Poverty Growing Around the World

Sunday 15 November 09

Since the worldwide credit crisis started many people have been falling into poverty. In the American middle classes alone, between 45 and 50 million people can be classified as poor, and now in some states of America to be poor is a crime!

Barbara Ehrenreich denounced this in an article on the New York Times website about the criminalization of poverty. She references an city attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., who said in June "If you're lying on a sidewalk, whether you're homeless or a millionaire, you are in violation of the ordinance". In Las Vegas, some volunteers of a group called Food Not Bombs, were arrested while they were sharing food between the homeless in a public space.
According to Ehrenreich the United States risks falling into a vicious circle: if poverty tends to criminalize people, that criminalization impoverishes more them. Is penalizing the poor the solution?!

If a poor person, without a job, goes into the supermarket and steals food, or is found sleeping on the street, we define this as crime but it is not a worse offence, when a strong country continually exploits the resources of weaker country? Where is the definition of justice in all of this? If we can speak about justice...

Sabrina Neri

Thoughts/comments/opinions are welcome in the forums.