Subject: NEWS: Sanders to Discuss Poverty in America
From: Michael Briggs <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 5 May 2016 14:06:32 +0000

Sanders to Discuss Poverty in America
 
May 5, 2016
Contact: Michael Briggs (802) 233-8653

KIMBALL, W. Va. – U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday was in McDowell County, West Virginia, to meet at a food bank with people living in one of the worst pockets of poverty in the United States and to examine why 47 million Americans live in poverty in the richest nation on earth.

He will meet this morning with West Virginians at the Five Loaves & Two Fishes Food Bank, where Linda and Bob McKinney struggle to keep residents of the rural mountain county from going hungry.

The discussion is expected to focus on the urgent need to lift millions of Americans out of poverty and rebuild the middle class. Sanders will focus on how poverty can be a death sentence. In McDowell County, where deaths by suicide and from drug overdoses are among the highest in the state, men live on average to be only 64 years old. Sanders will contrast that to suburban Washington, D.C., just a six-hour drive away, where men in wealthy Fairfax County, Virginia, live on average until the age of 82. The average life expectancy for women in Fairfax County is 85, compared to just 73 for women in McDowell.

To read the senator’s prepared remarks, click here.

To read prepared remarks by panelists, click here.

To read Sanders' interview on poverty in McDowell County with Steve Inskeep on NPR’s “Morning Edition” today, click here.

To read more in The Atlantic about poverty and mortality, click here.

To read about a Senate hearing Sanders chaired on poverty in McDowell County, click here.

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