Virginia Eubanks, author of  Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor, was the keynote speaker for Support KC's 2018 Excellence in Nonprofit Leadership Awards this summer.   As an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Albany, SUNY, Eubanks writes at the intersections of technology and social justice and has emerged as a thought leader in the economic justice conversation.

Eubanks' message decoded the history of poverty in the United States and how, left unchecked, big data can further marginalize the most vulnerable populations.

"If we're going to have a just future, we need to build it on purpose - brick-by-brick and bit-by-bit," said Eubanks to an audience of area nonprofit leaders and community members.

In her book  Automating Inequality, Eubanks proposes that, while the emerging data-driven technologies have enormous potential to reduce barriers across social services and in the nonprofit sector, we are actually building a system of injustice she calls the "digital poorhouse."

"You're going to send me to the poorhouse!"

Have you heard this phrase or similar ones?  Eubanks opened her presentation with startling research on the United States' history and criminalization of poverty and explored the institutionalization of county poorhouses and work farms throughout the country.  Many who requested public assistance were required to enter into these institutions, where their lives would change forever.  By entering the poorhouse, participants often gave up the right to vote, hold public office, to marry, or even raise children.

Eubanks localized the conversation by sharing Kansas City's own history of poverty.  By the mid-1800's Kansas had 72 poorhouses and Missouri had built over 90.  Kansas City had two of these institutions: the castle-like Kansas City Workhouse on Vine Street and the Wyandotte Country Poor Farm, which operated until 1973 and was located at the present-day site of Schlitterbahn Waterpark.