Poverty By Design

Even while survivors of our own country’s horrible 2012 “storm of the century,” Hurricane Sandy, are still reeling from Sandy’s wrath, Haitians are still suffering from the 7.0 earthquake that happened three years ago today. Over 200,000 people were killed; 1.5 million were left homeless.

Homeless Haitians set up tents nearby the Pres... — Homeless Haitians set up tents nearby the Presidential Palace, in the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In spite of billions of dollars pouring into the tiny country, said to be the poorest country in the world, the look of destruction is almost as stark as it was three years ago. Too many people are still living in overcrowded camps, where people are living in tents, with no fresh water, no sanitation, no electricity, and no privacy. Some camps have closed down, with some Haitians having been paid to leave them, but with so little new housing, one wonders where they have gone. A report on National Public Radio (NPR) said that some people have moved into new houses, but have ended up back in camps because they haven’t been able to get work to pay their rent. (http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=2&t=1&islist=false&id=169078876&m=169117672)

A friend of mine recently visited Haiti, and came back shaken. “I can’t stand to see that kind of poverty,” he said. “It’s too much.”

If it’s too much for a visitor who sees what is there but can leave it, one wonders how those trapped in the abject poverty and destruction are faring. One wonders what the overall psychological effects are on the spirits of the people who live in such squalor.

There was money pledged, billions, in fact. That money was received and according to Haitian officials, used well and wisely, but apparently the “wise and well” spending of the money did not extend to the millions of people living in misery. What happens to people who get “used” to being miserable? And what happens to the world when there are so many people, internationally, who live in such disgusting poverty?

In every poor nation, there are people who live quite well, and I would bet that those who live well try their best to stay away from the poverty and misery literally at their feet. Poverty is ugly. Nobody wants to see it.

And yet, perhaps if they would see it, and smell it, and taste it and hear it…they would be moved to help in ways they could. Maybe if they could see the squalor they know is there, their hearts would be pricked.

Once, when I was a reporter, I did a story on poverty in the city. I visited the “home” of a family, where the walls were cracked and broken, where there were holes in the floor of one of the upstairs bedrooms, where the roaches were everywhere, even in the refrigerator. The resident, a mother with small children, explained that she could not afford anything else, and that the landlord ignored her requests for help. “I clean,” she said, “but the roaches are everywhere. I can’t get them out.” At night, she said, she would put cotton in her ears and in the ears of her children so that no roach would climb inside of them.

“I don’t sleep well,” she said. “I worry for my children.

Yes, she worked, but at a job which paid her barely enough to live. She had no benefits. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing and hearing.

“In the winter, we all stay in the kitchen,” she said, “and stay warm by the heat from the oven.”

I don’t even know why I wanted to do that story, but the images, the voices, the smells have never left my consciousness. That there are people living like that in these United States is troubling…and the fact that the poverty here isn’t even close to the poverty I have seen in other countries is sobering. Jonathan Kozol, in some of his books, describes the poverty and squalor that many urban kids and youth in this country face every day, in their schools, of all places. The facilities many of our kids go to every day do not encourage learning or the desire for wisdom. Rather, as students shudder in the winter and roast in the summer, as they go to bathrooms which many times do not work well, as they look through broken windows, or, worse, look at the place where windows are supposed to be, but see giant pieces of plywood instead, one wonders how they manage to learn anything. Even the poor like nice surroundings.

The poor are not objects, though we tend to look at them that way. I read recently that in the system of capitalism, some are supposed to be poor; that’s the way the system works. Wrote H.W. Brands in his book, American Colossus: The Triumph of Capitalism, 1865-1900, democracy and capitalism are two opposing ideologies, antagonistic to each other. Juxtaposing the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith, Brands called them “dueling manifestos.” “Democracy depends on equality, capitalism on inequality,” wrote Brands. “Citizens in a democracy come to the public square with one vote each; participants in a capitalist economy arrive at the marketplace with unequal talents and resources and leave the marketplace with unequal rewards.” (page 10)

In order to make this capitalist democracy work, then, we have to be able to look at some people as objects, not human beings with souls and needs. Their suffering cannot be allowed to reach our nostrils or our hearts. They become objects which can and will be used to further the wealth of those who, frankly, do not need more money, but who are driven to get more and more.

It is the way the system works.

That reality is sobering. When I think of the people squashed in those tents in Haiti, while some in Haiti are living in luxury, when I think of the poor in this nation, the richest in the world, we’ve been told, when I think of the poverty in India and in Latin America…and even in the places where we who are more fortunate actually go for vacations. I shudder.

Something is wrong and not enough of us want to face it.

A candid observation …

When We Are Unwilling to Struggle

Joan Chittister writes in her book, Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, that Western civilization, “and the United States in particular, has developed to the point where pain is unacceptable.” Because of that, our country is unwilling to struggle with the things which are always with us. Racism is one of those things. It sits in the middle of everything we do, like a grinning Cheshire cat, knowing that it does not have to worry about being confronted honestly. Many will say that even the mention of racism is foolhardy, that it is gone and has been for a long time. Those who pull “the race card” are immediately ostracized and criticized.

And yet, the Cheshire cat stays amongst us. In this last presidential campaign, the cat walked quietly yet persistently into campaign rhetoric, shaping words that belied the rancid presence of racism. Bill O’Reilly, after President Obama, said “Obama wins because it’s not a traditional America anymore,” he said. “The white establishment is the minority. People want things.”

The entitlements that Republicans want to slash help poor, black and brown people but a whole heap of poor white people as well. There is a resentment there, always right below the surface. People who are on government assistance are viewed as leeches. They want “things,” as O’Reilly said. I guess well-to-do people don’t want things? Isn’t having “things” part of what America is about? And those who do not have the things that they see the well-to-do, or at least comfortable, people have yearn for the day when they’ll be able to have those things too. That is part of the capitalist ethos, isn’t it?

The Cheshire cat grins and walks quietly away. America will not struggle, will not confront her, and she knows it.

We don’t like to struggle, and yet it is through struggle that we become whole. Struggle happens when we confront ourselves, our weaknesses, our issues, our fears, our fears. Struggle happens when we see ourselves for who we are, not for what we would like to be. When we refuse to struggle, our issues clog us up. We are always on defense, always trying to justify ourselves and where we are. We do not grow if we refuse to struggle.

America is not nearly the nation she could be, because we refuse to struggle with this dogged racism. The Republicans have awakened; the nation is not lily white anymore. They will have to pay attention to people of many colors and hues. Demographics. Mitt Romney lost to every demographic except for white people We as a nation do not want to struggle…

And we as individuals, many of us, refuse to struggle and so are not nearly what we could be.

Chittister says that “struggle is not one thing; it is many things.” The things with which we refuse to struggle are toxic and can pull us into pits so deep we cannot get out. We refuse to admit that we are not perfect, and we refuse to get help to address our imperfections. That causes deep pain. Individuals try to get rid of the pain by overeating, taking prescription meds, doing drugs…anything to stop the pain. But because pain cannot and will not go away until we walk into the chaos instead of running away from it, we have to keep on doing self-destructive things in order to breathe without hurting.

Our country lives in denial. We as a nation deny that racism is as rancid as it is, that it permeates everything we do. We have tried, consistently, to push it under the carpet, but it doesn’t stay. “This country is more divided now than it has ever been,” I heard Mary Matalin, a Conservative, Republican pundit say, She said that President Obama made it so.

The Cheshire cat grins …

I am not at all convinced that America will ever seriously deal with racism, because we keep ingesting and digesting denial. We keep the toxicity of racism with us, even though we deny it’s there.

But I would hope that we as individuals, those of us in the midst of a struggle and those of us who are avoiding a struggle in which we need to engage, would not follow our country’s example and struggle as we need to in order to grow and to become new. Chittister says that “hurt may actually be a part of the process of life.” If we find the root of our pain, we can do what we need in order to get it out, or at least take away its power. If we don’t address and treat our pain, it grows and metastasizes. like a cancer.

If we are unwilling to struggle, we cannot feel the joy of being freed from the grip of our issues. Chittister quotes Helen Keller, who wrote, “The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.”

If we are unwilling to struggle, we stay in the valleys. Because of her denial of racism, America sits in a valley, not even traversing. Just sitting.

The Cheshire cat is smiling, licking her paws, settling down for a nap.

A candid observation…

A Broader Understanding of “Pro-Life”

I have often found myself cringing as “pro-life” advocates have stood outside abortion clinics, pleading for the rights of an unborn fetus, not because I like it that there are so many abortions, but because those who are “pro-life” seem, for the most part, to have such a narrow understanding of what life is.

In fact, although pro-life advocates have put billboards up in urban neighborhoods, urging people in those neighborhoods to refrain from having abortions, it seems that these same advocates, once the babies in these neighborhoods are born into poverty and despair, pretty much ignore them.

Children who live in poverty, who are born in poverty, depend on the government for basic services, like food and health care. Children born into poverty have a higher chance of ending up in prison, because the schools in their neighborhoods are so bad and they end up giving up and dropping out of school.

According to the Children’s Defense Fund, a “cradle to prison” pipeline exists because children born into poverty – yet very much alive – suffer from abject poverty, inadequate health care, gaps in childhood development, disparate educational opportunities, “intolerable abuse and neglect,” “unmet mental and emotional problems, rampant substance abuse,” and involvement in an overburdened , ineffective juvenile justice system, a system which looks at these children as a drain on society.

These children, very much alive, are despised once they come out of the womb. As a fetus, a poor child is cherished; the heartbeat of the fetus is used in commercial and religious attempts to get people to oppose abortion. Yet, there is no such drumbeat for these children, and for the things they need once they are born in order to have valuable and viable lives, once they are born.

There is something very wrong with this reality.

Martin Buber, a Jewish theologian and Zionist, wrote a powerful book, I and Thou, where he described how we as human beings objectify other human beings, presumably to protect ourselves, our thoughts, and our beliefs.

He believed that part of the problem in Israel was the inability and unwillingness of Jewish people to treat Arabs as fellow human beings, “it” as opposed to “thou.” An “it” has no feelings; it is an object, devoid of even the need for another human being to invest caring and compassion into. A “thou,” on the other hand, is a “fellow human being,” one with which one can develop an empathic relationship, based on the understanding that this “thou” has needs and feelings equal to that of the person doing the evaluating.

“I-it” relationships have made it possible for sexism, racism, homophobia, discrimination against the aged …to flourish. When we as humans do not see another human as human, we feel nothing about what we may or may not do to affirm that person’s worth and need to meet their needs.

That’s the feeling I get that the pro-life proponents carry with them. The poor are precious so long as they are in the womb. Once out, they are a bane to society, unworthy of anyone’s time or concern.

If the pro-life people would advocate as hard for quality education for poor children as they do for more affluent children, or push for legislation or some other source to provide for quality health care for these children, I wouldn’t care about their concern and love for the unborn fetus. Poor children do not ask to be born, and they are not responsible for their conditions. It is so hypocritical and sad for a civilized society to have such a narrow definition and appreciation for life.

A candid observation …

Are Capitalism and Christianity Compatible?

It so happened that as I was reading something this morning about the requirements Jesus asks of those who love and follow him that a thought struck me…and stayed with me.

What Jesus asks of us seems fundamentally incompatible with the principles of capitalism.

As I read and study, it seems clearer and clearer that Jesus got in trouble, yes, because he riled church leaders, but more so, or at least equally so, he got in trouble because he got in trouble with government officials.

Jerusalem and the Jewish people were under Roman rule and Roman oppression. The Romans ended up destroying the Jewish temple in 70 AD because the Jews had tried to lead a rebellion against the Romans. While Jesus was alive, he noticed the disparity between rich and poor, the “haves” and “have-nots” and he spoke against that…and in so doing, angered the government.

Jesus was in alignment with Hebrew scripture, which asked the Israelites to take care of the poor, of the widows. Yes, the God of the Hebrew scriptures was angry at the Israelites for breaking covenant and for following false gods…their apostasy seemingly grieved Yahweh enormously. But this same God was furious at the Hebrew children for forgetting their role as His “chosen” ones. In the Book of Isaiah, the very first chapter, the prophet writes, on Yahweh’s behalf, “Stop doing wrong! Learn to do right. Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.”

It is a motif which appears throughout the Hebrew scriptures. In the Book of Deuteronomy, part of The Law, Moses says to the Israelites, on behalf of Yahweh, “Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns. Pay him his wages each day before sunset because he is poor and is counting on it…Do not deprive the alienor the fatherless of justice or take the cloak of widows as a pledge…(24:17) In the 15th chapter of that same book, it reads, “If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardh

earted or tight-fisted toward your brother. Rather, be open-handed and freely lend him whatever he needs…”

In the book of Jeremiah, the prophet writes, “He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the Lord.

Jesus, the reason for Christianity, asks followers to take care of “the least of these,” and says, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasures in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

None of what I just quoted seems to be in alignment with the principles of capitalism. The free market system is such that the acquisition of profit and possessions are the prize, the goal, often at the expense of the poor, who are exploited so that profit margins may be larger.

Indeed, the tension between government and labor seems to be partly because unions ostensibly work to protect the poor and the laborers, who would be mercilessly exploited without such protection. What capitalism aims for the the biggest gain for its buck. That in and of itself is not bad…but I am just not sure that it is in alignment with principles of Christianity.

I wrote a paper which I presented at Oxford University several years ago, saying that there seems to be a real tension for some American Christians between the Bible and the United States Constitution. Both documents are important, but they are used and manipulated in order to accommodate the desires of people at any given time, and for some, the Constitution is a document more worth defending and quoting than is the Bible.

Why? Because where the Bible admonishes followers of God to treat each other fairly and with dignity, the Constitution seems to make it OK to treat others the way one wants…because we have the freedom to do so. The Bible talks about the way God works, giving, for example, the same amount of money to a person who has worked for one hour as to the person who has worked a full day. (Matthew 25) The Constitution, written to define and protect the idea of republicanism, wrote of the “inalienable rights” of people – but those people were primarily property owners, white male property owners, at that.

Capitalism, or the ideas of capitalism, were written into the Constitution, along with the omission of the need to treat all people fairly, including blacks, women, and whomever else might join the new republic. And so, at the outset, it seems that the Constitution was in direct conflict with the Holy Bible.

All that being said, it seems highly unlikely that the division between rich and poor will ever go away, no matter what the Bible says. There is resentment against the poor in this very Christian nation; the “victims” are too often blamed for their predicaments and the fact that this is a “free country” is thrown up in our faces as proof that “anybody” can make it. Hypothetically, that is true, but in reality, that is scarcely the case. And no amount of Christian mouthing off about the unfairness of capitalism is going to change that reality.

If Jesus were to visit this nation, this world, today, I wonder what He would say? So much of the world lives in abject poverty, while the rich squander money and scramble to make even more. The very rich make money and stash it, against Biblical principles, but perfectly in compliance with the working of capitalism. The poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed…are scorned, used, manipulated…and too often, forgotten.

It seems that capitalism is really held more dear to hearts than is Christianity, except in certain instances or as applies to certain issues…like contraception or homosexuality. The Bible is cast aside in its call for fairness, for example, as all-male Congressional committees listen to the conditions of women, or all-white juries serve in trials involving black and brown people.

As I watch and read, it just doesn’t seem that capitalism and Christianity are compatible; they work against each other. There is definitely an issue here. And it’s a serious one.

A candid observation …

Somebody Ought to Tell the Truth!

In a front page article written by Binyamin Appelbaum and Robert Gebeloff which appeared in The New York Times on February 12, a gentleman was described as being

anti big government. He printed tee shirts for his local Tea Party affiliate, and says he doesn’t need or want help from the government.

Yet, the article said, he gets a payment from the government every year, a subsidy for working families called the “earned income tax credit,” “he has signed his three school age children up to receive free breakfasts,” paid for the by the federal government, and his mother, who had to have hip surgery twice, is on Medicare – again, a federal program.

This kind of situation is not the exception, but, rather, the rule, and I am finding it harder and harder to listen to GOP presidential contenders talk about how they will slash domestic spending because it represents big government. At the end of the day, politicians are not telling people the truth, but, rather, what they want to hear. The people are not clear on what “big government” is, and politicians are allowing their ignorance to remain, because their lack of knowledge is the pot in which raw emotions fester, and politicians know that many an election has been won by stirring the right pot with the right emotions.

Are people really thinking about what would happen if the host of government benefits we all take so for granted suddenly were not there? What WOULD happen to our elderly if Medicare were no more? The Times article said that “dozens of benefits programs provided an average of $6,583 for each man, woman and child in 2009, a 69 percent increase since 2000.” The article said that older people get most of the benefits, primarily through Social Security and Medicare. So, if we cut domestic spending, how would “the least of these,” in this case, the elderly, get by?

Rick Santorum said that while Jesus wanted people to help poor people, social justice creates lazy Christians. That statement was stunning in and of itself, but it is disturbing and misleading and leads Americans to visualize “the poor” as lazy and probably members of a minority group. Like it or not, there are certain buzz words that get self-righteous Americans stirred up about who “the American taxpayer” is helping…but what is not being discussed or highlighted is that, again according to the Times article “the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits.” Now it seems that the doling out of government benefits has been more focused on saving the slowly dying middle class.

There is no doubt that the nation’s economy, in fact, the world’s economy, is in horrible shape. GOP presidential hopefuls who want to beat President Obama cannot be pleased that the economy seems to be getting better, albeit slowly. That fact takes the wind out of their argument that the Obama administration is a “failed presidency,” but they still beat the drum that the biggest reason, or one of the biggest reasons the economy has pitted is because of big government and reckless government spending.

Somebody needs to be bold and tell the truth about what is going on. Rick Santorum looks like a clean-cut, all-American choir boy, and he stands on his Christianity, but Christianity i.e., the following of the Christ – demands a social conscience and a heart for “the least of these.” Santorum has not voiced the truth that “the least of these” is a group growing larger and larger as the income disparity between rich and poor gets wider and wider. William Sloan Coffin once said that what the “Christian community needs to do above all else is to raise up men and women of thought and of conscience…” Merely advocating for slashing of needed government programs, at the expense of people who have been the backbone of this country, providing the labor and services that made wealth possible for so many, would seem to be immoral, unethical …and un-Christian.

Santorum is talking a lot of religion lately, going so far as to say President Obama has a “phony theology.” I do not understand that phrase, but what I do know is that the Jesus in the scriptures I read would not condone the wealthy getting more wealthy while more and more people are falling deeper and deeper into financial ruin, with the threat of what little help they have hanging over their heads.

I cannot believe God is pleased with what is going on.

A candid observation.