Moynihan Lecture press - Washington Square News

Issue date: 10.06.2005  Washington Square News

Bono & Sachs: Fight global poverty

by Barbara Leonard
News Editor

U2 frontman Bono and aColumbiaUniversity economist said global poverty can be eliminated in this lifetime, ending the tremendous risk it poses toward mankind and the value of human life.

Jeffrey Sachs, who is also the director of the United Nations Millennium Project, joined forces with Bono in the '90s to observe the global impact of economic policies. At aSkirballCenter for Performing Arts lecture last night, the unlikely pair of activists advocated for practical application of economic aid to an audience of 860 comprising rock stars, rock fans and economic policy enthusiasts alike.

The lecture was the first in a series planned by NYU's Glucksman Ireland House to commemorate the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was a prominent antipoverty advocate.

Among the eclectic group at the event were U2 lead guitarist The Edge and members of NYU's Graduate Student Organizing Committee, who handed out fliers asking those involved in NYU events hold events off-campus, or if that is impossible to visibly support the union's cause.

Sachs was introduced by Bono, who studied global economics under Sachs and was sporting a GSOC pin.

Bono said the economist contributes important data supporting a noble cause.

"He sees statistics not as numbers on a page, but as figures of real people's lives," said Bono, who was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. "He certainly could teach me what I didn't know, but what I felt, which was that all the arguments against debt relief were bullshit."

In communities where one-fifth of children die before age five, Sachs said not helping is unconscionable.

"We are the first generation in history [able] to see the end of extreme poverty on our planet," Sachs said. "We have to do it because if we don't do it, we will so diminish the value of life that we will put our children at risk."

Sachs said Americans need to abandon the notion that the impoverished misuse monetary aid.

"We stopped thinking about the people," Sachs said. "They have this crazy idea that they don't like to see their children dying."

The African communities Sachs and Bono toured need only minimal assistance from high-income nations to escape from poverty, they said.

Items like insecticide-treated beds or nets would help prevent the spread of diseases like Malaria, but the people who need them most cannot afford them. This is a crime of the current trend of "social marketing" - essentially selling social welfare - Sachs said.

"Social marketing is one of the dumbest ideas I know," Sachs said. "Only the rich value things given for free, not the poor."

Practical economics should mirror modern medicine, Sachs said. Doctors use differential diagnosis in treating patients because they understand that symptoms are not unique to one illness.

"You have to think clinically," Sachs said. "I call it clinical economics."

Sachs said government officials justify resistance to direct monetary aid by saying the community in question has incompetent leaders. But he said this is not true - people are ensnared in a "poverty trap," and disease and death are problems unique toAfrica's climate, not the result of politics.

"They just want a helping hand, not a hand-out," Sachs said. "The big problem inAmerica is we became afraid of the poor. They don't want your handouts, they want a little bit of help to save themselves and their children."

Continuing on a track of ignoring pleas for help from impoverished communities inAfrica will adversely affect high-income nations eventually, Sachs said.

"I feel like we're putting ourselves at direct risk," Sachs said. "A disease could come out ofAfrica and spread around the world. Oh yeah, we call it AIDS."

Attendees said the lecture was powerful because of its charismatic speakers.

"A lot of the issues that Dr. Sachs talked about came down to simple things like food and water," said CAS junior Patrick Worth, who is a member of the Ireland House. "I think people like Dr. Sachs and Bono are popularizing it in a way that needs to be popularized."

1970s punk-rock icon Patti Smith, said, "Its a subject we're all engaged with ... I think that helping our fellow man help himself is the most important issue - helping people develop their infrastructure so that they can help themselves." •