NC LEGISLATIVE BLACK CAUCUS TO HOLD
TOWN HALL MEETINGS ON POVERTY
Special to The Carolinian
The North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus has announced a series of statewide town hall meetings and symposiums addressing the growing rate of poverty in the state.
“2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the War on Poverty. The poverty gap continues to widen and we thought this would be a good time to refocus our attention on the thousands of North Carolinians who are the working poor,” said Representative Garland Pierce, Chairman, NCLBC. We will launch a series of Town Hall meetings with several community partners to advance the message of the poverty gap and educate them on why it is getting wider and what we can do collectively to close that gap,” said Pierce.
According to recently published reports, the poverty gap continues to widen, “North Carolina has eighteen percent, 1.7 million living in poverty. Twenty percent have no health care coverage. We have the 12-highest poverty rate in the country – though only a decade ago we were 26th. The top one-fifth of our households capture more income than the bottom 80 percent put together. Over a half-million of our households, participate in the food stamp program. In Robeson County, that included 33 percent of families, the third-highest figure in the nation in counties over 65,000.”
"North Carolina citizens have been working in their communities and have similar ideas about how you solve poverty. They want to connect education and economic opportunities, to close poverty gaps at the community level," said Senator Earline Parmon, Vice Chair, NCLBC.
The first Town Hall Meeting was earlier today in Durham at St Joseph’s AME Church.
The Caucus is also being hosted in Winston-Salem by The Renaissance Men of Winston-Salem State University and Delta Alpha Chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc on Friday, April 4 from 1-3pm at Dillard Auditorium in the Anderson Center on the Campus of Winston-Salem, State University. “April 4 has the significance of being the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assignation during his visit to Memphis, Tennessee in support of striking Sanitation workers,” said Pierce.
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