"Look down and see the beggars at your feet. Look down and show some mercy if you can. Look down and see the sweepings of the street. Look down, look down upon your fellow man!" Thus reads the text of a song from the most popular work of musical theater in history: Les Miserables. In the musical version of the classic French novel by Victor Hugo this song shifts the scene to the squalid streets of Paris: 1832. It is sung by "the miserable ones," those from whom the novel and the musical takes its name.

The beggars, the poor, the dregs of society sing to the upper crust. "Look down," they cry. "See our misery." Theirs is a cry as old as human history and as fresh as today's headlines. The world has always been filled with "the miserable ones," "the wretched of the earth," crying out for me…