America in poverty and behind bars
Published: 23 July, 2009, 11:29
Edited: 10 January, 2010, 04:47
'The Captain', as he's known, has been homeless for 20 years and has made a home on wheels so it is easy to move. 'The Captain' is a resident at 'Tent City' in Sacramento.
(27.5Mb) embed videoTAGS: Crisis Chronicle, Human rights, USA
American author and journalist Sasha Abramsky talked to RT’s Anastasia Churkina about the staggering number of hungry Americans embedded in poverty, and the atrocities of the US prison system.
“There are about 33 million people on food stamps in this country at the moment and there are ten million more poor enough for food stamps. And there are people who have jobs but whose salary does not stretch to cover the month’s bills, and there are several tens of millions more in this category.”
“At the moment, as a legacy of the last quarter century of economic policy, we have got this sort of cascading crisis of poverty, maybe previously affecting 10-15% of the society, now we get 20-25% who on a daily basis are very vulnerable.”
“The incarceration that started in the 1970s and continues at the current moment is transforming America into the single largest incarceration country on Earth. We are out-incarcerating Russia. We are out-incarcerating China. We are out-incarcerating every other country whether authoritarian or democratic. We went from a country with about 100 incarcerated out of 100,000 to 1000 incarcerated per 100,000. We have 2.3 million Americans, or 1% of the entire population, behind bars.”
23.07.2009, 10:18
1 comment
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The american administration,either under Bush or under Obama,have no rights to tell the world,what to do.!!!!!!When they cannot look after their own people, "even americans " he omly thinks,he knows what he is doing in the world is right,when his own people crying help us!!!!.......... Why cant our President look after us,after he tried to look after the rest of the world and done his world tour!!!!! Is he going clean- up the white house after he is finished with it!!!!!!
One of the things that always amazes me when traveling into other countries is the number of people you meet with their hand out begging.. There can be such a contrast. Huge, beautiful palaces and extreme wealth along side street beggers. Many countries do not have any kind of safety net for its destitute and many of the conutries have a huge percentage of their population that are super poor. You don't have to get very far away from the tourist traps to see this. Americans have a lot to be thankful for and that is why our constitution is so important America has prospered because the constitution has helped protect individual rights and given them a reason to work hard and be more productive. Currently, we need to bring our factories back home and put our unemployed back to work. It is the American way.
america doesn't like helping its poor, and the cops are so corrupted it is scary. i can't say it's any worse than other countries.