Op-Ed Printed in the Courier-Journal (10/19/12)
Link to the CJ website

Woven into the very fabric of the United States Constitution is the recognition of certain basic civil and political rights.  Called the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments in our Constitution guarantee the right to free speech, the right to assemble, the right to religious practice, the right to legal representation and trial, etc.   These rights are bedrock.  They have been contested, abrogated, and ignored at different times throughout our history.  Different groups of people in the last 200 years have suffered the absolute denial of some of these bedrock rights.  Nonetheless, the  Bill of Rights represents some of the best of the American experience: its heart.

What have not been foundational are those principles and rights which finally do make a society truly healthy and whole: those social and economic rights which put flesh on a theoretical political equality.  These fundamental rights often are not even imagined, let alone identified and guaranteed.  Indeed, the mere assumption of economic rights is often vilified.  While we might defend a person’s right to speak, we do not often even imagine that that person has a right to eat.  We have made great strides ensuring these civil rights.  Economically, however, we are still living a Darwinian world: power goes to the victor.  Rights are not factored in.

This is apparent today.  In 2012 our society is as greatly stratified as it was in the early years of the 20th century.  The income and wealth gaps today rival those of those early decades as wealth and power once again have become increasingly concentrated into the hands of a very few.  Our strides are backwards.

The numbers tell one story.  Today the poorest 60% of Americans in real dollars has lost wealth in the last 20 years.   The top 5% has gained over 40%.  The top 1% has more wealth than the bottom 95% combined.  And the 400 wealthiest individuals on the Forbes 400 list have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. 

Yet they do not tell the other “story,” the personal ones, the countless stories with faces and bodies of children, family, kin, the stories told in wrinkles, tears, stress, heartbreak, anger, and illness, the stories of individuals and families struggling against the odds: foreclosures on homes, illness and death due to inaccessibility to medical care, families trapped in chronic and generational poverty, homelessness, disappearing Main Streets, the flight of capital to other countries, the lives of promise neglected and ignored by economic structures that grind on according to the laws and policies only a very few appear to control and dictate.   It can be argued that we are living in and blinded to an economic totalitarianism, yet tragically do not know it. 

And in the face of these stories, in the face of 1 out of 11 JCPS students not having a permanent address, in the face of  1 out of 5 children living in poverty in Kentucky, in the face of consistently measuring toward the bottom of so many social indices, we nail our political, emotional, and spiritual coffins shut with the assumption that the system in which we live cannot change.  The system’s mantra is: “pull yourself up” or “shut up.”  So, for example, though huge groups of people suffer poverty and have lived so for generations, we conclude that it is their fault and that they must change, not the systems and structures.  Though millions of people are unemployed or underemployed or not receiving a sustainable and living wage, we conclude that it is their fault and that they must change, not the systems and structures. 

We propose a different assumption.  We hold a different vision and understanding.  While all people are called to assume responsibilities for themselves, their families, and their communities, still our systems and structures can and must be altered.  Our systems and structures must become faithful to and guided by a deeper set of values and rights and a grander vision that calls forth our best.  Not only is this a vision of the common good, but it is a vision of true health, well-being, and security for all people.  

It is not a Democrat’s vision nor a Republican’s.  It is a human vision, a common one,  a common-sense one, and finally a spiritual one that spans our generations, neighborhoods, skin color, and class.  It is a vision that arises out of a conviction that all persons matter, all have value, all count.  And if that is so, then all deserve to be treated that way.  The vision arises out of the wisdom that our lives are interconnected, that the hurting of one part truly affects all parts. 

It is time to consider, promote, and work for an expanded bill of rights: an Economic Bill of Rights.  Simple yet profound, these rights form the basis of a fair, just, and healthy society.  They can and should be afforded all people regardless of age, race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, physical ability, and creed.  No one is disposable.  To even imagine, let alone implement and defend these rights, would begin to awaken us out of stupor.

What would it be like to live in a society that ensured the following?

1.       The right to a useful job and to safe and dignified treatment, and the abolition of forced labor, human trafficking, and the exploitation of children;
2.       The right to a sustainable, living wage with equal pay for comparable work;
3.       The right to organize to ensure fair treatment;
4.       The right to adequate protection during sickness, accident, disability, and old age.
5.       The right to decent, safe, and affordable housing;
6.       The right to affordable and adequate health care;
7.       The right to a good education;
8.       The right to a safe and clean environment;
9.       The right to healthy and adequate food;
10.    The right to vote.

Not a Democrat’s vision, not a Republican’s, but a human one, a common-sense one, a spiritual one that has spanned the generations, a vision nurtured in all neighborhoods, skin colors, and classes -- a vision of true health, well-being, and security for all people.  Let us imagine this kind of vision for all and let us work and live for it, locally and nationally. 

Phil Lloyd-Sidle
Pastor, James Lees Memorial Presbyterian Church
Coordinator, Sowers of Justice Network

Reason in the Political Season

In this political season more and more Americans of all hues know the realities of living in households that are poor. As political ads fly, the harsh realities of poverty and an economic downturn are not debated, even if everything else is. Poverty and injustice have a feel that statistics can’t measure and that mere words can’t adequately describe. Living in poverty or living with the effects of injustice comes with a story. How poverty hits you is different depending on your age and race and location, but the stories are uniformly unpleasant. Are those stories even more unpleasant if you’ve never been there before but find yourself there anyway? Or when it’s yet one more long wait for something different, some shift in scanty circumstances? If you are reared in poverty or new to it, the better part of the challenge is to come out alive and not too scarred.  The same goes for living in the effects of  injustice.

The political season soon gives way to a spiritual season, one holiday where people pause and gives thanks for abundance and another where people celebrate the catalytic birth of a poor child far from home. The intact memory of that Child’s paucity at birth and transformation from a child born in poverty and conflict to a sovereign invoking  abundance and peace informs much of what faith communities have to say about economic justice. 

The intact collective memory of our own scarcity, fear, and discrimination gives energy, depth, and spirit to an economic justice that can serve the wider community. That memory of poverty and that confidence in the possibility of abundance, peace and blessing invites our collective compassion, empathy, and action.

People of faith have two complementary opportunities to add dimension to impending political and spiritual seasons. One is the Festival of Faith and its theme, Sacred Fire: Light of Compassion. The other is Sowers of Justice Summit on Economic Justice. In the coming days , many  of us will pause to consider compassion and how to light that  fire  in our hearts, our homes, our neighborhoods and our world. Compassion─ that is, sharing a deep understanding and concern for another’s condition─ is also action, that is doing whatever is possible to alleviate difficulty, disability, or distress. That kind of fire is not only individual deeds of helping those in need, but also working to change the conditions that cause inequity.

The memory of poverty and injustice is surely powerful but even more powerful is the memory of another’s  compassion, the remembrance of another’s brave and tender heart when an injustice seems barely tolerable,  and recalling a hand of help and abundance when want seems overwhelming.

Doug Lowry
Sowers of Justice Network