alabama possible from the alabama poverty project

Politicians’ impoverished backgrounds don’t help

By Lukata Mjumbe

Special to the Press-Register

Mobile Press-Register

October 14, 2007

Nowadays, many people like to justify speaking on behalf of poor people simply because they know some poor people or experienced poverty at some point in their yesterdays.

Tragically, something always seems to get lost in translation.

We at the Community Action Association of Alabama are encouraged by the initiative put forward by state Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, and House Speaker Seth Hammett, D-Andalusia, to create a House Task Force on Poverty. Our hope is that the Task Force can help shape the context for the creation of new partnerships, which will allow poor people to engage their legislators and effect real change in the state’s fledgling “war on poverty.”

However, a recent editorial in a major daily newspaper seemed to suggest that the Task Force on Poverty may be preparing to step forward with some faulty assumptions.

In suggesting that, because of the involvement of groups such as Alabama Arise and the Alabama Poverty Project, it has more data than it needs, the task force may be making a serious error.

I am reminded of a jewel of wisdom shared by state Sen. Bobby Denton at a community action meeting this summer. He said, “Politicians always try to ‘out poor’ each other, but sometimes we leave poor people out.” He was right.

Any effort at eliminating poverty that does not include poor people themselves is doomed to fail. Politicians and middle-class think tanks, by themselves, will never fashion real solutions for poverty in our state.

What most frequently gets lost within the perennial task forces and the committees is the urgency of the need for real victory – yesterday.

The elimination of poverty is larger than the recycling of data, the simple pas- sage of a bill or the changing of a policy that may take years to be fully implemented.

Even as anti-poverty advocates who may have grown up poor, we must confess that history and experience are not sufficient to enable us to always adequately communicate the perspective, wants and needs of poor people today.

When you are merely “historically poor,” the promise of incremental change means a lot more to you than it does to a family that has to remain in poverty while they wait for the so-called “progress” to actually kick in.

Only the poor can translate poverty data into an agenda that resonates with the greatest sense of clarity. When you are stressed-out, right now, about eating well, paying on your utility bill arrangements by Friday or going to court next week without a lawyer, your priorities may look a little different than the classic “anti-poverty agendas” that are promoted year after year.

For more than 40 years, community action agencies have been fighting poverty through the delivery of programs and initiatives designed to promote self- sufficiency. Our work is rooted in a fundamental truth: Poor people working in partnership with the public and private sectors are the best equipped to produce results.

Every one of the 22 community action agencies fighting poverty in all 67 Alabama counties is governed by a board of directors which includes poor people as full partners.

When poor people speak for themselves, only then do we have the capacity to “speak truth to power” and ensure that the most legitimate anti-poverty message of transformation does not get lost in translation.

Lukata Mjumbe is executive director of the Community Action Association of Alabama. His e-mail address is lmjumbe@caaalabama.org.