Christmas card from the American Friends Service Committee,
As I was reading the February 28, 2025 newsletter of Friends Committee on National Legislation, the section about the Trump administration’s termination of foreign aid contracts stood out:
The Trump administration announced it is terminating nearly 10,000 foreign aid contracts and grants, leaving only 1,200. This is as they are trying to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). As FCNL’s Ursala Knudsen-Latta said in a recent blog post, this means that
“millions of children who were fed in January will now go hungry. The sick who were receiving treatment will no longer. Peacebuilders and human rights defenders who sought the U.S. as a partner for their futures have been abandoned overnight.”
This immediately brought to mind the song “Hunger” by Robbie Gass.
From one who is hungry to one who is well-fed,
I see the children everywhere
Die from lack of bread.
I do not seek your guilt,
Your fortune followed from your birth.
But please, please remember,
We must share the earth.
There could be enough for all,
The Mother would provide
Yet ignorance has led her children,
Always to divide,
Into nations, and rich and poor,
And separate from their kin,
In a battle against ourselves,
Who could ever win?
For as long as there is one who suffers,
You must suffer too,
For the walls to keep me out,
They also must imprison you,
So open up your heart and feel that we are really one,
When each of us is living truth,
Justice will be done.
And on that glory day,
When there will be enough for all,
From the nations of the earth
There will go forth a mighty call:
For red, white, black and yellow,
To join hands across the sea;
And to share a meal to celebrate,
The birth of harmony.