We Americans tend to be self-satisfied about our national commitment to civil liberties and human rights; when political figures talk about “American Exceptionalism,” they evoke images of the City on the Hill, a virtuous (albeit imaginary) metropolis where liberty and equality are celebrated by a moral citizenry, the rule of law is respected, and human rights are enjoyed by all citizens.

Needless to say, that City is still under construction—and so is our understanding of the nature of human rights. In the United States, we tend to think of human rights in terms of legal rights: equality before the law, civil rights protections against discrimination, an equal right to participate in the democratic process and to have our electoral preferences count at the ballot box. But if we are honest, most of us will acknowledge the existence of non-legal challenges to the full realization of equal human rights.

Poverty is such a challenge; a citizen working two or three jobs just to put food on the table doesn’t have much time or energy left over for civic engagement and the exercise of the franchise. In my state of Indiana, and an increasing number of other states, that’s a lot of people.