Spring Break
CBC puts poverty back on frontburner
Hazel Trice Edney, NNPA Washington Correspondent
Issue date: 9/29/05 Section: POLITICS
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WASHINGTON - A town hall meeting at the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference started off discussing blame for the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, but ended up focused on who's to blame for America's poverty that was exposed by the tragedy.
"If you are Black in this country and you're poor in this country, it's not an inconvenience, it's a death sentence," says Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.). "George Bush is our Bull Connor. And if that doesn't get to you, nothing will be able to get to you, and it's time for us to be able to say that we're sick and tired and we're fired up and we're not going to take it anymore."
By comparing Bush to Eugene "Bull" Connor, Birmingham's infamous commissioner of public safety, who ordered police dogs and fire hoses to attack civil rights demonstrators in 1963, Rangel was the strongestcritic of Bush during the CBC's annual town hall meeting.
In 1974, the percentage of Black families living below the poverty level was about 32 percent; for White families, it was 8 percent, according to the U. S. Census Bureau. Currently, the percentage of Black families living below the poverty line has dropped to about 27 percent while the percentage of White families in poverty has remained virtually unchanged.
The poverty line is defined as $9,573 or less for an individual or $18,660 for a family of four with two children.
With approximately half of the Blacks in New Orleans living below the poverty level, it was mostly poor African-Americans who could not make it out of the flood because many had no transportation.
"We've had the capacity to eradicate poverty, but we've never used it," says Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas), a co-chair of the ALC. "Why did we hold ourselves from eradicating poverty when we hadthe capacity? We did we wait so long?"
Open-ended questions such as Jackson-Lee's begged for answers that were rare during the ALC Town Hall meeting. Lively with questions and debate, the meeting presented few answers except the need for voters to support or oppose legislation, make demands and hold public officials accountable.
"If you are Black in this country and you're poor in this country, it's not an inconvenience, it's a death sentence," says Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.). "George Bush is our Bull Connor. And if that doesn't get to you, nothing will be able to get to you, and it's time for us to be able to say that we're sick and tired and we're fired up and we're not going to take it anymore."
By comparing Bush to Eugene "Bull" Connor, Birmingham's infamous commissioner of public safety, who ordered police dogs and fire hoses to attack civil rights demonstrators in 1963, Rangel was the strongestcritic of Bush during the CBC's annual town hall meeting.
In 1974, the percentage of Black families living below the poverty level was about 32 percent; for White families, it was 8 percent, according to the U. S. Census Bureau. Currently, the percentage of Black families living below the poverty line has dropped to about 27 percent while the percentage of White families in poverty has remained virtually unchanged.
The poverty line is defined as $9,573 or less for an individual or $18,660 for a family of four with two children.
With approximately half of the Blacks in New Orleans living below the poverty level, it was mostly poor African-Americans who could not make it out of the flood because many had no transportation.
"We've had the capacity to eradicate poverty, but we've never used it," says Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-Texas), a co-chair of the ALC. "Why did we hold ourselves from eradicating poverty when we hadthe capacity? We did we wait so long?"
Open-ended questions such as Jackson-Lee's begged for answers that were rare during the ALC Town Hall meeting. Lively with questions and debate, the meeting presented few answers except the need for voters to support or oppose legislation, make demands and hold public officials accountable.