Time To Come Clean

The idea for this blog came from my deep frustration, really my borderline despair over the state of our country, and by extension, the world.  No small amount of my sadness comes from the realization that there is precious little that one individual can do in our increasingly constricted economic and political environment.  Without being a multi-national corporation (granted, by Citizens United, the same free speech rights as a person), I can't have much sway in the public sphere.

But I can quilt.

Several months ago, it suddenly struck me that quilting would actually be an effective way to depict graphically some of the egregious statistics that have come to public attention since the 2008 financial drama.  It led to a conversation with a friend, in which I mentioned that I was thinking about doing this, and he said, "agitprop quilting!  I love it!"  And so, a pithy blog title was created.

But it's so much more than that.  Our country is in real, imminent danger of forfeiting our democracy to oligarchy.  Our government is in a corporate stranglehold; our elected officials spend as much time raising campaign funds as they do governing.  And when they govern, they are voting without a truly independent agenda.

So.  Until we have publicly funded elections (this link lists some current proposals), we are going to veer more and more to becoming a banana republic, with a tiny cluster of billionaires (though lopsided, on both sides of the aisle) silencing our voices.

And until I become one of that tiny cluster (I'm workin' on it), here's what I have to offer:

The top 1% of the people in this country control 40% of its wealth.  The bottom 60% of the people in the country control less than 2%.  Those numbers are really important, but hard to grasp.  So here's what they look like.