Wow what an enraging and important read! Thank you for pointing to – with unapologetic honesty – poverty as an unnecessary cancer that inflicts all of us. You give us hope by inviting all of us to become poverty abolitionists. As I walked through the streets of center city Philadelphia listening to Poverty, by America, I look at the dying opioid addicts, scores of people experiencing homelessness and a family asking for donations to pay for the funeral of an 18 year old family member killed by gun violence.
I think of the ways I contribute to this horrifying scene with my retirement investments that support big banks and when I drive my car versus supporting public transportation. None of us are exempt from contributing to and benefiting from severe poverty in our so called richest county in the world. As a relationship and psychotherapist focused on helping people live more relationally, I very much appreciated your calls to build connected community. And as the coordinator of Independent Pennsylvanians, a grass roots activist group fighting for full voting rights of non affiliated voters, I thank you for calling out the complicity of the two parties in perpetuating the state we are in.
As a fellow poverty abolitionist, I vow to divest my money from big corporations, take the subway, and support local food banks with my excess garden harvest. These steps are not sufficient of course until we ban together. It’s a start? For my mother’s ancestors who worked the coal mines of Pennsylvania to support the industrial devolution while dying of poverty illnesses and not having enough money for shoes or food while helping to make extreme riches of the gilded age Barons.
Jennifer Bullock is the Director of Independent Pennsylvanians, which is a proud coalition partner with Ballot PA, working to repeal Pennsylvania’s closed primaries. She is a social therapist practicing in Philadelphia.
July 25th at 3pm ET
Join our host, Cathy Stewart, for a Virtual Discussion with author Matthew Desmond
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Pennsylvania Poverty Fact Sheet
In conjunction with the release of Poverty, By America, Matthew Desmond also developed a fact sheet with information on poverty indicators for each of the 50 states.
We will be sharing the fact sheet for the state of each Reader’s Forum author. Below is the fact sheet for Pennsylvania.
Thank you so much for
Your moving and powerful review!