This is Karen Hunter and welcome to the hub. I had a conversation on my radio show on Serious XM Urban View channel 126 with

Reverend William Barber who has picked up the mantle, picked up the baton for Martin Luther King Jr.

and heading up the Poor People's Campaign,

Poor People's Movement all over the country,

and Jennifer Jones Austin, who is an anti-poverty activist also author of

considerate pure joy and of course you know we were talking about the

millions of Americans 140 million Americans who are classified as

impoverished in this country and how that has a deleterious effect on us as a nation

as Americans if you're in another country you know people have

various disparate ways in which they deal with poverty but America is supposed to be

the richest nation in the world and we shouldn't have anyone living in poverty in this

country and I agree with that.

I also know that we have certain social programs that will protect, particularly children and I'm going to say that there should not be a single child in America that goes to bed hungry,

a single child in America that is impoverished because they don't ask to come here and we need to take care of them.

But I post this question to Reverend Barbara and I got a couple of phone calls and a couple of

accusations of elitism

and being out of touch.

But I asked him this question, what percentage

of the 140 million people in poverty

can we attribute their poverty to their own choices and decisions?

Now, there's no stat for that.

But I asked this question because I just

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