This Week in Poverty: Smiley Calls for White House Conference on US Poverty

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http://www.thenation.com/blog/172163/week-poverty-smiley-calls-white-house-conference-us-poverty


Tavis Smiley (left) and Cornel West (center) visit the DC Central Kitchen on August 10, 2011. (Flickr/DC Central Kitchen)


Next Thursday, at George Washington University in the nation’s capital—just four days before President Obama’s inauguration—broadcaster Tavis Smiley will bring together a bipartisan panel and an array of poverty experts in a nationally televised event, “Vision for A New America: A Future Without Poverty.”

Expect a heated debate, as a panel that includes Newt Gingrich, Cornel West, and Michael Moore discusses Smiley’s call for a national plan to cut poverty in half in ten years and to eradicate it in twenty-five.

It’s part of Smiley’s latest effort to bring attention to the more than 46 million Americans living below living the poverty line, on less than $18,000 annually for a family of three. Smiley is also calling on the President to deliver a major public policy address on poverty—which includes telling the American people what they can do to help—and to convene a White House Conference on the Eradication of Poverty.

“This is all about raising the profile of poverty in America,” Smiley told me. “It’s about gaining traction.”



***let the Casting of Asparagus begin!