Obama vows to fight poverty

Presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Tuesday criticized the government for turning a blind eye toward the poor, vowing that he would, as president, implement policies to help eradicate poverty.

In a speech at the Town Hall of Educations Arts and Recreation Center in Washington, D.C., the senator condemned policies of the Bush administration and the nature of political discourse in the nation’s capital as counterproductive to the American people’s interests.

{mosads}“With the stroke of a pen, billions are spent on programs and policies, on tax breaks for those who didn’t need them and a war that should’ve never been authorized and never been waged,” Obama said. “Debates rage and accusations fly and at the end of each day, the petty sniping is what lights up the evening news.”

Obama pointed to Anacostia, an impoverished area of Washington, D.C., as an example of the government failing to represent the interests of the lower classes because they cannot afford expensive lobbyists.

“The streets here are close to our Capitol, but far from the people it represents,” Obama said. “These Americans cannot hire lobbyists to roam the halls of Congress on their behalf, and they cannot write thousand-dollar campaign checks to make their voices heard. They suffer most from a politics that has been tipped in favor of those with the most money, and influence, and power.”
The government must do more to fight poverty, Obama said.

“Our government cannot guarantee success and happiness in life, but what we can do as a nation is to ensure that every American who wants to work is prepared to work, able to find a job, and able to stay out of poverty,” he said. “What we can do is make our neighborhoods whole again. What we can do is retire the phrase ‘working poor’ in our time.”  

Obama also said poverty is not simply a matter of economics but also of geography.

“There are vast swaths of rural America and block after block in our cities where poverty is not just a crisis that hits pocketbooks, but a disease that infects every corner of the community.”

Referencing his experiences as a community organizer in the South Side of Chicago, Obama said, “Everywhere you looked, businesses were boarded up and schools were crumbling and teenagers were standing aimlessly on street corners, without jobs and without hope.”

But, the presidential aspirant added, there are examples of programs that are already in place to fight poverty. The Harlem Children’s Zone, a community-based project dedicated to educating children and keeping them from joining gangs, is “saving a generation of children,” the senator said.

“It’s working. Parents in Harlem are actually reading more to their children. Their kids are staying in school and passing statewide tests at higher rates than other children in New York City,” Obama said. “They’re going to college in a place where it was once unheard of. They’ve even placed third at a national chess championship.”