Reader’s Forum – Night’s Liberation by Leah Clifford

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The Crafts’ Journey

Night’s Liberation

By Leah Clifford

The night air buzzes,
No matter how cold you are,
The heat here always
Begins to weigh life down.

They can no longer linger,
Like rust on iron chains,
Their impatience begins to form.

Intrepid footsteps land,
While moonbeams strike the dark sky,
Slashing the melody of night.
Like the edge of a knife; they glint back.

Hour hands halt them,
And seconds wag like disapproving fingers.
The time is now.

Night removes distinction,
Disguises erase designation.
Soliloquies scratch at their minds,
As they practice their roles.

Donning her vesture, his rags,
They'd hide their souls
And willfully pursue fantasy.

Their threads spread, and
Love beats in the rhythm
Of the night, guiding fellow man
Into independence.

Stars watch with indifference,
But their brilliance is reflected in their story,
Embracing freedom like a vow.

The leaves of their story
Branch out, galvanizing resistance.
Demanding justice is not a mistake,
But denying rights creates outlaws.

Loudly, we can now turn the page,
Just as fiercely as they
Would follow the other, anywhere.

Leah Clifford lives in Saratoga Springs, NY and is an Administrative Assistant at Independent Voting.

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Reader’s Forum – An American Story by Caroline Donnola

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Ellen and William Craft

PHOTO: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

An American Story

By Caroline Donnola

One thousand miles up the coast
along the Overland Mail Route
on train tracks
with fires blazing 
and furnaces groaning,
by steamer and stagecoach and sheer cunning;
a light-skinned woman
passing for white
dressed as a planter
travels with her servant—
a tall, dark man,
his first cameo appearance
as a slave
escorting his master 
on a journey to the North—
But really
a husband escaping bondage with his wife.
Push on, Ellen!
Push on, William!

A story with a hundred twists and turns—
of terror and courage,
devotion and hope—
a quest for freedom
with still so many miles ahead,
and not nearly enough behind.

Finally, they reach the North, 
with its abolitionists 
and Anti-Slavery Society,
its passionate former slaves,
now freedom fighters,
leading together in righteous battle.

And then, 
the Fugitive Slave Act—
taunting, hobbling, goading them,
the constant threat
of being dragged back South
in chains. 

Decent Bostonians
defied the new law.
They tricked and foiled 
those slavecatching-bounty-hunting-sons-of-bitches
and sent them running back to Georgia.
Push on, abolitionists!
Push on!

Still,
they could not protect
Ellen and William
against the deadly power of the law,
so the running
began
again.
Their breathing fast,
their resolve steady.

Hundreds of miles
on land and on sea,
through Maine and Nova Scotia,
barely making it to their ship.
Forced to travel in steerage
with Ellen already ill,
they tossed and turned through winter storms
until finally sighting Liverpool.
Dry land at last!
Freedom at last!
Where the slave catchers held no sway.

They had run and run and run—
slogged through mud,
bounced up and down
on bumpy trains and stagecoaches,
escaped the paddy rollers of Macon,
survived the treacherous trip to the North,
then thousands more miles
across an unforgiving sea,
the wind always pushing them up and out.

How strange it must have seemed
to Ellen and William—
these gutsy, defiant former slaves,
these leaders of the cause—
to be forced to cross the Atlantic
to escape the great experiment
in order to be deemed fully human,
to be welcomed
in the very country
that invented slavery.
A strangely American story.

And yet
many thousands of miles,
hundreds of years
and millions of tears later,
here we are.

We still stand at a precipice.
Will we push on as Ellen and William did?
As the abolitionists did?
Or will we sink into the kind of despair
that shuts the door on creating a fighting chance
to build a new kind of world?
One that we haven’t yet begun to shape
but which we, nonetheless, must.

Caroline Donnola has been writing poetry since childhood. In 2021, she published The Year That Was: Poems for Troubled Times and is currently working on a new poetry collection. She recently edited A Poet’s Journey: Life, Love, and the River by Harry Kresky. Caroline has been an independent political activist for four decades. After retiring from her position at Independent Voting in 2022, she launched a freelance writing and editing business. This month she is teaching a weekly virtual poetry writing class. She can be contacted via LinkedIn or by email at carolinedonnola3@gmail.com.

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Reader’s Forum – Steve Hough on Master Slave Husband Wife

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Wow, what a story! 

The book “Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom” by Ilyon Woo is a wonderful, gut-wrenching, account of William and Ellen Craft’s escape from slavery. Despite knowing the outcome in advance, Woo’s telling produced physical reactions at multiple points along the Craft’s perilous route to freedom. The skillfully executed narrative is second only to the amount of effort dedicated to researching the subject matter. Well done!

The book evokes a wide range of thoughts and emotions, but as an independent-centric book club, I’m always attuned to material relatable to our predicament as second-class voters in the electoral process. Politics played a major role in the environment in which these events took place, but anti-slavery activists were also a vital component. Unless activists organize and build a movement, there can be no viable challenge to the status quo. 

This period in our history was unlike any other (perhaps with the exception of the war of independence) in that the political waters roiled and then boiled to the point of a civil war. The “compromise” of 1850, with its enhanced “octopus powers”, merely delayed the inevitable. Despite recent remarks by a former President, the issue of slavery could not be negotiated, and it would not have died a natural death any time soon. 

Although not nearly comparable to the South’s intractable position on the abomination that was slavery, I noted a few snippets directly relatable to today’s bitterly hostile political environment. 

“Ward excoriated the “Northern dough-faces”—pliable collaborators—who would “lick up the spittle of the slaveocrats and swear it is delicious.”

Woo, Ilyon. Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom (p. 201). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Sound familiar?

“Through false news, they would attempt to appropriate her will, her desire.”

Woo, Ilyon. Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom (pp. 319-320). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

For the discriminating consumer, how much of our political “news” has become suspect? Perhaps the better question is, how many consumers of news differentiate opinion-based entertainment from factual news? There are plenty of outlets for real news in the media sphere, but entertainment and opinion-based outlets command the attention of massive audiences, and their messaging is amplified on social media platforms. Although these tactics have been employed forever, a former president was able to denounce all criticism of him as “fake news” and his core supporters believed him. 

The Southern contingent in Congress held that the preservation of the union was dependent upon the preservation of slavery. We can all understand why the preservation of the union required the Confederacy to be defeated in the Civil War, but fast forward one hundred sixty years. 

No dispute today (except possibly abortion among the most radical pro-life faction) is incurable, yet we hear terms like “soft” or “cold” civil war often being used to describe the level of division in our current political environment. It doesn’t have to be this way. 

In some instances, a compromise might be the best solution. In others, representatives must be willing to admit that the other side has the better idea. Neither can happen under our current electoral process. That must change, and it must change sooner rather than later. That’s why I’ve been involved with other independent voters and organizations seeking electoral reforms for the last twelve years. Progress has been made, but there’s much more to be accomplished. Thankfully, momentum is building. Even if due to an increasingly dysfunctional government, I’ll take it. Twelve years is a long time, but others in this space have been at it longer. So, I leave you with this. 

“This was the seventeenth annual convention of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society… 1832: twelve White men in all, with leaders of the veteran Massachusetts General Colored Association bearing witness. As the ceremonies closed, Garrison declared, “Friends, we have met tonight in this obscure schoolhouse, but, before many years, we will rock Faneuil Hall.”

Woo, Ilyon. Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom (p. 156). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

And so, it came to pass.

Steve Hough is a lifelong independent and became an activist for political reform after retiring as an accountant. He is the director of Florida Fair and Open Primaries.

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Reader’s Forum – Frank Fear on Master Slave Husband Wife

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Master Slave is a Call to Action

Don’t just sit there. Do something. Act.

Then, as now, the exhortation applies. Few of us will be as bold or heroic as Ellen and William Craft, author a book about our efforts, or make history. But none of that is important. What is? 

Act. Make a difference. We can all do that.

I live part of each year in the North (Michigan). In Michigan, State Rep. Josh Schriver (R, Oxford) is promulgating what is known as The Great Replacement Theory. GRT is conspiratorial, asserting that nonwhites are immigrating to the U.S. (among other Western countries) to “replace” white voters to achieve a liberal/progressive agenda. White Supremacists, anti-immigration groups, and other hate-laden groups/organizations believe in GRT, share its tenets, and act accordingly.

Don’t just sit there. Do something. Act.

House Speaker Joe Tate (D-Detroit) said he is removing Schriver from previously assigned committees, pulling his funding allotment for office functions, and reassigning his staff because of what he called “racist, hateful, and bigoted speech.” Schriver “has a history of promoting debunked theories and dangerous rhetoric that jeopardizes the safety of Michigan residents and contributes to a hostile and uncomfortable environment for others,” Tate said. (Source, Bridge Michigan)

I also live part of the year in the South (Florida). Mike Andoscia, a veteran high school civics/social studies teacher, has served students in the North Fort Myers, FL, school district for the past eight years. His classroom space includes a 600-book personal library, with those books available to his students. That situation changed on Tuesday, January 16, 2024, when Andoscia arrived at work and found the books removed from his classroom. The school administration was the source, with administrators responding to FL House of Representatives Bill 1069, which passed the FL Legislature in 2023. 

Among other things, the wide-ranging bill (a centerpiece of Governor DeSantis’s culture war) “tightens restrictions on school lessons about sexual identity and gender orientation, which lawmakers say should happen at home. It requires libraries to pull books from shelves within five days if someone objects to the content. The measure is part of the push by Florida conservatives to uproot what they say is “indoctrination” in schools.” (Source, Politico)

Andoscia had been instructed to cover the books before parent-student meetings, which he did. It wasn’t enough, and his books are now stored in his garage. 

Don’t just sit there. Do something. Act.

Andoscia resigned from his teaching position. “I did not want to tell the kids this is OK,” he said. But the story is not over. Andoscia was informed by the Professional Standards Director of the country school system that he remains “under investigation.” (Source: Fort Myers News-Press)

The narrative Dr. Woo shares in Master Slave happened a century-and-a-half ago, and the clips I just shared are happening today. But in a very real way, they are (as the malapropism goes) “the same difference.” 

Extremely difficult and frightening times always require “good people” to respond to oppression. And no matter what the era, when people think the situation cannot get worse, it does. Counter-pressure is necessary in the form of wise and strategic action with conviction, courage, and concerted effort the antidotes to silence and inaction. 

That’s what the Crafts’ displayed long ago, and it is what Tate and Andoscia display today. Any era. Any place. It is always “the same difference.”

Master Slave tells us a lot about America back then. It also helps us better understand America today. Among many things, it helps us see that the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act have contemporary equivalents (e.g., state laws banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in public institutions) and that categorizing people can obfuscate reality (e.g., “The law of barbarism (Act of 1850) was passed…by Northern men.” (p. 205). 

While I enjoyed and benefited from reading Woo’s narrative, let me say that my learning style caused me to take a break from reading the book from cover to cover. I needed more context to proceed. I sought out information about Dr. Woo, including why she decided to author the book, read a variety of book reviews, and then read the final chapter (Coda) before returning to where I had recessed my reading (several chapters in). 

Walking that circuitous path made me appreciate Dr. Woo’s research diligence, and it also gave me the time and perspective to size up her offering. I tried constructing my own response but found that I could do no better than what Woo wrote on the book’s final page. I underlined nearly every word on p. 334; the words spoke to me. 

“This space is ours to enter” are Woo’s final words. Those words are an apt conclusion to the Crafts’ story, and they are an equally compelling invitation to us. 

Frank A. Fear is professor emeritus, Michigan State University, where he served as a faculty member for thirty years and worked in various administrative positions for nearly twenty years. Frank also writes about issues that intersect sport and society.

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Reader’s Forum – Steve Richardson on Master Slave Husband Wife

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Master Slave Husband Wife is an inspiring story about two courageous people who exhibit extraordinary spirit and thirst for freedom.  But it is also a remarkable lesson about more common examples of ignorance and prejudice that treat freedom as a privilege instead of a birthright. As the book’s title indicates, American society in the middle of the 19th century had a hierarchical structure that recognized enormous differences in status between people with different roles and especially skin color. What Ilyon Woo’s rendition of the Crafts’ story so skillfully highlights is how two illiterate slaves managed to turn that prejudice to their strategic advantage.  Ellen’s light skin and a costume that allowed her to pose as a (male) slave owner were her ticket to safe travel on trains and ships and across the Mason-Dixon line – a journey that would have been impossible, otherwise. 

She and William earned safe passage not just in looking the part in the South.  They continued to face challenges in the supposedly safe North, where many people lent their support largely because the couple were deemed “intelligent” and thus worthy of freedom.  In Worcester, MA, we are told, a pastor rallied the crowd to Ellen’s aid not because they were committed to freedom for all, but because she “may be called beautiful; she has no trace of African blood discernible in her features, eyes, cheeks, nose, or hair.”  Black people were not treated as equals in any state, and thanks to the Fugitive Slave Law (FSL) of 1850, which gave slave owners authority to pursue runaways into free states, “the Crafts remained outlaws, even up North.”  Daniel Webster, one of the era’s most influential figures and Secretary of State during the Fillmore Administration, demanded arrest of the Crafts.  And Benjamin Curtis, who would soon join the Supreme Court, considered fugitives invaders who were guilty of disturbing the peace in Massachusetts.

Although I was surprised to learn the extent of the prejudice and dehumanizing treatment of slaves in the North, I enjoyed reading about the civil disobedience of the FSL that helped the Crafts escape to Canada and England.  Their fame, largely a function of Ellen’s relative “whiteness” and the clever ruse that earned the respect of many abolitionists, led to public demonstrations of support that frustrated politicians and inspired slaves in the South.  The FSL made it a crime to assist fugitives and a duty to hunt them down, yet organized resistance emerged, such as the Colored Citizens and the Vigilance Committee in Boston.  These groups recruited local Sheriffs to protect the Crafts by charging the slave hunters from Macon, GA with slander, criminal intent, and kidnapping, and setting their bails extremely high. Thousands of people, white and black, gathered to demand punishment of the slave hunters. The mob tossed garbage at them, they were mocked as uneducated bottom dwellers, and they returned to Georgia empty-handed.

Steve Richardson

We know now that the FSL and the Compromise failed to avert civil war, and while the war settled the legal issue of slavery, it did nothing to change racist attitudes.  It took us a hundred years to legally recognize equal rights for Black Americans, and almost 80 years after that, Black Americans are still struggling to realize those rights.  It’s hard to celebrate such a gradual, reluctant abandonment of ideas that are so completely immoral and inhumane.  And I can’t help wondering how much of that is not due to universal acceptance of equality but because interracial relationships are more common and have given us far more people who look like Ellen.  As good as we might feel about her success story, we all know that it could never have happened if more of her African blood had been “discernible.”   

Steve Richardson is a founding member of the Virginia Independent Voters Association. Steve was a member of the Eyes on 2020 National Cabinet.

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Reader’s Forum: Al Bell on Master Slave Husband Wife

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I found myself frequently paging back to the map. What better device to summarize a journey than a map? Who would follow that path? How could they possibly make it work? How many pitfalls and potholes waited to ensnare them? How were others, probably incapable of ever sustaining such an endeavor themselves, still be pivotal in the success of this bizarre journey? What does this experience, tell us about our history and heritage? What does it tell us about who we were? How does it shed light on who we are now? Who, in fact, are we?

Most importantly, what do we do with this knowledge?

These are the questions that echoed in my mind, learning of this history I knew nothing about—had never even heard of! Likewise, until recently, the Tulsa massacre. Even more recently, the Okemah community right here in Phoenix, devastated by a public works project, typifying a pattern the last eighty years in American city after city. I learned about that yesterday.

What do these stories of our past tell us? Many things, of course. But the one that stands out for me is the simple fact that, after we strip away all the generalities and justifications and theories and myths we tell ourselves—or are sold to us from the many agendas that prevail among our diverse society’s elites—we end up where Ellen and William Craft found themselves. While they were a remarkable team, the weight of their world rested on them as individuals. They each had a personal responsibility which, were it less durable, would have cost them dearly and probably lost the enterprise completely.

Fascinating and illuminating history is rewarding in its own right. It broadens our grasp of where we came from and what we make of the results. And so it is with the Crafts, as they are revealed to us in company with names more familiar to us: Frederick Douglass, Marian Anderson, Rosa Parks, Benjamin Davis, Henrietta Lacks, Katherine Johnson, Thurgood Marshall, Hank Aaron, Martin Luther King Jr., Colin Powell, Neil De Grass Tyson, and countless others from all fields of endeavor.

And many thousands of others whose personal stories could inspire us. They will not, because they will never be told. This one is now told.

White folks cannot truly feel what it is like to be black and live by the rules set by a society that once prospered on our backs and in which many still consider us to be less than themselves. We can read—and maybe even understand—the words, but what does that really feel like? The closest we can come is a personal narrative that penetrates not just our intellect, but our souls as well. Ilyon Woo provides that gift with the story of Ellen and William. It’s as close as those of us who are white will ever come to grasping what being black in America is actually like.

What are we to do with this knowledge?

One suggestion: use it as an added source of motivation as supporters of independentvoting.org to join with myriad other Americans who strive to bring our political system into consonance with the ideals expressed when our Nation began its journey. “We hold these truths.” “We, the people of the United States of America.” Our response was unprecedented, bold—and seriously flawed. It remains imperfect because we are imperfect. That has not prevented us from moving closer to the vision.

Nor should it now.

When I was a kid during the Great Depression, a delightful source of entertainment was listening to the adults tell family stories. I am sure most of them were true, despite a few enhancements with each retelling. Thank you, Ms. Woo, for reminding me of that great tradition, now sadly replaced by blaring headlines, endless noise on TV and social media, and a political system that is still flawed despite it potential to render journeys like the Craft’s no longer necessary.

You have reminded us that we have a lot more work to do.

Al Bell lives in Peoria, AZ and is a co-founder, with Richard Sinclair, of the recently initiated Arizona Independent Voter’s Network, designed to link the Independent Voting community for greater effectiveness. Al served on Independent Voting’s Eyes on 2020 National Cabinet, working to get the 2020 presidential primaries open to independents across the country.

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Reader’s Forum – Jenn Bullock on Master Slave Husband Wife

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Wow I am completely consumed with Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo. I have just started reading William and Ellen Craft’s courageous journey to freedom,  and am so moved. I am moved by the simultaneous trauma and resilience, the trust and love, the boldness of the plan and the discipline required to pull off traveling through foot, trains, boats and carriages in disguise towards the possibility of a better life together.  I am heartbreakingly moved that they fueled their determination and courage with pure faith and deep grief – grief of being enslaved, being separated from family and community, being treated as less-than-human. Their love of and faith in one another is astounding in the backdrop of grotesque inhumanity all around. 

I am moved by Woo’s dedication to painstakingly research historical documents and archives to put together a non fictionalized account of the Craft’s road to freedom. What a feat of will. 

I am looking forward to reading the part of the Craft’s trek that includes Philadelphia, my hometown. I am the coordinator of Independent Pennsylvanians, a group of ordinary citizens on a 20 year trek of our own towards full voting rights. Although the scope and scale of the injustices of slavery and the injustice of voter suppression is not comparable,  I still take solace and inspiration from what I take to be the Craft’s cry to the world in 1848: We are full humans, we have human rights. We are the engine that propels this country forward into a new world of technology, transportation and trade. We are key to the country’s economy and culture. We belong. We will be a part of this new world as free citizens!  

Thank you Ilyon Woo for researching and writing about the Craft’s truly epic journey. I am so glad to see you, hear you, honor you William and Ellen (and all the other desperate and audacious refugees making the trek to freedom before, during and after you). 

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.

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Dr. Jessie Fields and Lowell Ward on POVERTY, BY AMERICA

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On Ending Poverty in America

By Dr. Jessie Fields

As a primary care physician in the Harlem community I see poverty in the poor health of many of my patients. There is no single factor that has a bigger impact on an individual’s or a family’s or a community’s health than the social, historic and physical environment in which they live. The book, Poverty By America by Matthew Desmond explores all of these interrelated realities.  

“…Black poverty, Hispanic poverty, Native American poverty, Asian American poverty, and white poverty are all different. Black and Hispanic Americans are twice as likely to be poor, compared to white Americans, owing not only to the country’s racial legacies but also to present-day discrimination.”

Ending poverty is a deeply practical way to address illness, social isolation, despair, violence, crime, and much more, “since poverty is a catalyst and cause of an untold number of social ills, finally cutting the cancer out would lead to enormous improvements in many aspects of American life.”

Reading and studying the book, Poverty By America, can be a very helpful catalyst for the success of a movement to end poverty in America. As others of this Politics for the People book club have written, the independent political movement by transforming the political process and bringing diverse Americans together across partisan divides, can play a leadership role in that task of ending poverty in America.

Dr. Jessie Fields is a physician practicing in Harlem, and a Board member at Independent Voting and Open Primaries.

Lowell Ward on POVERTY, BY AMERICA

Matthew Desmond in his book, Poverty By America, does an amazing and truthful  job of exposing some devastating truths about poverty in America.  

To add insult to injury our politicians  hold sham hearings in Washington in a vain attempt to smear Joe Biden and his son Hunter. No hearings on homelessness, poverty, inflation, mass shootings, etc.  Just a total waste of taxpayer money that should be going to fund some of the stuff Desmond recommends in his book.

I agree with Mr. Desmond when he suggests we create mass movements to attack poverty and homelessness. We also need to create action on the local and state levels as well. Also start creating and nurturing our own candidates for office. This is key to overcoming politicians selling us out. Right now congress is holding sham hearings to protect Donald Trump.  Nothing is being done about poverty, gun violence, LGBQT violence, etc 

Our politicians need to figure out better ways to get along so that things can get done.  As Americans we have opportunities and the resources to achieve our visions.  We can destroy homelessness, poverty, gun violence, racism and all the other ills this country suffers from if only we could learn to communicate our differences calmly and respectfully.  Compromise has to be at the forefront of any real conversation for change.

Lowell Ward, an activist with MA Coalition of Independent Voters, Founder of Build Black Better (an initiative to stem violence, crime & poverty) had lived the street life, spent many years in prison, and is now working to make the world a better place.

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Allen Cox on POVERTY, BY AMERICA

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I want to thank Matthew Desmond for this book, Poverty, by America.

I can’t tell you how much I love this book. I love the title that says to me in big bold letters that poverty is a product produced by America, not a product of poor people who are often accused of just being too lazy to take advantage of what America has to offer.

I hate the fact that poverty even exists in a country that has so much wealth. I am someone who knows first hand about the pain, humiliation and stigma that comes from being poor, that comes from all quarters, even from other poor people. So when Desmond says things like “poverty is the feeling that your government is against you,” and “poverty can cause anyone to make decisions that looks ill advised and even downright stupid, “ and “poverty is often material scarcity piled on chronic pain, piled on incarceration, piled on depression, piled on addiction and on and on,“ I know intimately what he’s talking about.

I hate the fact that poverty gets hidden away, like it doesn’t exist. Desmond puts it this way, “When politicians propose anti-poverty legislation, they say it will help “the middle class.” Even when social movement organizers mobilizing for higher wages, or housing justice, they announce that they are “fighting on behalf of working people “or the many.” And “when poor people take to the streets, it’s usually not under the banner of poverty.”

This is why I am so appreciative of the many years of research by this author, to make his case not only to why there is so much poverty in America, but also how to eliminate it. I totally agreed to his assertion that it will require new policies and renewed political movements, as well as each of us, becoming in our own way, poverty abolitionists.

I am someone who has been active in grassroots organizing for the last 30 years or so, to change the culture of politics, and bring people together, who would not ordinarily even be in a room together, like rich people and poor people, young people  and old people, cops, and kids, people in the corporate world and inner-city youth,as well as working with health providers to promote health and the prevention of diseases to reduce disparities and achieve equity within the black community.

This is why I feel close to Michael Desmond, when he quotes Alicia Garza when she says “to build the kind of movement that we deserve, we can’t be afraid to establish a base that is larger than the people we feel comfortable with. We have to reach beyond the choir.”

And lastly, he states that “poverty abolitionism should transition partisan divides because poor and working class people deserve more than either political party has delivered for them over the last 50 years, and we should not view liberals and conservatives, the young and the old, undocumented, immigrants, and citizens, as adversaries, but political allies in the fight against poverty.” Well stated Michael Desmond.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is concerned about poverty in America.

Allen Cox lives in the Bronx and is a lifelong independent and grassroots community organizer. He is an outreach consultant for the Black Leadership Commission on Health.

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Reader’s Forum – Sadie Stewart and Nancy Hanks on POVERTY, BY AMERICA

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The Fear of Poverty: Moral panic and other psychological mind games in latent capitalism

By Nancy Hanks

Some years ago, I asked my dad (who was born in 1929, at the beginning of the Great Depression and grew up marginally poor in Arkansas) for some money to see me through a particularly rough patch of joblessness when my unemployment benefits ran out.  The infusion helped but didn’t outlast the “bad economy” of the moment. At the time, I was getting older and less desirable and productive in the labor market, and went back to him to ask, apologetically, for another sum to see me through another few months while I continued to look for work. 

He obliged and sent the check with a note that read “Nancy, if you can’t take care of yourself now, what are you going to do when you get older?”

 “I’m going to be poor like everybody else,” I said – silently.

I’m not afraid of poverty. 

America is afraid of the poor, not of poverty. America is afraid of race-mixing. America is repelled by the poor, especially poor people “of color”. America’s failing institutions exist and continue to survive and rule through fear – institutions that depend on the denigration, de-humanization, and finally the elimination of poor people, not the elimination of poverty.

I’m not afraid of America. 

I welcome this America and the decisions we are making and will have to make in the coming years and decades. I embrace the possibilities that come with the creative struggle by ordinary people to have and live decent lives that give the world so much beauty and compassion. The issue, in my humble opinion, is not so much the elimination of poverty as it is the creation of new forms of life, the active creation of new cultures, new songs, new visions, new ways of speaking with each other, new ways of being together.

Nancy Hanks is a life-long grassroots independent political activist currently living in Philadelphia PA. She works closely with Independent Pennsylvanians and is the Interim Philadelphia County Chair for the Forward Party PA.

Sadie Stewart on POVERTY, BY AMERICA

While I appreciated all this book, I found it profoundly interesting that the assumptions about the economic impact the extended government aid to the poor would have on local economies, were not supported by the data.

Also, I was glad to have had the opportunity to read some of the other’s comments before making my own. And here is why.

I had initially felt that the book pointed out how integrated we are in the creation and sustaining of poverty. And that it was too complicated to be unraveled, but then I read one reader’s response to this very thoroughly researched and digestible book, and I was amazed:  instead of her feeling pessimistic about our plight, she was moved to act, and disinvest in the maintenance of Poverty.

This is certainly inspiring that some will be compelled to action, However, I fear the majority will do as I did and see any opposition to this evil system as futile. And to an extent it is. 

If society finds merit in Capitalism as a viable economic system: trying to tweak it into some kind of acceptable economic form (via unions, labor laws, Social Security Benefits etc.)  is impossible, as we are essentially trying to fix an inherently evil system dependent for the most part on poverty.

Any system that produces millions of dollars annually for some, off the backs of those least compensated for actual labor, does not represent just income disparities, it is probably equivalent to slave owners’ wages. The cost of shelter food in the 1800s is probably about what amounts to what many today who are paid minimum wage and below. No money for vacation or boat rides, less alone own a boat. And there are of course yacht owners and private planes and other over-the- top materialistic ownership.

It will indeed take a “paradigm shift” to eliminate the capitalist system that depends on poverty, disguised as the all holy “free market”. 

Sadie Moore Stewart is a 70 year old lawyer and independent activist from Ohio.

July 25th at 3pm ET

Join our host, Cathy Stewart, for a Virtual Discussion with author Matthew Desmond

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Ohio 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 Ohio.

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