THE NATION: One In Three living in Poverty + Bill Moyers
Nearly two years ago, TheNation.com launched This Week in Poverty as a way to keep the issue of poverty—and what we can do about it—front and center for our readers.
We felt that poverty was largely ignored by the mainstream media, with the exception of every September, when the new Census Bureau statistics were published. In contrast, as the oldest political weekly magazine in the country—founded by abolitionists in 1865—The Nation has poverty coverage in its DNA. It’s been a great privilege to be a part of that coverage on a weekly basis.
For me, spending more time in the field, and having the freedom to engage strategically with activists, feels like a natural progression of my work at The Nation. The more I have spoken with people who are struggling in poverty, or with workers trying to survive on low wages; the more I have been alarmed by Republicans, and disillusioned with Democrats; the more I have been impressed with the activists, thinkers, and advocates fighting for good policy and stronger communities, while also searching for new approaches to that fight… the more I’ve wanted to get involved as an activist myself.
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TheNation.com created this blog with the notion that it simply isn’t true that we don’t know what to do to turn the tide in the fight against poverty—that there are many progressive organizations and, most importantly, people living in poverty themselves, offering solutions that are there for the taking and that need to be heard
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The conditions for an antipoverty movement now exist: when more than one in three Americans are living below twice the poverty line (below about $36,500 for a family of three)—unable to pay for the basics like food, housing, healthcare, education, and unable to save—something’s got to give. When 95 percent of the economic gains are going to the top 1 percent, and more than 60 percent to the top .1 percent—the potential is there to unite the majority of people who are being denied an opportunity to get ahead.
More: This Week in Poverty: Signing Off
“Why are record numbers of Americans on food stamps? Because record numbers of Americans are in poverty. Why are people falling through the cracks? Because there are cracks to fall through. It is simply astonishing that in this rich nation more than 21 million Americans are still in need of full-time work, many of them running out of jobless benefits, while our financial class pockets record profits, spends lavishly on campaigns to secure a political order that serves its own interests, and demands that our political class push for further austerity. Meanwhile, roughly 46 million Americans live at or below the poverty line and, with the exception of Romania, no developed country has a higher percent of kids in poverty than we do. Yet a study by scholars at Northwestern University and Vanderbilt finds little support among the wealthiest Americans for policy reforms to reduce income inequality.”