e has long been the subject of scholarship and great storytelling.

Today's guest combines both in a study that shines a light on the lived experience of young people making the transition from childhood to adulthood, while living in poverty.

He's Nikhil Goyal, this week on "Story in the Public Square".

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Hello and welcome to "Story in the Public Square" where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from The Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve Pell Center.

- And our guest this week is Nikhil Goyal, a sociologist and policymaker.

He's also the author of "Live To See the Day: Coming of Age in American Poverty".

He joins us today from Burlington, Vermont.

Nikhil, it's so great to have you with us today.

- Thanks so much for having me.

- You know, we were chatting just before we started taping, and I think we've had a number of sociologists on the show, and as an academic discipline, you seem to get what we're trying to do here better than most.

And so, I'm just curious about what it is, in your opinion, about sociologists that help you understand the power of storytelling in public life.

- Sure.

No, it's a great question.

I think my work and many other sociologists are rooted in the very rich tradition of public sociology where we engage deeply with the public about questions of inequality and poverty and power.

And there have been, you know, numerous sociologists, cross generations, who have been concerned with those questions and concepts and have done extensive ethnographic work in communities of great deprivation, and then translated those findings to a wider audience as well as policymakers.

- It's a remarkable discipline and an important set of conversations.

"Live to See the Day" is a remarkable book.

Do you wanna just provide us a quick high altitude overview of it?

- Sure.

So, the book began in 2015 when I was interested in examining the high school dropout crisis, and it snowballed into a much larger project that encompassed an ethnographic study in the neighborhood as part of my graduate studies.

And that study, and that dissertation was turned into a readable version, known as "Live to See the Day" focusing on three Puerto Rican kids who grew up in the poorest neighborhood of Philadelphia called Kensington.

And I traced their lives from childhood to adulthood in the wake of welfare reform, hyper incarceration, and educational privatization.

And I also provide an intergenerational account of their families through the lens of their mothers to illustrate the ways in which inequality and poverty and other social ills are reproduced from one generation to the next.

- So, we're gonna get into the three families that you followed in a moment, but give us an overview of Kensington.

It was at one time an industrial powerhouse, and again, this is part of Philadelphia.

What happened to it, and what is it like today, where these people are living?

- Yeah, as you point out, Kensington has had a storied history.

In the 19th and 20th century, it had the world's largest, most diverse textile industry.

On almost every street corner you could find textile mills buzzing and booming and producing, you know, millions upon millions of various types of goods for the global economy.

And so, if you left school early and didn't graduate, and you could very quickly get a job in one of these factories that would provide you with a middle class livelihood for the next several decades of your life.

And over time, as a result of foreign competition, the decline of the textile industry, other competition from other industries, and other global issues, you know, such as the collapse of The Bretton Woods System and the end of the gold standard among other policies, all of that contributed to the decline of manufacturing across the United States, but particularly, very concentrated in neighborhoods like Kensington, which had relied on the textile industry for their economic security.

And so in the book, I traced the history of Kensington from that period of time through de-industrialization, and then through the period of the rise of the war on drugs and how that completely transformed the neighborhood leading to hyper-criminalization and very punitive criminal justice policy.

And then I bring us to the modern day through welfare reform, through educational inequality, where Kensington is the poorest neighborhood of the poorest large city in America.

It is now the site of the largest open air drug market on the East Coast where the most pure and cheapest heroin is pedaled on the streets.

It has some of the highest levels of violence in terms of homicide and assaults and other types of crime.

So, you know, there are serious, serious challenges that families across the city, and particularly, in this neighborhood are dealing with.

- So, get into some of those challenges in a little more detail.

The book is so powerful.

I started reading it and except for having to sleep, I kept going right through to the end.

Some of the other challenges, the housing is horrific, the educational system is horrific, the violence is rampant.

Give us some detail about that.

It was, I mean, I've read about all this, but not in such detail and really with such dismay that this is happening in America.

- Sure.

No, I think the stories are just harrowing and should shock readers that for those of you who may not be familiar with poverty and you know, such an affluent country as ours.

You know, I tell the stories of these children, and I use their stories to illustrate larger economic and social institutions and policies.

And when you think about an issue like housing insecurity, many of these children in Kensington have endured multiple evictions, sometimes several evictions in a single year.

And what that means is that they're forced to upend their entire lives, move into a new unfamiliar neighborhood, oftentimes leave their schools and go to a new school, lose their friendships.

I mean, it is just a completely debilitating experience for these children.

And just think about the effect that it has on their educational performance in school and, you know, all the other issues that relate to that.

So, housing is one piece that is, you know, an acute, acute crisis in the city.

Whether it's just the lack of tenant protections to evictions to the shortage of decent, dignified, affordable housing.

Housing where children, you know, children should not have to live in housing where there are rats and broken glass and asbestos and lead.

They deserve to live in habitable decent housing.

So, housing is, you know, one of the big, big issues that afflict these children and their families.

- So, Nikhil, you talk about, you described the coming of age of these three young boys.

First, we want you tell us a little bit about each of them so we get to know them a little bit, but before that, how did you find them?

How do you find these people who are willing to participate in this study?

- So, I met these three kids when they were students at El Centro de Estudiantes, an alternative last chance high school in Kensington.

And this is a school that is part of the Big Picture Learning Network, which has dozens of progressive students center schools around the country.

And their practices range from restorative justice to small classes and advisory structure where students are put into advisories and teachers are called advisors, real world learning with internships two days a week.

And really strong responsive student teacher relationships, among other practices.

And so, as I mentioned, I was interested in examining the high school dropout crisis, and this was ground zero, you know, where thousands of kids are leaving school early, being pushed out of school each year.

And so, I just began interviewing students.

I was, you know, very grateful that the school gave me full access.

They just let me wander the school, sit in on classes and activities, speak to whomever I wanted, as long as they gave me their consent and permission.

And so, I just did that and, you know, came across these three kids, among other kids, who, you know, just opened my eyes to the dropout issue and the constellation of problems and crises in the neighborhood in Philadelphia.

- So, let's have you describe these three young people.

They're now young adults.

Start with Ryan Rivera, who is he and what are his issues and challenges?

- Sure.

So, I start the book off with the story of Ryan and I narrate a scene in middle school when he was, it was just a month before he had turned 13.

And he was engaging in some mischief with some friends, had been, you know, troublemaker in school, had racked up a lot of disciplinary infractions.

And so, one day he and his friends were challenging each other to light pieces of paper on fire and then snuffed them out with their shoes.

And then one of them decided to challenge the other to light a trash can on fire.

And so, you know, Ryan and his friends began putting ripping sheets of paper from their notebooks and lighting it on fire and putting in a trash can.

And then, you know, eventually extinguishing it.

But then they left one sheet of paper burning in the can.

Fortunately, it was found by a staff member and it didn't spread any further, but Ryan was found by school administrators.

He was brought into a room that where the school resource officers were stationed, and then he was interrogated without the presence of an adult, or a guardian, or anybody else.

And that led him to confessing to participating in the fire.

And then he gets funneled, gets arrested and funneled in and out of the juvenile justice system from one juvenile detention center to another.

And then when he comes home, he gets expelled from Grover, Washington, his middle school, and get sent to an alternative disciplinary school, a for-profit one where he's treated like a criminal.

Forced to walk with his hands behind his back in the hallways, you know?

In many respects, treated as a subhuman, not with the same rights and dignities that human beings should be afforded, let alone a child.

And so, I think his story illustrates some of the inhumanities of the juvenile justice system where instead of treating children with respect and restorative justice and other forms of less punitive methods, we have criminalized and funneled children into the bowels of the carceral system at a very young age.

Oftentimes, for offenses that many white affluent kids would never be penalized for.

- The next child you follow is Emmanuel who later takes the name Corem Coreano.

Tell us about them.

- So, Emmanuel grew up in Kensington.

Originally, was raised by his mother and his father.

There was a sequence of domestic violence episodes by his father towards his children as well as his wife, Yvette, Emmanuel's mother.

And DHS, the Department of Human Services gets involved and forces the family to break up in some respect where the father can no longer see his children.

And so, Yvette is on her own raising Emmanuel.

Emmanuel's brothers, one of them is in a facility for individuals with intellectual disabilities.

And another brother is at a behavioral treatment facility.

And so, it's just him and his mother and she's disabled, and together she tries to raise him off of less than $10,000 a year in Supplemental Security Income, SSI, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF, plus food stamps.

- [Wayne] Wow.

- So, this puts them at the very bottom echelon of the economic strata and it forces 'em to live in great economic and intense economic insecurity for several years.

And so, you know, I mentioned the evictions.

Emmanuel was dealing with evictions consistently.

Educational instability at times, not doing well in school, one time failing a grade level, because of the instability.

And then dealing with food insecurity where their food stamps would run out before the end of the month.

And so, they'd have to rely on food pantries and other forms of assistance.

And then on top of that, living in a very violent neighborhood, where at any point he could walk outside and be at risk of getting shot.

And so, the constant peril of daily violence and navigating that contesting with that violence and trying to avoid it, is a daily struggle for Emmanuel, his mother, and other members of that neighborhood.

And I eventually, tell the story of Emmanuel growing up, grappling with his sexuality, coming out to his mother as bisexual, and his mother, who is a Pentecostal Christian woman who is very deeply religiously conservative, rejects him.

And, you know, I try to explain and narrate the experience of this young person grappling with his sexuality, his mother's rejection on top of trying to graduate high school.

And so, you know, his story is a story of great resilience, of perseverance, but of great trauma and suffering that should never exist in a country as wealthy as ours.

And so, I think his story is quite powerful in his own right.

- And it is as is the story of the third person who is Giancarlos Rodriguez.

Tell us about him.

And again, he's like the others, he's very distinctive, but in a different way.

- Sure, yeah, Giancarlos is a fascinating young person and I met him when he was attending El Centro and he had before that time had been dealing with a lot of disciplinary issues, was pushed out of school in part due to fighting at school.

Trying to defend the honor of another student.

And then, you know, his story I think is quite fascinating, because it dovetails with the history of educational privatization and inequality in the city.

When he was growing up, his godmother, Andy Perez, ran an organization called Youth Unite for Change.

An educational justice group that work with young people to help them fight for their rights and for decent schools and better public institutions.

And so, he becomes an activist in middle school and one of his first actions was participating in a walkout against the mass school closures, proposed mass school closures in 2013.

Philadelphia ends up closing 24 public schools, one of the largest school closures in American history.

And so, he and his peers walked outta school engaged in protest against the school closures, against zero tolerance, school discipline, and austerity measures.

And then he comes to high school and goes to a school that is devout of basic resources where classes are more than 30, 35 students.

The teachers are deeply underpaid.

There's very few counselors and extracurricular activities.

He doesn't get access to music and dance and art at many times.

So, it's a school that has just been stripped to its bone, bear to its bone of basic resources.

And so, he believes, and he believed as a young person that, that was unjust, that we deserve fair funded schools, and we deserve to live in dignity.

And so, I think his story is very powerful to help examine and talk about the history of public education in the city.

- Nikhil, you know, I know that in addition to being a sociologist and a scholar, you also spent some time working in the United States Senate for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

You know, I'm curious carrying these stories, having the experience of interacting with these families and getting to know them and the reality that they're living, how does that carry with you when you're working on Capitol Hill?

- So, when I joined the Senate in 2021, I began working on the Senate Budget Committee and I had spent before that several, many years in Kensington examining these issues of poverty, incarceration, and inequality.

And when we had the chance to work on a bill called Build Back Better, I carried, as you point out, I carried those experiences of Kensington and the lives of these children into the Senate and influenced my policymaking in very clear ways.

You know, when we were trying to work on making permanent, the Expanded Child Tax Credit, I had known how transformative that policy would've been for those children, how they received it when they were young.

It would've meant less economic insecurity, housing insecurity, food insecurity.

It would've meant that they would've lived healthier, more fruitful and safer lives.

And so, I knew that it was, I felt this great responsibility as a policymaker to help get these programs, whether it was tuition-free public college or affordable childcare, or you know, investment in affordable housing, universal pre-K.

I knew that those things would have an enormous impact on the people of Kensington, but the Kensingtons across this country where people are living in great hardship.

So, you know, that was a very formative experience.

Unfortunately, as we all know, we were not able to get the entirety of Build Back Better across the finish line.

Many of the programs that I worked on did not ultimately get passed, but I, you know, was very happy to see that we were able to get the Inflation Reduction Act, a major climate investment, prescription drug reform passed into law.

And so, I think the challenge ahead is when there's a trifecta in Washington, when Democrats control the House and the Senate and the presidency at the same time, these crisis will still remain with us, and we have to do everything in our power to reduce the suffering and provide a cradle to grave social democracy, but where no family gets left behind.

- So historically, there have been people who blame the victim who say it's some kind of moral failure or character defect.

And I'm talking about the people that you write about in "Live to See the Day" that obviously, is not the case.

Who is to blame for the conditions and the outcomes of these people that you are writing about.

- So, there's, you know, there's a very clear, you know, I think it's really important to direct our blame not at the people at the bottom, but the people at the very top, at the corporations, at the political and economic elites who propose policies and enact policies that deprive people of basic livelihood, whether it is the largest corporations in this country and some businesses that fail to pay their workers a living wage and decent working conditions.

Whether it is the landlords and big developers who are enriching themselves off the backs of poor people by jacking up rents and expanding gentrification.

Whether it is policy makers and corporate foundations and other groups that are working to privatize and defund public education.

And then the criminal justice system, you know, whether it's a confluence and a vortex of judges and prosecutors and court officials and even the public that has been involved in perpetuating tough on crime and punitive policies that actually don't do very much to address the root causes of crime.

And then the larger economic system, the tax system, the way we tax people and families in this country and we don't make sure that the rich and billionaires are paying their fair share of taxes.

So, you know, there's a lot of blame to go around, but what I can say is that the blame is not with the people living in poverty.

It's at the people at the top who are doing extremely, extremely well, while other people are suffering.

And the point that I make in the book, and I think the clear takeaway from it is that we cannot accept a society where we condemn poor working class people to suffering a premature death, while some people live decent and dignified lives.

We should all be able to live in dignity and prosperity.

And that should not be, there's no false choice between the two.

- So, Nikhil, we've had other sociologists on, as Jim was mentioning, who have made the point that we are living in the wealthiest society in the history of this species.

Do you have any hope that this can be changed given the political realities, given where we are and where we've been?

Do you have any hope?

- You know, of course I have hope.

I think there are incredible people and organizations that are doing the tireless work of trying to reduce poverty and economic insecurity and other social injustices.

You know, whether it, you know, you have incredible activists and organizers of the trade union movement.

I think the labor movement is the strongest defender of working people against the rise and dominance of corporate greed and corporate power.

And so, I'm very excited and happy to see that there's some great work across the country to make sure that workers are given decent wages and benefits and have the right to join a union.

I'm also really inspired by states that are taking up the mantle of enacting these important social and economic programs.

You know, New Mexico, for example, has enacted tuition free, two and four year public college, affordable childcare and pre-K universal free school meals.

You know, there's states all over this country that are adopting many of those measures and recognizing that the federal government and Washington may be in paralysis, but we have an obligation to protect and serve working people and give them the tools and resources necessary to live good lives.

And so, that makes me hopeful.

And so we cannot despair.

You know, my former boss will always say that, that we cannot despair, we cannot let the forces of negativity define us.

That, you know, there's obviously huge obstacles and the powers that be that don't want to see working people do well.

But we have to continue the struggle until we get to a place where not a single American is living in economic insecurity.

- Well, Nikhil Goyal, your book "Live to See the Day" is an important part of that conversation.

Thank you so much for being with us today.

That is all the time we have this week, but if you wanna know more about "Story in the Public Square", you can find us on social media or visit pellcenter.org where you can always catch up on previous episodes.

For Wayne, I'm Jim, asking you to join us again next time for more "Story in the Public Square".

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