Sasha's book not only takes the lid off the fundamental sinkhole of the US economy - the 99% are sinking to lower and lower income levels as the rich take the cream off the top ever more skillfully - by traveling across America to interview and report on individual cases, and then moves ahead of the news by suggesting solutions to this decline and fall. ========================================================================================== Fifty years after Michael Harrington published his groundbreaking book The Other America, in which he chronicled the lives of people excluded from the Age of Affluence, poverty in America is back with a vengeance. It is made up of both the long-term chronically poor and the new working poor—tens of millions of people, their lives shaped by financial insecurity, paying the price for a fractured economy and an ever more dysfunctional political system. In his new book, The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives, Sasha Abramsky brings the effects of economic inequality out of the shadows and, ultimately, suggests ways for moving toward a more economically just social contract. Exploring everything from housing policy to wage protections and affordable higher education, Abramsky explores pragmatic and imaginative solutions that, taken as a whole, amount to a blueprint for a reinvigorated War on Poverty and a reimagined sense of community. Learn More: Rights & Justice, United States, Education & Youth in the United States, Governance & Accountability in the United States The American Way of Poverty (video) Sasha Abramsky and Bob Herbert discuss Abramsky's new book, The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives. The book explores stories of people struggling to survive the country's rising economic inequality. Open Society Foundations–New York Date: September 12, 2013 Time: 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Location Open Society Foundations–New York 224 West 57th Street New York, New York 10019 212-548-0600 Speakers: Sasha Abramsky and Bob Herbert Sponsored by U.S. Programs In Partnership with Demos Signed up on Web/ in the probably vain hope that the filmmaker has any clue as to the real problem and what might be done about it, just as Robert Reich's Inequality for All presented no way forward other than to rouse a grass roots movement globally. Demos Sep 12 6pm Video: Web sites: The Voice of Poverty Sasha Abramsky Twitter: @voicesofpoverty =============================================================== HOW IT TURNED OUT Demos held this event at Open Society Foundations, a building which George Soros has taken over on the South side of 57 Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue, and packed with his many enlightened foundations. As a result the "hors d'oeuvre" laid out before and still there after the meeting were exceptionally high quality - sticks of tender beef with dark red sauce, tender chicken on sticks with golden mustard sauce, an array of tiny quiches with exquisitely soft yet firm pastry shells, teensie egg rolls, soft crab balls, and so on. All of this complemented an array of soda cans, spritzer and white wine, an ideal if ironic setting for a discussion of a book on how almost everyone in America is sinking towards poverty, with 48 million Americans having reached that official status including a fifth of the children in this great nation. The American Way of Poverty: How The Other Half Still Lives (Penguin) is well written by Sasha Abramsky, a lively young bearded English writer who emigrated to California, and now has a fellowship at Demos. Are the English more sensitive to American poverty than we are? His origin reminded us of the memorable sequence in Julie Christie's first and greatest film, Darling, in which an auction dinner held in London for the poor in some African country featured a jewelry laden matron dipping her tidbit into sauce with fat, multi ringed fingers while the bidding proceeded to save the starving blacks 3000 miles away, a bit of savage irony also set off by small black pages in white turbans who stood by to attend to every public (and possibly private, it was hinted) need of the guests. Despite the rainstorm which had begun outside the large presentation hall on the first (ground) floor was packed with obviously enlightened faces professionally and personally concerned for the plight of the poor, including many charming young women graduate students and foundation workers, none of whom showed any sign of being mired in poverty, though Manhattan rents being sky high after three terms of Mayor Bloomberg, presumably they may well be struggling for all one knows. Introducing the author and serving him up a series of friendly questions was none other than ex New York Timesman Bob Herbert, who also found refuge at the increasingly influential liberal think tank Demos after leaving the Times, where his perceptive analysis of economic injustice shone brightly in their columnist lineup for years. Talking to Bob before the proceedings started was Miles Rapoport, head of Demos, who stated that Demos name recognition was higher than ever before now. Wasn't greed the basic problem he faced, we asked, having in mind that the rich plundering the economy and holding politicians in thrall was surely the basic economic problem for Demos. He thought for an instant as he took some hors d'oeuvre.... (to be cont)