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Category: Social Justice

  • She Did Not Consent: PETA Highlights Sexual Abuse on Farms

    Ahead of the release of She Said, a film about Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault allegations—and as the disgraced movie producer’s criminal trial enters its fourth week—PETA is placing a sky-high message near Los Angeles International Airport, pointing out that being violated without consent isn’t just a human problem. In these remarkable times when women are rising up against sexual abuse and exploitation, we’re asking everyone to go vegan in solidarity with females of other species who are routinely sexually abused and exploited in the food industry.

    Raising and killing animals for food depends on the exploitation of female bodies, including nursing mother pigs locked in farrowing stalls who are unable to care for their sick or dying piglets (as our billboard depicts), mother cows restrained in devices that dairy industry insiders have called “rape racks,” and hens treated like egg-laying machines and slaughtered when their reproductive systems give out.

    She Did Not Consent: Animal-Derived Products Are the Result of Assault

    Farmers exploit the female reproductive system to maintain a steady stream of victims who are slaughtered and whose body parts are packaged for supermarket shelves. Anyone who’s upset about the sexual abuse of women should be equally incensed about the sexual abuse of females who may not be human but who also have a reproductive system and are as capable of experiencing fear and pain as humans.

    Female cows produce milk only when they’re pregnant or nursing. They make milk for the same reason human women do: to feed their babies. Cows who are imprisoned on dairy farms are forcibly impregnated through artificial insemination again and again on what farmers themselves have called rape racks—all to create milk, cheese, and other dairy products.

    Go Vegan to Support Females of All Species

    The meat, egg, and dairy industries are built on the subjugation and exploitation of female animals, something that no one should support. We can all feel pain and fear and experience love and joy. We’re all the same in all the ways that matter most.

    No one needs to eat meat, eggs, or dairy in order to be healthy—and there are loads of delicious vegan ice creams, cheeses, and milks to try. All of us can help end this abuse by choosing to follow a vegan lifestyle. Go vegan—for mothers, for sisters, for daughters, and for all females whose bodies are exploited.

    The post She Did Not Consent: PETA Highlights Sexual Abuse on Farms appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • The False Economy of Means-Tested and Conditional Income Support

    By: Hein Marais

    Battle lines separate the demand for a universal basic income (UBI) from the hold-out view that the support should be rationed and restricted to those who most “deserve” it. Ranged on one side are civil society organizations, trade unions, academic researchers and sections of the ANC; on the other is organised business and the Treasury.

    The latter appear to favour an exceedingly narrow, exclusionary and complicated approach that would deprive millions of people of desperately needed income support by adding layers of restrictive terms. The preference is to tightly ration income support by making it conditional (for example, on seeking employment) or “targeting” it at subpopulations (eg the “poorest” households, by testing for income levels). 

    Both of those approaches claim they are the most cost-effective way to provide income support (since they only go to the people who are most in need of support). In fact, they are bad at reducing income poverty and near-useless for building social cohesion.

    Targeted and conditional schemes rely on detailed information about the targeted beneficiaries (for instance, regularly verifying their incomes) that is often out-of-date, incomplete or plain inaccurate. When tied to job seeking, they force people into the costly theatrics of proving they’re looking for work, even when the odds of finding employment are vanishingly slim, as they are in South Africa. 

    It’s been estimated that job searching costs on average around R940 per month (roughly what Statistics South Africa says a month’s supply of basic food and other essential items cost). 

    Burdensome and prone to error and delay, targeted programmes routinely miss large proportions of intended beneficiaries. Brazil’s flagship Bolsa Familia programme, for example, missed very large percentages of intended beneficiaries (despite the country’s relatively strong administrative capacity) as did Mexico’s Oportunidades programme. 

    None of the 42 targeted social protection schemes examined in a large review had exclusion errors of less than 44%; 12 of them had exclusion errors of more than 70%.

    Similarly, the emergency cash payments provided in South Africa during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic brought vital relief to millions of people. But they were marred by serious inefficiencies and inaccurate and out-of-date information, which led to huge delays and gaps in coverage. In the grant’s initial cycle, only 6.4 million applicants were approved, even though the eligible population was estimated at 10-12 million people. Almost half of eligible individuals who were not receiving the social relief of distress grant by mid-2020 were in the poorest third of households. 

    Means-tested programmes are also highly unfair in places with widespread poverty. They artificially segment populations who, in reality, live in similar desperation – offering one group support, while denying it to the rest. 

    Studies of income distribution data from Ethiopia, Malawi and Zambia, for example, have shown that very small actual differences in personal and family circumstances separate people in the bottom 50%-60% of per capita consumption. 

    Limiting income support to people earning less than, say, R663 per month (the current “food poverty line”) and denying it to others with, say, R800 entails a basically arbitrary segmentation between people in equally dire circumstances. When eligibility is based on tiny variations which ordinary people don’t see as real differences, it feeds a sense of unfairness, resentment and social tension. 

    That is why Thandika Mkandawire argued that means-tested income support does not make sense in places where large proportions of the population are poor. 

    Minute changes in circumstance shift people in and out of eligibility for means-tested support. Because the schemes struggle to reliably identify who should receive support at a given point, unmerited interruptions and delays in payment are built-in features. The schemes are typically designed and administered in ways that make it arduous to prove eligibility, remarkably easy to “lose” access, and exceedingly difficult to restore it.

     Tying income support to conditionalities became a staple of social policy during the neoliberal era. This distrustful approach assumes that people with little or no money must be forced to do what’s “good” for them. Defenders say conditionalities can “engineer” certain desirable behaviours (like enrolling and keeping children in school, having them vaccinated or having regular health check-ups). In fact, it’s very often not the conditionalities that lead to the desired behaviours, but the fact that families can afford to keep their children in school, or travel to a health clinic. 

    Job-seeking requirements hinge on further fallacies. They imply that living in poverty is the fault of work-shy individuals and they assume that income support encourages idleness. 

    The evidence says otherwise. 

    Numerous studies, including a World Bank review of cash transfer programmes, show that adults do not work less when they get income support. Income support enables economic activity, increases rates of self-employment, supports job searching, and especially boosts women’s economic independence. In South Africa, with close to half of adults unable to find paid work, a job-seeking conditionality seems especially blind to reality.

    Universal is easier, cheaper and fairer

     A UBI is easier to implement and avoids the administrative burdens, costs, inefficiencies and unfairness that plague conditional and targeted income support. It would be much more effective at reaching people with no or very low incomes and therefore better at reducing severe income poverty. Indeed, the cost of a UBI tends to be overstated, because estimates often don’t consider cost-savings due to its administrative simplicity and limited scope for corruption. 

    A UBI also spares people the stigma and humiliation of having to constantly “prove” their poverty to state officials. Since everyone would be eligible for a UBI, it would affirm the principle of universalism and satisfy the criterion of fairness. 

    Some people find it disturbing that a UBI would democratise people’s access to support by dispensing with deciding who “deserves” support and who does not. Waged work serves as a beacon in that moralistic outlook, which draws on a deep-felt sense that it is chiefly through selling our labour that we “earn” our place in society. 

    Such sentiments are untenable in a labour market like ours. They also rely on very narrow and distorted notions of what counts as work. Not having paid work doesn’t mean a person is inactive or unproductive. A great deal of vital work goes unpaid and is taken for granted: raising families, tending the sick and frail, volunteering, assisting neighbours, studying and acquiring skills, or trying to get an income-earning activity going. Societies would cease functioning without the (typically unpaid) reproductive and other care work that women and girls perform, for example. Work can mean many things.

    A UBI would underwrite all forms of work, paid or not, as well as people’s search for jobs, by providing a dependable source of income for the tens of millions of South Africans who currently lack it. It would implicitly recognise that even having paid work is not a sure shield against poverty. And it would provide indiscriminate and dependable support that enables people to plan ahead and take greater charge of their lives. DM/MC

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Universal Tipping Points: Change is Coming

    Much like individual change, societal developments happen gradually, often painfully; even when sudden shifts take place, seemingly ‘out of the blue’, they are the result of an accumulation of incremental steps – the last straw on the camel’s back as it were. Small developments may slip by unnoticed, major events scream out and demand our attention. Take man-made global warming – going on for 70  years or so, ignored for most of that time, until one July, when, in 40°C heat people collapse, crops are wiped out, water is rationed and drought blights the land.

    Whilst it’s true that change is, paradoxically, constant, dramatic shifts, life-changing developments, by their very nature, occur only rarely, at key moments. Globally, we are living through such a time of major change; a transitional time akin to that step from one age group to another, adolescence into early adulthood, for example. A moment when everything is, potentially, set to shift and evolve, when old habits and ways of living, recognized as inadequate, either fall away naturally or are rejected.

    Signs that we are living through such a time have been evident for a while  – decades, longer probably, and have year on year become more and more widespread and diverse. The momentum for change, and with it resistance (which is intense) from those wedded to the status quo, appears to be reaching a point of crisis. Battle lines are exposed, delineating the choices before humanity, alternative values and modes of living that are becoming more defined, and more opposed all the time.

    The political-economic arena has been the primary field of conflict and resistance, and also opportunity. This all-pervasive space encompasses most, if not all, areas of contemporary life, including education and health care, the environment, international relations, immigration, defense, etc; it shapes values and determines the direction of collective travel. Differing viewpoints have become increasingly polarized, opinions hardened. And, growing out of the vacuum created by government’s inability to meet the challenges of the time, and the uncertainty caused by clinging to systems and modes of living that are day by day being drained of life, extremism has exploded; populism, on the left and most fiercely, on the right of politics. Intolerance, prejudice and hate have accompanied this political polarization, dividing societies around the world.

    Cynical politicians hungry for power have fueled and exploited these splits, inflamed divisions with the politics of tribal nationalism and intolerance. Truth has been perverted, facts questioned or disregarded; democracy, limited to begin with, has been undermined and autocratic leaders/demagogues have surfaced, or intensified their stifling grip on power.

    When and how?

    As points of crisis draw near in diverse, yet interconnected areas – climate/ecosystems, economic uncertainty and mass migration/displacement of persons, energy supplies and war, food security and global health threats, demands for solutions intensify.

    Current socio-economic-political methodologies hold no answers, and are increasingly seen to be inadequate. Rooted in the Ideologies of Division Exploitation and Greed (Imperialism and Neo-liberalism), they are an integral part of the problem and cannot therefore respond adequately to the current challenges, which are immense. Creative solutions consistent with the emerging times are called for; compassionate alternatives rooted in social justice and freedom.

    Systemic change in the economic sphere is desperately needed.  Neo-Liberalism, which dominates the global economy, is a poisonous unjust ideology that relies on unlimited, irresponsible consumption and promotes greed, exploitation and inequality. Once change in this area takes place, and a more humane unifying and just model is introduced, then development in a range of other related areas becomes possible – health care and education, the eradication of food insecurity and large scale action on the environment.

    It is values that need to change first though, and among many people they are changing; systems, policies and structures will naturally follow. Central to shifting values is the idea of unity, a recognition that humanity is one, varied, diverse but whole. This is not some incense-coated pseudo-religious fluff, but a fact (spelled out many times by visionary figures throughout the ages) in nature that is sensed by people everywhere; a fact that the existing socio-economic ideology, with its emphasis on competition and selfishness, actively works against.

    Unity is a primary quality of the time, as is cooperation and tolerance. From these primary Principles of Goodness a series of positive consequences, or secondary colors flows: social and environmental responsibility, the eradication of prejudice; sharing as an economic social principle; social justice and equality, brotherhood — talked about for at least two thousand years, known in the heart but expressed fleetingly — and understanding of self and others. Unity shatters tribalism and strengthens collaboration; working together encourages relationship and erodes fear of ‘the other’, which in turn dissolves tensions and creates a space in which conflict is less likely. These are the values and ideals of the time, not radical, not new, perennial values that have been long buried and are now re-surfacing, influencing thinking in all areas of society. Coloring social and environmental initiatives, empowering popular action and driving change.

    Momentum is building and, despite entrenched resistance from fearful forces determined to maintain control and ensure the perpetuation of systems and attitudes that breed division and suffering, the question is no longer will there be fundamental change and the inauguration of new modes of living, but when and how.

    The ‘when’ is not a fixed moment in time but a dynamic flow expanding throughout the now; the ‘how’ is a creative explosion of collective action, examples of which are all around us, in every country of the world.

    Wherever voices are raised in praise of social justice there is the how and the now; when people, young and old, stand together, despite the risks, demanding freedom from suppression, that is the how and the now; it’s individuals forming groups, acting in unison, crying out for substantive environmental action; it’s the rise of Trades Unions; it’s thousands of community initiatives, large and small, throughout the world; it’s Citizens Assemblies and the fall of demagogues – some, not all; it’s the growing influence of so-called Green Politics and demands for equality in all areas.

    These are the signs of the times; diverse worldwide manifestations of ‘the how’, occurring within ‘the now’. Daily they multiply and strengthen, and the forces of resistance falter; they are the seeds of evolving socio-economic-political forms; they are the promise of things to come, the forerunners of The New time, which, no matter how the forces of resistance kick and scream, cannot, and will not, be held at bay.

    The post Universal Tipping Points: Change is Coming first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • Small Animals Were the First Victims of Dahmer, Bundy, and Other Killers

    There’s a reason the FBI keeps track of cases of cruelty to animals: It’s often a precursor to escalated levels of violence, most famously illustrated by serial killers and mass shooters such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and Nikolas Cruz, who abused other animals before attacking humans.

    Studies have shown that animal abuse is a better predictor of sexual assault than previous convictions for homicide, arson, or weapons offenses: Psychology Today reported that 70% of criminals who were most violent to humans in one prison also had a history of animal abuse, and other studies have found that 43% of school shooters have a history of abusing animals. Animal abuse is also one of the most significant factors in someone’s becoming a domestic abuser. How many killers abused our fellow animals before harming humans?

    David Berkowitz

    Before he began terrorizing New York City in the summer of 1976, David Berkowitz, also known as the “Son of Sam,” lived in Yonkers, where he shot one of the neighborhood dogs whom he thought was possessed by demons. He killed six people and wounded seven in eight separate shootings throughout New York City’s outer boroughs. When he was finally caught, he claimed that he’d received instructions to kill people from a demon named Sam that possessed his neighbor’s dog, a black Labrador retriever named Harvey. Berkowitz eventually shot Harvey.

    Ted Bundy

    Ted Bundy was the confirmed killer of at least 30 humans, and he reportedly derived pleasure from tormenting small animals, such as dogs and cats. According to family members, Bundy’s grandfather was a violent man who abused animals—reportedly kicking dogs until they howled and swinging cats by their tails—and Bundy cited his grandfather as one of the few people he felt close to. A criminal defense attorney who represented him in the 1970s reported that as a child, Bundy would buy mice at a local pet shop and “play God” to determine their fate. A woman who claimed to have grown up with him said that he liked to tear apart neighbors’ animal companions and set them on fire. It’s speculated that he had around 100 human victims, and the violence he was responsible for increases exponentially when victims of other species are added to the count.

    ©Florida Memory Project

    Nikolas Cruz

    Nikolas Cruz, who confessed to killing 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, committed many acts of cruelty before he opened fire that day. In elementary school, he shot squirrels and chickens, and as a teenager, he reportedly killed frogs, tried to maim a neighbor’s pot-bellied pigs, and tried to crush animals trapped in rabbit holes. In a video shown at his trial Cruz described how he used to skin lizards with a knife after taping them to a table at age 4. His now-defunct social media accounts also reportedly showed many photos of dead animals, presumably more victims of his cruelty.

    Jeffrey Dahmer

    A young Jeffrey Dahmer caught tadpoles as a gift for his teacher. When his teacher gave them to another student, Dahmer was furious. He went to the student’s home and poured motor oil into the tadpoles’ jar, killing them. Dr. Carl Wahlstrom, a forensic psychiatrist who interviewed and evaluated Dahmer, recalled that he said, “If you want to call that torturing animals, I tortured animals.”

    Jeffrey Dahmer in his high school yearbook

    His father, a scientist who believed his son was taking an interest in biology when Dahmer collected dead animals, taught him how to bleach and preserve their bones—the same techniques he would later employ to attempt to preserve his human victims. He allegedly liked to cut open live fish to see their insides and strangled neighborhood dogs and cats. Neighbors found frogs and cats impaled on or staked to trees. In 1975, he went so far as to decapitate the carcass of a dog, place the head on a stick, and nail the body to an adjacent tree—all as a “prank.” He would murder his first human victim just three years later and went on to kill 16 other men and boys between 1978 and 1991.

    Albert DeSalvo

    Albert DeSalvo, who confessed to killing 13 women as the “Boston Strangler,” also confessed to stealing dogs and cats in his youth, confining them to a box or crate, and then shooting arrows into the enclosure to injure or kill them.

    Payton Gendron

    Payton Gendron was indicted by a federal grand jury on 27 firearm and hate crime counts in addition to facing New York state murder charges for the Buffalo grocery store attack that killed 10 and injured three people in May 2022. Gendron allegedly targeted Black people in a premeditated act of terrorism.

    Just two months prior to the shooting, according to one of his own social media posts, he had found a feral cat attacking his own feline animal companion in his garage and spent 90 minutes chasing the cat, stabbing the animal with a hunting knife, and swinging a hatchet at the cat’s throat. He posted a photo of the mutilated cat online with a caption detailing how he felt “blank” about the killing and a photo of his own face sprayed with the animal’s blood.

    Edmund Kemper

    Two cats were among the first victims of Edmund Kemper, who would later kill his paternal grandparents, his mother, her best friend, and several college-age women. At the age of 10, Kemper buried the family cat alive, then dug up and decapitated the animal and put the head on a stick. Just three years later, he killed another family cat because he perceived the animal to be favoring his younger sister over him. He kept pieces of the dismembered feline in his closet until his mother found them. Just over a year later, at age 15, Kemper used a rifle that his grandfather had confiscated from him for shooting animals to kill both of his grandparents, the first of 10 human victims. As an adult weighing around 300 pounds and standing at 6 feet 9 inches tall, he was known as “Big Ed” and then “The Co-Ed Butcher.”

    Dennis Rader

    “BTK,” the name serial killer Dennis Rader submitted to newspapers while on a murder spree in the 1970s, stood for “Bind, Torture, Kill.” He reportedly practiced this killing method on other species. As a child, he allegedly developed “violent sexual fantasies that involved bondage” after killing cats and dogs by hanging and strangling them. He enjoyed watching animals struggle until they died, and he got excited when he saw chickens who would soon be killed for their flesh. After he became a dogcatcher and compliance officer in 1991, numerous complaints were filed against him—including for killing his neighbor’s dog. In 2005, Rader was convicted of 10 murders committed between 1974 and 1986.

    Michael Bruce Ross

    Michael Bruce Ross grew up on his family’s chicken farm in Connecticut. When he was 8 years old, he was put in charge of feeding chicks and giving them water. When he deemed a chick too small or unlikely to produce enough eggs, his job was to kill them, which he did by strangling them. He grew up to become known as “The Egg Man” and “The Roadside Strangler” for raping and murdering three women and five teenage girls. In addition to the murders, Ross confessed to about two dozen rapes.

    The killing of baby chicks isn’t just committed by growing serial killers. It’s standard in the egg industry, where more than 200 million male chicks are killed each year because they’re “useless” in terms of profit. This happens on all farms: Eggs labeled “free-range” and “cage-free” come from hatcheries that kill day-old male chicks and farms that exploit their mothers and sisters for their reproductive parts and flesh.

    Baby Chicks Ground Up Alive

    Help PETA Lead With Empathy and Reach Children Before Violence Occurs

    PETA keeps an updated list of reported incidents in which young people have committed acts of cruelty to animals. It’s meant to illustrate how prevalent the problem is and provide educators with tools to teach students what it means to have compassion for all living, feeling beings, and it can be shared with your local school district and community members. Early intervention is key to saving lives, and simply reporting an incident can make a difference. Please share this resource with any educator you know:

    The post Small Animals Were the First Victims of Dahmer, Bundy, and Other Killers appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • Battle Against Poverty / The Robert Hicks Show

    This post was originally published on American Jewish World Service – AJWS.

  • Trafficked Victim Placed Under House Arrest, Faces 20 Years In Prison

    A human trafficking victim has been ordered to pay the family of a rapist that she killed $150 thousand dollars. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             A human trafficking victim has been ordered to pay the family of a rapist that […]

    The post Trafficked Victim Placed Under House Arrest, Faces 20 Years In Prison appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • DeSantis May Have Broken MULTIPLE Laws With Migrant Flights

    Ron DeSantis is now facing a class action lawsuit and a criminal investigation for his political stunt of shipping asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard. Journalist Judd Legum joins Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins to explain all the details of that case.

    The post DeSantis May Have Broken MULTIPLE Laws With Migrant Flights appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Southern Baptist Covered Up Sex Abuse For Decades & FBI Failed Larry Nassar Victims

    It was revealed recently that the Southern Baptist Convention has been covering up allegations of sexual abuse for decades. Also, the women who were abused by Larry Nassar during their gymnastics careers are suing the FBI for failing to take action when they warned about what was happening. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss. Transcript: *This transcript was generated […]

    The post Southern Baptist Covered Up Sex Abuse For Decades & FBI Failed Larry Nassar Victims appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Black Lives Matter Leader Sued For Stealing Millions From Organization

    A leader of the Black Lives Matter group is being sued by other members for allegedly siphoning millions of dollars from the group. Attorney Michael Bixby, filing in for Mike Papantonio this week, is joined by Farron Cousins to discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Michael Bixby:                    A […]

    The post Black Lives Matter Leader Sued For Stealing Millions From Organization appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Starbucks Billionaire CEO Closing Stores & Firing Union Workers

    Starbuck CEO Howard Schultz gained an extra ONE BILLION DOLLARS during the pandemic, and now he’s fighting union efforts at his stores. Attorney Michael Bixby, filing in for Mike Papantonio this week, is joined by Farron Cousins to discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Michael Bixby:                    Starbucks CEO […]

    The post Starbucks Billionaire CEO Closing Stores & Firing Union Workers appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Right Wingers Using TikTok To Spread Extremist Propaganda

    While most social media networks are trying their best to crackdown on hatred being spread on their platforms, TikTok is behind the curve. This is why right wing extremists have been flooding the network with their extremist propaganda, and Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins recently spoke with Olivia Little from Media Matters about this growing […]

    The post Right Wingers Using TikTok To Spread Extremist Propaganda appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

  • Political Polarization Is Pushing Evangelicals to a Historic Breaking Point

    A potentially historic political shift is currently taking place within an unexpected group of Americans: evangelical Christians. In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency, strains within the evangelical community, especially among people of color, have resulted in significant numbers of people defecting from the right and opening themselves to social justice stances on issues of race, immigration, climate and economic fairness. Should the trend escalate, it could send tremors that extend well beyond the religious community and reverberate throughout U.S. politics.

    While the future of evangelical politics remains uncertain, the divisions forming in religious spaces are creating significant opportunities for those interested in promoting progressive change. Moreover, organizing among evangelical dissenters is providing important lessons in how those working on social justice issues might find fertile ground in communities outside their circles of usual suspects — provided they can relate with people who do not identify as belonging on either side of the traditional divide between the political right and left.

    Due to the various ways in which the term “evangelical” is defined, it is difficult to put an exact percentage on the number of evangelical Christians in America today. A 2016 survey by Wheaton College, a private religious university, estimated about 90 to 100 million people in the United States are evangelical. Today, it is generally taken for granted that this constituency is one of the most rock-solid pillars of the Republican coalition — and there is good reason to see things this way: In 2016, 80 percent of white evangelicals supported Donald Trump, with two-thirds of self-identified evangelicals saying their faith influences their political beliefs.

    Such far-right identification, however, has not been forever locked in place. As recently as the early 1970s, evangelicals were considered a largely apolitical group. To the extent they formed a voting bloc, they were considered divided and persuadable — a constituency that could be won over by Democratic politicians such as Jimmy Carter. Indeed, since Carter was himself a born-again Christian, Newsweek magazine dubbed 1976, the year of his election, the “Year of the Evangelical.”

    A concerted campaign by conservative groups such as the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition and Focus on the Family made certain that future mentions of evangelicals in politics would definitely not refer to Democratic presidential wins. In social movement terms, the decades-long project by the “New Right” to transform the evangelical community from a muddled and sometimes apathetic bloc into one of the most die-hard conservative demographics represents an unprecedented organizing accomplishment.

    While conservatives have provided a textbook example of how a constituency can be polarized in order to strengthen allegiances and move indecisive moderates into a political camp, the continuing polarization that occurred under Trump began creating a backlash. On the one hand, Trump was a master at energizing religious conservatives and solidifying their identification with him. Analysis from the Pew Research Center suggests even some non-churchgoing white conservatives are now adopting the “evangelical” label — not to show religious identity, but to express a political orientation and demonstrate support for the party of Trump.

    On the other hand, a predictable consequence of polarization is that, even as many supporters grow more passionately partisan, others will start to become alienated. When forcing people to take sides, you may draw many into your fold; however, you risk losing a fraction who are turned off and unwilling to make the leap. Signs of such a backlash can currently be seen among evangelicals — particularly people of color.

    No one would argue that the right has lost its command over the evangelicals as a whole, as white evangelicals remain among the most fervent supporters of former President Trump. At the same time, the reaction of evangelical leaders to mass protests around racial injustice, COVID, and #MeToo — along with sexual impropriety and scandals in many churches — have started driving people away in significant numbers. In some cases, those who are leaving are now looking for new expressions of their faith that are aligned with social justice — expressions that sometimes put them squarely at odds with white evangelical Trump supporters.

    Even if only a limited fraction of evangelicals are moved to embrace more progressive stances, the impact on the electorate as a whole could be profound. For this reason, understanding the divisions that are forming — and analyzing the opportunities they present — is a pressing task.

    A Splintering Evangelical Coalition?

    In recent years there have been many news stories about how the ardent right-wing identification of the evangelical community has begun to produce increasing numbers of defectors. Primarily, this has been reported in terms of people leaving their churches.

    The percentage of Americans who identify as Christian (once well over 90 percent of the population) has steadily fallen since the 1960s, with the decline accelerating in the past 10 years. Among the subset of people who identify as white evangelicals, the drop-off has been particularly marked. According to the Public Religion Research Institute, “23 percent of Americans were white evangelical Protestants in 2006; by 2020, that number had decreased to just 14.5 percent.” Some part of this trend can be attributed to a general waning of public religiosity, as an increasing portion of the population checks “none” on surveys when asked about religious affiliation.

    But it would be wrong to underestimate the connection between evangelicals’ diminished share of the population and disaffection with the conservative extremism that pervades many congregations. Following Trump’s election in 2016, the #Exvangelical hashtag became increasingly popular, as many white evangelicals deserted their churches, citing Trumpism among faith leaders and their hard-right political platform as a primary concern.

    This exodus from evangelicalism has been highlighted by the exits of prominent individuals within the movement. One such figure was Peter Wehner, a political operative who served in three Republican administrations. In a popular op-ed for the New York Times titled “Why I Can No Longer Call Myself an Evangelical Republican,” Wehner wrote about no longer feeling comfortable with the designation “evangelical” after witnessing continued support among fellow conservative Christians for Roy Moore, a former Alabama Supreme Court Justice and Republican nominee in a 2017 U.S. Senate race who was accused of sexual misconduct by nine women.

    In a similar move, Bible teacher and conservative Christian Beth Moore (no relation to Roy Moore) left the Southern Baptist Convention, or SBC. She cited, among other issues, the failure of her church to condemn Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape. Meanwhile, the shifting political climate has also riven institutions such as World Magazine, a prominent Christian news organization, which lost editor-in-chief Martin Olasky and several journalists who protested that the publication was becoming less a respected news source and more a conservative opinion outlet.

    Such developments are symptomatic of a larger splintering within the evangelical church, in which many are questioning whether or not they ideologically belong in the community they once considered home. They are witnessing increasing divisions not only over Trump, but more generally over issues such as sexuality, #MeToo and the public response to the COVID pandemic. High-profile scandals have further exacerbated tensions and spurred the departure of many parishioners. Megachurches from Seattle to Illinois to Alabama and beyond have witnessed resignations from well-known pastors after allegations of sexual misconduct or infidelity — and investigations such as the major report on sexual abuse in the SBC released in May 2022 have documented the endemic mishandling of sexual abuse claims.

    In a February 2022 article for the Christian magazine First Things, Evangelical writer Aaron Renn argued: “Where once there was a culture war between Christianity and secular society, today there is a culture war within evangelicalism itself.” Not only prominent leaders, but rank-and-file pastors are departing in significant numbers. According to a 2021 poll by the Christian polling firm Barna Group, 38 percent of pastors said they had considered quitting full-time ministry. Scott Dudley, a pastor at Bellevue Presbyterian Church, told The Atlantic that many pastors have not only left their churches, but are deciding to pursue entirely different careers. “They have concluded that their church has become a hostile work environment where at any moment they may be blasted, slandered, and demeaned in disrespectful and angry ways,” Dudley said, “or have organized groups of people within the church demand that they be fired.”

    In a widely circulated February 2022 opinion piece for the New York Times, columnist and author David Brooks examined this tension within the evangelical community. “The turmoil in evangelicalism has not just ruptured relationships; it’s dissolving the structures of many evangelical institutions,” he wrote. “Many families, churches, parachurch organizations and even denominations are coming apart. I asked many evangelical leaders who are wary of Trump if they thought their movement would fracture. Most said it already has.”

    Fracturing Along Racial Lines

    Perhaps as much as any other issue, the question of race has created schisms within evangelical communities. In his article, Brooks cited “attitudes about race relations” as one of the primary factors that has driven Christian evangelicals apart. “It’s been at times agonizing and bewildering,” Thabiti Anyabwile, who pastors the largely Black Anacostia River Church in Washington, D.C, told Brooks. “My entire relationship landscape has been rearranged. I’ve lost 20-year friendships. I’ve had great distance inserted into relationships that were once close and I thought would be close for life. I’ve grieved.”

    In an April 2017 special report for Religion Dispatches titled “Betrayed at the Polls, Evangelicals of Color at a Crossroads,” reporter Deborah Jian Lee profiled several women of color who left their churches after the Trump election. Alicia Crosby, who is a Black social justice advocate, felt betrayed by white evangelical support for Trump and left her church to found the Center for Inclusivity. Crosby has spoken out on numerous podcasts about her experience leaving the evangelical church and finding Christian community elsewhere. In 2019, she wrote: “In this moment, it’s not enough to ask how Christians can be more justice-minded, it is necessary to ask them to consider how their tradition and lived out faith practices are complicit in creating conditions for harm, regardless of what shapes their personal moral code.”

    Chanequa Walker-Barnes, a professor of practical theology at the McAfee School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta, left the majority-white church where she had been on staff. “People of color [have been] willing to fit themselves into these white evangelical spaces even when it was uncomfortable,” she told Religion Dispatches. But for her and many colleagues, the dissonance became too extreme: “One friend said the [2016] election was the ‘final nail in the coffin of my relationship with the evangelical church,’” Walker-Barnes explained. “I don’t know if I’m doing a full divestment from evangelical spaces, but I’m definitely pulling back.”

    Racial tensions are not new, of course. That said, a March 2018 article by New York Times reporter Campbell Robertson highlighted how the right-wing polarization of the past decade has undone initiatives to create multi-racial church communities. A 2012 National Congregational Study showed that two-thirds of those attending majority-white churches were worshiping alongside “at least some Black congregants,” an increased level of church integration since 1998.

    However, after the 2016 election, when white evangelicals supported Trump “by a larger margin than they had voted for any other presidential candidate,” churches began to resegregate, reversing previous efforts. Speaking about Trump’s open hostility towards people of color and immigrants, Walker-Barnes told Robertson, “[S]omething is profoundly wrong at the heart of the white church.”

    “Everything we tried is not working,” added author Michael Emerson. “The election itself was the single most harmful event to the whole movement of reconciliation in at least the past 30 years,” he said. “It’s about to completely break apart.”

    Subsequently, the murder of George Floyd in May 2020 and a renewed wave of Black Lives Matter protests further heightened tensions. At a time of national reckoning, many evangelicals of color no longer felt that their congregations adequately supported them or reflected their values. Two prominent Black evangelicals, Chicago pastor Charlie Dates and Atlanta’s John Onwucheckwa both left the SBC due to concerns about racism within the organization. For Dates, the “final straw” was when all six SBC seminary presidents issued a statement in November 2020 that rejected critical race theory, calling it “incompatible with the Baptist Faith and Message” and “not a biblical solution.”

    In a December 2020 opinion piece for Religion News Service, Dates asked: “How did they, who in 2020 still don’t have a single Black denominational entity head, reject once and for all a theory that helps to frame the real race problems we face?” Dates calls for a “new vision and new standard,” one which will not be “led in full by white men” and which “speaks justice courageously to the government and cares gently for the oppressed, marginalized and women.” A little over a year after Dates’ public exit, in February 2022, the SBC appointed Tennessee Baptist pastor Willie McLaurin as interim president and CEO of the SBC Executive Committee; McLaurin is the first and the sole Black person to assume an Executive Committee role.

    For his part, Onwuchekwa named four reasons for leaving the SBC, including the “destructive nature of a disremembered history” (the SBC failing to address the ways the organization participated in slavery), “racial repair” (the denomination has not denounced racism), “unhealthy partisanship” (allegiance to the Republican Party), and “shallow solutions where they should be putting on scuba gear” (a focus on unity rather than structural solutions to racial injustice). “The SBC liked me,” Onwuchekwa wrote in his public goodbye letter, “but I feel like they’ve failed people like me. I’d rather give myself to serving that overlooked and under-resourced demographic than merely enjoy the perks of being treated as some outlier.”

    A Mixed Evangelical Politics

    Although there are signs that new political possibilities may emerge within evangelical spaces that have experienced polarization and division, there is no widespread agreement about what form these may take — and how radically they might break with the orthodoxy of the religious right.

    Some dissenters, while perhaps falling in the “Never Trump” camp, remain hardline conservatives, simply wanting a more sedate, family-values Republicanism. As Rachel Stone, a lifelong evangelical and former evangelical writer, wrote in response to the David Brooks article, “Mr. Brooks’s alleged ‘dissenters’ depart from evangelical orthodoxy by not bowing to Donald Trump; otherwise, they’re typical evangelical gatekeepers.” As an example, Stone noted that one of the “Never Trumpers” cited by Brooks, Christian professor Karen Swallow Prior, supports highly restrictive abortion legislation, among other conservative public policies. Other evangelicals want to make their churches less political, but not necessarily more progressive, putting forward calls for unity that attempt to paper over existing strains.

    In June 2021, Michael Graham, who regularly communicates with evangelical pastors around the country, created a typology to explain these changes within the evangelical community. In an article titled “The Six Way Fracturing of Evangelicalism,” Graham divided the community into a half dozen distinct groups. He sees three groups (the “Post-Evangelical,” the “Dechurched, but with some Jesus” and “Dechurched and Deconverted”) as having cut ties with the faith. Among those who have remained, he sees three further factions: “Neo-fundamentalist evangelicals” (who have a strictly orthodox worldview), “Mainstream evangelicals” (who may show concern for “the destructive pull of Christian Nationalism” but are “far more concerned by the secular left’s influence”), and finally “Neo-evangelicals” (who are “highly concerned” by the acceptance of Trump and failure to engage on issues of race and sexuality within the evangelical community). Of these, only the last group would truly represent potential for political realignment.

    Nevertheless, Graham sees major changes afoot. He questions whether “big tent evangelicalism” will survive, given the highly visible and even “fatal” divides between fundamentalists and neo-evangelicals. He believes new models of churches will emerge — and are already emerging — to offer compromises to those who fall between categories, or who are still deciding where they belong. “We will see a rising tide of justice-minded churches,” he writes, which is likely to draw in those who are turned off by the right and have interest in the social gospel.

    The values and experiences of a younger generation are also driving change. Mark Labberton, the president of Fuller Seminary, says that some younger members of the church “want to build communities that are smaller, intimate, authentic, which can often fit in a living room. They see faith as inseparably linked to community service with the poor and marginalized. There’s a general interest in getting away from all the bitterness that has devoured the elders and just diving back into the Bible.”

    Likewise, as Cylde Haberman reported in the New York Times, “A younger cohort of evangelical Protestants is increasingly Black and Latino. Ethnicity aside, they resemble other young Americans in not automatically sharing their elders’ hostility to same-sex marriage, abortion, or gay and transgender rights.” David Bailey, a Black evangelical in Virginia whose own church is “racially and socioeconomically diverse” told David Brooks he sees that “Christians who are millennials and younger have different views on things like LGBTQ issues and are just used to mixing with much more diverse demographics.”

    Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City and a leading evangelical thinker, sees a younger evangelicalism rising with a politics that cannot be easily characterized as right or left. “The enormous energy of [evangelical] churches in the global South and East has begun to spill over into the cities of North America, where a new, multiethnic evangelicalism is growing steadily,” he wrote in a 2017 New Yorker article. “In my view, these churches tend to be much more committed to racial justice and care for the poor than is commonly seen in white Evangelicalism. In this way, they might be called liberal. On the other hand, these multicultural churches remain avowedly conservative on issues like sex outside of marriage. They look, to most eyes, like a strange mixture of liberal and conservative viewpoints, although they themselves see a strong inner consistency between these views.”

    Toward Mission-Centered Racial Justice

    The vehemence of support for Trump’s white nationalism in many evangelical spaces has prompted some Black evangelicals to leave or to find Black churches rather than remaining in majority-white spaces. Others, however, are remaining steadfast in their church communities, advocating for a mission-centered approach. As Deborah Jian Lee wrote for Religion Dispatches, some are “reframing the evangelical world as a mission field as opposed to a place for spiritual nourishment, creating ethnic safe spaces or staying firmly planted in evangelical community to combat racism from within.”

    Ra Mendoza, who works as a national program director at Mission Year, an urban ministry with evangelical roots, is a Mexican-Latinx evangelical who has been working to create “ethnic safe spaces.” Mendoza told Jian Lee that evangelicals in Mission Year looked to her to “call things out” but that “these groups never invited her to create something that actually corrected the problems she called out; they listened to her critique and they thought that was enough.” Despite this, Mendoza stayed at Mission Year, hoping to create what she described to Lee as “new space that doesn’t perpetuate whiteness and sexism and all the stuff that was built into our DNA for the last 20 years.” Mendoza created a Facebook group to mobilize churches to “protect trans and non-binary people of color.”

    In a December 2018 article for the New Yorker titled “Evangelicals of Color Fight Back Against the Religious Right,” Eliza Griswold wrote about the Black evangelicals taking action to affirm social justice in their church communities. Griswold profiled Lisa Sharon Harper, a prominent evangelical activist. Harper is the former mobilizing director of a Christian social justice organization called Sojourners and the current president of Freedom Road, a consulting group that trains religious leaders in social action. After the murder of Michael Brown, Harper organized evangelical leaders and their followers against police brutality in Ferguson, Missouri. She also organized a trip to Brazil to unite against far-right President Jair Bolsanaro. “Sociologically, the principal difference between white and Black evangelicals is that we believe that oppression exists,” Harper stated.

    For his part, David Brooks wrote of dissidents who are working within their churches to heal from divisions caused by Trumpism. “Many of these dissenters have put racial justice and reconciliation activities at the center of what needs to be done,” he wrote. “[T]here are reconciliation conferences, trips to Selma and Birmingham, Alabama, study groups reading Martin Luther King Jr. and Howard Thurman. Evangelicals played important roles in the abolitionist movement; these Christians are trying to connect with that legacy.”

    By organizing within marginalized communities, Black evangelicals diametrically oppose Trump’s ethno-nationalistic coalition. And given that people of color are the fastest-growing demographic within evangelicalism, their organizing has the power to influence the wider political orientations of the community. (A 2015 Pew Research study predicted people of color will make up the majority of the Christian population by 2042.) “Evangelicalism has been hijacked by the religious right,” Harper told the New Yorker. “We come from the arm of the church that is so toxic, we understand it and we can offer a solution.” Her solution is that Black evangelicals propose an alternative rooted deeply in faith and “vehemently jealous for the human dignity of all people.”

    One example of organizing that uses this new missional approach focused on racial justice and reconciliation has emerged in Phoenix, Arizona. There, a group called the Surge Network, which is connected to a nation church renewal movement co-founded by Tim Keller, has dramatically reshaped the composition of its leadership team in recent years to be primarily led by women and people of color. In terms of activating its evangelical constituency, it has been a key force in mobilizing interfaith responses to the murder of George Floyd and organizing religious people to join Black Lives Matter protests.

    In one instance, Surge turned out 3,000 people from 200 churches to join a march through downtown Phoenix toward the Arizona Capitol, where ministers led a public prayer. As the crowd knelt, Melissa Hubert, a deacon at Redemption Church Alhambra, read the names of people killed by police. Among the protest signs, one placard invoked Hebrews 13:3: “Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” Beyond such public-facing mobilization, Surge leads a religious education program called the “Neighbors Table,” which prompts local parishioners to lean into hard conversations about criminal justice reform, immigration and Islamophobia through discussion and meals with neighbors directly impacted by these issues.

    What will the future of evangelical politics be? This remains to be seen. But the current juncture has created a moment loaded with potential, in which the unprecedented alignment of evangelicalism with the Republican right is being shaken — at least at the margins — and new possibilities are emerging. Although white evangelicals may remain conservative loyalists, the ranks of people who might once have been among their fellow parishioners, but who have since been alienated by their intolerance and are now seeking new identities aligned with social justice, could well number in the millions.

    Those millions are people that no movement interested in changing the world for the better should want to ignore.

    Research assistance provided by Celeste Pepitone-Nahas.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Republicans Keep Winning On Culture War Issues

    The Republican Party is winning the culture wars that they launched, and Democrats have absolutely no response to it. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             The Republican party is winning the culture wars that they launched and Democrats have absolutely […]

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    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire Network.

  • America’s Lawyer: Republicans Are Destroying The Dems With Culture-Wars

    America’s Lawyer E13: Gas prices continue to be a major problem for both consumers and the Biden administration, but is it bad politics or corporate greed driving the high prices? We’ll answer that question in just a moment. The Supreme Court’s ruling against the EPA isn’t just going to impact environmental policy – it could […]

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    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire Network.

  • Supreme Court Justices Will “Punish” Liberals Over Protests

    A majority of Americans say that it is time for term limits for Supreme Court justices. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             A majority Americans say that it’s time for term limits for the Supreme Court. This ties right into what […]

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    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Ghislaine Maxwell Still Won’t Release Names Of Epstein’s Accomplices

    Ghislaine Maxwell has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking and prostitution operation. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

    The post Ghislaine Maxwell Still Won’t Release Names Of Epstein’s Accomplices appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

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  • Brits support universal basic income by 20-point margin

    By: Ben van der Merwe.

    See original post here.

    Nearly half of all British adults (48 per cent) would support the introduction of a universal basic income (UBI), according to a YouGov poll shared exclusively with the New Statesman.

    A UBI would provide every UK resident with a guaranteed monthly income from the state. Unlike existing benefits such as Universal Credit, the payment would be made without means-testing or work requirements. 

    A plurality supported the policy in every region, in both major social classes and in all age groups under 65. However, Conservative voters opposed the idea by 43 per cent to 35 per cent, while Leave voters were evenly split.

    YouGov found that the policy also has broad support in Italy, Spain and Germany. Support in Germany and Italy was similarly split by party and age, though in Spain it was older age groups that were most supportive.

    All groups polled in the UK agreed that a UBI would increase living standards and reduce poverty. However, Conservatives, Leave voters and pensioners expressed concern that the policy would reduce economic growth.

    Indeed, the affordability of a UBI was the greatest concern for the general public, with 45 per cent believing that the government would be unable to pay for the policy (against 35 per cent who disagreed).

    Last year, parliament’s Work and Pensions Committee advised the government against introducing a UBI, arguing the policy would be “extremely expensive, and would not target support at people who need it most”.

    Estimates of the policy’s cost vary widely, owing to disagreement over the suitable level of payment. YouGov’s poll found that a majority of all social classes, age groups and regions in Britain think that a UBI should be enough to live on without any other form of income (54 per cent of all respondents), though a sizeable minority believe it should be set lower and supplemented by employment income or other benefits (41 per cent).

    A 2017 study by the Institute for Policy Research examined a range of possible UBI schemes, examining their distributional effects and cost. The authors concluded that “such schemes either have unacceptable distributional consequences or they simply cost too much”.

    However, a 2020 study estimated that a UBI could eradicate child and pensioner poverty at a cost of £67bn, similar to the cost of the Covid-19 furlough scheme. The researchers suggested the scheme could be paid for by getting rid of corporate subsidies and tax breaks.

    In January this year, a report by the New Economics Foundation called for a mixed system, combining a minimalist UBI with a minimum income guarantee, which it calls a “Living Income”. The system would cost an estimated £137bn, which the think tank suggests could be raised by abolishing the personal tax allowance. It calculated that such a policy could lift 760,000 people out of poverty and boost the average income of the poorest 10 per cent of households by £2,000.

    Sam Tims, an economist at the New Economics Foundation told the New Statesman: “Strong and growing support for UBI demonstrates that we are moving away from the austerity-driven consensus of the last decade, the result of which is an inadequate social security system that fails to protect those who need it most. 

    “At its core, UBI ensures no one’s income falls below a set level and the concept of a decent minimum income should be welcomed and applied to the welfare state. But we don’t need UBI to begin eradicating poverty and reducing inequality. A ‘Living Income’ would provide a minimum income tied to the cost of living through a means-tested system.”

    The poll comes just as the Welsh government begins its trial of a basic income for children leaving care. The scheme, which is set to run until 2025, will see around 500 18-year-olds offered an unconditional income of £19,200 per year for up to two years.

    The post Brits support universal basic income by 20-point margin appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Supreme Court Fascists Are Destroying The United States

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    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Clarence Thomas Wants To Continue Destroying Your Rights

    Reversing Roe v Wade isn’t enough and US Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas now wants to revisit same-sex marriage & contraception laws. Mike Papantonio is joined by journalist & podcast host, Rick Outzen, to discuss. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             You know, before you take […]

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  • Is Universal Basic Income Part of a Just Transition?

    By:  JOHN FEFFER

    See original post here.

    In the remote rural village of Dauphin, in the Canadian province of Manitoba, economists tried out an unusual experiment. In the 1970s, they persuaded the provincial government to give cash payments to poorer families to see if a guaranteed basic income could improve their outcomes. During the years of this “Mincome” experiment, families received a basic income of 16,000 Canadian dollars (or a top up to that amount). With 10,000 inhabitants, Dauphin was just big enough to be a good data set but not too big as to bankrupt the government.

    The results were startling, including a significant drop in hospitalizations and an improvement in high school graduation rates.

    After four years, however, money for the experiment dried up, and this early example of universal basic income (UBI) was nearly forgotten.

    Today, such UBI projects have become more commonplace. In the U.S. presidential race in 2020, Andrew Yang made his “freedom dividend” of $1,000 a month a centerpiece of his political campaign.

    Several pilot projects are up and running in California. In fact, at least 28 U.S. cities currently give out no-strings-attached cash on a regular basis (since the recipients are all low-income, these programs aren’t technically “universal”). In other countries, too, basic income projects have become more popular, including a new citizen’s basic income project in the Brazilian city of Maricá. Basic income programs were in place, briefly, in both Mongolia and Iran. Civil society organizations like the Latin American Network for Basic Income have pushed for change from below.

    Unlike the mid-1970s, universal basic income must contend with two sets of factors: the weight of old but institutionalized social welfare systems and the demands of new priorities, particularly environmental ones.

    “The old welfare systems are based on sustained economic development, on economic growth that creates jobs and fiscal resources,” points out economist Ruben Lo Vuolo, a member of the Centro Interdisciplinario de Estudios de Políticas Públicas in Argentina, at a recent discussion of UBI sponsored by the Ecosocial Pact of the South and Global Just Transition. “They are structured based on the fact that people will have jobs and contribute over the course of their lifetimes and the state will have fiscal resources to cover them. But now the state says that it can’t keep growing and can’t generate jobs as it did before. We’re seeing less growth than in 1950s or 1970s but more inequality and more carbon emissions. So, the basis of the social-welfare system has been seriously questioned by climate change.”

    This conflict between the logic of the social-welfare state and the imperative to reduce resource use means that “we have to stop thinking about a state that can repair damages and start thinking about one that prevents damages: a state that’s not so concerned about economic growth and then redistribution but redistribution itself,” Lo Vuolo continues.

    The social welfare state provides compensation to those who have lost their jobs, experienced a health emergency, or needed extra provisions to feed the family. Instead, a new eco-social state should be thinking of ways to prevent those negative outcomes in the first place.

    Key to this challenge of redistribution, of course, is the question of mechanism. Does the state rely on the market to meet basic needs or on other methods of assessing and then fulfilling those needs? One of the chief defects of the market is its focus on short-term outcomes. “With an economy based on market preferences, it is impossible to generate an intergenerational pact that takes on climate change,” Lo Vuolo adds. “If we continue on this path, future generations won’t have a healthy environment.”

    One of the chief preoccupations of a social-welfare state is to make sure that those who have sufficient resources don’t receive assistance. This has led to often complex systems of “means testing.”

    Universal basic income strategies, Lo Vuolo points out, flip this approach on its head. Instead of focusing so many human resources on ensuring that the well-off do not receive benefits, the universal character of UBI guarantees that no one who needs help is left out. A progressive tax policy, meanwhile, targets sectors where wealth is concentrated to address questions of “unfair distribution” as well as to finance the universal benefits. Such a “sustainable distribution” system has the additional benefit of suppressing consumption among the wealthy even as it boosts consumption among the most vulnerable sectors.

    A UBI strategy can’t work, however, if individuals have to pay for public goods like education and transportation. The reduction of a country’s carbon footprint, meanwhile, requires not only robust public systems at the national level but institutions at the global level that coordinate mitigation. However, the track record so far of compliance with global pacts to reduce carbon emissions has been dismal.

    The Stockton Example

    Stockton is a mid-sized city in California with a population of over 300,000 people. It is located about 85 miles east of San Francisco in the agriculture-rich Central Valley. In 2012, it also declared bankruptcy, the largest U.S. city to do so at the time. In response, the municipal government slashed public services. Unemployment spiked, and the lack of affordable housing led to a sharp increase in homelessness. One in four citizens lived below the poverty line.

    In 2017, Stockton chose to participate in an experiment very similar to the one that took place in Dauphin in the 1970s. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED), as its name suggests, emphasizes the choices people make and the agency they exercise in making those choices. To qualify to participate in SEED, you had to be a Stockton resident in a neighborhood that was at or below the city’s median income of about $46,000. Participants were selected randomly. One hundred and twenty-five people were given $500 a month for two years. The other participants in the program, by receiving nothing, constituted a control group.

    To determine the efficacy of the experiment, researchers asked three questions: how did the additional payment affect monthly income volatility, how did that volatility influence wellbeing, and how did guaranteed income improve participants’ ability to control their future?

    As SEED’s Research and Program Officer Erin Coltrera explains, the group that received the universal income had considerably less income volatility. “There is an oft-cited statistic that nearly half of US citizens would choose not to pay a $400 emergency expense with cash or cash equivalent,” she reports. “They might use debt instead. But this has long-term implications because it means that a $400 emergency will cost more over time.” With the additional $500 a month, SEED participants were more likely to be able to handle an emergency with cash.

    As in Dauphin, the Stockton experiment demonstrated clear improvements in mental health. Coltrera quotes one participant: “I had panic attacks and anxiety. I had to take a pill for it. I haven’t taken that in a while. I used to have to carry pills with me all the time.”

    The basic income made a particular difference for women performing unpaid care work. “The SEED money allowed them to prioritize themselves in ways they’d ignored, for instance to catch up on their medical care or to center themselves in their own narrative,” Coltrera explains.

    One criticism of basic income payments is that they discourage recipients from seeking employment. The SEED project demonstrated the opposite. At the beginning of the experiment, only 28 percent of recipients had fulltime employment. One year later, that number had grown to 40 percent.

    “Recipients were able to leverage the payment to improve their employment prospects,” Coltrera says. “The $500 allowed participants to reduce part-time work to finish training or coursework that then led to fulltime employment.” One recipient, for instance, had been eligible for a real estate license for a year but hadn’t been able to take the time off to complete the license. The $500 allowed the person to take the time off and complete their license, opening up employment and other economic opportunities.

    The money also provided people with more choice. They could choose to stop living with family, for instance, which meant freeing up time previously spent on unpaid care work. “Once basic needs are met,” Coltrera explains, “people could describe small and meaningful pathways to authentic trust, choice, and a sense of safety.”

    Critiques of UBI

    One of the major criticisms of universal basic income is that it encourages “parasitism.” If people receive money with no strings attached, they will become dependent on these handouts and stop working. “There is this logic that if you’re not receiving remuneration for some activity, then you’re not doing anything,” reports Ailynn Torres, a Cuban researcher with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation based in Ecuador. As the Stockton case demonstrates, however, the payments didn’t reduce participation in the labor market. And the payments reach people who are otherwise overlooked by the social welfare system, such as those who engage in unpaid household work.

    Another critique of UBI is that it’s not a good way to fight poverty compared to targeted subsidies. On the other hand, the social welfare system that provides such subsidies carries substantial administrative costs. Such as system has often fostered clientelism and bureaucracy and created systemic dependency.

    A third critique, from the left, is that UBI is not anti-capitalist. “UBI is not a magic pill that will put an end to bad things in society,” Torres concedes. “But because it is universal and unconditional, it helps people without anything. It allows us to rethink different realities and explore the interdependence of rights. And what is more important than sustaining life? UBI is not utopian but a political program that has been shown to be feasible.”

    A final critique involves the overall cost of UBI. “We’ve seen debate on how to finance this,” Torres continues. “Critics say, ’It’s really expensive, we can’t finance it.’ But could you make it possible by eliminating local subsidies and bundling programs together, removing administrative costs and actually increasing benefits? Really, we should turn the question around. It’s not how much UBI costs. It’s how much does it cost not to have UBI.”

    Several countries in Latin America are looking into some version of UBI. Uruguay is exploring the financing of UBI through a personal wealth tax. Mexico, too, is looking at progressive tax reforms to cover a universal pension of the elderly and a basic income for children. Argentina instituted an Emergency Family Income program during the pandemic to sustain about 9 million people during the lockdown and economic downturn. According to one estimate, an extended UBI would cost 2.9 percent of Argentina’s GDP. Another estimate, for Brazil, suggests that one percent of GDP could cover the basic income for the poorest 30 percent of the population.

    Still, more research is necessary to show how UBI can strengthen community networks, how it can increase access to basic services including banks, and what kind of differential impact it has on different ethnic communities. Introducing more money into Amazonian indigenous communities, where livelihoods are relatively independent of capitalist market relations and people have long fought for the recognition of collective rights, might cause more harm than good, for example. Thus, in culturally diverse countries, especially around indigenous peoples, an intercultural adaptation of UBI according to the collective decisions of recipients might be in order.

    Amaia Perez Orozco, a feminist economist from Spain, believes that a UBI can be part of a package deal of socio-economic transformation.

    Much depends, however, on how it is financed and implemented. The challenge, she notes, is the broader context of ecological collapse, racial inequality, and the greater precarity of life under spreading mercantilization. “Can UBI play an emancipatory role in this context?” she asks.

    So, for instance, does a UBI provide people with money to pay for private health insurance or is the UBI embedded in a system of national health care? Does UBI contribute to greater national debt and thus dependency on global financial markets? Is UBI boosting unsustainable consumption and making the hoarding of resources worse? Will men, provided with a basic income, increase their care work or will UBIs reinforce gender divisions and others based on race class as the wealthier continue to externalize these jobs?

    On the other hand, if a UBI reduces material dependency for women, “it could open the way to new jobs, new opportunities for leisure, the option to leave violent relationships,” Ailynn Torres adds. “Women would have more opportunities to negotiate their work conditions.”

    The post Is Universal Basic Income Part of a Just Transition? appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • FBI Sued For Allowing Larry Nassar’s Abuse To Progress

    The women who were abused by Larry Nassar during their gymnastics careers are suing the FBI for failing to take action when they warned about what was happening. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             The women who were abused by Larry […]

    The post FBI Sued For Allowing Larry Nassar’s Abuse To Progress appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Procter & Gamble Sued For Discrimination Against Black-Owned Company

    Procter & Gamble is being accused of discrimination after it was found they are paying a Black-owned contract company far less than the white-owned companies. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             Procter & Gamble is being accused of discrimination after it […]

    The post Procter & Gamble Sued For Discrimination Against Black-Owned Company appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • New Ohio Bills Require Genital Checks For Trans Athletes & Arms Teachers

    The state of Ohio has passed two highly controversial bills in the past week that have put the Buckeye State in the national spotlight. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             The state of Ohio has passed two highly controversial bills in […]

    The post New Ohio Bills Require Genital Checks For Trans Athletes & Arms Teachers appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Democrats Hope Roe V Wade Decision Will Give Them Midterm Advantage

    If Roe gets overturned, Democrats are hoping it will give them an edge in November – but polls are saying it just won’t happen. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos. Mike Papantonio:             If Roe gets overruled Democrats are hoping it’s gonna give them […]

    The post Democrats Hope Roe V Wade Decision Will Give Them Midterm Advantage appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Corporate Media Enabled The Dismantling Of Roe v. Wade

    The Republicans deserve the bulk of the blame for overturning Roe v. Wade, but they aren’t the only guilty parties here. For decades, the corporate media has played into their lies, failing to refute them and acting like the issue is a “difference of opinion.” Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses the role of the […]

    The post Corporate Media Enabled The Dismantling Of Roe v. Wade appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Republicans Ready To Take Away More Rights After Roe Is Overturned

    Republicans have made it clear that they aren’t stopping at overturning Roe, and they’ve been open about the fact that they are coming after other court decisions, including on the issue of birth control. This assault on our rights is not going to end until Republicans have absolute control over your entire body, and Ring […]

    The post Republicans Ready To Take Away More Rights After Roe Is Overturned appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.

    This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.

  • Buffalo Shooting Suspect Allegedly Beheaded Cat Weeks Before Attack

    As details emerge about the suspect in the May 14 mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, a disturbing history of violence is coming to light. Payton S. Gendron—the 18-year-old accused of fatally shooting 10 people in the racially motivated attack—reportedly had a history of violence toward animals. Prior to the shooting, he reportedly wrote in an online journal entry about chasing and stabbing a homeless cat for an hour and a half, grabbing him by the tail and smashing his head into the concrete floor, and slashing at his neck repeatedly until he was completely beheaded.

    Study after study has confirmed a link between killing animals and committing violent acts against humans, and amid an epidemic of youth violence, PETA is responding by rushing its empathy-building curricula to schools in Gendron’s former school district. Youth violence toward animals is a prevalent issue, and educators have the unique opportunity to help students develop compassion for all animals—including humans—and detect early warning signs of violence before it takes place.

    This worrying trend often goes unreported, but in just the past few weeks, the media have covered cases of similar violence toward animals. Teens in Colorado allegedly flushed a live squirrel down a toilet, a Tennessee teen reportedly posted a video of another teen beating a dog to death, and in Florida, a group of students reportedly gutted a shark and hung the animal from the school rafters. In each of these cases, TeachKind—PETA’s humane education division—contacted local school districts in order to provide them with our compassion-building curricula.

    teachkind empathy now cover image child and dogThis pattern of violence is also an example of how speciesism can go hand in hand with other forms of discrimination. The mindset that condones the oppression of humans—including people of color, Muslims, women, older people, and members of the LGBTQ+ community—is the same mindset that permits the exploitation of animals. Prejudice arises when we start to believe that I am special and you are not and that my interests somehow trump those of other sentient beings.supremacy flowchart

    Every single case of cruelty to animals needs to be taken seriously. Many lives may depend on it.

    The post Buffalo Shooting Suspect Allegedly Beheaded Cat Weeks Before Attack appeared first on PETA.

    This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.

  • After election defeat, Robredo to lead ‘biggest volunteer movement in Philippine history’

    By Mara Cepeda in Manila

    Philippine Vice-President Leni Robredo will not allow the massive, volunteer-led movement she inspired in the 2022 presidential elections to just fade away following her loss to the late dictator’s son Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.

    Facing tens of thousands of her supporters during her thanksgiving event at the Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City on Friday, Robredo announced the creation of the Angat Buhay nongovernmental organisation, harnessing the so-called “pink revolution” her campaign inspired for the bigger battle ahead.

    This NGO, set to be launched on July 1 or a day after Robredo steps down as vice president, will be named after the highly praised anti-poverty and pandemic response programme she has been running for the past six years.

    “Hinding-hindi dapat pumanaw ang diwa ng ating kampanya. Ang pinakalayunin ng gobyernong tapat ay ang pag-angat ng buhay ng lahat. Kaya inaanunsyo ko ngayon ang target natin: Sa unang araw ng Hulyo, ilulunsad natin ang Angat Buhay NGO,” said Robredo, sending her “kakampink” supporters into a frenzy.

    (The spirit of our campaign should never die out. The primary aim of an honest government is to uplift the lives of all. That’s why we are announcing our target: On the first day of July, we will launch the Angat Buhay NGO.)

    The Vice-President plans to tap into the Robredo People’s Councils that her campaign team had strategically put up across provinces to help organise the hundreds of volunteer groups that were created for her presidential bid.

    ‘All is not lost’ pledge
    Robredo may have lost the 2022 presidential race to her bitter rival Marcos, but she assured her supporters that all hope is not lost.

    “Bubuin natin ang pinakamalawak na volunteer network sa kasaysayan ng ating bansa. Tuloy tayo sa pagtungo sa mga nasa laylayan at sa pag-ambagan para umangat sila,” said Robredo.

    (We are going to build the biggest volunteer network in the history of our country. We will continue going to those on the fringes of society and working together to alleviate their lives.)

    And once the Angat Buhay NGO had been been set up, it would serve all Filipinos in need, she said.

    “Pero hindi tayo mamimili ng tutulungan…. Ipapakita natin ang buong puwersa ng radikal na pagmamahal,” said Robredo.

    (But we will not choose who to help…. We will show them the full force of radical love.)

    One of Robredo’s first campaign messages was a call for “radical love” — for her supporters to exercise sobriety and openness as they aim to convert those who were voting for another presidential contender.

    It was only around mid-January of 2022 — about two weeks before the official campaign period started – that Robredo’s campaign slogan “Gobyernong Tapat, Angat Buhay Lahat (Honest Government, a Better Life for All)” was coined.

    New Zealand Pinoy supporters for the Leni-Kiko presidential elections ticket
    New Zealand Pinoy supporters at a Kakampink rally in Auckland’s Campbell Bay Reserve two days before the election … they are now planning a new movement that will link to Angat Buhay in the Philippines. Image: David Robie/APR

    Heartbreaking loss for only woman
    It was a heartbreaking loss for the lone female presidential contender, who was riding on a volunteer-spurred momentum in the crucial homestretch of the 90-day campaign. It made her critics step up their attacks, with three of her male rivals even ganging up on her in a now-infamous joint press conference on Easter Sunday.

    Robredo’s presidential bid has sparked what has since been called a “pink revolution” never before seen in Philippine elections, where even Filipinos who do not usually engage in political activities saw themselves spending their own money and dedicating time just to campaign for her.

    She hit the ground running when the official campaign period started. Robredo was indefatigable on the campaign trail, visiting multiple provinces in a span of a week.

    She would start her day early in the morning and her grand rallies could last until midnight.

    This was complemented by the massive volunteer base that Robredo attracted in the 2022 campaign. Her “kakampink” supporters organised soup kitchens, marches, motorcades, concerts, house-to-house campaigns, and grand rallies that were attended by tens of thousands – sometimes even in hundreds of thousands – across provinces.

    Observers and Robredo herself likened the pink movement to the “People Power” collective effort of Filipinos in February 1986 to oust Marcos Jr’s father and namesake, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, through a bloodless revolution.

    But all of these were not enough to make Robredo the 17th president of the Philippines. This upset her supporters, many of whom continued to grieve and grapple with the election results.

    But Robredo had already told them to accept the results. She then said that they should channel all their emotions into doing the necessary work needed to bring about a more meaningful change in the Philippines in the next six years.

    Sociologist Jayeel Cornelio said Robredo’s post-elections call for her movement aims to counter what some political pundits believe to be a creeping authoritarianism under Marcos.

    “Leni gets it. A disengaged citizenry will only embolden authoritarianism. Transforming the movement into the biggest volunteer network this country has ever seen is not only a social intervention. It is a political statement,” Cornelio tweeted.

    Crusade vs disinformation
    Robredo also made it clear on Friday that she would lead efforts to break the massive disinformation network on social media, rallying her “kakampinks” to join her in this crusade.

    “Alam kong marami pa tayong lakas na ibubuhos. Nakikita natin ‘yan ngayong gabi. Itutuon ko ang enerhiya ko sa paglaban ng kasinungalingan at hinihiling kong samahan ninyo ako dito. Kailangan nating maging isang kilusang magtatanggol ng katotohanan,” said Robredo, sending her supporters into a frenzy.

    (I know you still have a lot of strength left. We can see that tonight. I will channel my energy to fighting lies and I am asking you to join me in this fight. We need to become a movement that would defend the truth.)

    Without directly mentioning any name, the Vice-President acknowledged that the Marcoses had spent years fortifying their disinformation network that sought to sanitise the Marcos regime and rid Filipinos’ memories of the atrocities committed during the Marcos dictatorship.

    Studies have also showed that Robredo was the top target of these lies, which in turn benefitted Marcos’ presidential run.

    Robredo believes she would need the help of the more than 14 million “kakampinks” who voted for her in the May polls to counter the well-entrenched disinformation network.

    “Ang pinakamalaki nating…kalaban, namamayagpag na bago pa ng panahon ng kampanya, dahil dekadang prinoyekto. Matindi at malawak ang makinaryang kayang magpalaganap ng galit at kasinungalingan. Ninakaw nito ang katotohanan, kaya ninakaw din ang kasaysayan, pati na ang kinabukasan,” said Robredo.

    (Our biggest…enemy was already dominant even before the campaign period because decades had been spent working on this. The machinery capable of spreading hate and lies is formidable. It stole the truth, so it also stole our history and our future.)

    “Disimpormasyon ang isa sa pinakamalaki nating kalaban. Pero sa ngayon, maaring naghari ang makinarya ng kasinungalingan. Pero tayo lang ang makakasagot kung hanggang kailan ito maghahari. Nasa atin kung tapos na ang laban o kung nagsisimula pa lamang ito,” she said.

    (Disinformation is one of our biggest enemies. For now, perhaps the machinery of lies rules. But it is up to us how long it would prevail. It is up to us to say the fight is over or if it is only just beginning.)

    Mara Cepeda is a Rappler reporter. Republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Giving People Money With No Strings Attached Is Good for Their Health, Dozens of Studies Indicate

    By: Sze Yan Liu

    See original post here.

    The Big Idea

    When people living in poverty in countries like Malawi, Indonesia, and Ecuador receive cash payments without having to do anything in return, they have better health, according to a scientific review of a large body of research.

    To reach that finding, our interdisciplinary team of public health experts, economists, and epidemiologists from Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the United States pooled data from 34 studies that involved 1,140,385 participants in 50,095 households across Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia.

    Our systematic review and meta-analysis also determined that unconditional cash payments in low- and middle-income countries not only reduce poverty, but they also lead to greater food security, improved nutrition, and more consistent school attendance.

    Follow-up surveys with individuals who received this money earlier found that they were less likely to have been sick in the previous two weeks to three months compared with individuals who had not received this money. In addition, there is some evidence that people who got cash payments spent more money on health care.

    The studies we examined involved 24 cash-payment programs in 13 countries that were run either by governments, nonprofits, or researchers. The value of the money given to people in need varied widely, anywhere from 1.3 percent to 81.9 percent of gross domestic product per capita.

    Why It Matters

    Governments, nonprofits, and researchers around the world are increasingly experimenting with a simple approach to reduce poverty: giving people money to spend on whatever they need.

    Many of these cash-transfer pilots and experiments — often called basic-income programs — have required people to do something to receive the money, such as making sure their children regularly attend school. Sometimes the condition involves completing a specific health-related task, such as attending a health education workshop or going to a preventive care medical appointment.

    Researchers are debating whether these conditions improve or hinder the effectiveness of these programs.

    Other programs, like those we studied, have no such requirements.

    One advantage of the no-strings-attached approach, argue the GiveDirectly nonprofit and other supporters, is that it eliminates the need to monitor compliance and slashes administrative costs. Unconditional cash payments may empower recipients more since they can decide how to use the money to meet some of their immediate needs.

    Making payments contingent on people meeting requirements may also unintentionally harm people in need who can’t comply with conditions due to physical, social, or economic barriers. For example, requiring a clinic visit to “earn” a cash payment does not help anyone unable to make the trip.

    What Still Isn’t Known

    We still don’t have enough information to determine if this pattern holds true in the United States and other wealthier nations.

    The long-term health benefits of unconditional cash payments is also not clear.

    Finally, more research is needed to understand whether the impetus for these programs, such as when they follow a hurricane or other major disaster, makes any difference.

    What’s Next

    Our team plans to study whether cash-payment programs that require compliance with conditions lead to better health, too. We also want to update a previous review we conducted of payments given to people who had experienced humanitarian disasters to include evaluations of similar efforts carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic.

    Editor’s note: This article is part of a partnership the Chronicle has forged with the Conversation to expand coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The three organizations receive support for this work from the Lilly Endowment. This article is republished from the Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

    The post Giving People Money With No Strings Attached Is Good for Their Health, Dozens of Studies Indicate appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • Pittsburgh scraps plans for guaranteed basic income program

    By: JULIA FELTON

    Original post can be found here.

    Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey is scrapping plans to use American Rescue Plan funding for a guaranteed basic income pilot program in the city.

    Former Mayor Bill Peduto had proposed using $2.5 million in American Rescue Plan funding for a pilot program to offer $500 monthly payments to 200 low-income Pittsburgh residents and track how participants used the cash for two years.

    The concept has been tested in other cities across the country, where people have been given monthly cash payments ranging from $500 a month in Stockton, Calif., to $1,000 a month for Black mothers in Jackson, Miss.

    Pittsburgh’s program had not begun when Gainey took office in January. His administration decided to nix the experimental program after investigating whether American Rescue Plan money could be used to fund it, said Gainey spokeswoman Maria Montaño.

    “Our legal understanding is those funds would not be eligible for the way the previous administration had set up the (guaranteed basic income) program,” she said.

    Montaño said Peduto’s administration had made tentative plans to use American Rescue Plan funding for the program before full federal guidelines were released to outline how the funding could be used.

    The city hasn’t determined how it will spend the money that had been earmarked for the pilot program, Montaño said. Because the program was intended to help Black women in particular, the administration is now working to convene a group of Black women leaders who can offer input on how they think the money could best be used to help Black women in the city, she added.

    “We believe that before we launch any program to help Black women, we have to have conversations with Black women, to have them at the table to have a voice,” Montaño said.

    The guaranteed basic income program would have been operated through OnePGH, a nonprofit created under the Peduto administration.

    Two members of Gainey’s administration — Deputy Chief of Staff Felicity Williams and City Planning Director Karen Abrams, both Black women — were recently named to the OnePGH board.

    With the guaranteed basic income pilot program scrapped, Montaño said the purpose of OnePGH moving forward is somewhat unclear. The administration is working to “assess and review the commitments that OnePGH made and that the previous administration made through OnePGH,” she said.

    The post Pittsburgh scraps plans for guaranteed basic income program appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.