How To Become a Poverty Abolitionist

KQED's Forum

KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

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Summary

The statistics on poverty in the U.S. are shocking and shameful: one in 9 Americans lives in poverty and one in 18 lives in “deep” poverty, defined in 2020 as annual income below roughly $13,000 for a family of four. More than a million public schoolchildren are homeless; more than 2 million Americans live in homes without running water or toilets. In his new book, "Poverty, by America", Matthew Desmond, who won a Pulitzer for his searing book on eviction, strives to figure out why there is so much poverty in the richest nation in the world — and what can be done to eliminate it. The responsibility, he writes, is all of ours: beyond policies and political movements, “it will also require that each of us, in our own way, become poverty abolitionists, unwinding ourselves from our neighbors’ deprivation and refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Desmond joins Forum to tell us how. Related link: The Eviction Lab Guests: Matthew Desmond, professor of sociology and director of The Eviction Lab, Princeton University; author, "Poverty, by America," and Pulitzer Prize winner "Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for Forum comes from Rancho La Puerta, boated the number one wellness resort and spa by readers of travel and leisure magazine in 2024.
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0:26.6	Support for Forum comes from Broadway S.F. presenting Parade, the musical revival based on a true story.
0:34.4	From three-time Tony-winning composer Jason Robert Brown comes the story of Leo and Lucille Frank,
0:40.6	a newlywed Jewish couple struggling to make a life in Georgia. When Leo is accused of an
0:46.3	unspeakable crime, it propels them into an unimaginable test of faith, humanity, justice, and
0:53.2	devotion.
1:02.1	The riveting and gloriously hopeful parade plays the Orpheum Theater for three weeks only, May 20th through June 8th.
1:06.4	Tickets on sale now at Broadway, sF.com.
1:09.0	From KQED.
1:24.1	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:29.2	Matthew Desmond's last book, Evicted, with a surprise bestseller and one of the best books that I've ever read. It delivered a rich and novel argument that evictions were not just
1:35.2	a consequence of poverty, but a root cause. The book never lost its focus on the human beings,
1:40.9	just barely making it, and sometimes not. His new book, Poverty by America,
1:46.6	marshals evidence from across the social sciences
1:48.9	to make the empirical case that poverty can be abolished
1:52.2	and the moral case that it should be.
1:54.7	He joins us for the hour to talk about policies
1:57.2	and personal politics that keep people exploited, vulnerable, and in pain, and how we
2:02.6	can make change. It's all coming up next after this news.
2:12.0	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Matthew Desmond's new book, Poverty by America, is a guidebook of sorts.
	...

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