Poverty Should Be At The Top of Our National Agenda

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/05/1680/

Poverty Should Be At The Top of Our National Agenda
by Jesse Jackson

We haven’t even mentioned poverty,” John Edwards noted toward the end of Sunday night’s Democratic presidential candidate debate. The CNN host, Wolf Blitzer, grilled candidates about Iraq, immigration, health care, energy, gay rights and women’s rights — but there was virtually no mention of the economy, rising poverty, stagnant wages or the worst corporate crime wave since the Robber Barons.

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And poverty cannot simply be cordoned off as the signature of the John Edwards campaign. His moral courage should invite others to engage, not to retreat. As a society, we all pledged that we would never forget the poverty and desperation revealed in the wake of Katrina. But the poorest of Katrina’s survivors have been dispersed across the country, most still unable to return. Public housing has been leveled with nothing to replace it. Homes have not been rebuilt.

New Orleans reflects the nation. Our cities grow unequal — with the wealthy doing well, the middle class displaced, and the poor struggling ever more. Immigrants with no legal status supply a low-cost, easily oppressed pool of workers, driving down wages on the low end.

Why is poverty not on the agenda of the debates? Is it because our national anchors are so well paid they think the economy is humming? Is it because we wrongly conflate race and poverty, and forget that most poor people are not black — they are white, female and young?

The Bush administration has an answer for the economic woes that plague middle-income and poor people. The administration is slashing the budget of the bureau that collects the statistics on poverty and well-being. If more children are raised in poverty, at least we won’t know too much about it.

Today, Republicans gather for their New Hampshire debate. They will be asked about the war, about choice, about immigration. As they should be. But this time, don’t leave out poor children and what we should do about rising poverty. Ask about stagnant wages, and what we should do about an economy in which so few capture so much of the rewards of rising productivity. Ask what they would do to insure that workers get their fair share of the profits they help generate. We may learn what the candidates’ values really are.

Jesse Jackson

K&R

will make poverty even worse. That shit needs to stop and stop now!