Draft Gore 2008 PAC

On February 1st, 1954, Radio Luxembourg broadcast "Mes amis, au secours !"

The voice that came into the kitchens and living rooms of France simply said:

Mes amis, au secours... Chaque nuit, ils sont plus de 2 000 recroquevillés sous le gel, sans toit, sans pain, plus d'un presque nu. Il faut que ce soir même, dans toutes les villes de France, dans chaque quartier de Paris, des pancartes s'accrochent sous une lumière dans la nuit, à la porte de lieux où il y ait couvertures, paille, soupe, et où l'on lise sous ce titre "Centre fraternel de dépannage", ces simples mots : "Toi qui souffres, qui que tu sois, entre, dors, mange, reprend espoir, ici on t'aime."

My friends, help ... Each night there are more than 2,000 homeless people, in freezing weather, without a roof, without bread, some of them nearly naked. There must be this very evening, in all the towns of France, in every quarter of Paris, illuminated signs at the doors of places where there are blankets, straw, soup, where one reads under the heading of "Fraternal Relief Center" these simple words: "You who suffer, no matter who you are, enter, sleep, eat, restore hope, here you are loved."

The man who spoke those words just died.

Before 1954 the nightly guillotine of the poor during the winter was unmentionable. Eviction during the hardest part of the winter was a death sentence, usually carried out within 24 hours. After 1954 silence on the issue of shelter for the homeless was impossible.

L'Abbé Pierre changed France because French people wanted change. The function of public piety in French worked for the poorest of the poor, les sans abri, those without shelter. It has worked better than the parties that control the distribution of wealth, and poverty, in France. As recently as this winter tents were put up throughout Paris to provide shelter for the homeless.

L'Abbé Pierre is the author of the most enduring, the most sincere, program of work in the last half century to reduce the inhumanity of the comfortable towards the discomforted, in the French Republic. His conception of duty towards the poor was not limited to those comfortable enough to be members of a political party, to those comfortable enough to vote, to those with political currency left to spend, or those comfortable enough to affect piety.

It is impossible to imagine the piety that prevails in American political life, the piety of misogyny, homophobia, racism, and privilege, of anything approaching the works of l'abbé Pierre, yet we have a duty not simply to the voting poor, but to the non-voting poor. Climate change is reducing agricultural yields in Africa by a quarter. Our conception of "sans abris" from the elements must extend to Muslim, Christian and Animist men, women, and children in East and Sub-Saharan Africa, who face famine as fatal as freezing, because of Global Warming.

We should not follow the example of those who seek to replace clinics in Africa with churches. Drought resistant seeds, not sermons, are what necessity requires.