Julianne Malveaux: Poor and low-income people need to vote

REV. WILLIAM BARBER (TriceEdneyWire.com) —“There were fifteen Presidential debates in 2020,” thunders the Rev. William Barber, the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival (www.poorpeoplescampaign.org). I’ve heard him make this point many times, and sometimes the exclusion so rankles him that he shifts from conversational mode to preacher mode, with all the thunder that comes with the shift. According to Barber, not thirty minutes was devoted to poverty in any of the fifteen debates. No wonder poor folks don’t vote—few talk to or hear them. So they stay home. Politicians might pay more attention to their issues if more poor folks voted. Instead, many Republicans consider poverty some kind of a moral failure. And while Democrats tend to promulgate policies that provide some assistance at the bottom, they often couch them in terms that do not appeal to people experiencing poverty. For example, I recently talked to a young brother who says he will not vote. He says neither Democrats nor Republicans appeal to him. When I spoke to him about some things the Biden-Harris Administration has done to benefit the Black community—including infrastructure spending, HBCU assistance, and more. The young man said he...