Census reports, demographic studies and social-service agencies continue to reveal the Columbus metro area, Ohio, as a place where poverty no longer declines along with the unemployment rate.
How is it that we can have one of the lowest unemployment rates and one of the highest poverty rates?” asked Robert “Bo” Chilton, CEO of Impact Community Action.
“It means that you’ve got a lot of people working who are not making above the poverty level or a livable wage,” answered Roberta Garber assistant vice president at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority.
“If you’re working full time in this country, you should not be food insecure, and you should have a decent place to live,” Michelle Heritage, executive director of the Community Shelter Board, said. “That needs to become a core value, and I don’t think it is right now.”
Keith Kilty, Ohio State University professor emeritus of social work, said America’s social-safety net has been tattered by cuts. Tackling poverty again — 50 years after President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the War on Poverty — will require a grass-roots push, Kilty said. “It will happen when people finally get frustrated enough that they don’t see any other options.”
The solution is not as Chilton said, “a high paying job” but the abolition of all paid labor, the abolition of the wages system and that won’t happen as Kilty pointed out, until people see no option other than social revolution itself and begin to organise en masse to achieve it.
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