Michelle Alexander Quotes

When people get out of jail, it is not easy for them to find a job. It is not easy for them to return to civil society.

The way the [welfare] programs are organized, poor people are only paid to do things that are counter-productive - such as breaking up their families, such as not earning above a certain level of income.

We can't afford to lose control of our own borders or to take on new financial burdens at a time when we are not adequately providing for the jobs, the health care and the education of our own people.

I got into the race because I'm concerned for my children, and for the opportunities they don't have. Really, it's for the same concerns that the people of the 16th district have. They're concerned about jobs.

You have to provide 5 things to the people: Income, Housing, Education, Health Care, and Justice.

Mothers born on relief have their babies on relief.

People return home from prison and face legal discrimination in virtually all areas of social and economic and political life. They are legally discriminated against employment, barred from public housing, and denied other public benefits.

Exacerbating the problem of mass incarceration is that, even after someone is released from prison, the stigma of a misdemeanor or felony conviction makes finding gainful employment difficult, if not impossible.

What if all the forces of society were bent upon developing [poor] children? What if society's business were making people insteadof profits? How much of their creative beauty of spirit would remain unquenched through the years? How much of this responsiveness would follow them through life?

America is divided by economics, and we as Americans, we've got to do a better job of supporting poor people.

I was asked why I did not give a rod with which to fish, in the hands of the poor, rather than give the fish itself as this makes them remain poor. So I told them: The people whom we pick up are not able to stand with a rod. So today I will give them fish and when they are able to stand, then I shall send them to you and you can give them the rod. That is your job. Let me do my work today.

What people want now, they want jobs. They want great jobs with good pay. And I'll tell you, we're spending a lot of money on the inner cities - we are fixing the inner cities - we are doing far more than anybody has done with respect to the inner cities. It is a priority for me, and it's very important.

I care about our young people, and I wish them great success, because they are our Hope for the Future, and some day, when my generation retires, they will have to pay us trillions of dollars in social security

There are the fundamental core values of the Democratic Party, which is to work to grow the economy, to create jobs, to encourage small business, to encourage ownership, to expand access to quality health care, to enhance opportunity by making higher education more affordable to American's young people, to have our children live in safe neighborhoods, drug-free, crime-free, and a safe and clean environment, first and foremost to provide for the national defense, to protect and defend the American people, and to have accountability for our budget and for our spending.

The first (lesson) which we meet again and again in history, is that once the dole or similar relief programs are introduced, they seem almost inevitably - unless surrounded by the most rigid restrictions - to get out of hand. The second lesson is that once this happens the poor become more numerous and worse off than they were before, not only because they have lost self-reliance, but because the sources of wealth and production on which they depend for either doles or jobs are diminished or destroyed.

A parent may be without a job, but no child should be without a doctor.

The greatest crime of welfare isn't that it's a waste of money, but that it's a waste of people.

I think it is inflationary. I think it actually is counterproductive in many ways. You end up costing jobs from people who are at the bottom rung of the economic ladder.

Simply put, unsustainable debt is helping to keep too many poor countries and poor people in poverty.

You know, we should not be giving cash to people who basically are just going to blow it on drugsand not take care of their own children.

About 70% of those released from prison return within a few years, and the majority of those who return in some states do so in a matter of months because the challenges associated with mere survival on the outside are so immense.

So much of America's tragic and costly failure to care for all its children stems from our tendency to distinguish between our own children and other people's children--as if justice were divisible.

You can't abandon people there and say, go and find a job, when you know they are not going to be able to find one, and therefore starve to death. So we have got to address that matter, but we have got to address it systematically.

I think our former first lady said it last month in one of her first speeches since leaving the White House, I think I'm getting the quote nearly right- "Who could possibly be against feeding children wholesome, good food?" Well, it turns out there are people who are against feeding children wholesome good food and there are people who are against solving our homelessness problem, they're against solving our food security issues and by and along political lines.

Let's stop wasting billions of dollars on prisons, which send people home who are too often less capable and more damaged than when they went in. We would have safer neighborhoods if we spent the same money on true rehabilitation, job training, employment and entrepreneurship.