Rant! Social or political commentary

• Maternity Leave Policy Protest...by Katerina

I wrote this on my last day of work before going onto unpaid maternity leave. I had unsuccessfully asked my manager to raise the issue of paid maternity leave with the CEO (he lacked the courage to even speak to him about it) and Human Resources advised me to email the CEO if I was unhappy with the company's policy. Noone thought I would actually do it...I am now looking for another job as the extreme reaction it provoked convinced me of the futility of working for a company which is threatened rather than stimulated by dissent, and which shares none of my values.

Dear <CEO's name removed>,
I am writing to express my disappointment about your maternity leave
policy, specifically the fact that it is completely unpaid. After today, I
will lose all my income for the 6 months I'm taking off to look after my
baby. I, and my baby, will be financially dependant on my partner, who,
fortunately, is caring and reliable. If I was unable to work for another
reason, such as ill health, then I would be supported by this company until
I was able to return to work. However, because I am choosing to do the most
important job of all, I am penalised.

Have you ever thought about where your future <Company's name removed> workers come from,
where the people who will care for you in your old age must come from? Have
you considered why the birth rate in Australia is falling below replacement
levels? Or why industry, unwilling to look after its female workers for
such a short time, is losing so many of them to the public service, wise to
the long-term advantages of fair treatment of their staff.

I completely reject the idea that paid maternity leave is unaffordable for
<Company's name removed>, or even for most IT businesses. Women are under-represented in
IT (I wonder why??) and thus paid maternity leave would not be a frequent
expense. Even, if it was, it would still be insignificant in the context of
the huge profit made -- profit made purely from the labour of those you
claim you can't afford to support.
Regards,
<My name removed>
 

• The Wandering Poor...by April Glasco

When New York Rudolph Giuliani announced in December 1999 that he would require the homeless to work before they could receive a bed in a shelter, in retrospect he probably was unaware that his proposed policy revived a very old historical tradition. For a time in the 1820s person convicted of vagrancy in New York City were forced to labor on a treadmill, and from the 1880s to the 1930s it was common throughout the country for men staying in homeless shelters to have to chop wood or break stone for two or three hours before receiving a meal and a bed fore the night. In this essay I would like to inform you about then homeless as a population as a whole, review the origins of the homeless in early American culture and to inform on how is the homeless and the relief support that is offered.

In the new homeless the post 1975 period tended to be much younger than their predecessors, and were more likely to be Hispanic and African American the recent past. In 1996 national survey of the Urban Institute found that almost three quarters of homeless adults were under the age 45 years of age and almost and almost half under 35: only 2 percent were 65 or older. By the mid 1990s blacks made 41% and Hispanic 11% and native America make up 8% which made up half of the homeless population of the United States. To get a visible source for understanding the social economical characteristics referring to the Department if housing and Urban development estimates that in 1987 there were 250 thousand persons living on the streets or in a shelters on any given night. In 1990 that figure had double. A 1996 urban intuited that on an average night 470.000 persons were sleeping in shelters. But that a much higher number. About 2 million in some point of time had experienced homelessness at some point during the previous years.

This initial growth of the homeless population took place primarily in the nation’s small but growing cities. In 1933 Sociologist Neal Anderson identified a homeless person as a destitute man, women, or youth, either a resident in the community or a transient, who is without domicile at the time of enumeration. In the past as today, a flexible definition of homelessness that takes these factors into account makes the most sense. Homeless has assumed a variety of forms throughout American History. Many homeless people took part in tramping or worked seasonal laborers (sometimes called hobos) during part of the year. Others traveled little and lived for decades in the poorest section of cities, surviving on intermittent wages from odd jobs, begging, and occasional meager support from family members.

In the decades proceeding in 1980s there were two significant sources of help for homeless people: the traditional missions and Salvation Army establishment and the Catholic Workers Houses of Hospitality spread around the nation. Today there are many organizations in America for the homeless and to prevent homelessness here are a few: Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), Corporation for Supportive Housing, Council of State Community Development Agencies and Ending HOMELESSNESS! Round Table on Abolition of Homelessness along with hundreds of others. The homeless is and was a great problem so much so the government has agencies along with the federal to control and help the poor along with the homeless.

Beggars, tramps, vagrants, hobos, street are known to most people. Americans have long struggled to half sense of the homeless within their midst. Today in America there are thousands of vagrants throughout the United States that are trying to help those homeless Americans to find shelter and feed and cloth the homeless. The compulsion of stereotyping the homeless as dependent and deviant turns the poorest Americans into an abstract “other,” separate and inferior from everyone else. Although their problems are more severe, however, destitute people living on the streets and in homeless shelters are not so different from the rest of us. They never have been. Any genuine effort to end homelessness must begin with recognition of that essential truth.