USW VP Fred Redmond Presents Author with Becker Award At Just Harvest Dinner

At the 26th annual Just Harvest celebration dinner Wednesday, United Steelworkers (USW) Vice President for Human Affairs Fred Redmond presented an award named for former USW International President George Becker and his wife Jane Becker to Sasha Abramsky, an author who has written extensively about poverty.

harvest2As Redmond handed the award to Abramsky, author of The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives, he said, “Sasha, your words tonight and insights in your writings help us grow a stronger future for a nation with humanity, dignity and justice for all. These are the values that drove George and Jane Becker and the values that drive the USW and Just Harvest.”

Inscribed on the award, created by Just Harvest and the USW, a long-time supporter of the Southwestern Pennsylvania organization that works to end hunger, is, “Together, we’re stronger than steel.”

Because of the work Just Harvest does, and to honor the Beckers’ commitment to the group, the USW is a sponsor, and its banner was displayed during the dinner. USW International President Leo W. Gerard is a member of the Just Harvest Honorary Advisory Board, and USW Local 3657 member Paulette Battisti serves on the Just Harvest Board of Directors.

harvest1Just Harvest says that it works to sow the seeds of economic justice, and that is what Abramsky talked about to the group of 450 at the fund raising dinner held at the Omni William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh.

Abramsky, a journalist and author describes in his book the lives of Americans struggling to survive while explaining that their plight is not the result of some individual failing but, instead, the product of an economic system. 

Abramsky’s book follows up on the work of Michael Harrington, whose groundbreaking 1962 book on poverty in the United States was called the Other America. It helped prompt President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.

That “war” was successful, significantly reducing poverty over a decade. Abramsky noted, however, that when poverty wasn’t eliminated completely, politicians became disenchanted and rejected the campaign. Such a monumental effort as eliminating poverty, Abramsky said, can’t be accomplished in a decade. He recalled Harrington saying that the work would take generations, and without that long-time political commitment, someone would have to write the same book again in 50 years.

harvest3That is what Abramsky did. His book challenges the conservative meme that poverty is an individual disease and not at all a societal condition.

Abramsky told the stories of people he interviewed across America, including a counselor at a high school just outside Las Vegas whose full-time job is to help homeless students. “How do those kids have a fair chance?” Abramsky asked.

He told of Steelworkers who lost their jobs after 30 years when the aluminum foundry where they worked went bankrupt. These workers who labored all their lives lost everything, jobs and paychecks and pensions and struggled to pay bills.

He recounted laid off steelworker Matthew Joseph of Stockton, Calif., crying as he told Abramsky that he did not know how he would keep a roof over his head.

“These are real lives fractured, real people ignored, real communities told they are expendable,” Abramsky said.

“There is an upwelling of poverty in the richest country in the world,” Abramsky said. A quarter of American children live below the poverty line. America is a less socially mobile country than Canada, Japan, Australia and most European nations. As a result, an American child born below the poverty line is more likely to die there. That’s not right and it’s not necessary, he said.

In talking to Harvard public policy professor Marshall Ganz, Abramsky said he realized that poverty is a warning sign that a country’s political and economic environment has been compromised.

That compromise explains how the richest country in the world would condone a situation in which 50 million of its citizens live with food insecurity – unsure of where they’ll get their next meal.

People aren’t hungry because there isn’t enough food in America or homeless because the country can’t build enough housing, he said. “It’s not a tragedy about which there is nothing we can do.”

“Poverty is a scandal as a result of choices and priorities made or not made,” he said.

America must make the choices and deploy the policies it knows will help resolve this societal condition, Abramsky said. This includes legislation demanding a living wage, job training, universal pre-school, and affordable higher education – all of which could be paid for with a more just tax system that would include a financial transaction tax – a levy that would not only raise money but discourage the kind of risky betting that caused the financial crash and recession.

This must be done, he said, to ensure that in 50 years, no one must write this book about poverty again.

Just Harvest Board President Barbara Finch encouraged everyone to help ensure change occurs, saying, “Speak up, spread the word and help Just Harvest make hunger a thing of the past.”

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