Invisible People: Brenda Graduated College And Worked 35 Years. Then She Encountered A Very Bad Bus Driver And A Very Corrupt "Legal System."
A YouTube Channel Tells The Stories Of The People We Don't Want To See, Or Hear
“But I’m proud to be an American, cuz at least I know I’m free.” (Sarcasm intended.)
Why is American poverty still a taboo?
This is from the channel “Invisible People” which tells the story of homeless people in America. It was filmed 7 years ago. Update in comments: Brenda has found housing, is now living indoors. But her story lays bare the “Free America” we don’t like to talk about. How systemic corruption, crime, injustice, trauma, shock and “procrastination,” are precursors to “poverty” and “homelessness.”
The main cause of both, I maintain, is trauma. And the father of trauma is injustice.
I salute Brenda for spending $3 on her signature pink lipstick. She’s still a woman, she still cares what she looks like. The people who scorn her being able to “afford” lipstick carry the denialism and judgment that block Americans from getting honest or educated about the causes of poverty. It’s easier to carry Puritanical notions of judgment that sustain the illusion it could not happen to any of us.
We lack empathy at our peril.
“ we lack empathy at our own peril “ says it all, and “ it could happen to anyone “ should be a reminder to have empathy for our fellow citizens who have been screwed over by the system. Thx for sharing.
The state of North Dakota has the lowest homelessness rate, the lowest credit card and student loan default rates, one of the lowest home foreclosure rates, and the lowest unemployment rate. in the country. It also has had a state-owned bank since 1919, the Bank of North Dakota (BND).
BND makes loans jointly with local community banks and credit unions. In the 2008 crash the BND increased its lending jointly with those local financial institutions, with whom it makes "partnership" loans, enabling the state to avoid the Great Recession. BND made record profit each year. BND bought bad loans from stressed local banks and credit unions to keep them in business.
Thanks to BND there have been no bank failures in North Dakota for many years. Banks create new money in the amount of a loan when they make a loan, in the form of a new deposit in the borrower's account at the bank. If states, cities, counties, and our national government followed this model, much more money would become available to meet the needs of people like Brenda.
Our national government initiated the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932, which through loans to enterprises and farmers throughout the US, provided an injection of $40-50 billion to pull us out of the Great Depression and fund much of World War II.
_The Public Bank Solution - From Austerity to Prosperity_, by Ellen Brown, describes how this solution has worked whenever it was tried in countries around the globe, including Germany, China, Japan, and Taiwan, as well as in colonial America (as described by Ben Franklin), and in Alberta province of Canada for the last 88 years. The awful experiences of millions of people like Brenda could be greatly reduced if legislators would establish publicly owned banks to serve the community rather than the major banks into which governments currently deposit all their tax revenue. The major banks thus use our money to maximize profit for themselves, mostly outside our state or communities.