Nearly 50 years after the opening salvo of the War on Poverty, and the introduction of programs such as VISTA, Head Start and Job Corps, poverty remains as firmly entrenched in our communities as ever. Nearly 50 million Americans are poor. Over a third of African Americans and Latinos live in poverty. How do we engage this failure? What is to be done?
In this three-week "Revolutionary Conversation" led by developmental psychologist and educator Lenora Fulani and attorney and community organizer Alvaader Frazier, we take a developmentalist's look at poverty – an investigation designed to question and explore the assumptions, misconceptions, biases and mythology about being poor in America. What is the relationship between poverty and race? What's the impact of our collective failure to put an end to poverty in one of the world's wealthiest nations? How do we have to grow together – wealthy and poor, black, white and brown – to find new solutions that include all?
Lenora Fulani, Ph.D.,is co-founder of the All Stars Project, where she currently serves as dean of UX and director of Operation Conversation: Cops and Kids, a series of workshops that uses performance to facilitate dialogues between New York City police and youth. She earned her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the City University of New York and worked as a guest researcher at Rockefeller University, focusing on the interplay of social environment and learning, with a particular focus on the Black community. Dr. Fulani has long been active in creating change through political action. She has twice run for president as an independent. In l988 she became the first womanand first African American in U.S. history to appear as a presidential candidate on the ballot in all 50 states.
Alvaader Frazier, Esq., is a long time community organizer.
She received her law degree from Western State University College of Law in Fullerton, California and has worked as a human rights attorney and patron of the arts. **
