One way to reduce the cycle of violence we see in cities like Holyoke is to call attention to the fact that poverty — and the violence it breeds — is not caused by people who live in poverty.

It’s caused by people who have the power to invest in areas plagued by poverty and choose not to.

It’s sustained by the indifference of people who live in segregated, middle-class communities encircling concentrations of urban poverty.

It’s strengthened by the representatives of these affluent communities who keep our towns and cities segregated and refuse to support policies that would make lasting change in communities that have historically been robbed of resources.

In June, the state’s Racial Imbalance Advisory Council released a report that found that 60% of our public school students are racially segregated, with Holyoke suffering some of the worst repercussions from such segregation.

Poverty throws people into survival mode, traumatizing generations of families, while many people who hold power stand aside and talk about compassion and empathy while doing very little.

When it comes to violence, we repeat “arrest, arrest, arrest.” And yes, we need to hold people accountable, but holding individuals accountable won’t stop the violence. It won’t end poverty.

We can’t arrest and imprison our way out of the damage poverty inflicts.

If we could, police efforts like former police chief Anthony Scott‘s zero-tolerance enforcement sweeps that put hundreds behind bars in the early 2000s in Holyoke would have worked. But such police actions fail to make lasting change.

We need real investments, in infrastructure, in housing, in food, in parks, in schools, in energy. We need to invest in families.

We need to invest in health care, including free accessible treatment for the post-traumatic stress people living through poverty experience.

Along with reformed police departments, we need community trauma centers. Along with more beat cops, we need more social workers. We need to pay inner-city teachers more than nearby suburbs if we want them to remain in our urban schools. Holyoke’s public school teachers are fleeing faster than we can replace them.

When we expanded the child tax credit during the COVID pandemic, child hunger — and all the violent consequences of child hunger, like brain damage — dropped.

Then, Congress failed to extend the expansion of the tax credit, and child hunger spiked — and so did the assault on the bodies and brains of children.

That choice was made by people who are not hungry. People who do not live in poverty chose to continue the cycle of poverty and the damage it causes.

This is just one of many ways we perpetuate poverty and the suffering it unleashes.

Living in Holyoke, I am inspired by Holyoke’s Puerto Rican community and culture. I have witnessed how their community and culture act as a balm and a support for people who suffer the assaults of poverty.

I have seen people in the Puerto Rican community work around the clock to help those who are in need. I have watched them give the few dollars they have to make sure their neighbors can get by.

But such communities can’t fix this societal crime of poverty by themselves, even though they endlessly try.

All people need to step up and show they care by supporting real investment and change in our inner-city communities. And when that investment is not there, all people need to speak out and push for it.

As the Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel said, “As long as one child is hungry, our lives will be filled with shame.” As they should be.

Our indifference is the real crime.

Sometimes we are quick to protest and cry out for people in war zones across oceans — and we should — but many of the same people ignore cities like Holyoke where people must continuously combat the direct and indirect traumas of poverty.

How many people in the suburbs even know Dexter Ortiz’s name?

Patrick O’Connor lives in Holyoke.