Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama unveiled his plan to combat urban poverty Wednesday, making his case from one of Washington’s, and the nation’s, poorest black communities.
Obama pledged to replicate New York’s Harlem Children’s Zone, a grassroots-born social services program, in more than 20 cities nationally if elected.
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He made that promise from the stage of The ARC, a community center in the District’s Ward 8, where the median household income is about $25,000 despite an ongoing economic boom in nearby neighborhoods west of the Anacostia River.
“If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can’t just treat those symptoms in isolation,” Obama said. “We have to treat the entire community.”
The Harlem Children’s Zone is a program that provides prenatal care, early childhood education, life skills classes and free medical care at a cost of $46 million annually. It also offers job counseling, technology training and crime prevention. Obama pledged to fund half of the plan, which he expected to cost in the billions, through federal money with the remainder coming from the business and philanthropic communities.
In addition to replicating the Harlem plan, Obama pledged to raise the minimum wage to a livable one, invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs programs and develop more than 112,000 affordable housing units nationally.
Obama trails Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., in polls on the presidential candidates, but leads in fundraising.The rolling out of Obama’s plan came just one day after Mayor Adrian Fenty endorsed Obama. Council members Marion Barry, D-Ward 8, Tommy Wells, D-Ward 6, and Muriel Bowser, D-Ward 4, also attended.
