6. Beyond a shell of a man

  

 Modern day society disregards the struggle of poverty and the rigorous economic situations that others are infested within today. We have a natural tendency to judge simply based upon appearance rather than looking beyond the outer shell and what lies within. Jacob Riis, author of How the Other Half Lives  and the one to shed light on the state of poverty in 1890's New York City. He himself had struggled in his past with his appearance in landing a job as a journalist. Lucky him, rather than receiving money, he was able to receive a suit and a nice set of shoes, allowing him to be presentable and able to land a job. He was the same man, just simply a different change of clothing. The saying "don't judge a book by it's cover" was not applied at all back, as is still the same now. If anything, it's just gotten worse.     

Jacob Riis however, wasn't one to jump to conclusions, having a rough past attempting to make it in America as an immigrant, he himself had sympathy for others. He would look beyond the outer shell of someones physical appearance, and view what was inside. His one true known act of sympathy was through his photography, showcasing the struggles a real live people of all ages, living on the streets and just barely making it alive.

“When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before.” - Jacob Riis

      
 Poverty is just like a rock being split in two.It doesn't just all happen at once, it takes many smaller blows to a larger spectrum of it to take it down. Each crack representing an individual whose fallen victim to the word. People have the ability to crack, they themselves are able to break apart, to shatter into two. Jacob Riis was aware of this, maybe having seen it himself in his days, he wanted to help those in need before they completely shattered in two. He was able to see the cracks that they were made up of, able to feel the hits they took, and above all was able to capture such difficult components in a simple of collection of pictures that would change the way society viewed them.

#5

As a class, we talked about donating to a charity. I did some research to find a charity. I came across many charities for poverty but there was 1 that really stuck out to me, Oxfam America. This organization isn't just about trying to feed hungry families but help with poverty and injustice. Helping with injustice helps the people feel safer in their own community. Oxfam America is America based and works all over the world. This link goes right to their homepage. http://www.oxfamamerica.org I recommend everyone looks at this and explores the website. To explain the website, there are 3 tabs, Explore, Take Action and Donate. Explore brings you to all of the stories Oxfam America has been involved in. There are different categories. Take Action gives different options to help out and spread the word. There are options to campaign, host events and more. Donate is pretty self explanatory. Donations can be money right to the organization or if you click Oxfam America Unwrapped that brings you to a store where a water pump, building of a girls' school, school supplies, soap, first aid kit, ducks and goats, planting of a vegetable garden and more can be bought. This works because we pick what we want to buy, whoever helped you would get a free card showing your appreciation and the gift would be sent to a country that needs that help. I think this is a great organization we could look into.

There is also an organization called Comic Relief. Comic Relief is based in the UK and helps children get vaccinated against 5 major diseases, malaria included. Comic Relief is based on 5 themes: better futures, healthier futures, safer lives, stronger communities and fairer society. The goals are women ages 15-49 and children under 5 have improved life, disadvantaged children and adults again access to and attain, a good quality of education, women and girls are equal and respected member of society, slum dwellers have an improved quality of life, children and young people at risk are safer with greater opportunities to increase skill, people affected by HIV have an improved quality of life and poor people can improve their income through trade, enterprises and employment. Comic Relief is very big, they started Red Nose Day. It’s the day, every two years, when people across the land can get together and do something funny at home, work and in school. This is a great organization also.
I read into so many charities and here are some links. The first is an article about weapon distribution throughout the Southern Sudan and its becoming very unsafe. The rest are links to webpages. This is a big issue but we can help end this!

• https://news.vice.com/article/weapons-are-streaming-into-south-sudan
• http://www.oxfamamerica.org
• http://www.comicrelief.com/about-us
• http://ar.care.org
• https://www.sendacow.org/how-we-work

While researching poverty I came across some eye opening statistics that left me in disgust. Did you know that nearly 49 million Americans struggle to put food on the table every night? Or half of all Americans will live in poverty sometime before they reach 65 years of age. Or even that 1 in every 5 U.S. children lived in homes without food at some point during 2010 and again in 2013. African American children are three times are likely to live in households with incomes below the poverty line as their white "equals". Latinos are double as likely to live in poverty as their white "equals". In 2013 26.4 million (13.6%) of people in poverty were ages 18-64. That is literally people our age to people our grandparents age. In 2011 4.8 million seniors over the age of 60 were food insecure. Nevada is the most food insecure state at 9.8%. New York is 14th of 50 with 7.7% of our population food insecure. The average USA income for 2012 was $51,017. In New York to live "comfortably" you must make a yearly average of about $80,000. The starting teaching salary ranges from $45,500 dollars to $74,000 in New York. Which is both below what is recommended to live "comfortably" and "modestly". Seeing that the family average is a husband and a wife with 2.5 kids. (2 children and a pet) and each child by the time they are 18 have wasted (haha) nearly a million dollars, that sounds unreasonable and unfair to only make $80,000 a year and have a family of your own. Living expenses along with education expenses, health expenses and food expenses are far overpriced and with inflation is getting worse by the year. The average private university has gone up $10,000 in the last five years. Basically what I'm getting at is, living in America is pretty horrible because the value of a dollar is so low and the price of living is so high. Cash LITERALLY rules everything around me.

Ferguson's Lasting Results on Black Communities

             Ferguson was a disaster.  There is no other way to describe it.  Most of the people involved in this "protest" were not even from Ferguson, but people that just wanted to be involved in riots.  The whole event was just upsetting to watch, because whatever race you are, white, black, yellow, red, there is no excuse for that kind of response.  They had the right to protest and organize, but not the right to set fires, tip cars and ruin innocent peoples' businesses.  But back to the point, every person interviewed in Ferguson stated that they are tired of the "racial tension" in the community between cops and residents.  Do these people not think that rioting will make things worse?  They were set on the world stage, if they peacefully organized in a constructive manor, maybe things could have gotten done to make sure a cop never shoots an unarmed civilian, regardless of race.  But instead they protested and completely screwed over their community and others around the world.  And regardless of race, there should be a much higher level of respect for officers of the law.  Officer Wilson knew about a robbery and Brown's appearance matched the description (at the time we did not know he was the perp).  If he had walked to the sidewalk as asked, handed over the cigars, and according to Missouri law, would have been a Class A Misdemeanor and would have been charged with a fine no more than $1,000.   Brown was not a child as the media depicts him, he is a grown 6' 5" 280 pound man set on going to college, he can make decisions on his own.  He made the typical "screw the police " move and paid with his life and there is nothing else to blame it on.  Sorry for another tangent, but the summarizing point is that Ferguson completely screwed up reputations of black communities all over the country, not just Ferguson.

Ferguson (#6 i think)

It's been a little over a week since the up-rise  of protests in Ferguson and there is still violence going on. I don't understand why society thinks that looting, burning and damaging  their own community is going to help. In no way does this effect or show respect for the Death of Michael Brown. Everyone wants "change" the system and our 'corrupted' government but no one wants to put in the time or effort to become these police officers, lawyers, etc.... maybe Michael Brown should not have died the night he did but the way the community is reacting is not bringing any peace to his name, if anything Michael Brown is just going to be remembered as associated with this new social out roar over racism and injustice. This isn't the way a positive change is going to occur

War on Poverty (6)

 “We fought a war on poverty and poverty won.”-Ronald Reagan


Since we, as Americans, have begun truly counting, the percentage of people living in poverty was at its lowest value in 1973, at 11.1%.  Ten years later, this number grew to 15.2%, but decreased back to 11.1% in 2000.  Today, we are back to 15% of the population.  How is this so, despite our many attempts to help the poor?


It is a fact that several movements to hinder the effects of poverty have been met with success.  These efforts include social security, food stamps, earned-income tax credit, and many more.  Although poverty is at an all-time-high, programs such as these have still cut down the numbers, as poverty would now be nearly doubled without them.  As the New York Times puts it, "To say that 'poverty won' is like saying the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts failed because there is still pollution."  Our current attempts are simply not moving at a great enough speed to combat the constantly growing numbers of poverty.


There are a great deal of factors that come into play when considering why more and more people are categorized as poor in America.  First off, many people are living on the income of low-paying jobs.  According to the most recent data available from the Census Bureau, 104 million people — a third of the population — have annual incomes below twice the poverty line, less than $38,000 for a family of three.  This may be because a higher education is too expensive to come by, or simply because of the current competitive state of the job market.


Although i have not experienced it first hand, I have seen and heard about job displacement caused by this competition.  Because my mother is a teacher, I have seen individuals who are willing and able to hold a job with the school district getting laid off simply because the district needs to save money and these individuals were not working long enough to have tenure.  These people may have been forced to settle for a lower-paying job as a result.  Additionally, I have seen the outcome of outsourcing in my father's field of work.  When he was a software engineer, his company decided it would be cheaper to allow work to be done overseas, and as a result my father's American colleagues were no longer needed to work, again forcing them to search elsewhere to make a living. 


It is undeniable that the job market has taken a hit, but what is the answer? I am no historian, but I feel that we can learn a lot by looking to the past for help.  It is possible that what worked then could work today and, if not, could inspire new ideas.  In response to outsourcing, however, my opinion is concrete: WE SHOULD ENCOURAGE AND SUPPORT AMERICAN BUSINESS!

The Power of Color #6

Jacob Riis is known mostly for his publishing of How the Other Half Lives. He was a photo journalist who captured those who were overlooked and quite literally thrown into corners. Mr. Riis’ black and white stills hold a certain emotional atmosphere that the viewer climbs into when they view his work. He photographed in black and white not by choice but because that was how photography was still developing during his time. However the lack of color helps contribute to the gloomy feeling in the photos.  Today black and white photos are used for formal occasions, and serious events that just have to saved on film. But these photos often don’t carry much emotional baggage along with them, in comparison to Riis’ work. Why is this, have we been sensitized to color photos? Or is it purely the content that drives the photographic experience?

                Lets conduct a small test. Look at both of these images, which one do you feel more of any emotion from? The one on the left or the one on the right?

Both photos are simply of a man in a rocking chair, and not much else but why does the photo on the left feel like it is more than just a man in a chair. It may be due to the lack of color which in turn can be contributed to emotion. The void of color doesn’t provide much of a base for the eye to grab onto, and instead the brain takes in the image in a different way. The photo now draws in our eye but not because of the color but because of the content.  When the viewer looks into the photo and directly into the content of the piece, they may tend to stray for a deeper meaning even if there isn’t one. And on the chance that the piece functions as a method to inform people of something such as a social injustice. This leads to the emotional feeling(s) experienced and pairing that with a black and white color scheme and that makes for a truly memorable photo, that can be used to express a topic that people might feel uncomfortable discussing with words.

  In Jacob Riis’ case his photos captured not only a colorless void but also a compassionless void as well. These two factors are what made the photos Jacob took so compelling even today.