These midterm elections have enormous stakes for poor and low-income Americans (The Guardian...Need I Say More?)

[Valin]

The Guardian

Our country faces a material and moral crisis – and Republicans are offering only resentment and false solutions

Reverend William Barber and Karen Dolan

Nov. 2 2022

Our wellbeing is on the ballot this November. Amid a pandemic, rising inflation, and deepening financial instability, we need a strong commitment from all candidates to our children, families and planet.

In 2021, we won some of that commitment.

Members of Congress – some of them – heard our voices. They made investments – from the expanded child tax credit to healthcare to infrastructure – that brought unemployment to historic lows and reduced child poverty to its lowest measure on record.

Prior to the pandemic, the Poor People’s Campaign: a National Call for Moral Revival estimated that 140 million of us were poor and low-wealth. The American Rescue Plan and other investments brought that down to 112 million last year – a huge step forward.

But even this help left one-third of us still living in serious economic hardship. Even worse, it was temporary. With those programs now expiring, and the cost of living continuing to climb, poverty is again on the rise.

What have we learned? That poverty is a political choice. It drops when the government commits to reducing it. And it rises when that commitment vanishes.

(Snip)

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Comments

TizzyLiz

12 hours ago

Guardian Pick

I live in Rochester NY, a food pantry has been robbed of food twice in the last month. We should all pause and pay attention to this situation. People are stealing food, at many grocery stores
you now see police. ?? If our poverty in this country is not fixed we could have food riots again. We had food riots in the 1930’s, we all seemed to have conveniently forgotten about those riots.