I think it goes back to whether or not race and class - that is, race and poverty - is not becoming even more of a constraint. Because with the failing public schools, I worry that the way that my grandparents got out of poverty, the way that my parents became educated, is just not going to be there for a whole bunch of kids.
The fact is that ours is the first generation that can look disease and extreme poverty in the eye, look across the ocean to Africa, and say this, and mean it. We do not have to stand for this. A whole continent written off - we do not have to stand for this.
I contribute a large amount of money to the Southern Poverty Law Center, so I'm on their mailing list for all their Klan Watch newsletters. I'm very well aware of White Power movements in America.
In Mexico, wealth and poverty live next to each other and are cordial with each other - in my experience.
In order to counteract income inequality, it's essential to tackle poverty in an integrated way that has long-term impact. We need to give people the capacity to be resilient, to take on challenges and to learn the skills they need to work toward more prosperous futures.
Although they are some of the hardest working folks I know, rural Americans earn, on average, $11,000 less than their urban counterparts each year. And they are more likely to live in poverty.
And sometimes people don't realize that 90 percent of the persistent poverty counties are located in rural America.
As covetousness is the root of all evil, so poverty is the worst of all snares.
I like crafts that come out of poverty or necessity. There used to be hobby shops where you'd get your supplies, and then you'd use your imagination.
Tax credits are designed to help people who work hard but who, through no fault of their own, don't earn enough to keep their families out of poverty.
The common base of all the Semitic creeds, winners or losers, was the ever present idea of world-worthlessness. Their profound reaction from matter led them to preach bareness, renunciation, poverty; and the atmosphere of this invention stifled the minds of the desert pitilessly.
Poverty is the mother of crime.
Criminality is always the result of poverty. Countries that experience such a fundamental change as we have - we had the apartheid regime and must now develop a multicultural democracy - must necessarily pass through a phase of high crime rates.
It seems far-fetched, even preposterous, to blame the global economic order for the persistence of severe poverty in countries that are ruled by obvious thugs and crooks.
Empowering small farmers to increase productivity, improve crop quality and access reliable markets is critical to addressing global hunger and poverty.
When I think how art education is eliminated whenever we get a budget crunch in the schools, I have to stand up and say that even when there was dire poverty ten blocks away from Tiffany Studios in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, there was art and creativity within.
The market economy is deeply congruent with the values set out in the Hebrew Bible. Material prosperity is a divine blessing. Poverty crushes the spirit as well as the body, and its alleviation is a sacred task. Work is a noble calling.
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of soul, impossible.
City Year resonated with me because when I grew up, we were poor - and an education is a way out of poverty. It's a way out of the current situation that can seem isolating and hopeless for some kids.
That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous.
