Sachs, Legend Kick Off Poverty Tour

“I know you all came here to hear me sing, right?” Earth Institute Director Jeffrey Sachs joked in front of a packed Roone Arledge Auditorium crowd at an anti-poverty event he headlined with Grammy-winning recording artist John Legend Monday night.

Sachs and Legend spoke and—in Legend’s case—even sang, on the theme of eradicating global poverty, a cause in which both are passionately active.

“Things that were thought to be impossible are going to be proved inevitable in the next few years,” Sachs said.

The session opened with a video describing Legend’s anti-poverty Show Me Campaign, named for one of his songs, and its work with the Tanzanian Millennium Village Mbola.

“I don’t want to be standing on the sidelines,” Legend told the audience. “I don’t want to just show up at a concert once in a while and say something nice—I want to be involved.”

Legend finished the event by performing four of his songs, including crowd favorite “Ordinary People.”

The bulk of the discussion, which was moderated by Rhodes Scholar and Show Me Campaign Co-Director Kweli Washington, was based on questions from students.

Both Sachs and Legend condemned the current and past U.S. governments for providing what they said was insufficient aid to poverty-related causes. “When we’re giving four cents of every $100 of our GNP [Gross National Product] to that cause, we’re not doing our job,” Sachs said.

“He was outspoken,” Kalema Boateng , BC ’11, said of Sachs afterwards. “He did not censor what he was trying to say. I think that’s important.”

The two men also stressed the importance of unity and bipartisanship. “This doesn’t have to be a liberal versus conservative argument,” Legend said in answer to a question. “One of the things I think we all agree on is that human lives are valuable and that we want to save them.”

“That really resonated with me because it’s a really harsh time right now [in terms of political rhetoric], and it’s important to remember to unite rather than divide,” Melanie Weniger, BC ’10, said.

Sachs and Legend called on attendees to involve themselves with grassroots anti-poverty action. “Connect with all your friends, connect with the other campuses, and get the message out,” Sachs said. “The time for change has arrived. The time for hope is here. The time for facing up to sustainable development is here.” Sixteen related student groups were listed as co-hosts of the event, members of which were stationed outside afterwards to recruit volunteers.

Many attendees said they found the message inspiring. “As college students, we always hear people say, ‘You’re going to lose your idealism—you’re going to burn out,’” Yoav Guttman, GS/JTS ’10, said. “It was nice to hear someone—an adult—say the opposite.”