There’ve been a lot of articles about the rising price of food around the world and what it means for everything from the death of the middle class to the politics of oil nations to US agricultural subsidies to…to…to…
But Marc Lacey, one of my favorite journalists and the only individual for whom I have a google alert, draws a connection no one usually writes about:
Not being able to afford food to feed your kids makes people pissed off. And that can have political consequences.
President René Préval of Haiti appeared to taunt the populace as the chorus of complaints about la vie chère — the expensive life — grew. He said if Haitians could afford cellphones, which many do carry, they should be able to feed their families. “If there is a protest against the rising prices,” he said, “come get me at the palace and I will demonstrate with you.”
When they came, filled with rage and by the thousands, he huddled inside and his presidential guards, with United Nations peacekeeping troops, rebuffed them. Within days, opposition lawmakers had voted out Mr. Préval’s prime minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis, forcing him to reconstitute his government. Fragile in even the best of times, Haiti’s population and politics are now both simmering.
This is the reason I love this guy: He takes the news item (“Preval must reconstitute government”) and makes it human again, connecting elite political games to the ordinary lives of people who live by, and suffer through, them. Read the whole piece here.
Here’s another great example of the same approach, an older article about Darfur: In Sudan, Militiamen on Horses Uproot a Million.
