[US Domestic Policy] Opportunity Knocks to End Poverty

A student-led campaign with former U.S. Sen. John Edwards as its spokesperson sets out to put an end to poverty

by Steve Sellery

October 27, 2005

Poverty is the great moral issue in America," former U.S. Sen. John Edwards told a rapt audience of close to 1,000, mostly students, who attended his speech at Yale University last week. Levinson Auditorium holds 500, but the overflow crowd filled two large additional rooms, wired for sound. "There are 37 million Americans in poverty," Edwards continued, "and there are 1 million more people in poverty now than last year. There is economic recovery in America for people with capital, but not for working people. They are being squeezed by higher fuel prices, higher housing costs."

Nine students, members of the Project Opportunity Executive Board, sat on the dais with Edwards. Behind them was a poster for Opportunity Rocks www.opportunityrocks.org, the student-led organization on which Edwards serves as honorary chairman, that is mobilizing to end poverty in America. On Oct. 17, Edwards began a two-week, 10 university tour to ignite student interest in this fight. Each of the 10 universities has mobilized its own Opportunity Rocks chapter that is organizing students who have pledged 20 hours of volunteer work per semester to end poverty in their communities and in the nation.

In his opening comments, Daniel Weeks, a student who is co-director of Project Opportunity at Yale, brought the message home on a local level. "More young blacks and Hispanics are in prison than college in America," Weeks noted. "One-quarter of New Haven citizens are in poverty. Too many people work full time and can't support their families. We have an opportunity to make a difference in these people's lives."

Edwards left the U.S. Senate in January to set up the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina Law School. He joined the Opportunity Rocks campaign in the spring. He told the Yale audience that he has committed his life to ending poverty in America, which, he says, can be done just like we've gone to the Moon. It's all about will, Edwards said. "With Hurricane Katrina we saw the ugly face of poverty," Edwards told the Yale audience. "Why do the poor get hurt most? Because they are living on the razor edge. Many of them will never recover. They live paycheck to paycheck. These folks are extraordinarily vulnerable--to predators, to emergencies. They are different from us, because you and I don't have these vulnerabilities, because we are not poor."
Poverty has a face of color, he continued. African American families have an average of $6,000 in assets. Latino families in America have average assets of $8,000. White families have an average of $80,000 in assets.

And, Edwards noted, it takes assets to climb out of poverty. He proposed helping the poor open savings accounts, so that they are not living paycheck to paycheck and that the government should match their savings. But first, we must raise the minimum wage. The minimum wage in America is a national disgrace, he said, to lengthy applause. Edwards praised Yale students for campaigning for a living wage for those who work at the school. Edwards advocates supporting the unions, which he called the best anti-poverty movement in American history.
"Some people argue that if you're successful you do so by yourself, and that if you fail, you fail on your own. That's a lie," Edwards asserted. "No one succeeds by himself. I had great support from my family and from public education through high school and public education at a state university." Success is about hard work, but it's also about luck, he said.

Edwards identified what he called a thirst for a feeling of national community in America--a feeling that we're bigger than our own self-interest. That sense of national community was evident in the outpouring of response to Hurricane Katrina's victims. That event opened a window for change, Edwards said, but Americans don't have a long attention span. The challenge for Opportunity Rocks is to keep that window open.

"We need to speak the truth. There's such a void of moral leadership in America today," Edwards said to loud applause. "You can fill that void. You'll never find poverty at the top of anyone's political agenda, so we have to speak for [the poor]."

After his speech, Edwards met with reporters and was asked how the momentum would continue. He said that Opportunity Rocks would use the Internet to continue rallying volunteers and sharing experiences of what worked and what didn't. He added that the response has been so great in the three schools he has visited so far, that he plans to extend the tour beyond the originally planned 10 schools.

http://westchesterweekly.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:131526

[US Domestic Policy] Poll: Poverty should be country's top priority

By Peter Prengaman, Associated Press

Majority of blacks, plurality of whites favor pulling troops from Iraq, rebuilding New Orleans

LOS ANGELES — Eliminating poverty in America is more important than fighting terrorism, especially to blacks, U.S. troops should be pulled out of Iraq, and money saved on war should be used to rebuild hurricane-scarred New Orleans, according to a national poll released Thursday.

When asked, "What do you think should be the most important priority for the U.S.?" a majority of blacks, 58 percent, chose "eliminating poverty" over other answer choices "rebuilding our own cities," "fighting terrorism," and "establishing democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan." Pluralities of other ethnic groups — 43 percent of Hispanics, 40 percent of Asians and 36 percent of whites — also chose eliminating poverty as their top priority.

"I don't remember poverty ever finishing as the No. 1 priority on any kind of list," said Sergio Bendixen, whose firm Bendixen & Associates conducted the poll. "The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the images of poverty have clearly made a large impact on many Americans."

Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast in September, killing more than 1,000 people and devastating New Orleans. President Bush and the Federal Emergency Management Agency were sharply criticized for sluggish response efforts as millions of television viewers watched thousands of New Orleans residents — many black—struggling to survive amid abject poverty. The survey was conducted by telephone Oct. 14-21 among 1,035 adults nationwide — 258 whites, 268 Hispanics, 259 blacks and 250 Asians.

Most were sampled using the "random digit dial" technique, to reach people with unlisted and listed phone numbers. Japanese, Asian-Indians and Filipinos — half the Asian subgroup — were sampled based on first and last names from phone listings and other public databases.

Interviews were conducted in six languages. The sampling error for each subgroup was plus or minus 6 percentage points except sampling error cannot be calculated for Asians not sampled using random digit dial. The poll found that a majority of blacks, Asians and Hispanics, and a plurality of whites believed U.S. troops should be pulled from Iraq to pay for rebuilding in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_3160004

[Military Spending] Poverty Campaigners Take On War Spending

UNITED NATIONS,
Oct 17 (IPS)

Despite the fact that poverty can be seen as a violation of basic human rights, 1.1 billion people, or about a fifth of the world's population, scrape by on less than one dollar a day.

And a total of half the world's people live on less than two dollars a day. "Poverty devastates families, communities and nations," said U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a message marking the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on Monday.

This year's theme, "Achieving the Millennium Development Goals: Empowering the Poorest of the Poor", made clear that there is a need for partnerships with the people who are often excluded from the development process. "Poverty is more than just income poverty. It is also manifested by the lack of access to education, basic health services, clean water and sanitation," said Jomo Kwame Sundaram, U.N. assistant secretary-general for economic development, underlining the importance of implementing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs include a 50 percent reduction in extreme poverty and hunger, universal primary education, reduction of child mortality by two thirds, cutback in maternal mortality by three-quarters, the promotion of gender equality, environmental sustainability, the reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, and a global partnership for development between the rich and the poor.

Jan Eliasson of Sweden, president of the General Assembly, emphasised that the commitments made this year must be implemented and that trade talks scheduled for December in Hong Kong "must deliver an outcome which advances the cause of development". At a commemoration ceremony at the U.N. Headquarters Monday and events marking the day around the world, many used the opportunity to underline that the poor themselves must be given a greater voice in the process of poverty eradication.

"They are the ones who know their way out. They are the victims," said Constantine Saasita Munema, the delegate for Tanzania of the International Movement ATD Fourth World, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) dedicated to overcoming extreme poverty. Munema also stressed the link between poverty and human rights. "Whenever men and women are condemned to live in extreme poverty, human rights are violated. It is our duty to come together to ensure that these rights are respected," he said.

The main focus must be now to implement the MDGs and the commitments made at the U.N. World Summit in September, experts said. To reach this goal, Eugen Brand, director general of ATD Fourth World, called for an end to the "teacher-student" relationship between rich and poor countries. Poor people are found in every country, he said. "When we talk about extreme poverty we are all students and we have to come together."

Monday was also the launch of an international inter-religious campaign called "Global Priorities", whose goal is to join "the voices of people of all religious traditions to challenge current national and international spending priorities". This requires a long-term effort to shift a portion of investment in human security away from military spending and toward reaching the MDGs.

In the view of Global Priorities, this year's U.N. Human Development Report paints a stark and unacceptable picture of a tragic lack of progress by the world's leading economic powers in meeting the MDGs. The campaign urges that funding be refocused on neglected and especially urgent child survival needs. "We can easily save up to 60 billion dollars in the U.S. military budget without having less security," said Lawrence Korb, former U.S. assistant secretary of defence during the Ronald Reagan administration, highlighting unproductive military spending in the proposed 440-billion-dollar U.S. defence budget currently before Congress.

He added that this amount does not include funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reducing the number of nuclear weapons from 7,000 to 1,000 would also send a signal to the world, Korb said. "We are the ones with the cigarette in the hand telling others not to smoke."

According to Global Priorities, other countries also have excessive military budgets. The group singled out France, which plans to spend more than 10 billion dollars on "unnecessary submarine-launched nuclear missiles, which can be better used to meet human needs". But French officials said there is more at stake than money when talking about poverty.

"There are three elements: money, partnership and to spend the money correctly. We have to work on the three of them," Jean-Marc de La Sablière, France's permanent representative to the U.N., told IPS. He added that he was nonetheless interested in the work of Global Priorities: "I am always listening to those who know and can tell us how we can spend the money in a better way."

The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty was officially recognised by the United Nations in 1992. The day was first celebrated in 1987 by thousands of participants at the Human Rights Plaza in Paris, France.

[US Domestic Policy] Hunger In America Rises By 43 Percent Over Last Five Years

Source: Brandeis University
2005-10-29

Hunger in American households has risen by 43 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data released today. The analysis, completed by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, shows that more than 7 million people have joined the ranks of the hungry since 1999

The USDA report, Household Food Security in the United States, 2004, says that 38.2 million Americans live in households that suffer directly from hunger and food insecurity, including nearly 14 million children. That figure is up from 31 million Americans in 1999.

"This is an unexpected and even stunning outcome," noted center director Dr. J. Larry Brown, a leading scholarly authority on domestic hunger. "This chronic level of hunger so long after the recession ended means that it is a man-made problem. Congress and the White House urgently need to address growing income inequality and the weakening of the safety net in order to get this epidemic under control." According to the Center on Hunger and Poverty, food insecurity increased by nearly a million households from 2003 to 2004. Rates of hunger increased in almost every single category of household during the same time, with single mothers and those living in or near poverty continuing to suffer from severely high rates of both food insecurity and hunger.

California, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oklahoma and South Carolina all have food insecurity and hunger rates that are significantly higher than the national average. The lone bright spot in the nation is Oregon. Once considered to have the worst hunger in the country, Oregon has shown significant decreases in food insecurity and hunger since 1999-2001.

"With this astonishing level of food deprivation in America," Brown concluded, "we need President Bush to step up to the plate. If he now asks Congress to cut federal food programs, hunger will increase even further. We need the moral leadership to stem this crisis."

A full copy of Household Food Security in the United States, 2004 is available at http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err11/


To obtain a bulletin of the analysis by the Center on Poverty and Hunger, visit http://www.centeronhunger.org.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/10/051029093925.htm