TRAC KS OF HOPE The Forgotten Story of America’s Runaway Train and How We Can Change Its Course author: Lauren Speeth, D.B.A. | editor: Marian Brown Sprague | foreword: David Grusky, Ph.D. TRACKS OF HOPE The Forgotten Story of America’s Runaway Train and How We Can Change Its Course author: Lauren Speeth, D.B.A. editor: Marian Brown Sprague foreword: David Grusky, Ph.D. © 2007 The Elfenworks Foundation LLC All Rights Reserved ISBN: 978-0-615-18848-5 No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without express written consent from The Elfenworks Foundation. To find out more about The Elfenworks Foundation, please visit us online at elfenworks.org. Acknowledgements DeGolia, Delaine Easton, Brother President Ronald Gallagher, President Janet Holmgren, Dr. Talmadge King, My thanks go first to the brilliant Paul Minorini, Rev. Paul Mitchell, John Elfenworks Foundation team and Moores, Rev. Penny Nixon, Dean trustees — Barry, Beth, Chris, Craige, Nancy Thornborrow, and Sheryl Cristina, Dan, Dana, Ed, Jacquelyn, Young. John, the two Kims, Linda, Maggie, Mariah, Marian, Mark, Michael, And finally, special thanks to all my Mike, Nicole, Noreen, Ryan, wonderful friends and family who Stephen, the two Steves, Tammy, Tim, patiently read and commented on and Vivian. There are not enough draft after draft, and provided support superlatives to describe you, and I am and encouragement to keep me at once humbled and gladdened to 3 going. At not quite 5’2” and slight of work with you. Thanks in particular to TRACKS build, I’ve never considered myself Marian Brown Sprague, whose editing heavy, but as I look back on all the OF HOPE made my words sing; to Mike Dalling, people it has taken to lift me up to this who took the elements I gave him and point, perhaps I should reconsider. My added his artistic touch to realize my thanks go out to each and every one vision; and to Cristina Parvu, who of you. came up with a perfect title. Thanks Celine, Alexa, Jackson, Willem, to Professor David Grusky for writing Ainsley, Juliana, Hyden, Noah, the foreword; to Professor Jim Hawley Dedication Nadir, Dahnish, Nathaniel, Tatjana, for writing the piece on fiduciary For Morgan, Alexandra, Caroline, Quinton, Lauren, Connor, Hayden, capitalism; to Don Kane, who Miles, Ethan, Sidney, Jack, Danny Tiernan, Kourosh, Suzie, Lexi, Duke, showed me where to find many of Anne, Loren, Ehren, Kyle, Clair, Will, Judy, Emma, Daniel, Sofia, Niko, the landscapes pictured; to Drs. Dean Vivian, Alan, Matthew, Tory, Michael, Jasmine, Martie, Kuran, Nikita, David, Schillinger, Michelle Lin, and Martha Julie Anne, Evan, Paige, Alex, Dan, Hannah, Andreanna, Ben, Minna, Neighbors, who made the medical Max, Dashiel, Sam, Andrew, Sylvia, Mercy, Xan…and all the children of photographs available; and to all of Greta, Akai, Pierce, Riker, Zachary, our country, a country I know is great the many other contributors, including Laura, Elain, Megan, Jackie, Eytan, enough to make the term “throwaway Rosalynn Carter, Joyce Dattner, Rachel Gabriel, Micaela, Mercy, Arianna, children” an anachronism. Table of Contents Acknowledgements and Dedication 3 Foreword 6 Introduction 8 Some Common Beliefs about Poverty and Inequality 11 CONCERT FOR HOPE PHOTOS 7 • Mitchell Sardou Klein conducts Everyone in America Has the Same Opportunities 12 the Elfenworks Festival String Poverty Should Stay in the Slums 16 Ensemble with sopranos Shawnette It’s Just a Crying Shame, How Poor People Act 19 Sulker and Rebecca Plack in the premiere of Giancarlo Aquilanti’s What’s Wrong with Them? 20 La Povertà. (top) Everyone Has Access to a Quality Education 21 Don’t Let Your Feelings Show 24 • Tammy Hall, conducting from the You Are Wrong. I Don’t Believe You. I Read or Heard Something Different 25 piano, premieres her composition 5 In Harmony With Hope, with There Are Too Many of Them to Help 27 Don Kane (bass), and Michaelle That Couldn’t Happen to Me — or My Teen 30 TRACKS Goerlitz (percussion), and vocalists Rhonda Benin, Valerie Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key 33 OF HOPE Joi Fiddmont, and La Tonya Reed. All Homeless People Are Crazy 35 (bottom right) What’s It to Me, Anyway? 40 They’re So Different / Why Don’t They Work as Hard as I Do? 42 One Person Cannot Make a Difference, Can They? 43 Communication and Change: Call and Response 48 Films for Social Justice 48 Ficlets 51 PHOTO CREDITS Putting on a Poverty-Awareness Event 52 All photos by Lauren Speeth, except Which Track Will You Take? 52 Carter Center (R. Carter) 59 Steve Castillo (all) 7 Conclusion 52 (Saller) 16 Appendix A, Big and Little Things You Can Do Now to “Be the Change” 57 (Dattner) 59 Dust Jacket Appendix B, 2007 In Harmony with Hope Award Winners 59 Donald Kane 14, 60 Appendix C, Other Changemakers We Know 63 Michelle Lin 27 Alexandra Neiman (sunset) 43 Appendix D, Useful Links 69 San Damiano Foundation About The Elfenworks Foundation 71 (design by T. Schaller) 49 Tim Schaller 61 About the Author 71 Ted Sprague 53 Notes 71 Foreword This important book, written by Lauren poor alike. The poverty price tag The greatest challenge Speeth and her team at The Elfenworks comes in the form of the additional we face is the growing Foundation, reflects the growing incarceration, law enforcement, drug chasm between the rich concern that poverty and inequality and alcohol treatment, and medical and poor people on earth. are among the most pressing social costs that high poverty rates have JIMMY CARTER problems of our time. Why this tended to entail. concern with poverty and inequality? It is not merely that economic inequality It comes also in a long-run form: we has increased spectacularly in the experience substantial losses in total United States over the last 30 years. production because poverty-stricken Nor is it simply that the high poverty children and adults cannot easily rate in the United States becomes secure the schooling, job experience, ever more difficult to justify as the and job training that allow them to country becomes ever richer. These maximize their potential. It follows that conventional moral concerns, for all societies that choose a high-poverty their importance, hardly exhaust the road do so at high cost. This book is reasons why poverty and inequality dedicated to exposing that collective have recently been understood as price of poverty and thereby allowing pressing problems. Additionally, there citizens to make an informed decision is a growing recognition that poverty as to whether it is a price that they comes with substantial economic costs wish to continue paying. that are borne by all of us, rich and DAVID B. GRUSKY PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY Larry Brown with the Harvard School of Public Health and several other leading researchers have determined that the total cost burden of hunger in the United States is about $90 billion — an amount that could be entirely eliminated by just $10-12 billion of increased spending on federal nutrition programs. Introduction trend analysis, and informing public Dean Richard Saller, and there was discussion of poverty, inequality, and original music composed by Giancarlo policy. We consider the development Aquilanti and Tammy Hall. Truly, it In writing this book, we were inspired of inequality.com to be our most was a hopeful moment — for Stanford by former president Jimmy Carter. significant achievement to date, and for the entire nation — and it “All of us,” he wrote, “need to look because a web-based center for ended with the entire audience joining at ourselves, our circumstances, the trend and other breaking research in song, “in harmony with hope.” environment in which we live, and data on poverty can offer journalists, ask: Within my own talent and realm politicians, and policymakers at all News of the Concert for Hope was of possibilities, what can I find to do levels immediate access to a wealth carried in the San Jose Mercury that would be good and lovely?” We of information, making it possible to News. The citizen commentary on that have decided that, for the next three monitor poverty and inequality just as news, though, bespoke a great lack years, it would be good and lovely, 8 easily as monitoring economic output. of information and understanding, and within our talents and possibilities, and it started us down the path to TRACKS to focus on domestic poverty — to do On September 6, 2007, at the the book you hold in your hands what we can to create new hope for OF HOPE Stanford Center’s inaugural today. This book includes the parable the disenfranchised who live, quite celebration — a Concert for Hope — that Professor Grusky told that night, literally in some cases, on our very its director, professor David Grusky, originally written by philosopher Peter doorsteps. threw down the gauntlet to the Unger. The book also tries to address thought leaders of Silicon Valley and a few of the misperceptions we’ve Along the lines of the social challenged them to take up domestic found when trying to raise awareness entrepreneurship model, we have poverty and inequality as major social about domestic poverty. Of course, aligned ourselves with innovative problems, bringing about a larger one book can’t possibly contain organizations whose goals are in revolution in thinking, just the way enough pages to answer all questions, harmony with ours. The Center for they brought about a revolution in but if it gets you — or anyone — the Study of Poverty and Inequality our thinking about global warming.