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In this year’s US presidential election campaign, we’ve heard endless speeches about saving the middle class .. middle-class tax-cuts … helping home-owners.  Both sides - Republican and Democrat.

I don’ recall any speeches or advertising about reducing poverty, programs for the poor, etc.  Now I certainly don’t expect concern for the poor from the Republican side, but I remember a strong Democratic concern for the American poor and reducing poverty.  From the sixties until the nineties.

Suddenly, it seemed, Clinton and friends discovered Hollywood and big money and concern for the middle-class.  Overnight, poverty had been eliminated - at least as a matter of concern.

Growing up Catholic in the fifties, the poor were part of the conversation, if not part of the family:  our relatives in post-war Eastern Europe; the children in the mission territories of Africa and the South Pacific, among others.

In the sixties, brave politicians created the Great Society and the War on Poverty to help the poor in this country.  The Peace Corps spread abroad to work in developing nations.  We heard the words poor and poverty as part of the national conversation.

Today, it seems, we have a battle betwwen the middle-class and the super-rich.  Who gets what and who gets to pay for it.  Certainly no headlines on poverty or the poor.

And that’s just about poverty here in the US.  Around the world, more than a billion people subsist on less than a dollar a day.  We hear almost nothing about them - unless there’s an explosion or tsunami.  The US sends about $25 billion each year to developing countries.  That’s a buck a day for 25 days for a billion people.

So what do we do now?

First, check the action at www.blogactionday.org

Then take one action, today, to help.  Write a post.  Send a check.  Tell a friend.

Thanks.

Love to all.

http://blogactionday.org/js/99adc9f576edeb9115137b7b0e0445b6ebb3fa7f