 Hello and welcome to Creating a Human Rights Culture, which aims to promote a lived awareness of the interdependency and invisibility of human rights principles in our minds, hearts and bodies, that is, dragged into our everyday lives. What after all is freedom of speech to a person who is homeless and lives in a world at war? Therefore, it is dedicated ultimately to the application of the Human Rights Triptych, which in brief consists of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at its center, the conventions, that is international treaties on the right, and implementation measures on the left. One I'm Joseph Ronca, and this is part two of our discussion of poverty in western Massachusetts. And I'm here with Professor Miguel Arce and Dr. Walter Mullen, and we've been teaching together for years at the Springfield College School of Social Work. So we're simply going to continue our discussion. As many of you know, poverty is a violation of human rights. Many human rights documents talk about that. So let's talk more about it. And Professor Arce, Miguel, whatever, would you want to share some more data on that? Sure. Or what do you want to go for? Well maybe for us to just to recognize the fact that poverty is structural in nature. So it's not a failing of an individual. You cannot have a quarter of our population in poverty with a failing of an individual. So I would suggest to you that we need to think of the issue of inequality as being structural in nature. Okay. Let me intro. That sounds great to me. In Psych 101 they speak about this as the observer attribution bias. If someone fails at something, it's their problem. It's what they did inside. And that's a bias, and it's totally absurd. I just have to add that it's interesting in Europe, people see poverty as a lack of social inclusion and as a structural kind of thing. Like if you ever go to a movie, they say stuff, the sign says children have a price, there's a family price, and then they have another sign that says unemployed. So if you're unemployed, you pay less to get into the movie. It's sort of seeing poverty as a structural kind of thing. So we mentioned capitalism and also Martin Luther King was heavy-duty into this. We have to dismantle the edifice that produces poverty. So keep on going. I don't remember where I was going, but just to suggest to you that in our profession that we see that there are mechanisms that oppress people. And I would suggest to you right now that poverty is a tool that's used to advance a very small number of individuals at the expense of the vast majority of individuals. And I heard, I have no way of citing the source right now, that eight men, stress the word men, all of them caucasians control as much wealth as the bottom third of the global population. I heard it was 50%, but go for it, yes, it's pretty bad. So there's something structurally wrong, right? There's something sick about that. It's criminal, it's morally corrupt, it's just wrong. Yeah, what they refer to, United Nations terminology, it's global distributive injustice. Right, that works for me. Yeah, it's totally ridiculous. So I don't have anything else to add, Dr. Molle. Can I pass the baton to you? Sure, yeah. So you think of that, if we build from that, then the perspective that this wealth, people with wealth, have the choice for kindness. Well, kindness is not really what we look for in solving the problem of poverty, because when we think of it as a right as opposed to kindness, it's not about kindness, it's about a human right. And so to imagine that these people that you're talking about, Miguel, this percentage of world wealth and the numbers of people, numbers of men that have it, it leaves it up to them around whether they're going to care about others who are poor or not. And our perspective is not about that, it's about that all people are entitled to a certain standard of existence and to food and to housing and to education and to medical care and to health care. So it's partly what we try to do in our work, I think, is to bring this idea that we all, the governments, our governments, ourselves need to provide, need to build it into our structure to think about it as structural. So how to enact that or how to do that, in a way, is really crucial, I think, from the public policy standpoint. And so what we hear, I think, in public policy is, are we spending too much money on certain things? Does this cost too much? Like armaments, I have to, armaments, bombs. We don't listen to our own presidents, President Eisenhower said every bomb made us theft from poor. Now the United States produces 55% of all armaments in the entire world. For all the countries. So you can make the argument that we're the greatest thief. I mean, if you believe what President Eisenhower said, is that what? 50% of our discretionary budget is used on national defense. It just further supports your point. 50%. Over 50%. And what they say is the budget for the military is a little bit over 2 trillion. One percent of that can educate and feed every person on this planet, according to the UN. But go ahead, Walter, you will go on to continue. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt. Yes. So say, for example, we think about a program, say we discuss a program in particular, SO SNAP, which is its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. And so many people might know that as the traditional food stamp program. They may know it more by that language, right? And so in recent years, people have a certain amount of money based on how they qualify for the program that they can use at the grocery store, that they can use to buy certain items. Some of those items are controlled by what they can buy and is judgment in some of those items. But if we go with just sort of that as a standard, well, the recent political discourse is to change that and to change that to commodities instead of the cash supplements. So some people that may be familiar with older programs may know that there used to be a time when you could get cheese, blocks or peanut butter or some canned goods. Beans. Beans and those types of things before the food stamp program came to be so that if you were, if you needed food, you could go someplace and to a warehouse and you would be given this food supply, right? So but now the recent discussion has been to go back to some of that, right? And to go back to... Harvest box. Harvest box is what it was called, right? To go back to harvest boxes. Interesting. And so what's the difference? Well the difference is sending a message, right? Sending a message that if you have a certain, if there's a certain amount of money you deserve out of your humanity for food. But now we believe you're not going to be able to manage that in some way or we should tell you what food to have. We should give you cheese and peanut butter and those things. Is that right? Is that your understanding of it too? Is that, do you have a perspective on it? Yeah, just go back to the kind of the mechanisms of oppression, right? Or mechanisms that benefit capitalist systems and not necessarily individuals. Let's talk about the SNAP benefit from a different perspective. We both know, we all know that food stamps are really important to the health of families. Same with the WIC program. But think about it as an economic engine. That is to say for every dollar that's spent through this program, someone is employed at the cash register to ring them out. Someone has to stock the shelves. Someone has to deliver the food. Someone has to process the food before it can be delivered. There's probably a warehouse in between those two places. You now have farmers that are creating additional products that they wouldn't be able to provide if there was not an end the consumer, right? So I would suggest to you that even some of our social programs really have economic benefit to the whole society. But I think most people don't see that. They just see a poor person in line with their debit card, and they look down at them, without understanding that that person is benefiting the economic engine of our country and stuff. So just to be clear, if I understand what you're saying, because your argument looks like it could be used to support either the harvest box or the food steps. No, no. I'm saying that the harvest box would cut a lot of those steps off, and there would be a cost savings, but there would not be any kind of individual selection made by the person who's supposed to be receiving the benefit. Because of my interest in psychological things, there's also the idea that being able to manage one's own life and make one's own choices is not only a benefit for the moment, but it's a benefit for the future of one's own life or raising one's children. So the idea, when you're told that you have to do certain things in certain ways, it minimizes you. And so the choice that one makes with the SNAP program, with the food stamp option, is way better for overall human functioning. And so it's really important that social programs, in some way, don't diminish the person that they're intended to serve. So that's where I come from, is that the idea that you can choose the things you want at the grocery store versus you're told American cheese is what you're going to have to eat for the next few weeks. I agree with you. Okay, I agree. But I just have to say that many of the stuff that's in the grocery store ain't that great. I'm thinking here, the United Nations rapporteur on the right to food said, food must be nutritious, reasonably priced, must be easily accessible, and culturally appropriate. You just do not have that in the supermarkets. And the question is why. It's capitalism again, plus, if you ask me personally, the Food and Drug Administration is supposed to be monitoring all this stuff. I mean, I don't know. Do these people have stock in teenage ninja turtles, cocoa puffs or something? And these are the things that also need to be changed or need to be looked at. I just have to quote Plato, who guards the guardians. These are the people that are supposed to make sure that food is nutritious, cheap, and culturally appropriate. I just have to, when I was in Alaska, if I could just, okay, one, go ahead. Well, we could just pick it up and say food deserts is sort of the idea that not only your point that you're making job, but sort of the accessibility to food. So, for example, our school, where we work, is in the center of Springfield. And so it's a reasonable neighborhood, really, near where we generally poor neighborhood. I don't know where the nearest grocery store is from where you certainly couldn't walk from where we are to a grocery store to get a fear following your point that you're making, even if the food, imagining that the grocery store has something reasonable, that you, I don't know where you would go to, people must know. And certainly, if you're taking the bus, remember, we're talking about people that may not be able to pay the car payment or the, if you had to take a bus to go to the grocery store from where we lived, I don't know, you'd probably have to go downtown Springfield and then catch another bus to go out to West Springfield to a grocery store, maybe, or something like that. To East Long Meadow. Or East Long Meadow, out to East Long Meadow. I've seen a lot of poor people carrying these big bags of groceries, and they rip, and it's really tough. And it's an affront to human dignity to have to do that. And of course, like I said, people say, they deserve it or something. This is totally ridiculous. So that discourse has to be changed. But that's what we hope to do in our writing in some way. So, you know, so SNAP, you know, is a governmental, large governmental, nationwide program. I'd like to talk about the heroic efforts at a local level, right? And how one organization can have a very strong impact on a whole community. Yeah, we could move towards what can we do. OK, so here's an example of what can be done. And it's only one example. There's many examples. There is a program in Holyoke called the Care Center. I know Dr. Mullen's wife has been very involved with the Care Center for a number of years, and it helps raise money, right? Well, the Care Center works with the most challenging, low income population that there are. Teenage moms, right? And the ponderance of those teenage moms are Puerto Rican. And these teenage moms live in really poor housing, may not have very limited income, may have problems with transportation, medical care, educations, very oppressed population. Well, the Care Center will go out and pick up young women and their children in a van, bring them to the school. They will feed the child. They will feed the mother. They will provide gynecological services to the mother. They will provide pediatric services for the child. The young women in the program, oh, they provide daycare for the child. The young women in the program can continue on and get their GED or high step, and they can go and continue on college courses through Bard College, or through the Clemente courses and Humanics, and they can go on and continue their life successfully. So there are programs that are able to reach very challenging population, vulnerable populations, in a really impactful way. I mean, this organization has been identified as a national model, has been recognized by the former First Lady, Michelle Obama, and has- Yeah, she was good. Yeah, yeah, she was good. And she recognized the efforts of this local organization. She also recognized the role of capitalism in obesity, but that's another story. So can I pick up on that same story? Yes, please. Because I know about it, too, and so let me finish with this so that then, because as part of it is that over the last few years, it decided that they helped these young ladies graduate from high school, and they decided that it would be good for them to go on to college. They wanted to go on to college. So they built an agreement with Bard College to offer some college courses at their site, and they've been quite successful. But they realized that, I guess, as I understand it from the last event, that some of the young women couldn't continue because of a housing problem. So then they worked in the community with somebody who was building some housing to... Wave finders. Wave finders to provide some housing or to contract for some housing. And so they're building in supportive housing to the idea that then, while they go to school, they need supportive housing. And if you get rid of these, what we might consider structural problems to get rid of those, then all of a sudden you have people flourishing. And so these young people, young women, who come from an experience that would never have allowed them to go to colleges, are writing poetry and essays and doing some major English work and other work. Being accepted to colleges to continue their studies. Mount Holyoke, Mount Holyoke, and other... Smith. Smith and other local. So it's really a good example to answer the question, where you're going, what can be done? Here's a program that addresses the multiple aspects of poverty at the same time. So originally, maybe starting with education, but then saw that they needed to do all those things you just said. That's why we need a human rights culture. Rights are independent. You just can't talk about education or poverty. It's housing, it's medical care, security, and old age. Go ahead. Yes. Right. Yes, yes. So addressing the question, what can be done, is that... Access to essential services. What can the viewers do watching right now? What can they do by themselves, if anything? Lots of things. Keep on going. Lots of things. So first of all, I don't know if you want to answer this first, but I would go to pay attention to the aspects of social policies, change in social policies from a political perspective, understand what the intention of the social policy. From more my psychological orientation, the idea of visualizing the life, of understanding the life, coming from a place of understanding, not being afraid of people in poverty, not being afraid and not being judgmental in your conversations or in your beliefs about communities and about people. I mean, those would be three things I would say. He took the words right out of my mouth, but let me use my own words. Yeah, use your own words. So I would say is be opening to witnessing the pain that surrounds us, right? That you cannot avert your eyes anymore. With so many people, one in four Americans suffering from the issues that surround poverty, it's impossible. We should not pretend like it doesn't exist. It surrounds us. I think that the next thing, and Dr. Mullen said this already, which is basically that if you open up your heart, then you will know what is the next step, right? You have to be present in order to know what is the next step. There's no formulas. There's no list of good people that will sign up for this or that, but just be open to the possibilities that exist to provide services, to provide justice, to treat people with dignity and worth, to understand that every person is unique and is special and divine. And if you see people that way, you're going to treat them accordingly, right? And I guess that would be my formula, to understand you use an expression that I've never heard anyone else use, and you talk about the meta-micro. A meta-micro, what were you? Yes, so yeah. And so you're an author of an idea that very few people don't recognize by that expression, but basically just being kind to people, to smile, to touch. Yeah, just to understand that they're human beings, right? And that there are not some kind of scourge of the earth, that there's some horrible human, you know. And that's a segue into what I think needs to be done is having a human rights culture. But you have to teach children about these human rights documents. You have to teach them about dignity, nondiscrimination, the fact that everyone has a right to a job. And a job isn't working at McDonald's. I have nothing against people that work there, but you get my point. According to Eleanor Roosevelt, a good job is a job that is socially useful, contributes to the development of the human personality, and pays a reasonable wage. Now you tell this to kids, and they can understand this at an early age, then they get socialized into believing the importance of human rights in their everyday life. And you just don't have all this nonsense. I will say in Norway and Sweden, between cartoons, they literally flash a right between cartoons, says that no child should be hit or something, or every child should have good food or something. And then the kids are socialized into thinking, well, that's what you should have. In Norway and Sweden, they have the relatively good on many indices. I notice that time is kind of running out. I just want to bring up some other things. We've been speaking about the rights to food and some of the programs that were there. As part of health care, education. And these things are important. I just want to make some notes here. There's other types of poverty around that maybe we could spend one minute talking about it or not talking about it at all, I don't know. I think that there's a spiritual kind of poverty out there. There's poverty in relationships. And then there's a poverty that I refer to and many people at the UN refer to as living in loveless affluence. Spiritual poverty, I don't know what's going on, but everybody's sort of after themselves these days. And many of these spiritual principles, whatever they are, to do things for the least of these, to treat others like you'd like to be treated. I don't know, it's just not in our culture. And I think that's a kind of poverty. The other poverty, I think, is in human relationships. New York Times had some articles saying that people don't have confidants anymore. And people are kind of alienated. And there was a book by Johann Harry, I think, called Loose Connections. She saw the lack of connection behind the opioid crisis. And there's this famous rat study where they gave the rats opioid, and they gave them heroin, all sorts of drugs. And what did they do? They could take water or drugs. So they went to the drugs. But then they had what's called a rat park. You probably know about this, where they played. They had food. They had relationships. And nobody went to the heroin. They all went to the water. So I think there's a dearth in relationships. I just wanted to bring that up. Sounds like you have another program that you can cover. Well, I don't really like programs. Because I think that they don't teach us anything that we know. You give people opportunity. They do well. And we have to give people opportunity. And then there's people that live under loveless affluence. A lot of kids, they will use video games. And they have cell phones and, I don't know, 3D televisions. I don't know what they have. But they're not that happy. Well, I'm sorry to take up the last few minutes. Thank you for having me. Any final comments? Well, this has been really wonderful to give us to have the opportunity for us to do this. And it matches our goal, which is to really highlight the lives of people living in poverty. And so thank you for that. 876. OK, so we'll have to do this again. So take care of yourselves. And take care of others as needs be.