A report released by the Illinois Department of Human Services on Tuesday revealed that over 785,000 Illinois households—more than 1,630,000 individuals—throughout the state receive food stamps through a program known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The total represents a nearly 12 percent increase from June 2009, and state officials expect those numbers to increase steadily over the next year, according to an August 3 report in the Chicago Tribune. The data also reflects a national trend, as recent Department of Agriculture reports indicate that national levels of food stamp assistance are at an all time high, exceeding over 40 million Americans.

Nearly every county in Illinois saw a sharp increase in food stamp use over the last year. According to the IDHS’ Bureau of Research and Analysis, the southern counties of Saline, Williamson and Jackson saw their usage increase by 13.2 percent, 10.1 percent and 7.9 percent respectively. The hardest hit counties were to the north and west of Chicago, according to IDHS Director Jennifer Hrycyna.

Economic transformation of Welch, West Virginia: from mines to prisons

August 2, 2010

McDowell County, West Virginia’s southernmost county, has seen a dramatic decline in population as a consequence of the collapse of the mining workforce. At its peak, McDowell was home to more than 100,000. Today’s population is a quarter the size; since 2000, it has declined by 18 percent.

(Click image to launch slideshow)

For many years the county was the world’s largest producer of coal, and Welch, the county seat, was christened, “The heart of the nation’s coal bin.” Smelter-bound coal exports fueled the US industrial revolution, the critical steel industry, and the explosive expansion of American capitalism in the 20th century—including providing the energy resources for production of war materiel. McDowell County coal mining and processing sites of the US Steel Corporation were for decades the largest operations of their kind in the world.

At Clinton wedding: The American aristocracy flaunts its wealth

August 1, 2010

The wedding of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky, a multimillion-dollar affair held on an estate on the Hudson River, was a demonstration of the deep and unbridgeable social gulf in America. In a society on the brink of full-scale depression, the US financial aristocracy mounted a display of extravagance that seemed almost calculated to evince indifference to the plight of the vast majority of the population who are struggling to survive from day to day.

The corporate-controlled American media gushed without restraint or apparent shame about the “royal wedding” and the “princess bride,” doing its part to celebrate and legitimize the aristocratic principle, i.e., the belief of a tiny, self-absorbed and complacent layer at the top of American society that it is entitled to the best of everything.

According to the admiring press reports, the direct cost of the wedding was between $2 million and $3 million—roughly 50 times the annual income of the typical American family. The big ticket items included: $750,000 for catering; $600,000 for tents and other temporary structures; $250,000 for flowers; $40,000 for entertainment; $20,000 for the vegan, gluten-free cake; $20,000 for the Vera Wang dress worn by the bride, who was adorned with $250,000 worth of jewelry.

“If you got hurt and took an ambulance, you would die”

July 29, 2010

Situated in the steep mountains of Mingo County, West Virginia, the town of Matewan has a total area of no more than half a square mile. This small town, which has earned a place in history for the struggles of the coal miners who called it home in the first part of the twentieth century, consists of little more than two roads and two rows of buildings. On one side of town, a floodwall offers protection from the rising waters of the Tug Fork river; on the other side, the Norfolk Southern railroad brings an endless string of coal cars through town, covering everything in a film of dust.

Just 475 people currently live in Matewan, according to the most recent estimates from the US Census Bureau. Of this small group, 31.9 percent of individuals and 16.8 percent of families live below the poverty line. Nearly 43 percent are classified as disabled. The median household income, according to the 2000 Census, stands at a staggeringly low $13,529.

The town is dominated on one end by a large United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) building. Considered alongside the conditions that surround it and the stories of the people who live there, one might say the UMWA building stands as a monument to that organization’s betrayals of the workers in the region.

The social crisis in Appalachia

July 26, 2010

This article is the third of a series on the history, economy, social and environmental conditions in the Appalachian region of the United States. Part 1 was published on July 22, part 2 on July 24, and part 4 on July 30. World Socialist Web Site reporters recently visited the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia and interviewed residents on their conditions of life. Accompanying interviews are posted in four parts here: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.

Millions of dollars worth of coal heaped in uncovered train cars pass through impoverished Appalachian towns each day, covering the ground and coating buildings and automobiles with coal dust. The enormous wealth produced in the region is owned and controlled by a few large companies and individuals, while the majority of the population lives from day to day, many without basic necessities.

On Wall Street, crime pays very well

July 25, 2010

In a report issued Friday, a federal “special master” found that 17 big financial firms awarded nearly $2 billion in bonuses and retention payments to top executives during the period when they were receiving bailout funds from the US Treasury under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Kenneth Feinberg, the special master for TARP executive compensation, declared in a perfunctory four-page statement that he “did not determine that payments were contrary to the ‘public interest’ requiring monetary reimbursement.” He also claimed that he had no legal authority to rescind the bonuses or penalize the banks that awarded them.

A total of 419 banks participated in the TARP program between October 2008, when it was established in the midst of the Wall Street crash, and February 19, 2009, when new rules went into effect to regulate executive pay. But the bulk of the payments were made by 17 firms. The 600 executives at these banks received payouts, combining salary and bonuses, totaling $2.03 billion. This represents an average of $3.38 million per executive.

The social crisis in Appalachia

July 23, 2010

This article is the second of a series on the history, economy, social and environmental conditions in the Appalachian region of the United States. Part 1 was published on July 22, part 3 on July 27, and part 4 on July 30. World Socialist Web Site reporters recently visited the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia and interviewed residents on their conditions of life. Accompanying interviews are posted in four parts here: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.

By virtually every measure, the working class and poor in the United States confront a crisis in social infrastructure. In the coalfields region of eastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia, where most residents are poor, and access to health care and other basic services is limited, the levels of disease, drug addiction, and other ills are a stark expression of the inequality that exists throughout the country.

Statewide, poverty stands at 22 percent in Kentucky, and the official unemployment rate is 10.6 percent. In West Virginia, unemployment rose to 9.5 percent in March 2010 from 6.9 percent a year earlier; 19.1 percent of West Virginians live below the poverty line. In both states, the median annual income for households is $10,000 below the national median.

The social crisis in Appalachia

July 21, 2010

This article is the first of a series on the history, economy, social and environmental conditions in the Appalachian region of the United States. Part 2 was published on July 24, part 3 on July 27, and part 4 on July 30. World Socialist Web Site reporters recently visited the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky and southwestern West Virginia and interviewed residents on their conditions of life. Accompanying interviews are posted in four parts here: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4.

The region has long suffered a deep economic distress. One-third of the 100 poorest counties in the United States, as measured by median household income, are concentrated in the coalfields. This “pocket of poverty,” as economists sometimes refer to it, has, for decades, recorded extremely high levels of deprivation, unemployment and all the social problems that accompany them. This has been exacerbated by the dearth of government spending on the region and scarcity of basic infrastructure—freeways, commuter rail, airports, Internet connectivity, public universities—which lend the region a remote and disconnected air.