Worrisome news runs in the shadows, a sign of the oblivion of the poorest: ATD Fourth World, which fights extreme poverty, is excluded from the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE): We are amazed! As poverty increases […], the representatives of the poorest in the 3rd assembly of the country will be less numerous
, says Marie-Aleth Grard, president of ATD Quart-Monde.
Reform (1) which reduces the members of the Council has a good back. Because, when the number of environmental representatives goes from 18 to 26 (2), that of the poorest goes from 3 to 2. However, one in six French people lives below the poverty line.
Some consider that ATD does not need to sit since it is a member of a collective already represented. Others add that the concern for the poorest will also be borne by the representatives of social, territorial and other cohesion.
No doubt, but it’s going quickly. Because it is to ignore the action of ATD which carries the voice of the voiceless in this Council since 1979. We owe it the law against exclusion and poverty in 1988, the minimum insertion income (RMI). Its opinions have propagated new solutions: school of success
, zero unemployed territories
…
Do we want to deprive ourselves of their initiatives?
It is also in contradiction with the desire to develop participatory democracy. Because, with ATD, the poorest people participate in the development of policies that affect them. Far from assistantship, they take charge of their future. By presenting the solutions they construct to the EESC, their citizenship was recognized.
Do we want to deprive ourselves of their initiatives? To exclude ATD from the EESC is to ignore the social dynamics that would help the country to recover by preventing it from sinking into dull anger. Because the billions will not be enough to extinguish the social crisis which simmers. It would be necessary to involve people, to listen to them, to help them build solutions and policies. Reintegrate ATD into the EESC, as requested in a petition (3) to the Prime Minister, would be a good signal.
Because social questions are rising from all sides: from the youth that must be welcomed with open arms; wounded farmers and unemployed people who must be supported; homeless people who have been forgotten by vaccination, says Doctors Without Borders indignantly; refugee families on the streets (4) ; prisoners with living conditions that need to be improved in Ploemeur (5) and elsewhere.
We must also surround our patients and our elders: families, caregivers, intellectuals ask the deputies for a law recognizing the right to visit them. During the pandemic, the abandonment of our patients, our dying and our deceased constitutes a considerable retreat of civilization
, they write (5).
Now is the time to tackle social issues head-on and put the excluded at the heart. It would be the most worthy tribute to all those who have been swept away by the pandemic and whom so many families mourn today.
(1) Reform 09/04/21 ; (2) The Cross 24/03/21 ; (3) change.org ; (4) West-France 15/04/21 ; (5) Release 04/09/21
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