‘US war on poverty turned to war on poor’

American activist Don DeBar believes that America’s so-called war on poverty has conversely turned into “a war on the poor.”

“This year is fifty years since the so-called war on poverty which has essentially become for most of the time subsequent a war on the poor,” DeBar said in a phone interview with Press TV on Tuesday.

“We went from a war on poverty to a war on the poor,” he added.

January 8 marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s declaration of “unconditional war on poverty.”

“At the very time that Johnson declared the war on poverty in the United States in fact he was conducting a war on the poor in Vietnam and several places in the Caribbean, Central and South America,” DeBar said.

“This has been a practice of the United States over the bulk of its history.”

Fifty years since Johnson’s declaration of war on poverty, the Census Bureau puts the nation’s poverty rate at 16 percent. The number of poor people in the country held steady at nearly 50 million last year, according to federal data.

Despite all that, Congress has recently moved to cut many federal programs that the poor rely on including the food stamp program and unemployment benefits.

A family of four living on a salary of $23,492 a year and an individual living on $11,720 a year are classified as poor in the United States.

The US unemployment rate fell to 7 percent in November 2013 from 10 percent in October 2009 but much of the fall is attributed to people getting fired.