This Week in Poverty: The Philly Alliance

http://www.thenation.com/blog/167711/week-poverty-philly-alliance


Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane is devoting a full hour to poverty this morning at 10:00, and I have the pleasure of being one of her three guests. So just a quick post on the excellent conference I’m attending this week in Philadelphia—I’ll write more about it over the weekend or early next week.



The promise of Beyond Hunger: Real People, Real Solutions was that it wouldn’t be a gathering of just the usual suspects—academics, advocates, government people, journalists, etc. Sure, that crowd would be there with very important contributions, but really this conference would include and largely be led by “the true experts—those who know hunger and poverty first hand.”



It’s lived up to that billing.



Out of 350 participants, one-third are people for whom poverty and hunger are not abstract; it’s their struggle. They have traveled here from as far as San Diego and Sacramento, Denver, Oklahoma, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Nebraska, Texas, and from up and down the east coast. They were able to do that because people who could afford it paid just a little more than one might typically pay to attend a conference—so that scholarships could be provided. (A novel idea these days—those who can afford it paying a little more so that others might have better opportunities.)



Dr. Mariana Chilton, director of Center for Hunger Free Communities at Drexel University which hosted the event, set a high bar for the gathering: “We aspire to create strong friendships, alliances and collaborations that break down the usual boundaries between us.”