POVERTY IS A CRIME

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
—Mohandas Gandhi


Poverty is the third rail of politics. Dangerous to the touch like the open palm of a Skid Row resident. During the 2008 presidential campaign, the major candidates held hands and leap-frogged over the poor to fondle the middle class. If you counted the times all Americans heard “middle class” on the campaign trail—and sold each reference on eBay for a dime—we could feed every homeless person in America and have enough money left over to buy iPhones (with all the cool new applications) for the ones who haven’t yet given up looking for a job.


The conversation around President Obama’s $850 billion + stimulus package has also managed to squeeze out the most needy. 37. 3 million Americans according to a 2007 US Census poverty report. There’s talk of a huge middle-class tax cut and home owner-assistance. The message for the poor: Become middle-class and buy a home and we’ll help your broke butt.


Demonizing the poor used to be a spectator sport, with the Right calling all the audibles. Over the last 20 years, you could turn on the TV and watch wild-eyed Reagan Revolution-comrades get the spittle flying talking about “personal responsibility”, “poverty pimps” and “welfare queens.” Only calming down once someone starting slinging statistics (containing multiple zeros and commas) about corporate welfare and no-bid contracts.


The poor has been such an easy target that the Left has decided to join the fun. Of course, not with the Right’s uninformed, irrational mean-spiritedness, but a nuanced approach to kicking the poor is still kicking the poor.


We can trace this Left shift to where blame meets the public sphere: in language. In 2007, Emory University psychologist Dr. Drew Westen’s Message Handbook for Progressives from Left to Center began to find its way onto desks occupied by left-leaning candidates. Specifically, it encouraged progressives to jettison the Left’s long-time platform item, addressing income-inequality, and instead urged politicians to speak about the middle-class not the poor.

The Left’s been listening.

The unfortunate subtext is that this approach sends the nuanced message that that “the poor are just lazy people looking for a handout so let’s not be associated with them because if we do, they’ll cost us this damn the election.”

George W. Bush was poor people’s fault.

Of course, there are lazy poor people but laziness is not why there are 37.3 million poor people. In America, and other places around the world, access to a good education is an extremely effective predictor of future success. If public schools are poor so will be the people who graduate from them. If they graduate at all. According to Harvard University’s Civil Rights Project, 50% of black students don’t graduate high school around the country. What can you do in America, when you are the product of a public school system where half the students don’t leave with a diploma?

Play ball. Spit lyrics. Pick Six.

Or more likely: Become a poverty statistic.

Or: Choose violence to access bread.

Ghandi said, “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

It’s a crime.


Peace & Blessings,

Michael Datcher
Editor