Join us for a very special Crucial Conversation luncheon:
Prof. Peter Edelman discusses his new book, Not a Crime to be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America
In addition to exposing racially biased policing, the Justice Department’s Ferguson Report exposed how fines and fees for minor crimes often proved too expensive for Ferguson’s largely poor, African American population and resulted in jail sentences for thousands of people.
As former staffer to Robert F. Kennedy and current Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman explains in Not a Crime to be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America, Ferguson is everywhere in America today. Through money bail systems, fees and fines, strictly enforced laws and regulations against behavior including trespassing and public urination that largely affect the homeless, and the substitution of prisons and jails for the mental hospitals that have traditionally served the impoverished, in one of the richest countries on Earth we have effectively made it a crime to be poor.
Edelman, who famously resigned from the administration of Bill Clinton over welfare “reform,” connects the dots between these policies and others including school discipline in poor communities, child support policies affecting the poor, public housing ordinances, addiction treatment, and the specter of public benefits fraud to paint a picture of a mean-spirited, retributive system that seals whole communities into inescapable cycles of poverty.
Prof. Edelman is coming to the Triangle to mark the 50th anniversary of Durham-based nonprofit MDC. His visit is the first of a series of MDC-sponsored events focused on ways that Southern leaders can work together to create an Infrastructure of Opportunity that shapes a South where all people thrive.
Peter Edelman is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and poverty law and is faculty director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality. On the faculty since 1982, he has also served in all three branches of government. During President Clinton’s first term he was Counselor to HHS Secretary Donna Shalala and then Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.
***Note: Copies of Not a Crime to be Poor will be available for purchase and Prof. Edelman will be signing books after his talk.***
Don’t miss this important and timely event!
When: Friday, February 16, 2018 at noon — Box lunches will be available at 11:45 a.m.
Where: Center for Community Leadership Training Room at the Junior League of Raleigh Building, 711 Hillsborough St. (at the corner of Hillsborough and St. Mary’s streets)
Space is limited – preregistration required.
Cost: $15, admission includes a box lunch. Scholarships available.
Questions?? Contact Rob Schofield at 919-861-2065 or rob@ncpolicywatch.com
Can’t make it to Raleigh? Prof. Edelman will also be appearing earlier on the same day for a breakfast event at the Durham office of MDC.
Click here for more information.
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