The Michigan Daily - Monday, May 9, 2005 - 5
VIEWPOINT
Fixing poverty is w
BY EMILY BEAM
( ( housands Died in Africa
Yesterday" was the title of
a recent New York Times
op/ed piece written by Jeffrey Sachs. He's
arguably the most influential economist
in the world, and he's helped nations like
Bolivia and Poland get their economies
on track. In short, he's my hero. In his
recent book, "The End to Poverty," he
delivers compelling and practical argu-
ments for the steps needed to eliminate
extreme poverty in the world, and he's
right about both the urgency and feasibil-
ity of promoting economic development
in impoverished nations.
I consider myself "aware" because
I've been somewhat exposed to poverty.
I vividly remember meeting an Appa-
lachian couple who couldn't afford to
get married because their welfare ben-
efits would be reduced. And I still think
about the teenage girl I met in Peru who
wanted nothing more than to marry a
man with a battery-powered boom box,
the latest status symbol on an island
too poor to enjoy electricity. But these
isolated cases I've encountered are not
among the truly horrendous instances
of poverty, typified by the swollen-
bellied children the media generally
ignores. They are not what Sachs labels
"extreme poverty," a state in which one
billion people live. One billion.
Here on campus, we most frequently
talk about unemployment and poverty
within our own borders. Many of us reach
out to the poor in Ann Arbor and neigh-
boring Detroit. And we should. But just
because it's easier to feel the problems
of poverty in our own communities does
not mean our world ends there. With the
spread of globalization, the lines between
nations are blurring, and our world is
expanding. In other places, there is a cri-
sis of extreme poverty that is far more
pressing but also far easier to ignore.
I'm concerned about union workers
who lose their jobs to outsourcing. But
I'm even more concerned about families
who can't even subsist in rural Cambodia
or the arid savannahs of Africa.
I've heard complaints that the United
States ignores its own poor in lieu of inter-
national interventions. But there does not
need to be an international versus domes-
tic tradeoff; rather, it's guns versus but-
ter. There is a big difference in whether
Progressives vs. Democrats
ithin our reach JSESNA T1~~
JESSE SINGAL STEM T 3HE IDE.
actions abroad are military or humanitar- uch has the Democratic Party seems to be fleeing
ian, whether the United States is spending been from whatever vestiges of a progressive
$500 billion a year in Iraq or a measly $16 made in agenda it once had.
billion a year to help the world's poor- the months since the This is a bit of an oversimplification in
est nations, as Sachs estimates. To fully 2004 election about that it makes the party out to be a mono-
fund development efforts, he asserts that the inability of the lithic, homogeneous entity, but the fact
it would still cost the United Steates only <. Democratic Party is that, for the most part, the Democratic
$70 billion - far cheaper and more effi- to understand the Party has completely ignored - or failed
cient than present military actions, and ° :. values of the aver- to mount an effective defense with regard
as a bonus, nobody dies when you give '.,"', age voter; in fact, to - a number of social issues that appeal
them bed nets. A real commitment to eco- many pinned John Kerry's loss on a severe to a large portion of its political base.
nomic development would bring stability divide between the values of the general Those who feel passionately that no one
to impoverished nations and benefit the population and the ideals of the party. should have to spend years of his life in
United States with increased global secu- What's being lost in all this talk is the jail for a nonviolent marijuana arrest, and
rity and trade. Everybody wins. squelching of an important, young subset those who think that anyone proposing
But in order to end poverty, at home or of Kerry voters: the so-called "progres- a ban on gay marriage should be able to
abroad, we must push our government. sive" camp. "Progressive," like any other rationalize his position without recourse
Organizations like one.org really impress ideologically-charged term, is thrown to the Bible, simply do not have a voice at
me; they are making a valiant grassroots around frequently and sloppily, and there- the moment.
effort to initiate a top-down change, fore it has only a vague meaning. For the What complicates the situation is the
requesting that the United States commit sake of this discussion, take someone to singularity of purpose that seemed to
1 percent of its federal budget to combat- be progressive if he is pro-gay marriage exist late last year: All manner of "radi-
ing extreme poverty. and/or feels that our nation's drug laws cal" groups aligned themselves with
I don't like economic inequality, but are unjust. Obviously, these two issues in the Democrats, at least temporarily, in
I can at least find a framework in which no way constitute the totality of what it the name of defeating Bush. Support for
it makes some sense. I can't, however, means to be progressive, but each serves Ralph Nader, so trendy in 2000, very
rationalize the presence of extreme pov- as a good barometer. quickly went from "hot" to "not." But it
erty in any way. It doesn't matter if you're It is safe to say that many of those who would be a grave mistake for the national
freezing on the streets of Detroit or Mos- participate in campus political groups party to assume that only the members of
cow. Whether it's school uniforms or a like the College Democrats would self- said radical groups care about the social
$1.20 malaria cure that you can't afford identify as progressive. And it was these issues that are getting swept under the rug.
for your children, it's still sickening. The progressive folks who donated untold There are plenty of participating mem-
statistics are staggering and unnecessary hours to Kerry's campaign and solicited hers of the College Democrats who view
to repeat, but it doesn't matter any more God knows how many dollars in dona- themselves as quite mainstream and want,
or less if it's one person or several million tions. What do they have to show for more than anything, to have an active role
who are dying of poverty. it? Kerry lost, of course, but that's only in the direction the party takes in the years
It's a lot more comfortable to focus half the story - that is, the fact is that to come. But this interest will be severely
on the poverty we can see. But the links
of globalization bind us so tightly to the Tel11It l1ke1it *
international community that the plight Tell i like 1 is
of those who earn less than $1 a day is
no less important than the homeless man M ARA GAY cos' s N E
who asks you for a few dollars. We have
the resources to do both: to help those n 1775, one in If liberals were able to market their ideas
close to us and to extend the 0.7 percent 20 American as effectively as Thomas Paine and Sean
of our GNP needed to end extreme pov- colonists owned Hannity, today's political landscape might
erty worldwide. The beautiful thing about a copy of Thomas be very different. There is a reason it took
saving the world is that sometimes it can Paine's "Common the right wing some 20 years to reclaim
be done, but our government won't do a Sense" The pam- the White House from the debauchery of
thing until we care. As students, we don't : phlet is credited liberalism. It is the conservative agenda
have to oversimplify and naively clamor -,with using clear and that is out of touch with the values of the
for the vague notion of global change. direct language to average American; it took billions of dol-
We can be those sign-waving activists convince the average tars, quite a few think tanks, the general
who actually understand the problem colonist that not only was it in his favor to disintegration of responsible journalism
and demand that we be heard, because seek independence from Great Britain, but and two elections riddled with voter fraud
extreme poverty is completely fixable. it was his sacred right and civic responsi- to win the Bush "mandate" - a whopping
threatened if the party takes the advice of
all those who claim that they need to bet-
ter identify with the "average citizen."
Simply put, there is no way the Demo-
cratic Party can have it both ways. Ask the
"average citizen"in most parts ofthecoun-
try how he feels about gay marriage, and
he will respond that he is firmly against it.
Many claim the Democrats should be try-
ing to appeal to such voters. At the same
time, however, the party's future is hugely
reliant on younger participants who have
a decidedly progressive social agenda. It
might work, in the short run, for the party
to reach out to "values voters" and their
ilk while retaining the support of young
progressives, but if it does, it will only do
so because of PresidentBush and the huge
amount of mistrust and resentment he has
mustered among those of certain political
stripes during his time in office.
In the long run, the Democratic Party
is going to have to figure out - and
make clear - exactly where it stands on
a number of social issues. Given the lim-
iting nature of a two-party system, there
simply might not be room for the party
to occupy its current, vague role. People,
as a rule, like strong opinions; "We are in
favor of civil unions but opposed to gay
marriage" might work for the moment,
but in the absence of a unifying force like
Bush, such nebulous half-slogans will fall
on deaf ears.
Singal can be reached at
j.singal@umich.edu.
usual reluctance to present straightforward
moral arguments for causes that require a
direct appeal to a voter's sense of values
and social justice.
The same kind of ineffective seman-
tic jargon is currently being used to fight
MCRI. University President Mary Sue
Coleman is probably right when she says
the language in MCRI is likely to have a
devastating effect on women in higher
education. But to be frank, if affirmative
action were simply about the advance-
ment of white women, there wouldbe little
room for controversy. Voters will decide
the fate of affirmative action based upon
what lies at the heart of the issue - race.
The campaign to end affirmative action
must be exposed for what it truly is: a dis-
turbing example of the insidiousness of the
very racism affirmative action works to
counteract.
Now that I am back home in the true-
blue state of New York, the full horror of
the past year's political happenings has
begun to percolate in my mind. But after
some liberal soul-searching, the lesson
Thomas Paine has to teach us is clearer
than ever: It's not about the message, it's
about the delivery. Liberals must under-
stand that there is no need to market ideas
with convoluted arguments of semantics
whenthey are genuinely beneficial tothose
they're being sold to. After all, demanding
real and positive change is not revolution-
ary to most Americans - it's common
sense.
Gay is a member ofthe Dailys edito-
rial board. She can be reached at
maracl/ibumnich.edu.
Beam is an LSA junior and the Daily's
associate editorialpage editor.
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bility to do so.
The irony, of course, is that the Ameri-
can Revolution did very little to change the
life of the average colonist. But the same
thing that worked for Paine does wonders
for pundits like Sean Hannity and their
conservative agendas. In fact, if Paine
were around today, he might very well be
on Fox News, leading his faithful flock to a
revolution that doesn't necessarily advance
the interests of the flock at all.
Not unlike Paine, today's conservatives
appealdirectly tothemoralityoftheiraudi-
ence. The very success of the deceptively
named Michigan Civil Rights Initiative,
for example, which seeks to end "prefer-
ence" based on race and gender, banks on
its supporters' assumption that Michigan
voters fundamentally support the concept
of civil rights.
Instead of simply expressing outrage at
the way in which these progressive terms
have been hijacked by their rightful own-
ers and used to roll back decades of posi-
tive reform, liberals had better work to
chip away at the moral monopoly they
have allowed conservatives to amass.
51 percent of the vote.
It must be frightening for Republicans
to ponder what might happen if Demo-
crats wise up and begin to reframe the
terms of the debate. Why notchallenge the
moral high ground of the conservatives,
for example? Issues like health care, social
security and education must be presented
as the crises of morality that they are.
Last November, the Thomas More Law
Center marketed Proposal 2, an amend-
ment to the state constitution banning
gay marriage or "similar union for any
purpose," as simply a way to protect the
sanctity of marriage and strengthen family
values. OpponentsofProposal2couldhave
restructured the conversation, reminding
the public that bigotry and intolerance are
not family values at all. They could have
encouraged Michiganders to demand to
know how legalized discrimination would
help them find decent-paying jobs in a state
whose unemployment rate is tied for last
place with Alaska's. Instead, they insisted
that the language in the proposal was so*
vague it might be used to impede upon
even heterosexual rights, displaying their