Denver
At the DNC's Faith in Action Panel, Rev. Jennifer Kottler of the Living Wage Coalition said that poverty, "like slavery more than a certury ago," is a "stain" on our nation. But this stain is much darker and deeper than most know.
"Before you think poverty is only about poor people--think again," she told the crowd a couple hundred at the Colorado Convention Center. According to Rev. Kottler, there are four types of poverty. There's "income poverty"--people living below the official federal poverty level. Then there's "extreme poverty"--those who make less than half the poverty level. And there are the "working poor"--those making 100 to 200 percent above the poverty level.
But the forgotten poor are those suffering from "asset poverty"--individuals "at any income level who live paycheck to paycheck" and could not subsist at the poverty level for 3 months without a job (emphasis mine). Rev. Kottler cited the plight of her niece and her boyfriend--who have bachelors degrees and masters degrees and work for non-profit groups--as an example of those suffering from asset poverty. "Even pooling their resources, they're having a tough time making it by."
And Kottler reminds us that poverty is a central issue for religious voters. She said, "if you cut out all the parts about poverty" in the Bible "there's not much left."
