robert rector writes facts about the poor. this was posted about a year ago. the chart shows the percent of households with certain amendties. 92 pkts have microwaves. 50% have internet service. 33% have a big screen or plasma lcd. the argument there is, how can someone be poor if they have a television set? steve, let me get your take on this because you work in an area of extreme poverty and i would imagine that a tv set, one way or another is not going to help you get out of poverty. let me start by saying, or addressing the microwave issue. in chicago, the microwave may be the only thing they had.
i think mayor rahm emanuel is trying to partner with us and try to kind of seduce some of the violence the best he can. but, the poverty, the violence, there are a bunch of underlying issues that go into that mess. ultimately, we need to have funding and policy prescriptions on a federal level that provide for things like that. absolutely. we are going talk about that in the next segment. steven, author of poverty in america . steve gates, john wheel from senior service america. thank you all for joining us this morning. thank you. a stunning new report on how little coverage poverty is getting in the presidential campaign. that s up next and how we are going to address these issues of poverty.
least not from politicians. it s more of an abstraction, not part of the whole. we want to talk about why that is. joining me, we have tonja, founder of lives behind numbers, a blog that tracks poverty in the united states. steven, the author of the people s history of poverty in america an associate professor at columbia university and steve gates, chicago youth programs and john reel, assistant to the director of senior services america inc. tonja, i want to start with you. i was a guest on this program a month ago or a couple weeks ago. you talked about your experience in the wake of the great recession. just tell us a little bit about what the past couple years have been like for you and your family.
we, in turn, were abandoned by caregivers that would leave without notice. i came home from my business to find my mother locked in her room. the lady moved out without giving notice. i was forced to close my business within two weeks of that event. so, i have never regained what i lost in that transition. my mother has since died, of course, but it s something that stays with you. it s terribly disruptive. and i mean, it carries over into many constituencies in our society. indeed. steve, as you sit here, i know that during our last panel we were talking about education as a panacea of poverty. you have been working in the south side of chicago. correct. with you, under the youth
over 40% of the think of it as $11,500 or below for a family of four. the people living in a community of deep poverty is where you have over 40% of those people living in poverty. how else has it changed? if i can, i want to bring up something steve said and pull it back to education. i hope we have the opportunity to thank steve for bringing up the question of race. we want to talk about it in the context of the american criminal justice system. when we think of education, there s a lovely 1967 movie with sandy dennis called up the down staircase. a do gooder goes into the bronx to uplift the black and brown people for a better life. she runs through all the obstacles those move vis have to