MMP on Smiley and West's Poverty Tour

Media Mobilizing Project is on the road with Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West on The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience. The seven-day tour began in Minnesota this past Saturday and is making its way through Chicago, Detroit and West Virginia, to end in Memphis, Tennessee on August 12. Smiley, West, MMP and the tour are making stops in urban and rural areas to learn about and document the brutal conditions facing poor and working people today.

On Saturday, as the tour met with Hmong farmers in rural Wisconsin, Tavis Smiley commented, "Poverty in America has no color." Shivaani Selvaraj, one of MMP's producers on the tour, explains, "The focus of the documentary will be to illustrate the shared roots that underlie the hardships people are facing across the country, while highlighting local communities where people are rising up and collectively changing their conditions."

MMP is making a documentary about the tour, which will air this fall on the Tavis Smiley Show on PBS.

Watch a recent episode of Democracy Now! to hear more about the Poverty Tour.

Tanya Jackson, one of MMP's videographers on the tour.

MMP filming Will Allen, founder of Growing Power Farm in Milwaukee, WI