At a town hall event held in Iowa Falls this morning, Sanders called on the crowd to share their experiences with living on $12,000 a year, which is less than half of the federal poverty level, sometimes known as “deep poverty.”
One woman became emotional as she responded to Sanders’s invitation, crying as she described her life in poverty:
It’s so hard to do anything to pay your bills, you’re ashamed all the time...when you can’t buy presents for your children it’s really really really hard – and I work 3, 4, 5 jobs sometimes, always minimum wage, I have a degree, divorced and it’s just I’m waiting for disability to come through so my parents have to support me – it’s just hard.
The Washington Post has the video: