Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman Announces Princeton Anti-Poverty Scholar Matthew Desmond as State of the Union Guest
Today, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12) announced her 2024 State of the Union guest, Matthew Desmond.
Matthew Desmond is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Evicted and Poverty, By America. An outspoken proponent for more robust anti-poverty measures in America, Professor Desmond is also the principal investigator at The Eviction Lab, which conducts research on eviction throughout the country.
“I’m honored to be joined by Professor Desmond for this year’s State of the Union address,” said Rep. Watson Coleman. “His research on poverty and eviction in the United States has had a profound impact on the national debate surrounding these issues, and not only shone a light on the brutality of poverty, but offered a path to ending it. We know that poverty is a policy choice and Professor Desmond’s work has done more to clarify that fact than almost anyone over the last decade.”
“It is a great privilege to attend the State of the Union with Representative Watson Coleman, both as her guest and as one of her constituents,” said Matthew Desmond. “For years, I have worked to increase our national understanding of housing insecurity, eviction, and poverty in America. I am encouraged that people across America have committed themselves to the mission of poverty abolitionism and are pushing for effective solutions. A powerful movement for economic justice is growing; yet there is much work left to be done. We have created a unique brand of poverty in America, one that contradicts our claims to greatness, and it is up to us all—elected officials and citizens—to abolish it.”