Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Whatever postures our country has projected to the world – shining city on a hill; leader of the free world; model of democracy; the indispensable nation; a rules-based order–all have crumbled like a house of cards. Our country’s failures, however, are deeper and older than the recent election.
The United Nations lowered the U.S. ranking to #41 among nations in 2022 due to the extreme gap between the rich and the rest and women’s loss of reproductive freedom. Elsewhere the U.S. ranks as a “flawed democracy” because of its severely fractured society. These ongoing societal failures feed a continuous decline in health, such that we now ranks 48th among 200 countries in life expectancy, while having the largest number by far of billionaires and millionaires compared to other wealthy countries. Corporate lobbies for the weapons industry, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, processed foods, etc. dictate our federal government’s priorities while 78% of US people live paycheck to paycheck.
Blessed is the Poor People’s Campaign: This national campaign in more than 45 states is organized around the needs and demands of the 140 million poor and low income Americans. Its vision to restructure our society from the bottom up, recognizes “we must…deal with the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation and the denial of health care, militarism and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism that blames the poor instead of the systems that cause poverty.” Add sexism to that list of injustices.
Blessed is Fair Share Massachusetts, a coalition of labor unions and dozens of community and faith-based organizations that won passage of the Fair Share Amendment in 2022. The constitutional amendment has instituted a 4% surcharge on annual income over $1 million. In 2024 the $1.8 billion accrued from the tax on millionaires provides free school meals; free community college; and funds to invest in roads, bridges, and public transit.
In 1948, the United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which recognizes adequate housing as one cornerstone of the right to an adequate standard of living. All 27 European Union (EU) member states as well as Australia and South Africa institutionalized housing as a human right for their citizens while the United States has not. In every state except Oregon and Wyoming, it can be illegal to be homeless, essentially casting blame on 650,000 adults and over 2 million children for their poverty-stricken homelessness
Blessed is Rosie’s Place, a model to our country of woman-centered humanism. Much more than a shelter, it is a mecca and “a second chance for 12,000 poor and homeless women each year” in Boston. Rosie’s Place was founded on Easter Sunday 1974 in an abandoned supermarket, as the first shelter for women in the country. From providing meals and sanctuary from the streets, it grew into a multi-service community center that offers women emergency shelter and meals plus support and tools to rebuild their lives. Rosie’s offers a food pantry, ESOL classes, legal assistance, wellness care, one-on-one support, housing and job search services, and community outreach. Ninety percent of homeless women have suffered severe physical or sexual abuse at some time in their lives.
Blessed are the nearly 3000 domestic violence shelters and groups organized throughout the U.S. to provide temporary shelter and help women re-build their lives, offering legal assistance, counselling, educational opportunities and multi-services for their children.
“Beating the Blues,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024
A recent Gallup Survey found that the U.S. ranks last among comparable nations in trust of their government and major institutions, including business leaders, journalists and reporters, the medical system, banks, public education and organized religion – a plunge from top of the list nearly 20 years ago.
Blessed is Hands Across the Hills, a blue-state red-state seven-year effort formed after Donald Trump’s 2016 election to bring together progressive residents in western Massachusetts and more conservative residents of rural eastern Kentucky, for conversations and sometimes intense dialogues about their political and cultural differences. They disputed the idea, “that we are hopelessly divided, as a myth sold to us by politicians and mass media, to hide our nation’s all-too-real inequalities.”
Blessed are the peacemakers across dozens of federal agencies, including the military and in communities throughout the country who challenge, resist, resign and refuse orders in our flawed hyper-militaristic government. Since the US-enabled genocide in Gaza, more than 250 veterans and active-duty soldiers have become members, respectively, of About Face: Veterans Against the War, Feds for Peace, Service in Dissent, and A New Policy PAC. All have arisen from current and former federal employees aligned with the majority of Americans who want the Israeli-US war on Gaza (now expanded to Lebanon and the West Bank) to end through diplomacy.
Blessed are those of the people, for the people and by the people – beacons in a country sundered by militarism, rich privilege, origins in slavery and genocide of Native Americans, and persistent inequality of women.
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