I have been struggling. Not just physically, though illness has weighed on me, but emotionally and spiritually—struggling with the sheer enormity of the cruelty happening before our eyes. The suffering. The deliberate, calculated choices to harm. This is not just a political crisis; it is a moral one.
For nearly 40 years, I have worked as an advocate for the poor. I have spent my life fighting for dignity, for justice, for the belief that no one should be discarded. Yet today, I wake up to a world where those in power are making it their mission to dismantle the very structures that hold people up—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, USAID, food assistance, housing support. These programs are not luxuries. They are lifelines. Their destruction is not about fiscal responsibility. It is about power. And it is about cruelty.
What makes it even worse is why these cuts are happening. This administration isn’t gutting these programs out of necessity—they are doing it to fund tax cuts. In plain terms: they are taking healthcare, food, and security from the most vulnerable to give to the wealthiest Americans.
How did we get here? The wealthiest among us—those who will never worry about rent or medical bills—have gaslit the American people into believing that social programs are the problem. That somehow, a retired teacher, a factory worker, or a single parent who paid into the system their whole lives is a taker, while billionaires demanding tax breaks are makers.
They needed a scapegoat to make this lie stick—someone to blame. And so, they pointed to the poor, the disabled, immigrants, and struggling families, painting them as the reason for economic instability. But they did not stop there. They weaponized class resentment, selling the myth that the middle class pulled itself up by its bootstraps while so-called “takers” wanted something for free. They fed working Americans a steady diet of jealousy and resentment, convincing them that every dollar spent on social programs was being stolen from them rather than from the billions hoarded at the top.
This is the great lie. And it has been repeated so often that many accept it without question.
But the cruelty isn’t just happening here. While we gut social safety nets at home, we are also slashing humanitarian aid abroad—leaving starving children to die, their bodies too weak to cry. The U.S. has abruptly cut billions in USAID funding, halting food and medical relief in some of the world’s poorest places. In Congo, Ethiopia, and Sudan, emergency aid has vanished overnight. The result? Millions of children will suffer. Tens of thousands may die.
This is a choice—made by comfortable men in Washington. The money for these programs was already allocated. The food was already sitting in warehouses, ready to be shipped. And yet, in an act of breathtaking cruelty, the aid was frozen. Infants will die. Mothers will watch their children starve. And those who made this choice will sleep soundly in their mansions. I am heartbroken.
This is not a political fight. It is a moral reckoning.
Throughout history, when America has faced its greatest injustices, change has only come when the people refuse to comply with evil. Slavery did not end because politicians debated it out of existence. It ended because abolitionists bore witness, because enslaved people resisted, and because a war was fought when no other choice remained. Civil rights were not granted by polite negotiations–they were demanded in the streets, in courtrooms, and in marches. As Frederick Douglass wrote, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.” Change has never come from waiting for the powerful to act out of conscience. It has come from people making injustice impossible to ignore.
Now, we are facing another moral failure. The systematic abandonment of the poor and vulnerable, the starving of children, and the theft of security from the elderly. This is not a policy disagreement. It is a test of who we are.
A political fight can be won or lost at the ballot box; a moral fight must be won in the streets, in our communities, in our refusal to be complicit.
It is time to name the cruelty, to reject the lie that suffering is an economic necessity, to oppose– peacefully, relentlessly, with every tool at our disposal. We have reached the moment where we must make it clear that this will not stand. Because silence is the greatest weapon of the cruel. And they will not get mine. Not now. Not ever.
Gayle Rose is a Memphis businesswoman and an advocate for the poor. She is founder and chair of the Rose Family Foundations and Team Max, named after her late son, Max Rose. She also serves on the advisory board of the Institute for Public Service Reporting.
