Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

Reverend William Barber and Dr. Liz Theodoris, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, wrote a compelling op ed piece for the Guardian declaring that poverty, not the threat of an invasion by Spanish speakers, is the real emergency in our nation. The essay is full of chilling statistics illustrating the widespread poverty in our nation and the crumbling infrastructure that has resulted from decades of underfunding by governments at all levels… and by both parties! Here are some examples:

And the fact is, it’s not just the Republican party that has ignored these issues. Poverty has increased by 60% since the Rev Dr Martin Luther King launched the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign, under both Democratic and Republican administrations.We can no longer accept the same political discourse that for the past 50 years has refused to mention poverty nor can we accept politicians enacting policies that prey on the poor. It’s time to talk about the real emergencies plaguing our nation and the real moral issues of our day – the lack of health care, living wage jobs, clean water and sanitation, the militarization of our communities, the attack on indigenous sovereignty….

This is the time to take on the lies of the enablers. When people say poverty is caused by laziness, race, or lack of moral character, we must expose these lies.

In today’s America, the real emergency is that a quarter of a million people die from poverty each year while our political system refuses to use the great wealth of this nation to lift the load of poverty.

Democrats should validate the fact that 250,000 people die from poverty each year, and hammer that fact home during this debate. One way they could do so is to declare that when they have the opportunity to do so, hopefully after the 2020 election, whoever is elected President as a Democrat will declare a national emergency and divert funds earmarked for wars abroad to deal with the decades-long emergency of poverty. Such a declaration would shine a spotlight on this shameful reality.