Refusing to be Silenced, the MAP Project Opens a Conversation

"The MAP project isn’t just about telling the truth, it’s about helping to undo the untruths that are keeping us from being able to unite together and tell our own story. About why we’re valuable regardless of how much money we have. About why we as humans deserve food and medicine, not just because we’re working but because we’re human."

Jess Bartholow, speaking at the launch of Pushed to the Bottom: the Experience of Poverty in the U.S.

On March 27, the final results of our multi-year research into the multidimensional aspects of poverty (MAP) were released in an event at The New School for Social Research in New York City. With almost one hundred people packed into the event space and hundreds more who have watched the Facebook live stream, it was a resounding launch to an important new contribution to our understanding of poverty in America. 

The animation above reviews the key findings: that poverty is the result of a process of subjugation, and that because of that subjugation one part of society lives in disadvantaged areas where they lack access to basic resources, suffer ill health, struggle against work- and employment-related hardships, have their voice silenced or ignored, live in exclusion and isolation, and endure stigma and shame. These different aspects of poverty are intimately intertwined with one another.

Perhaps more important than simply identifying the key aspects used to define poverty, however, this research poses fundamental questions about who gets to define poverty. “We believe what experts say on a number of topics,” the MAP project co-director Maryann Broxton told the audience at the New York launch, “But when it comes to the topic of poverty, people who live in poverty – the ones who know by experience – are excluded from the conversation.”

With the MAP report, this is no longer the case.

After presentations at The New School, audience members were invited to participate in small group discussions around key aspects of poverty. Those ideas were then shared the following week in Boston, when the MAP report was presented to another packed room at Harvard University. 

“How do we address the fact that we have so little power and so little say so?”Activist and MAP national research team member Marlon Wallen asked the Boston audience as he concluded his discussion of health and well-being, describing poverty as“a trauma.”

It was a question answered by the following speaker, Deeqo Jibril who works for the City of Boston. In describing her own life story, and her own experience as an immigrant coming at the age of twelve to the United States, Ms. Jibril provided a powerful testament to how we can stand up and be counted if we unite and come together.

This is what we will continue to try and build over the coming months. The MAP report has been downloaded nearly three hundred times, the website and its animations and interviews have been viewed thousands of times. On April 18, the MAP research will come to Oakland with an event at the St. Mary’s Center – registration is available here. In May, the international research will be presented at the OECD in Paris, an event which will be live streamed here.

Then in June we will be back in the U.S. with a live event in New Orleans on June 8th– more details coming soon.

In the meantime, we encourage folks to get in touch with your ideas, suggestions, or reactions. If you want to learn more, write to Dave at Dmeyer[at]4thworldovement.org. 

The path ahead of us is clear. As national research team member Kimberly Tyre told the crowd at The New School on March 27, “[I]n a Catch 22 scenario between suffering in silence and speaking out, I chose the latter.”

“We have to use our voice, and use the powerful tool that is this report. We need to keep on disseminating our findings and keep on having outlets to talk about it over and over. We need to keep on talking about it until we can’t talk about it anymore and then we have to train young people to talk about it and talk about it and keep on talking about it and when they get tired we'll train others to talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. 

“We should talk about it in the universities and in schools, we talk about it in church and in Congress. We should talk about it everywhere […] I refuse to let our life and our truth be silenced.”