An Evening with Matthew Desmond and Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta: Poverty, By America

The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages?
On Wednesday, March 22, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond joined a record-breaking crowd at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore for a discussion of his new book: POVERTY, BY AMERICA. Desmond was joined in conversation with PA State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta.
Signed copies of the book can be purchased here, while supplies last: www.midtownsch...
In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow.
Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom.
About the Speakers:
Matthew Desmond is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and the founding director of the Eviction Lab. His last book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, among others. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Desmond is also a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.
Malcolm Kenyatta was elected to serve as state representative for the 181st Legislative District, Philadelphia County, in 2018. He is a product of Philadelphia public schools and a graduate of Temple University and Harvard Kennedy School’s Senior Executives in State and Local Government. He recently earned a Master of Science in Strategic Communication from Drexel University. He currently serves as vice chair of the Philadelphia House Delegation and as a member of the Governor’s Taskforce on Suicide Prevention and holds a host of committee leadership positions. As the first openly LGBTQ person of color and one of the youngest members elected to the PA General Assembly, he is deeply committed to creating an equitable and inclusive society.
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[@kimwilliams388]

Desmond is telling the truth.

[@Praisethesunson]

Poverty exists as a tool of the rich to extract the most money possible out of the rest of us.

[@averayugen7802]

why? cause the rich are so fulfilled and want it even better? But "it" doesn't "work" that way. I say poverty itself is something that can be MANIPULATED because the rich seem to need to escape their inner impoverishment. But maybe they don't have the right to escape it. Paradigm change if it happens...