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Searching for America's Heart: Rfk and the Renewal of Hope
Traces the evolution of America's conscience from Robert F. Kennedy to the Clinton administration, demonstrating how the United States has turned away from a commitment of social and economic justice, and show how efforts to bring together a local and national activism could hold promise for a renewal of a vision true to Kennedy's vision of justice for all. 15,000 first printing.
262 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 27, 2008
This book is phenomenal. Written by a man who was a Justice Department, Senate, and Campaign Aide to Robert Kennedy, it traces Americans' commitment (or lack of it) to tackling poverty in the United States. It's an indictment. And it's packed with ideas for solutions, and case studies of people who got it right.
Edelman isn't some pundit standing on the outside looking in; neither is he a politician, dependent on the votes of a certain class of voter to get re-elected in the next two, four, or six years. Instead he's a public servant, administrator, and (recently) academic who's been working on these issues for thirty-five years. His wife, Marion Wright Edelman, is President of the Children's Defense Fund. He knows of what he speaks.
And by gosh, he has a lot to say. Somewhere between 1968 and now, the definition of poverty became one of personal failure and societal blame. Americans as a whole lost the stomach for rooting out the causes of poverty, and it was too easy to blame the poor for the things that the rest of the country saw spinning out of control - the economy; violence in the cities; rising crime rates; rising, out-of-wedlock birth rates. One of Edelman's theses is a very personal challenge to everyone reading the book - what were you thinking? (And as I think of this present election, I'm struck by the fact that poverty hasn't been mentioned by either candidate. To some extent, I can understand why - it isn't the poorest citizens buying newspapers, watching CNN, tuning into the debates, or most likely to go to the polls (although I have faith that Obama's campaign, at least, is focused on the rural poor and disenfranchised African Americans in particular). But more than that, I'm the perfect example of the financially stressed middle class; I have a good job, and a solid car, and health insurance, and a nice house, but I live paycheck to paycheck, without savings or retirement funds, or extra money to cover my share of hospital bills. It's too easy, for people like me, focused on making ends meet and hoping not to get ill, to forget that there are roughly fourteen million people living below the poverty line, that most of the adults in that number work, that most of the children in that number are malnourished and destined for schools that are failing, that many of the elderly are living without cool in the summer or heat in the winter months.)
And perhaps what I like best about this book is that Edelman lays out just how much this is everyone's problem, and how the solution will take everyone's effort if it's to come about: government, businesses large and small, churches, schools, community centers, parents, godparents, extended networks of friends and kin, neighbors, sports teams, teachers, health care workers, hospitals, clinics. Where the far left is too eager to lay the responsibility for everything on government, and the far right is too eager to make everything about the ramifications of personal choice, Edelman sees solutions in an amalgam of absolutely everyone's energies. His case studies of what's worked, and where, and which programs are having mixed success, and why, and where people are still below the poverty line, and how many can never hope to get above it, he casts his net widely. And I have never been more convinced that I should put a particular book in the hands of everyone I know. Read this. It's worth it.
Edelman isn't some pundit standing on the outside looking in; neither is he a politician, dependent on the votes of a certain class of voter to get re-elected in the next two, four, or six years. Instead he's a public servant, administrator, and (recently) academic who's been working on these issues for thirty-five years. His wife, Marion Wright Edelman, is President of the Children's Defense Fund. He knows of what he speaks.
And by gosh, he has a lot to say. Somewhere between 1968 and now, the definition of poverty became one of personal failure and societal blame. Americans as a whole lost the stomach for rooting out the causes of poverty, and it was too easy to blame the poor for the things that the rest of the country saw spinning out of control - the economy; violence in the cities; rising crime rates; rising, out-of-wedlock birth rates. One of Edelman's theses is a very personal challenge to everyone reading the book - what were you thinking? (And as I think of this present election, I'm struck by the fact that poverty hasn't been mentioned by either candidate. To some extent, I can understand why - it isn't the poorest citizens buying newspapers, watching CNN, tuning into the debates, or most likely to go to the polls (although I have faith that Obama's campaign, at least, is focused on the rural poor and disenfranchised African Americans in particular). But more than that, I'm the perfect example of the financially stressed middle class; I have a good job, and a solid car, and health insurance, and a nice house, but I live paycheck to paycheck, without savings or retirement funds, or extra money to cover my share of hospital bills. It's too easy, for people like me, focused on making ends meet and hoping not to get ill, to forget that there are roughly fourteen million people living below the poverty line, that most of the adults in that number work, that most of the children in that number are malnourished and destined for schools that are failing, that many of the elderly are living without cool in the summer or heat in the winter months.)
And perhaps what I like best about this book is that Edelman lays out just how much this is everyone's problem, and how the solution will take everyone's effort if it's to come about: government, businesses large and small, churches, schools, community centers, parents, godparents, extended networks of friends and kin, neighbors, sports teams, teachers, health care workers, hospitals, clinics. Where the far left is too eager to lay the responsibility for everything on government, and the far right is too eager to make everything about the ramifications of personal choice, Edelman sees solutions in an amalgam of absolutely everyone's energies. His case studies of what's worked, and where, and which programs are having mixed success, and why, and where people are still below the poverty line, and how many can never hope to get above it, he casts his net widely. And I have never been more convinced that I should put a particular book in the hands of everyone I know. Read this. It's worth it.
May 20, 2007
A look at RFK's life with ideas of how we can bring poverty back to the front burner and help bring people in this country out of poverty.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews