FDR's 4th Freedom Has Been Forgotten
Torie Osborn

A local talk radio host called recently wanting to know "where those numbers" came from. My agency was using L.A. poverty statistics to promote the Weekend to End Poverty, an anti-poverty event. He thought they were so outrageous that he couldn't believe them. Unfortunately, 750,000 kids in Los Angeles not only believe those numbers, they live them.

Yes, there are three-quarters of a million poor children in the city of angels. And those figures were calculated before Sept. 11 and this year's recession.

The federal poverty line was instituted in the early 1960s based on a formula that took the cost of food for a family and multiplied it by three. Nearly 40 years later, the price of food, relative to other family expenses, has decreased while other family expenses have gone up. Last year, if you – as an individual – made $8,960, by the government's calculus you were middle class. Small comfort, I'll bet, to those trying to pay rent, food, utilities and other expenses on that amount of money. The absurdity of the federal poverty line is precisely why policy groups in Los Angeles and across the country have developed adjusted poverty lines that take into account the true cost of living today. In general, these adjusted poverty measures set the threshold at a little more than twice the federal poverty line. By those measures, nearly 1.5 million children live in poverty in Los Angeles.

But despite those startling numbers, the poor are not on our political radar. Thus, Congress debates an orgy of proposed tax cuts to corporations and the rich while the number of hungry children rises.

During the "Tribute to Heroes" fund-raiser, I heard Robert DeNiro recite Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms:" Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom from fear. Freedom from want. Sixty years later, how is it that these four freedoms have been distilled into two – freedom of speech and religion – with a third – freedom from fear – rearing its head in the shadow of Sept. 11? What has happened to the fourth freedom? Where is freedom from want in our national dialogue?

Today, instead, the House of Representatives passes a $100-billion "stimulus" package that offers only 16 cents of every dollar to assist the 628,000 people who have lost jobs in the last two months as well as the nation's poor.

Roosevelt knew better. Despite the fact that he spoke at a moment when American security was threatened, Roosevelt understood that freedom from want had to be a cornerstone of our policy.

Americans know that the terrorism we face from Islamic extremists was nourished on the impoverished streets of the Arab world. In its 1998 annual report, the United Nations Development Program calculated that it would take less than 4% of the combined wealth of the 225 richest individuals in the world to achieve and maintain access to adequate food, safe water, basic education and health care, and adequate sanitation for all people. America's fourth freedom must be restored to its rightful place among the nation's goals for itself and for the world. Our national security will never be safe without it.

Torie Osborn is executive director of the Liberty Hill Foundation, a Los Angeles-based social-change organization

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