Events this week: Peter Edelman on the criminalization of poverty, Francine Klagsbrun on the legacy of Golda Meir

Two talks this week, one at Boswell, one at the JCC. Wednesday, November 29, 7 pm, at Boswell:
Peter Edelman, author of Not a Crime to Be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America, cosponsored by Community Advocates Public Policy Institute.

Peter Edelman is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law and Public Policy and the faculty director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown University Law Center. Edelman was a top advisor to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and served in President Bill Clinton's administration. In his new book, the author of So Rich So Poor shows how not having money has been criminalized and shines a light on lawyers, activists, and policy makers working for a more humane approach .

Karen Dolan spoke to Peter Edleman in The Huffington Post. On being asked about extreme poverty, he notes: "Extreme poverty means having an income of less than half the poverty line. That’s less than $9,000 a year for a family of three. The stunning fact is that in 2010, there were 20.5 million people who had incomes that low. And perhaps even more disturbing — six million people have no income other than food stamps (SNAP). That means an income at one-third of the poverty line or less than $6,000 a year for a family of three. You can’t live on that. So, these are people who are really in extreme trouble."

Read more about the event in the Shepherd Express Book Preview column. Registration is not required, but if you are coming, it would help us get a handle on how many folks are attending.

Thursday, November 30, 7 pm, at Harry and Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, 6255 N Santa Monica Blvd: Francine Klagsbrun, author of Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel, presented by Tapestry: Art and Ideas.

Francine Klagsbrun, a regular columnist for The Jewish Week and a contributing editor to Lilith, now offers a major new biography of a world figure with Milwaukee roots. Lioness has been called the definitive biography of Golda Meir: the iron-willed leader, chain-smoking political operative, and tea-and-cake-serving grandmother who became the fourth prime minister of Israel and one of the most notable women of our time.

From Stewart Kampel in Hadassah magazine: "Almost 40 years after her death, Golda, as she was universally known, stands as one of the most important Jewish women of the 20th century. Russian born, American educated and a fierce Zionist since her teenage years, she immigrated to Palestine in 1921. As a young woman, she worked on a kibbutz and later navigated the shoals of Israeli politics for 50 years, sometimes nobly and sometimes with rock-solid stubbornness. She was autocratic and contradictory, tough and practical, intelligent and gifted. She put the destiny of the Jewish people above all else, sometimes wittily, sometimes pugnaciously and sometimes, she acknowledged, at a terrible price."

Here's more about her life in Milwaukee from Jim Higgins, who wrote about the book for the Journal Sentinel: "Golda attended North Division High School, but fled to Denver for refuge with her older sister after a conflict with her mother, who wanted Golda to go to secretarial school and to marry a much older man in the neighborhood. At her father's urging, she later returned to Milwaukee and graduated from North Division. In October 1916, she started college at Wisconsin State Normal School, a predecessor of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, with a future as a teacher in mind. (UWM later named its library in her honor.) "

Ethan Bronner also reviewed Lioness in The New York Times Book Review, and calls the book "a thorough and absorbing examination of the woman and her role in Zionism and Israel."

Klagsbrun has written more than a dozen books. her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, and Ms. Magazine. The JCC is located just northeast of Bayshore Town Center. Admission is free to this event.