Putting The "Un" Back In Unemployed

Gentle readers.

You may have noticed that the name of this small blog has changed from Unemployed Brooklyn back to its original title - Unemployed Brooklyn.

Yes. That's right.
Your MatchGirl is once again on the dole queue.
The company for which she worked faced some setbacks in the fourth quarter, which led to a major restructure. While they'll probably push through and come out all right on the other side, for now, your MatchGirl and several of her colleagues are pounding the (virtual) pavement.

Don't despair, though, dear readers,  Your MatchGirl feels totally OK.

Your MatchGirl will keep you updated as she moves forward in her quest for a new position. And of course, this little tome will continue to bring you thoughts on the plight of the under and unemployed in this country as we move through the current election cycle.

Stay tuned ... I have a feeling there will be a lot to talk about.

In Order To Form A More Perfect Union ...

Early last year, gentle readers, your MatchGirl wrote about the anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the need we still have for oversight for employees. Whether you fully agree with that or not, I'd like you to take a moment to look at the photo above and have a good think on what it says. Because, dear ones, I assure you that one of these parties is serving their country in a much more productive way - ensuring America's future, not their own.

Just something to think about ...

The New Great Depression

Gentle readers, your MatchGirl is a bit terrified. Terrified of what's coming down the pike. Terrified of what is going to become of us.


In reading this piece in the Washington Post earlier this week, I realized that we really are coming to the next great depression in America.


The article, an adaptation of Bruce Springsteen's intro to Someplace in America: Tales From The New Great Depression, reminisces about a book that came out 30 years ago, by the same authors, filled with pictures and stories of ordinary Americans just struggling to get by.


Springsteen writes:

That book — “Journey to Nowhere,” by Dale Maharidge and Michael S. Williamson — put real lives, names and faces on statistics we’d all been hearing about throughout the ’80s. People who all their lives had played by the rules, done the right thing and had come up empty, men and women whose work and sacrifice had built this country, who’d given their sons to its wars and then whose lives were marginalized or discarded. I lay awake that night thinking: What if the craft I’d learned was suddenly deemed obsolete, no longer needed? What would I do to take care of my family? What wouldn’t I do?

Without getting on a soapbox, these are the questions Maharidge and Williamson posed with their words and pictures. Men and women struggling to take care of their own in the most impossible conditions and still moving on, surviving.

Gentle readers, is this not the same thing we've been talking about for the past (over) three years? What happened to this country, the political rut we are stuck in, occurred be cause we as citizen's were too blinded by the glitter of a small economic boom to see failure coming. What has happened to this country has happened to this country before, yes, in the poverty and layoffs of the 80s - where manufacturing jobs started on their inevitable decline - but also in the wake of the "roaring twenties."

Extremes, dear ones, are not sustainable.

The failure that we didn't see coming - how stupid were we. Plants started shutting down in the midwest and the south. The family farm started getting eaten by the factory farm. Wages were cut in half and half again (The great book Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town, by Nick Reding details well what the loss of these types of jobs has done to our country). Towns started to die. This started in the 1980s.

But what did we do? As citizens?
Sure, we donated to FarmAid, but FarmAid still exists. Thirty years later we're still begging for donations to help the family farm. And, maybe, in some places, this is coming. And maybe, as more people really want to know where the food they're eating comes from, we'll see their lives improve. We'll see.

We bemoaned the loss of "real American jobs." We watched Roger & Me. But what else did we do?
Did we "buy American"? Maybe.
Did it help? Not so much.
Because those American cars, at least parts of them, were being manufactured in Mexico and Taiwan and loads of other places where the labor was/is cheap and labor laws barely existent.

What we did not do, gentle ones, is look at the core problem.
What we did not do is to invest in education.
What we did not do was look at spending money now to teach people to be more prosperous in the future.

My generation, Generation X for those of you who pay attention to those things, is the first generation to be, overall, worse off than the one before it. Let's not let it keep getting worse for the ones who come after us.

Let's let our leaders - the ones in office, they work for us, you know - know that we want them to think long term. That we want them to invest in education and innovation. That we want them to look beyond creating 5,000 for the next 3 years and figure out how to create 5,000,000 over the next thirty.

Let's learn a lesson from our past - for once - and push push push for an American where there is a priority placed on learning to the highest level, of the skills that will build a future and carry us forward into the 22nd century.

Sure, we won't be around to see it, but that doesn't mean it's not a worthy investment.

A Country Built On Rights

On the subway the other morning, your MatchGirl saw a sign for the Ken Burns documentary, Prohibition. And the words on it struck me, gentle readers, so much, that I thought they bore sharing here with you.

The poster posed this question (to paraphrase): In a country built on rights how could everything have gone so wrong?

Oh my.

I feel like this is the question that the people who are occupying Wall Street (and Boston, LA, Chicago, etc...) are asking. I feel like this is a question that we all need to be asking ourselves. Right now.

The unemployment rate is high.
The income gap is seemingly un-bridgeable.
The world is not becoming a better place.

I certainly don't have it any better than my parents did - in fact, when I look around, at my career, at my life - I have it a lot worse than they did when they were my age.

And things are not getting better.

There is no one who will help. Maybe there is no one who can help.

So, dear readers, I ask you this, what are you going to do for yourself? What are you going to do to make your life better - to make the lives of those around you better and richer and brighter?

Give yourself a helping hand and pull up a few friends along the way.

Your MatchGirl is pretty sure it's the only way we can make the world a better place.

How Can We Make Things Better?

Yes. The amount of people living below the poverty line is growing. And growing.

The rich are getting richer while the middle class slowly (maybe not so slowly) slip down into poverty.

What do we do? How can we make things better?

Where do jobs come from?

Your MatchGirl doesn't have the answers, certainly, but she can see so many of the problems.

We're fast approaching election season - the one that people come out and vote for - and these are the questions that everyone is asking: What can you do about the economy? Where are the jobs?

Your MatchGirl is not sure that the federal government is positioned to fix this mess. Perhaps we're better off looking to our local governments and voting in those little elections - you know, the ones for city council and boards of advisors and superintendents. The ones for the people who make things work where we live...

Just a thought.

Remembering The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire - And The Importance of Oversight

Gentle readers, your MatchGirl would like to take a moment and talk about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Friday, March 25th, marks the 100th anniversary of the tragedy - the largest industrial disaster in the history of New York - in which 146 people died - mostly women and, in reality, children.

I would like to take a moment to remember that tragedy and to talk about the important strides for worker's rights and labor unions that arose from the fire.
                           
With all that has been happening in the past few years - recession, job loss, fucked up economy, unemployment and underemployment - your MatchGirl thinks it's important to take pause and think about the workers who sacrificed so much to ensure that we could have fair working condition. With states like Wisconsin taking steps to make sure that collective bargaining and worker's rights will go away and Congressional Republicans promising to cut funding for OSHA, it's time to take a moment to think about what unions have done for us. And how they can help under served workers in the future.

Unions, of course, dear readers, are different then they were in the wake of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedy. They are different than they were when Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in 1975. And maybe the union, as we know it, is no longer necessary. But there is a place for oversight. There is a place for organization. There is a place for worker protection.

Employers, as a rule (save those with amazing company culture), place economic growth and profits ahead of the welfare of their workers. In 1911, that welfare was about cramped working conditions, long hours and fair wages. In 2011, it's about substandard oversight of oil rigs and mines. It's about teacher's, educating this country's next generation of leaders, getting paid, on average, less than your neighborhood babysitter. It's about people desperately looking for jobs only to see the only things listed are unpaid or underpaid internships - where the "employer" wants full time work and a long list of qualifications, but refuses to pay for the experience.

Your MatchGirl doesn't have the answer, gentle readers, but she sees the problems. And while we may not have the same kind of need (in this country, anyway) for labor unions that we used to, we still need something.

Until that time comes, let's make sure to look out for each other, gentle ones. It's the least we can do.

Operation Tomodachi: Benefit for Japan

Gentle readers, though it's not in Brooklyn, your MatchGirl wants to share this benefit event with you. It happens tonight at 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the Red Cross to assist the survivors of Japan's earthquake and tsunami.

Thanks to Star Mama for sharing!

Please join Deadly Dragon Sound and guests as we honor and pay respect to everyone that has been affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan this past week.

We will be donating all proceeds from the night to Red Cross Japan.

Confirmed guests include : 

Miki from King Jam Sound // Mitch from Yard Beat Sound //
Kitano Creation // Uni-T Human Crest //

plus performances by :

Johnny Osbourne
Ranking Joe
Screechy Dan
Mikey Jarrett
Willow Wilson
& more!

$10 (suggested donation) at the door.

Happy Ending Lounge
302 Broome Street (Forsyth/Eldridge)
New York, NY 10002

10pm - 4am
2 for 1 drink specials from 10pm - 11pm

for more info check out deadlydragonsounds.blogspot.com


＃日本StandFirm

Will Anything Come From The Lame Duck?

It's that time again, gentle readers, when Congress returns to Washington to sit on their bums and get pretty much nothing done.  Yep.  It's another lame duck session.  Your MatchGirl would like to believe that the Congress-people and Senators will do their due diligence and decide about a few things that are on their agenda.  Your MatchGirl would like to believe that they will not just bide their time, waiting for the new session to begin in 2011 and a partisan rivalry to throw the country into a standstill for the next two years.

For unemployeds, there is only one true issue - I mean, it's great if they vote on the 20 bills they've got lined up - but, dear ones, there is only one bill that matters to you right now.  One they need to vote on before November 30, 2010.  And that is the extension of unemployment benefits.  If Congress doesn't vote before this date, before the Thanksgiving recess, then upwards of 2 million people could be left with no safety net.  No matter your thoughts on the unemployed in this country - whether you think they are milking the system, they are lazy or you really know the truth - there are a lot of people who rely heavily on those benefits - to feed their families, to pay their rent, to get their heat turned on - and it's not fair, entering the holiday season, especially,  to leave them so literally out in the cold.

This morning I heard a figure on the radio - I can't recall the source they were quoting - that said for every one dollar put into unemployment benefits, two dollars go back into the community.  This means that those people collecting benefits (people like you and formerly me), are buoyed by this tiny bit of income these benefits provide and they are paying them back to the economy - into the MTA, into the indie bookstore down the block, into Walmart, into the bodega, into church collection baskets, into grocery stores and farmer's markets.  Here is a place where math as most of us understand it does not make sense.  Here is a place where one equals two.

Your MatchGirl is no economist.  But hey, neither are most of the people who are sitting in the House and Senate right now.  Goodness knows, there has to be a better way.  But she knows one thing, gentle ones, she knows that any math you do that makes one equal two is only good math in this economy.  Sure, job creation is paramount - unemployment extensions are no magic salve, merely a Band-Aid on the wound - but those jobs will take time to create and fill.  It cannot happen overnight.  They will certainly not be created in the next few weeks nor, realistically speaking, the next few years.

There is no instant solution to the massive problems in joblessness, malemployment and unemployment in this country, but if the lame duck Congress does just one thing right in the next handful of weeks it will be to pass another unemployment extension.  This is important.  This matters.

(Dis)Enchantment

Last night, Americans went to the polls and they voted.
In this MatchGirl's opinion, gentle readers, many of them voted against those in office, as opposed to for those whose ideals they share.

This saddens me.
This frightens me.

For the unemployed and underemployed, who knows what will become of us when this crop of Tea Party people take control in January. I am not being overly dramatic when I say that, with these election results, I fear for our future.

Why You Need To Vote Tomorrow

Because people like this actually exist, your MatchGirl beseeches you - Please remember to VOTE on November 2nd!

Rocking The Boat

Ah, gentle readers, with the midterm election fast approaching, your MatchGirl's, though currently employed, mind keeps turning to her unemployed and underemployed friends and neighbors.  The unemployment rate is stagnant and where it drops - in nearby states like New Jersey, it's supposed that this is only because so many people's benefits have run out that they are no longer being tracked.  And income levels have not changed in a very long time.

A quick little internet search reveals that - with the last numbers - the unemployment rate here in Kings County is slightly above the national average, and above the average for the rest of the sate of New York - at 10.5%.

Your MatchGIrl knows, dear ones, that many of you have found jobs - some are making more than you were before, some less.  Some of you have found jobs in your chosen field.  Some of you, like your MatchGirl, have veered in a new direction, either through choice or circumstance.  Some of you simply took the first thing that was offered to you, knowing that you could stay unemployed no longer.  And a great many of you are underemployed.

Those of you who have found jobs - I know - are incredibly grateful to be working.  I am.

Here's the question, though: Do you find yourselves, just because you are so very excited to (finally) be working again, letting your employers take advantage of your eagerness?  Do you find yourself too eager to please that you're being overworked and (probably) underpaid? Are you finding yourself afraid to rock the boat simply because you are terrified of not having a job again?

Your MatchGirl hears things and reads things - both news article and anecdotes - and, unfortunately, I think that this is the case - across the board.  And I understand being grateful to be employed.  I am.

Be careful, gentle ones, in walking that tightrope that lies between gratitude and being taken advantage of.  Be careful in keeping your new and oh-so-hard to come by job.  But take care of yourself and your needs.  Know that you were hired for several reasons - and being a door mat was (hopefully!) not amongst them!

What do you think? Are you moving on up in your new found employment? Or simply treading water, trying not to capsize?

Cast Your Vote

Gentle readers, October 8th marked the final day to register for November 2nd's mid-term election in New York State.  Your MatchGirl sincerely hopes that you have registered and that you plan on being at  the polls on November 2nd.

It may not seem like a big deal, a mid-term election.  But, it is.  If you are still unemployed.  If you are under-employed.  If you are living paycheck to paycheck.  If you are worried about what will become of you if things don't start to improve, then it is most certainly a big deal to vote in this election.  Whomever is elected next month will be instrumental in forming your future.

You can find a comprehensive list of all the candidates, for New York State or your own, on the Smart Voter website.

PRESS RELEASE | Unemployed People Speak Out!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 8, 2010



Kevin Powell Holding Press Conference with Members of the Unemployed Community, Inviting Towns and Barron



(Brooklyn, NY) This Saturday, at 1 pm, Congressional Candidate Kevin Powell will be holding a press conference at Pathmark located at 11110 Flatlands Avenue highlighting the unemployed members of our community who continue to look for work and find no opportunities as a result of our government's perpetual bailouts of big banks instead of addressing the concerns of the jobless in our communities.  Charles Barron and Congressman Towns will be invited to listen to the community and provide ideas on how we can work through the financial crisis together.



"We're looking forward to meeting with members of the community whom have been out of work for a long time as a result of this economic downturn and our government's misguided attempts at recovery that have clearly failed our community and have set Wall Street against main street" says Powell. "We have some ideas, but we need to hear from those most affected as some of the best ideas come from our community, not from our legislators."



As for why he is inviting his opponent, Ed Towns, Powell responds, "Charles Barron and I have been working together and in opposition to Ed Towns, however we all need to hear ideas directly from the community.  This has been a heated race.  Both Mr. Towns and I intend to win.However, regardless of Tuesday's outcome, we're all better off if we remember who we serve, not the other way around."



Some of Powell's ideas to aid the recovery can be found at http://www.kevinpowell.net/platform.php

The Dunning-Kruger Effect

A few days ago, a friend posted this quote on his Twitter feed:

The Dunning-Kruger effect: people who don't know much tend not to recognize their ignorance, & so fail to seek better information.

And from the blog of The Science Show:

The dumb get confident, while the intelligent get doubtful. That's the conclusion that David Dunning and Justin Kruger came to when studying people's perceptions of their own talents. What has now become known as the Dunning-Kruger effect helps describe why lay people often act as experts and inept pollies get our votes.

This is exactly why the Tea Party movement is gaining so much traction in America.  And why we spent so many years with a President who people wanted to drink a beer with instead of one with a proven record.

If this blog starts taking a more political slant in the coming months, it's because this is a midterm election year.  And one of the biggest things that will be effected by this election is the economy - and therefore unemployment, joblessness and unemployment benefits.  People tend to think that the only elections that really matter - that they really can get behind are those big every four year Presidential ones.  But don't forget - the people who have been holding up unemployment benefit extensions are the men and women who are elected every six years...

Just sayin'...

File Under: People Unclear On the Concept

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) thinks that you're a bunch of junkies.

Yep. You heard me. You unemployed person.  You working poor.  Orrin Hatch thinks that you are on drugs.

Now, who is your MatchGirl, gentle readers, to judge?  I don't care.  But I do care that Orrin Hatch thinks that the poor and the unemployed, basically anyone collecting state or federal assistance, should be required to subject themselves to drug testing.

Click here to tell him he's an ass.

In other news, Rand Paul (R-KY), proud representative of the Tea Party movement, thinks that you all ought to stop asking for handouts and take lower paying jobs.

Via The Huffington Post:

Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul has a blunt message for the millions of Americans who remain unemployed in the long-term: "Accept a wage that's less than [you] had at [your] previous job" and "get back to work."

While he was answering a question about Republicans stalling an unemployment benefits extension in the Senate, there is, perhaps, a more educated conversation to have.  It's ignorant to think (to say!) that the majority of unemployed people are not looking for work.  People are looking for jobs.  And many many people have accepted jobs that pay well below what they made previously.  There are grown adults taking barely paid internships and pouring coffee/beer/cocktails/what-have-you on the side just to squeak by.

I'm sure that there are unemployed and poor people out there who do drugs.  And I'm certain that there are unemployed people out there trying to milk the system for as much money as they can get.  But to make vast generalizations on literally millions of Americans simply proves how very out of touch these men are with the real world.

Recovery

For the past couple of days, the radio has been telling me that the recession is over.

Gentle readers, this is news to me. A (near) year of unemployment. My savings dwindling down. No real idea as to what will happen in the next few months. The countdown to my unemployment running out is on.

But the recession is over.

The government has launched a website called recovery.gov where you can see where all the stimulus money is going. You can even search the country by zip code - cool for New York, as you can really see how it's affecting your neighborhood - but. But. But.

The radio also keeps telling me that this will be a jobless recovery. How can we be expected to spend money to stimulate the economy if there are no jobs for us?

It's all well and good that they are trying to create jobs. Wonderful. But they are only in a few sectors, and, unfortunately, in New York City they are not necessarily in the sectors that are hurting.

During the Great Depression, FDR created the WPA, which stimulated the economy by creating real jobs. In fact, pretty much everyone who was unemployed was eligible for some kind of job under this bill - they restored old buildings, artists created giant murals, the pool at McCarren park was built during this time and it even eventually offered job training. The thing that the WPA did that our current stimulus program is not really doing was offer relief to white-collar workers. I think it's great to offer training to people who previously didn't have that kind of education and building infrastructure through construction jobs is important, too. I'm not really knocking the current stimulus. But, for an already educated person, living in NYC, it doesn't really do anything to help me in my job hunt.

The fact of the matter is that a lot of jobs lost in NYC were jobs in the fashion industry and the arts and on Wall Street - and not the high paid jobs, but the assistant designers and the secretaries and the office managers and event organizers - and those are the people that are currently being overlooked (those are the people whose jobs are being turned into internships). That's the kind of job I had. That's the kind of job that I know a lot of people who read my blog and follow me on Twitter and are a fan on Facebook were laid off from and are currently looking for. But it's not the kind of job that's being helped by the current stimulus. There is a lot of talk about the rich Wall Street people that lost jobs. And there is a lot of talk about people who were living below the poverty line who lost there jobs. And every now and then you see something about the middle class. But not much. And, in my opinion, those are the people who are going to be out of work the longest, because there is just not that much that is being done to help them.

But, ring the bells and throw a freakin' ticker tape parade, dear ones, cos the recession is over.

All Hail ...

It's an election year in NY, gentle readers. I hope you've been following it closely. I trust that you pulled yourself away from your lap top long enough to stroll down to your polling station and cast your vote in the primary and subsequent run-off (Goodness knows you have the time!).

Your MatchGirl is not endorsing anyone - though she was quite taken with Miss Heather's ringing endorsement of C. Montgomery Burns for Mayor over at New York Shitty on Sunday.

But I did want to speak to a couple of issues that you, as civil minded (and perhaps a wee bit disgruntled) residents, the un and underemployed of NYC, maybe concerned about.

First up:
Public Transportation and the MTA
Sunday morning, dear ones, I had to be in Central Park by 11am. No. Not so early, but consider this - neither of the trains I would normally take from my neighborhood were running. So, I had to leave myself a little before 10am and still, giving myself an hour for transport time, I was late! Just by a few minutes, but late nonetheless. And this started me thinking about when I had a job where I worked weekends - every weekend. And how I had to leave my house at least 20 minutes earlier than I would have on a weekday morning, just to get there in the nick of time.

And while this blog is about unemployment and my experiences surrounding my life as a single and unemployed gal in Greenpoint, my Sunday commute made me think about the working poor. The people who have a handful of really crap jobs on weekend and evenings, who have to take what they can just to scrape by and pay their rent and feed their kids.

And, though the NYC subway system is really super compared to a lot of others and compared to cities that don't have public transportation, I wonder who is going to do something to make it a bit more user friendly. Anyone know?

What are some other issues of interest to my fellow unemployeds? I'll have a few more rants coming up over the course of the next few weeks ...