All posts by Antoinette Isable-Jones

Social Security for All

By Deepak Bhargava and Mimi Abramovitz

The economic crisis that accompanied the COVID pandemic pushed the safety net into the spotlight—and millions of Americans have found it threadbare. People seeking help for the first time are learning what poor and working-class people—mostly women and people of color—have long known: that in times of crisis, the net doesn’t catch you when you fall.

In this their latest piece for the American Prospect, CUNY SLU Professors Bhargava and Abramovitz retort that now is the time for a revolution in American social policy.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.

 

 

Photo credit: JANDOS ROTHSTEIN

The US Safety Net Is Degrading by Design

Our social safety net is designed to fail. Our government isn’t working for the people. Bold steps are necessary to end this system of oppression, “that replaces our racial and gender caste system with a just and equitable one.”

READ MORE in this piece by SLU Professors Deepak Bhargava and Mimi Abramovitz and Tammy Thomas Miles, Senior Organizer at Community Change.

#economicjustice #organize

 

Image Rights – (Rick Bowmer / AP Photo)

On Labor Day, New Reason Not to Fall for Trump’s Immigrant Threat Narrative

By Distinguished Professor Ruth Milkman, for Gotham Gazette

Among the many conversations I’ve had about the upcoming election, one stands out in my mind.  It was with an old friend who is riding out the pandemic in upstate New York. She told me about an acquaintance of hers there, a white male construction worker, who is a steadfast Trump supporter. She could not understand why, given that he is struggling economically, he finds the ‘MAGA’ narrative so appealing. “What he is really angry about is all those Mexicans and Guatemalans around here who are taking jobs away from people like him,” she reported.

There’s no danger that New York State will land in the Trump column in November, and lately immigration has faded from the headlines, displaced by the Black Lives Matter protests and Trump’s demonizing of “rioters” and “looters” in the streets. This time around “law and order” is the focus of Trump’s presidential campaign. But we should not lose sight of the immigrant scapegoating that was his North Star in 2016. It remains a potent force for a sizable chunk of Trump’s base, especially white working-class Americans like that construction worker.

Read the full piece HERE.

Photo Credit: Construction workers, New York (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor’s Office)