Solidarity that outlasts the pandemic
Dear all,
Maryann has explained to me how poverty means uncertainty and a diminished power over your own life and that there is little you can do about it. Today, many of us are experiencing a sense of this, with the way the pandemic continues to deprive us of some of the most important aspects of our life - health, social connections, and opportunities. But poverty is even more brutal.
“The essence of extreme poverty is to have the people who suffer it wander in a void,” said Joseph Wresinski, founder of ATD Fourth World. This void is a social construct, the consequence of individuals and social systems reacting to people living in poverty by avoiding them and their struggles. These reactions prevent us from learning about ourselves, our communities, and how our society functions so we can do better for everyone.
Something positive we have learned from the pandemic is that our communities have the capacity to care. Most of us are even more thoughtful when interacting with others, for ourselves but also because we don’t want other people to get sick. We actively show that we care. And in the early peak of the pandemic our local and federal governments seemed to care more too, from passing an expanded Child Tax Credit, to eviction moratoriums, to more available food distribution. Some government programs even reached out to know if you were in need. That’s the right direction, but many of those initiatives, including the expanded Child Tax Credit, have ended. We can now see more vividly what was missing before the pandemic, as Stacy explains: “When I got Covid, the city was calling me to see if I needed anything. I was so angry. Nobody ever called me to see if I needed help when my kids were hungry.”
Overcoming poverty is about building actively caring communities at all levels of our society - from our neighborhoods to state and federal governments. The solidarity put in motion to resist the pandemic is crucial and it needs to outlast it: No one should be left in hardship and isolation.
This year, we have to keep learning with people experiencing poverty how to face the social and economic consequences of this pandemic. In this way, our common thirst for overcoming poverty will lead to impactful actions.
In hope,
Guillaume Charvon
National Director
Check Out the ATD Fourth World 2021 Year in Review
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