New data show that Americans are suffering from record levels of mental distress. --- According to the National Center for Health Statistics, roughly one in 12 American adults reported symptoms of an anxiety disorder at this time last year; now it’s more than one in three. Last week, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a tracking poll showing that for the first time, a majority of American adults — 53 percent — believes that the pandemic is taking a toll on their mental health. This number climbs to 68 percent if you look solely at African-Americans. The disproportionate toll the pandemic has taken on Black lives and livelihoods — made possible by centuries of structural disparities, compounded by the corrosive psychological effect of everyday racism — is appearing, starkly, in our mental health data.

And the Black Lives Matter movement could be the vaccine the country needs. --- But both Floyd and Taylor are part of the viral underclass—a population harmed not simply by microscopic organisms but by the societal structures that make viral transmission possible. Viruses directly affect the lives of people who become infected. But the bodies of the viral underclass are made needlessly vulnerable, and that vulnerability shapes their lives and their communities, even if individual people ultimately don’t become infected or killed. […] When we follow a virus—HIV, SARS-CoV-2, hepatitis B or C—we find all the fault lines of the society it is infecting. […] Where you’d find policing, you’d find poverty, and Black people, and new cases of HIV, and untreated cases of HIV—which, untreated, proceeded to AIDS, and to AIDS deaths. […] As Black people have organized against the connected crises of the virus and policing, they’re giving the viral underclass a map toward liberation. Facing the contagion of financial ruin and with time at home, many white people have realized (perhaps for the first time) that they have far more in common with other members of the viral underclass than they do with the ruling class. […] We are roughly 5 percent of Earth’s population but account for 25 percent of the world’s prisoners and COVID-19 deaths. That the wealthiest nation on Earth has the most coronavirus deaths is because we put resources into policing, militarism, and punishment that we haven’t (yet) put into public health. […] U.S. citizens have a hard time understanding that—while there’s a viral underclass within the country, the country might be the underclass of the world. We are a “failed social experiment,” as Cornel West put it. Other countries may treat the U.S. as pariahs for years because our society allowed for uncontrolled community spread, staggering unemployment, and horrific levels of death. The nation’s massive wealth was not used to provide prophylaxis from this virus for the many; it just concentrated upward. […] Understanding and embracing this can lead us away from selfish politics and toward a new politics of communal care and understanding—to create the kind of multiracial, multinational uprising we have been seeing in the past few weeks. […] In the past, when I’ve thought about what a world without AIDS would look like, I’ve thought about the words of the 1977 Combahee River Collective statement, which coined the concept of identity politics.* In writing about working in coalition, they wrote, “We might use our position at the bottom, however, to make a clear leap into revolutionary action.” This could benefit everyone, because, “[i]f Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.” A world without AIDS would mean everyone had gotten the food, medicine, and shelter they needed and would, thus, be free.

The Times spoke with four landlords and four tenants across Los Angeles County to understand how they’re coping with the fallout from the coronavirus.

When coronavirus hit, homeless students lost their safe haven: school. --- […] There are more than 22,000 students recognized as homeless across Oregon, with rural communities like Butte Falls experiencing the highest percentages among their student bodies. […] “It’s very scary to me because usually schools are the consistency in these kids’ lives,” Torres said. “That is a top priority right there, especially if you’re living in that travel RV with your three siblings and your parents in that cramp little area,” Torres said. “They can’t even go to the parks. I just couldn’t imagine in their situation.” […] Townsend said the crisis families are facing is very familiar to people working on the front lines of services, for social workers and school staff. It is less obvious to people who don’t always know all the challenges people in a community face. With coronavirus, "the challenge is to go outside of ourselves and see how it’s impacting people around us,” she said. “Everyone talks about student homelessness as being very hidden, and I can see how unless people are looking for it, it’s going to become even more hidden.”

Farmworkers are considered essential workers, but they don’t necessarily receive essential services such as health care and unemployment benefits. --- “When we talk about farm-to-table food, we know that an immigrant likely had a hand somewhere in that process,” Hernandez told Street Roots. “And yet, farmworkers don’t have the same rights, and they are under tougher working conditions. During this pandemic, we’re seeing the same thing.” […] “We ask our state government to set up an emergency fund for nonprofit organizations of the state who serve immigrants, refugees, day laborers, farmworkers and people of color — all of whom will be disproportionately affected by COVID-19.” Specifically, Miranda advocated: • Unemployment benefits for people regardless of immigration status. • Statewide rent and mortgage forgiveness. • Free food and other essential resources to low-income families. • Universal child care for those who continue working. • Small-business assistance grants to child-care facility owners. Some means for field workers to wash their hands would also be nice, Lopez said. “It’s the most basic thing,” she said. “We’re over here asking for hand-washing stations and soap while everybody else is in this totally different conversation about stimulus money and getting $1,200 per household. That’s just not even our reality. We’re fighting for the basics.” […] Oregon’s U.S. senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, announced April 7 that they would introduce legislation to ensure immigrant workers have access to health care. The legislation, the Coronavirus Immigrant Families Protection Act, promises immigrant workers access to COVID-19 testing and treatment and other services provided in federal coronavirus relief legislation. It would provide dedicated funding for CDC to conduct public outreach in multiple languages. The act would also temporarily modify immigration policies that deter immigrants from receiving medical care. If federal policymakers would like additional advice on reaching farmworkers, Adrien suggested they contact her clinic and other migrant community health centers.

How did a person grow up in a society governed by financial institutions and never get taught how they work? --- Navigating life in this century revolves around our ability to interact with an interlocking series of bureaucracies run according to their own precise rules and delicate timescales. No matter how consumer-focussed these institutions are or deem themselves to be, you will, in the end, have to follow their procedures in order to perform tasks that are essential, unavoidable, or necessary stops in the pursuit of your own happiness. We all know that we often need to look out for our elderly friends, neighbours, and relatives, who learned to navigate a very different maze, and sometimes struggle to keep up with the rules of this one. That’s because it’s hard. It’s a complicated business. And we all know how rubbish a bad interaction with a corporation makes us feel. The recurring term, chosen spontaneously by thousands of callers, is nightmare. […] This inner machinery reveals the billions of ordinary “consumers” who use Facebook to be Romans in their baths: enjoying the futuristic technology of adjustable plumbing and heating, blissfully unaware of the Thracian slave shovelling coal into a boiler just a few feet below. Except, in this case, the facility we are all using and responsible for keeping alive influences elections, convinces people to join the far right, pushes Britain to leave the European Union. […] As stable work has started to disappear, call centre work and other customer service has remained one of the best options for entry-level work. Nearly everyone in my office works there because they needed stable hours and a guaranteed income, and nothing else available to us offered those things. Nearly everyone is under 30. And as impenetrably designed digital services take the place of more and more straightforward face-to-face interactions, more and more things will be contested, and thus explained, assessed, queried, and escalated to a payment expert. Maybe you’re cool with that. Personally, it sounds pretty dystopian to me, considering that those interactions are nearly all immiserating. […] If you must contact a bank or an insurer, do so knowing that it has been made impossible by design for you to talk to anyone with real authority. When you scream down the phone you’ve ruined my life, your system error means I can’t get a mortgage, you will rarely if ever be screaming at anyone who could help you. This design places those with power and responsibility safely away from the impact of their actions, and pits two enormous groups of stressed-out working people against each other. Rather than resolve conflicts in a constructive or efficient way, we are forced to abuse and hate each other as proxies. […] If somebody has to be traumatized in order for Facebook to function as a business, then Facebook doesn’t function as a business. If somebody has to be mistreated and dehumanized for a business to function, then it doesn’t. […] I’m not sure if many know this, but a great many people every day, in this society we live in, destroy their finances on Amazon or ASOS, buying four pairs of $200 trainers on credit when they live on minimum wage and support a family. I can’t say how many, all I can say is that I speak to around five of them a day. Who failed them? How did a person grow up in a society governed by financial institutions and never get taught how they work?

When many lower-income Americans feel isolated and empty, they yearn for physical social networks. All across US, this happens organically at McDonald’s.

Enterprising Angolans have used two free services—Facebook Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero—to share pirated movies, music, television shows, anime, and games on Wikipedia. And no one knows what to do about it. Because the data is completely free, Angolans are hiding large files in Wikipedia articles on the Portuguese Wikipedia site (Angola is a former Portuguese colony)—sometimes concealing movies in JPEG or PDF files. They're then using a Facebook group to direct people to those files, creating a robust, completely free file sharing network.

I mean this reaction to poverty is not even mocking, or laughing. The have-nots hate the haves just for being themselves, glorious, glossy and rich; thus the haves needn’t, and won’t, even acknowledge that the have-nots exist, those gap-toothed ignorant peasants in their gross marabou-free clothes. They need to shut up, control themselves. Calm down.

The one neat trick to solving the housing crisis: give the things owned by the rich to the poor.

A new study suggests that one reason seniors are more conservative politically than younger cohorts of Americans is that poorer people don’t live as long and suffer from health conditions that inhibit voting and other forms of political activity.

What also makes O’Connor’s article so troubling is that he wraps the usual scurrilous myths about SNAP in a veneer of health promotion — a framing that’s sure to win over some left-leaning readers who’d otherwise recoil at the usual trumped-up claims about food stamps. Yet in the end, O’Connor’s health paternalism doesn’t just run aground morally, but empirically: the study provides no evidence that SNAP encourages soda purchasing, and no evidence that SNAP funds (as opposed to personal funds) were used to buy soft drinks. O’Connor writes a lot about sugar, and not much about social policy. So perhaps his main target here is the sugar industry. If so, he has thrown millions of food-insecure Americans — most of whom work or have significant disabilities — under the bus to advance his agenda. Just as political attacks on social protections are on the rise, the article panders to the worst stereotypes of “welfare,” ignoring the SNAP program’s many successes. In the process, it tells people who imagine the worst about food stamps that they’ve been right all along. Facts be damned.

What if the government simply paid everyone enough so that no one was poor? It's an insane idea that's gaining an unlikely alliance of supporters.

Consider writing THAT essay. What is wrong, Mr. Graham, with REDUCING income inequality by taxing EXCESS wealth, and spending it on public services to maintain or even (gasp) improve social mobility? Because that’s what those “hunters” are really talking about.

Steve Albini and his wife and friends dedicate their Christmas to directly helping poor people.

In this debate (which I guess it is now), the participants actually agree on the basic principle that: you should support a woman over a man for president provided that her views aren’t really bad. The only thing we disagree on is whether the proviso at the end of that principle is satisfied here. I think Hillary’s actions and views about the poor are so egregious that they should disqualify her from our support (especially where there is a better candidate out there). Others don’t think they are egregious enough to warrant disqualification.

Basic income.

Heartwarming though it may be, the practice of plucking individuals from a life of poverty does not scale. When Cinderella ascended to the throne, she did not bring the rest of the servants with her.

Gaines-Turner closes by saying that “millions of Americans just like me will work with you to help you with the answers to poverty that you seek.” “We invite you to come to Philadelphia to see where and how we live, to come to our grocery stores, childcare centers, and elder homes, and to visit with my neighbors. And then we can talk like equals, and join in the idea of putting poverty in the past, of investing in helping American people do and be their best. It’s the patriotic thing to do.”

Toyota’s emphasis on efficiency proved transformative for the Food Bank.

‘The problem with the expansion of homeownership wasn’t that some people don’t have what it takes to be homeowners. They did. The problem was that traditional methods of discrimination were replaced by new forms of exploitation. Borrowers in certain neighborhoods were steered toward subprime loans. Appraisals were deliberately inflated. Loans with predatory terms were set up and designed to fail. None of that had to happen. And now, as that house of cards is collapsing, we’re losing decades of progress in integrating and stabilizing neighborhoods.’

‘The Republican position on inequality rests on five statements, all false.’

‘Nobody wants a recession. Nobody wants historically high poverty rates and unemployment rates. Curiously, it’s the Occupy Wall Street folks who are most passionate about making whatever changes are necessary to ensure the next recession doesn’t happen. The financial industry, on the other hand, is fighting any effort at common-sense regulation tooth and nail.’

While the Roma of Europe struggle against incredible hardship, the immigrant Romany population of the US is doing quite well.