The Unemployed Somehow Became Invisible

[Coach Trotsky]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/business/the-unemployed-somehow-became-invisible.html?_r=1

An interesting NYT article here. Comments?

[Jose Gracchus]

It blows. NYT liberals cannot understand anything not organized by "intellectuals" (because of course there were no worker socialists or communists :rolleyes:) and that involves "voting" (i.e., presenting themselves as a utility to the Democratic Party's hackery).

[RED DAVE]

And of course the motherfuckers never talk about their own culpability. This is an article in the most visible newspaper in the US if not the world talking about how a group is invisible.

RED DAVE

[Lynx]

When you have no political movement to advance your rights, you're not only invisible, you're irrelevant.

[Dr Mindbender]

I suspect we have a similar situation here in the UK. Unemployment and dispossession is widespread yet we've yet to witness any Greek style throwing of rocks at cops.

[Jimmie Higgins]

It blows. NYT liberals cannot understand anything not organized by "intellectuals"

There's a grain of truth in what they are saying which is basically that the protests in the 1930s did not come out of thin-air but were part of an organizing process. But rather than talk about how radicals were more intrenched in working class struggles back then (but gosh the american working class is immune to radical ideas!) they present this idea in the most passive way possible: some smarties thought of something and duped the poor into fighting for them.

And I think it is true that in the absence of organized resistance and budding class consiousness, the first reaction most people have to being unemployed (particularly for long stretches of time) is demoralization and feelings of worthlessness. That's the real reason that unemployment is invisible, not because politicians simply don't care because they don't vote (as if that would make a difference anyway) but because they want people to feel alone and unable to change their circumstances.