Cornel West and Tavis Smiley want the issue addressed in the debates and on the next president’s agenda.

(The Root) — Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, hosts of the nationally syndicated public-radio program Smiley & West, remain as determined as ever to put the issue of poverty — which Smiley has called “the new slavery” — higher on the national agenda.

On “The Poverty Tour 2.0: A Call to Conscience,” which kicks off Sept. 12 and includes stops in Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Pennsylvania through Sept. 15, the two plan to host solution-generating town hall meetings that will broadcast live on multiple platforms. Families, community organizers, job cooperatives, elected officials, war veterans and religious leaders will be invited to participate.

The timing of Poverty Tour 2.0′s launch — less than a week after the release of disappointing August jobs numbers and the same day the Census Bureau is set to announce the findings from its “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage” report — is no accident. The Root spoke to Smiley and West about what they want Americans to know as the election approaches, what they think the next president’s first act should be and why their answer to “Are poor people better off now than they were four years ago?” is “Hell no.”

The Root: On this leg of the tour, what will your message be about the recently released August jobs numbers, and the Census Bureau findings that will be made public on the tour’s first day?

Tavis Smiley: Taken together, what we expect to see — when we consider the pretty good intel the AP got on what to expect from these poverty numbers — is that it will be pretty clear that poverty is the new American norm. One out of every two Americans is either in or near poverty. By near poverty, I mean low income. In the richest nation in the world, poverty ought to be abnormal, not the new normal. That’s what we’re up against.

TR: You’re doing the tour just months before the election, in battleground states. What impact do you hope it has on the outcome, if any?

TS: We wanted it to be during this sprint from Labor Day to Election Day. We’re going specifically to battleground states because these are the places the candidates are going, where the media will be focused and where poverty has run amok. The economy is the major issue in every one of these states.

Cornel West: On one hand, we are quite clear that Barack Obama is better than Mitt Romney when it comes to issues of poverty and poor people. At the same time, we acknowledge that neither candidate has a good record in poverty — because poor people have not in any way been a priority in the Obama administration.

And of course we know poverty would be very low on the totem pole in a Romney administration. We hope President Obama wins, and we’re going to put the same pressure on him in the second term that we have in the first term.

TR: You’ve said you want people who are struggling in this economy to know that they’re not alone and not forgotten, and that you want to speak truths about suffering. What other concrete results do you want from the tour?

CW: We want to educate people about just how vicious this system is under which we live. It’s oligarchy more than it’s democratic. Even with a black president, we still have a new Jim Crow in place — a vicious, racist system called the prison industrial complex, which most candidates won’t say a word about. We want to educate people about what’s going on in schools and housing in the inner cities, with gentrification and privatization.

TS: One of the things we call for in our poverty manifesto in The Rich and the Rest of Us, a book that came out this year, is a White House conference on the eradication of poverty. We’re going to be pushing that really hard between now and the inauguration of whoever the next president is.

We believe that just like President Obama made the Lilly Ledbetter Act his official first act — which we celebrate, of course — the next president ought to make his official first act the establishment of this conference on the eradication of poverty. It’s clear the role poverty plays in threatening our very democracy. It’s now a matter of national security in this country. We need a president who makes this a front-burner issue.

We are also going to be very aggressive and unapologetic about pushing the moderators of these four upcoming debates while we’re on this tour to get poverty on the agenda. The reality is, in the presidential race, in those three debates between McCain and Obama, the words “poor” or “poverty” did not come up one time. Obama didn’t raise it, McCain didn’t raise it, so it did not get on the agenda.

CW: At the very beginning of sister Michelle’s powerful speech the other night, she said to the mom who introduced her, “I got your back … we’re making it a priority.” Well, we want the Obama administration to say that to poor people of all colors: “We’ve got your back. You are a priority.”

TR: Are people better off now than they were four years ago?

CW: Hell no.

TR: What about the people who now have access to health care because of the Affordable Care Act, or are able to afford college for their children? Are they not better off?

CW: That’s one element. They may be better off in some ways, but they’re catching hell in so many other spheres of their lives. You can have three positive things and 99 negative things. You’re still not well off.  But it’s also true that they’ll be worse off under Romney. Brother Tavis and I just want to tell the truth about the suffering and allow people not to be seduced by the lies that have been told or the illusions that are put forward.

Jenée Desmond-Harris is The Root’s staff writer. Follow her on Twitter.

The mini-tour will hit six different states, with a town hall event being held at Delaware State University, which will tackle the issues surrounding both President Barack Obama and hopeful Mitt Romney, in the upcoming elections in November.

Additionally the pair are preparing to talk about the upcoming statistics being prepared by the Census Bureau, which will announce that America’s poverty rate is the worst it has ever been in 50 years.

“These new Census numbers will underscore what we’ve been saying for a long time — poverty is the new American norm,” said Tavis Smiley. “The time is now to force poverty on the agenda; our leaders can’t simply continue to be quiet on this issue.”

The “Poverty Tour 2.0″ will hit key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Florida and each stop will be broadcast live via UStream and on the Pacifica Network and Native Voice One.
Confirmed guests appearing on the tour include Peter Edelman, former member of the Clinton administration, and co-founder of the Children’s Defense Fund; Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers; Ralph Nader, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, Congressman Chaka Fattah, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH); and Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for president.

“We’re putting the spotlight on our precious fellow citizens who don’t have access to a decent job, decent housing, and decent healthcare,” added Dr. Cornel West. “We want to hear solutions that can be duplicated and adapted in communities across the country.”

Check out the tour schedule below:

10am-1pm, Wednesday, September 12, Westfield Insurance Studio Theater at Playhouse Square, Cleveland, OH; 5-7pm, Wednesday, September 12, Cuyahoga Community College, Highland Hills, OH;
10am-1pm, Thursday, September 13, T.C. Williams High School, Alexandria, VA; 8-10pm, September 13, Delaware State University, Dover, DE; 10am-1pm, Friday, September 14, Tenth Memorial Baptist Church, Philadelphia, PA;12-3pm, Saturday, September 15, Franklin D. Roosevelt Middle School, West Palm Beach, FL

This nasty debate, Medicare (Obama) vs. Vouchercare (Romney), is really a referendum on the nation’s senior population. The stakes for poor senior citizens couldn’t be higher.

I’m not at all naïve about the politics being played here, but I have never quite understood how a nation of advanced citizenship can so easily render invisible the weak and the vulnerable? In other words, “we got your back,” unless you’re too young to vote or too old to matter.

I get asked all the time when discussing the issue of poverty, why it is that the poor don’t matter? We all know why: because the poor aren’t “likely voters” and the poor aren’t big campaign donors. It’s really that simple. And that’s sickening.

The fact-checkers had to work overtime at the recent political conventions to keep up with all the half-truths, distortions and outright lies being sold daily. There was one big lie we heard repeatedly from the stage at both conventions: that America is a magical place where anything is possible. Tell that to the children of America who are forced to surrender their life’s choices before they ever know their life’s chances. Tell that to seniors who might have believed that decades ago, but now face the reality of having to choose between medicine or food.

When children or seniors are continuously neglected or abused, somebody eventually shows up to arrest the perpetrators and take the victims away to a safe place. We continue to politically, economically, socially and culturally neglect children and seniors, but who arrests us? Who ushers the children and the aged to a safe place? No one. It’s business as usual in America. If you’re young, good luck. If you’re old, good night.

So we just foreclose on our future and discard our past? Is that how we do it in America? U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Not so fast. True democracy focuses on the public interest; it defends the common good and protects its citizens — especially the weak and the vulnerable. No democracy can survive without the powerful notions of compassion and public service.

“Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural, but it is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness. Thus compassion that might be seen simply as generous goodwill is in fact criticism of the system, forces, and ideologies that produce the hurt,” said scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann.

It’s time to take the hurt seriously.

Please note that Tavis and Dr. Cornel West will embark on “The Poverty Tour 2.0″ sponsored in-part by HuffPost Live this Wednesday, September 12. For more information, visit: www.povertytour.smileyandwest.com or you can follow the conversation with the Twitter hashtag: #ThePovertyTour.

Follow Tavis Smiley on Twitter: www.twitter.com/tavissmiley

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Leshelle Sargent

lsargent@tavistalks.com

Phone: (323) 404-1602

 “THE POVERTY TOUR 2.0” HITS THE ROAD

IN FOUR BATTLEGROUND STATES

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West kick off the tour in Ohio, September 12,

coinciding with the release of a new U.S. Census Bureau report on poverty

WASHINGTON, DC (September 10, 2012) — The U.S. Census Bureau is

expected to announce this Wednesday, September 12, that America’s poverty

rate is the worst in 50 years. In light of the bureau’s latest findings, broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary, kick off “The Poverty Tour 2.0: A Call to Conscience” in Cleveland, OH.

The co-hosts of the nationally syndicated public radio program Smiley & West, from Public Radio International (PRI), hit the road September 12-15 to host six town hall events that are FREE and open to the public.

“The Poverty Tour 2.0,” sponsored in part by AARP Foundation and HuffPost Live, will visit the key battleground states of Ohio, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Florida. In addition, one town hall event will be held in the state of Delaware.  Smiley and West intend to push the moderators of the upcoming presidential debates to ask the candidates about America’s poverty problem, and to urge legislators to support public policy and implement programs that will alleviate poverty.

“These new Census numbers will underscore what we’ve been saying for a long time — poverty is the new American norm,” said Smiley. “The time is now to force poverty on the agenda; our leaders can’t simply continue to be quiet on this issue.”

The six town halls — which will be broadcast LIVE to radio stations across the country via the Pacifica Network and Native Voice One, and which will also be streamed on HuffPost Live and USTREAM — will feature national and local leaders, activists organizing on the ground, and Americans struggling with poverty, sharing their personal stories and solutions. Audio of all six town halls will be available as podcasts, and highlights will be featured on Smiley & West over the next two weeks.

Confirmed guests include: Peter Edelman, former member of the Clinton administration and co-founder of the Children’s Defense Fund; Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers; Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and former presidential candidate; Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH); Congresswoman Marcia Fudge (D-OH); Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA); Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH); and Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for president. All presidential and vice presidential candidates have been invited to participate.

“We’re putting the spotlight on our precious fellow citizens who don’t have access

to a decent job, decent housing, and decent healthcare,” said West. “We want to

hear solutions that can be duplicated and adapted in communities across the country.”

The tour schedule is: 10am-1pm, Wednesday, September 12, Westfield Insurance

Studio Theater at Playhouse Square, Cleveland, OH; 5-7pm, Wednesday, September 12, Cuyahoga Community College, Highland Hills, OH; 10am-1pm, Thursday, September 13, T.C. Williams High School, Alexandria, VA; 8-10pm, September 13, Delaware State University, Dover, DE; 10am-1pm, Friday, September 14, Tenth Memorial Baptist Church, Philadelphia, PA; and 12-3pm, Saturday, September 15, Franklin D. Roosevelt Middle School, West Palm Beach, FL.

“We are pleased to be teaming with ‘The Poverty Tour 2.0’ to help put the spotlight on the national disgrace of having over 46 million Americans living in poverty,” said Roy Sekoff, president and co-creator of HuffPost Live. “This is an issue that HuffPost Live is committed to covering, and we are happy to support Tavis Smiley and Dr. West’s efforts to make it an integral part of the national conversation.”

To follow “The Poverty Tour 2.0” or register to attend one of the four events,

please visit: povertytour.smileyandwest.com and live.huffingtonpost.com.

###

About SMILEY & WEST, from Public Radio International (PRI)

The weekly program from PRI, Smiley & West, is co-hosted by two of America’s

most influential public figures, noted broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Union

Theological Seminary Professor Cornel West. The one-hour program features

thought-provoking, intelligent, and stimulating conversations. Listen,

engage, and discuss on smileyandwest.com or follow them on Twitter at

@tavissmiley and @cornelwest.

About AARP Foundation

AARP Foundation is AARP’s affiliated charity. The Foundation is dedicated to serving vulnerable people 50+ by creating solutions that help them secure the essentials and achieve their best life. AARP Foundation focuses on hunger, housing, income, and isolation as its key mission areas. The Foundation envisions “a country free of poverty where no older person feels vulnerable.” Foundation programs are funded by grants, tax-deductible contributions, and AARP. For more information about AARP Foundation, please visit aarp.org/foundation.

About HuffPost Live

HuffPost Live offers viewers new ways to engage before, during and after

programs, through a groundbreaking social video platform. HuffPost Live was co-created and developed by HuffPost’s founding editor Roy Sekoff, who serves as President of HuffPost Live. HuffPost Live streams 12 hours of original live programming, five days a week, available online, on mobile and on-demand. HuffPost Live’s studios are in NYC and LA with a Washington DC bureau. Watch HuffPost Live now at Live.HuffingtonPost.com.

PBS talk-show host Tavis Smiley will speak at The Poverty Forum Sept. 28th at the Lexington Convention Center. Tickets are $50 for the 6 p.m. dinner event to benefit the nonprofit Community Action Council. / Copyright 2004 The Courier-Journal;YES COURIER-JOU

Estimates vary of the damage inflicted by the Great Recession on the middle class. The fall in home values precipitated by the 2008 mortgage crisis is responsible, many experts predict, for an average drop in net worth between 28 to 38 percent for U.S. households. Meanwhile, the national unemployment rate remains stagnant at around 8.2 percent, the same as the state of Kentucky.

The Poverty Forum will present radio and television broadcaster Tavis Smiley at the Lexington Convention Center to benefit the nonprofit Community Action Council. In advance of the dinner event Sept. 28th at 6 p.m., Tavis Smiley talked about the shrinking middle class.

Smiley is the host of “Tavis Smiley” on PBS, the “Tavis Smiley Show,” and “Smiley & West,” both distributed by Public Radio International. With Dr. Cornell West, his PRI co-host, Smiley co-authored the book “The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto.”

Where do you see poverty growing in the U.S.?

Smiley: “What I hear from everybody is that it has never been this bad. There are three classes of poor people in this country. The first are those persons who have been perennially poor. The second are those who are near poor, just a paycheck or two away… I identify the new poor as the former middle class.”

What characteristics define the “new poor?”

Smiley: “I am talking specifically, in the last two or three years, (those) who fell out of the middle. They filed bankruptcy. They lost their homes. They lost their 401k. They were downsized. They spent all their savings. There is a whole new group of Americans now in poverty who never expected to be here. They went to college. They got fired. They got laid off.”

U.S. Census Bureau estimates show median income fell at least 8 percent in every Louisville-area zip code except one, Glenview, from 2005 to 2009. Does this pattern match what you hear from your reporting, and your radio and television audience nationwide?

How do you define poverty or low income?

Smiley: “One out of two Americans is either in poverty or in low income. We define low income as a couple of paychecks from being there, right on the brink, where any one catastrophe pushes you into the ranks of the poor. This is is an American catastrophe.”

Some experts say we are at least three years away from a recovery in available jobs and home values to levels before the Great Recession began in 2007. What is your view of the possible timing of a return to more widespread prosperity?

Smiley: “I don’t see the light… I am looking for it. My friend Suze Orman says `there is a highway into poverty and not even a sidewalk out.’”

“What we have to do is have a president who makes this a priority. You cannot sustain a democracy long term when the hopelessness quotient is rising so fast and so high. We lack a president who says to poor people `I’ve got your back and I am going to call a White House conference on the eradication of poverty.’ This is not a skill problem. It is a will problem.”

In the past year, it’s hard to imagine how anyone could have done more on the national stage to seek out and speak out on behalf of people living in poverty than broadcaster Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West, professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary. Next week, September 12–15, they will go on the road for their second poverty tour in a year, which they have dubbed “Poverty Tour 2.0”.

In August 2011, Smiley and West embarked on an eleven-state, eighteen-city “Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience”; that was followed in October by a week-long series about the tour broadcasted on both the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Public Radio International (PRI). In January 2012, they collaborated with Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs on a study examining the impact of the recession on people living in or near-poverty; the next day, Smiley moderated a panel live on C-SPAN—“Remaking America: from Poverty to Prosperity”—which included Dr. West, author and Nation contributor Barbara Ehrenreich, filmmaker Michael Moore and others. In March, Smiley moderated a nationally broadcasted panel of women who talked about the impact of poverty on women and children in America. Finally, Smiley and West co-authored The Rich and The Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto. It was released in April and peaked at #7 on the New York Times Best Sellers List.

All of this work is in addition to their coverage of poverty-related issues on their nationally syndicated weekly public radio show, Smiley & West.

In my mind, Smiley and West’s work is representative of the kind of constancy and singular focus that’s needed if we are to preserve the advances this nation has made in the fight against poverty, and take new and greater steps forward in the months and years ahead.

“It’s all about making sure we keep on beating the drum about poverty,” Smiley told me when I spoke with him and Dr. West about the upcoming tour. “We want to do our part to make it a priority in this campaign and beyond this campaign.”

The poverty tour that begins next week will visit four battleground states—Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida.

“We know where Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney are essentially going to take up residency between now and Election Day,” said Smiley. “We know where the energy is going to be and the concentration of media is going to be, and that’s where we’re going.”

At each venue, Smiley and West will interview elected officials, policy experts, faith leaders, and authors—“people who have solutions to offer,” said Smiley.

“But most importantly we’re going to be talking to poor people—to folks in the audience who will share their stories of enduring, of trying to survive, of overcoming poverty,” he said.

They will also focus on pushing the presidential debate moderators to make poverty a central issue in the upcoming debates.

“The words ‘poor’ and ‘poverty’ did not come up one time in the 2008 presidential and vice presidential debates,” said Smiley. “We’re going to be hitting the moderators really hard in advance of the first debate on October 3.”

The tour is scheduled intentionally to coincide with the release of new Census Bureau statistics on poverty.

“These new numbers will underscore what we’ve been saying for a while now—poverty is the new American norm,” said Smiley. “There are now one out of two of us—150 million of us—either in or near poverty. Politicians can’t simply continue to be quiet on this issue.”

“This is all about trying to lift the veil off poor people and the stereotypes of poor people—attempts to demonize and dehumanize poor people—to allow people to see them for the human beings and fellow citizens that they are,” said West. “The prevailing public discourse describes poverty as a matter of bad habits and bad judgment, instead of seeing the lack of opportunity, lack of jobs with a living wage, lack of access to quality education and quality housing. We come back to these issues over and over and over again. How do we instead stay in contact with the humanity and creativity of poor people?”
West and Smiley aren’t without their detractors, and both expressed concern that personal attacks will get in the way of the work they hope to accomplish through this tour.

“Get the focus off of us, and put the limelight on our precious fellow citizens who don’t have access to a decent job, decent housing, and decent healthcare,” said West. “I think that’s a challenge for every journalist today, because the problem right now is we live in a country where conservative discourse has made it fashionable to be indifferent or have contempt toward poor people. If you focus on the messenger then you never have to confront the suffering and the misery of the poor people that we are highlighting with our work.”

Smiley also noted the negative reactions they have received for their critique of President Obama.
“I get sick and tired of people who believe that just because you’re pushing the President, that somehow you’re hating on him, or you’re aiding and abetting the other side,” said Smiley. “How do you push a President? You can’t push him by being silent. You can’t push him by not pressuring him on the things that really matter. We are not going to stop pushing, but it doesn’t mean that we hate Barack Obama.”

“What we hate is the contempt and indifference toward poor people that is found in both Republican and Democratic parties—less so in the Democrats, but both parties suffer from it,” West added. “So this issue of class, of poverty, of economic injustice is one that we will continue to highlight in a very serious way.”

Smiley and West hope that their effort will play a role in electing a President who can no longer afford to ignore poverty—that so many people will demand action, he will use the bully pulpit to make the eradication of poverty a priority.

“We need to force poverty onto the agenda,” said Smiley. “And timing is everything.”
“Very Low Food Security” on the Rise
On Wednesday, the United States Department of Agriculture released its annual report on food security. The data show that more than 50 million Americans—one out of every six households—were “food insecure,” meaning they “had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources.” That means there was no statistically significant change in the overall number of food insecure households between 2010 and 2011.

However, the number of households with “very low food security”—those with members that reduced their food intake or skipped meals at times due to limited resources—rose from 5.4 percent to 5.7 percent of all households in 2011. That number represents 6.8 million households, or more than 16.8 million people, and is the same level of very low food security that was evident at the height of the recession in 2008 and 2009.

Children in particular are struggling with hunger. More than 16 million children live in food insecure households, including nearly one-fourth (24.5 percent) of all children under age 6.
Dr. Mariana Chilton, associate professor at Drexel University School of Public Health and co-principal investigator for Children’s HealthWatch, notes the impact on young children who go without food as they lay the foundation for their health; cognitive, social and emotional development; and future potential.

“There are lifelong implications,” said Chilton. “Children in food insecure households have more health problems, are more likely to be hospitalized, and have developmental delays. Young kids who are food insecure may arrive at kindergarten unprepared and never catch up with their peers.”
Tianna Gaines-Turner, a member of Witnesses to Hunger—a project in which people living in poverty use photographs and testimonials to advocate for change at the local, state and national levels—said she isn’t at all surprised by the numbers. She operates a peer mentoring program in Philadelphia two days a week, helping people get the food, energy assistance, healthcare, school supplies, community legal services, and housing services they need.

“I see more and more people in need of assistance with purchasing food,” Gaines-Turner said. “Many come in with their children who wake up in the morning hungry and go to bed with their stomachs growling.”

“What these numbers show is that we have malnutrition right here in America,” said Chilton. “The people suffering from hunger are our neighbors—in the suburbs, cities and rural areas. We can do better as a nation.”

She noted, however, that the summer drought is expected to drive food prices higher, there is no national plan to end hunger, and the strongest defense against hunger—food stamps (or, SNAP)—is under attack in Congress.

Indeed, the Senate version of the Farm Bill would cut more than $4 billion over 10 years from SNAP, reducing benefits for an estimated 500,000 households. The House version would make these same cuts and also end benefits totally for a minimum of 1.8 million people, cutting the program by $16 billion.

The good news is that the American people seem to be ahead of the politicians when it comes to SNAP and supporting the nearly 47 million people who benefit from it. A new poll released by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) indicates overwhelming majorities are opposed to SNAP cuts, with 79 percent of respondents supporting more (55 percent) or about the same federal spending to address hunger. Fully 75 percent feel that cutting food assistance is the wrong way to reduce federal spending. According to FRAC, opposition to SNAP cuts was high among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.

“[The] food insecurity data and polling data show that proposals for SNAP cuts are a ‘two-fer’ of wrong thinking,” said FRAC President Jim Weill. “A bad policy idea and a very unpopular idea. Americans…believe government should—and must—do more to address hunger.”

Here are a few things you can do to fight hunger and protect food stamps and other nutrition programs: you can advocate to protect SNAP in the final Farm Bill; join the NoKidHungry campaign which focuses particularly on protecting nutrition programs that serve at-risk children and families; support and follow Witnesses to Hunger—the experts who know poverty and hunger firsthand; and e-mail me at WeekInPoverty@me.com about other campaigns people should know about.

That’s by no means an exhaustive list. And I look forward to your help as we stay on top of this epidemic to help ensure that no one—families, single adults, working, not working, homeless, housed, seniors, middle-aged, young—goes hungry.
A Note on President Obama’s Nomination Speech
There is no question that from an antipoverty perspective, President Obama’s speech tonight was thin. If you expected otherwise, I don’t think you’ve been paying attention. This is a pragmatic President trying to get reelected. He set out to do what he had to do, and—though I’m no expert—he probably accomplished it.

That he did better than the other guy in addressing some issues of concern to lower-income people surely isn’t enough. But I suggest we stop trying to “read” Obama—does he care about poverty, or doesn’t he care about poverty? Will he be bold, or won’t he be bold? Is he this, that, or the other thing?
It’s a waste of time and it’s a waste of energy.

In my opinion there is one line from the President’s speech tonight that those of us who care about eradicating poverty can and should take to heart: “Only you have the power to move us forward.”
My two cents is that we take a moment to recommit ourselves to this fight: that we will educate and agitate; we will yearn, push, and strive; we will not be complacent, nor will we be silent in order to make potential allies feel comfortable.

We will do everything we can—as Tavis Smiley said in the above interview—to force poverty onto the national agenda. We will be relentless.

I hope that our effort culminates in Barack Obama embracing this cause. But if it doesn’t, so be it. It’s not about him—never was—and that can’t stop us.

There are roughly 300 million American citizens. Each one with an equal right to be heard. But four Americans have been given special status. Jim Lehrer, Bob Schieffer, Candy Crowley and Martha Raddatz: the four journalists selected by the Commission on Presidential Debates to moderate the upcoming presidential and vice-presidential debates.

I have the utmost respect for my distinguished broadcast colleagues; they have each earned their way onto the debate stage. That said, I reiterate my deep disappointment with the obvious lack of diversity in this group; a group that could have been and should have been more representative of the most multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-ethnic America ever. But I have an even greater concern at the moment.

As we move closer to the first debate, October 3, in Denver, Colorado, how do issues that should matter actually get raised in the debate? Case in point: four years ago in the three debates between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, the word “poor” or “poverty” did not come up one time. Obama didn’t raise it, McCain didn’t raise it, the moderators never asked about it. By the way, two of those moderators are back on stage this year.

This year, both Governor Romney and President Obama at least mentioned the “P” word in their convention speeches, but neither pledged to make the alleviation of poverty in America a priority. Both continued to address the “middle class” when everybody knows that the new poor are the former middle class. Candidates for high office love sharing personal narratives of overcoming poverty, but can’t seem to fully commit themselves to lead in creating a bi-partisan plan that could significantly reduce and eventually eradicate poverty in the richest nation in the world.

So, how do we get the impolite topic of poverty on the agenda for the debates? It’s hard to ignore that 1 in 2 Americans is either living in or near poverty. Hard to ignore the 16 million children now living in poverty. Hard to ignore that more Americans are experiencing long-term unemployment than at any time in recorded history. Hard to ignore the growing lines at food pantries. Hard to ignore all the FORECLOSURE yard signs. Hard to ignore all the recent — and not so recent — college graduates who can’t find work. Hard to ignore the millions of Americans falling through the cracks as government inexplicably draws up the social safety net, diminishing Medicaid, food stamps and other vital social service programs. Hard to ignore the direct link between poverty and joblessness. Hard to ignore.

Yet, I fear that’s exactly what may happen if we don’t remind the candidates and the moderators that poverty in America ought to be abnormal, not the new normal. So, what to do? I say let the moderators hear from you. I don’t know too many of my colleagues who outright refuse to review their mail. It matters to most. And since they’re representing US, why not hear from US?

Greg Kaufmann of The Nation magazine has been doing his homework, chronicling potential questions about poverty in America for President Obama and Governor Romney. Sample questions: What is the appropriate role of government in improving the likelihood that an honest day’s work earns a living wage? What do you think is most important in securing economic mobility for all children, regardless of the incomes or educational attainment of their parents, and how will you accomplish this? As president, what would you do about America’s growing hunger crisis?

So here’s your assignment: I’m sure you have a question for Obama and Romney about how to tackle poverty, and you ought to share that with the debate moderators. Here’s how:

JIM LEHRER – PBS
twitter.com/NewsHour
newshour@pbs.org

BOB SCHIEFFER – CBS
twitter.com/bobSchieffer
facethenation@cbsnews.com
CANDY CROWLEY – CNN

twitter.com/crowleyCNN

MARTHA RADDATZ – ABC
twitter.com/martharaddatz

Poor people cannot be rendered invisible in this campaign. This time around, let’s do our homework and make sure that ALL voices are heard.

BY BLAKE ZEFF

After a News column this week took both campaigns to task for ignoring the issue of poverty, The Rumble was contacted by broadcaster Tavis Smiley and professor Cornel West with a tangible next goal for pushing the problem onto the national agenda. 

“We want to beat the drum loud enough so that [presidential] debate moderators this year will have to ask about the issue of poverty,” Smiley, who’s co-hosting a 4-state poverty tour with West next month, said. “There were three debates in 2008, and the words ‘poverty’ or ‘poor’ did not come up once. The issue must be debated this time around. We hope our tour is loud enough so that debate moderators cannot ignore it.“

As they seek to seize the national stage presented by debates, the activists were none too impressed with what they saw at this week’s GOP convention. “The level of mendacity and hypocrisy is overwhelming,” West said of VP candidate Paul Ryan’s claims to be committed to workers, while espousing policies which do the reverse.

“Ryan mentioned poverty two or three times in his speech. To his credit, he is not shy about raising the issue,” Smiley added. “He acknowledges it exists, acknowledges that it’s worsening. The problem is his approach is all wrong. The Ryan budget will exacerbate the problem, and take it from bad to catastrophic.”

But the duo, as it has for some time, saved some of its strongest condemnation of the silence on poverty, for President Obama.

Asked to respond to a much-discussed column in this month’s Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates noting the added challenges Obama faces because of his race, West replied, “Of course being a black president is different from being a white president, just as being a black doctor is different from being a white doctor, in a society with a history of slavery and Jim Crow.”

“The question,” he continued, “is what kind of courage do you have? So far we haven’t seen that from this president. We understand context. But great black leaders and pioneers have stepped forward and pursued justice anyway. We can’t let poor people be demonized.“

Smiley, for his part, said he was “disappointed in [Coates’] apologist work,” adding, “I don’t think that great Presidents are born, they’re made. There’s no Lincoln without Frederick Douglass pushing him. There’s no LBJ without a MLK. You push a president into greatness. You don’t excuse him.”

“Race does not absolve [the President] or abrogate us from the duty to press him,” he continued. “Otherwise, why have a black President? If he’s handicapped and hogtied from pushing an agenda I support, why celebrate? Symbolism? It has to be about substance, too. What is the price of the ticket we pay for entrance? It’s too high if a president can’t help people caught in a spiral [of poverty] through no fault of their own.”

With this goal of forcing poverty onto the national conversation, the pair intends to hit the road from September 12-15 – “the Labor Day-to-Election Day sprint when people are paying attention,” Smiley says — to host town halls in the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

“We want fairness and justice for everyone,” West said, noting that the poverty rate is projected to hit its highest rate in five decades. “We’ve got to be thermostats rather than thermometers. If, like a thermostat, we reshape the climate, we can get a different moment.”