We all have a stake in fight against poverty

By Cory Booker

Friday, Oct. 18, 2019 | 2 a.m.

My dad was born poor in a small, segregated town in the mountains of North Carolina to a family that couldn’t care for him.

A local family took him in and put a roof over his head, and later, members of the community helped pay tuition for his first semester of college. They opened doors that he never even knew existed: He got a good job and worked hard, and moved his family from poverty to the middle class within the span of a single generation.

But the extraordinary generosity of one community cannot, and should not, be the only pathway out of poverty. Our nation’s history, imperfect as it may be, has made great progress toward ending poverty. From King to Kennedy, from Roosevelt to LBJ, leaders have called to our collective conscience and spurred action. It is that tradition that gave us Social Security, Medicare, nutrition assistance and so much more.

I had the privilege of meeting some incredible children and young leaders in Las Vegas this month at the Nevada Youth Network. During a conversation about the impact of everyday gun violence in communities of color, I got a question from Futuma Mahamed, a student at Western Prep Middle School, about how to keep students safe at school when they are often faced with limited resources. Without knowing, she was able to depict the reality that children in low-income communities experience and demonstrate the intersectionality of these issues.

We know that while genius is spread equally across ZIP codes, opportunity is not. In Nevada, nearly one in five children are living in poverty. These kids face a fundamental injustice from the very start; growing up without enough income to afford the basics is linked to problems with brain development, lower educational attainment, reduced long-term earnings, worse health outcomes and greater likelihood of interacting with the criminal justice system. Eliminating poverty isn’t just a moral calling; we all lose when not everyone can participate in our economic growth. Our children will be the leaders of the future and the workforce powering the global economy.

Issues of child poverty have been almost entirely absent from the campaign trail, despite the moral and economic imperative to act. We could reduce childhood poverty by two-thirds by vastly expanding the child tax credit and increasing funding for SNAP and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program — measures I support as part of my plan to end childhood poverty. Doing so would strengthen the federal safety net and help cover the basics like food, housing and diapers. And we need to ensure federal programs and services meet families where they are by breaking down barriers to access. That means in places like Nevada, we can ensure all kids can benefit from public services, regardless of their families’ immigration status. And that we decriminalize poverty and give a fair shot to kids with parents who are incarcerated or justice-involved.

But don’t just take it from me. Listen to the children, talk to their teachers, their parents and you’ll see — we are failing an entire generation if we don’t tackle this head on. Children in Nevada and across the country, no matter what their ZIP code, from rural to urban communities, deserve an opportunity to succeed. Futuma and her classmates deserve to show the world everything they have to offer, and we should do everything we can to fight for their future.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is a Democratic candidate for president.