Up With Chris Hayes guest host Sam Seder argued on Sunday's episode that poverty is almost entirely absent from the 2012 presidential election as a campaign issue. When President Obama and Mitt Romney do address the matter, the conversation is often framed by statistics and a sense of poverty as an abstract ill. But on Sunday's Up With Chris Hayes, Seder strove to make the abstract into something concrete and visceral by asking some of his guests about their direct experience with poverty.
Steven Gates, program director of a Chicago youth mentoring program called Youth Advocacy Programs-Illinois, said he has seen desperate poverty in Chicago's South Side. "The poverty's so desolate and deep, and the South Side's so desolate, it's strange, almost, to hear [Tanya Wells, another guest on that show] talk about going to apply for food stamps, and that being painful when, in Chicago, on the South Side, the food stamp thing, or applying for [an Illinois Link Card] is almost normal because the poverty level is so desolate," he said.
For people living at the margins, Gates argued, access to education alone isn't enough. "There are millions of people who utilize the food stamp program," he said, "and I've seen it where they're not trying to go to school. They're trying to feed four or five kids. And when it comes to education, how do you begin to learn when you're hungry? You talk about the chicken and the egg coming first, but how do you focus or talk about test scores when there's no lights, there's no gas? We're talking about deep, deep poverty."
Though education alone may not be enough, guests nonetheless argued that inequality in schooling helps reproduce poverty. Gates also noted that poverty is highly racially stratified.
"Perhaps we also want to talk about this in the context of the American criminal justice system as well," said Columbia University Professor Stephen Pimpare, "because I don't think we can think seriously about poverty without that."
Tying it all together, Pimpare said, "The problem is that we've got, especially in very poor neighborhoods, this enormous array of systems pushing constantly against them and directing barrier after barrier after barrier after barrier so the simple act of getting food in your stomach and getting to school without being injured requires superheroic efforts."
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I know a single parent family who are very poor. Mom 2 kids. Mother barely can read and write and frankly I don't think she could be taught much more than that. I have seen he feed her kids something called ho-cakes with salt and ice water for supper (in the South supper=dinner). Ho-cakes is flour & water fried in a greased skillet.
Food stamps will buy enough food to last a couple weeks then they have to make do. Food prices have gone up a lot in the last year or two. I don't think there was much of a increase in food stamps if any.
Lurchz, I read your comment and know that it is true for so many. I know that some school districts are working through concepts to provide educational and nutritional opportunities for these situations, but, there seems to be scarce money or human resources for it (prefer to just feed the kids breakfast and lunch, rather that educate the family on how to feed their own families a nutritional dinner). Strange how government decides on priorities. Makes one think that, as a nation, we can act so foolishly with our resources, and lack even the most basic use of common sense.
Sam Seder did a brilliant job filling in for Chris and highlighting poverty. He has all but devoted his professionial life to highlighting economic injustice. I wish MSNBC would give Sam a show and allow him to pursue this very topical issue that impacts us all. He would be a rock star!