The Atlanta Anti-Poverty Campaign's mission is to eradicate poverty throughout Georgia with a direct focus on the metro Atlanta region and to serve as a resource for impoverished communities.

We have several goals over the short term (within the next year). We plan on building the APC Shelter for Homeless Veterans located in Atlanta, Georgia; we want to build a Food Bank for all who need it; and we want to start franchises to ensure the life of the organization. 

We are specifically tasked to continue Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign that he was working on in 1968 shortly before his life was ended. As such, we are tasked with the same goals which are:
- The idea that all people should have what they need to live
- A meaningful job at a living wage
- Access to land
- Access to capital for poor people and minorities to promote their own businesses
- Ability for ordinary people to "play a truly significant role" in the government

Our long term goals are to set up a Women's Shelter, a Shelter for LGBT and LGBT Community Center, Community Centers in impoverished areas, urban revitalization and development, an open state university, a credit union, and a research and teaching hospital.

We are seeking 501c(3) status and should get it before the start of 2014. This is a project concerned with Tikkun olam.

The verdict is in.  Poverty in the United States is getting worse in the general population despite the economic recovery.  It seems that the recovery is affecting the bottom lines of Wall Street and Corporate America and not "trickling down" to the greater masses where all of America lives.  There are award-winning strategies to get us to a place that is more familiar to us - Participatory Economy.  

 

That is a far off goal.  In order to get ourselves out of the doom and gloom of not recovering from the economic downturn, we propose that it has become an imperative to fix things that have been broken for decades.  Poverty, homelessness, hunger, and incorporating our veterans properly into society are all, not only the right thing to do, but in all of our best interests.

 

The fact remains that we live in a consumer economy.   Barring some unforeseen revolution, in order to generate economic growth, one would have to increase consumption.  There are two ways to increase consumption.  They are (1) providing the unemployed with jobs and (2) eliminating poverty.  These two solutions are not one in the same.  You can eliminate poverty by providing those unable to work with a proper safety net that is adequate and humane.  

 

It is the far and decent thing to do.  But, considering one does not believe in that, imagine the increase in consumption generated by money in the hands of consumers once impoverished and unable to consume thereby exacerbating a sluggish recovery.