PostCarbon Rhode Island

Sharon Astyk: Ordinary Human Poverty

Sharon Astyk, author of Depletion and Abundance, looks at the roots of poverty and potential responses, that (surprise) require us to learn how to better work in community. Here’s the full article.

The only way to live in the world of ordinary human poverty is to live there in a world where your pocket isn’t picked constantly, where you aren’t the victim of endless resource conflicts, where your government doesn’t sell your future out. And the only way to be a nation of reasonably self-sufficient, ordinarily poor people living decently is this - to remember that the reason we use the word “ordinary” here is that there are a lot more of us peasants than there are of the powerful. The truth is that repressive governments, of the sort we have had and are rapidly entrenching are scary - but they never have enough troops, enough power to stand up against the unified dignity of those who are simply ordinary, and simply want enough. But that requires that we trust each other, that we work together, that we create the institutions of ordinary poverty, the ones that have fallen into disuse - Granges, Unions, Consumers Unions, neighborhoods, voting blocs, and larger groups that can be used to pull us together. These things too are ordinary and human - and it is getting to be time to build them.