Like in most American cities, the stark disparity between those who had much and those who had so little was disturbingly easy to see; in this case via the following two scenes witnessed that morning; one of overflowing opulence and the other of abject poverty – with each residing less than three miles from the other. Were the visitors of the former really that much more worthy of their abundance than the residents of the latter? And can any society that purports to be just & fair & decent in any way allow the latter to exist at all?

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint, and yet when I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist … There is an undeniable truth at play in every ghetto – the truth that poverty is ever the parent of first crime and then revolution … Indeed, until we come to recognize as a collective society that there is no Them, but only unique facets of Us, then there will be neither justice nor equality nor civility nor security among us all … In truth, the test of our progress as a nation is not whether we add ever more to the abundance of those who already have much, but rather whether we provide enough for those who have too little … We must all loudly oppose any social order in which it is possible for one man who does so little that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence. Indeed, if we as a society are not willing to provide even the most basic necessities for all our community’s residents, what use is our forming a society at all?” ~ inspired by Dom H. Camara, Aristotle, John Green, Franklin D. Roosevelt & Eugene Debs

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt