NOTE: I wrote this for an op-ed submission to the Cincinnati Enquirer.  They  published a nicely edited version today but wanted to have the original intact here.

I have the distinct privilege of being a member of Leadership Cincinnati Class 39. The program is facilitated masterfully by Dan Hurley and the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, along with a steering committee of Cincinnati leaders unique to each session.  Each month we address a challenging issue affecting our community.

This month we did a deep dive into poverty, convening at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul.  At the end of each session a community leader presents a “Call to Action.” My friend Tracy Cook, Executive Director of ProKids, who battles abuse and neglect of children on a daily basis, issued a deeply moving call last week. I hope in some small way this editorial answers that call, though I know these words must be followed up with action.

Please let me begin by saying I do not know poverty. I do not know what it is like to be poor – to be on public assistance; to struggle to feed my family; to be required to navigate our city on public transportation; to be one stroke of bad luck away from a death spiral; to live in the neighborhood that can at times resemble a war zone. More than a few of my very successful classmates actually do know, and my eyes and heart have been opened as I hear or read their journeys and those of the wonderful people we meet.

We were honored at our session to have Mayor Cranley outline his bold plan to reduce poverty in our region through the Cincinnati Childhood Poverty Collaborative.  Although some of my classmates understandably want to see more action faster, we all applaud and support the Mayor and his Steering Committee undertaking this effort to reduce the number of our children in poverty by 10,000 and adults by 5,000 within five years.  The numbers are staggering and have actually worsened over the last decade. With nearly half (44%) of our children living in poverty, the time has come for a coordinated, unified approach to confronting this ugly truth. Success with this initiative would represent a significant and attainable reduction in childhood poverty.  And perhaps as importantly, through the collaborative process of community engagement, it would raise our region’s consciousness about poverty and its long-lasting societal impact.

The statistics are alarming and I am not the expert to recite them to you. Suffice it to say that a child who grows up in poverty has the deck stacked against them in ways we simply cannot imagine. And failure leads directly to the perpetuation of so many other societal problems we currently battle – joblessness, violent crime, overcrowded prisons, poor physical and debilitating mental health diagnoses.  It is a statistically proven domino effect of bad outcomes when children grow up in poverty.  I was personally sold on the human dignity aspects, but if you need the economic justification, it is easy to see how all of these outcomes are bad juju for Cincinnati – a less capable workforce, lost productivity, higher costs of social welfare, increased pressure on the criminal justice system.  All of this will eventually destroy what we’ve been working to build in our current urban renaissance.

One related challenge is to try to find a way to eliminate the phrase “working poor” from our vocabulary. Having gone through our workshop and personally interacted with several individuals who have experienced this status, it is clearly an unfortunate, and I would argue untenable byproduct of unchecked capitalism. My perhaps utopian vision is to see that label used only in history books and civics lessons to describe an embarrassing economic reality of a past generation.  If someone is working 35+ hours per week (regardless of how many jobs it takes to get there), they should be able to crest an absurdly low poverty line in our land of plenty.

The fix is not easy.  Problems of access to transportation, fair wages, healthcare and education will not be solved quickly. This is at least a generational commitment.  And although the wage issue is politically divisive and requires state and federal action, we have a local opportunity to effect meaningful change in front of us through the Cincinnati Childhood Poverty Collaborative.  Based on the passion and intellect of my classmates and community leaders supporting this effort, we should have the political will.  But they will need broad community support to keep the momentum going and achieve lasting improvements. Please join me in supporting this initiative.  We can no longer turn our backs on the children of our community and the parents, guardians and community agencies trying so hard to protect them.