Quotes from Sasha Abramsky

Like a man who pinches himself to make sure he still has feeling, Chimen read to reassure himself that he was still alive.

As long as people think poverty is the problem," Ganz explained, "they're missing the whole point. Poverty is evidence of a problem; it's not the source of the problem. They're all based on the weakening of collective institutions—the decline of labor, of common interests. The core question is not about poverty, it's really about democracy. The galloping poverty in the United States is evidence of a retreat from democratic beliefs and practices.

Faith is a wondrous thing; it is not only capable of moving mountains, but also of making you believe that a herring is a race horse.

Poverty is, in other words, as diverse as the United States itself. What the poor have in common, however, is an increasingly precarious existence in a country seemingly unable—or at least unwilling—to come to grips with their collective despair.

Pascal had formulated a famous wager in favor of the existence of God: If you bet there is no God and you are wrong, a wrathful deity is likely to condemn your eternal soul to hellfire; but if you gamble that there is a God and there is not, your consciousness will cease to exist upon your death and you will never know that you were wrong.

the most successful eighth graders from poor economic backgrounds had only the same chance of attaining a bachelor's degree as the least successful eighth graders from the wealthiest echelon of society

For while white conservatives use government assistance copiously--whether it be Social Security, or mortgage tax relief, low-interest federal college loans or Medicare--in their political discussions they tend to define their benefits as not being "welfare," in contrast to the somehow less noble assistance provided to their black and brown neighbors.

In the decades after the Civil War, as bankrupt former Confederate states with a historical aversion to raising taxes tried to restore their public finances, priosner leasing became standard practice across the South. Not only did it negate the need to build large prisons but, since private companies essentially bought the right to prisoners' labor from the state, it also served to generate revenue.