permaculture

[Jason Gerhardt <jasongerhardt@gmail.com>]

“What was excluded from that policy was a clear pathway out of poverty,
like education”. This is sometimes true and very often not true. Education
is rarely sited high on the list of needs by poor communities when actually
asked what they need. And I'd argue that social relationships are still
material, and at the least will require material resources like money to
build and maintain. The authors thesis suggests otherwise, as if invisible
structures can be solved and managed invisibly, which is a downright
harmful supposition to be putting out there, especially in an era that is
likely to include significant defunding of social programs. I'd like to see
the author take this and develop a thesis on *what causes a lack of social
relationships, *which would be where the rubber meets the road for
solutioning poverty. As usual, academics are very good at describing
problems, not so good at solving them, and it's a very good debate about
whether describing problems divorced from solutions is actually a positive
contribution in the first place.

Here is a phenomenal example of solutioning poverty via social
relationships and expanded networks. This is a simple connection being
made, facilitated by ecological thinking. It is unfortunately reliant on
high technology, which makes it low in resiliency, but demonstrates a real
world approach that all of us working in poor communities could learn from.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiOXAkZ_fLA

Jason Gerhardt

On Fri, Nov 25, 2016 at 1:26 PM, Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture
Network <lakinroe@silcom.com> wrote:

> http://bigthink.com/videos/c-nicole-mason-on-poverty-in-america <
> http://bigthink.com/videos/c-nicole-mason-on-poverty-in-america>
>
> What Causes Poverty? Not a Lack of Money, but a Lack of Social
> Relationships
>
>  <http://bigthink.com/experts/c-nicole-mason>
> C. Nicole Mason <http://bigthink.com/experts/c-nicole-mason>
> Policy and Economic Justice Expert
> Dr C. Nicole Mason was born in Los Angeles, raised by a beautiful but
> volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate
> between an unpredictable home life and school where she excelled. Having
> figured out the college application process by eavesdropping on the few
> white kids in her predominantly Black and Latino school, and along with the
> help of a high school counselor, Mason eventually boarded a plane for
> Howard University, alone and with $200 in her pocket.
>
> Mason found a path out of poverty – something that only 4% of America’s
> impoverished population are able to do. An alarming majority will never
> rise into the middle class, and so it seems that in the US, if you’re born
> poor, you stay poor. And no one is being very honest about this invisible
> caste system.
>
> Mason is a vocal advocate against the presumption that the poor are poor
> simply because they don’t help themselves enough. “[In college] we heard a
> lot of things about welfare queens, people living off the system, not
> wanting to work, women being lazy, having multiple children. And that
> really wasn’t the reality for the women who were actually impoverished.”
> Mason found that the policies were detached from reality, and in fact the
> barriers built into the system (some intended to motivate people) – such as
> time limits, additional child penalties, and few provisions for childcare –
> were ineffective and suppressed social mobility. “What was excluded from
> that policy was a clear pathway out of poverty, like education,” she says.
>
> When people think of poverty they think in terms of money and material
> resources, but a large part of being poor is suffering from a lack of
> social connections and networks, and living in a low-income area with no
> infrastructure that enables the leap up to the middle class.
>
> If institutions and leaders want to support and elevate poor communities,
> Mason argues that they need to provide better infrastructure (like
> libraries, parks, good grocery stores, and hospitals) as well as bridging
> programs both within the community and, very importantly, outside of it, so
> people can get in contact with people outside of their normal social
> network. “We just need to be honest about what it really takes for
> everybody to have a fair shot at the American Dream,” she says.
>
> Dr. C. Nicole Mason's new book is Born Bright: A Young Girl's Journey from
> Nothing to Something in America <http://www.indiebound.org/
> book/9781250069924>.
>
>
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