In this most contentious era of tweets and counter-tweets, of warring political factions, and ideological hostility, a most wonderful and salutary activity is taking root in three rural counties of New York State in the quest to eradicate poverty in these areas.

Within Allegany, Steuben, and Tompkins counties  elements of both the social political and academic establishment, as well as those who currently dwell in impoverished circumstances, in concert with the Washington, D.C. entity, The Fund For An Equitable America, are demonstrating that fruitful collaboration and inter-party cooperation is both possible and enormously desirable in the quest to achieve significant increments in the magnitude of social justice that is extant in these vicinities.

Providing crucial leadership in this undertaking are three components of Cornell’s Cooperative Extension system within these counties, in tandem with organizations that provide critical services to the destitute residents of these geographical expanses.

What distinguishes this endeavor from all other policy and or programmatic approaches which seek as their goal the elimination of poverty in in rural sections of the United States is the  tri-parte structure of principles that undergirds this initiative.

This typology reflects the explicit commitment to the eradication of poverty in these areas  as an overarching explicit goal of this activity; the strategic planning context within which the entirety of this transformational process unfolds, as well as the paradigm  of a vibrant, self-sustaining middle-class communities which this multi-year process shall create as the result of the establishment of for-profit community based commercial enterprises.

The specific mechanism that animates this dynamic is  the  provision of products and services to non-profit anchor institutions in these counties, e.g. health-care centers and hospitals, universities, county and municipal governments, etc. and most importantly the inclusion of those significant private sector entities as participants in these commercial transactions with this community of local entrepreneurs as well.

It is the preceding variables which exponentially augment the efficacy of more traditional efforts to invoke and operationalize “community wealth-building” concepts that are extant in various locales in this nation.

Moreover, the revolutionary paradigm/protocol that we are in the process of implementing will yield great benefits not solely for those in upstate New York, but shall also be applicable with little revision or alteration in every rural county in this nation in which so many of our citizens currently languish in circumstances of impoverishment, dysfunction, demoralization and most tragically due to this constellation of grim and tragic realities in which they are imprisoned a state of paralyzing hopelessness.

The final tasks that remain to be accomplished in translating our proposal into reality is to obtain the vigorous support of numerous members of the bi-partisan political coalition that represents the citizens of New York at both the local and state levels, as well as those who represents its interests in both the House and Senate as well.

When these letters of support and endorsement have been obtained in the very near future we shall armed with these powerful missives of approbation, engage in a vigorous dialogue with those in the philanthropic community and various governmental programs at the federal, regional, and state levels of government whose mandate is to address in an ameliorative posture the plight of our nation’s poor to obtain the financial resources to render this audacious initiative operational prior to the conclusion of 2017.

To those of you who occupy positions of responsibility in various foundations and philanthropic ventures and are currently engaged in the search for unique paradigms and novel approaches that may contain the potential to greatly diminish if not completely eliminate poverty in America, we respectfully request that you look no further but rather join with us as partners in our most noble and enormously efficacious prescription to administer to the reality of poverty in this country a lethal injection which shall bring to a close this social affliction that has plagued this society since its founding 241 years ago.

What more appropriate time to be engaged in this activity then the present as we as a national community prepare to celebrate our founding as a great republic more than two centuries ago.

Let us complete the tasks necessary to make live in the lives of ALL our citizens the promises our founding fathers enunciated  during that sweltering summer in Philadelphia so many decades ago.