Some thoughts on poverty

In this video, Bernie Sanders speaks at a food bank in Kimball, West Virginia. That is in McDowell County, the next county over from where I was raised. It is a place that I have always loved, with a unique way of life; it is the home place of one of my best friends. And it is the poorest county in West Virginia, which in turn is one of the poorest states. The life expectancy for men is the lowest of any county in the U.S., thirteen years less than the national average; women’s life expectancy is the second-lowest. Only about six percent of the people have a college degree. About half of the children live in poverty. Per-capita income is about $12,000/year. You can read more about it in Wikipedia.

As recently as the 1950’s, McDowell County was prosperous. It is at the center of the coalfields, and times were good. It has been downhill ever since, as the mining companies pulled out. Nowadays, the largest private employer in the county was the Wal-Mart store in Big Four (near the county seat, Welch). That is, it used to be: the store (the only Wal-Mart in the county) closed in January 2016.

Senator Sanders has much to say, but he gives much of the time to local activists, who talk about the challenges, and what can be done to make things better. At one point near the end, he says that he loves doing this sort of event. At root, it is community organizing. Given the resume that Mr. Obama laid before us, we thought that we were electing a community organizer in 2008 and 2012. It did not turn out that way.

It is clear that Bernie comes from a different place; he cares about the community, this great community that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and he is putting a lot of effort into trying to get us organized. I don't think he would care one bit whether he became President or not, if there were any other way to change things.

It means much to me that Senator Sanders and his wife took the time to come to Kimball, West Virginia. And, in the middle of a political campaign when he needs to be in twenty places at once, spend a couple of hours there at a food bank. And listen to what’s going on in that little town, in that little county with about twenty thousand people – after his speech, he took questions for better than forty-five minutes. Listen to this too, if you can spare the time: the questions and discussion are just as good as the speech.

Hillary Clinton is not going to do this. Donald Trump is not going to do this.

We are not a poor country. We are the richest country on earth. The problem is, the policies that take place in Washington every single day are policies that are designed to help wealthy campaign contributors. People who go to dinners for $350,000 a couple. Anybody here been to dinner lately for $350,000? Anyone here put a million dollars into a Super-PAC lately? That’s another world. But that’s the world of Wall Street and big-money interests who make huge campaign contributions and then hold the people they give the contributions to accountable to work for them. (Sen. Sanders, about 37 minutes into the video)

The only way that change takes place, people come together, stand up, fight back, and say that the status quo is not acceptable. And I think that’s the moment we’re in right now.