Rethinking Poverty

by James P. Bailey

2010 · University of Notre Dame Pess

In Rethinking Poverty, James P. Bailey argues that most contemporary policies aimed at reducing poverty in the United States are flawed because they focus solely on insufficient income. Bailey argues that traditional policies such as minimum wage laws, food stamps, housing subsidies, earned income tax credits, and other forms of cash and non-cash income supports need to be complemented by efforts that enable the poor to save and accumulate assets. Drawing on Michael Sherraden’s work on asset building and scholarship by Melvin Oliver, Thomas Shapiro, and Dalton Conley on asset discrimination, Bailey presents us with a novel and promising way forward to combat persistent and morally unacceptable poverty in the United States and around the world. Rethinking Poverty makes use of a significant body of Catholic social teachings in its argument for an asset development strategy to reduce poverty. These Catholic teachings include, among others, principles of human dignity, the social nature of the person, the common good, and the preferential option for the poor. These principles and the related social analyses have not yet been brought to bear on the idea of asset-building for the poor by those working within the Catholic social justice tradition. This book redresses this shortcoming, and further, claims that a Catholic moral argument for asset-building for the poor can be complemented and enriched by Martha Nussbaum’s “capabilities approach.” This book will affect current debates and practical ways to reduce poverty, as well as the future direction of Catholic social teaching.

Here Comes a Wind

by Groesbeck Parham, Gwen Robinson, Jim Green, Sean Devereux, Carolyn Ashbaugh, Dan McCurry, Mike Krivosh, Jennifer Miller, Don Stillman, Melton McLaurin, Michael Thomason, James E. Youngdahl, Chip Hughes, Len Stanley, Clem Imhoff, Bill Becker, Bill Bishop, Tom Bethell, Elizabeth Tornquist, Ed McConville, Jim Grant, Fran Ansley, Sue Thrasher, David Ciscel, Tom Collins, Larry Rogins, Myles Horton, Higdon Roberts

Toward the end of 1931, the black dust was settling in the Harlan County, Kentucky, coal fields after one of the most bitterly fought labor struggles in our nation's history. The miners were beaten, their rank-and-file organization crushed. The epithet "Bloody Harlan" survived the day and remained a symbol for that battle and those that periodically erupted for the next half century. But the proper legacy of the Harlan wars, as the veteran Hobart Grills tells us, is not the chaotic violence but the spirit of steady resistance that smolders until the changing times fan the sparks into a new flame. During the long Depression era, the winds of change blew all across the South — from the coal fields of Appalachia to the tenant farms of Arkansas, from the cotton mills of Gastonia to the automobile factories of Atlanta. It was a period rich in the South's peculiar blend of semi-organized rebellion, individual courage, and rank-and-file militancy; but its lessons were omitted from the history books. To rectify that insult, Southern Exposure published a special book-length issue on the Depression, based largely on the oral testimonies of those who were the sparks for that era's struggles. Entitled "No More Moanin'," the collection — now near the end of its second printing — has been a popular source book in union halls, university classrooms, and informal study groups.