Thanksgiving is a time when many Americans pause to be grateful for all we have. In the current economic downturn when the gap between rich and poor is at the highest level since the Great Depression and the unemployment rate is 10.2 percent, millions of our neighbors, including many families with children, are struggling hard to count their blessings. The latest Census Bureau numbers show the number of children living in poverty ($22,050 for a family of four) increased by almost 750,000 in 2008 to 14.1 million; the number of children living in extreme poverty ($11,025 for a family of four) increased by more than 500,000 to 6.3 million children. This is the biggest child poverty increase since 1992 and it comes at a time when our national safety net is full of holes. When parents lose their jobs, lose their homes, lose their health care, children suffer, and all of us lose. Each year we keep 14.1 million children in poverty it costs our nation over half a trillion dollars in lost productivity, higher crime, and poorer health.
What kind of nation, blessed to be the wealthiest in the world, lets one in five children be poor, with its children the poorest age group among us? This indefensible and preventable child poverty reflects a spiritual and values poverty far deeper than the eye can see and threatens the very meaning and future of America. So I offer a Thanksgiving prayer for us to commit to end poverty in our time -- beginning with children.
God help us to end poverty in our time.
The poverty of having a child with too little to eat and no place to sleep, no air, sunlight and space in which to breathe, bask, and grow.
The poverty of watching your child suffer and get sicker and sicker and not knowing what to do or how to get help because you don't have a car to get to the emergency room or health insurance.
The poverty of working your fingers to the bone every day taking care of somebody else's children and neglecting your own, and still not being able to pay your bills.
The poverty of having a job which does not let you afford a stable place to live and being terrified you'll become homeless and lose your children to foster care.
The poverty of losing your job and searching and searching and searching for another amidst an epidemic scarcity of work.
The poverty of working all your life caring for others and having to start all over again caring for the grandchildren you love.
The poverty of earning a college degree, having children, opening a day care center, and taking home $300 a week or even month if you're lucky.
The poverty of loneliness and isolation and alienation -- having no one to call or visit, tell you where to get help, assist you in getting it, or care if you're living or dead.
The poverty of having too much and sharing too little and having the burden of nothing to carry.
The poverty of convenient blindness and deafness and indifference to others, of emptiness and enslavement to things, drugs, power, money, violence, and fleeting fame.
The poverty of low aim and paltry purpose, weak will and tiny vision, big meetings and small action, loud talk and sullen grudging service.
The poverty of believing in nothing, standing for nothing, sharing nothing, sacrificing nothing, struggling for nothing.
The poverty of pride and ingratitude for God's gifts of life and children and family and freedom and country and earth and not wanting for others what you want for yourself.
The poverty of greed for more and more and more, ignoring, blaming, and exploiting the needy, and taking from the weak to please the strong.
The poverty of addiction to drink, to work, to self, to the status quo, and to injustice.
The poverty of fear which keeps you from doing the thing you think is right.
The poverty of despair and cynicism.
God help us end poverty in our time in all its faces and places, young and old, rural, urban, suburban and small town too, and in every color of humans You have made everywhere.
God help us to end poverty in our time in all its guises -- inside and out -- physical and spiritual, so that all our and Your children may live the lives that You intend in the richest nation on earth.
Follow Marian Wright Edelman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChildDefender
"I do not know what you mean by BDS, but aside from that..LBJ's war on poverty was sabotaged. The money 'thrown' at it did not have a chance,because his plan was never executed as it was intended."
Nevermind about BDS.
"...because his plan was never executed as it was intended."
This truly is the point at which progressivism falls on its face. For the progressive, the answer to any problem or 'crisis' is to institute a government program to fix it. Health care (well, it started out as health care, but now it's all about insurance) needs fixing. So, create a massive, MASSIVE government program to fix it. Our carbon footprint is too big (even though it looks like our AGW scientists have cooked some books) so we need a massive cap and trade program to fix it. Our economy is on the fritz and we need a massive stimulus program, 'cash for clunkers', and jobs created or saved in congressional districts that don't exist, to fix it.
Invariably, if the program doesn't work, the progressive response is to say it went off the tracks somehow, and we need either a bigger, better program, or we just didn't spend enough money on the old one.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.
But what have we gained other than wars that were not warranted and have no end plan..and the closest we have ever been to a police state.
The "socialist" nations of Dennmark and Norway are happier and more successful than this country.
Clearly the conservatives had their chance. They failed.
Let's look at unemployment rates:
1932 23.6 percent.
1933 24.9 percent
1937 14.3 percent.
1938 19.0 percent
Six years into his administration, after Agricultural Adjustment Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Farm Credit Administration, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the National Recovery Administration, the Public Works Administration,the Tennessee Valley Authority, Emergency Banking Bill, the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, the Farm Credit Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act,the Truth-in-Securities Act, the Works Progress Administration, the National Labor Relations Board, the Rural Electrification Administration Banking Act of 1935, the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, the National Labor Relations Act, the Social Security Act, Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act, and more, Mr. Roosevelt watched unemployment boomerang in 1938 back to 19%.
After 6 years, programs out the wazoo, and the closest thing to an imperial presidency as we've had in the country, unemployment shouldn't have gone back up, but it did.
Then, WW2 started and it all became a moot point.
Exactly how do you define success?
For some reason this link is being rejected..perhaps links are not allowed for the TIME.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,838539,00.html
I'm sure Ms. Edelman's heart is in the right place, but when one considers the $s spent to combat poverty over the last 50 years or so with no better result than what we have, lets put down the shovel and take stock of the hole we've dug, shall we?
My concern is that if we were to raise taxes to raise another $30 billion (about $500 per month per family with at least one child in poverty) how much of that sense of shared society would we lose? If it is the governments job to take care of the poor then why donate to charity? That has been the result in Europe. So, if an increase in taxes were to decrease donations by 10% you would not have changed anything but would have harmed society.
How about a mandatory social service of one year for everyone around the age of 19 (after high school) where you work to as a tutor after school or kindergarten, providing childcare, cooking in soup kitchens and the like. The cost may be the same but the benefits would be much higher and would not look like “throwing money at the problem” rather a “teaching experience”.
Perhaps because we're still the richest nation in the world.
Meanwhile, you can all do something, right now for kids, but just seeing what this group is doing:
http://www.nccpr.org/ This is the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. Forget the wonky name. It does more with less than any other group. The mania in this country to send kids to foster care instead of working on keeping them with their parents is driving poverty. Let's get real, folks...check it out. Foster care is a huge problem, abuse is real, states make money from it (incentivizing it) and it doesn't have to be this way.
the same kind of country that lets 45,000 people die every year because they can't afford medical care, the same kind of country that lets over a million CHILDREN be homeless- the country where freedom if valued over compassion, privilege over people.
I used to say that I, as a dual citizenship American would live in the US if I could afford health care. Now say I'm glad I don't live in the US and likely couldn't be enticed to. I don't want to be identified with the US in any way any more!
That senators elected because they are democrats and because of the democrat platform are now holding the country hostage is despicable.
And yet they call themselves patriotic Americans.
What happened to personal responsibility? The article is about children. To those who wrote this, I would ask, did you take care of yourself when growing up? Did you feed, clothe, shelter and educate yourself? Are you seriously advocating that children are responsible for the families they're born to?
We can't tax people to end poverty because it will hurt the economy? You think society benefits more by failing its children than by taxing those who can afford to help? Show me the equations, because I just don't believe it.
Anecdotal evidence, I agree. But just saying.
But the poverty rate has hovered around 12-15% for over 50 years. When are you going to fix it? $trillions spent, but where are the results? My guess would be that we'd have far less poverty if the government would stop fighting the war. Government sucks at war.
Those who forget history are condemned to relive it - we took a system that was built after the Great Depression designed to avoid all of those flaws and took it apart. A system that made us the strongest nation on earth - what the hell we're we thinking?
It's the philosophy I'm slamming here, a philosophy that stemmed from the cult worship of Ayn Rand...
1. Come up with a program that will "solve" the problem once and for all.
2. When it doesn't work, blame the lack of money and commitment because Republicans are cheap.
3. When Republicans agree to spend more money and it still doesn't work, blame them for not spending enough.
4. When Republicans agree to spend more money, but with a few small strings to prevent waste, fraud, abuse, blame Republicans for hampering the program.
5. When Democrats get a majority and remove strings and it still doesn't work, just blame Republicans for breathing.
6. Repeat process over and over.