“A majority of our neighbors are ALICE neighbors, which means they are Asset Limited, Income Constricted and Employed. They make enough money to survive, but then they have an unexpected expense, or their social service assistance is cut from them, pushing them back into poverty.

A person gets a good job, and then how do we reward them for that? Cut their child care, their SNAP benefits, their Medicaid, just because they now make a couple more bucks an hour. In a time when they still have all this stuff from before that they’re dealing with. There’s no grace period, and then they just end up back in the system.

Poverty costs trillions of dollars a year. If people want more money in their pockets and more safety and security for their family, they should be all about ending poverty for everybody because unless you are a billionaire, poverty is coming for you like a freight train.

Even if you make millions of dollars a year, you are a lot closer to your neighbor in poverty than you are to the billionaire. And if something does happen to you financially, you’re going to need to learn how to navigate things you’ve never had to think of before.

Let me tell you, poverty is inconvenient. It’s exhausting. And we could solve it. It doesn’t have to be like this. We could make sure that the people who have the least have a solid foundation to grow from. Think about what it could look like to have a minimum standard for living, keeping people fed and living in decent housing and sending them to a regular school. If we were to do that, what would that do for people? What would that do for our economy?

And yet, it’s easier for us to judge somebody. We do a really good job of judging people, and a really lousy job of loving people. Which seems strange to me. Because love is a lot easier to do than judging.”

– Martin Butler is the Executive Director of NSI Food Pantry, which responds to the ill effects of poverty in Central Ohio by providing food and material assistance to persons in need. NSI strives to improve the quality of life in our community by compassionately and respectfully serving our neighbors.