Strategic Initiatives

Earlier this week, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, ACORN, the Coalition on Human Needs, and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights kicked off the political arm of a campaign to expand the middle class by nearly 20 million people over the next decade. Well, they don't actually it that, but that's the basic idea.

The campaign's new website notes that the campaign "will focus on the issues facing the poor and middle class in America, building an effective constituency to advocate for specific policy changes." The part about focusing on issues facing the middle class is a notable addition and something that was lacking from CAP's earlier report on poverty.

It's a good sign that John Edwards is chairing the campaign. Edwards could bring the kind of partisan and populist voice to this work that has been lacking on the national level. As Larry Bartels' new book suggests, advancing the cause of economic justice in the next decade will require a Democrat in the White House and more partisanship rather than less.

Edwards should help ensure that the campaign doesn't become a kind of mushy attempt to find "common ground" between Republicans and Democrats on economic justice. The reality is that there really isn't any common ground on economic justice right now or in the near future at the national level given the conservative extremism of the national Republican party and their allies. (I say this as a matter of fact rather than advocacy—there are thoughtful efforts by progressive R's to change this, but it's a decades-long project, not a short-term one). The biggest challenge for the CAP campaign isn't finding common ground between Republicans and Democrats, it's making sure that conservative Democrats don't obstruct efforts to expand the middle class (which is one of the reasons, by the way, that this campaign needs to be framed as a campaign to expand the middle class).

While I'm a fan of the policy ideas put forward by the campaign, I'm less enthusiastic about much of the communcations aspect of the campaign. The name of the campaign, "Half in Ten," while easy to remember, sounds more like a technocratic goal than a statement that combines vision and values. This can be demonstrated by comparing it with ONE: The Campaign to Make [Global] Poverty History and Green for All's goal to "build an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

ONE is both a values statement (we're in this together, "united as ONE") and a true vision statement ("make poverty history"). Similarly, Green for All's goal combines vision and values—a strong and inclusive economy—in a slogan that clearly positions poverty as an economic issue. By contrast, "Half in Ten" has no obvious values content and will sound to some like "give us half a loaf in 10 years." This may be fine as a compromise governmental goal adopted by political leaders, but may be less effective as an advocacy slogan. I wish the wealthy backers of estate tax repeal had rallied under the banner of reducing the estate tax by 50 percent in 10 years, but unfortunately they went for the whole loaf and were much more successful as a result. Of course, a 50 percent reduction in poverty in ten years would be a fantastic accomplishment, but the slogan the campaign, like all good advertising, doesn't need to be so literal.

A related communications issue. Most of the images used on the campaign's website seem likely to reinforce popular stereotypes and misconceptions about people living below the poverty line. The banner of the site rotates a set of photographs that appear to be: a black child, a white mother hugging a child, an elderly white woman in a wheelchair, a black man, and a black woman (the classroom setting suggests that she may be an immigrant). None of the pictures portray people who are clearly at work or in work clothes.

A final point that involves framing in a deeper sense: while it's positive that the campaign "will focus on the issues facing the poor and middle class in America, building an effective constituency to advocate for specific policy changes", they need to go one step further and describe the cross-class constituency they're trying to build as "the working class and middle class." Where I grew up in the tundra of rural Minnesota, there were plenty of people living below the poverty line, but if you called one of them a "poor person" you would probably get either a punch in the face or an insulted glare. The same goes for the hundreds of clients I represented as a legal services attorney in west central Minnesota. Most people with incomes under even the miserly federal poverty line describe themselves as working class or middle class rather than "poor." The descriptions used to describe people—and how they describe themselves—change considerably over time. Negroes, paupers, and, increasingly, homosexual, are examples of terms that have been replaced in general public conversation or are in the process of being replaced. Poor people is another term in need of such evolution.