By: Jenna Beresheim News Editor
On Jan. 21, about 60 participants assumed the roles of 26 different families struggling with poverty-induced limitations.
The event took place during Martin Luther King, Jr. week in remembrance of King’s antipoverty movement known as the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968.
“King planned for an initial group of 2,000 poor people to descend on Washington, D.C., southern states and northern cities to meet with government officials to demand jobs, unemployment insurance, a fair minimum wage, and education for poor adults and children designed to improve their self-image and self-esteem,” reports Stanford University’s King Encyclopedia.
King’s actions have not been forgotten.
With poverty continuing to be an issue to this day, students partook in role playing to experience a problem that Martin Luther King Jr. fought to end in the 1960’s.
The poverty simulation allowed students to experience what living month-to-month is like for a typical low-income family.
Those 26 low-income families were formed within a large room with the families seated in small groups towards the center of the room.
Along the perimeter of the room, tables represent available services and community resources for the families to make use of as needed.
Some goals of the simulation may seem simple: keep the family intact while providing basic necessities, such as shelter.
In order to achieve these goals, the families had to make difficult choices, including pawning off items or scraping together enough money to buy a bus pass to the pawn shop.
“The latest figures from the American Community Survey show 16.7 percent of Oregonians live below the poverty line,” reports Oregon Public Broadcasting.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the poverty rate in 2014 was 14.8 percent, meaning that 46.7 million people lived in poverty.
The simulated families range from both parents working, to one parent working, to the children also trying to make ends meet, and every variation in between. Poverty can affect an entire family, including children under 18.
The poverty rate in 2014 for children under age 18 was 21.1 percent, while the rate for people aged 18 to 64 was 13.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
By garnering a greater grasp of what it meant to be impoverished and to experience another human’s struggle, participants became more aware of not only their privilege, but how to assist the community.
According to Stanford University, the Poor People’s Campaign “succeeded in small ways, such as qualifying 200 counties for free surplus food distribution, and securing promises from several federal agencies to hire poor people to help run programs for the poor.”
The goal of the simulation was ultimately to raise awareness, but also to encourage students and other participants to make a difference against poverty.
