SNAP Beneficiaries Probably Aren't Who You Think

Reblogged from Faith and Public Policy:

As Congress considers cutting up to 2 million people off of SNAP, it's worth taking a little bit of time to think about who these people are. Forty-five percent of them are children, and another 26 percent are adults who live with children. Many of the rest are the elderly or disabled. Most of the 'other section' is actually composed of elderly and disabled who do not live alone, but I was not able to display those categories in the pie chart since they overlap with "Adults with Children."

Read more… 241 more words

As Congress considers cutting SNAP, let's take a look at whose bodies and brains will be cut into by hunger.

Faithful Budget Updated for FY 2014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE APRIL 15, 2013 CONTACT: Casey Schoeneberger, 202-569-4254, casey@faithinpubliclife.org

Prominent Faith Leaders Urge Congress & President Obama to Stand by Commitment to Fellow Americans Faithful Budget for FY 2014 demonstrates how federal budget choices can and must reflect America’s shared values (Click here to see the Faithful Budget (.pdf)) (Washington, DC) – A prominent coalition of America’s major national religious organization and leaders today unveiled the “Faithful Budget for FY 2014” an expression of the faith community’s budget priorities that stands in stark contrast to the partisan budget proposals currently under consideration. The document is a set of comprehensive and compassionate budget principles that promotes values shared by diverse faiths: protection of the common good, the value of each individual and lifting the burden on those living at the economic margins of society. “The Faithful Budget reflects our vision of a responsible fiscal plan that focuses on justice and economic opportunity for all,” said Sr. Simone Campbell, SSS, Executive Director, Network, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby. “While ensuring adequate resources through a fair tax system, it prioritizes human security and care for Creation while it supports measures to address the moral scandal of rising inequality. We call on Congress to adopt its core principles, which exemplify the values and compassion of our faith traditions and nation as a whole.” Joining with the release of Faithful Budget for FY2014, Sister Simone and Rev. Chuck Currie of the United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon, published an op-ed in The Hill’s Congress Blog today, detailing why President Obama’s latest budget “…falls short of the moral vision many faith leaders have for this country and the president’s own ideals as he embodied in his second Inaugural Address.”  With the latest release, the faith community calls on Congress and President Obama to atone for their budgets’ more shortfalls by restoring economic opportunity, ensuring adequate resources for shared priorities, meeting critical human needs at home and abroad, accepting intergenerational responsibility, using the gifts of creation sustainably and responsibly, providing access to health care for all, and recognizing a robust role for government. “The Faithful Budget recognizes that our lives here in America are inextricably bound together with the lives of all others around the world,” said Rev. John L. McCullough, President and CEO, Church World Service. “God’s abundant provision means that there is enough for all, if we act with justice and compassion. As a people, we can be compassionate neighbors creating security and prosperity for ourselves and for all by helping to end hunger and extreme poverty throughout the world.” The Faithful Budget for FY 2014 Preamble, which has been endorsed by 44 religious denominations and organizations, calls on Congress and President Obama “to craft a federal budget that fulfills our shared duty to each other in all segments of society, to those who are struggling to overcome poverty or are especially vulnerable, and to future generations through our collective responsibility as stewards of Creation.” “As the prophets have taught us, our community is like one body, and when one part of it aches, the entire community awakens in a fever,” said Dr. Sayyid Syeed, National Director, Islamic Society of North America. “Now is the time to awaken to the pain of those who are poor and vulnerable among us, both here in America and around the world.  As people of faith, we are committed to ensuring that our nation’s federal budget reflects the moral conscience of the American people by providing protection to those in our community that need it most.” Faithful Budget for FY 2014 builds on the Faithful Budget for FY 2013 released in March 0f 2012 and the Faithful Budget Campaign, an effort launched by the religious community in May 2011 to lift up faithful voices on behalf of the nation’s most vulnerable in order to encourage the administration and Congress to maintain a robust commitment to domestic and international poverty assistance programs. “Our Jewish tradition commands us to ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God’ (Micah 6:8),” said Rabbi David Saperstein, Director and Counsel, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. “Is justice a father working full-time who still cannot support his family on a minimum wage salary? Is mercy a mother who is forced to choose between feeding her children and paying for their medicine? Are we walking humbly as we pass thousands sleeping outdoors each night? We can do better. We must do better. This Faithful Budget is a call to recognize the inherent dignity of each and every human being, a call to honor the spark of the divine that is present in every one of us, a call to action.” Additional details about the Faithful Budget Campaign can be found at www.faithfulbudget.org. The Faithful Budget for FY2014 was spearheaded by some of the nation’s most recognizable Christian, Jewish, Muslim and other faith-based organizations united by shared beliefs to lift up the nation’s most vulnerable and demonstrate that America is a better nation when we follow our faiths’ imperatives to promote the general welfare of all individuals. A full list of the faith-based organizations that endorsed the preamble-principles of the Faithful Budget are included below. xxx American Friends Service Committee Arkansas Interfaith Alliance Bread for the World  Center of Concern  Center on Conscience and War Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in the United States and Canada Christian Connections for International Health Christian Reformed Church Office of Social Justice Church of the Brethren  Church World Service Columban Center for Advocacy and Outreach Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism Conference of Major Superiors of Men Council of Churches of Rhode Island Delaware Ecumenical Council of Children Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Faithful Reform in Health Care  Florida Council of Churches Franciscan Action Network Friends Committee on National Legislation Institute Leadership Team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas Interfaith Worker Justice – New Mexico Islamic Society of North America Jesuit Conference  Jubilee USA Network     Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation Office, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, United States Province Leadership Conference of Women Religious Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns Mennonite Central Committee US Michigan Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Network Minnesota Council of Churches Muslim Public Affairs Council National Advocacy Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund National Council of Churches of Christ, USA NETWORK: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby North Carolina Council of Churches Pax Christi USA Pennsylvania Council of Churches Presbyterian Church (USA), Office of Public Witness Progressive National Baptist Convention Unitarian Universalist Association United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries United Methodist Church, General Board of Church and Society

Can you help the NCC Poverty Initiative finish 2012 strong?

I’d like to express my gratitude for all you’ve done in 2012 to support the NCC Poverty Initiative’s ministry. As you know, the Poverty Initiative is driven by the strong common desire among an incredibly diverse group of Christians to unite and respond to God’s call for “the least of these.” 

In 2012, the NCC Poverty Initiative:

• Equipped Christians for poverty education with three new faith study guides/tool kits, four hunger webinars, and opportunities to join interfaith partners in Fighting Poverty with Faith mobilization events.
• Raised Christians’ voices of faithful concern for people living in poverty with more than 2,000 messages to legislators and more than 35 meetings between faith leaders and the U.S. Congress and Administration. We also joined with Ecumenical Advocacy Days to bring 700 Christian advocates to Capitol Hill to call for a Faithful Budget that protects the most vulnerable.
• Kept poverty issues in front of election 2012 candidates by joining forces with the Circle of Protection coalition to collect and release videos made by President Obama and Governor Romney explaining what they will do to address poverty. We also reached 70,000 people on Twitter with our faith voice at the 2012 election hashtag #TalkPoverty.
• Partnered with the Emergency Food and Shelter Program to ensure relief funds are shared efficiently and equitably across the United States.

We’re looking forward to 2013, when we’ll continue our strong public witness on Captiol Hill and partnership with the Emergency Food and Shelter Program. We’ll also strengthen our connections to state interfaith and ecumenical councils and launch a Pastors Ending Poverty network to help clergy set and reach goals to improve their anti-poverty ministries. Our Council counts on people like you to keep this ministry vital. I hope you will prayerfully consider contributing an end of the year donation to our work.

You can do so by following this link to contribute online, or simply mailing a check to:

National Council of Churches, Poverty Initiative

110 Maryland Ave NE #108

Washington, DC 20002

National Council of Churches Poverty Initiative wishes you and yours every blessing as your heart prepares room for the God who came to us a homeless infant who turned our worldly notions of power upside down. 

With peace, joy, hope, and love,

Shantha

Share Advent Hope with Your Community and Congress.

There are just a few weeks left to reach a deal that averts the “fiscal cliff.” While Congress is busy deal-making, many faith communities are taking up collections, putting up giving trees, or preparing food and gift baskets for those who might otherwise go without during the holiday season.

Any fiscal deal that doesn’t protect people in poverty goes against the spirit of generosity in our churches. If you haven’t yet, I hope you will click here to email your members of Congress and tell them about how your faith community is sharing Advent hope with neighbors in need.

Unfortunately, members of Congress are openly considering cuts to programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), a powerful tool for fighting hunger among the 20 percent of children who live in food insecure households. If government reflects who we are – our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers – we should not be considering cuts to programs that lift up struggling families.

Please email your members of Congress about sharing Advent hope with neighbors in need. Then, click here to use this easy tool to share the message with a letter to the editor of a local newspaper. Let us keep Advent hope and prepare room in our hearts for the One who taught us how loving our neighbors leads us all to a more abundant life.

Poverty and the 2012 Election – October 18, 2012 Online Training Summary, Action Steps, Tools

Rev. Michael Livingston, Public Policy Director of Interfaith Worker Justice and past President of the National Council of Churches USA, offered a moving opening reflection and prayer, which you can read in full here.

Erik Stegman of the Half in Ten campaign then shared that more than 46 million Americans lived in poverty in 2011, including one in five children. Yet, the media is barely paying attention to this crisis. Only 17 of the 10,489 studied (.2%) campaign stories addressed poverty in a substantive way.[1] It’s time to #TalkPoverty. He shared tips on how to get the word out about poverty in the election season.

Shantha Ready Alonso of the National Council of Churches Poverty Initiative and Circle of Protection shared a success story about what happens when the candidates do #TalkPoverty. At the request of the Circle of Protection, the presidential candidates shared videos about what they will do to address poverty:
http://circleofprotection.us
Check out the next page to take a quiz on who said what.

Amelia Kegan of Bread for the World explained the legislative landscape of the election as well as what we can expect in the lame duck. With the Bush tax cuts set to expire and a mandate to cut $1.2 trillion from the budget in “sequestration,” now is the time to shape the legislative debate around how our nation manages our budget and tax policies. By November 13, the President and “Gang of 8” in the Senate must unveil a plan on how to solve the fiscal problems of our nation. You can put the pressure on right now to make sure the most poor and vulnerable among us are protected from further cuts. See more details about who’s in the Gang of 8 in the

Lastly, Leslie Woods of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) shared about action steps you can take to make a difference in the conversation around poverty in the final weeks of the election and into the weeks after the election (the “lame duck” session). The most important one, obviously is: VOTE!

Here are more action steps to fit any schedule.

30 seconds: Send a tweet to the final presidential debate moderator: @BobSchieffer of CBS news by 10/22 at 9:00pm EDT asking him to #TalkPoverty with the presidential candidates. You can find tweeting tips at
http://www.halfinten.org/talkpoverty
.

 

Two minutes: First, it is most important you write to your Senators and Representative right now and let them know you want a budget deal that does not further jeopardize people living in poverty. Ask your Senators to weigh in with the “Gang of 8” about protecting poor people in any budget deal. Any deal to replace the fiscal cliff must have EXPLICIT protections for the programs that serve the most vulnerable and it must be balanced with responsible spending cuts alongside additional tax revenue.

Three minutes:Then, spread the impact to your local elected officials and send a message asking them to clearly state what they will do to address poverty if reelected.

Ten minutes: Watch the two presidential candidates’ videos about poverty and faith below, and see what church leaders are saying about poverty and the 2012 election. Quote the videos. Use the “Who Said it?” quiz and share the videos with friends.

Fifteen Minutes: Talk to you friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors. Use your circle of influence to fill the gaping hole the media’s left us. If they don’t talk poverty, we must.

Thirty-Sixty minutes: Use the power of the pen or keyboard.Write a letter to the editor or an Op-ed. Use the talking points in the PowerPoint from this online training. Be sure to mention your elected official by name so his or her staff will flag it for their boss. You can also blog, which will turn up in Google searches. Be sure to tag your blog posts with your elected official’s name.

Attend a candidate forum or town hall meeting: Ask good questions about poverty and reference the facts you learned in this training. You can find more resources about town hall meeting tips and good questions to ask here:
http://www.bread.org/ol/2012/elections2012/pdf/town-hall-meeting-tips-2012.pdf

For further election 2012 resources, including important information about making voting accessible to all, check out Operation EMR (Educate, Mobilize, Register) from the African Methodist Episcopal church and Our Faith, Our Vote from the United Church of Christ and Elections Matters handbook from Bread for the World at
http://www.bread.org/ol/2012/elections2012/pdf/elections-matter-2012.pdf
.

Quiz: Who said it?

When you know what your candidates are saying about poverty, you can hold them to their promises. Take this quiz with quotes from the Circle of Protection and the two Presidential Candidates’ videos to see if you know what the candidates are saying. Watch the videos these quotes were pulled from at
http://www.circleofprotection.us

1. “Our government rightfully provides a safety net for the hungry and the homeless, the sick and the elderly, and we have a responsibility to keep it intact for future generations. I’ve laid out a sensible plan to save and strengthen our nations’ entitlement programs, which now account for more than half of federal spending. Here again, I’m committed to protecting those in or near poverty.”

a) Governor Romney                  b) President Obama                        c) The Circle of Protection

2. “Look at every budget proposal from the bottom up—how it treats those Jesus called “the least of these” (Matthew 25:45). They do not have powerful lobbies, but they have the most compelling claim on our consciences and common resources.”

a) Governor Romney                  b) President Obama                        c) The Circle of Protection

3.  “Government can’t solve every problem and it shouldn’t try… Not every tax dollar is spent wisely. Not everyone can be helped who refuses to help themselves. But that’s not an excuse to tell our fellow Americans that they’re on their own.”

a)    Governor Romney                b) President Obama                        c) The Circle of Protection

4.  “Nearly one in every six people in America is in poverty. When our economy is weak, lives are shattered, hearts ache, parents wonder how they’ll make ends meet, and how they’ll provide better lives for their children.”

a)    Governor Romney                b) President Obama                        c) The Circle of Protection

5.  “We can pay down our debt in a balanced and responsible way, but we cannot balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable. And certainly can’t ask the poor, the sick, or those with disabilities to sacrifice even more, or ask the middle-class to pay more, just so we can offer massive new tax cuts to those who’ve been blessed with the most.  It’s not just bad economics, it’s morally wrong. It’s not in line with our values, and it’s not who we are as a people.”

a) Governor Romney                  b) President Obama                        c) The Circle of Protection

      6. “Give moral priority to programs that protect the life and dignity of poor and vulnerable people in these   difficult times, our broken economy, and our wounded world.”

a)    Governor Romney                    b) President Obama                        c) The Circle of Protection

 

 

(“Who Said It?” Answer key:         1 – a          2 – c           3 – b          4 – a          5- b            6 – c)

---

[1] Source: New study by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting looked at 6 months of campaign coverage between 1/1/12-6/23/12 by 8 prominent outlets

Poverty and the 2012 Election: Reflection and Prayer by Rev. Michael Livingston

Since the recession began in 2007 only two congressional districts in the entire nation that have had a statistically significant decrease in poverty.  One hundred forty-five have stayed the same and 388 have seen a significant increase in people living in poverty.  Forty-nine million Americans are living in poverty.  That’s the context in which our election is taking place.

What we have is one candidate who talks about poverty, mentions it, but whose policies, experts tell us, will do harm to people living in poverty.  The safety net will be further torn, rather than strengthened for the greater demand it must bear in these difficult times of slow growth.  And we have another candidate who will not talk about poor people, will not say the word “poverty” though we may have confidence that his policies will provide relief and opportunity for the most vulnerable among us.  Real talk about poverty, frank exposure of the dimensions of the array of challenges that confront us is absent from our national dialogue in an election that could fundamentally alter the universe of social and economic policy as we know it.  We are on the brink now.  We could be over it soon. 

Talk of policy should never obscure the people whose lives and loves policies shape and steer as they deprive or make available access to resources and opportunities that put knowledge and skill in the heads, hands and hearts of the least fortunate among us.  The woman who sits nightly on the bus stop bench with several small and large bags placed beside her, just so, a glare at once defiant and desperate on her face, a rigidity about her frail body that suggests vigilance as another long night approaches.

 The woman who sits on the steps outside the train station: umbrella, head rag, a mask of make-up in pastel shades that match her flowing dress;  “Got anything for me today?” She asks. 

The men who sit on crates or lean on walls with empty paper cups asking for change wanting bills for cigarettes, more coffee, a sandwich; their lives circumscribed by loss.  This seems their work absent real jobs that pay living wages.  The children we mostly do not see, twelve million of them, behind when they begin school, never to catch up, equipped only for a Medicaid future of low-paying-low-skilled work without pension, affordable health care, paid sick days or vacations, workmen’s compensation, and unemployment insurance. 

We can do better, we must. 

Let us pray:  God of all people in every place, we trust in your love and justice when our will fails.  Inspire us to love and good works, to develop systems that right wrongs and set in place programs that provide opportunities for especially those who have been left out and forgotten while a few at the top enjoy luxuries that are bought at the expense of the very people who make any profit possible.  Thankful for this very day and hour, open our ears to new insights and initiatives, and move us to act for the good of all, especially our brothers and sisters living in poverty.  Amen.

This reflection and prayer was offered by Rev. Michael Livingston on October 18, 2012 at the “Poverty and the 2012 Election” webinar hosted by the Interreligious Working Group on Domestic Human Needs. Rev. Livingston is a past president of the National Council of Churches and former director of its Poverty Initiative. He now serves as the Public Policy Director of Interfaith Worker Justice.

Money and Faith: The Search for Enough

Money and Faith: The Search for Enough (includes a community-building study guide, ideal for small group use)

Recommended by Shantha Ready Alonso, NCC Interim Poverty Coordinator

In the introduction to Money and Faith Schut shares his hope that his book will be “personal, prophetic, pastoral, and purposeful.”  

In our personal lives, and in the ways we relate to and feel about money, he points to our need for the “nurturing companionship of a wise, compassionate pastor or spiritual guide.” In some of our society’s more powerful assumptions – such as “more (money, economic growth) is better” and “time is money” – Schut writes “we need to experience the power, strength, anger, and call to repent reminiscent of an Old Testament prophet.”  Facing great inequities and ecological degradation, he suggests “we need purposeful guidance that will lead to actions, decisions, and policies that will lead to a world with enough for all.”

Good pastors and priests are all these things. They are personal – they get to know us and honor our journey. They are prophetic – not afraid to clearly speak the truth. Even when that truth pierces our assumptions or challenges our lives, they invite us to see in a new way. And they are purposeful, helping us answer, in light of our own lives and the world’s realities, “How shall we then live?”

Money and Faith succeeds in guiding the reader on a journey that is all these things: personal, pastoral, prophetic, and purposeful.  The book is undergirded by the faith that, in God’s economy, it is possible to create a world with enough for all, for all people as well as the rest of God’s good creation. The book is comprised of essays from a wide diversity of authors, and is ideal for use in small groups, as it comes with a community building study guide complete with prayers, meditations, discussion questions, and suggested action steps.

If you’ve read this book or you want to, comment on our blog to start a discussion, or tweet us @NCCEndPoverty

Why Food Stamps Matter: A Profile of Vernell Livingston

By Rev. Michael Livingston, Director, NCC Poverty Initiative

Vernell Livingston thanks God for getting up every morning “with a portion of good health.” She’s had the blessings of marriage and motherhood and she is in good health, though she is a diabetic, as she lives a life of modest contentment as a senior citizen.

Mrs. Livingston participated in the Food Stamp Challenge that launched the Fighting Poverty With Faith Mobilization last fall responding graciously to our invitation to her to guide congressional legislators on Capitol Hill and religious leaders on a shopping trip on the weekly allotment given to SNAP recipients ($31.50). The coincidence of our last names (we are not related) created a bond between us and she welcomed an opportunity to share more of her story.

The second eldest of 12 siblings, Mrs. Livingston has had a life of hard work for very little compensation. She was picking cotton and tobacco in South Carolina alongside her sharecropping father when she was 12 years old. She never went to college, indeed, she wasn’t able to finish high school so that she could help the family make ends meet and assist her mother with the raising of their large clan.

When her father suffered a stroke, her fate was sealed. She did back breaking work as a day laborer picking cotton and was exposed to toxic chemicals picking tobacco until she was eighteen or nineteen years old. The young Vernell moved north to Washington, DC with an aunt and cared for the aunt’s son for a few years before returning to South Carolina where she married a logger and gave birth to a daughter.

In the following years she worked several extremely low-paying jobs and after returning to Washington DC she spent most of her adult years working as a maid in the hotel industry.

Her last eight years working were as a floor manager for a motel chain. Chronic knee pain led to a full disability and eventually to two knee replacement operations on the same knee. She received disability checks until she began receiving Social Security benefits in 1991. In all her working years she never had an employer supplied pension plan and her low wages insured that her Social Security benefits would be meager.

When I asked Mrs. Livingston how much her monthly Social Security checks amounted to, she lowered her head sheepishly, paused, and said, “Reverend Livingston, I get $885 a month.”

I cannot say precisely how she felt, but any and all shame should be the province of a society that has not taken good care of those who have labored long and hard and been denied access to opportunities by familial necessity and the structural inequalities, racial and economic, so prevalent in our society.

Mrs. Livingston, many years a widow now, lives on $885 a month plus what she receives in SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Those benefits were cut, without explanation, from about $200 per month at the end of 2011 to $33 a month in January of this year.

Before the cut in SNAP benefits she had an annual income of $13,020; her income in 2012, after the cut, will be just over $11,000. She pays $181 a month in rent in a government subsidized senior housing complex and has a car note. After rent and car expenses, Vernell has about $500 per month for everything else. SNAP is a lifeline. She’s thankful for what she has so far received and worried about the recent cut and the awful possibility that more cuts could be coming.

The NCC’s Poverty Initiative works with other ecumenical and interfaith partners to ensure that programs that are lifelines for vulnerable people like Vernell Livingston. We are working to make certain people like Vernell are not further victimized as a result of the critical budget and tax decisions that will be made in the months to come and especially in the “Lame Duck” session of congress at the end of this year.

Your support for our work, your work really, is essential to the witness of people of faith in the 37 member communions of the National Council of Churches.

I wrote earlier that I was not related to Mrs. Livingston, though we share the same last name. To tell the whole truth, we are related, to each other and to you, through our belonging to the human family. We are all God’s family, make in God’s image, each one of us. I hope you will remember Vernell Livingston in your prayers and in your giving. (Click here to make a contribution to the Poverty Initiative of the NCC.)

Fighting Poverty with Faith is an annual mobilization of faith communities across the United States in common actions against poverty. Co-chaired by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Catholic Charities, and the National Council of Churches, the mission of Fighting Poverty with Faith is to educate the public and build political will to participate in the goal to cut U.S. poverty in half from 2010-2020.

Click here to sign up for more information and get involved in the Nov. 18-28, 2012 mobilization.

Former NCC Intern Youngest Delegate to Democratic National Convention

Former NCC Poverty Initiative intern Kevin Bloomfield is a rising sophomore at Ohio State University. He will also be the youngest delegate at the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina.

We were extremely fortunate to have Kevin in our office. No joke, he found the NCC internship opportunity through a mis-clicked link on Wikipedia and thought it looked interesting! Kevin said of the experience, he was “glad for the opportunity to advocate for those in society who have no expensive lobbyists, yet need their voices heard the most.”

Before coming to our office, Kevin worked for offices of state representatives and a Republican congressman. Democrat or Republican, we are proud of Kevin for his continued commitment to public service and civic engagement.

Here’s a short interview with Kevin:

Why is it important to you to be engaged in the election, and what role, in particular, do youth have in the upcoming election?

All elections have consequences. It is important for me to be active in this election because I support the initiatives President Obama has passed through Congress and the policy programs he still hopes to pass in the next four years. Youth should be active in all elections. While I am a Democrat I would love to have youth be active Republicans and Democrats, because only through active political participation will the concerns of young Americans be listened to.

What did you learn while working with the NCC Poverty Initiative that influences the way you look at poverty issues and the way they are playing out in national politics?

I learned that in each statistic lies hundreds, if not thousands, of individual stories. Thinking about SNAP appropriations in dollar terms is very dry and sterile. I learned to think in terms of the untold numbers of real Americans affected by policy decisions and how important it is to assist them in climbing out of poverty.

What is your hope for the NCC and the Faithful Budget interfaith community during this election season?

My hope for the NCC and the Faithful Budget community is for realistic budgetary alternatives to be proposed that tackle America’s fiscal problems while protecting our social safety net and ensuring that the less-fortunate in America are not penalized for the actions of others.

Equal Voice Convening 2012

This July, the National Council of Churches Poverty Initiative staff will get a chance to build community and share ideas with a diverse group of faith, education, human and civil rights, environmental justice, worker justice, and child advocacy leaders from across the United States.

The reason? Together, we desire to sustain a deeper, wider, stronger movement that lifts up the voices of U.S. families so they are heeded in the public arena. 

Too often, in a political system too easily corrupted by big money, a government that is supposed to be “by and for the people” becomes neither. Many of God’s people suffer in an increasingly unequal society where those who Jesus called “the least of these” are the last considered in public policy-making.  What matters most deeply to ordinary people – resources to heal from illness, support for affordable shelter, or access to nourishing food – is cavalierly ignored by too many policymakers.

The purpose of the Equal Voice Network is to change that reality. For many years, the foundation that makes our work possible – The Marguerite Casey Foundation – has listened to the constituents of its grantee organizations in town hall meetings and online forums. Now, we will use the information and our collective resources to create the deep changes our country needs.

In July, we will put our heads together with others to figure out how. Among the groups we will meet are: Progressive Technology Project, Greater Birmingham Ministries, Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama, Bay Area Equal Voice Caucus, Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, SouthWest Organizing Project, Isaiah Institute, Diné Citizens Against Ruining our Environment, Mississippi Workers Center for Human Rights, Leadership Center for the Common Good, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Arkansas Public Policy Panel, Equal Voice Network – Southern California, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Labor Community Strategy Center, United Congress of Community and Religious Organizations, Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment, Citizens for a Better Greenville, Florida New Majority, Florida Immigrant Coalition, Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama, Arizona Center for Empowerment, Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo IndÍgena Oaxaqueño, Georgia Strategic Alliance for New Directions and Unified Policies (STAND-UP), One Voice Louisiana, Equal Voice Network – Rio Grande Valley, Parent Voices, Action Now, Environmental Health Coalition, La Unión del Pueblo Entero, Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE).

We look forward to sharing live updates from the gathering in Los Angeles in July.