Declare war on city’s poverty

Declare war on city’s poverty

Concentrated poverty in Greater Youngstown is officially higher than in any other major metropolitan area in this nation, one allegedly under God.

This ugly fact is a moral outrage, one that should shock or shame us all to call for an immediate revitalization of the War on Poverty. After all, poverty is a form of terrorism and its most common victims are children, nearly 7,000 of whom struggle to survive within grinding poverty in Youngstown each day. Youngstown’s childhood poverty stands at 54.7 percent, an obscene rate which is even higher than the poverty rate for the capital of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

America, by contrast, is the richest country on earth and there are absolutely no good reasons for our perniciously and persistently high childhood poverty rates. Childhood poverty is directly correlated with poorer health, shorter life, greater stress, higher insecurity and lower education. That translates into trillions of dollars of lost productivity over a lifetime from the millions of American children subjected to this colossal social sin. Poverty is suffocating our economy as well as the lives of countless children, thousands of them in the Mahoning Valley.

Abolition of childhood poverty in America in the 21st century is as much of an economic necessity and moral imperative as was abolition of chattel slavery in 19th century America. Let this new abolitionist movement begin in the Mahoning Valley.

Werner Lange, Newton Falls