tavis: good evening. from washington, i'm tavis smiley. tonight we bring you to first of three nights devoted to a conversation about the issue of poverty. i'm joined tonight here on the campus of george washington university by a terrific group that includes oscar winning film macromichael moore, financial expert, suze orman, cornel west. jo complafmente we're glad you joined us for night one coming up right now. >> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know.

it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. w.k. kellog foundation engaging communities to improve the lives of vulnerable children. and by contributions to major your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. kcet public television] [applause] tavis: i'm so honored that you here. i want to start with you because the numbers here have been coming out so much of late.

certainly in the last few months of 2011, it seemed like every other day there was a new statistic coming out about how bad things really are. the most recent ones from the census bureau finds that one of two americans was either in poverty or near poverty. now i was not math major in college, but i think that means half the country is either in poverty or near poverty. if you add three categories together. the perennialy poor, the new poor and the near poor, you're talking over 150 million americans. i want to start by asking how did it get this bad? >> well, let me just say about those numbers, you know, there has been an idea for a long time that the poor are some kind of special grurengs some special demographic. they are over there somewhere. we're not talking about someone

else. we're talking about almost half of americans struggling and that goes from the senior citizen who want make it on sorblee social security, the low wage worker from wal-mart of something like that. it is a massive phenomenon. we're going to have a discussion about how we got this way. i'm going to throw out one possible cause. the theory for a long time, coming not only from the right but from some democrats is that poverty is that there is something wrong with your character. you have got bad habits. you've got a bad lifestyle. you've made the wrong choices. i would like to present an alternative theory, which is that poverty is not a character flaw. it is a shortage of money. laugh 4r56 [applause] the biggest reason for that shortage of money is that most

working people are not paid enough for their work. [applause] and then -- or don't have work. tavis: dr. west, i want to come to you. i want to build on what she has laid out for us. how we got to be this way. indiana university this week released a paper called "at risk" which really does detail what this great recession has done to the american public. it is pretty clear from this report that the new poor in this country are the former middle class. the new poor are the former middle class. typically politicians love -- i guess their polls must encourage them to speak to the angst of the middle class voter. how do you talk to the middle class in ways similar to the past if the new poor in this country happened now to be the former middle class? >> i first just want to salute

you in your leadership. give brother tavis a hand. very important. [applause] i was blessed to go to 18 cities, 11 states in seven days with brother tavis on a tour. we were able to see the middle class mothers and -- brothers and sisters of all cultures. they were black, brown, white. we started on the indian reservation because it is always fascinating to look at america through lens of the original people. [applause] very important starting point. the original people. and we began with the notion that poor people are priceless and precious. just as each individual has the dignity that ought to be affirmed and what did we see, brother tavis?

we saw the results of a system in place that has been driven by corporate greed at the top with o linch garks ruling and money coming from the big bank corporations pushing working people to the margins and rendering poor people superfluous, invisible. any time you talk about poor people, you have got to talk about the larger systemic context. how could it be that the top 400 individuals have wealth equivalent to the bottom 150 million fellow citizens? there is something sick about that. then how could it be that poverty hasn't become the major moralist issue of our time?

because our leaders lack courage and independence. they are too tied to big money. how could it be that the complex has been expanding and $300 billion has gone into jails and prisons and criminal justice yet when it comes to money for schools, housing, jobs with a living wage, it is a warped system. we're here because martin luther king and others said america is a sick society. america doesn't always have to be sick. if americas rise up to where the occupy movement has been talking about and begin to talk about these issues seriously. longer than a brown face. we overlook it. white middle class face, uh-oh, we've got a problem now. we're going to have to deal with some things. that's fine, we believe that white brothers and sisters have the same rights as black and

brown and red and yellow. tavis: let me go to roger clay on the other end here. i think that roger can speak to something that dr. west raises now poverty in this country for too many of us is color coded? how much of our lack of will to address heretofore at least in the poverty question has to do with the fact that poverty is so color coded? >> i went back and looked for the last 40 years to see what the unemployment rate was for blacks. knowledge one year has it been lower than -- only in one year hasen been lower than it is now. black folks have been hurting for a long, long time. no one paid attention to it because they look at the unemployment rate for everybody, not just certain populations. i think it is a good example of what happens when looking at a

lot of problems among our different racial minoritys is that if it doesn't hit the white community it doesn't happen. it didn't exist. what's happening now of course is that there are a lot of white folks that have fallen out of the middle class or are in danger of it and so now it is a problem. it wasn't a problem before and black folks have been there the entire time, the last 40 or 50 years. we have been keeping statistics longer than that. tavis: one of the arguments you hear from michael moore. it is fun to ask him a loaded question. it is just more fun that way. part of what we're hearing from some of those white folk, michael, is that what this conversation represents is class envy. that somehow people are envious, they are jealous, hating on people. we are a bunch of haters on all the folk who have none.

what do you make of that argument? >> it is not envy. it is a war. it is a class war. perpetrated by the rich on to everybody else. that is the class war. it is one that they started. the mistake they have made to deal with the racial part of this is their boot has been on the necks of people of color since we began. this is a nation founded on genocide. and built on the back of slafse. all right? -- slaves, all right? so we started with a racial problem. we wanted to try to eliminate one entire race and that we used another race to build this country quite quickly as a new country into a world power. this country would never have had the wealth that it had had it not had slavery for a couple

hundred years. they actually had to pay people to build america, you know, we might just be at that point in utah where we're joining the two rails together maybe at this point right now. i think here is what i find really interesting. you know, corporate america and wall street, they are always thinking about what is in it for us. how is it going to work for us? and they actually need poverty. they need poor people. the system doesn't work for them unless there is always a good chunk of poor people. the mistake they have made is they had a permanent poor class mostly of people of color but a lot of poor white people too. they had a permanent class of poor that they could use as essentially a threat to the middle class. if you ask for too much, if you ask for higher wages if, you're

expecting health benefits if, you want a day off, you could very quickly be over there with those people. so they knew how the use this group to manipulate this group. the huge catastrophic tactical mistake that they have made because of their incredible greed, and they came up with it essentially with the housing thing. after they had soaked the poor and used the poor, they thought, jeez, we're just not making enough money. what can we get off the middle class? wait a minute, they all own homes. let's do the mortgage thing that they went after that and after their homes. they moved their jobs overseas. they took their health care away. they made it so that their children would be the first generation in the history of this country who would be worse off than their parents' generation. the final thing i want to say to

this is that what i don't understand is that wall street and the banks, they have so overplayed their hands here. they -- they should have just eased up a year or two ago. maybe just backed off. they could have had their larger class of permanent poor, but i think it works in their benefit because why would we have poverty -- if wall street and the rich thought poverty was bad, they would get rid of it. if they really thought it was not good for them, right? they have means to get rid of it. they would get rid of it. but they don't. they need it. they need this large, large -- half the country -- half the country living in anxiety and fear and the other half over here are the ones that they will sell their good to. that's really actually messed up economics because they have been

going for the short-term gains and sooner or later they are not going to make their money on that. sooner or later the chinese are not going to be in poverty. people are going to rise up in other countries. they are not going to be able to go there and do this for 10 cents an hour. i think they made a colossal mistake. i think you're going to be able to see -- you're seeing it now. this large group of the american public, 150 million people rising up. [applause] tavis: this conversation -- this conversation tonight here at george washington, is made possible thanks to the generous support over the -- of the w.k. kellogg foundation. there is a particular question submitted from the kellogg website is that i wanted to get to because it is a great segue, suze orman, to you, michael just talked about the group of

americans who have always been poor. i called them earlier, the perennialy poor. there is a great question from the kellogg website that said children who grow up in poverty tend to stay in poverty. what factors do you think contribute to it among american families? that phrase got me. i want to ask suze to comment on that because we know suze orman as the most regarded financial expert in this country to my mind. you might not know that white suze grew up on the black side, the south side of chicago. [applause] in a whole lot of poverty. obviously she has made her way out of that, but she has a unique perspective on the perennialy poor in this country that might, again, not seem plausible at first glance. suze talk to me about what keeps

people in poverty. >> what's interesting is this. and i'm going to take just a little drimpt approach on this as i can. -- different approach on this as i can. all of you who have ever heard me speak, you have heard me say people, be careful. the rich are getting richer. the poor are getting poorer. sooner or later, the middle class will not exist. the people that call into the "suze orman show" used to be middle class. i'm here to tell you they are all now in poverty. the face of poverty has changed. the face of poverty is the person sitting next to you. it is every single color and what keeps us in poverty is that there is a highway into poverty and there is no longer even a sidewalk out. to get out of poverty, you to have a source of income. you have generate money so that you not

poor. it is not brain science. but you cannot make money if there isn't a job for you to have. even if you do make money, you can't afford to pay things, especially when you see the prices of food out there and what it costs. so everything is set up as michael has said that, once you are poor, they have you exactly where they want you. now i don't give them as much credit as you do in that i don't think they are smart enough to know what they did purposely. i don't. [applause] i think they go after money and we don't know what to do because we're not educated on money. so when somebody says to you, sign here, you can have your american dreerges you believe them. -- dream, you believe them. and you believe them because you want more for yourself, and why would they lie to you? well, they did, everybody. there is only one person that can get you out and that is you. and you have got to start taking

your own power, giving power to your voice, stop sitting down not saying anything and just settling for less. if you settle for less, you'll always be less. so what changes things is that when people start to voice how unhappy they are. what also starts to change things if you simply stop buying from the corporations that are keeping you down. [applause] tavis: ask the to ask majora about the link to poverty, alleviation and environmental remediation. i want to ask that, majora, because poor people, those who are perennialy poor, are not just stuck in poverty. the so often they are stuck in certain pockets, neighborhoods, and they can't get out. those environments get dumped on.

that's where their lack of resources new york city transportation, there is -- no transportation, there is a link between poverty and environment. talk to me about the link. >> it is very real. my work has always been based in showing that environmental equality could be used as a tool to create economic stability and opportunities. because you know, i would -- i am very well known for the type of things like transforming dumps into parks. ideally what those projects did was provide a visual reminder of things because they look particularly now don't have to be there always. it is a very visual way to do that. environmental equality is simple lay belief and principle that no community should have to bear the brunt of lots of virmental burden and not enjoy benefits.

we know now race and/or class, both actually, will determine where you find the good stuff, parks and trees or the not so good things like to waste facilities and power plants. there is hope and opportunity that i think we kind of missed a lot of, the fact that we can create a new economic opportunity around things like how do we adapt our country? in particular, our coastal areas and our cities to deal with the way the claimant is changing, ways to use environmentally sound ways to restore water management and energy conservation while creating real jobs in particular for people that have been left behind by our education system for so long and whether it is green roofing or urban forestry management, things of that nature that provide municipal services as well and using real estate

development as a platform for engagement that aspires to really help undo the unintended consequences of integration that made its so that when communities -- we were once at one point for racially segregated but then later on, once we had integration, those that had more money were able to "leaving katya"ing some very vulnerable -- leaving some very vulnerable people in these pockets. if we can create truly mixed income communities bring back the kind of resources so that poor people are not always so poor. bringing in things like manufacturing, always keeping an eye toward the environmentaly sound to things that do not continue the destroy fabric of our communities. we have done that and we know we can do more oifert. tavis: thank you for your patience. >> saving the best for last?

tavis: love that modesty. it is actually perfect timing because what majora was talking about in these pockets of poverty are that people get stuck in these conditions. one thing you know is that in these pockets of poverty people have access to less than. we were talking food, high quoolt food,--quality food, fresh meat, when most americans think about hunger, food and security, they don't think about of that as an american problem. we think about the infomercials we see on late night television of little african babys with big bellies. but talk to mebout what the numbers are saying to us about hunger and food security in america now. >> yeah so, the numbers are

huge. i mean, there are 50 million americans in this country that are hungry. that meanses that they don't know where their next meal is going to come from. they are fretting and worrying if they are parents about how they are going to feed their children. if they are kids, they come in oftentimes on monday morning with knot not enough to eat and they are finlty in classrooms. we know this -- fidgety in classrooms. we know this because we talk to teachers. senior citizens living on a fixed income are too embarrassed to ask for help. we have seen the numbers since the last recession. the numbers have counciled. 150 million -- have doubled. 150 million people. we have a crisis in front of us. the interesting thing that goes

back to various things a various panels have said, up until now it has been hidden. we all know somebody that is struggling. the work that we do at feeding america, we did the biggest piece of research around hunger in america that is done. shows that it has doubled since the recession as i said, but also the people that are coming to our food banks and into food stamp offices for the first time have grown by 30% and that 30% are people that are visiting that have never been there. so it is the middle class. but i think -- i was thinking about this as we were getting ready for the panel. you know, this country has come together and solved some really big issues around race, because of the great leaders like dr. king, have solved great issues

like women's suffrage because of susan b. anthony. this is an issue of leadership. and we need to join hands together and lead. 150 million. that's half of our country. if we can't do something about this now, then we never will. [applause] tavis: we have to leave it there for tonight, but join us again tomorrow night for part two of our terrific conversation. you can access maiga-ba on -- access "remaking america" on our website pbs.org. >> for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. tavis: hi, i'm tavis smiley. join me next time from washington for night two of our conversation about combagget poverty and restoring posterity.

>> every community has a martin luther king boulevard. it's the cornerstone we all know. it's not just a street or boulevard, but a place where walmart stands together with your community to make every day better. w.k. kellogg foundation. learn more at w kk f.org and by contribution to your pbs station from viewers with you. thank you.