Fighting Poverty and Social Justice like a pendemic bird flue

Journalist George F. Will's essay on "Evolution of Poverty" (March 5) and previous Senator and Vice Presidential Candidate John Edwards' Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity deserves as much attention as its Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The poverty and the civil rights are not just the issues confronting North Carolina, or deep South but also that of the Pacific Northwest as well as the parts of Africa, Asia and South America. I attended the North Carolina State University in 1969 and the picture of poverty in Down Town Charlotte where I worked for Duke Power Company later was a rude awakening for me.

War on Poverty is not only the matter to be addressed by John Edwards of Two Americas but also is being addressed by the United Nations and the recent anti-poverty bill passed by India where sixty percent population, about six hundred million men. women, and children are poor and uneducated. The moderate living wages and the rise in employment accompanied with the rights to the education, housing, staple food, and health care for all should be the goal of all civilized and the industrial nations and all democratic institutions.

Unless we tackle the poverty and civil rights like the pandemic bird flue it will engulf the humanity.

Shantu Shah