But The Working-Class Have Jobs Already

In a Newsweek article on the Chicago transformation plan from May 15, 2000, for instance, Mayor Richard M. Daley is quoted as saying, "What people want is education, jobs and job training." But in a survey that Kalven's organization did in 2000 that asked residents of the Stateway Gardens housing project what they most wanted for their neighborhood, three of the top five answers were related to better health care, but the other two were "more activities for children" and "more cultural activities," like theater and music. Says Kalven: "These people were asserting their dignity as human beings. Our entire discourse defines them as problems, and they quietly resist it, but no one is listening."

Brent Cunningham in Columbia Journalism Review's May/June issue. It's an excellent piece, analyzing the way journalists cover the poor. People report on problems - homeljoblessnessoblesness, drugs, so on - no one reports on people who are poor. In fact, according to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, most Americans place the number of poor people in the country at about a million. The real number? Thirty-five million.

Post a Comment