Heard this a few days ago from a story on Júlio Lancellotti, a Brazilian priest and activist:
Lancellotti has worked among São Paulo’s street people for 40 years. Yet if you suggest he actually helps them, you get a prickly reply.
“I don’t help anyone,” he says. “I live with them. I share what I can with them.”
For Lancellotti, this is about faith and about pushing back against intolerance and injustice.
“Society has to find a better way of living together.”
It’s since stuck with me. He spoke so much about the ideals of communal living, mutual aid, classlessness with just a few sentences.
I heard this story on NPR as well. And of course, some far right asswipes say he’s a communist. Just some guy trying to help the most vulnerable and they have to make it political.
Disclaimer: i didn’t read the article
I believe you’re missing the point, that the priest does not help people from a privileged/comfortable position (charity) but rather lives and struggles with communities (solidarity). This is eminently political and sounds a lot like communist/anarchist approach to mutual aid.
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Super cool approach to poverty, rather than the usual system of rich flight and wealthier individual run off to ‘better’ neighborhoods, making some neighborhoods the pure distilled essence of poverty.
