Fired up about poverty

By charles sheketoff

The Forest Grove News-Times, Dec 11, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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The morning after last month’s election, I watched a video of Barack Obama telling how, on a rainy morning last June, Edith Childs of Greenwood, South Carolina, energized a room full of people with her chant, "Fired up! Ready to go!"

The chant became a signature of the Obama campaign.

With the chant still echoing in my head, I turned to a blog post by an advocate I’ve admired for years, John Bouman, president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law.

Noting that “the State of Poverty is America’s most populated state – 37 million people,” the Shriver Center recommended a 12-point plan to confront poverty.

In reading over the Shriver Center plan, I realized how relevant it is not just to the new Obama administration but also to the new Oregon legislature.

About one in eight Oregonians today lives below the federal poverty line, the same share as 40 years ago. If assembled in one place, Oregon’s poor would comprise the state’s second largest city, bigger than Eugene and Salem combined.

Those numbers may seem depressing, but the Shriver Center’s plan got me fired up and ready to go.

Here’s the center’s 12-point plan and the steps Oregon’s 2009 legislature can take to tackle each of them head on:

Strengthen civil rights: Improving access to lawyers for our poor would help strengthen the legal foundation for civil rights and racial justice.

Establish affordable quality healthcare for all: The legislature should breathe life back into the Oregon Health Plan so that it can get closer to its goal of coverage for all working poor adults.

Add to that expanding coverage to all Oregon children and we would be making progress toward affordable health coverage for all.

Ensure economic safety for workers: Oregon’s unemployment insurance system needs to be brought into the 21st century by adding coverage for part-time and contingent workers. We also need to enact paid sick leave and family leave insurance.

Boost revenues: The state’s revenue shortfall threatens critical public structures. This revenue problem must be met with a revenue solution, not cuts to vital public services.

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