Social Justice and the Environment

I want to start a dialogue on social justice how it affects the environment and Obama’s new call for moral imperative.

I think by now everyone has heard of how we need to become more energy efficient, buy products that do not pollute our waters and the air we breathe, buy local food and help your community. But has anyone thought about how a person who can hardly survive on minimum wage or sometimes less can afford to buy these wonderful green products? It has become a vicious circle of the haves and the have nots and the continuous blame of those that have that the have nots are not doing their green living share and responsible living.

How can we live green? The answer is first we need social justice!

Let us look at some of the social justice and challenges that we have here in the USA. Social Justice aptly defined by John Rawls as respect of basic individual liberty and economic improvement. What does that mean exactly, economic improvement, it means in a democratic society such as ours everyone living in these 50 states deserve basic and good universal education, basic and good universal health care from the cradle to the grave, social security for children in terms of safe early child care so that parents can earn a living, basic security for seniors, good jobs with basic and real livable wages from mighty corporations to the smallest firms and above all safe and inexpensive public transportation.

This is what makes a country, these are just the basic needs that a government has to perform for its citizens if it wants to be considered progressive, civil, decent, compassionate and democratic. This is not socialism it is basic government services for which the people, in return, pay taxes to their government.

It is that simple.

Do you know the answers to some of the following Social Justice questions, adapted from Bill Quigley who is a Human Rights Lawyer and Law Professor at Loyola University in New Orleans?

1. In 1965, CEOs major companies made 24 times more than the average worker. In 1980 CEOs made 40 times more. How much more did CEOs earn than the average worker in 2007?

Answer: Today’s CEO from Fortune 500 companies make 374 times the average worker and over 70 times the pay of a four star Army General. And they pay less taxes than the average worker through all kinds of tax loop holes. Not only do they get these outrageous salaries but they get bonuses at the end of the year. When did a worker in the same Fortune 500 company get a bonus?
Also the CEOs are vehemently opposed to any social justice for their workers. They do not contribute to child care, they decry any vacation time and give their employees barely 10 workings days off a year sometimes not paid, they are derelict when it comes to health care insurance deducting enormous amounts from their meager pay checks. They outsource and fire at will. Where is the social justice in that?

2. In how many of the more than 3,000 cities and counties in the US can a full time worker who earns the minimum wage afford to pay rent and utilities for a one bedroom apartment?

Answer: In no city or county in the USA can a full time worker who earns minimum wage afford even a one bedroom apartment rental. In order for a worker to rent any kind of apartment they must earn at least $17.32 an hour as per the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
In fact 81 percent of renters live in cities where the Fair Market Rent for a two bedroom apartment rental is not even affordable with two minimum wage jobs.

3. How many people does our government say are homeless in the US on any given day?

Answer: A total of 754,000 are homeless. About 338,000 homeless people are not in shelters (live on the streets, in cars or in abandoned buildings) and 415,000 are in shelters in one given night. For comparison, San Francisco has population of about 739,000.

4. What percentage of people in homeless shelters are children?

Answer: HUD reports nearly one in four people in homeless shelters are children 17 or younger.

5. How many veterans are homeless on any given night?

Answer: Over 100,000 veterans are homeless in any given night. About 18 percent of the adult homeless population are veterans. This is about the same population as Green Bay, Wisconsin.