Denver At the DNC’s Faith in Action Panel, Rev. Jennifer Kottler of the Living Wage Coalition said that poverty, “like slavery more than a certury ago,” is a “stain” on our nation. But this stain is much darker and deeper than most know. “Before you think poverty is only about poor people–think again,” she told the crowd a couple hundred at the Colorado Convention Center. According to Rev. Kottler, there are four types of poverty. There’s “income poverty”–people living below the official federal poverty level. Then there’s “extreme poverty”–those who make less than half the poverty level. And there are the “working poor”–those making 100 to 200 percent above the poverty level. But the forgotten poor are those suffering from “asset poverty”–individuals “at any income level who live paycheck to paycheck” and could not subsist at the poverty level for 3 months without a job (emphasis mine). Rev. Kottler cited the plight of her niece and her boyfriend–who have bachelors degrees and masters degrees and work for non-profit groups–as an example of those suffering from asset poverty. “Even pooling their resources, they’re having a tough time making it by.” And Kottler reminds us that poverty is a central issue for religious voters. She said, “if you cut out all the parts about poverty” in the Bible “there’s not much left.”
