Ending the State of Poverty in America

We all saw the State of Poverty when we watched the Hurricane Katrina coverage on television: people up to their armpits in water with nowhere to go and no means to get anywhere any way and no public evacuation plan for them. A public default, a government default, a collective default. The hurricane didn’t cause the State of Poverty to exist—the hurricane simply revealed it to those who willfully ignored it.

The State of Poverty was there before; it’s here now. Poverty exists in America on a huge scale—a scale that really requires sustained collective action such as community building, strategic policy-making, and government programs that secure a humane safety net for the poorest among us.

The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law’s work—our specialty—is to devise smart solutions that involve the government in effective attacks on the State of Poverty and then to pursue strategies that make these solutions a reality.

This is not just about what low-income people need. It’s about what we all need. The State of Poverty affects all of us. It invades all of our communities. We must address it because it’s in our own interest.

A public responsibility, a government responsibility, a collective responsibility.

This sense of community compels us to secure a fair and just society for all. The Shriver Center has been working hard for the working poor. In this past year we’ve succeeded in winning three key policy advances that attack poverty among the working poor.

Margaret Stapleton wrote and successfully advocated a law that made sure working poor people get the full benefit of the recent increase in the Illinois minimum wage. The new law, for example, increases the amount of earnings that the worker may protect from creditors.

Dory Rand was one of leaders of the campaign to regulate payday lending. Too many low-income people fall prey to predatory lenders who suck their future wages and ruin their credit, locking them in the State of Poverty. In Illinois these payday transactions will now be limited and regulated, and people will have much more information before committing themselves to such lenders.

This past year the Shriver Center’s FamilyCare initiative was expanded yet again to offer health insurance to about 400,000 working parents of minor children. This is the final year of three straight years of expansion for this key strategy to support work and attack the State of Poverty.

In every community we find people who live in the State of Poverty. However, let us not simply recognize that it exists; we now must build the political will to overcome it with comprehensive and reasonable solutions. The Shriver Center will continue to lead in this cause by advocating laws and proposing model policies to benefit low-income families across the country.