This is what putting people in a pressure cooker of $8/hr minimum wage, state violence and $1500/mo rents yields.
Also, whatever you think of this action (I happen to be against it because it’s illegal.), acknowledge that mobilizing this many people is the result of invisible forms of organizing, not neccesarily legible to the “left” whose traditions cross-polinate with the professionalized activism of ngos, labor unions and political parties.
It’s just a shame that it was expressed this way. We need major social democratic reforms and avenues for disenfranchised people to exercise political power so these kinds of desperate actions don’t disrupt our lives.
The provocative title is a way to call attention to the ways that overseas reporting and domestic reporting on social conflict differ. A detournament of imperialist propaganda if you will.
You can’t really live off of welfare. It barely exists anymore after every admin since Reagan has been parting it out. I suspect there’s a lot of mutual aid going on to keep people from starving.
Philadelphia is the poorest large city in Amerikkka with a very long history of radical movements. There’s tons of mutual aid going on in the city and affinity groups of all types that work to provide food, housing and legal services in a kind of grey zone. This includes multiple anarchist libraries/community centers across the city in different neighborhoods that have been providing community services for decades at this point. Real dual power hours.
I’d love to know more about it.
I figured that was a given. I wasn’t trying to do the welfare queens thing. The people I know who do this get food stamps, HEAP, are constantly at food banks, are constantly fighting with social services to keep their services, do odd jobs under the table, and still receive significant help from family to make ends meet. I think I know more people who can’t work because no job will hire them at a high enough wage to make up for the services they’re losing.
Thank you for clarifying.
Absolutely. I understand how it came off that way. The point about mutual aid playing a large role in the lives of people on welfare is a good one. I’d never thought of what they were doing as mutual aid.