As a longtime resident of Ward 4 in Waterville, I am eager to know what efforts will be made in this latest phase of “revitalization” planning in Waterville to not just superficially “include” — or worse, simply ignore) — the needs, desires, wisdom and future welfare of the poor and low-wealth members of our community, but in fact to center those needs, desires, wisdom and future welfare.

What efforts will be made to reach out in practical and meaningful ways to engage and learn from these precious community member, so many of whom are struggling mightily for their very survival under extremely adverse and stressful conditions, which many of the rest of us cannot begin to imagine?

What plans are there to demonstrate unequivocally that the welfare of these community members — their capacity not just to survive but to thrive — is actually key to how we plan to move forward as a city? How will we demonstrate that we as a community, from our elected leaders on down to the most ordinary citizens like myself, refuse to allow so much suffering to continue largely unaddressed, and so many lives to be cast aside like trash?

At City Council meetings, I often hear folks making the case for how important it is to make Waterville welcoming to new people: tourists, potential residents, etc. My deeper concern — and I hope it is yours, too — is how to make Waterville a loving community that embraces, cares for, and lifts up all of its current residents, even as it opens its doors to others as well.

As a local organizer with the Poor People’s Campaign, a member of the Greater Waterville-area Poverty Action Coalition, a volunteer at Inland Hospital, and in various other capacities, I spend many hours every week talking with poor and low-wealth community members, hearing their stories, and learning about their almost unimaginable burdens, many if not most of which derive not from “bad choices” but from the systems of astonishing economic inequity and neglect that we see across the nation, and also right here in our city.

I would hope that as this next planning phase moves forward, the city won’t hurry and tear things down and build new things for the residents who are already thriving. I hope instead that the central operating principle would be, in essence, one that stands at the heart of the Poor People’s Campaign: namely, the principle that “when you lift from the bottom, everybody rises.”

This is the opposite of “trickle-down theory.” It is also not the same as saying that if somebody’s tide rises, everybody’s boat will be lifted. It means, rather, that a thriving community for all of us requires first and foremost that we act to lift the weight of poverty and suffering off the backs of those being crushed by them, and that we allow those who are collapsing under this terrible weight — who have so much to offer if they could just be unburdened — to lead the way into a more humane future.

It’s the morally just thing to do, and I hope we will do it. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who conceived the original Poor People’s Campaign in the months before he was murdered, “God never intended for one group of people to live in superfluous and inordinate wealth, while others live in abject, deadening poverty.”

Let’s start by correcting that immoral distortion of human existence in every way we possibly can, right here in our city.

Elizabeth Leonard lives in Waterville.