There really isn’t a middle class in America anymore. We have the working class, and we have the rich. I knew I’d have to convince both groups to abolish poverty. Thanks to my years of investing and working for elite institutions, I knew a lot of very rich people. Most ignored my calls. A few special ones answered. They listened to my proposal, and after about an hour or so of conversation, I could see I got them thinking. They’d come back a few days later with a list of questions, and we’d talk a bit more. After two or three discussions, I typically had them convinced that the proposal made sense, but they’d still have their doubts about my ability to get politicians onboard. The most interesting part was that it didn’t matter whether the person identified as a Republican or Democrat. It didn’t matter whether they cared mostly about ending poverty or saving taxpayers trillions of dollars. I had to cut through their preconceived notions—the same notions I had when I began this work—but those with open minds kept coming to the same conclusion: we could really do this. Next, I started reaching out to more working-class Americans.4 I couldn’t believe what happened—they understood the proposal within 4 The term “working class” is interesting to me. It’s really just a euphemism for poor people. According to Wikipedia, it’s a general term used by economists and pollsters to refer to people who don’t have college degrees, but it begs the question, who isn’t working? The answer is a very small number of very wealthy individuals.
ten minutes. I guess I’d been surrounded by so-called elites for so long, I’d started buying into the idea that education was somehow correlated with intelligence. While the working-class friends and family I spoke with may not have been able to reference a particular study or economist, they understood poverty. When you’re part of the working class, you’re always just an accident away from poverty. You know plenty of people who’ve had it happen to them, or maybe it’s something you’ve gone through yourself. Those people would walk away from the conversation saying, “Sure, this makes sense, but you’ll never get the rich to go along with it.” Finally, I thought about those I’d seen on Skid Row. They’d benefit most from the proposal. What would they think? I grew up poor, but we were never homeless. Anyone who’s grown up in poverty knows that there are levels to being poor. We were food stamp poor, not welfare poor. We had to stay with relatives from time to time, but we always had a place to stay. Homelessness was something I couldn’t relate to. In the same way that the rich never thought about people like me, I never thought about the perpetually unhoused. I pretended not to see them, just like everyone else. It was time for that to change. I let go of my fears and started going to encampments and shelters to speak with the poorest Americans. I asked them about their lives and their thoughts about my proposal. Once again, I saw how prejudiced my beliefs were. The conversations never lasted longer than one minute. I wasn’t telling them anything new. They understood how inefficient and dehumanizing our welfare systems are. They’d seen people killed in shelters. They waited for hours in the rain, hoping for there to be enough food left when their turn came. They’d tried and failed to get jobs because they had no address or couldn’t get access to a shower. They’d been arrested for sleeping outside, then told they couldn’t get work because they’d been arrested. I hated myself during these conversations. I’d thought about poverty my entire life and always considered myself to be an advocate for the
CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 93 disadvantaged. But the poorest people in my own country had been invisible to me. I realized I knew nothing about their struggles, their joy, their fight. I’d ignored the problems that were not mine. I only ever thought about people living on the street when they were in my neighborhood. I talked about “fixing” the homeless problem instead of discussing people in need of help. I spent countless hours speaking with people and hearing their stories. We shared meals, hugs, tears, ideas, and laughs. I finally saw them. And in doing so, I was able to let go of some of my prejudice against the wealthy. I, unfortunately, could relate to simply not seeing someone’s struggle because it was more convenient for me not to see. But if I can make that transformation, the world’s rich can as well. Getting this proposal made into law is only going to be the first step. For us to reach our true potential as a society, we must learn to see every human. I forgave myself for not seeing. Moving forward, I promised to be a light for others. I saw a vision for how to get the bill passed, but I knew it would be an uphill battle. After I’d talked to enough people to have a good sense of the proposal’s viability, I knew it was time to start raising awareness across the country. A lot of people don’t realize that it’s possible to end poverty and that we could do a better job distributing the money being spent in this country. Consider that we could’ve ended poverty in this country for the next thirty-five years using the money our government has spent on COVID stimulus funding alone, and that’s not taking into consideration the trillions of dollars in tax savings we would’ve seen, too. I began to plan a cross-country tour. I wanted to get people talking about the proposal, and to encourage debate because debate is healthy and important for democracy. I wanted people to understand how the Seed Money Act could benefit every individual in the country, as well as our society overall. I wanted people to ask their government representatives to support the proposal and use their votes to help eradicate poverty in our country.
The most important thing that you can do in a democracy is get involved. We have a right to tell our politicians that we don’t want to have poverty in this country, and we can use our vote and our voice to make them listen. I knew the stops on the tour would have to match the demographics of poverty in America. When most people think about poverty in this country, they think it’s centralized in the urban areas. In fact, there’s more poverty in the rural areas, and another lesser-known fact is that more than half of the poor people in the US are white Americans. I sat at my computer and pulled up a list of every zip code in the country. I began sorting them by income. Next, I opened another tab and broke down the poverty demographics using categories such as ethnicity, urban vs. rural, political affiliation, etc. From this, I put together a list of thirty-six of the poorest places in America. I made sure the final list matched the overall poverty demographics of America. I then found a crew of activist filmmakers willing to spend two months driving across America with me, going to the places we’re all told are too dangerous or too poor to visit. For any real social change to happen, I knew we’d have to start at the grassroots. I started reaching out to churches, schools, local governments, shelters, food pantries, individual activists, and everyday citizens in the poorest parts of the country. My intention was to build a coalition of all who are already fighting the fight against poverty on a daily basis. I didn’t care about their political views, skin color, or religion. If they cared about finding a way to help those who have the least, I wanted to meet them. Hamilton, Montana “What’s the economic situation here like?” I asked. “This is a Republican town,” was the only reply. I was standing inside a coffee shop. Hamilton is a part of the Bitterroot Valley, an area known as a hotbed for armed right-wing extremists. I didn’t find the gentleman responding to be rude or confusing. He
CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 95 was simply saying the quiet part out loud. America has a deeply rooted history of racism. He was politely letting me know that my skin color could get me into trouble in that part of the country. I was aware. There’s nothing all that special about American racism. I’ve seen versions of it all over the world in my international development work. Racism is a microcosm of imperialism. Whenever a society decides to become an empire and ruler over lots of people, they must come up with systems of oppression. It takes too much time and energy to keep people down with constant violence, so you need to control their minds. The first step is always to divide and conquer. Humans are tribalistic creatures, so it’s very easy to get them to dislike each other based on arbitrary differences. If you randomly divide a room into an orange team and a yellow team, people will swear by God that their team is, without question, the best at every single activity—just because that’s their team. With imperialism, you need to take that tribal energy and turn it into murderous warfare. You take a small group and elevate them to an elite status. Select any common features, real or not, and say the best people have these features. It can be height, nose shape, skin color, anything. From there, you group and rank all of society. To make it all stable, you put a small minority at the bottom. That bottom group is volatile because they have no one to look down upon and will feel the heavy burden of the system of oppression. They’ll become the society’s scapegoats. If they’re too large in numbers, they’ll revolt and topple the system. If you can split this group so a small minority of them is at the bottom, but the majority is slightly above the bottom, that majority will maintain the system out of fear that in a new system, they might be on the ultimate bottom. Although the system is designed to oppress nearly everyone, most won’t see it that way. “At least we’re not those disgusting creatures on the bottom!” In the colonial United States, the system of hierarchy was originally quite complex. Most of the rankings from the Old World were brought over, dividing people based on their country of origin (e.g., Irish people
were considered inferior to the British people), the caste they belonged to within their country of origin, their religion, and so on. There were varying levels of slavery and servitude. You couldn’t just look at someone or hear their accent to know where they belonged in society because there was so much diversity. That was a problem for the system of oppression. In a multi-cultural society where land was so abundant, it was difficult to keep large percentages of the population in servitude. If a slave or indentured servant ran away, they could find land elsewhere with relative ease and start farming for themselves. To solve this problem, the British came up with a great new idea: race. After Bacon’s rebellion, which took place in the latter half of the seventeenth century, the British instructed the Governor of the Virginia colony to implement a system of racial control. Anyone of African descent would be considered black and on the absolute bottom of society, while anyone of European descent would be considered white. Native Americans would sit between the two groups. Given the small number of those of African descent, the system was a good one for oppression. It stabilized the system as white indentured servants saw themselves lifted from the bottom and had a reason to endorse the hierarchy. They remained extremely poor and mistreated, but hey, at least they weren’t black. These poor Europeans were then armed and hired to ensure that anyone of African descent remained a slave. That was the early beginnings of the American militia, which later morphed into the police force, the Ku Klux Klan, and other groups of racial oppression. Knowing this history, I understood what the gentleman at the coffee shop meant. This region was full of armed militiamen who were angry that the centuries-old system of racial hierarchy and oppression no longer seemed to be working in their favor. It’s why they continue to rally and meet to discuss ways of bringing back the “good ole days.” People who are poor have been systematically exploited and manipulated because they’re divided on issues like race, religion, and
CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 97 political affiliation. It’s easy to understand how they might be swayed by fear-based rhetoric from political leaders promising to help them regain what they believe they’ve lost. They’re convinced to buy into the very systems and people that want to keep them at the bottom of our society. Hamilton is one of the poorest parts of Montana, with about one-fifth of the people living in poverty. There’s understandable anger and frustration. Unfortunately, there’s also a lack of education and opportunities. That makes the area ripe for radicalism. Most people in Hamilton, and Montana in general, aren’t racist extremists. But the poorer the area, the more likely you are to find those characteristics. Generations ago, their families were promised a guaranteed handout based on their skin color, and now it seems that promise will never be fulfilled. The system has betrayed them, and their response is to fight with every bit of strength to keep someone—anyone—beneath them. What I hope to help people understand is that there’s a better way. In a world of plenty, no one needs to be stomped on, starved, and forced to work. We can still have an oppressive social hierarchy if that’s what people want, but we can make life more bearable for those living on the bottom rung. We can ensure everyone, regardless of skin color, religion, intelligence, height, or whatever other differentiating characteristic you can come up with, has access to basic food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. In doing so, we can inject capital into places like Hamilton, Montana so people can begin to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” We cannot look down on people who are from poor communities if we want to end poverty. Regardless of their belief systems, their children deserve to eat just as much as anyone else’s does. Most humans just want to feel safe, feed their children, and know their family has a chance to live their lives with dignity. That’s true for Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. When we tell the poor that they can’t have those things because the “niggers and immigrants” want to take it all away, they get scared and respond accordingly. We must stop
hating people who are manipulated in this way, and ask ourselves, why are we allowing people to sow the seeds of hate in the first place? Why are we comfortable leaving poor white Americans behind, only speaking to them once every four years when we’re competing for their vote? Until we address the underlying poverty in rural white America, the result will remain a bitter root. Watts, California The poverty in Watts is disturbing. Just like in Hamilton, Montana, it’s turned extreme and violent. “Do you know where you are?” an older gentleman asked me. I did. Having grown up in and around areas like that, I knew what he was asking me. Imperial Courts, Nickerson Gardens, and Jordan Downs are housing projects in Watts, and they make up the poorest district in Los Angeles. Children in those communities can’t walk freely down the street out of fear of gang violence. There’s trash all over the place, and a general sense of stress, fear, and anxiety in the air. “I’m here with the Watts Empowerment Center,” I replied. He nodded approvingly. Poor communities in Los Angeles have been blasted for their senseless violence and gang activity for decades. We’ve seen countless movies depicting the horrors of life in places like those. We describe the people and the communities as ‘hopeless.’ I spoke with community members who didn’t believe that narrative. They understood that if you told kids they were nothing and that there was no hope, they behaved accordingly. If you showed them love, you could make a difference. Radicalizing poor black children is no different than radicalizing poor white children. When people have nothing, it’s easy to convince them that another group of poor people are the problem. No jobs, plus lots of guns with a perceived enemy in close proximity is going to lead to violent outcomes.
CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 99 “My mission was to come back and save a few of the youth.” That was what Justin Mayo, founder of the Watts Empowerment Center, told me when I met with him. When asked about his goals for the Center, his response was immediate. “The first thing that comes out is all the negativity. You hear about the violence, but I’m here to empower. That’s why I call it the Empowerment Center. I want every kid that walks in that door to have a story.” Community members in Watts have banded together to make a difference. Among the Center’s many notable initiatives is their weekly farmer’s market. People line up for hours before the market opens each week in hopes of accessing some of the healthy food it offers. In an economy where food scarcity is no longer an issue, the fact that millions of Americans still struggle to access food speaks volumes about our society’s values. Growing up in a poor neighborhood in Indianapolis, I never went to a farmer’s market. Such things didn’t exist where I lived. We ate peas and carrots that came out of cans because it was cheaper than the fresh stuff sold in stores. The first time I ever went to one was in Ghana. I remember being amazed by the variety of colorful produce that cost so little to buy. When I finally saw a farmer’s market back in the US, I couldn’t believe how expensive everything was. It seemed backward that it would be more expensive to buy food at a farmer’s market than at a grocery store. It also makes you wonder why wholesome, healthy food is so expensive in this country, while foods that are processed, laden with sugar, salt, and chemicals are so cheap. The Center’s website highlights some disturbing statistics, and yet the community of Watts has fought to sign gang truces, established a weekly food pantry, launched a community business accelerator, and even raised funds to send a brilliant young man, whose mother is working three jobs to make ends meet, to college for free. They’ve gotten the attention of celebrities and been featured on the Kardashians, which raised the Center’s profile and helped with its
fundraising and outreach initiatives. We didn’t have access to that kind of resource growing up. Most of the poor communities in US cities we visited still have nothing close to what’s happening at the Watts Empowerment Center, and that’s the problem. Aristotle said that “poverty is the parent of crime and revolution.” We must stop pretending like anything other than jobs and financial inclusion will save our inner cities. Putting more people in cages won’t solve this crisis. When people are dirt poor, with no options, bad things happen. Putting poor working people in jail not only punishes the offender but negatively affects the offender’s family and community. When you understand the roots of the incarceration system, it’s easier to understand the prejudice suffered by poor people within the system. Rather than punishing already marginalized people, we need to reframe how we look at marginalized people within the justice system. The same pain I felt for the people of Hamilton, I felt for the people of Watts. I saw individuals trying to hold onto hope and pride in their communities and in themselves. I saw people waving flags to show how tough they were, how resilient. In both places, I saw the poor suffering and crying for help. Our nation has failed the people from both of those towns. We continue the pointless game of pitting the poor against one another, wasting trillions of dollars in the process. Our country becomes less stable, our streets unsafe, and our democracy is put at risk. Poverty is ugly. In a nation where those without money get tossed aside, ridiculed, humiliated, and stripped of their dignity, you can expect that group of people to become violent, contrarian, unruly, and eventually, radical revolutionaries. Instead of giving people hope, we’re giving them guns and liquor. We’re creating terrorism in our own backyards all because we won’t move on from the false notion that people are poor and uneducated because they’re somehow ‘lesser humans.’ In capitalism, people are poor
CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 101 because they don’t have capital. Give everyone a little money and watch these problems melt away. We don’t need complete equality; we just need to give people a sliver of hope. Otherwise, those we oppress the most will eventually burn the whole thing down. Pine Ridge Indian Reservation “You won’t be back,” she sighed. “Everyone wants to come here and film, but no one ever helps.” I was talking to a young woman who lived on the Reservation in South Dakota. The genocide that occurred in the Americas is the worst thing that’s ever happened in human history. In less than a century, nearly fifty million people were wiped off the face of the planet. Entire civilizations were intentionally destroyed with disease, war, and famine. For the Native Americans who survived the initial genocide, the following four hundred years wouldn’t go all that much better. Their lands were snatched away from them in violated treaty after violated treaty. Their people were slaughtered, raped, and subjected to unimaginable horrors such as the Trail of Tears5 and the Wounded Knee Massacre6. “It’s dangerous in Pine Ridge,” we were told by outsiders. The same false narrative arises again and again. We take a group of people and subject them to centuries of abuse. We systematically destroy their culture and community and rob them of any real opportunity. We set their world on fire, then ask as they wail and scream, “What’s wrong with them?” “We were nomadic people, and now we’re forced to live on reservations.” Having lived her entire life on the reservation, she’d finally had enough of the injustices and was preparing to move on. “We have thin soil and destructive hailstorms. So how do we survive?” In the past, the tribe would have moved further south during these winter months. Now, that isn’t an option. With a poverty rate of nearly fifty-four percent, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is one of the poorest places in North 5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_Tears 6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre
America. With no jobs, poor soil, and no hope, depression is rampant on the reservation. Life expectancy in Pine Ridge is the lowest in all of North America, with a Lakota man expected to live fifteen to twenty years less than someone living a hundred miles away. The only way to survive is to live off government programs. “When you live here, you’re at the mercy of the government.” In areas of high destitution, government programs breed dependency. But people don’t need programs, they need money. The Seed Money Act could radically transform a place like Pine Ridge. It’s virtually impossible to start a business in an area where everyone is this poor. An injection of capital would nearly double the local gross domestic product. Once again, I saw a community that had been forgotten and left for dead. But they hadn’t given up on themselves. Everywhere I looked there were examples of people trying to improve their situations and raise up their community. They were building vocational schools to train young people, had started community gardens to finally bring fresh produce to the reservation, and were bringing back traditional language and history into their classrooms. All they needed was a little funding to move things along. I grew up in a place called Indiana, and as a kid I’d never met an indigenous person. Where I grew up, all the poorest people were black. And when I watched TV, I saw the same. We’ve wiped Native Americans out of the narrative altogether. When I walked around Pine Ridge and talked to people, their issues were all too familiar. We can racialize it all we want, but the truth remains that we have a poverty problem in America, not a race problem. If someone doesn’t like me because of my beliefs or my skin color, I can live with that. But when someone creates a system to force me to live a life of servitude simply because I was born with less, that’s unacceptable. We’re not going to be able to unwind the centuries of race-based hate in this country overnight. But we can eliminate the very source of that hateful energy: poverty. If we wipe out poverty across the country, we
CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 103 give every community a chance to begin building a brighter future. We need to shift the energy away from pulling down other communities and start directing it toward building up our own. We don’t all need to get along. We just have to get out of each other’s way. I plan to return to Pine Ridge, but not as some kind of savior. I don’t know the area, I don’t know the culture, and I don’t know the people. It’s the people of Pine Ridge that know how to solve their own problems. My job is to find a way to get them the resources to do it. I know they can. When I go back to Pine Ridge, I’ll do so to see what happens when, instead of bureaucratic government programs, we give them seed money and freedom. Rexburg, Idaho Few Americans are poorer than college students. Rexburg is a beautiful mountain town with clean air, luscious green landscapes, and a forty-three percent poverty rate. I split my time there between talking with students and local families that are often low-paid employees at the school. Initially, many of the students expressed the typical concerns about helping the poor. “My only concern is that people given this opportunity won’t use the money to get themselves out of poverty,” was the most common response. “Do you have any wealthy friends here?” I asked the group. “Sure. Of course.” “Are any of them wasteful with money?” I continued. “Absolutely.” “Are any of them starving to death?” “No.” “Are any of them homeless?” “No, not at all.” They started to see that no one deserves to be poor. People across all income levels make mistakes. That’s a part of being human. But when
you have nothing, the effects of your mistakes are magnified. Why are the wealthy allowed to make mistakes but the poor aren’t? I’ve seen people make terrible financial decisions from every economic class. But when someone is starving, I’ve yet to see someone get handed money that didn’t then immediately go purchase food. We demonize the poor for any crutch they may have that helps them cope with the incredible pressures of poverty. We pretend that it’s the alcohol that causes their poverty, and not the other way around. You see wealthy people with drug addictions. You see wealthy people lose their jobs. But you never see wealthy people living on the streets. Humans are flawed. Those flaws don’t mean that someone deserves to starve. “What would you do with the money?” I asked one family. “Probably make a better life for her,” the mother answered, pointing to her daughter. “There ain’t much here in terms of jobs, so that would really change things for us. A place would rather hire college kids than locals,” she added. “It’s hard to get a job around here.” It was nearly impossible for the students to empathize with this mother. Their worlds are too different. “When someone needs help, they should turn to their family first,” said one local professor. But what if that family has no money? We may understand that people need help, but we must also understand that when an entire community is poor, and they don’t have the freedom to just start farming empty land, they’ll need some help to get going. I shifted the conversation to what they could understand: themselves. “If you ignore everyone else, what would this money do for you?” I asked. “As a father and a husband going full-time to school, I don’t have a chance to work,” one student told me. Once they were able to work through some of these classist tropes, the students were able to shift their thinking. We have a hard time thinking about helping other groups in this country because we see them as undeserving and lesser. But when it comes to ourselves, we’re gentler and more forgiving of our circumstances.
CHAPTER 8: ISM SCHISM | 105 “It would be great to eat some better food other than top ramen or mac and cheese every other day,” admitted another student. “I’m already deep in debt, and I want to go to physical therapy school, which means more debt. This would help me avoid taking on so many loans.” Our tribalism stops us from realizing obvious truths. Americans are trying hard to improve their lives. We should give them a helping hand. Helping one another is a good thing. If a student in college has a little money in their pockets, they don’t suddenly drop out of class. Instead, they can attend lectures more consistently and are less likely to have to quit school to get a job. When a struggling family receives a little extra cash, they typically spend it on their children’s futures. “That money would be an opportunity for us to reduce the anxiety of either getting into debt or losing every bit of life savings we have. It would be a chance to grow.” Our fear and hatred of one another is pulling everyone down. Those students were initially ready to shoot down my seed money idea because they thought it was going to help a group they believed to be deserving of poverty, even though they themselves would be major beneficiaries of the grants. The conversations brought to mind an old Hebraic parable I once read about a man who wasn’t getting along with his neighbor. God told the man he must learn to be happy for his neighbor’s blessings. In the story, God offered to grant the man anything he wished for but said whatever the man received, his neighbor would receive twice as much. The man asked for several things and saw his neighbor blessed with twice as much each time, and rather than being grateful for his own blessings, the man was unhappy that his neighbor received more. So, the man asked God to take out one of his eyes. My job is to show people how they, as individuals, will benefit from a world without poverty because, unfortunately, we often feel hateful and fearful of our neighbors. So many of us cannot see that the thing we should despise is poverty, not our neighbors or some vulnerable minority sub-group in our society. I want people to understand how eliminating
poverty will lower our tax bills, reduce violent crime, protect our property from theft and vandalism, eliminate homelessness and the associated filth in our streets, reduce healthcare costs, and wipe out hunger. There’s something in it for everyone because each of us is better off when no one is desperately poor. Luckily, the students in Rexburg were more than willing to engage in a respectful discussion. They shared their views and were open to hearing mine. We all walked away having learned something new and proved that we’re not like the man in the parable. With constructive dialogue, we can find solutions to our nation’s problems. “I feel like, as a people, we’ve lost the opportunity to bring forward an idea that’s awesome, you know? To give everyone the opportunity to change their lives,” concluded the student-father. His open-mindedness and willingness to adapt based on his evolving perspective challenged this gloomy thought, and that gave me hope.