Poets Against Inequality

It is not shameful to be poor, nor to be rich. Shameful is a system where the rich become every minute richer, and the poor, poorer. This is exactly the picture Oxfam International has shown us:

"Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just 1% of the population, and seven out of ten people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last 30 years. The World Economic Forum has identified economic inequality as a major risk to human progress, impacting social stability within countries and threatening security on a global scale."

Look at the column below —it shows the number of people whose wealth is equal to that of the poorest half of the world’s population since 2010:

2010: 388

2011: 177

2012: 159

2013: 92

2014: 80

2015: 62

You have read it right: just 62 people hold as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion!

From Oxfam report: "Richest 1% have seen their share of global wealth increase from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014, and more than 50% in 2015″.(''An Economy for the 1%'', published by Oxfam on 18th January 2016).

Moreover, the report shows that the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population has fallen by 1 trillion dollars since 2010 — a drop of 41%. This has occurred despite the global population increasing by around 400 million people during that period.

Meanwhile, the wealth of the richest 62 has increased by more than half a trillion dollars – an astonishing 44% – to $1.76 trillion.

All this means that, although the number of people living in extreme poverty halved between 1990 and 2010, the average annual income of the poorest 10 percent has risen by less than $3-a-year: an increase in individuals’ daily income of less than 1 cent a year. Had inequality not grown, in the same period, an extra 200 million people would have escaped poverty. This is what we are talking of, when we honestly ask ourselves what 'inequality' means for mankind.

And we’re talking of multinational companies and wealthy individuals using offshore tax havens to avoid a fair taxation.

Along with almost all wealthy elites —including world leaders, politicians and public officials of more than forty other countries, plus their relatives and associates, as a recent leak (the so-called ‘Panama papers’: a leaked set of 11.5 million confidential documents) reveals—, 9 out of 10 leading companies have a presence in one or more tax havens around the globe.

This is fuelling economic inequality.

Data also show how women are disproportionately affected by inequality, as well by discrimination and exploitation. We cannot hide the fact that in many parts of the world, even in the most advanced countries, the gender pay gap is the norm. Indeed, the majority of low paid workers around the world are women.

Furthermore, we cannot fail to mention those so-called traditional cultures where women are considered ‘property’ of their husband or father, and are subject to child marriage and widespread domestic violence. How to accept that, in the third millennium, in many parts of the world women are denied land and property rights, have no inheritance rights, and are even denied access to learning?

We are not talking about marginal issues; we are talking of basic rights!

In 2014 I wrote a poem after I heard that just 85 super rich had as much wealth as the poorest half of our planet (the title is 'Is it true that The Devil Wears Prada?', in 'The Chinese Gardens', 1st Edition, 2015 – you can read the poem at the end of this ‘opening note’); I used, as a footnote, few words taken from a statement by 'Avaaz': "wealth they too often use to buy politicians and capture our democracies to keep the whole system going in their favour".

It is the same concept expressed by Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam International Executive Director: ''This is an Economy for the 1% [..] The richest can no longer pretend their wealth benefits everyone —their extreme wealth in fact shows an ailing global economy. The recent explosion in the wealth of the super-rich has come at the expense of the majority and particularly the poorest people."

And indeed, any honest person is disturbed by the rise of extreme inequality which threatens to undermine the basis of our society, spreading the seeds of increasingly greater social conflicts.

As poets and citizens of the world, we feel the urge to call for a strong and concrete action by governments and by the best part of mankind to tackle inequality, because if we all work to making sure that everyone has enough to live a decent life, we may reduce inequality, while positively acting to end poverty.

What we want to get, through this poetry compilation, is to add our voice to those other unequivocal voices that denounce such an absolute lack of equality in our society, and make all such voices resonate in the conscience of all people of goodwill.

The poems collected in this book belong in what is called Poetry of Witness, and we believe that this is a task that all of us, as poets, have a moral obligation to pursue, because we can't accept to live in a world where extreme poverty is so widespread and sheer inequality is the norm.

At the bottom, it is all a matter of sin and greed.. «Because the world has no more miracles to show —And it represents / The most painful betrayal.»

Now, it’s time to act.

(Fabrizio Frosini, April 2016)

~*~

Notwithstanding the obvious and comforting

Exceptions (exceptions die hard, don't they?)

The tycoons of luxury are not so different from

Those operating in any other market segment.

In the globalized economy, where the smart ones learn

Quickly how to circumvent the rules (if any), that products

Are weapons or food, health or human flesh, matters little:

The selfish pursuit of profit substantially always wins.

All of them live in the enchanted but fake world of

Finance -a world where profits often come through the

Suffering/ needs/ weaknesses of other living beings and

No question is raised about those who are forced to sell

Their labor (or even themselves) just to survive.

What matters is the growth of wealth of a tiny

Minority. Everything else is an annoying surplus of

Little –if any– relevance.

Therefore goose feathers –torn off of the living flesh–

Fill luxury duvets, packaged at little money where

It's more convenient; then resold at thousands

US dollars/ Euros/ British pounds/ Swiss francs.

It is through it, also, that numbered accounts at offshore

Havens multiply. After all, are not these ones

Worth much more than any other supposed

Paradise?

Fabrizio Frosini

‘Is it true that The Devil Wears Prada?’ (2014)

In 'The Chinese Gardens' (2015)

~*~

"O Sultan, my master, if my clothes are ripped and torn

it is because your dogs with claws are allowed to tear me."

Nizar Qabbani

(Damascus, 1923 – London, 1998)

~*~

The Poems

Sayeed Abubakar, 'I Dream A World'

Alexandro Acevedo Johns, 'The Tree of Inequality'

Elias Aghili, 'Kingdoms Fall'

Kareem Akadri, 'The Giant Tree of Inequality'

Saadat Tahir Ali, 'Why, I came to be?'

Denis Andrei, 'Alienated of will'

Tia Attwood, 'How greed consumes the leaders of this land'

Kasiviswanathan Balakrishnan, 'To Those Who Govern'

Anna Banasiak, 'The richness of the soul'

Khaoula Basty, 'A Poor Engineer'

Lawrence Beck, 'Circles of Hell'

Abhilasha Bhatt, 'Rich dad, Poor dad'

Mayjorey Buendia, 'Inequality / In Equality'

Sophy Chen, 'Men and Women are not Equal'

Sahra Hussein Dahir, 'The lost opportunity'

Anish Debnath, 'Irrational Differentiation'

Luka Dezmalj, 'Even if a cynic'

Asavri Dhillon, 'Spear in Chest'

Fabrizio Frosini, 'Wax and Wane'

Alem Hailu G/Kristos, 'Inequalities of all shades'

Majid Gaggi, 'Were not we all born equal?'

Dimitrios Galanis, 'Throngs groaning'

Negar Gorji, '[Wo]/Man'

Birgitta Abimbola Heikka, 'Inequality.. a body atrophied'

Galina Italyanskaya, 'Not