By Shel Horowitz
This post is in three parts:

  • My Personal Poverty Story
  • What’s Wrong Right Now
  • Prescription to End Poverty
  • 7000 bloggers are joining together today to talk about one issue: poverty. I’m proud to be one of those 7000.

    My Personal Poverty Story
    Poverty is something I know something about, first-hand. In the 1970s and early 1980s, I was desperately poor, and for a portion of that time, on food stamps. I jokingly refer to those years as the “research phase” for my e-book, “The Penny-Pinching Hedonist.” But I didn’t just pinch those pennies. I squeezed them so hard it might have drawn blood, if pennies could bleed.

    When I got a job as a VISTA Volunteer community organizer, with the princely salary of $82 per week (and they let me keep getting food stamps), it was a major step UP the economic ladder for me; before that, I’d been working a single day a week in a neighborhood fruit store. I seem to remember that I earned $15 for those shifts, but that would have been below minimum wage even then, so it must have been more like $26.

    I do know that I thought long and hard about every discretionary purchase other than food; with the food stamps, I didn’t have to worry about that, at least. But if I could get around New York City by bike instead of subway, I did–all over Brooklyn, where I was living and where I was charged to build the local Gray Panther chapter, and lower Manhattan, where my community organizing office was. If I could find clothing at a thrift shop, I did–even if it didn’t fit quite right. I found entertainment like poetry readings, that didn’t cost anything. I read the books and listened to the records I already had, on a stereo I’d bought used while a college student.

    Even then, I knew I was lucky. All around me, I saw people who were trying to support a family; I had no dependents. I saw people being forced out of rent-controlled apartments so that landlords could quadruple the price under vacancy decontrol; I had found a small apartment in a warehouse district that I shared with a friend; my half was only $150, which meant that once I got the organizing job, I was able to earn back the cost of housing in less than two weeks and have the other two weeks’ pay to live on for the month. Before that, I’d been paying the rent out of small and precariously dropping savings since losing the entry-level corporate job that had brought me to New York. And even during that time of unemployment, I scraped by enough that I didn’t have to deal with the intimidating and humiliating welfare bureaucracy; the food stamp office was far more humane, according to my friends who’d been through the welfare system.

    Gradually, in the 1980s, I moved out of the city, started the business I still run, and eventually got to a living wage, and then out of poverty.

    What’s Wrong Right Now
    But I still get very angry when I hear politicians and toxic talk show hosts who have no first-hand knowledge of poverty ranting about welfare cheats while passing out massive subsidies to their friends and funders at the very top of the economic ladder.

    And it shocks me that we’ve allowed the disparity between the poorest and the richest to go totally haywire, much like the Latin American dictatorships we always heard about in the 1970s and 80s. CEOs take home nine-figure compensation packages, while poor and middle-class people lose their homes. This is not fair or just, and I’m hoping the current world-wide financial crisis will lead us to change those percentages. What would life be like if no CEO got more than 25 times the wages of a full-time employee making minimum wage, or for that matter, 25 times as much as the check that a welfare mom is supposed to live on while she supports her kids?

    Some companies manage to get by paying their CEOs much less than that! There are companies where the CEO makes only eight or ten times the lowest paid employee, and others, collectively owned, where every worker makes the same salary. Somehow, they survive and thrive and attract great talent. Because they have a mission they can believe in that’s not just about lining their own pockets.

    Okay, so I’m the one ranting now.

    Prescription to End Poverty
    But this is Blog Action Day. I’d like to finish with some action steps that we can take as a society, steps that address some (by no means all) of the systemic causes of poverty, and whose adoption will lift up the bottom. Changing these could take whole communities from poverty to abundance.

  • Switch to sustainable, renewable, nonpolluting energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, and small-scale (non-invasive) hydro. Surely, if we can find $700 billion to pump into the financial system, we can find a few billion for a Marshall Plan-style initiative that would eliminate dependence on foreign oil, slash carbon emissions, create thousands of jobs, and put money in the pockets of rich and poor alike.
  • Retrofit all buildings with proper insulation, water-saving plumbing, and other sustainabiity measures. Again, this lowers costs, creates jobs, and reduces carbon as well as dependence on oil imports (and thus global warming).
  • Decriminalize the petty offenses that fill up our prisons, taking away income-earners, making it harder for them to get jobs again when they get out, and leaving their families with a huge financial burden. We have no business throwing people in prison for using drugs or feeling forced into prostitution. Dealing is one thing; it harms society. But using harms only the users and their families, as long as they don’t get behind the wheel or operate dangerous machinery.
  • Revitalize mass transit. Poor people get to work on buses and trains, and the more places transit systems reach, the more job opportunities for poor folks. Added benefits once again: reduced carbon, reduced foreign oil imports, reduced traffic congestion.
  • Urban community food self-sufficiency: an organic garden on every flat roof and in every vacant lot! Lowers food costs, boosts nutrition, freshness, and flavor, builds community, reduces carbon and more.
  • Adopt, finally, the sensible system of government-salaried doctors not beholden to insurance companies that has allowed almost every other industrialized country in the world to make health care a right, not a privilege. This is something we advocated for when I had the community organizing job with the Gray Panthers almost 30 years ago, and it’s still a good idea–and long-overdue.
  • Oh yes, and save poor and middle-class lives as well as vast boatloads of dollars by getting out of the illegal and unconscionable war the Bush administration lied its way into in Iraq. the $700 billion per year saved could provide seed capital to fund all the rest of it.
  • So there you have at least part of my prescription to create jobs, reduce costs, lower pollution, and shift our country’s trade and overall deficits. What are your ideas? Please post them, and let’s get started!

    While this post is copyright 2008 by Shel Horowitz of https://www.principledprofit.com, I hereby grant permission to reproduce the post in its entirety in any medium as long as attriubtion is included, and to link to the post without restriction.

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    Found both of these links in the How Online blog–found the juxtaposition quite telling:

    First, an inspiring (and long-overdue) article on MarketWatch about how people are seeking MBAs not just to acquire personal wealth but to make a difference in the world. I could quote many parts of this terrific article, but I’ll pick just one:

    “The New Green Focus for Future MBAs” headlines Greenbiz.com. And, it’s the most popular story on the site. At the same time, a new poll by Experience Inc. shows more students are hoping for a job with a green-minded company. The poll says 81% of students believe there is value in working for an environmentally aware company, while 79% would likely accept a job at an eco-friendly company over a conventional one.

    “In a few short years, eco-friendly practices have gone from being new-fangled selling points to becoming essential requirements, with states vying with each other to offer incentives and legislation that promote green technology and business. While the corporate world is scrambling to devise strategies to address sustainability, business schools across the country have been incorporating it into their curriculum for the past several years, both in response to student demand and in line with industry trends,” Greenbiz says.

    But the same page of the same blog links to another story (International Herald-Tribune) that shows, once again, the same-old-same-old of too many giant corporations just doesn’t work. and deceptive business practices have cost General Motors, and its auditor, Deloitte & Touche, over $300 million combined:

    Under the settlement, GM would pay $277 million to investors, while its auditor, Deloitte & Touche LLP, would pay $26 million, pending approval from U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen in Detroit.

    The two-year-old class-action lawsuit claimed that GM misstated and mischaracterized its revenue, earnings and cash flow, artificially inflating the company’s stock price and debt securities.

    Let’s hope those green and ethical MBAs of tomorrow remember that they know better when they’re presented with opportunities for fraud.

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    I did quite a bit of writing about our Guatemala trip, and have gathered the links all together here. The first three are classic travel writing, then three with a specific focus on environmental and social change–including our encounter with Guatemala’s President, Alvaro Colom.

    Then Dina’s three blogs on our trip, and then two sets of photos. Enjoy, and feel free to comment here (most of the links go to places without comment fields but this page has them).

    Antigua, Guatemala: Colonial Elegance and Lots to Do

    Haight-Ashbury in the Guatemalan Mountains: San Pedro and Lake Atitlán

    Guatemala City: Where Are The Crowds?

    Touring an organic macadamia farm run by a self-described “eco-guerrilla”

    Social Responsibility in Guatemala (subject of my weekly blog on FastCompany.com)

    Encounter with Guatemala’s President

    My wife Dina Friedman’s three blog entires on our trip (with photos by me)–when you’re done reading the first one, get the next ones by clicking “vacations2” on the upper right, and then of course “vacations3”

    I wrote two other stories from this trip, on Pacaya volcano and Xela/nearby–but those I’m going to try to sell. You can see pictures, though:

    From the first half of our trip, Antigua and the Lake Atitlán

    Second half: Xela (Quetzaltenango) and nearby Momostenango, Fuentes Georginas, and Zunil…jade workshop and museum in Antigua…Guatemala City and the President

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    We *have* made progress! A Utah newspaper, the Herald Journal, ran its first announcement of a same-sex marriage–and only four people canceled their subscriptions!

    The paper ran a very clear announcement of its rationale here
    .

    Bravo to the paper–and its readers, who I guess have noticed that the world is changing.

    I live in Massachusetts. We’ve had gay marriage for I think three years now. And guess what–the sky hasn’t fallen! I think a lot of the people who supported some of the homophobic responses in the past have realized, now that they see openly gay married couples raising families, having jobs, and enjoying such taken-for-granted-by-heterosexuals privileges as visiting their partner in the hospital, that it is no threat to heterosexual marriage.

    I have never understood why they felt threatened in the first place. My wife and I will be celebrating our 25th anniversary in October. We’ve been to several gay and lesbian weddings. I think it makes a family stronger when a couple can express their love and commitment and take on the responsibilities and benefits.

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    Call for Action: Fight the “Orphaning” of
    Writers’ Constitutional Right to Copyright Protection
    By guest blogger Jerry Colby, President, National Writers Union

    [Note from Shel: This was originally sent by Jerry as a letter to members of the NWU. I asked if I could post it here to share with non-NWU members.]

    Librarians typically want to expand the public’s access to their
    collections. It’s in their nature to help people grow in
    knowledge. While getting a salary, they do not do this just for
    money.

    Online database companies and publishers, like librarians,
    archive works in the arts and sciences. They, too, want to see
    more people using the works they have stored in digital format.
    Unlike librarians, however, they do this for profit by selling
    digital copies of others’ works. For years they did this without
    seeking permission from writers and artists who created these
    works – until the Supreme Court in 2001 declared this illegal in
    its Tasini v. New York Times et al. decision which affirmed that
    usage of work must be paid for in electronic media.

    The database companies and publishers have not given up their
    efforts to seize control of the rights to copyrighted works they
    want to sell through the Internet. Beside all-rights contracts,
    they have also targeted a category of copyrighted works whose
    authors are least likely to defend themselves because their
    whereabouts are unknown. The media industry has taken to calling
    these books, plays, articles, poems, photographs, illustrations,
    and so on “orphan works.” Now the publishers want the legal right
    to use these works without the rights-holders’ permission. All
    they would have to do, as proposed in new legislation (S. 2913,
    the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008), is make a “diligent
    effort” to locate the rights-holder which is “reasonable and
    appropriate” according to government standards for “best
    practice” overseen by copyright experts hired by libraries. Such
    searches would be beyond the budgets of all but the largest
    publishers and database companies.

    This would stand copyright law on its head. Since the 1976
    Copyright Act went into effect in 1978, writers supposedly had to
    do nothing to enjoy copyright protection of their works. Any work
    not in the public domain cannot be used without permission of the
    rights-holder. This “opt-in” requirement is in compliance with
    the spirit of the copyright clause in Article 1, Section 8 of the
    U.S. Constitution, which vested original and exclusive ownership
    of works with their creators for a limited time (currently the
    lifetime of the creator plus 70 years) in order to encourage
    innovation in American society. Such a bill strikes at the very
    heart of capitalism’s success and the source of innovation
    crucial to any nation’s cultural and economic growth. What is
    really being proposed is the orphaning of our constitutional
    right to copyright protection.

    Should this orphan works bill become law, infringement of
    copyright of orphaned works, both domestic and foreign, would be
    permitted after a vague “due diligence” search for the rights-
    holder. The negative impact this could have is manifold. Our
    foreign trade partners who take copyright very seriously would
    fight American companies encouraged by this act to raid works
    summarily declared orphan after computer and phone searches. It
    takes little imagination to see where this might lead.
    Retaliatory raids by competing foreign companies on American
    orphan works could escalate into trade wars over orphaned
    intellectual property. Given the enormous role intellectual
    property plays in the global market, such trade wars could easily
    expand and unravel carefully negotiated international trade
    agreements. Ironically, this orphan works act could damage
    international trade in such intellectual property as music and
    movies where the U.S. still holds a favorable trade balance.

    Congress should signal an end to the decades-long indulgence of
    corporate greed and insist everyone play by same the rules. It
    should table the onerous bill until a more thought-through
    version that respects the property rights of creators can be
    crafted.

    Congresspeople are very sensitive to influence during national
    election years. Writers would be wise to remind their
    representatives to observe the constitutional covenant with
    American writers and artists. I urge all NWU members to take the
    lead here, look at the two letters on orphan works currently
    posted on the nwu.org website for ideas, and write your own
    letters to Congress. Be sure to also send a copy of your letters
    to the National Office.

    Gerard Colby, trade union activist, investigative journalist and author, is currently serving his second term as the President of the National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981. Colby is co-author (with Charlotte Dennett) of Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (HarperCollins, 1995), author of Du Pont Dynasty: Behind the Nylon Curtain (Lyle Stuart, 1984), and lead contributor to Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press (Prometheus, 2003), winner of the 2003 National Press Club award for press criticism.

    He can be reached at GColby@nwu.org.

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    One of my favorite marketers, the brilliant and unconventional Sean D’Souza in far-away Aukland, New Zealand, claims he built his entire Psychotactics business on strategic alliances.

    And I believe him.

    Strategic alliances are that powerful. Two world-class examples:

    Apple, IBM and Motorola joined forces in the 1990s to design the PowerPC computer chip–which dominated at least Apple’s product line (and I think was used in various IBM models as well) for the next several years.

    And a person in the audience of one of my speeches reminded me that until it formed a strategic alliance to supply operating systems, Microsoft was just another two-bit hole-in-the-wall computer business.

    The comments on Sean’s blog page got into a discussion of the typical Internet-marketer JV, but Sean correctly responded,

    The downsides to strategic alliances? I know of few. One is, that because they’re not motivated by money, there’s less momentum–that is they’re less likely to be motivated to help. But this hasn’t been true for me. Our alliances have literally built our business, and continue to do so. And the entire relationship is built on trust. And respect.

    The downsides to Joint Ventures, I can list by the dozen. The essential problem with joint ventures is money. When the money dries up, so does the motivation. But it’s also an upside. I don’t know. Call me crazy. I prefer alliances over joint ventures.

    I agree with Sean. In fact, I posted my own comment, “Most people can’t see beyond the typical JV arrangements to see the much greater power of strategic alliances (and the friendships that can come out of them)” to grow a business.

    Strategic alliances have been an essential tool in building my business, and I haven’t yet structured one like the typical Internet-marketer JV (though I may, down the road). At the moment, thanks to a strategic alliance with Sean’s Aukland neighbor Mark Joyner of Simpleology (another fantastic marketer–what’s in the water down there?), I’m about to participate in what could be the most powerful strategic alliance of my career, a partnership that involves one of the most famous names in marketing as well as a large publishing corporation. I’ll tell you all about it once the papers are signed. 🙂

    Meanwhile, if you want to know more about strategic alliances, I cover them in some detail in my award-winning sixth book, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First. Incidentally, my alliance and friendship with Mark came about because he ordered this book, and I was brave enough to seize that opportunity to begin a correspondence with him.

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    In a few minutes, I’m heading into downtown L.A. for my 12th Book Expo America.

    I’m remembering the first time I did the show in L.A. It was only my second BEA, and I struck up a conversation in a booth that led ultimately to the contract for my fifth book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World. Other years, I exhibited Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First at a co-lp booth, nd that led to rights sales for Indian and Mexican editions, both of which have been published. I’ve made connections with editors, agents, vendors, and clients, and I find the show can energize me for weeks (even while overwhelming me with the followup) on top of my usual workload.

    This week, already, just from the pre-show conferences, I have a possible subrights deal for the newer, more specialized Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers. Not to mention a few new client leads, some good PR contacts, and some great tips that will make me a more effective author and publisher. In other words, the show dovetails nicely with my attitude that the world is a place of abundance, and good things are there for you if you want to tap into them. Every single BEA has brought good things to me, from friendships and hugs to powerful deals.

    And then there’s the social part. Every year, I see friends and have a lot of fun. Last night, at the Ben Franklin Award dinners, I was able to introduce several sets of people who should know each other. Some of those connections will lead to business for the people I introduced. I get a lot of satisfaction if I bring that kind of relationship into being.

    It was also a privilege to be at the Franklins for the photo-tribute to the amazing Jan Nathan, the group’s long-time executive director who passed away last summer. Jan was among the warmest and most helpful people in the very warm and helpful world of independnet publishing, andshe had a great sense of huor and a smile that could light up a room.

    You can read numerous articles I’ve written about most of these BEAs; the majority of articles on that page come out of these events.

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    Fascinating and far-ranging interview with European philosopher Slavoj Zizek on Democracy Now this morning.

    He covered war, energy, US presidential politics, and much more. But the statement that really got to me was:

    A true act creates the conditions of its own possibility. That is to say, it appears impossible, you do it, and the whole field changes: it’s possible.

    He went on to cite President Nixon’s opening US relations with Maoist China, and postulated that if Obama becomes president, he will seize a similar window with Cuba.

    But this concept has reach far beyond international relations. In sports, the 4-minute mile was an unassailable barrier for decades; once Roger Bannister broke it, many people followed quickly. In science, it was unthinkable in 1955 that a human being would walk on the moon before 1970. In energy and the environment, the work of Amory Lovins and others show new ways of reinventing society as a more earth-friendly place (see my article here). And in business ethics, I like to hope that my Business Ethics Pledge campaign will make a similar difference in the consciousness that ethical business is actually more profitable.

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    Last night was the twice-a-year Town Meeting in my town of Hadley, Massachusetts. We still have an old-style New England Town Meeting, where any registered voter can speak (about issues already on the agenda, anyway) and vote. And these votes really do shape the town; every zoning change, for instance, has to get a 2/3 supermajority at Town Meeting.

    During the Save the Mountain campaign several years ago, for instance, one of my neighbors submitted a citizen petition to restrict the altitude of a building lot. She gathered the requisite number of signatures,w e organized turnout at the meeting, and her new bylaw was overwhelmingly adopted, along with some others we’d put in.

    But some financial outlays are a two-step process. First, Town Meeting approves them, and then, a paper-ballot election is held at a later date, to appropriate the funding.

    Last night, a longtime citizen environmental activist raised the point that we
    d passed some of these improvements several times, but they kept getting voted down in the later election because most people didn’t know when that election would take place. She asked if the election date could be announced at Town Meeting, but the Selectmen (kind of like a Town council) hadn’t set the date yet.

    So I stepped to the microphone and offered to create an e-mail notification list. Then I went home and set up an announce-only newsletter on yahoogroups with this mission statement:

    An announce-only media channel to notify residents of Hadley, Massachusetts of upcoming votes and meetings of town boards, committees, and commissions. This non-partisan list will not take positions on any issues. It is solely to notify the public of upcoming votes and meetings. It will distribute information as received; the listowners make no promises or claims regarding the completeness or accuracy of information received. We just want to help get the word out.

    By phrasing it as a “media channel,” and by not stating opinions on the matters before us, I will be able to receive and forward the press releases from the town administrator, and hopefully over time several hundred people will be able to learn the dates of the elections in time to vote.

    Seems like this is a pretty good model for lots of communities. It costs nothing to set up, and I’m anticipating a whole year of administering the list will add under an hour to my workload. We’ll see how it works.

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    Miscellaneous items in the news of late:
    1] The Weekly Spin, an always-provocative newsletter from PR Watch/Center for Media

    and Democracy, reports that corporados and their hired PR guns have stepped up campaigns against citizen activists. Not only are they infiltrating these groups, but also going through activists’ trash, using their spies to release deliberate disinformation campaigns, undermine citizen actions, and generally abuse the public trust. Yeech!

    This is not new–here’s an example from six years ago:

    “Inside information gives companies a strategic advantage,” wrote Amsterdam-based investigative reporter Eveline Lubbers in the 2002 book “Battling Big Business.” Lubbers helped uncover an eight year-long scam by a Dutch security firm, where one of its employees posed as an activist. He collected discarded paperwork from at least 30 different activist groups, saying he would sell it to recycling plants and give the proceeds to charity. Instead, the documents were carefully reviewed and often used against the groups.

    But apparently it’s still very much going on, in both the US and UK, probably elsewhere too.

    CIW began being “vilified online and in e-mails that can be traced to the Miami headquarters of Burger King,” reports the Fort Myers News-Press. The emails and comments were posted under the names “activist2008” and “stopcorporategreed.”

    2]MarketingProfs.com offers six don’ts for effective e-mail marketing. Item #1–don’t e-mail too frequently; you don’t want people unsubbing because you bother them too much.

    But the first reader comment points out that MarketingProfs itself mailed three times within a week about a particular conference.

    3] But PR isn’t just for influence; it can also be fun. My friend Ken McArthur is on a campaign to popularize the coined word “zingwacker,” which is in his new book “The Impact Factor.” As of early April, the word brought zero results in Google. As of before I hit the post button, it’s up to 393. Not bad, Ken–even if the Squidoo page misspells your new word in its URL.

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