Poverty was my very first client in East Harlem—a father whose child died from being bitten by a rat. Poverty is a dope pusher who wanted to learn from me his rights if arrested because he knew that would sooner or later happen. Poverty is a widow on welfare whose landlord cuts the heat knowing that winter will end before the complaint is processed. Poverty is an addict who pawns the jacket off his back to get another “fix.” Poverty is a young couple who married only to obtain public housing but now have no grounds for divorce in New York and are tempted to collusion. Poverty is a boy who wants to be adopted because his mother is alcoholic. Poverty is the payoff to a building inspector not to report violations of the building code. Poverty is the attempted eviction—finally defeated—from a project of a family whose son was thought to be ‘undesirable’ by the project manager. Poverty is the wife of an addict with whom I worked out a budget to manage her while her husband was in prison. Poverty is a Puerto Rican shopkeeper whose store was stoned when he tried to relocate to 96th Street. Poverty is a kid in trouble who comes to my place in the middle of the night because his foster parents have thrown him out. Poverty is the relentless daily attrition of contending with the most primitive issues of human existence: food and cleanliness and clothes and heat and housing and rest. Poverty is an awful vulnerability.

~William Stringfellow,”Christianity, Poverty, and the Practice of the Law.” Harvard Law School Bulletin 10(6) 87