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By Mark Gruenberg
WASHINGTON—Using the phrases of the nation’s founders, the Rev. William Barber II is warning that rising poverty in the U.S. endangers the whole country.
“You cannot have domestic tranquility or promote the general welfare when near 50% of the country is poor and low-wage,” he told a 90-minute National Press Foundation seminar on “Poverty and Inequality 2020.”
“We were at 43% before the pandemic, and that’s going to go up…And 700 people a day die from poverty,” academic studies show, Barber said.
In his wide-ranging discussion on September 2 of the prevalence of poverty, near-poverty and how to cover it, Barber, co-chair of the New Poor People’s Campaign, said both the mass media and policy makers don’t realize, much less talk about, the plight of the poor and how it harms society as a whole.
And not doing so is both a constitutional and a moral mistake, he declared....
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