It Is the 1% Who Should Be Ashamed of Poverty

Lessening or even losing conditioned shame about poverty is one of the most significant developments of the occupy movement. The voices of both the young woman Cat, who is homeless, and Kimberly, whose job is to help people find non-existent jobs, are eloquent around this point in this video I made at Occupy Bangor yesterday.

On Facebook yesterday someone shared this fact from the website Feeding America: 4.8 percent of all U.S. households (5.6 million households) accessed emergency food from a food pantry one or more times. 

The post drew these comments: "I was embarressed at this, but I had to utilize a food pantry twice this year."

"don't be embarassed be proud that you took the courage to ask for help when you needed it. You've taken an important step amongst many to become true to your SELF!!!"

 Where is the wealth of our nation going? What do our taxes actually fund?

New flash: Cost to House a Captive at Guantanamo Bay is $800,000. McClatchy's Carol Rosenberg in, among other papers, Stars and Stripes:

The Pentagon detention center that started out in January 2002 as a collection of crude open-air cells guarded by Marines in a muddy tent city is today arguably the most expensive prison on Earth, costing taxpayers $800,000 annually for each of the 171 captives by Obama administration reckoning. Congress, charged now with cutting $1.5 trillion from the budget by Christmas, provided $139 million to operate the center last year, and has made every effort to keep it open - even as a former deputy commander of the detention center calls it "expensive" and ‘inefficient.’

Then, in the CalTV video below, we see yet more tax-funded public servants. These are Berkeley police officers beating up citizens engaged in nonviolent protests against the rising cost of tuition at Univ. of California, Berkeley. Who pays their salaries? Who paid for the pepper spray and rubber bullets that were used that day but that we don't see in this particular video? Who will pay for the lawsuits by people like Scott Olsen who were injured by the brutality of police in the neighboring town of Oakland recently?

The 99% are coming together to figure out how to stop paying for this shit.