By Reginald Byron Jones-Sawyer, Sr.
Every year the United Nations (UN) asks world leaders to reflect on the issue of social justice and create programs that focus on eradicating poverty in their respective countries. The UN’s Annual World Social Justice Day (every February 20) is a day to remind ourselves at the local level that inequalities in poverty, exclusion, gender equality, unemployment, human rights, and social protections exist and are on the rise.
National numbers indicate poverty is hitting every community with Native American (25.4%), Black (20.8%) and Latino (17.6%) communities being the most affected. Studies indicate children in particular are living in poverty with one in every six children at or below the federal guidelines for poverty. Over 2.5 million kids, 16.2 percent of the U.S. population, were homeless in 2015.