The condition of the poorest is an affront to our democratic principles. For there can be no democracy that is not founded, first and foremost, on respect for minorities. The majority has a duty to defend them, to support them, to give them a voice. Otherwise, democracy becomes nothing more than the usurpation of power by the strong.
It falls to us to ensure that our democracies offer minorities every chance to become actors in their own right, participants on equal terms with everyone else.
And yet, our democracies, which claim to be built on equal opportunity, remain profoundly unequal. For nearly two centuries, a section of our population has seized economic, political, social, and even religious power. Whatever the regime in place, that same section has guarded privileges accumulated over centuries.
It is the poorest above all who reveal to us the true state of our societies. Everything they could have hoped for has been taken away from them: every means of expression, every possibility of living in dignity. They have been reduced to playing the game of others, of administrations, charities and social initiatives. They have been turned into objects, not recognised as conscious human beings with voices of their own. To survive, they have been compelled to act, to pretend or to mimic.
And yet, when we draw close to these families, we are struck by the unmistakable strength of their humanity. Human beings do not accept to be crushed or forced to fit in. They resist.
Like the man I met in the Jura mountains of eastern France. He had lost his job over a serious matter, and in that region, it meant he would never find work again. Here was a family in a hopeless situation, because society, and we are that society, fails to provide its members with the support they need simply to get by. This family was left adrift, unable to raise their four children except through petty theft or begging.
And yet this man is a worker. I had known him for twelve years. He would find a job, lose it, and never rest until he found another. Not long ago, when I visited him, he was leaning over his kitchen table. He straightened up, greeted me with dignity, and spoke of his setbacks, his hopes, his fierce longing to work.
This is the experience of the very poorest, generations of workers driven relentlessly into irregular, menial labour. Judged as inferiors, they received an inferior education. And now, before me stood the descendant of this lineage, thirty-five years old, without a trade, who, across that kitchen table and from the depths of his being, cried out: “Find me work!”