The Empire 481

California 'first failed US state'?

By Rob Reynolds in Los Angeles

On Sunday mornings at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in the rough-edged Tenderloin district of San Francisco, the sanctuary is always rocking to old-school gospel music.

"It's so good to come together," Pastor Cecil Williams declares. His is a diverse congregation - white and African-American, gay and straight, young and elderly.

For four decades Pastor Williams has been an outspoken advocate for the city's poor and marginalised. On one bright October Sunday recently, he preached a sermon on compassion and the need for social justice.

"You affirm who you are when you stand up for others in need," Williams told his flock. "And you can say, we are going to change this old world to a new world."

But it is a harsh new world in California these days. A state once synonymous with opportunity and prosperity, sunshine and surf, Hollywood and Disneyland have fallen on bitterly hard times.

'Land of opportunity'

The evidence is no further away than the church basement, where free meals are prepared for homeless and hungry people such as Robert Shirley. He's been homeless, on and off, for months, he says.

"California was the land of opportunity. You could make it out here," Shirley says. "Hey, I'm sorry, but California is not that way any more."

The number of meals served here has jumped 21 per cent since last year. Williams says the free kitchen's clientele has changed drastically.

"They were people [in food lines] who were carrying briefcases, people who were dressed in suits, people who were dressed up very nicely and had been a part of the middle class" Robert Shirley, homeless California resident

"They were people who were carrying briefcases, people who were dressed in suits, people who were dressed up very nicely and people who had been a part of the middle class," he says.

"And we were seeing them come through the lines. And that, of course, was shocking."

California is the world's eighth-largest economy, but its unemployment rate is over 12 per cent - the highest in 70 years.

Millions of people lost their homes when the housing bubble burst. Millions more have been thrust into poverty by the recession.

In July, the state legislature haggled for weeks over how to close a $26bn budget gap. Instead of increasing taxes for corporations or the wealthy, the budget deal that emerged to be signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the state's Republican governor, ordered deep spending cuts, laying off tens of thousands of state workers.

Reduced funding for education, coupled with big tuition increases, sparked a student and faculty strike at California's public universities. Programmes for ex-prison inmates and parolees have been slashed.

And the social safety net of healthcare and services for the poor, children and elderly - the least powerful and least vocal members of society - has been systematically shredded.

"The people that are going to be effected first and foremost will be the poor, those who are in great need," Williams says sadly. "They are not considered to be human beings."

State 'abandoning its poorest'

Lees verder: http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/10/2009101881543377434.html