The Julie Gold song “From a Distance” has long been a favorite of mine. And, as two strikingly different events converge this year – the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “War on Poverty” and a rare meet-up in our own Milky Way galaxy of two unique, yet equally impressive entities, a spectacular gas cloud and an immense black hole with the mass of four million suns, Gold’s lyrics give us pause for thought:
From a distance/We all have enough/And no one is in need/And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease/No hungry mouths to feed/From a distance/We are instruments/Marching in a common band/Playing songs of hope/Playing songs of peace/They are songs of every man/God is watching us/God is watching us/God is watching us/From a distance.
The universe is full of mystery; and, no one really knows what the outcome will be or what the event will ultimately mean for science and humankind when the gas cloud, called G2,
The universe is indeed full of mystery. But poverty should not be one of those mysteries. The lessons of the last 50 years, since the “War on Poverty” was declared, have taught us well about the struggles of people who need to decide from month to month whether they
Interestingly, although every woman enrolled at Caroline Center is living at or below the federally mandated poverty line, few if any of the women would say that they are “poor.” In fact, in a research study conducted in 2013 by Loyola University Maryland undergraduate Briana Ciccarino on the topic of “Just Language,” Caroline Center trainees expressed that when they heard the words “the poor” used – as they often are by people and organizations – that they actually heard nothing and saw no one. They reported that the words “the poor” made them feel “called out,” “othered,” and “completely invisible.”
It should not be difficult to see, then, even from a distance, that we are all poorer because poverty exists – that we are all diminished by the loss of human potential and promise that poverty inflicts. Wherever it exists, poverty depletes us by stripping away the resources and opportunities we all need and deserve to be fully participating members of society.
No one should ever have to live on a poverty “event horizon.” Every person who is living on the brink brings us all closer to that terrifying, irrevocable but, in this world and in this time, absolutely preventable point of no return.
While there is still light, while there are still living stars in the galaxy, let us act justly by