Greg Kaufmann | The Nation

In May 2012, Richard Crowe was laid off when the steel mill where he had worked for thirty-four years was shut down. He’d worked there since graduating from high school. New ownership filed for bankruptcy.

“The judge threw the workers’ contract out, the owners walked away with $20 million, and we got nothing,” says Crowe, who is 54, and lives in eastern Ohio.

Seven months later, Crowe is one of 5 million “long-term” unemployed workers in the United States who have been looking for work for more than six months. They are disproportionately older (over 50), women, and minorities, and according to today’s jobs report, their employment prospects haven’t much improved.

The hardest thing about the poverty beat is this: getting to know men, women and children who are working to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and knowing the consequences to their lives if those obstacles prove too great. I also meet people in low-income communities, NGOs, think tanks, universities, and government who are completely devoted to the eradication of poverty. They engender hope. I checked in with some of them this week and asked what they are thinking about this Thanksgiving. Here is what they had to say:

Sister Simone Campbell, executive director, NETWORK:

On Monday I was in Louisiana sharing stories from Nuns on the Bus with teachers and those who work in various support roles in schools. One woman told me that she has been doing the same support job for thirteen years in a school district, not had a raise for seven years and is currently making $17,000. She has had to take extra jobs to support her family and at times uses a food bank and other services to even get by. While she loves working with the children, it is a daily struggle for her and her family. She is in the bottom 20 percent of our nation for income, yet she is doing some of the most important work helping to form the new generation. This Thanksgiving, I am keenly aware of so many in our rich nation who are struggling to put food on their families’ tables. We are better than this. My prayer is that the 100 percent will come together, and exercise our responsibility for each other, being “We the People” forming a more perfect union.

“I really want people to understand that we all work just as hard as the next person that’s in a business suit,” says Tamika Maxwell, mother of three, describing her work as a janitor in Cincinnati, her hometown.

Along with 1,000 colleagues in the city, Maxwell hopes that current negotiations between SEIU and the city’s cleaning contractors will raise their $9.80 hourly wage—which, for annual full-time work, still leaves a family of three below the federal poverty line and relying on food stamps and Medicaid. In essence, the state ends up subsidizing corporations to continue paying people a non-living wage.

“My paycheck is the same amount as my Duke Energy bill,” says Maxwell. “And you know they don’t care—they will cut you off if you don’t have their money.”

Three months ago, anticipating that the media and presidential campaigns wouldn’t focus on the struggles of the poor and near poor in a substantive way, TheNation.com kicked off a new campaign: “#TalkPoverty: Questions for Obama and Romney.”

In an effort to push the issue of poverty into the mainstream political debate, I profiled and polled five experts who have devoted their lives to fighting poverty—and individuals who have lived in poverty—giving them the opportunity to ask the presidential candidates the questions that they want answers to.

A thriving #TalkPoverty community developed online, and the Half In Ten coalition—comprised of 200 national and local organizations across the country—ran an excellent spin-off campaign to pressure debate moderators to ask President Obama and Governor Romney about their plans to address child poverty. Despite this vibrant campaign—and the outsized focus of the debates on the domestic economy—the moderators never asked a single question about poverty.