NEWSBYJON STEPANIAN

About a month ago, Michigan House Bill 6458 was introduced to specifically exclude urban farmers from the Right to Farm Act. An action in support of urban farmers created by my colleague Brittany Shoot struck a chord with me. As I signed the petition, I realized I needed to share with the rest of you why it's so important.

I'm the co-founder of Long Island Food Not Bombs, an organization that shares food and other necessities weekly with thousands of people in the NYC/Long Island metro area.

I know when many people think of Long Island they think of rich towns and yacht clubs but what really exists underneath it all is extreme poverty, tent cities, persistent racism and discrimination. Many people don't know about the routine hate crimes, the "beaner jumping" and the lynching of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero.

On top of all the social divisions where I'm from, poverty doesn't help. So that's why I do what I do. Part of Long Island Food Not Bombs is about sharing the basic necessities people need, like a week's worth of groceries, clothing, a hot meal or school supplies. The other part of Long Island Food Not Bombs is about bringing people together, creating solidarity and confronting social ills like racism.

That's where urban farming and the petition to support it fit into all of this.

It was a little more than two years ago when we decided to transform a vacant trash-filled lot into a community garden near our Hempstead food share (one of our weekly food distribution sites). The idea was to bridge the gap that existed between many members of the community while creating a sustainable food source.

At first there were just a handful of us cleaning up the lot and tilling the land, but as days became weeks and the space began to take a different form many new faces started joining our ranks. People were truly interested in improving their neighborhood and within two weeks we had hundreds of people standing beside us.

Together we all worked to create a beautiful garden.

Just a reminder to all those voting in New York on Tuesday: Republican gubernatorial candidate and Tea Party heartthrob Carl Paladino's plan to deal with the homeless and unemployed in New York State is to put them in "work camps." If the term work camps seems a little too gulag-y for you, consider that Paladino suggests that these camps be organized in state prisons.

The endeavor is all part of the candidate's proposed Dignity Corps and is designed to take the homeless out of urban centers, or out of sight (depending on how you look at it), by placing them in camps. There they can learn job skills and "good hygiene." Paladino argues that his program is modeled off of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps and would offer a path to sustainable private sector employment. But would it?

I think a program that would give the homeless the option of a nice place to stay, job training and a sense of community is a great idea. But this isn't that. Instead, this would be putting the homeless in retrofitted jail cells and more than likely forcing them to be cheap labor for some corporation that was privatizing the operation.

It also seems like whenever you have a vulnerable group of people that's out of sight, or out of mind, some terrific form of abuse is bound to occur. Call me pessimistic but when I see a country with a vastly profitable prison industrial complex and an unemployment rate of 9.6 percent, I have to wonder if what's coming next is a poverty industrial complex. Making money off the poor by putting them in secluded prisons just seems a little totalitarian to me.

We know 44 million people live below the federal poverty line, one in four Americans can't afford basic necessities, and unemployment stands at 9.6 percent. So we know that poverty is a serious problem. But how do we go about dealing with it?

If you don't understand a problem, you certainly can't tell how to make it better.

Economic indicators exist to tell us how things are going. Mainstream indictors like the Dow Jones or our GDP that give us an idea on the profitability of our economy, but these can also leave out valuable information.

For example, between 2000 and 2008 our economy was thriving according to most mainstream economic indicators. The Dow Jones and our national GDP grew at incredible rates. But those numbers didn't show that, during the same time, the average income for middle class households shrank and the income disparity between the wealthiest two percent and the rest of us increased drastically.

Overlooking this important information can lead to serious problems, and even economic collapses, so that's why more economists and non-profits are starting to look at alternative economic indicators — such as a person's access to affordable housing. When most people think about an economic indicator this rarely comes to mind, but a community that increases access to affordable housing greatly reduces the prevalence of homelessness and sexual violence (pdf).

Someone really stole the show at last week's New York gubernatorial debate. I'm not talking about the homophobic and backward-thinking Republican Carl Paladino or Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic legacy candidate and shoo-in. I'm talking about Jimmy McMillan.

You might not know who Jimmy is. But you should.

He's the candidate from, and CEO of, the Rent Is Too Damn High Party. You can guess at the party platform. Catch some of Jimmy's oratory below.

I know many may view Jimmy's comments as Too Damn Theatrical or Too Damn Crazy, but maybe they're exactly what American politics needs. Hear me out on this one.

In an election season in which the classist conservative ideology of the corporate-funded Tea Party has gone almost unchallenged, I think Mr. McMillan is a breath of fresh air. (Oh, and when I say Tea Party I don't mean conservative. I have the utmost respect for fiscal conservatives. I'm referring to those zealots demanding tax cuts for the rich, who call the human right to health care "fascism" and who think people are poor because they're lazy.)

Class warfare is real. The poor didn't start it, but they're getting crushed by it, big time. Even in the debate, Cuomo conceded that Jimmy is right, Rent Is Too Damn High. In fact, while we're at it, the cost of living is Too Damn High, the cost of getting to work is Too Damn High and even the cost of sending your kids to school is Too Damn High.

More rate hikes and service cuts are in store for mass transit users in the New York City metro area. That was the announcement recently from New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), and the locals aren't happy about it. As of December 30th, their travel expenses for getting to work will increase drastically. In this economy that's serious trouble.

The rate hikes, which are the latest of many, increase the price of NYC's monthly subway cards by 17 percent and ticket prices for the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and Metro-North Railroad by seven to 14 percent.

These are no small margins. For instance, a woman residing in the city's outlying suburban town of Huntington currently pays a combined $363 for her monthly rail and subway passes. Starting next year the combination will cost her $403 a month, or $4,836 a year. It amounts to annual increase of $480, or just about an extra month's rent.

This fare hike is a costly burden for many. The New York mass transit system is an invaluable resource. People need to get to work and there are not many alternatives available. Already, many transit users have been forced into making serious sacrifices. For example, a recent study found 44 percent of people receiving food aid in the metro area counties of Nassau and Suffolk were choosing between paying for food or transportation (pdf).

When I think about the best ways to fight poverty, I have to think about people coming together as a community. If you have community you're no longer alone in your struggle, and the ability for two people to help each other succeed is far greater than the chances of either one on his or her own.

The Brooklyn Free Store embodies this idea. Think of it as the anti-Walmart, or a location where New Yorkers can come together to share or receive goods and services instead of paying for them. These are goods that might be second hand, new, dumpster-dived or created. They are also almost always goods that someone, or anyone, might find valuable.

Located on Walworth St. between Dekalb & Willoughby, the Free Store is erected on a vacant lot now reclaimed by neighborhood residents. Its exterior, a DIY structure made from a massive blue tarp, isn't so visually impressive but when you step inside the environment becomes familiar. Very similar to any other store, there are stacks of piled goods — clothing, books, toys, tools, household goods and more — spread neatly across the space making it easy to browse.

It's also genuinely nice stuff. When I stopped by a few weeks ago I was able to pick up a new tripod for my camera and a vintage 80’s skateboard. On the shelves were other treasures like a blender, canned goods, various tool kits and some really nice books. The Brooklyn Free Store isn't just about free stuff, though. It also hosts events like artistic performances and educational forums. In this way the store acts as both a public forum and an area of exchange.

Flashback to the fall of 2008 when millions of Americans faced foreclosure because of increases in their mortgage rates. The country seemed to be on the verge of an economic collapse. Back then, it was the big lending institutions that all said they had to raise rates because they didn't have enough money to put back into the system.

These major banks messed up, gambled with complicated lending schemes and needed a bailout. So we the American people gave them one, amounting to $700 billion or so. They didn't deserve it, but we wanted to prevent an economic collapse and we wanted to prevent people from losing their homes.

But now, two years later, the epidemic of foreclosures occurring in our country has gotten worse. In the first quarter of 2010 there were 932,234 properties with foreclosure activities, an increase of 16 percent from the previous year. Join the call for a national foreclosure moratorium.

Threats of foreclosure are still very much a grave problem for struggling homeowners — and it gets worse. Recent revelations show that the same lending institutions that asked us for a bailout have apparently been putting millions of homeowners on the fast track to foreclosure with careless and often illegal procedures.

With investigations in seven states, it appears as though banks like GMAC Mortgage, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America have been pushing forward foreclosure procedures without proper documentation, and sometimes even with fraudulent paperwork. These are the same companies that received $17.2 billion, $25 billion and $45 billion, respectively, in bailout funds.

There are many ways to alleviate poverty on the community level. Organizations that share food, clothing and other necessities address immediate needs. Other groups work on mid-term needs like housing, job placement and social services. However, long-term needs, like the ability to promote community and general wellness, are often overlooked.

That's where New York City's radical community-based health care exchange, the Rock Dove Collective, comes in. General physical and mental wellness with a progressive community component is what this group is all about. With specialists focused on physical, mental, sexual, emotional, social and spiritual health, the group is able to provide a well-rounded assortment of services to the general public through the exchange of mutual aid.

Mutual aid is really all about the idea of medical service providers and patients helping each other out on an interpersonal basis. The group gives the example of a patient walking her acupuncturist's dog for an hour in exchange for a treatment session. In essence, the Rock Dove Collective encourages moneyless exchanges and creates availability to services not often seen in the mainstream medical establishment.

Last year an individual could expect to pay $4,824 for health insurance; a family of four could expect to pay $13,375. These rates have led to more than 46 million Americans going without coverage. This is why community-led wellness efforts are so important.

It's obscene that our country is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the military when so many of our neighbors are suffering from poverty, hunger and the inability to meet their basic needs. Can we really justify this in the name of "National Security"? I don't think we're very secure at all when one in seven Americans lives below the poverty line.

The reality is that many more Americans die of poverty than terrorism. According to the U.S. State Department, 56 American civilians died due to terrorism worldwide in 2005. That same year, 472 lives were cut short due to homelessness (pdf) in Los Angeles County alone.

Having these numbers doesn't curb military spending, though. It's important to note that last year the United States made up 46 percent of all worldwide military spending and dished out more than seven times as much money as the next runner up, China.

For fiscal year 2011, $1,398 billion (48 percent) of our nation's budget is allotted for military spending (pdf). Of that, $399 billion is for paying off the interest on loans from previous military expenditures. In contrast, this year we'll only be spending $1.79 billion on homeless assistance grants like help with back rent for at-risk families.

These discrepancies raise some questions about our nation's priorities. Is war more important to us than feeding the hungry? Is the $600,000 we spend on a cruise missile sent to blow up someone's home in Iraq worth more than the six or so lovely U.S. houses we could build with such money?

With the recession over, the stock market towering above 10,000 and all the right wing outcry for extended tax cuts for the rich, you might assume we're well on our way to economic recovery. But that really isn't the case, is it?

When we have 43.6 million people living in poverty, the greatest number in our country's recorded history, it seems pretty hard to argue that the Great Recession is behind us. Worse still is that this number, one in seven Americans, doesn't begin to reflect how widespread poverty really is in this country.

For example, the U.S. Census Bureau defined poverty for a family of four as earning less than $21,954 in 2009. If a family of four made $22,000 that year, they weren't considered poor and consequently weren't counted in that 43.6 million. Can a family of four get by on $22,000? How about $30,000? When we talk about poverty, are we fooling ourselves into believing that the real number of people living in poverty isn't much, much higher?

Generally when we think about poverty, we think about those of us who are unable to meet basic needs or those of us who are going into debt to do so. Things like food, housing, transportation, utilities, clothing and health care add up quickly. But that's not how the Census Bureau calculates poverty statistics. For it, poverty has an absolute cutoff and statistics are formulated with no regard to regional expenses, changes in food prices or even taxes. It's clearly not the most accurate system. What we need in its place is a metric to judge poverty based on the cost of necessities.

The Self-Sufficiency Standard, formulated by Dr. Diana Pearce, the director of the Center for Women's Welfare, does just this. It calculates the income a family needs to meet its bare minimum expenses without any outside assistance and it does this on a county by county, state by state basis (pdf).