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On December 5, our CEO, George Jones will receive the Cornelius R. “Neil” Alexander Humanitarian Award from the DC Office of Human Rights. George is being honored for his local impact and fight for equity on behalf of DC residents for over 20 years. 

The “Neil” Alexander Humanitarian Award is named in honor of the longtime Chief Administrative Law Judge of the District’s Commission on Human Rights, who worked with the Commission for almost 20 years and was recognized as an expert in human rights law. 

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton will also be honored at the evening reception for her fight for DC statehood. 

In addition to leading Bread for the City, George has issued an ambitious, but achievable call to action to city officials, businesses, policymakers, and nonprofits: Ending poverty in the region by 2040. 

As he wrote last month: 

It doesn’t have to be this way. In Canada, an intentional alignment of public-private partnerships has brought communities together across the country to change the strategy about tackling poverty. David Brooks of the New York Times notes that Canadians “launch[ed] a different kind of conversation…they don’t want better ‘poor’; they want fewer ‘poor’. That is to say, their focus is not on how do we give people food so they don’t starve. It is how do we move people out of poverty… How do we eradicate poverty altogether?”

How can we do this? 

First, we decide that we’re genuinely committed to ending poverty. It’s not enough to say we are, while our actions reflect solutions that make us feel better but don’t do better.

We also realize that the government is a significant player in ending poverty. Our elected officials must end their reluctance to aggressively use the tax code to ensure more progressive, equitable outcomes for low-income residents. We must name these systems, calling out that poverty is born of systemic racism that has threatened to crush low-income Black and brown residents. 

Please join us in congratulating George on this achievement. More information about the event is available here.