Poor vision
'I REMEMBER when Bobby Kennedy went to Appalachia, and people saw the face of poverty," says John Drew, executive vice president of ABCD, Boston's antipoverty agency. He recalls the 1960s and 1970s as a time when officials in the White House represented the interests of the poor. ''That's not true now."
America and Washington do seem to have forgotten about poverty's raw devastation. And despite Hurricane Katrina's graphic reminder, many in Congress seem indifferent, bent on cutting the budgets of important antipoverty programs.
One is the federal community services block grant, meant to ''alleviate the causes and conditions of poverty." In 2005, the program had $626 million, which went to the nation's local community action programs. These CAPs dispense hope and vital services, including help with housing, jobs, and education. As part of this team, ABCD's goal is to help people help themselves.
On Sept. 2, the CAPs got a call to action from Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the US Department of Health and Human Services. Horn asked the agencies to reach out to Katrina families and ''help ease some of their suffering." The CAPs are responding, doing their regular work and helping hurricane victims. ABCD is using block grant funds to help families who are being flown into Massachusetts.
The work is essential. So it's troubling that the House has called for cutting the community services block grant nearly in half, and the Senate has called for level funding.
Katrina put poverty on national television. But the facts have long been clear. The faces of poverty in New Orleans and other cities largely belong to children -- 13 million of them, according to an August report from the Census Bureau. A third of all poor people are children.
In Boston, Drew says, the poor also include the elderly, a mix of races, the unemployed, and people who have never graduated from high school.
The country is full of heartening success stories of individuals who climb out of homeless shelters and into the middle class with help from antipoverty agencies. But often the ladders that people use can't be mass-produced because there isn't enough government funding to meet the demand for services.
That leaves America with the ''paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty," as it was called in the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which helped launch the war on poverty.
Katrina is a good reason to create a new political vision of prosperity for all, one that rejects ill-advised budget and tax cuts that cripple the country's ability to invest in its people and its future.
