The Violence of Poverty; "quiet terrorism"

[Sapphire Blue]

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The Violence of Poverty:
Remarks to Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting
Roberta Spivek,
AFSC National Representative for Economic Justice
September 14, 2003

(excerpt)

I'd like to talk about two wars our nation is currently engaged in: the war in Iraq, and the war at home. The first war, which has received more attention, involves the violence of militarism. The second, quieter war, also involves violence - the violence of poverty, and our society's indifference to it. My job is to help lift up this second war, and to bring a sense of urgency to the task.

Why is poverty violent? Like war, poverty can kill or maim you. Like war, its victims are mainly civilians, and the most vulnerable among us - battered women, children trapped in poor schools, immigrants who don't speak the language, older adults living on a Social Security check. Like war, poverty has structural roots and causes -- low-wage jobs, deindustrialization, domestic violence -- but is experienced on a personal level, child by child, woman by woman, home by home. Like war, poverty leaves scars. Unlike war, however, our society finds no glory in poverty; instead, it's surrounded by stigma and shame.

Poverty rarely generates a heated public debate in America. It arouses few demonstrations, especially by the middle-class, and no candlelight vigils. When people who experience poverty do demonstrate and organize, as many are doing today, the media usually ignore them, even more than they ignore antiwar protest. Perhaps "quiet terrorism" is a better analogy than war: the terror of losing your job, having no food in the refrigerator, a sick child, no safety net.

Continued @ http://www.afsc.org/economic-justice/TheViolenceofPoverty.htm

Reminder for tonight: 20/20 - "Waiting on the World to Change" - children growing up in the poorest city in America.: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x37700

[nam78_two]

1. K&R

Poverty rarely generates a heated public debate in America. It arouses few demonstrations, especially by the middle-class, and no candlelight vigils. When people who experience poverty do demonstrate and organize, as many are doing today, the media usually ignore them, even more than they ignore antiwar protest. Perhaps "quiet terrorism" is a better analogy than war: the terror of losing your job, having no food in the refrigerator, a sick child, no safety net.

No it doesn't generate a heated debate :-/....Not a "sexy" issue..

[Sapphire Blue]

10. Thanks, nam78_two!

Typically it's either ~ crickets ~ or the "It's not a winning issue" type comments.

On tonight's 20/20, a little boy named Ivan, is asked about daily meals on his first day of kindergarten... how many meals/day, what these meals are called. Ivan doesn't eat three meals a day, doesn't even know that there are three mealtimes/day.

Ivan matters.

Moochie matters.

Billy matters.

The millions of other children living in poverty matter.

The millions of people, young and old, living in poverty all matter. It's time for us to let them know it.

[Reterr]

2. kr.eom

[Sapphire Blue]

11. Thanks, Reterr!

:hi:

[caseycoon]

3. AMEN !

It's like nobody even wants to hear about... "Don't tell me so I don't have to do anything about it."
Very sad situation in the 'richest' country.
:cry:

[Sapphire Blue]

12. HI, caseycoon! Welcome to DU!

:hi: :hi: :hi:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Great post! As someone who experienced real poverty as a kid. Bravo to the author.

There is nothing uplifting or romantic about being hungry and/or homeless or watching your mother shoplift food to feed the kids.

The sad truth is that there millions of Americans and more than a billion people worldwide trapped in poverty with no hope.

[sandnsea]

5. Thank you

I had forgotten about it and definitely want to watch. I sincerely hope we are feeling a bubbling of an explosion of long overdue change.

[hfojvt]

6. great article

but the snip, at least, leaves out one thing. This war is being waged deliberately by Republicans and the Bush administration. Obviously they did not invent poverty, but they have been doing their best to take away safety nets and ladders that people can use to climb out of it.

Which is why my first signature line was this:

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
George W Bush, accidentally telling the truth

"I prophesy to you this evil man will plunge our Reich into the abyss and will inflict immeasurable woe on our nation. Future generations will curse you in your grave for this action." Erich Ludendorff

[etherealtruth]

9. Reagan singlehandedly changed the "War on Poverty"

Into the war on the impoverished.

I do not claim to believe that this country has ever been truly sympathetic to the poor ... but, Reagan made it "normal" to despise the poor and blame them solely for their circumstances.

[Sapphire Blue]

13. Yes, the repubs are deliberately waging the war; but who is fighting them on this issue???

[hfojvt]

14. Democrats have fought some

I remember seeing Daschle on TV, talking about the Bush tax cut for the rich, how it gave a muffler to most people and a new Lexus to the rich. He fought, but the voters of South Dakota, did not have his back. Wellstone fought, and died. Then the aged former Vice President, a Minnesota icon came out of retirement and blasted the Bush administration. The voters of Minnesota, did not have his back. After four years of Bush's "compassionate conservatism" why didn't he get thumped like Herbert Hoover? Edwards, the candidate who talked about the "two Americas" was on the ticket, but the voters, curse them, did not have his back. I cannot blame the Democrats when they do not see an electoral reward even for the little they do.

[Sapphire Blue]

15. While those Democrats fight, said voters don't have their backs...

.. because "Poverty isn't a winning issue."

Those words hurt as surely as a sword in the heart.

[silverojo]

26. You can see this happening right here at DU

Post after post about the war, but rarely do we see posts about poverty in America.

If the people at DU don't give a damn about the poor, what can we expect of the general electorate? :(

[Sapphire Blue]

You'll find a few posts about poverty here:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Sapphire%20Blue

Some have been well received, others not so much ( ~ crickets ~ ).

That so many care so little about the poor hurts. It hurts.

[hfojvt]

29. Poverty, though, has always been with us

and the war only since March 2003. Also seems to have a clearer, more obvious solution - "bring the troops home". And Harrington made the point that the war in Vietnam drowned out the war on poverty (which Johnson also declared). To an extent, we cannot take on poverty until we stop this war.

[Selatius]

7. America has failed the poor.

In an economy where the rich are posting double digit gains each year, the poor are forgotten, left behind. They talk about the middle class and trying to help them, but they ignore those who live in poverty. The gap between the rich and poor has grown wider since 1980 yet people throughout the last 27 years have called this the "New Economy." They said we were making progress.

If one defines progress as the rich running ahead of everybody else, the middle barely holding on or even slipping, and the poor falling way behind, then one would have to cite the 1980s and the 1990s as a hallmark of success.

In a country that boasts of being the richest in the world, boasts of having the most billionaires in the world, it should be considered a badge of shame to also have an underclass of the poor.

I only need to view the nearby cities where I live, cities left behind in the foot print of Hurricane Katrina, to affirm the truth in my eyes that America has failed the poor.

[nam78_two]

8. kick

[EC]

16. Just had an arguement with my boss about this

he says there are no hungry in America...it's too rich for that...I showed him reports etc. - he closes his eyes to it...doesn't want to believe it, so he doesn't...Anyway, I ended up calling him an uncaring asshole and he just left and went to the bar...This is one of those issues that people close their eyes to because they don't want to feel...

[Sapphire Blue]

19. For your boss & all of his compatriots, and to all who say "Poverty isn't a winning issue." ...

Elie Wiesel: "The Perils of Indifference"

(excerpt")

In a way, to be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman. Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can at times be creative. One writes a great poem, a great symphony. One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses. But indifference is never creative. Even hatred at times may elicit a response. You fight it. You denounce it. You disarm it.

Indifference elicits no response. Indifference is not a response. Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor -- never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees -- not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.

Indifference, then, is not only a sin, it is a punishment.

(snip)

In the place that I come from, society was composed of three simple categories: the killers, the victims, and the bystanders. During the darkest of times, inside the ghettoes and death camps -- and I'm glad that Mrs. Clinton mentioned that we are now commemorating that event, that period, that we are now in the Days of Remembrance -- but then, we felt abandoned, forgotten. All of us did.

And our only miserable consolation was that we believed that Auschwitz and Treblinka were closely guarded secrets; that the leaders of the free world did not know what was going on behind those black gates and barbed wire; that they had no knowledge of the war against the Jews that Hitler's armies and their accomplices waged as part of the war against the Allies. If they knew, we thought, surely those leaders would have moved heaven and earth to intervene. They would have spoken out with great outrage and conviction. They would have bombed the railways leading to Birkenau, just the railways, just once.

And now we knew, we learned, we discovered that the Pentagon knew, the State Department knew...

Full text & audio @ http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ewieselperilsofindifference.html

What will Ivan & Moochie be saying years from now when they realize that we all knew?

[smokey nj]

17. Kick

[Sapphire Blue]

20. Thanks for kicking, smokey nj!

:hug: And thanks for caring!

[bobbolink]

18. BRAVA!!!! My sentiments EXACTLY! When "libruls" vigil and march

for poverty, then I'll be there for the other stuff.

Until then, ....

.........................crickets...............

The crickets are from me, until my voice is taken seriously.

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{Sapphire Blue}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

[Sapphire Blue]

21. bobbolink, you matter!

:hug:

[Warpy]

22. One more K&R

Poverty is the worst WMD the world has produced.

Its cause is the concentration of wealth away from the earth's people and into the hands of the fewest possible of the rich and powerful.

[Sapphire Blue]

23. Thank you, Warpy!

:hug:

[silverojo]

27. Same here...I totally agree with you!

Taking care of the poor should be our top priority...a country cannot succeed when so many people aren't allowed to succeed. :(

[silverojo]

24. This article is SO TRUE!

Wars end eventually; poverty doesn't, because politicians keep ignoring it.

K&R!

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[Sapphire Blue]

25. Thanks, silverojo!

[silverojo]

28. Thank YOU for making the original post

So many times, I just get so saddened here at DU, when I look at all the posts and see so few that address the poverty issue.

I've bookmarked that article, and I'm going to e-mail it to everyone I know. Thanks again for finding and sharing it. :hug:

[Sapphire Blue]

30. ...

:hug:

[Sapphire Blue]

31. kick

:kick:

[Sapphire Blue]

32. Kick

:kick: