By Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett, The Guardian blog
Just as income inequalities and social class differences are divisive and give rise to opposed interests and perspectives, being in the same predicament creates unity and shared interests. Hence the pandemic has brought us together in the same way that research shows greater equality does. Both make us feel we have more in common.
By Zoya Teirstein, Grist
The wildfire crisis, one that is expected to get worse in the Golden State in the coming years as the full effects of climate change kick in, illuminates a glaring disparity. When fires rip through a community, its most vulnerable members — the old and sick, domestic workers, construction workers, and incarcerated folks — get left behind.
By Danica Jorden, Open Democracy
Automobile exhaust is an important contributor to air pollution, but this fuel tax inordinately hits people of moderate to low income who are already using as little gas as possible, cannot afford to live closer to where they need to go or buy a new, fuel-efficient car.
By Tegan Tallulah, The Climate Lemon
The fact that climate change is mostly caused by the rich and yet the poorest, who have done least to cause it and have the least resources to respond, will be hit most seriously by the damaging impacts – is uncomfortable. But it is important.
By Brian Davey, Feasta
Temporal inequality is a little noticed feature of our society. Poor people wait for things – the well-off are waited on. Temporal inequality is crucial to understanding people’s time choices.
By Katie Horvath, Mason Herson-Ford, Aaron Vansintjan, Uneven Earth
We briefly mentioned the problem of hierarchy as the shared root of many systems of oppression in our first column two weeks ago. In this article, we want to expand on the meaning of hierarchy—a system of obedience and command backed by the threat of force—and ground it in history.
By Richard Eskow, Common Dreams
The greatest threat to the “liberal world order” lies in its failure to reflect on its own fundamental injustices. It lacks accountability. If those who lead it can’t acknowledge its flaws – if Dr. King’s “revolution of values” can’t turn it into an engine of change for workers, the poor, refugees, and the other victims of its manifold failures – the system that Richard Haass wants to protect and improve will fail. And it will deserve to.
By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Chuck Collins, Common Dreams
America’s middle class is under assault. Since 1983, national median wealth has declined by 20 percent, falling from $73,000 to $64,000 in 2013. And U.S. homeownership has been in a steady decline since 2005. While we often hear about the struggles of the white working class, a driving force behind this trend is an accelerating decline in black and Latino household wealth.
By Brian Schwartz, Annemarie Hirsch, The Conversation
Where we live – the air we breathe, the water we drink, the environments around us – has a huge impact on our health and even on our DNA.
By Vera Bradova, Leaving Babylon
In other words, agriculture turned destructive not because of some intrinsic flaw within larger-scale, more sophisticated cultivation. It turned destructive for the same reason mining, conflict, grazing, or governance turned destructive.
By Lewis Lapham, TomDispatch
For the last several years, the word “revolution” has been hanging around backstage on the national television talk-show circuit waiting for somebody, anybody...to cue its appearance on camera.
By Tanya Layne, Solutions
The Cape Flats I had known before, as a life-long citizen and social activist in Cape Town, was one of social, not natural, fragmentation, marked by the railway lines designed to separate communities according to skin color under Apartheid—White, Colored, Black African, or Indian.