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This article recently appeared in FREEDOM (anarchist fortnightly) FREEDOM carries at least a page in every issue of international news of interest to the anarchist movement around the world. For a free trial edition write to: FREEDOM PRESS IN ANGEL ALLEY 84B WHITECHAPEL HIGH STREET LONDON E1 7QX FOCUS ON... THE RICHEST NATION ON EARTH The following article from the California based United Anarchist Front will probably bring feelings of d?j? vu to readers in the UK. Looking at the richest nation of Earth (of course only rich for some - see This is no American Dream on this page) perhaps gives us a taste of what is to come... or is it what is already here... If there is symbol of American violence in the last ten years, it is without doubt the spreading in all our major cities of soup kitchens and doss houses. Traditionally, soup kitchens appear as a sign of rising poverty in the most underprivileged social classes particularly those living on welfare. This new poverty has increased and is more and more visible. If we accept the figures in the latest census, the number of those living in acute poverty has gone from 25 million in 1980 to 37 million in 1992. In the 1970s the minimum wage in dollars, taking inflation into account, diminished by 22%. A report from the New York council, published in 1992 specified that nearly 1% of the population had spent at least one night in a doss house over the previous 12 months. Similar statistics come from the city of Philadelphia giving us an idea of the considerable number of homeless and economically marginalised people living in the centres of our modern cities. In response to this situation the American authorities have heightened repression against those who are begging on the streets and have authorised the setting up of private police units (often in collaboration with big industrial and commercial concerns), police forces which are financed by special taxes whose main role is to uphold 'law and order' in the urban centres (where commercial and finance institutions are situated) and to repress the homeless. In effect, after the 1960s, a record number of poor people flooded on to the welfare register, but this enormous growth in claimants has been hidden by the media and other sources of information. The main result has been that those seeking to fight against this situation had only a partial view of the situation and were acting individually without the possibility of specific organisations being set up with one notable exception: Welfare Right. Protest struggles and forms of agitation, even the most spectacular, in this situation were therefore marginalised and had little impact. The considerable rise in the number of welfare claimants led to the bankruptcy of municipal administrations (and also contributed to the US fiscal crisis), particularly in major cities like New York. In the more recent past, the last 20 years or so, the social services were dealt a number of heavy blows as were the thousands who were kicked off the welfare register. Some states in order to achieve this objective cut back welfare rights to bachelors and introduced severe restrictions on the means to get a hold of it. Charitable institutions took the place of the state, so much so that today they are overwhelmed by calls well beyond their limitations. The desire of the state to transfer as much social spending as possible into civil society and the community ironically dates back to the 1960s. Recuperate and decentralise have become the slogans of the day as far as state social policies are concerned (politically speaking the state wished to liberate the public from the impersonal and bureaucratic obligations of the public sector) ironic, once again, because this transfer to the community has taken place when the latter has been reduced to near disappearance, reeling after two decades of economic reconstruction. The mythical communities to whom would be transferred responsibilities and services no longer exist. Local groups which, in the 1960s, served as the interface between the state and the locality, are fast disappearing. Nobody attends meetings and nobody seems interested in these very questions. Today, and this is particularly true of the ghettos, individuals refuse to give themselves over completely to something of a social nature. The soup kitchens and doss houses have simply become the tip of the iceberg, which highlight the worsening of conditions for the most vulnerable of the American workforce and the long term unemployed. So the welfare services have lost all legitimate power over the last 20 years, the spectre of the starving in the richest nation on Earth still shakes public opinion. During the most recent end of year celebrations for example, the media was flooded with calls for charity for the poor and demands were made for them to support those charitable institutions that have replaced the state. Another aspect of this spectacular increase in the number of soup kitchens is the disappearance of the feelings of shame to be seen in them and of the stigma attached to them 20 years ago. Many now attend them regularly as a means to increase their social gains, which are more and more diminished, and in this way to get a hold of those things they have less and less opportunity to acquire. There are now many, who with the money they save by going to the soup kitchens, buy other goods and/or alcohol or drugs. In the queues at the soup kitchens there is almost a party atmosphere having become another way of meeting people and socialising. It is above all another means of consuming in a personal fashion but it is also another approach which is very different to that handed out by the more traditional charitable institutions. Those who go to the kitchens are all too well aware of this. For the people living in the most poverty stricken sectors of the ghetto, going to the kitchens has become a means of collective organisation a means of survival outside and in opposition to the establishment. They teach begging the only way to obtain those goods other wise denied to them. ACTION NOTE COLLECTIVE BALTIMORE LE MONDE LIBERTAIRE 28/9/94 THIS IS NO AMERICAN DREAM... THIS IS THE AMERICAN.... NIGHTMARE The USA is of course the 'richest nation on Earth' with the biggest GDP in the world. But how well is that wealth shared out? How rich is this nation culturally and at what expense to the environment is this achieved? Here are the facts... The US budgetary deficit stands at $450,000,000,000. In New York 67,000 people 'live' on the streets. More than 24,000,000 receive food aid in the US. 1,959,000 Amerindians live on reservations in the US. Average daily consumption of red meat per person is 300 grams per day. Every 11 minutes someone dies in a road accident in the US. 69% of the US population is a member of a religious congregation. The USA has the highest divorce rate in the world (1,000,000 in 1991). More than 2,500 prisoners are currently on 'death row'. American youngsters spend 73% of their free time watching TV. The USA has invaded (militarily) 22 countries this century. Information from Ekintza Zuzena (Basque Libertarian Journal) summer 94 DO NOT PASS 'GO' Clinton's new Criminal Justice Bill seeks, on the one hand, to answer public demand for action in a country which saw 24,500 assassinations last year. But, more importantly, it seeks to serve the American military-industrial complex and the state forces of repression. By the year 2000 its provisions will account for the creation of 100,000 new jobs in the police forces, an increase in mandatory minimal prison sentences and (surprise, surprise) more prisons and the setting up of correctional centres ? la Willie Whitelaw - with 'military' discipline which of course may come in handy in a country which has appointed itself the policeman of the 'New World Order'. Some voices of protest are to be heard. Not too much from the National Rifle Association who have come out more or less unscathed with little more than symbolic control of one or two kinds of weapons - the rest being ignored. All this of course for political reasons. Not so important when you're dealing with blacks. For the Black Caucus has also expressed some reservations given that the death penalty affects their political constituency most. Since 1976 it has been established that a black person who commits a crime is more likely to be murdered by the state than someone who commits a crime against a black. No problem. Blacks don't vote. On with the bill. 55 new offences which will carry the death sentence are to be added to the statute book and in addition to this there's the new 'three strikes and you're out' baseball approach to criminology. This is the insane idea that a recidivist two times over gets a life sentence. Not enough for the Pennsylvanians whose mainly Democratic representatives want in this case to substitute life for death in a 'three strikes and your dead' approach to criminology. In Georgia they're going for a 'two strikes and your out' approach. One Criminologist, Jeremy Miller, has a nightmare of all this, 'seven and a half million in jail by the year 2000 of which five million will be black, abandoning the urban centres to women on their own with their children?' Extreme? One accused, a small time drug trafficker in California has only just escaped 'life' having been found guilty of using soft drugs in prison. The new bill aims to criminalise society in its entirety. All this in a country which was yabbering on not so long ago about human rights violations in China. Pots and kettles we say. We may have our own problems with the Criminal Justice Bill in the UK but remember that it's to the US that so many of the present regime look for future policies for these shores. Keep an eye on America and you keep an eye on the future...