U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman selects Princeton Professor Matthew Desmond to be her State of Union guest

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12) announced Monday that her 2024 State of the Union guest is Princeton University Professor Matthew Desmond.
Desmond is the Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Evicted and Poverty, By America.” An outspoken supporter of more robust anti-poverty measures in America, Desmond is also the principal investigator at The Eviction Lab, which conducts research on eviction throughout the country.
President Biden will deliver the State of the Union address on March 7. He will address a joint session of Congress at the United States Capitol at 9 p.m. Eastern time.
“I’m honored to be joined by Professor Desmond for this year’s State of the Union address,” said Watson Coleman. “His research on poverty and eviction in the United States has had a profound impact on the national debate surrounding these issues, and not only shone a light on the brutality of poverty, but offered a path to ending it. We know that poverty is a policy choice and Professor Desmond’s work has done more to clarify that fact than almost anyone over the last decade.”
Desmond, a Hopewell Township resident, said it is a great privilege to attend the State of the Union with Watson Coleman.
“For years, I have worked to increase our national understanding of housing insecurity, eviction, and poverty in America. I am encouraged that people across America have committed themselves to the mission of poverty abolitionism and are pushing for effective solutions,” Desmond said in a written statement. “A powerful movement for economic justice is growing; yet there is much work left to be done. We have created a unique brand of poverty in America, one that contradicts our claims to greatness, and it is up to us all—elected officials and citizens—to abolish it.”
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