Shriver Center Sets National Agenda

The Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law has been helping poor people in courtrooms and setting policies at the state and national level for forty years, but now is a time when the country may be ready for deep and broad change.

The Shriver Center’s newly named president, John Bouman, explains why now is the time for such change: “Woken by the powerful public images of deep-seated American poverty revealed during the Gulf Coast disasters, and tired of the widening of the income gap between rich and poor and the intensifying threats to the middle class, most people in America are ready for leadership to end poverty. That national readiness is creating a political change, evidenced in part by the elections last fall.”

The Shriver Center’s national policy agenda, to be released this month, outlines 12 poverty issues that are ripe for policy change at the state and national level and shows how such policy change can be accomplished.

The Shriver Center is calling on policymakers to (1) strengthen the legal foundation for civil rights and racial justice, (2) establish affordable quality health care for all, (3) guarantee economic safety for people who need jobs, (4) create redemptive opportunities for people with criminal records, (5) increase economic mobility through lifelong education, (6) advance low-wage workers by making work pay, (7) link economic development to workforce development opportunities, (8) create asset-building initiatives for financial stability and growth, (9) expand low-income housing in economically diverse communities, (10) protect access to the American dream for immigrants and refugees, (11) ensure economic opportunity and safety for women and girls, and (12) invest in the public good through fair budget and tax policies.

“Significant leadership on all 12 of the issues identified in the Shriver Center’s national agenda would constitute a well-rounded, aggressive program to attack poverty,” Bouman says. This is the first step in many toward the Shriver Center’s renewed focus on national policy.

For an update, go to www.povertylaw.org.