By Ashley Gagné

I understand the imperative to save a life, though some cannot be convinced of even this: Gaza and Guatemala, Rwanda, Darfur, and Syria. All the others. The world looks away while humanitarian doctors arrive, sewing flesh to bone, as they are trained to do. What I struggle to understand is how a life once saved is left to crumble. This thing we call poverty, the condition of deprivation, is the story of power. Faith and phenotype weaponized to sow division. Societies militarized under the auspices of freedom. Born of those living materially reckless lives.

The problem is that people in Washington and New York, Geneva and Brussels are still making decisions about people in Gaza and Panzós, Kigali, Khartoum, and Aleppo. And every place Washington and its allies cannot name. The problem is that people living in million-dollar homes are still making decisions about people living on dirt floors, ten to a room, whose ways and knowledge are rendered invalid or threatening.

Sitting on stolen land, the allies praise palliative solutions, informed by elite schools to which they will send their children. They anoint themselves agents against an order they yet defend; alleging themselves detached from the systems of exploitation they steward. Drawing charitable plans, they force poor governments to claim ownership of these in return for money. And when the plans fail, they call these governments corrupt. But they themselves are the governors, and they themselves are corrupt.

And those living on dirt floors have learned dependence, to seek validation over centuries, causing psychosis, causing violence. Some believe themselves incapable, but only they know the strength of brokenness. Meanwhile, images of bodies, mostly black and brown, circulate to solicit donations. Bodies exhausted and essentialized. Cementing ideas about which bodies should hunger. And these are the bodies that hunger. Who tells the story of life in Gaza and Panzós, Kigali, Khartoum, and Aleppo? Who tells the truth?

Ashley Gagné is the Director at MCC United Nations Office, New York