Remarks on September 19, 2022 for online event at https://peaceweek.org
Powerpoint here.

Thank you for including us. After I speak, World BEYOND War Education Director Phill Gittins will discuss the educational work that can move us away from war, and World BEYOND War Canada Organizer Maya Garfinkel will discuss the nonviolent activism that can do the same. This way, I can talk just about the easy part, which is why we should abolish war.

“What’s the point?” Everybody (Nicole Erb) plaintively asks about human existence as she confronts Death (a playful Anne Gee Byrd as a not so Grim Reaper) in Antaeus Theatre Company’s Everybody, a rollicking adaptation of the anonymously-written 15th century Christian morality play, Everyman. With its modern twists, including projections (designed by Yi-Chien Lee), sound (provided by Salvador Zamora) and lighting effects (illumined by Bryan Ealey) plus dialogue that translates Middle English into the 21st century vernacular, including loads of obscenities, penned by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Antaeus’ mounting brings this Middle Ages classic alive. The setting is a sort of dreamscape (Nicholas Ponting is the scenic and props designer)

Some great news for a change:  the United States hit a record low rate of poverty with a decrease from 9.2% at that level to 7.8%, according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure that pretty much counts everything from all governmental aid to wages and so forth.  Additionally, child poverty was only 5.2%, a drop of 4.5 percentage points from 2020.

How did it happen?  Simply put, low-income families were given more money by the federal government.  For a change, the money went directly to families through various benefits, special guaranteed family allotments for children, and unemployment benefits increases.  By directly, I mean that for the most part the states, red or blue, were not able to prevent families and workers from receiving the benefits by diverting the money or requiring burdensome tests and disqualifications.  There’s no question that it cost big money for the Biden administration to make this happen and a huge pandemic-level crisis to force the hand of Congress, but it confirms what National Welfare Rights Organization leaders just to say repeatedly:  money is what ends poverty.  Period.  Full-stop.