• – 4 out of every 10 people on the planet lives in extreme poverty.
• – 8/10 people on the planet live off less than $10 a day. 

We read these statistics and in doing so we are both shocked yet distant from the sheer number of people that are being talked about. This piece is a reminder for all of us to look at our lives in an essential context, but also acknowledge that we have a charge to look at these statistics – the masses of people that are reduced to numbers and figures by news outlets and social media – and make a conscious effort to humanize them. Those 4/10 people living in extreme poverty are people with a shared hope and dream of a better life and a better world. For those of us blessed with the means to survive every day, this is a reminder that no matter what, regardless of how bad we believe we have it, we are always in a position to make a difference in our lives and the lives of a multitude of someones whose identities are lost behind the numbers.

We dream of a world free from poverty, inequity, and violence

We who have the privilege speak for the millions who can only dream of the peace that we few write in books, in speeches, and in declarations 

These millions are the nobodied

The nobodied that are statistics in books

The nobodied are echoed in the metaphors of that speech 

The nobodied championed in articles of that declaration

The nobodied are dying in bondage

Bound by the nightmare of their reality and the idealism of our words

The nobodied have names

The nobodied have families

The nobodied have futures 

To the nobodied, we are not saviors

we are just the author of that book

the giver of that speech

co-signers of that declaration

Speak their names

Live in their nightmares

Dream with and for them

The nobodied are so much more

We all must be 

For the sake of a better world