This Month in Compassion: December 2025

December opens with World AIDS Day — a global moment of remembrance and resolve — but it also reveals a deeper reality unfolding across the United States: a federal government growing increasingly silent in the face of suffering. From HIV prevention and civil rights protections to hunger, housing, and public health, compassion is receding from national leadership at a time when communities need it most. This month’s This Month in Compassion examines where empathy is thriving at the grassroots level, where it is disappearing at the federal level, and why ethical governance demands that compassion remain at the heart of every policy decision.

“A Voice for the Voiceless”

Activists in the humane movement often refer to themselves as providing a voice to animals whose needs are not heard. Similarly, for photographer and filmmaker Randy Bacon people who are homeless need to be heard and they also need to be seen. In The Road I Call Home, an exhibition of portraits, stories, and film of the homeless community in his hometown of Springfield, Missouri, Bacon provides an outlet for the people featured to be seen and to be heard in their own voices.