Two Ways You Can Help to Eradicate Poverty
May 1st, 2023
Like many of our neighbors, Brenda works for less than $9 an hour, not enough to pay for childcare for her two pre-schoolers. If her 70-year-old mother-in-law were unwilling to watch the children for free, Brenda would lose money if she worked.
Food-service workers are, if anything, paid worse than Brenda. Louisa waits tables for $2.80 an hour. Her take-home pay relies on supplemental voluntary tipping which is itself a remnant of slavery.
What can you do?
These egregious abuses are heaped one after another on our neighbors creating an oppression that is unconscionable. The problems of systemic racism and generational poverty seem too big to tackle. They’re not.
At UCOM we are committed to inviting you to attack this dreadful system in two practical ways. The first is advocating, activating, and agitating for policy changes that lift people out of poverty. This includes making SNAP benefits equal to and surpassing what they were when COVID was considered pandemic. It means raising the national and state minimum wage to $15 an hour as a starting point. It may mean promoting collective bargaining unions, universal health care, and other egalitarian measures that “promote the general welfare”.
While you are doing whatever you can to encourage equity, be the safety-net. Give as generously and as consistently as you can to ensure that food insecurity is eradicated worldwide, beginning at home in one of the wealthiest nations in the world.
Give money and volunteer time to organizations that are using this two-fold advancement for justice and abundance for all people. Enlist your family, friends, and anyone who will listen to join you in defeating poverty and all the -isms that injustice generates. Spread the wealth by giving to mutual aid networks, initiatives to benefit the unhoused, and churches that are fulfilling their responsibility of ministering to people’s needs while preserving respect and dignity.
While you are working for policy changes to bring liberty and justice to your neighbors, don’t forget that many people need help now. Until you can achieve eradication of poverty, be part of providing a respite for its worst effects.
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