From a Nun on the Bus
B.B. King sings, “Nobody likes you but your mama and she may be jiving you too.” A lot of poor people may feel that way. They are stigmatized and demonized. If they’d only go away. What’s wrong with them? Can’t they find a job or a place to live? The persistence of poverty in the U.S., perhaps the richest country in history, is a national disgrace, a shanda as they say in Yiddish. Neoliberal economic policies have produced huge inequality. Who suffers the most? Children. Almost 15 million children were poor in 2015, with more than two-thirds in working families who toil away in our low-growth, low-wage economy. A disproportionate number are Black, Latino and Native American. There’s no money to alleviate poverty, we’re told. Are you kidding? There’s plenty of dough to enrich the imperial war machine.
Speaker
Simone Campbell
Simone Campbell is a Catholic nun and an attorney who lobbies in Washington on issues of economic justice, immigration reform, and healthcare. She belongs to the Sister of Social Service and is the executive director of the NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice. Campbell’s recent memoir is A Nun on the Bus.
Sarah Ells –
This was truely the first time I heard someone speak about the severity of what’s going on since the election, who actually knows what she’s talking about. She is also sincere, intelligent and has given me hope and a sense of reason, as well as a way to respond to being used, manipulated and forgotten by our leaders. I am not alone, it appears we are all connected by this rejection and the misery it is causing. Thank you so much sister.