Poverty in America: Closing Words, Links to the Essays, and a Dedication

JeffR

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Sun Feb-01-09 06:27 PM
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Poverty in America: Closing Words, Links to the Essays, and a Dedication

Edited on Sun Feb-01-09 06:34 PM by JeffR

As many will know, a series of essays on aspects of poverty has been posted here throughout January.

During those thirty-one days, a new President and a new Congress took office, placed there by a nation at long last sufficiently disgusted with Republicans to banish them from control.

During those thirty-one days, more jobs that paid far too little disappeared completely, more people fell even further into soul-bleeding despair, more died obscene deaths in cold streets.

So although "Poverty in America Awareness Month" is over, the desperate need for awareness and action is not.

Change is on the minds of many voters, and change there will no doubt be. Will that change, amid an economy filled with question marks, include a commitment to achieving social justice for the poor?

Without loud and persistent advocacy from left of center citizens, the answer may well be no. Poverty, homelessness and hunger are issues that need to be salient on the progressive agenda.

Forty-five years ago last month, President Lyndon Johnson devoted much of his first State of the Union Address to his War on Poverty initiatives. His words bear repeating:

This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort.

It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won. The richest Nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it�

Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.

America is in fact losing this war, badly, through a daunting combination of factors.

Fifth-columnist free marketers have held sway in the realm of public discourse for so long that even many liberals have come to accept their sophistries. Meanwhile, the failure of both corporate and � shockingly � progressive media on poverty issues keeps the extent and the severity of the crisis essentially invisible. And in an especially cruel irony, the nation that spends more on "defense" than every other country on earth combined cannot even defend those trapped in poverty.

Affordable housing and freedom from want are fundamental human rights. The rule of law should never allow for indifference to poverty, and nor should the self-regard of a society that considers itself civilized.
_____________________

To all who have contacted elected officials, the President's Transition Team and local and national media in this effort, thank you for your contribution.

And to those who joined in the insightful, heartfelt and sometimes heated discussion the essays prompted, know that your voices added greatly to the work of the essayists.

Links to the series:

- Introduction

- Taxes by Hannah Bell

- The Old and the New by maryf

- Remember EVERYTHING MLK Stood For by dajoki

- Listening To Those Closest To The Problem by Two Americas

- No Shirt, No Shoes � No Service by NanceGreggs

Let me end this project as it began:

:

"(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection."

� adopted and proclaimed December 10, 1948 by the General Assembly of the United Nations

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This project was dedicated to the late Sapphire Blue, a much-missed advocate for the poor.

I'd like to add a second dedication now, to bobbolink. Love you, Bobbie.

Reposted in full by permission of peoplesing.org.