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homelessness
The Economy Is Like the Ocean: Why We Must Protect Its Foundations
If we continue to strip away vital support systems—whether through mass layoffs, corporate greed, or government neglect—we are poisoning the waters we all rely on.
Mar 05, 2025
The economy is like the ocean—both rely on a healthy foundation to thrive. Just as the ocean's ecosystems depend on clean waters and balance at its depths, the economy needs a strong, stable base—workers, industries, and resources that function properly at the ground level. If the ocean floor becomes polluted, it disrupts the entire ecosystem, causing the waters above to suffer. Likewise, when the foundations of the economy are neglected—through inequality, corruption, or unsustainable practices—the effects ripple upward, leading to broader instability, high unemployment, and deepening inequality, making it increasingly difficult for ordinary people to stay afloat.
A clear example of this is when mass layoffs of government workers occur. Governments play a key role in maintaining infrastructure, social services, and public sector employment, which support the economy at large. When governments reduce their workforce through austerity measures or budget cuts, the immediate consequences affect the foundational services people rely on—healthcare, education, public safety, and more. These cuts often lead to decreased economic activity in local communities, as government workers are consumers themselves, spending on goods and services. Moreover, when government employees lose their jobs, the ripple effects can harm the private sector, as unemployment rises and consumer demand falls, further destabilizing local economies. The loss of these vital workers often undermines the very systems that hold society together, from the safety nets that protect the vulnerable to the systems of governance that enable economic stability.
Much like a polluted ocean, neglecting the "depths" of the economy—whether through environmental degradation, mass reductions in vital services, or economic policies that favor the wealthy over everyday people—ultimately pollutes the economic waters above. By weakening the economy's foundations, mass layoffs and economic instability erode confidence in the system, resulting in diminished growth, further instability, and a more fractured society. Both ecosystems—natural and economic—are delicate, requiring careful, long-term stewardship to avoid collapse and ensure prosperity for future generations.
Just as we fight for environmental protections to sustain our planet, we must fight for policies that sustain economic stability and fairness.
I understand this reality firsthand. As someone who experienced homelessness while raising a child, I've seen what happens when economic policies fail the most vulnerable. Losing stable housing wasn't just a personal hardship—it was a direct consequence of a system that prioritizes short-term profits over long-term stability. The economic ocean had already been polluted, and I was caught in the current, struggling to survive in a world that often overlooks those in need. I faced the consequences of an economy that fails to support its most essential workers, the ones who are too often invisible in the greater economic landscape.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, I witnessed another failure of economic stewardship. Many homeless individuals had no information about the virus, no access to protective measures, and no healthcare support. My daughter and I took it upon ourselves to educate and distribute resources to those left behind. Later, while filming my docuseries In Correspondence With Eric Protein Moseley, a spin-off of Homeless Coronavirus Outreach, I contracted Covid-19 myself. I was fortunate to receive care from St. Jude Center—Park Central and Catholic Charities Dallas, but my experience further solidified the urgency of healthcare and economic policies that serve everyone—not just the privileged. It became clear to me that a system that neglects its most vulnerable citizens will ultimately collapse under the weight of its own inequities. The pandemic illuminated the deep cracks in our social systems, with those at the bottom facing the greatest hardships and suffering the most severe consequences.
The current economic landscape shows us that public resources must be protected, not gutted. Economic justice and environmental justice go hand in hand. If we continue to strip away vital support systems—whether through mass layoffs, corporate greed, or government neglect—we are poisoning the waters we all rely on. Those at the bottom will feel the effects first, but soon enough, the instability will reach every level of society, affecting businesses, communities, and entire nations. This instability doesn't just threaten the most vulnerable, but the entire fabric of society itself. When the foundations weaken, it's only a matter of time before the entire structure is compromised.
We cannot afford to let the ocean of our economy become toxic. Just as we fight for environmental protections to sustain our planet, we must fight for policies that sustain economic stability and fairness. We need long-term solutions, not short-term cuts that deepen inequality and erode trust in the system. If we fail to act now, the waves of economic instability will continue to crash down, leaving millions struggling to stay afloat and threatening the future prosperity of us all. Our failure to protect the foundations of the economy will not only harm those already at the bottom—it will have consequences for all of us, as the ripple effects of neglect reach every part of society. The time to act is now—before the waters of economic injustice drown us all.
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Do You Want to Work for Justice? Go to Eviction Court
The closer we get to the millions of people who are facing evictions or already unhoused, the more likely we are to be motivated to do something about it.
Mar 04, 2025
Before the Super Bowl brought global attention and hundreds of thousands of visitors to New Orleans in February, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry cleared out over 100 unhoused people from downtown, busing them to an unheated warehouse miles away.
In our community of Indianapolis, advocates fear similar clear outs will happen when a planned city shelter outside the downtown area is finished.
Which makes me think of Stanley Milgram and Bryan Stevenson.
“On that fifth day, the weather was very cold and rainy. All I could think about was the young dad and his son without a home, with a job disrupted, and the young boy missing school.”
Milgram was the Yale University psychologist who conducted the famous experiments in the 1960s that showed a disturbing willingness of study participants to follow orders to administer what they thought were powerful electric shocks to other study participants.
The unsettling results remain widely known. But one component of Milgram’s experiments is less often discussed: The study participants were far less likely to administer the shocks if they could hear or see the victims of their actions.
Milgram used the word “proximity” to describe that variable. Which is the same term that Bryan Stevenson uses when he describes how we can change the world.
Stevenson is the attorney behind the book Just Mercy and the film of the same name, and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. Stevenson traces his lifelong devotion to ending mass incarceration and promoting racial justice back to an event when he was still a law student. While interning for a human rights organization, Stevenson was assigned to go to a maximum-security prison in Georgia and deliver some procedural case news to a man on death row.
But the planned brief meeting turned into a three-hour deep, wide-ranging conversation. At the end of his time with Stevenson, the prisoner sang the hymn, “I’m Pressing on the Upward Way.”
Which launched Stevenson on his lifelong trajectory devoted to seeking justice. “It’s because I got close enough to a condemned man to hear his song,” he says. “When you get proximate, you hear the songs. And those melodies in those songs will empower you, they will inspire you, and they will teach you what doing justice and loving mercy is all about.”
What Gov. Jeff Landry, Stanley Milgram, and Bryan Stevenson can all tell us is this: The closer we get to the millions of people who are facing evictions or already unhoused, the more likely we are to be motivated to do something about it.
Carolyn Kingen can tell us that, too.
A retired critical care cardiac nurse, Kingen in 2020 joined some of her fellow members of the Meridian Street United Methodist Church in Indianapolis for a book study group that chose to read Matthew Desmond’s Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. After reading and talking about the horrors of our nation’s eviction crisis, where 3.6 million households face forced removal from their homes each year, the group decided to see for themselves.
On one of Kingen’s first visits to eviction court, she heard a father of a seven-year-old boy explain to the judge that he had fallen behind on rent because he had not received expected overtime pay from his job. But, the father said, the overtime boost would be coming through in his next paycheck, which was arriving in a week. He could catch up on rent then, and pay late fees too.
The judge, unmoved, ordered the family to be evicted within five days. “The entire case lasted three or four minutes,” Kingen recalls. “In those few minutes, the decision was made that an employed father and mother had to pack their belongings and get out.”
“On that fifth day, the weather was very cold and rainy. All I could think about was the young dad and his son without a home, with a job disrupted, and the young boy missing school.”
“I Could Be That Tenant”
Experiences like this spurred Kingen and the book group to create a Housing Justice Task Force in their church, and then join with other congregations of different faiths to create the Indiana Eviction Justice Network. I teach a law school clinic where my students and I represent people facing eviction in the same area. I can attest that the presence of court watchers changes the tenor of the proceedings, ramping up the respect paid to tenants facing the loss of their homes.
And the eviction court watchers go beyond the doors of the courtrooms. They take the proximity-provided lessons and use them to advocate with elected officials and the judges themselves. Rabbi Aaron Spiegel, who as director of the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance coordinates the court-watching program, connects the volunteers with lawmakers to push for housing reforms like mediation before eviction orders, sealings of past eviction records, living wages, and more and better affordable housing.
“Court watchers often know more about systemic housing issues than the elected officials they are talking to,” Spiegel says. Earlier this year, court watchers mobilized to lobby Indiana legislators in opposition to a bill that would have criminalized sleeping in public spaces. Last month, the legislation was withdrawn by its sponsor.
Court proceedings are open to the public, and several other communities across the country, in places like Greensboro, North Carolina; Houston, and Chicago, have court-watching programs, often connected to justice advocacy.
Kingen and many of the other court watchers are motivated by their faith or moral principles. “We are called to care for the poor, the orphans, widows—and in today’s society, we would include any group that is shunned or rejected,” she says. “I try to see Christ in the faces of every person I meet.”
Rabbi Spiegel says this same call to action crosses faith and moral traditions. “All religious traditions teach that we must take care of the ‘least among us’ and as such, housing is a human right,” he says.
The proximity Carolyn Kingen experiences in court allows her to see in those facing eviction not just the divine but herself as well. Kingen recalls a time when she could not pay her rent, but was fortunate enough to have a family member step up to help. “Each time I court watch, I try to remind myself that I could be that tenant appearing before the judge,” she says.
Placing herself in the shoes of those facing homelessness is far easier to do when she can be in the same room and hear their stories, Kingen says. Court proceedings are open to the public, and several other communities across the country, in places like Greensboro, North Carolina; Houston, and Chicago, have court-watching programs, often connected to justice advocacy.
Check and see if there is a program in your community. And if there isn’t, maybe consider helping start one yourself.
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'We the People—Not the Wealthy Few': Voters Target Greed of Landlords, Insurers, and Gas Giants
"We deserve a government that uses our money to fund our care, not one that uses our money to line the pockets of corporations," said one protester.
Feb 26, 2025
After meeting with their members of Congress, working-class voters on Wednesday marched to the Washington, D.C. offices of three companies behind the nation's housing, health, and climate crises that are set to cash in on federal Republicans' planned tax giveaways.
Organized by People's Action Institute, the protest targeted Blackstone, an investment company that has become the world's largest corporate landlord; UnitedHealth, the country's biggest health insurance company; and American Gas Association, which represents more than 200 energy companies that provide services to 189 million Americans.
The participants—who hailed from 60 congressional districts across 27 states—emphasized issues including unaffordable rent rates, housing insecurity, homelessness, denied medical treatment, unpayable healthcare costs, high utility bills, health harms from fossil fuels, and corporate lobbying for tax cuts that benefit companies and billionaires rather than working people.
"We're here today because we want to make the rich pay their fair share!" declared JJ Ramirez of People's Action Institute member organization VOCAL-Texas. "Blackstone is a private equity company that has over 300,000 rental properties across the country. They gobble up these homes, raise our rents, price gouge us, and then evict us when we can't afford to live in their places. We're here today because Blackstone has conspired with other corporate bad actors so they can gobble up everything that we have."
While the protesters gathered outside Blackstone, they stressed that corporate landlords in general are an issue. Ann Kiesling of Progressive Maryland, which supported tenants at the Enclave Silver Spring apartment complex, said that "I will never forget a woman with a disability telling me about the time she had to hop up, with the help of a neighbor, 15 flights of stairs to get to her apartment because the landlords refused to fix the elevators. I will never forget the parents of a four-year-old telling me how they had to heat up water on their stove to give their kid baths because their landlord refused to fix their hot water for over a month."
"An out-of-state private equity landlord, Hampshire Properties, is raking in massive profits by charging luxury rent prices while letting the building fall apart and leaving tenants with the consequences," Kiesling continued. "And while we are here fighting for basic living conditions against mold, broken elevators, pest infestations, corporate landlords like Hampshire Properties, like Greystar, like Blackstone, are pouring our rent money into lobbyists and elected officials' campaigns instead of fixing their buildings."
Hannah Peterson, a disabled veteran, seminary student, and member of the People's Lobby in Chicago, pointed out Wednesday that "just last night, House Republicans passed their budget resolution to cut millions from Medicaid."
That resolution
sets the stage for cutting not only $880 billion from the healthcare program that serves low-income Americans, but also $230 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps. Elected Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House, want to gut safety net programs to fund an expansion of tax giveaways to the rich that GOP lawmakers passed and President Donald Trump signed in 2017.
"Republicans are already funneling our tax dollars out of programs our communities need and into pockets of private corporations and billionaires," Peterson said. "We deserve a government that uses our money to fund our care, not one that uses our money to line the pockets of corporations."
As Medicare for All advocates often highlight, although the United States has Medicaid and Medicare, which serves seniors, it is the only developed country in the world without universal healthcare. Instead, the U.S. has a for-profit system that often leaves patients unable to access or afford necessary care, including because of denials from insurance companies.
"To the folks at UnitedHealthcare... if you really care about people's health, why don't you publicly come out and oppose the cuts to Medicaid?" asked Citizen Action of New York's Amelia Bittel—who has dysautonomia, a disorder that led to a heart surgery at age 35 and requires weekly blood draws.
"In my city of Syracuse, New York, 48% of the population relies on government-funded programs to get their insurance," said Bittel. "You don't need the $1.3 billion that you stand to profit from these cuts. Your company routinely reports the highest profits. Why not give back to the patients?"
At the American Gas Association, Gloria de Graves from Citizen Action of Wisconsin explained that in the Midwestern state, "if you're not familiar, we hit negative 30°F sometimes, and that means that people can freeze to death in their homes if they do not have a way to heat their homes."
"So all I'm saying is We Energies and Xcel Energy, who I have paid plenty of money to over the years, need to stop charging us so much money so that we can afford to feed ourselves, we can afford to stay housed, and when we are fleeing domestic violence, that there is a safe, electrified, and heated home to go into so that we are warm and safe in the winter," de Graves said.
Celebrating the multisite protest on Wednesday, progressive Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said that "I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, because there are people in my community that can't afford to come up here."
"It is so important to understand corporate greed and how it is embedded in environmental injustices, embedded in environmental racism," she said. "They want the federal government to continue to literally fund poisoning us, while we get sick here in our country. So they're making us sick, and we're subsidizing the fact that we don't have access to healthcare that supports our families."
In a dispatch earlier this week, People's Action executive director Sulma Arias wrote that her group "refuses to give up. We believe ordinary people have the power to rise and meet this and every moment, if we act together. We believe in the fundamental dignity of every person, without exception, and we believe government exists to serve all people—We the People—not the wealthy few."
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