A fascinating person, whom I've known long as a crusader for the poor (and who has a beach named after him).
One detail jumps out at me from the review: the old monster of anti-semitism: He was not free of prejudice ("Money is their God," he wrote of the Jews, for instance), but his harsh stereotypes were often balanced by positive observations.
Amazingly, even this man could not get past the old prejudice.
The "other half" of which Riis wrote was actually in 1890 not half, but three-fourths of New York's population, 1.2 million people living in 37,000 tenements. The number of tenements and of their impoverished inhabitants had more than doubled since Riis's arrival in the city in 1870. (Mr. Buk-Swienty mistakenly reports that the doubling occurred over a single decade.) A staunch Christian, Riis was, as Mr. Buk-Swienty puts it, "a typical Victorian moralist." He distinguished between the deserving "honestly poor" and undeserving "paupers" and "tramps." And he recognized, as he himself wrote, the difficulties of giving money to the poor "without perpetuating the problem it is sought to solve, by attracting still greater swarms."
Showing posts with label Poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poverty. Show all posts
Monday, August 25, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Shakira, Juanes y Bill Gates
Musicians againt poverty - Músicos contra la pobreza
Foto: EFE/Zayra Mo
Los cantantes Alejandro Sanz, Juan Luis Guerra, Shakira y Juanes posan para la campaña "Yo amo América" del BID, con Luis Alberto Moreno.
Spin it, Senators, spin it
Oy. More government. Haven't we learned that problems don't get solved just by adding another government layer? Yes, we have, as Bubba showed in his Administration. But the Senator is running for office, and the tried-and-true approach is to promise more government spending. Yet, aren't there enough government bureaus, department, and layers to make use of them to combat poverty? What is she proposing, a Secretary for Poverty?
Charles Dharapak/Associated Press In Memphis, Clinton Targets Poverty By ELISABETH BUMILLER and JOHN M. BRODER
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, greeting Democratic Congressman John Conyers in Memphis, said she’d create a cabinet-level post to fight poverty.
Not to get left out of the spin cycle, Senator McCain, who voted against making ML King's birthday a Federal holiday, went to Memphis to add his two cents to the news cycle. Win McNamee/Getty Images
Sen. John McCain spoke at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the site where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed 40 years ago.
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