Focusing on community building could ensure that new jobs programs, where needed, aren't make-work nonsense, which neither build community nor teach work skills. Welfare reform anchored in community building could complete the renewal of inner-city neighborhoods that appears underway. But welfare cuts that drive poor mothers into the low-wage job market, leaving their children without adequate care, will swamp these islands of urban renewal in a new tidal wave of misery. Joan Walsh's last piece for Salon was on California's Proposition. The look is more important.
Fashion becomes the idea, and that's what is sold.