Thank you to Father Peter for that warm welcome. And thank you to Paul and Christine Tufano who with their generous support have made this event possible. I am filled with gratitude for you and for this opportunity and I am inspired by your commitment to ending poverty. Anti-poverty work ought to be essential to a catholic university’s mission. And Villanova has made a community first commitment to that work.
I am Stephanie Sena, Villanova University’s Anti-Poverty Fellow. I’m grateful to have this opportunity to give a platform to the dispossessed, the migrants, the poor and the houseless, the ones who fight for a better world. I honor our speakers and panelists, some of whom are standing in their power despite great risks they take to do so. I am inspired by each of them, and I believe you will be too.
Which brings us to the focus of this symposium. Our event will take us on a poverty exploration that starts miles away on different continents and ends in our own backyard. We will address global, national, regional, and local poverty. From migrants to graduate students and faculty who struggle to afford their rent and utilities each month.
I was once that faculty member. I labored as an adjunct at Villanova for nearly twenty years. My salary did not cover my basic living expenses. For several years my children and I lived in a one-bedroom apartment where we often went without food, sometimes without heat, electricity, or healthcare. Every time I walked in the front door, I would say a little prayer that the heat was still emanating from the radiators. I hadn’t paid the electric or heating bills in months, and I knew that any day my utilities would be cut off. I am grateful that I am no longer living below the poverty line, and grateful for all the people who labor so that I can live in comfort and safety, but I want a world where we all are fairly compensated and we all have enough to thrive. I believe we are here because we want the same thing. We want an end to poverty and a world where life, dignity, and community are sacred. The good news is- we can have a world free of poverty. This crisis is solvable. And we need to solve it. Poverty is expensive. It costs all of us more than we can afford.
This symposium will highlight that expense.
The symposium will also expose the complicity of those profiting off poverty.
It will give us the opportunity to ask hard questions such as, how are we complicit in systems of poverty and oppression, and what do we need to do to redress the systems that we are part of? We ask how poverty is one star — in a constellation of concurrent crises that points to how far from ourselves we have strayed. And how do we get back to ourselves, back to what we know in our hearts to be true: that we are all one, and what affects the most vulnerable amongst us affects us as all.
In order to eliminate poverty, we must first understand its root causes. Poverty is man-made and systemic. It’s not like gravity- an inevitable part of life that we just have to live with. Poverty is a result of robbery built into our political structures. Three examples of this robbery are: blood, land, and law.
Let’s start with blood. Blood banks are concentrated in poor neighborhoods. Blood Donors’ ‘ mostly report they donate their plasma to supplement their income. A donation of plasma, for which donors are paid about $30, will yield roughly ten times that, which allows the industry to net approximately $27 Billion per year. A blood Bank executive earns approx. $1million/year.
Poverty research asks: “What is a poor person’s blood worth and who is profiting off of that blood?” Sex Labor is not the only way those in poverty are forced to sell their bodies to survive.
Poverty is also rooted in a robbery of land. Today our platform is on the land of the Lenape people. I want to honor the land on which we stand and acknowledge that millions of acres of land was stolen from indigenous populations to fund universities, and that many universities continue to steal native land and call that theft eminent domain. Poverty disproportionately affects the indigenous population and all people of color, but poverty is currently on the rise for all groups in the US. At the same time income inequality is the highest it’s been since the census bureau started tracking it five decades ago. These things are connected.
Poverty research asks: why is the only low-income housing in Montgomery County- one of PA’s wealthiest counties- being demolished so that luxury housing units can be built in its place? And what will happen to the people in nearby Norristown who are facing homelessness at an unprecedented rate? Poverty research asks: what can we do about wealthy universities not paying taxes to the communities that sustain them? The University of Pennsylvania owns 10% of all of Philadelphia land, yet it is tax exempt. When Philadelphia’s universities don’t pay taxes, the schools in the district that depend on local taxes remain underfunded. While new construction on Philadelphia land is tax exempt for a decade, and the wealthy universities are not paying taxes, the school district doesn’t have the money to remediate the asbestos in its buildings. My children attend school in the Philadelphia District, and my son’s teacher is dying of mesothelioma because of the asbestos in the room where she taught him for 5 years. Our children are being robbed of safe schools.
Poverty is also a robbery that gets enshrined in law. Poverty research asks “how do our laws favor the wealthy? Why do tax laws in particular serve to scam the poor? The IRS audits the poor at a disproportionate rate compared to audits of the rich. If you earn under $20,000 a year you are ten times more likely to be audited than a multimillionaire. And the US loses billions of dollars in revenue each year when the wealthy hide their income in tax exempt shell companies. Of all the countries that register shell companies, the easiest place to register a business anonymously — is not the Cayman Islands or Barbados. It’s the US. Hundreds of billions of dollars in government revenue are lost as a result.
Unlike the super-rich who can afford legal defense, low-income taxpayers are much less likely to have competent representation to dispute the IRS’ conclusions. The tax code is a scam.
The good thing about scams, is that once they are uncovered, they can be ended. We can end poverty. Here’s how. First, it requires a shift in your internal and public narrative. A narrative away from scarcity to one of reciprocity and gratitude. Gratitude for all the people who have worked below the poverty line so that we can enjoy our coffee, our clothes, our electronics, and our universities. When we are in a state of gratitude for all the laborers who toil for us without fair compensation, we cultivate a spirit of reciprocity, rather than scarcity, and are more open to sharing of ourselves. I once met a woman and her two teenage children who were trapped in homelessness. I was at that time able to offer them a room in my house to stay until we could get them their own housing. The mother was understandably resistant to accepting my offer. She felt shame and humiliation for needing it. I explained to her that it is not her but we as a society that bear the shame of her circumstances. This mother works two full time jobs- one as a hospice nurse, and the other as a one-on-one aid for children with autism in the Philadelphia District. Neither of these jobs in the care industry pay enough for her to afford rent in the city where she works. I explained to her that she has essentially been volunteering her labor since we collectively have been unwilling to pay her a fair wage. It is we who are the charity cases, and she the charity worker. We who owe her our gratitude. This reframe was transcendent for her. Maybe it will be that for you as well.
Once you have a shift in your internal narrative, you can help shift the public narrative. Please pass on the knowledge you learn today and challenge the myths that prevail- myths about bootstrapping, or rising tides lift all boats. We all have the power to shift the public discourse. This shift is needed to create policies and laws that center justice and dignity for all. Work to bring about this shift is challenging, but a recent conversation helped me reframe how I understand the impact of the work. This summer I asked National Homelessness Law Center Senior Attorney, Eric Tars why he keeps doing this backbreaking heartbreaking work, day in and day out, when the devastation of poverty remains. Eric said something that changed the entire way I view things. He said he’s been doing this work for decades. Years ago he asked the Obama administration to include Housing as a Human Right in their platform. They refused, it was too fringe, too polarizing. But he tracks the phrase Housing as a Human Right in on-line usage. And he has noticed that the phrase is being used more and more often. So much so, that it is becoming part of the public discourse, moving from the fringe to the center of policy conversations, as folks like Rep. Cori Bush shout it on the Capitol Steps, as she sleeps out to restore the eviction moratorium, as Rep. Jayapal leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus in their negotiations on the Build Back Better Act, and even as part of President Biden’s own platform.. Now he says, even if he loses a court case, the media attention on the case helps to raise awareness of the necessity of housing for all. With that in mind, every time a journalist calls me now I answer: Hello, housing is a human right. I have noticed that now every article about my work mentions that quote. I agree with Eric, the more it is mentioned, the more this idea sticks.
Shifting public narrative is crucial, but it’s only one part of the movement- a movement led by the people most affected by poverty. Words ready the heart to move the hands towards a range of actions that are part of the ecology of change. Actions that include eviction defense, and housing take-overs. We must give our resources to this work too. Open your wallets. Charity will not by itself end poverty. Of course we certainly need your funds to provide immediate aid to those who need it most right now. Give your time and creativity by joining the anti-poverty movement. We need you. There is a place for you and your gifts in this work, and the work is also the antidote to despair. We need a groundswell, and I believe that your presence here today is part of that groundswell for change. Thank you for being in this work. Poverty is one of the greatest challenges connected to intersecting crises of our time… I believe that facing it head on is our greatest opportunity.
