Socioeconomic Underground Railroad SUGRR ("Sugar") Network
for the Abolition of Poverty
Chained to the System
"We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them."
Said to Edward R. Murrow by Comment made by a Florida farmer in the 1960 documentary Harvest of Shame, about those who pick the food for the people of “the best fed nation on earth.”
Today, when we think about poverty, we think in terms of individuals, both the harshness of their lives and the choices they've made.
But the thing is, being consigned to poverty has less to do with personal agency and more to do with the circumstances we inherit. Research shows that if you were born into wealth or poverty, that's also most likely where you'll be when you die. That's because there's a malignant machine at work, one that's the direct descendant of chattel slavery in the South, wage slavery in the North, and child labor everywhere. Despite this system's use of a range of new mechanisms -- essentially, renting slaves instead of owning them -- it achieves results that are strikingly similar to those achieved when slavery was not only legal but the engine upon which our economy ran. Both historians and economists assert that this is how the United States, in less than a century, went from debt-ridden startup to the wealthiest nation in the world.
Impoverishment, like the earlier incarnations of economic exploitation it's built on, is a subtractive system, one that takes more from society than it gives. It's a machine driven by three conveyors: 1. Depriving people of asset ownership, including of land, of their homes (which locks them into a lifetime of renting) and of the companies they help make successful; 2. Paying people too little to live on, for more hours than they can maintain, in jobs they can't retire from; and 3. Overcharging those with the least resources and giving discounts to those with the most. The result is a society that can't sustain. In that sense, we're all chained to the system.
SUGRR's mission is two-fold: Work toward a day when the system is abolished-when all will be free to lead lives of vitality and agency, and, until that day, do everything we can to help people escape that system. We believe that:
Together, we can be the end of poverty.
But the thing is, being consigned to poverty has less to do with personal agency and more to do with the circumstances we inherit. Research shows that if you were born into wealth or poverty, that's also most likely where you'll be when you die. That's because there's a malignant machine at work, one that's the direct descendant of chattel slavery in the South, wage slavery in the North, and child labor everywhere. Despite this system's use of a range of new mechanisms -- essentially, renting slaves instead of owning them -- it achieves results that are strikingly similar to those achieved when slavery was not only legal but the engine upon which our economy ran. Both historians and economists assert that this is how the United States, in less than a century, went from debt-ridden startup to the wealthiest nation in the world.
Impoverishment, like the earlier incarnations of economic exploitation it's built on, is a subtractive system, one that takes more from society than it gives. It's a machine driven by three conveyors: 1. Depriving people of asset ownership, including of land, of their homes (which locks them into a lifetime of renting) and of the companies they help make successful; 2. Paying people too little to live on, for more hours than they can maintain, in jobs they can't retire from; and 3. Overcharging those with the least resources and giving discounts to those with the most. The result is a society that can't sustain. In that sense, we're all chained to the system.
SUGRR's mission is two-fold: Work toward a day when the system is abolished-when all will be free to lead lives of vitality and agency, and, until that day, do everything we can to help people escape that system. We believe that:
Together, we can be the end of poverty.
4th Terrace N. Neighbor Fund
Economic Justice Engagement Collaborative
Red Mountain Foundry
& Economic Justice Incubator
SUGRR ("Sugar") Papers
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SUGRR ("Sugar") Network's
2024 MLK Day Open Letter on Poverty
"New Phase of the Struggle" WHY ABOLISHING IMPOVERISHMENT IS CENTRAL TO BOTH THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND TO OUR NATION'S SURVIVAL
Leaders of the UGRR -- 2024 United States Postal Service Stamp Series.
“My work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice.” Bryan Stevenson
“This land has a story. What role will you play?” Duwamish Tribe, 2022