MetaFilter posts tagged with Poverty and charity

Before the Occupy movement, there were tent cities.

zarq — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:23:45 -0800

"Imagine if you had never been homeless before and you'd just lost your job and you lost your home. What would you do? Would you immediately go begging or knocking on a door? No, you would downsize, move into cheaper accommodations, if that did not work you'd move in with friends or relatives and then you'd move into a cheap motel and then ... where would you want to go before winding up at a shelter door? You would much prefer to live at a park with your family and your dog." ... "In just about every major city, there are tent cities. Unfortunately, we're in a growth industry and the numbers are going to continue." -- Michael Stoop, a community organizer for the National Coalition for the Homeless, explaining that the surge in American tent city shantytowns, first highlighted on MeFi in 2008/09: 1, 2, 3, has not slowed. The Great Recession: Life in Tent City, Lakewood NJ / Photo Gallery / Video. Additional Links The Lakewood tent city has a website. They were founded in 2006 by Reverend Steven Brigham of Lakewood Outreach Ministries. NYT (2007): A Ministry in the Cold, With a Gospel of Propane / Slideshow A documentary about the Lakewood group called "Into The Woods" was the focus of a kickstarter fundraiser earlier this year. The filmmaker met his goal in April and the project is in progress. Official site. He keeps a blog and has a page on facebook, both of which are tracking Lakewood's ongoing efforts to evict the tent city group. Videos * A Year in Tent City (Asbury Park Press) * 'Tent City', New Jersey's homeless refuge * Doug Hardman playing piano in Lakewood tent city (Business Insider) * The New Homeless (USA Today, from 2009: Pinella's Hope, FL) Articles (includes info on other American tent cities) * Recently on Mefi: Safe Ground * Once prosperous New Yorkers forced to live under canvas in New Jersey woods * There Are So Many Homeless In Virginia Beach Officials Are Pondering Official Tent City * Ann Arbor, MI: Camp Take Notice They were evicted in May, 2010, but that didn't last long. From July of this year: Ann Arbor’s homeless tent city faces scrutiny after string of small crimes * Tarp Nation / Related Images (from 2009) * MSNBC: In hard times, tent cities rise across the country (from 2008) Photo Gallery * MSNBC: Sacramento, From Boom Times to Tent City / Depression Days (photos from 1936) * Inside California's Tent Cities (from 2009)

Short Films Against Global and Social Injustice

zarq — Tue, 24 May 2011 07:17:35 -0800

In 2009, Ctrl.Alt.Shift, the "youth initiative of Christian Aid," held a national competition in the UK for aspiring filmmakers aged 18 to 25. Their mission: create a short film treatment based around three key issues: "War + Peace," "Gender + Power" and "HIV + Stigma." The results were then screened to an audience at the 2009 Raindance Film Festival. The films: 1000 Voices, HIV: The Musical, Man Made, No Way Through and War School. (All YouTube links. Vimeo links and descriptions of each film are inside this post.) These films deal with adult subject matter and may be disturbing for some viewers. Some may also be nsfw. The Films

1000 Voices: "A verbose and politically correct bureaucrat gives a lecture to a group of teenagers on the merits of the UK's efficient and humane asylum system, whilst meanwhile, in the same building, detainees, imprisoned indefinitely in different 'Removal Centres' across the UK, leave messages in vain on an abandoned telephone answering machine in the ministry basement. Their messages detail the horror of the life that they have escaped due to conflict."
HIV - The Musical: "The main aim of Patrick & Woodall's film is to expose the ridiculous attitudes towards HIV. A series of video blogs posted by a young playwright, James McKenzie (played by Martin Freeman from The Office), whose artistic integrity is being challenged by the ignorance of a film company determined to hijack his script, represented by a producer played by Julian Barratt (The Mighty Boosh)."
Man Made: "This two-minute short, based around gender + power, tackles the treatment of women as property and the lack of self worth and identity women feel due to the gender inequalities prevalent in many societies."
No Way Through: "No Way Through highlights mobility restrictions imposed in the West Bank, that are limiting its habitants’ access to health care, thus violating a fundamental human right."
War School: "Opting for a short based around war + peace, Ben Newman came up with one of the most popular entries, gaining praise across the board by re-creating a military training camp for child soldiers in a British school. The teacher at the beginning is played by Kate Ashfield from Shaun of the Dead."

Review of the screening from Little White Lies Magazine's blog. Movie Posters Wikipedia has more on Ctrl.Alt.Shift.

Down and out in Toronto and New York

Harald74 — Tue, 03 May 2011 04:06:04 -0800

Down and out in Toronto and New York: Freelance film critic Steven Boone recounts his experiences with the soup kitchens of Toronto and New York in First rate, second rate: In and out of the soup kitchens of Toronto and New York

Giving What We Can

philipy — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:40:02 -0800

Giving What We Can is a movement founded by Toby Ord , a 31 year old Oxford academic on slightly more than average income who plans to give away a million pounds during his lifetime. “I realised that by donating a large part of my future income to the most efficient charities, I really could save thousands of people’s lives. Since I already have most of the things I really value in life, I thought — why not?” -- Toby Ord The Giving What You Can membership consists of people, including philosophers, development economists, web developers and teachers, who have pledged to give at least 10% of their income to the most effective charities they can find. The website has interesting things to say about what they term eight persistent myths about aid, which are commonly put forward as objections. It also has interactive tools to figure out how rich you really are compared to other people in the world, and what kind of impact you personally could have.

The homeless

caddis — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 08:37:38 -0800

Invisible people. A multi-link Vimeo post. Mark Horvath gives homeless people a forum, removes their invisibility. (Via NPR's Weekend Edition)

A new kind of civil disobedience?

Harald74 — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 06:24:47 -0800

Boston College sociology professor Lisa Dodson does research on poverty, public policy, and low-income work and family life. Recently her research took a different turn, as she discovered through interviews with U.S. managers in charge of low-income workers that some of them feel "(a) sense of unfairness (...) as a supervisor, making enough to live comfortably while overseeing workers who couldn’t feed their families on the money they earned. That inequality, he told her, tainted his job, making him feel complicit in an unfair system that paid hard workers too little to cover basic needs." Professor Dobson talks about this phenomenon, and how it plays out in that some managers undermine the system, in interviews in the Boston Globe and on public radio. She has a book out called The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy.

Tent Cities, USA

dejah420 — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:20:48 -0800

As forclosures rise, so do tent cities filled with Americans. Across the country, tent cities are rising everywhere. From California, where foreclosures are taking over 60,000 homes per month, to Vegas, where hungry children sleep in the glittered dust of the wealthy, to St. Petersburg, Florida where the cops are destroying the tents of the homeless to make them leave the city, to the suburbs, homelessness, hunger, and poverty are on the rise. The government's response? Change how "homeless" is defined, so that the numbers appear to be decreasing at the same time that tents are springing up all over the country. This is a tragedy of epic proportions, and figuring out how to help can be overwhelming. What can you do? Donate to a local shelter. Donate to a food bank. Volunteer at a local charity. Build a house. And always remember, that there but for the grace of something, go you. Treat the homeless with respect. Don't just ignore the problem.

The revolution will be led by a 12-year-old girl

sveskemus — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:07:16 -0800

The Girl Effect.

Is it time to unwrap Oxfam Unwrapped?

teleskiving — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 05:53:47 -0800

Do goats make great gifts? Not everyone thinks so.

My life is good, you old bat!!

jonson — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 14:18:44 -0800

I'm the 24,519,565 richest person on earth! According to the Global Rich List, which says I make more than 99.506% of the people alive today. Only 24.5 million people between Bill Gates & myself...

IHateMyLife.Us

PrinceValium — Sun, 07 Sep 2003 00:07:29 -0800

IHateMyLife.Us. Homeless advocacy and support, from someone who's been there.