JUST IDEAS

The Obama Legacy: Place-Based Poverty

I have spent the last 50-plus years of my life fighting poverty. In 1967, when I worked for Senator Robert Kennedy as his legislative aide, the Senator and I traveled to Mississippi. We saw children starving—literally—with bloated bellies, open sores that wouldn’t heal. Our nation did the right thing then—we expanded the food stamp program—and that’s why you don’t see that kind of starvation here today.

But we had to fight for it. And now we are going to have to fight again.

Why the wealthy always win

Inequalities in income, wealth, and opportunity have risen to virtually unprecedented levels. In Affluence and Influence, political scientist Martin Gilens demonstrates that in policy disagreements between the most well-off and everyone else, the wealthy consistently...

50 Years Later: Why We Must Remember

Originally posted on TalkPoverty.org. Cross-posted on BillMoyers.com. This has been a summer of half-century commemorations, wonderful and gruesome. Last week we celebrated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the greatest and most important advance in civil rights...