Sasha Abramsky Lecturer, University Writing Program & Freelance Journalist
Abramsky is a Lecturer in the University Writing Program at UC
Davis. Much of his work over the past decade has centered on
America’s criminal justice system, and he also writes on
political goings-on and cultural trends.
His work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New
York magazine, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. He is
currently exploring poverty in America through a grant from the
Open Society Foundation’s Special Fund for Poverty
Alleviation.
Sasha Abramsky received his undergraduate degree in politics,
philosophy, and economics from Balliol College, Oxford, and his
master’s degree from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. In
2000 he was awarded a fellowship from the Open Society Institute, and he is
currently a Senior Fellow at the New York City-based Demos think
tank.
Abramsky is currently working on a book exploring poverty in
America; his other books include:
Breadline USA: The Hidden Scandal of American Hunger and
How to Fix It (2009)
Inside Obama’s Brain (2009)
American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the
Age of Mass Imprisonment (2007)
With the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating in March,Congress
scrambled to design a more than $2 trillion economic package that
would prop up private companies, keep the financial system
liquid, and, at the same time, provide financial help to
individuals whose income was evaporating as the result of states
issuing stay-at-home orders and temporarily shuttering
nonessential businesses.
DAVIS, Calif. — In his novel The Grapes of Wrath, John
Steinbeck made famous the image of poor farming families fleeing
a land that turned against them to seek better lives in
California. Drought, regular economic shocks and persistent rural
poverty nationwide are just a few reasons the rural poor that
Steinbeck portrayed continue to struggle today.
In this October 2013 seminar, Center Faculty Affiliate Sasha
Abramsky discussed his work researching and writing about today’s
poor for his new book The American Way of Poverty: How the
Other Half Still Lives.
