You never know where you will find a front page story in an American newspaper. I found one on page B-5 of today's Patriot News, the newspaper for Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state capitol, on a page dominated by obituaries, containing ads and stories about an escaped prisoner and a new elementary school.
The headline was "Call to end poverty." Six of the nine column inches were devoted to a color picture of two women and a man--all white--wrapping white bands around each walnut tree in a long row. The entire story--or picture caption to be more accurate--was on all of six lines, six lines more I am sure, than appeared in the vast majority of American newspapers.
"Rose Sharp, the Rev. Patrick Waller and Jane Kreischer wrap white bands around walnut trees on the grounds of the United Church Center in Lower Paxton Township yesterday. The white bands commemorate October 17 as International Eradication of Poverty Day. Walker is the regional director for the Church World Service, which is at the center."
A Google search brought forth the information that October 17 of each year has been officially proclaimed by the United Nations the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. This day was officially recognized by the United Nations before the election of Bill Clinton in 1992.
The short Wikipedia entry notes that "the first commemoration of the event took place in Paris, France in 1987. 100,000 people gathered on the Plaza of Human Rights and Liberties at the Trocadero to honor victims of poverty, hunger, violence and fear.
"One of the main aims of commemorations of 17th October is to make the voice of the poor heard. To this end, commemorations often include testimonies from people living in poverty about their own experiences of those of people they know."
Article 25 of the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims "Everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."
Although U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has long sought to remedy this, the U.S. Constitution contains no such rights. The United Nations--a very loose confederation of governments with an annual budget roughly equal to that of the City of Philadelphia's $3.6 billion--is at its best a combination of advocacy and public relations arm for the better instincts of the world community of governments. It has little real power to achieve its lofty goals.
I would welcome hearing from anyone who has ever participated in any commemorative activities for the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. I would welcome hearing from anyone who has ever been aware of any commemorative events locally held or locally reported. I doubt very many Americans are at all aware of this day. I confess that this is the first I have heard of it.
In or around 1965, President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty. That war petered out after he left office in 1969. Today, the American poverty rate for children is rising and now stands at around 17.8%, which is much too high.
In 1968 and 1972 Presidential candidates of both parties felt required to proclaim and defend their strategies for fighting poverty. Jimmy Carter's call for compassion in 1976 both widened the public appeal of the issue, but subsumed specifics under the righteous flag of moralism. Since then, with the notable exception of John Edwards' public plans for 2008, fighting poverty has pretty much fallen off the list of urgent public tasks.
There are good political reasons why this is so. As Ben Wattenberg and Richard Scammon wrote in their classic The Real Majority in 1970, "the average American is unyoung, unblack, unpoor." That is of course true today as well.
But Americans are citizens as well as consumers and financers of governmental services. As citizens, we have to be aware of the huge costs of poverty in crime, prisons, health care, job losses to foreign countries, racial tensions, and general senses of hopelessness, hostility, and alienation.
To win the political power that we need to change America for the better, the Democrats have to become the party of a much greater percent of rural America and suburban America. There is some poverty in these places, but poverty is not a dominant concern there.
The Democrat challenge, and the challenge of all Americans who see poverty both as a moral evil and an interconnected series of practical problems, is to find ways to reduce it that are in accordance with the values and fiscal priorities of middle class America.
Significantly reducing poverty--ideally even meeting the Lyndon Johnson-John Edwards goal of eliminating poverty--is not a task of a single politician or a single campaign or even in all likelihood a single generation.
But it is a task that the political system and political parties must embrace beyond mere rhetoric in the interest of our country and our planet.