The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Carol Jenkins

Hello, and thanks so much for joining The Invisible Americans Podcast with Jeff Madrick and Carol Jenkins. We address the travesty of child poverty here.

Jeff Madrick

There are nearly 13 million children living in serious material deprivation in America, and we don't see them. They are our invisible Americans, and we plan to change that.

Carol Jenkins

A couple of words about us. The podcast is based on Jeff's book, Invisible Americans: The Tragic Cost of Child Poverty. He's an economics writer, author of seven and co-author of another four books on the American economy.

Jeff Madrick

Carol is an Emmy-winning journalist, activist, and author. Most recently, president of the ERA Coalition working to amend the constitution to include women.

Carol Jenkins

We are longtime colleagues and friends.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Jeff Madrick  

In today’s episode of The Invisible Americans, we take up the issue of the right to food. How is that for a concept for every person in this country, as so many, including millions of children struggle on a daily basis to find enough to stave off hunger. Jenique Jones of WhyHunger joins us. We will also talk with David Ambroz, a leading national child advocate who spent his own childhood homeless, hungry and abused and has written a powerfully moving memoir about it, A Place Called Home.

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Carol Jenkins  

We began with Jenique Jones, who has just joined the anti-hunger anti-poverty organization, WhyHunger as its executive director. Its beliefs are that food is a human right. A world without hunger is possible. Food charity will never end hunger though. And its mission is to support the food justice movements that will bring on change in basic economic inequality in our country. Jenique, thank you so much for being with us today, Jeff and I have been discussing among ourselves this whole notion that you also wonderfully execute this idea of the right to food, which is a profound notion. And whether or not a country can do that, a state can do that, a community can do that. Thanks for being with us.

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Jenique Jones  

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

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Carol Jenkins  

So talk with us about the right to food. And then we'll get a little bit about WhyHunger, the organization that's what, 40 years old now? It started in 1975. I'm terrible at math, but [INAUDIBLE] it's a well established organization. Start us off with this notion of who deserves food, and why so many people in this country have to fight for it, especially children.

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Jenique Jones  

The reality is that everyone deserves the right to food. And part of the reason why everyone deserves that right is because there is enough food for everyone. We're not talking about something that is a scarcity. It's not something that is not available. Now we can have a conversation around people paying for food and all of those realities, but at the bare bones of it. And this is why WhyHunger was started. It's what Harry Chapin believed that everyone in the world had the right to not just food but nutritious food. 

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We’re really advocating for that. And because we believe that we live in a society that doesn't protect the rights of what I'll say is regular people, yet we subsidize corporations, we subsidize billionaires, why can't we subsidize people getting food? And on a bigger scale than $20 that people are given through the SNAP benefits? There's a saying you show me what you spend your money on. I'll show you what your values are. And I think that that is a big thing that we have, not just in this country, but in others.

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Jeff Madrick  

I did a book called Invisible Americans. And I asked a lot of people who either had been poor, or deal with the poor. How do poor kids suffer most? And it always came down to hunger. I say can they tell you what hunger is like? Is it painful, is it deprives you of energy, and the chapter I wrote about this began with hunger. So I think a lot of us in our organization are very sympathetic to this. Tell us how you go about it. Because that, of course, is the issue.

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Jenique Jones  

WhyHunger works on a few different fronts. One is we have our food hotline, and some of our US work, which is really about connecting people to food. So a lot of that is the traditional food bank model, you call us, we will say, you can go to this place or that place and receive food, because we believe that people need food for today, right? But our overall goal is that we want to make people food secure, and food sovereign. 

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We work in 23 countries and the US where we provide funding and training and resources to grassroots organizations and social movements, championing local food control, right? Some of the reasons why we have food insecurity is that the control of the food has been taken out of the hands of the people, right? We don't have as many farms, for instance, in the US, specifically, as we used to. Family farms, farms that were not about making money, but really were about sustaining the family or the local community. 

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We’re really focused on how do we build that infrastructure up, both in the US and abroad. And so that's a big part of that and to speak to your point about children. It's not just the pain of the hungry stomach, right? It's the pain of the shame. It's the, not wanting for misbehaving in class because you're hungry, and you can't focus. And so you're not learning well. And so to make up for the fact that you aren't able to intake the information, because your brain just isn't working. Now you're misbehaving or you're acting out. 

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There’s so many other components. How many people are in the prison system, not because they're bad people, but because they needed money to feed their families. It’s a pervasive issue on so many levels. And hunger actually, is the creation of other societal issues. It's why you have the child not doing well in school. It's why you have the person committing the crimes. It’s really pervasive.

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Carol Jenkins  

Jenique, we know that you worked for many years with the City Harvest, distributing excess food, when you rightly point out, it's not a shortage of food, there's plenty of food to be had. It's just getting it to the people who need it. We interviewed very early in this series, Brian Greene from the Houston Food Bank, who said—and they feed a million people, right?—he said that when he started in food banking, he thought, we will feed all of the people and we'll solve this problem. And he said, No, they just keep coming. Because the underlying problems have not been fixed. And that's something that WhyHunger believes as well is that underlying inequality is at the center of this. And until we address that, we will always have hungry people.

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Jenique Jones  

I cannot agree with my friend from Houston more. The reality is, that's why I left City Harvest. I'll be candid and say I miss my team there because I was there for 14 years. But when I started, the organization was distributing 26 27 million pounds of food. When I left, it was like 100 million pounds. 

Carol Jenkins  

100 million? 

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Jenique Jones

100 million pounds but the lines were still growing. Food pantries calling saying I had to turn X amount of people away, can you send more food? For me, it really became a matter of I needed to work in a space where I could address those underlying issues that cause hunger. The reality is, unbridled capitalism is a part of this issue, right? We have corporations that takeover whole towns, could put some of those farmers out of business, have inequitable practices, making billions of dollars but paying people hardly anything. We also have a situation of you know, we are still a society that has different issues around race, around gender, around sexuality, and all of those things feed into why someone may or may not be hungry. And so WhyHunger is really committed to addressing those things.

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Jeff Madrick  

Can you delineate the underlying causes of hunger or are they too vast to generalize too abstract to make the list?

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Jenique Jones  

I'm a big believer that a great way to fight hunger in the US—because I want to be very specific. The issues globally are vast—is around pay equity. It is no mistake that men are more food secure than women. And then when you look at the ways in which, let's say white women make more than black women who make more than Indigenous women, and so on and so forth. The levels of food insecurity actually follow those same rates. 

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Imagine what we could do to food insecurity ifeverybody, I think it's right now, white women, for instance, make 72 cents for every dollar that a man makes. What if we paid everybody their whole dollar? What if that was something that we did? What would that do to food insecurity? So that's one of those underlying issues that has an impact on food insecurity, hunger, poverty, so on and so forth. 

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Carol Jenkins  

It’s so interesting that you bring that up because they've just added a new category to the pay inequity and that's women with children, who actually rank at the bottom of that list in terms of amount of money that they make, and can bring home to feed their children. So whether it's black, white, Asian, Latino, it's a woman with children, who gets paid less. And as I've always said, if you want to identify the impoverished of America, it is women and children.

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Jenique Jones  

Yeah. And that's because of the weight, the value that's put on on women and children.

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Jeff Madrick  

Did you analyze the hunger, hunger levels, existence of hunger, when the expanded child tax credit has passed, most measures of that show a reduction in hunger.

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Jenique Jones  

That’s in hunger, the number of children in poverty decreased. It was the many of the tools that were utilized during the pandemic, lifted people in a really significant way. And it showed us who we could be. We talked about these issues being solvable, we saw during that brief span of time, that if we had the will, we could do this. We could lift children out of poverty, people could have food. I just think about, from the child tax credit to people having to now recertify for Medicaid and Medicare every year, and a lot of people lose their health insurance, because they forget, this gets lost in the mail, that's happening. The burden of poverty is really put on the impoverished, the people with the least resources. And I think that what we saw during the pandemic, was when we give people resources, they do much better, and our society was doing much better.

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Carol Jenkins  

We noticed that one of the campaigns that Why Hunger had was with Yoko Ono. Imagine a world without hunger. Tell us a little bit about that. One of your many partnerships in the organization.

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Jenique Jones  

Music is in WhyHunger’s DNA, Harry Chapin you know, Time in a Bottle, Cats in the Cradle. He really got us started in terms of our work with artists. And Yoko has been a huge, significant and strong supporter of WhyHunger for many, many years. I'm still learning all the things that she's done with us over the years. But I think if you really think about the song, Imagine and just everything that was said in there fits so perfectly with what we're trying to do, because that's what we're saying is imagine that this wasn't the world that we lived in. And so it's been a perfect synergy. 

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Every year we would give out the Imagine award to another artist who was also working towards different social justice, different areas of social justice. I'm gonna say, I believe that music also has the ability to change the world. I think it's a great unifier of people, you may not have anything in common with this other person who looks completely different than you and grew up in a completely different circumstance. But you both love the same John Lennon song. That’s really what music is able to signify for us.

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Carol Jenkins  

So President Biden held last year in 2022 a pretty significant conference on hunger and nutrition, etc. But the United States was criticized. I guess it came from the United Nations who said in a way that the failure to press forward on a right to food campaign effort was a shortcoming. How exactly would we go about that? I know that the state of Maine is the first to pass that sort of legislation for a right to food just as New York City has a right to shelter. But how do you enact that? How do you get the food to people who need it?

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Jenique Jones  

I'll be honest with you, if I knew the answer to that I myself would be running for president. I think that the truth is we live in such a polarized society right now that I don't think you could ever get our Congress or Senate to agree that people have the right to food. I don't know how we address that polarization to get people there. So I think that's the challenge. I mean, I do think that there's something to be said for the bully pulpit. And I think that President Biden does have that ability from a moral standpoint, and others who are also on the right side of things to come out and speak to food being a human right. And speaking to the fact that if we are the greatest nation in the world, we should not have people who are going to bed hungry. 

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If more people start to beat that drumbeat, maybe this is the one area where we could get at the very least, if not the elected officials to agree, the population to agree, because I think there's more of us who are dealing with issues around inequity, and food insecurity than the reverse. And so there's a path there. I just again, I think if I knew what it was.

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Carol Jenkins  

I think we understand your reluctance to think that it can happen tomorrow, for sure. But certainly, it's a notion that we should keep in the back of our minds and part of all of our campaigns to say, hey, wait a minute, why aren't we a country that provides food for every hungry person? We're rich enough to do it? The food is there, let's do it.

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Jenique Jones  

We can't even agree that all school children should get food every day, which is wild to me. The fact that there are debates around Universal school, breakfast and lunch.

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Jeff Madrick  

Nutrition, of course, is an issue you deal with. And children's food designed to attract children is often not nutritious, often the exact opposite. Do you have programs that specifically deal with that, that help the parents get the kids to eat food that isn't all sugar and carbohydrates? It's pretty hard to get them not to eat that.

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Jenique Jones  

We don't have programming like that, per se, although what we have found is that a lot—because a lot of our work is around agriculture. And you don't actually have those same issues globally. Food is actually healthier in other countries, partially because there are things that are illegal to put in the food in, say, Spain, that we don't do here in America.

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Carol Jenkins  

It's such a sad comment on American corporations.

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Jeff Madrick  

Well, as you said earlier, unbridled capitalism.

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Jenique Jones  

Exactly, exactly. But I also think it's less about getting kids to eat foods without sugar. But this is where we talk about those underlying issues. I remember once the Robin Hood Foundation put out a study and they had talked to a lot of different working parents. And there was this mother who spoke to the fact that the reason she gave her kids, quote unquote, bad foods was because it was the one thing she could say yes to occasionally. 

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She said she didn't have the money for the fancy sneakers, or the video games, but she could say yes to the potato chips, and the sugary soda and all of those things. And she said, imagine you are always disappointing your child. So I think it's bigger sometimes than just the kids want these things. I think there's a reason. I also think that it's about convenience and time. 

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I know when I cook a meal, and it's all fresh ingredients, it takes a long time. You also have to think about one: Do people have the skill set to do that? Do they have the time to do it? And in most impoverished neighborhoods, that is where they send the worst food. It's not what you get when you go to the fancy places on like the Upper East Side. The food doesn't look good. And so it's better to buy the canned goods with all the sodium and all of those things. So I think again, some of this is about the systems that exist [INAUDIBLE] to why people are less healthy. And I don't think poor people are less healthy than rich people. Everybody eats poorly but I think there's more of a stigma put on poor people.

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Carol Jenkins  

So Jenique, you have just taken over this huge organization that works internationally, but our concern is about the United States. Talk to us about what you have in mind, what you would like to see your organization do now and how people can coordinate collaborate with you.

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Jenique Jones  

So one of the things I think specifically in the US that I would like for our organization to get back to doing is really being an advocacy and policy space. I think so much of what's going to move the needle year is going to be around supporting policies that make sense. We've been focusing a lot on agroecology and the growth of food but even that we need to be having larger conversations about the farm bill and what's in it and who gets the support versus who doesn't. 

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I also think that, what I would love to see is the cost of living is different across this country. So we know that a single person in New York City needs to make at least $50,000 a year to be self-sufficient. To just meet your basic needs. But to get benefits, and you can't make more than I think it's like $25,000 a year. So what about those people in the gap? Right? What if you're a working person making $45,000 a year, but you're deciding between your diabetes medication and food, because you can't meet your basic needs? 

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Could we have a space where federal benefits were available based on the cost of living in your location. I also know that there are people in the Bay Area making six figures who live in Winnebagos, because they can't afford rent. So I want to see our organization really be a voice in that policy space and advocating for these things advocating for universal school lunch and things of that nature.

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Carol Jenkins  

Well, terrific. Jenique thank you so much, we will have you back to track how you implement all of that. And thank you so much for the work that you've done in your entire career and what you will be doing with WhyHunger.

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Jeff Madrick  

Congratulations with your new appointment.

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Jenique Jones  

I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, and I look forward to talking with all of you again soon.

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The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Jeff Madrick  

Ambroz is today a high ranking corporate executive, a national child and anti poverty advocate, honored by President Obama as an American Champion of Change.

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Carol Jenkins 
But he started life homeless and starving, wandering the streets of New York City behind his unstable mother and slightly older brother and sister. He tells a harrowing story of abuse that continued through the foster care system. He made it out, and his book is A Place Called Home.

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David, thank you so much for joining us today. After reading your book, I am shocked, stunned that you are still with us, alive and well, and making change in the world. Because the story you tell is so harrowing of living on the streets of New York, then going into a foster care system that was so brutal to you. To what do you ascribe your success your success and both—I was delighted to see both your brother and sister also looking great on your website.

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David Ambroz  

I think one thing I get asked quite often is that question and it has different outfits, but it's relatively the same and I will answer it. But first, I'll say many people ask it because they're trying to figure out what we can do to map it. And then try and apply that to other people. And the reality is, we need a system of support, welfare, whatever we want to call it. That supports the big, messy human that is every child that has unlimited potential.

What got me to where I'm sitting in front of you today was a fire that forged me. It brought forth certain skills that I needed to survive and augmented them and groomed them. And the same could be said of my siblings and other kids, but what got me here is nothing that any child in America or the world should ever have to go through.

There's nothing unique about me. I'm just like everybody that's listening to this or seeing this. I go out in the world, I have coffee in the morning, I walk my dog. He's grumpy. The common thing amongst me, my brother, and my sister is my mom. That's it. And my mom, from the moment I can remember, had grand ambitions for us.

She would say to me, David, you're going to be a Supreme Court justice. And I used to laugh and I'd be like, mom, it'd be nice to go to school once in a while because we weren't in school. But that idea of inculcating the value of education was the only light that the three of us had, and that was really lit by my mom. All three of us have advanced degrees from prestigious universities, and all three of us barely went through school from K through 12. And the only common thing was my mother and my mother valued education, despite her ongoing and progressive mental health issues. And she inculcated that value in her three wards. And that is why I'm sitting here talking to you today. 

Jeff Madrick  

Is there a way to apply that to hundreds of thousands of children who are homeless or very poor? Is there a way to inculcate them with that? 

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David Ambroz  

Sure. We have to ask ourselves is before we get to dessert, we need to look at the meal. And we have a system of poverty relief in our country that looks at the individual as if they can be siloed. Children are not out there for the most part on their own. They're with families. So when you're talking about how do you help children, you must really look at families and families don't exist in a vacuum. They are in communities, some communities that are over policed, some communities that are unsafe, some communities with failing schools.

We need a holistic approach to the human condition and focusing in on the one thing about a kid is not going to end up really addressing the systems that are leading to generations of this. You can help that one kid, but you're leaving behind a whole tribe that is not being helped. We have to focus on the whole family. And that's really why I started [INAUDIBLE] with my mom and showing the story of a woman because poverty is women's work. 

We have a sexist society and most of these people raising children are not men. So here you have a woman with three children being told to go look for work. Well, she doesn't have daycare and has progressive mental health issue, and she has to go to seven different lines to get rental assistance, food assistance, mental health care, et cetera, et cetera. And then we condemn her for her failure to live up to this. 

So, yes, can we have kids develop this value? Absolutely. But sometimes when you're drowning, all you need is air. You don't need a dinner. So, my mom tried to help us. But we were able to be helped. A lot of kids are in that place. And in order to get them to that place, we really need to look at the whole family and then the community both. And that's really the genesis of the memoir is people talk about this issue or this issue or this issue as if the human condition could be degraded, and it can't. We're just big, messy piles, and in order to help children, we have to address the pile. 

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Carol Jenkins  

You've said that we, in a sense, already know what to do to fix this problem. It's just that we refuse to do it. What pieces of those do you believe we have already that we know that we can put into action? 

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David Ambroz  

Ten years before I was born, we sent a person to the moon. We did not have a computer. We didn't outsource it to private companies. We as a society decided, and then 10 years later, I was born into a country that didn't believe in itself. 

I was born into a country that thinks if we hack away at public schools and put all of our kids in private schools, or if we attack—but healthcare institutions that somehow magically people will figure it out on their own. We need to get back to that idea that we can do big things together. And it doesn't displace nonprofits or private sector, but we have to believe in each other. 

And the only way that we can achieve meta scale change is through collective action. The only way we have to do collective action is through government. That's how we're gonna do things. We can't have a bake sale and solve poverty. We don't have a bake sale to fund an army. Well, we have a poverty problem. How are we gonna pull 8.4 million children today that live in abject poverty in the United States of America, out of poverty? It's not gonna be a church, it's not gonna be a nonprofit. It's gonna be those things as additive. But the main thrust of that battle has to be us together.

We know how to do this. And other piece of it is, so it strikes me every time there's a disaster, you see this latent, beautiful desire to help each other. We pull cans out of the pantry, we donate blood, we want to send clothes. That is always there, but we have to relearn. That that is a skill we need all the time, not just when the waters rise or the winds whip up.

We have an ongoing crisis which has become the white noise of our society, which is 8. 4 million children in poverty for decades. Decades. We are better than this. So do we know how to fix this? Absolutely. If we can send a person to the moon, we can figure out in the United States of America that there should be no children going to bed tonight starving.

One out of four kids will. We know how to feed people, but we have to figure out is, do we want kids in this country to live like I did? And I think the answer is no. I think we're better than this. So we're not asking people to solve nuclear fission or something. We're asking people to feed people, house people, care for each other, and especially children.

It’s there, but we have to unlearn this lesson, which is the denigration of government. We are the government and the kids need us to stop making fun of elected people and run for office ourselves if we don't like it. We need to get back together to working together to go back to the moon. In this instance, the moon is just filling up an empty stomach.

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Jeff Madrick  

We had a program that reduced, as you well know, child poverty by half, a stunning achievement in 2021, which Congress promptly rescinded because it costs too much money. What was your reaction to that? There is no child tax credit comparable to 2021. And indeed, we just got the numbers in. Child poverty doubled, roughly, even more than doubled in 2022.

David Ambroz  

I'm going to answer your question, but first, I'm going to avoid your question. Number one, child poverty always gets caught up in the shadow of other controversial issues. Abortion, the border issues, there is constantly a tall mountain, which puts child poverty in its shadow. We don't need a child poverty movement. We need a movement for children. 

I'm always struck by Marian Wright Edelman, who founded the Children's Defense Fund and is one of my icons. Listen to any of her speeches, we need a movement for children and the tax credit is certainly part of it but we have attacked schools and defunded them. We have denigrated teachers and then we mock them and then we're shocked when kids aren't coming through a school system that's overwhelmed. Because it's now a health clinic, family engagement, a mental health provider, a mandated reporter, gosh, now they have to worry about guns. We need to reinvest not just in a tax credit, but a holistic ecosystem that is leading to intergenerational poverty. 

What do I think about the tax credit? Now I'll answer your question. Put it back! We're better than this. Everybody that loves kids in this country should demand, we put it back, but it's only part of it. And for once, we need to look at this as a movement of people that love children. Maybe one of us was a children once. Maybe we liked ourselves. Maybe we have a child, maybe we have a niece or a nephew or someone we care for. And I think if we look at it holistically, we'll see that we need an ecosystem approach. Even with that tax credit, you still have schools that are underperforming because we've just hollowed them out. 

We fight over a 3 percent raise for teachers. What are we doing? We fight. Somebody name a street in your city that's named after a teacher. Name a teacher, anybody in America. I remember watching the super bowl when I was a kid. I didn't watch it. I watched all the people paint themselves colors and I'd walked down the street. And I'm like, where is the color for children? Where's the team for children? Where's the rabid fan base for children?

So I definitely agree with you. Yes. Put the tax credit back. But even if we do that, one out of seven kids that are hungry, what are we doing with the public institutions that are underfunded? Where are they accessing healthcare? Do they have a job prospect in the future? Are they over policed in their communities? Do their parents have what they need to be successful and thrive? So I totally agree with you, to answer your question. But one question I've been asked on this book tour, for example, is about the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And people use the phrase, unwanted children, which I firmly reject. Isn't that terrible?

It's going to overwhelm the system. The system's already overwhelmed. You name the system, public schools, foster care, the boat has holes and it's sinking, y'all. We all need to care and it's not just the tax credit, it's the whole ecosystem. But yes, give us back the tax credit, love your kids. If you disagree with that, I don't think you like kids. And who doesn't want to like kids? 

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Jeff Madrick  

But how would the tax credit have helped your life and your brother and sister's life, not to mention your mother's, had it existed at the same level when you were down there?

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David Ambroz 
I don't know. I think at the end of the day, we were in such a level of destitution. There was no income. There was utter and complete poverty. I kind of talk about it in the book a little bit, which is the idea that people with mental health issues and financial distress, single moms, are going to fill out paperwork is a little absurd. 

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What do I think of the tax credit for my mom? I don't know, but I can tell you my mom could barely fill out paperwork to get food stamps. I don't know how we would have handled that other barrier. Even enrolling in school, we used to go to schools and for a minute, my mom would, they'd be like, where's your school records? And my mom's like, we don't have them. And like, well, you can't come to school. Does he have this vaccine? Does he have that vaccine? As they should. I'm pro vaccine. However, it kept me out of school. 

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So, I don't know about the tax credit. I can tell you that... Putting this burden on poor people that are in distress, while we should figure out a way to watch out for fraud and all these things, we just distrust each other and we condemn people with shame that need help. And the system just kind of builds on that instead of looking at it as, gosh, this person needs help. Why don't we measure to trust or manage to trust? So, I don't know, I can't answer that question. I'd have to think about that, but I do think more burden on people to act as public services. It's not helpful.

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Carol Jenkins 
David, one of the systems of theoretically in place to help is the foster care system. I was a foster care mother. I adopted my son. You now are a foster parent as well. The system though, as you describe it in the book was not helpful and in fact, completely damaging with incompetent people who participated in destroying your life or wanting to. Talk to us about that system. I think at one point, you say in the book, to the caseworker. You mean, you're trying to return me to the mother who abused me. Is that the purpose here? 

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David Ambroz 
Well, we are the system. Everybody who consumes this content, everybody who breathes United States of America that's above the age of 18, there's no thing out there that is the system, it's us. And as horrible as some of the actors were in the system, and I had a couple doozies, we are worse. Our apathy is worse. The apathy of people who saw a homeless kid on the street. The apathy of the public who says, I can't foster, therefore I don't know a thing about foster care in my community. All of us who turn away from the panhandler or the squeegee man, we just turn away and then we do nothing. Voting, which is like baked table stakes. Barely a third of us do that. And so we suffer and when something happens, we condemn the actors in the system. 

So, for example, when a kid in foster care is hurt. We like the villagers in Frankenstein go after the social worker and we scream and we yell and what do we do? We add more paperwork, more policy, more training. My sister's a social worker. I once asked her, Jessica, what do you do for work? You know, she told me. Paperwork, David. I do paperwork. Here we have this passionate person that wants to help children and families, and we have her filling out forms. And every time there's a problem, we add more forms, as if that's the solution.

My sister has tens and tens and tens of kids on her case. Every time she goes into a home, she has to write down what she observes into like six different databases. What if she took a photo and it got uploaded into all the databases? My sister can't live within 30 miles of where she works. What if we gave interest free home loans to social workers after 10 years of good service?

We are the system, and we have to stop screaming at the people in it today for misbehaving or not living up to our standards. Because what have we done? Not enough. The moment that the people that consume this, unlike yourself, and perhaps myself, the moment that people have done enough is the moment you get to start judging.

That doesn't mean not to hold people accountable. But that's all we've done. We've never held ourselves accountable. Why is it that there's not enough foster parents? Why don't more people foster? I propose solutions to that. So you have the pressure on the system which leads to people like my sister turning through or foster parents who are overwhelmed with the kids they're getting. 

We can do better. I think we can do better. We also need to ask ourselves, who's going into foster care and why? Two thirds of the people entering the system, foster care, are there because of neglect. And the United States neglect is a euphemism for poverty. Mom misses a rent. Mom doesn't have daycare so leave the kids alone. Mom doesn't have enough food that month for the kids. The kids show up at school dirty, so what do we do instead of wrapping arms around the family? We take the kid away and so two thirds of the kids are into the system for neglect not every neglect case is from that, but a huge percentage is. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep a kid in foster care. Why are we not helping these families with that money? Keep the kid if he can with the family. 

Everything you said is absolutely true. But I think if we start from a place of personal responsibility and ownership, that we are responsible for these kids, we have given the state the awesome power of tearing apart families. We need to covet that power, and that means monitoring it and also holding ourselves accountable. And once they're in the system, we need to make sure the system is the system we would want if we placed our own child in it.

If it is not, shame on us. Shame on us. People are like, what's the solution? Well, close your eyes and imagine, right now, putting your kid in the system, what does it look like? What does that foster home look like? What does this kid's school look like? How is that child accessing education? How are they being exposed to careers?

How are they dealing with the trauma? What services and if that's not good enough for your kid needs, then it's not good enough for your kid because your kid is also every single foster kid. So I hope I've answered that question with my siloquy here, but I'm very passionate about that topic in particular. It's a huge reason I wrote this memoir. 

Carol Jenkins 
You say the government needs to step in and we are the government. I know that you have been honored by President Obama, by Hillary Clinton, what's the status with the current administration and the look at what is coming up? I know that you want child poverty to be a presidential campaign issue, as do we. How do we get to that point?

David Ambroz

The most important recent law that was passed was signed by President Trump. Coauthored by the Congressional Black Caucus's leadership and others, but signed by President Trump, and it was the Family First Act, which allows families states to provide support services to keep kids out of foster care for the first time, and that would be paid for by the federal government.

That is a major step towards what I was just talking about. President Obama was amazing, President Trump signed that bill, and this president has done so much to advance foster care, as has this Congress, the past Congress. The idea that those that are legislated upon should have not just a seat at the table, but the gavel at the meeting and drive the agenda and fully inform the law has really taken root to some of the issues that historically we've spoken about. Those people have not been at the table and today they are and they're leading and this president and this administration has really prioritize that foster care and poverty are really local issues.

They are administered in through local agencies, state agencies, county agencies. Most people can name a Supreme Court justice. Most people cannot name who represents them in their statehouse. People in Los Angeles recognize that homelessness is a huge problem. We have, I think, the number 60,000 homeless people in LA. And they rant. They rant against the mayor. The mayor has very little power, authority, or budget. It's the county supervisors. And when I point that out, they're like, the what? Shame on us. 

The Supreme Court is not sentencing young black and brown men to prison. It's the superior court. And people don't realize that when you skip over those elections on the ballot, you're putting people in power that may not align with your values in terms of justice reform and recognition of systemic racism and equity issues. So we have to stop fetishizing just D.C. and realize that we have so much power locally. Here we have the largest factory of inequity. Not intentionally. We have great people. The superintendent's amazing. The teachers are amazing, but it's not producing the results we want. And we're marching for things, which is important.

Who's marching for the schools? Where's that protest? Half the kids won't graduate. What are we doing about that, y'all? Where is that protest? One out of four kids go home hungry. What are their parents eating? Where is the outrage? Where is the organization? You know, we're talking about pro choice, all these important issues.

Why are we not talking about half the kids not graduating? Why are we not marching in the streets all the time? To fully fund public education. I was recently at a conversation. I said, close your eyes. And I was in a very wealthy environment out of California and well, what would you do? And I said, close your eyes for a second. I want to have a thought experiment. Not that I would do this, but just to stir the pot. And like, okay, I was like, okay, right now, close your eyes. Okay. Imagine if we banned all private and non public schools. Banned in the country. What do you think would happen to public education in America? Probably would get better.

Don't you think we wouldn't debate art, music, health, instruments, foreign languages. We would just fully fund it. Why? Right? If someone disagrees with that possible outcome. I know, who knows it's theoretical. I don't think we should ban that, but I do think we should look at things locally and realize the power that we have to lead the revolution for children. And I want to be part of that. 

Don't ignore the federal government, but don't overhype and ignore the power you have to affect your local community. Walk into your school board meeting and say, how do you integrate homeless children? There's a bill called the McKinney Vento Act, which allows homeless kids to stay in the school where they are, even if they move around.

How are your school district applying that? Most ignore it. Do you have a pantry for kids to take food home on the weekends? A foster kid shows up at school, usually they don't have clothes, other than the outfit they're wearing. Maybe you could start a pantry. So, I want us to realize the power we have and not just look to D.C., but realize locally. We gave my sister an interest free home loan so the social workers could buy a home where they work. That's a county decision. Let's do it, y'all. 

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Carol Jenkins  

David, thank you so much for being with us today. I love the idea of the revolution for children. We're on board. 

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David Ambroz  

Well, you're the marshal. I mean, I think I'm the entertainment and the drum, but I think you guys are the marshals here. 

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Jeff Madrick

David, thank you for coming to visit us.

David Ambroz 
My pleasure.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

Jeff Madrick  

History will judge a nation's decency in various ways. One of them will surely be the well being of all its children. American neglect of its poor children is both inexplicable and deplorable. By basic measures, it has the highest child poverty rate among rich nations in the world. A generation of careful academic research has shown how damaging this has been to children's cognition, health, nutrition, and future wages. We are dedicated. To restoring a bright and optimistic future for all children in this land long celebrated for equal opportunity. 

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Carol Jenkins  

Thanks so much for joining us on the Invisible Americans podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts. But we urge you to visit our website for transcripts, show notes, research, and additional information about our guests and their work. That's www.theinvisibleamericans.com. Please follow us on social media and our new YouTube channel and our blog posts are up on Medium as well as our website. That's www.theinvisibleamericans.com. Jeff and I will see you the next time.

The Invisible Americans theme by Bridget St. John

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