A New View of Poverty Desperately Needed

Barbara Ehrenreich, in an appeal redolent of mercy and even a little grace, advocates for a new view of poverty and its causes. Surely she is right when she says that the immediate cause of poverty is a lack of money. But what causes this lack in the first place? This re-evaluation is what America needs and what Ehrenreich has so eloquently called for.

It is tragic when authors, meaning well, are then used by revanchist opportunists. This is what happened with Michael Harrington's book The Other America, now fifty years old. Helpfully, Harrington pointed out that poverty in America was real and more widespread than acknowledged. But he also seemed to say, according to Ehrenreich, that those in poverty were there because they were different, even thought differntly. This allowed for a certain haughty conclusion to be drawn by many that they themselves had avoided poverty because they were made differently -- and better from those in poverty.

A corrective is long over-due, no doubt. This, too, is what the Occupy movement has been about. The homeless man pictured at the link below reminds me of persons I saw last fall at Occupy D.C. Occupy D.C. was happy to include the homeless. The homeless were then caught up in the Occupy movement by accident, if you will. But their presence gave the demonstration a certain real-world, gritty feel. In this way the children of the privileged mingled with the unfortunate from their elders' generation. It was a moving sight. Now, we should all be moved from pity to action.



http://www.truth-out.org/how-we-cured-culture-poverty-not-poverty-itself/1331821823