Compassion Begins With Empathy

I love those brave souls who decide to spend a night or two homeless so they can understand what they go through.  I was one myself.  I had my houseless friend take me out, get me a place to camp out, and I didn’t sleep well, I walked a lot and hung out in soup kitchens with a lot of folks that made me uncomfortable.  And I must apologize to my old self and all who decide to do this noble deed, but let’s not deceive ourselves: we still don’t have a clue as to what it means to be homeless.

Homelessness doesn’t begin overnight. It is the end step of a path of poverty, isolation and regret and resentment.  Possibly abuse and horror. 

We like to point to things like job loss and mental illness or maybe drug addiction as the source of homelessness.  The real cause of homelessness is that no one is there for you.  Not really.  Perhaps a newly houseless person has a lot of people who will give us a tear on Facebook or to hear about our plight they might say, “That’s too bad,” but no real friends.  Because real friends, real family will make sure that we have a place to stay, prevent us from crashing so badly.  Perhaps our lack of a support network is our own fault.  Perhaps it is because we are too ashamed to tell anyone or because we’ve hurt the people who might want to help.  Or perhaps it is because we are too broken by abuse and hatred around us that we can’t maintain a group of friends to support us.  But nevertheless, this process isn’t something a person can experience by spending a week outside.

The person staying out overnight know, in their heart of hearts, that they can stop any time they want.  They can arrange for someone to pick them up.  They can be out of the cold, out of the anxiety of being abused by authorities after a simple phone call.  They have no real danger of being raped or beaten because there is probably someone watching out for them. 

And the true danger of homelessness takes time to experience.  For a day or a week camping a person can plan and prepare.  It has the sense of an adventure—a stressful one, for certain, but not truly anxiety-inducing.  The longer a person is out on the street—no matter in a car, a tent or an RV in public spaces—the longer the chronic stress eats at us.  The lack of sleep creeps up on us.  Eventually, we lose the ability to process everything, to make decisions.   Eventually comes the crisis which we cannot brush aside, the event that cripples our hope.  We realize that we can’t control our lives.  That we are adrift and unless someone kind provides us stability, we will never have it again.

Homelessness isn’t living outside.  It is a cancer that devours our minds and we wonder where the person we were ended up.  It is a lifestyle of living in drama and we want to have peace, but even if we get some peace we discover that all that waits there is depression and guilt.  This is why most people who are chronically homeless use alcohol or drugs.  Not because that’s what made them homeless.  The addiction is a coping mechanism, so we don’t feel the shame of people staring at us, the guilt of the mistakes we made that put us on the street, the anger at those who refuse to help us.  For a while, we can just forget and really rest.

To understand this takes longer than an extended camping trip. To grasp this, without experiencing it ourselves, we need to listen to people on the street.  To gain their trust and have them tell us the truth.  To stand with them and give some an opportunity to escape the cycle they are trapped in. 

 Compassionate action begins with empathy.

Envy and Class Isolationism

I guess I'm some kind of lecture junkie.  I signed up to Audible and at my cleaning job instead of listening to novels, I'm mostly listening to audio versions of The Great Courses.  My favorite one so far is the one on Worldwide Mythology, but the ones on neuroscience and philosophy also are favorites.

So I'm listening to one on the philosophy of emotions, and I'm nodding my head (when I can between vacuum strokes) in agreement with the speaker.  He is explaining that our emotions are all based in rational processes.  Anger encourages us to respond to injustice, fear causes us to avoid danger, disgust can help us to avoid sickness.  The speaker is going through all the main emotions, explaining their foundations, but he stops short at one.

He explains, "Every emotion has a good purpose for them, except for one.  I can't, for the life of me, understand what the purpose of envy is for.  Envy just seems to only cause problems for solutions and doesn't ever come up with a solution."  (I am paraphrasing, here)

As a philosopher, he can understand the purposes of jealousy and fury and lust, and they all have good purposes, but he couldn't understand the basis of envy.

I have to agree with him that all emotions were created by God in order to motivate us to do what we must.  They are indicators that something is wrong and they push us into a direction to act (or, in the case of depression, to not act). Yes, if we give into these "pushes", we can easily head into extremes-- rage, isolation, anxiety, and others.  But usually we don't have to.  Usually we can use our emotions to consider situations thoughtfully and make decisions based on the information that our emotions give us.

Many of us would agree that envy doesn't have any purpose.  Of course, if we didn't think about it, then perhaps we wouldn't see the positive purposes of anger or depression.  What could the positive purpose of envy be?  After all, it is a sin, right?

Envy is, of course, looking at what someone else has and wishing that we had the same.  Envy can lead to anger that another person has what we want or even theft, but it doesn't have to go that way.  However, envy is clearly used in our society of consumerism to direct us into forcing us to obtain the useless items others have.  There is so much stuff, advertising is used to create a desire in us for what we do not actually need.  This is excess, it is greed and envy is at the bottom of it.

But what if we were a farmer, barely scraping by in the ancient world?  We planted the seeds, prayed for rain, but rain never comes when you need it or in the right amount.  Then you see that a neighbor has a creek right by his fields, with ample water for all his farm and more.  He has a system in which all his crops get just the right amount of water.  And you are envious.  You wish you had that creek.  You wish that you could live well as he does and have his wealth so your family wouldn't have to starve over the winter.

That envy works in you, but instead of just becoming angry, you consider ways that you might have the same opportunity as he has.  You could dig a gully, and use the water for both of your farms and then his benefit wouldn't be just his but yours as well.  So you approach him, and he is doubtful about the idea, but then you offer him something that he doesn't have so he reluctantly agrees.  You dig a ditch toward your land from his creek, and block it off except for the times he isn't using it. Because you are a good neighbor, you arrange a schedule so you don't use the water on the days he is using it.  And when it rains, neither of you use the water. 

This is the good of envy, a motivation to the lifestyle of others so that all can survive.

Why did my philosopher/psychologist lecturer not understand this?  Because all he could see was his life of over-reach.  For the majority of Americans, envy is a detriment, forcing people to use their resources for their bloated "needs" (like Audible?) instead of making sure that all people have their needs met.  But for the people I work with, the third world that lives within the United States, envy is sometimes a problem, but sometimes a solution.

Envy causes people to gather more possessions than they can carry, forcing a few to push around a train of shopping carts full of possessions that they might use, but probably can't.

But envy also looks at the thousands of acres of empty backyards in our city, so they ask people if they might be able to camp in one, making a mutually beneficial agreement for their own survival.  Envy motivates the poor to move into a shelter or into an apartment, not continuing to live on the street.  Envy sees the innovations of other people on the street, from dumpster diving to recycling to seeking day labor in order to live better than they had been. 

Interesting that my lecturer couldn't see this.  But, of course, how could he?  He is separated from the majority of humans throughout the history of the world who had to struggle to survive and every innovation might be the one that saves us.  Envy forces refugees to flee bombs and try to enter into another country, despite the dangers. When we separate ourselves from the poor, we are separated ourselves from our inheritance. 

Our ancestors were poor, at some points desperately poor.  We contain within ourselves the genetic disposition of survival.  We might allow ourselves another emotion at those who are poor if we find ourselves too separated from them: scorn, judgment.  We can judge the envy of the poor, because we do not see the need of it.  We can judge their desperation. We can judge their acts which seem so crazy to us.  But for them most of what they do is simply survival.

It is for our own benefit that we not separate ourselves from the poor.  Not just for self-understanding, but for our own emotional and moral well-being. 

Lifestyles

One of the most mysterious of cultural phenomenon is lifestyle.  Not the fact that different lifestyles  exist, and some of the main characteristics: those are well known.  Some in the third world live in mud huts with no electricity, and they are content with this (having visited one of these huts, I found that the insulation was so grand that it was cool in the midst of a humid afternoon.).  Some find it necessary to live in large homes with more than ten bedrooms with servants to clean the place, for no family, unless they spent all their time doing so, could keep it clean.  Some live slovenly, filthy; others live so clean that they would not have visitors lest they muck the place up.  Some prefer jobs that cause them to work in sweat and filth, while others insist on learning and educating, while still others organize workers forced to go to a gym to get their exercise.   This is all well-known.

What is mysterious about lifestyle is that we are forced into one without really considering which we would prefer.

There is a moral manner in which we must live.  Our views on environmentalism, social justice, economics, cleanliness, community life, aesthetics, communication, kindness and work ethic all conspire in our minds to create a lifestyle that we did not choose, but we must live with.

The way we must work, the amount of money we must have left over past expenses, the accommodations we allow ourselves, where we “cut corners” when we don’t have enough to meet expenses, what we consider “clean”, what we feel we can let go when life gets too hard—all of these are necessitated by an inner need.  When we choose a spouse, we compromise our inner sense of lifestyle, combining with them what manner of life is necessary, in some areas taking on their standards, and in some areas enforcing upon them our own.  And when we raise our children, we raise them in the hopes that they might live the same lifestyle, or perhaps a better (either up the social ladder or up the moral one) one.

We try not to judge other people’s lifestyles.  Everyone lives differently, and not everyone has the particular set of resources we collected to suit our moral arrangements.  But often we can’t help it.  We don’t understand why people poorer than us “have” to live that way.  We don’t appreciate how those wealthier than us live with such luxuries when there is such need in the world.  We complain because a neighbor doesn’t keep their yard according to the same standards as we do—we might even take action in our neighborhood association.  We support public policies that change other people’s lifestyles so that our communities might accommodate what we feel are moral and necessary standards, which happen to reflect our lifestyles.  

The “normal” are those who function near to our own chosen lives.  These are the ones who join us in our churches and our social groups and our neighborhoods —not only those who believe in the same or similar doctrine, but those who uphold the same rituals, who approve of same eating mores, who live in the same economic strata, who speak in the same tones and volumes and language forms, and have the same hopes for society.  Social clubs are not just a matter of connection, it is continuously supporting our lifestyle choices.

Of course, in our groups, there are always the one or two who live different lifestyles.  These who are unlike the rest always seem so strange, and so angry.  Some wonder why they don’t find groups that suit them better, while others find that they offer spice to their group, while their uniqueness confirms that the group’s lifestyle choices are the right ones.

All of this is the ebb and flow of living together, and those with the most powerful voices win the lifestyle battles.  We live according to the driving force of practical ethics and aesthetics, and we want those around us to do the same.

The crisis of placing concrete on our practical philosophy of life comes when we no longer have the resources to maintain that lifestyle.  It could be something as simple as losing a key friendship which then unravels the house of cards our social lives relied on.  But more likely it is the loss of something essential that our lifestyle depended on.  Losing a job and unable to find another at the same income or status level we have become accustomed to.   Losing a home and unable to find a similar one at the price we can afford.  Losing the ability to maintain the mental health that is required to live in a particular lifestyle.  The loss goes far beyond one portion of one’s life.

To have a drop in lifestyle necessitates a reduction in security.  If a person who is used to living in a large house suddenly lives in an apartment, it is frightening if one had never done it before.  You can hear your neighbors and at times they seem violent or addled.  You have heard rumors that drug addicts or criminals can live in apartments, and the walls and doors seem so thin.

The stresses increase.  There is a desperation at first to get back to the original lifestyle, a clawing for resources.  When that doesn’t work, then there is a grasping at straws, making unlikely plans and dreams of deliverance back to what we considered “normal,” all to no avail.  Finally, there is an acceptance and depression sets in.  Because once one accepts the loss of all that was considered good and moral and right, then one must also accept failure and a moral compromise.  We are not only inadequate people, but we are also, in some way, bad.

Many of us have had to accept a severe reduction of lifestyle.  It is always stressful, somewhat less so if the change is by choice—but it is always difficult to accept. 

Now consider those who suddenly find themselves an immigrant, a refugee, or homeless.  These are lifestyles that we do not make of our own accord.  Those who are forced into this role are also forced into an ethical and economic bind that they could never choose for them or their families.  Many swear that they would never find themselves in an address-less condition, for it would mean the surrender of all they hold dear.

And yet millions of people each year find themselves in this situation, at the bottom rung of the social ladder, with the next rung too high up to reach.  They used to think of themselves better than that, more honorable, of better position.  Yet millions find themselves there.  Unable to pull themselves back up or forward.   They now rely on other’s kindness, which they find is often not kind at all.  They are completely vulnerable, and easy to take advantage of.

All other lifestyle changes and reductions seem petty when one is at the bottom, without pride, without hope.  

Interesting Conversation

Yesterday, a policeman in his car drove onto the park behind our church, where we serve the homeless.  He spoke to a number of homeless people, and then spoke for 45 minutes to our co-pastor, Jeff.  The policeman was dissatisfied, so he asked to talk to "someone with greater authority," so he told him to go to the church and talk to me.  I was going to open in about ten minutes and was very busy, but it was polite to give him a bit of my time.  This was our conversation:
PD: You are letting people stay in the park.

Me: No, the park is public and they can stay there.

PD: You should tell them to move.

Me: I will absolutely tell them to move. As soon as there is a legal option for them to sleep somewhere else.

PD: They could go to Dignity Villiage (a local, legal tent city).

Me: DV has a year-long waiting list.

PD: Why are we getting so many complaints about them stealing, breaking into cars?

Me: I'm not sure. Do you know the neighborhood stats for stealing?

PD: I don't know them offhand, but I could get them...

Me: That's okay, I know them because I look at them every month. Our neighborhood with all the homeless people has pretty average theft. But two neighborhoods down, the theft rate is much higher. So the homeless aren't causing the thefts.

PD: Why do the citizens keep complaining about...

Me: (Interrupting) The homeless are citizens.

PD: Why are the hard-working...

Me: The homeless work hard to survive.

PD: Why do the residents...

Me: The homeless are residents.

PD: They don't have an address...

Me: Yes they do. Here. This church.  The homeless are also tax payers. The homeless are our neighbors.

PD: You can play with semantics...

Me: I'm not playing withe semantics. You are trying to separate the homeless from the rest of the community and I'm telling you that there is no difference from the homeless and the rest of our community. The homeless are people.

PD: Then why do I get so many complaints? What about the trash?

Me: Our homeless make the trash and they also clean up the trash. The reason you get so many complaints is because the neighbors in houses don't like them camping in their neighborhood. But until they have a legal place to sleep this won't stop. This isn't our ministry's problem, it is ALL of our problem, the whole community. A group of us are getting together in Gresham trying to do something about it. We would love to have you or a representative of the police department meet with us to try to come up with solutions so we could get places for people to sleep in our community. Would you like to come?

PD: We are very busy doing our jobs....

Me: (Yeah, like spending an hour berating us for helping the homeless) I know what you mean. I spend 60 hours a week doing mine.  Well, we need to open.  I'd love to talk to you more if you set an appointment.

Breaking Down Hobo-phobia

Prejudice is seeing a person, not as an individual, but as a part of a cultural movement you dislike.   It is an instant reaction, not something we control.  As soon as we see someone, we have a response from our most primitive, fastest part of our brain, and our minds have already judged that person.  When we see a young black man, our instant response is fear (even if you are black).  When we see a handicapped person, our instant response is pity.  When we see a wealthy person, our instant response is envy.   That doesn’t mean we have to respond to that instant response, but the response, for most people, is there and instant. 

Studies have shown that the strongest, most pervasive of prejudiced instant responses in American society is toward the homeless.  The far majority of people in the United States, when they see a homeless person, have a response of disgust.  Susan Fiske, in summarizing her analysis of the data, said, “A homeless person is seen as a garbage heap.”  This is an interesting metaphor, because this is how many city governments treat the homeless: piles of trash that should be moved on from place to place because there is no garbage heap to dump them on.

Once we see people as disgusting and horrible, if we give into that emotion, we will have one of two responses: anger or fear.  We might feel anger if we feel that they are lying by their appearance, trying to strike pity, but really being criminals or hidden monsters.  This might cause us to want to push them away, perhaps say something in anger or even desire to do violence to them (although we never would).  Our instant response might cause us to see the homeless as so much an alien, a blight on our land, that we fear them and what they might do to us or our children.  We don’t want to harm them so much as get them away, to transform them into people we can appreciate and care for.

Many of us reading this might say that we have never had these emotions about the homeless.  As far as we know, we have not felt disgust or fear or anger toward someone just because they were homeless.  The other instant reaction that might come up, and is just as limiting, is pity.  We might see a homeless person and instantly feel sorry for them.  This seems to us a positive response, and so we often allow ourselves to give into our impulses of pity.  But these impulses also diminishes an adult, even infantilizes them.  A person filled with pity might want to teach the homeless how to live, to “mentor” them, to assume what they need and give it to them.

How do we know if we have a prejudiced attitude toward the homeless?  Take this simple yes or no quiz:

• Do we assume we know a persons’ life story by looking at them?
• Do we assume we know how a person got into trouble?
• Do we assume they are criminals, lazy or miserable?
• When we see two homeless people talking together in private, do we assume they are up to no good?
• When we see a homeless person working on two or more bikes, do we think they have stolen them?
• When we see a homeless person pushing a shopping cart, do we assume they stole it from a grocery store?
• Do we think homeless people need just one thing to help them? (e.g. food, a place in a shelter, a kick in the butt, a listening ear?)
• Do we assume that all homeless want to live like us? Or that they all want to be homeless?
• Do we assume that all the homeless are addicts?
• Do we look down on a homeless person doing something that wouldn’t be considered “bad” if they did it in their own personal apartment? (e.g. drinking a beer, having sex with their girlfriend, sleeping)
• If we saw a homeless person on our property, is our impulse to call the police to get rid of them?
• Do we want to take care of the homeless, assuming they can’t help themselves?
• Do we assume all homeless are mean?  Or dangerous?  Do we assume all the homeless people are friendly? Or looking for help?

If you answered “yes” to any of the questions above, it means you have prejudiced assumptions about the homeless.  But don’t beat yourself up about it, almost all homeless folks have one or more of the assumptions above, even if they themselves don’t fall in any of the categories.

Homeless folks are people.  Yes, many of them do need help, and yes, some of them are criminals.  Just like housed folks.  Some are mean and some are friendly.  Some have hope and some have given up.   The homeless are young and old, men and women, educated and drop outs, employed and unemployed. 

However, there are a few generalizations we can make about all homeless folks:

1.       They are stressed
Because of the stigma of homelessness, even if they don’t believe it, they know that most people do.  So they don’t know when they might get attacked, abused, yelled at or told to move.  They might get ticketed or even arrested for something they didn’t do.  Generally, they have to work hard to get less, just to survive.  Almost everyone who has been homeless for a year or more have PTSD, and this stress leads to a shorter life.  Stress is usually the cause of addictive behavior on the street, and it requires a strong will not to give in to that crutch. To just leave the stress behind.

2.       They are lacking support
If a homeless person had adequate support, they would be staying in someone’s home.  We don’t know why they lack that support, if it is their own fault, other’s fault or some combination. But most people have friends or family who will let them crash on a couch, if nothing else.  Some people are unable to obtain support from their friends because they have been stigmatized by their homelessness.  The homeless are the 1 percent who have no where to go, no one to help them in the way they really need help.  Even those who help the homeless full time don’t have the resources to provide for them what they need. 

3.       They don’t know who to trust

Because of the widespread prejudice against the homeless, what a person looks like may not be the truth.  Perhaps they are trying to take advantage of you, they are using the poor to prop themselves up.  There are shelters that abuse their guests, and people who look like they want to help who turn on you in a moment.  This is because almost everyone feels superior to homeless people and some don’t have any problem with stealing or taking advantage of the homeless.  It is easier to con the homeless because they are so desperate.  Because the homeless have been hurt so many times, they don’t trust people easily.

4.       They need opportunities

The homeless don’t really need a handout, although they might ask for that because they think it is all they can get.  What they really need is an opportunity for a better life.  Each homeless person understands a good opportunity differently.  For some, it is a job.  For others, a safe place to sleep.  For others, an apartment.  For others, a friend to stay with.  Some need mental health assistance, some need rehab, some need work to do.   But opportunities for the homeless are hard to come by, and the longer they stay on the street the harder they are to find.

If we want to help the homeless, then there are a few things that, knowing these facts, come to mind immediately.  The first is that, just like any racism or sexism, we need to speak out against hobophobia.  If anyone makes a prejudiced statement about the homeless, they should be gently but firmly corrected.  We don’t know any person’s story, and we must not make assumptions or generalizations.

Second, we should make relationships with the homeless.  We must not treat them like a group, as if their issues or cares are all the same.  We should get to know them individually, listening to their story and responding appropriately, knowing that they have a unique experience and a unique life-situation.  This means we know fewer homeless than those who serve hundreds, but we can have a greater chance to actually help them if we get to know them.

Third, we provide opportunities for the homeless we get to understand.  We ask what they want and need and we see if we can help them take the next step to escaping poverty or the stigma of homelessness.  We don’t all have the same resources, so we won’t be able to give our homeless friend what they might need.  We won’t always know if what our homeless friend wants is what will really improve their lives.  But in friendship and partnership, we can improve the life of our homeless friend, just by being their friend.

Transforming Homelessness

The human brain is created to be infinitely flexible.   If a person loses their sight or hearing, the section of the brain dedicated to that sense is then reused for other purposes.  It takes some time, but any section of the brain can be transformed to a new skill.  Our brain is in a new context and then it re-forms to develop new skills to get used to the new context. While we are developing those skills, we are uncomfortable and scared, but eventually we get used to where we are and we change who we are to adapt to the new context.  This is the reason why humanity is the highest functioning animal.  Not just because we can change our environment, but because we do a dance with our environment, both changing and learning to change until we and our environment are adapted to each other.

A great example of this is the deaf culture of the last hundred and fifty years.  They were given an opportunity to build a deaf community that helps itself, born out of Gallaudet University in Washington DC.  From that community comes a new, complete language—American Sign Language—telephones, lights to answer telephones and a culture that looks and sounds—yes, sounds—different than any culture that had ever existed.  Many, if not most, modern deaf people would prefer to live as a deaf person, in the adaptive deaf culture than to get their hearing back and to try to live in “normal” culture.  They have taken their “disability” and made it a cultural strength, thus increasing the diversity and power of the broader culture, and importing their culture around the world.

Not every person or aspect of culture has this ability to adapt and change.  Most of us have certain abilities and so we are insisted upon to fit into the normative culture as it exists.  Since most people have the ability to adapt to things as they are, they do.  But not everyone has that opportunity.  For instance, the homeless.

The chronic homeless are a people who have all been de-normalized.  They’ve been told, individually, that they do not belong in “normal” society and that they must live apart.  They are denied a social network that can support them to fit into normal society.  Those who have lived on the street for a year or more have not only been without a home, but they have been denied opportunities to come back into the fold of normative culture.  And so they adapt to their new environment, and they form a new culture, based on their need to survive.

In their new context, they are taught that they are disgusting and shameful.  They learn this by the fear and anger that some people approach them with.  They learn this by their interactions with police officers, which has increased tremendously since they became homeless.  They learn this because of the fear they experience when they sleep—fear of being seen, fear of being woken, fear of being beaten in the middle of the night by strangers.   They learn that they are vulnerable people, partly because their sleeping gear and personal items are often stolen, but also because they now can receive things for free from generous people, both homeless and non-homeless.   They learn their helplessness because people offer them food for free. 

They also learn that they are criminals.  They learn this through police interactions, who basically treat them as criminals, or at least suspects of wrong-doing.  Because they are treated like criminals, they realize that they can act like criminals because they are already suffering the consequences of criminal activity.  So, clumsily, they learn some criminal activity.  But they don’t really put their heart into it, because they know, in their heart, they aren’t a criminal.  They are just someone who is trying to survive.  They will try using and abusing drugs and alcohol because it helps them to not care about the shame and blame that they are saddled with.  

But these long-term homeless folks still have the amazing brains that are adaptive.  They just are using them to survive in their new environment.  They aren’t useless or helpless, no matter how often people put them in that box.  But since they are expected to be both useless and helpless, they learn to adapt to that environment.

But what if that environment changed?  What if they were given opportunities to help themselves?  Then the homeless adapt toward that.  On a church property in Gresham, a small group of homeless have a place to sleep and cook and they take care of their own environment, all on a volunteer basis.  In Portland, a community builds its own homes and lives independently, with small help from their compassionate surrounding neighborhood.  Perhaps homelessness isn’t easy to adapt back to be “normal”.  But it can be adapted in order to be self-sustaining and in cooperation with the surrounding, normative communities.

The poorest communities in the world have escaped poverty.  It happens every day, all over the world.  It doesn’t happen because a large organization steps in and gives the people what they need.  It is because they develop within themselves adaptive communities that help themselves. 

It usually goes like this: a representative of a development organization steps into an impoverished community, and organizes a meeting with the community leaders and other interested parties.  The representative says that his organization wants to help them create a project to be a more sustainable community, but the community itself must decide what this project will be and they must determine how it would be done.  Over time, through discussions, arguments and anger, a decision is made by the community as a whole on one project.  The organization provides some seed money and some expertise to develop that project, and with money and labor by the community, the project is finished, and the community is improved.  Then the community moves onto the next project.

The development organization doesn’t come with their own agenda apart from one: creating a community that creates their own solutions and implements them.  They don’t have an idea of how the community should live, or what the solutions are, or how to create a better community.  They just provide the impetus and opportunity to create a greater level of sustenance.

This can work for the homeless.  It has been done through Right to Dream 2, and other sustainable communities.  It cannot be done without struggle and without sacrifice, because our society has determined that the chronic homeless are blameworthy, helpless and useless.  But the homeless themselves can change those false expectations, if they but given empowerment and encouragement.  The homeless have already proven that they are adaptive and community-oriented.  They just need to be given the opportunity to make their own changes,  to be given the opportunity of location and some seed money, to make their own changes.

As long as society is telling the chronic homeless who they are and how they should survive, the homeless will never make steps forward, for society is big on creating demands, but not opportunities.  The homeless need to be given the location, time and resources to make their own changes.   We will not see homelessness end, but we will see it transformed into a creative, adaptive culture that is still separate from but fits within normative culture. 

Making Local Justice

“What I want to know is, “ Mark asked pleadingly, “why has God forsaken us?”

Mark and his wife Diane, a homeless couple, has just been forced to move from the camp that they had peacefully dwelt in for years.  They have nowhere to go.  A summer storm blew through Portland the last couple days and because they had nowhere to legally set up their tent, they were soaked the other night, hiding for cover, and now they have no dry blankets or clothes.

 They came into our church’s day shelter yesterday freezing.  We were able to give them a warm meal and a change of clothes and some dry bedding… but Mark’s question lingered.  He said, “I’ve been praying.  I’ve been seeking God for help.  Why won’t he help us?” 

Honestly, I gave some pious answer about waiting and God’s timing isn’t our timing.  But I wasn’t really being honest to him.  I woke up at 6 this morning with his question haunting me.  I couldn’t get any more sleep, so I want to be honest with you today:

The reason Mark isn’t being helped by God is because God has already given the power to help him to His people, the church, and the church isn’t interested.

It isn’t that the church isn’t interested in justice.  But they would rather take sides in the Israel/Gaza conflict rather than be there for their neighbor who lives in their community.  Which is odd to me, because it seems that the point of the parable of the Good Samaritan is that we are to show mercy to the one whom we come across, not write a blog post for them, nor re-post a video that touched us about justice.  Justice isn’t about making a public position, but about creating a context where people are free to live. 

I’ve been reading Walter Breuggermann’s book Peace the past couple weeks, and in that brilliant short book he makes the point that there is a difference between order and justice.  Order is what Pharaoh had, with his slavery and his taskmasters.  God had to reach in and make chaos of that order so that He might establish justice.  Order is what we have in our cities, and the city councils keep order by creating laws and policies that move the homeless out of people’s sight, that fundamentally make it illegal for those human beings to exist.  The police, many of whom believe the homeless to be naturally criminals, will move them on, dehumanize them, take their possessions, and even arrest them for the crime of being unable to pay rent.

The church of the United States can stop this.  We will be judged, not by how we respond to justice issues overseas, but by how we create justice in our neighborhoods.  We can create justice for the homeless in their communities.  Here are some simple steps.  Not all the steps are easy, mind you, but creating justice never is.

1.  Get to know the homeless
We can never help create justice if we do not know those whom we seek justice for.  You can go to a day shelter like what my church, Anawim Christian Community, has.  There are shelters like this where the homeless can exist without harassment in almost every major city of the United States.  Go and listen.  You can volunteer, or help, if you like.  But your primary goal is to listen to the homeless and find out about their lives.  What are their struggles, what are their joys, what are their hopes and what keeps them from obtaining their hope?  As we talk with the homeless we will find out that, just like housed people, a few may be criminals, but most are not.  We will find out that we really enjoy spending time with some of these folks.  We will find out who can be trusted and who can’t be.  And we will find out the policies and habits of our city that make their lives miserable.

2. Write letters
Find out what laws have been passed in your community that the law enforcers use to oppress the homeless in your area.  In Portland, there is a camping ordinance that makes it illegal for anyone to sleep outside.  While it could be used against children pitching a tent in their backyard, the lawmakers intended to use it against the homeless, and so “sweeps” regularly happen where the police tell the homeless that they have to move.  There is nowhere for them to move to.  Some police in Portland will tell the homeless to move out of their city and never return—the city they were raised in.  If a number of people wrote letters to their city council demanding that the homeless be treated like the citizens they are, instead of piles of garbage that need to be cleaned up, the city would change their policies.  If people wrote to the local newspaper demanding that the homeless not be harassed by the police, then lawmakers and the police will listen.  But it will take a lot of people, over time, doing this.

3. Provide jobs
Most of the homeless want to work.  But getting a job without an address, or a shower is almost impossible.  Going to an interview when the stress of everyday life makes one desperate and anxious and so an unlikely candidate for hiring.  Our church hires the homeless to care for our landscaping and to do our janitorial work.  Some folks might need some supervision or training, but they are grateful for the work, learn fast and work hard.  Often churches see the homeless as objects of charity rather than people who need a chance.  Instead of hiring a company to maintain your property, go the extra mile and hire some homeless folks. 

4. Offer housing
When Jesus spoke of helping the homeless, he didn’t talk about giving them a dollar, but inviting them into our home. Me and my family of five live in a six bedroom house.  We specifically purchased this house so that we could take our extra rooms and welcome the homeless to live with us.  We have had as many as eleven folks live with us.  I am not suggesting that everyone who reads this take so many people in, but many of us have extra room where we could take someone in.  I would suggest not bringing in a stranger, but someone you learn to know and trust at a shelter.  Because what the homeless really need is an opportunity

5. Create a Network of Churches
Most of our churches are small and have little finances or resources.  But groups of churches are able to do what an individual church cannot.  A group of churches can establish a day shelter in areas of town where the homeless population isn’t being served.  A group of churches can establish a regular meal for the local poor to eat.  A group of churches can collectively go to the city council and request that they no longer harass the homeless, to stop treating them all as if they were criminals and not citizens.  A group of churches can listen to the homeless, find out their needs and help them with the resources they have collectively.  In one area of town, we listened to the homeless and provided a winter shelter.  In another area of town they didn’t want a winter shelter, but propane stoves to keep warm in their tents.  Our church networks were able to provide these services.

6. Support your local ministries
If you live in a city in the United States, there are local ministries to the homeless in your area.  Some of these ministries are being attacked by local laws to prevent them from bringing justice to the homeless.  Other ministries are attacked by neighborhood associations or local neighbors who assume that they are “brining criminals into our neighborhood.”  Anawim stands strong for the homeless every day, but we are attacked and we struggle with too little to go on.  Go to your local ministry and find out what they need.  Almost certainly they need financial help (we struggle to pay our rent every month).  But they may need more volunteers or more donations.  They may need some encouragement.  They may need someone to stand up for them against those who complain about them in neighborhood meetings.

7. Tell Stories about your Homeless Friends
As you learn about the lives of the homeless, tell people about their stories.  Not just the bad things or the oppression they face, but talk about their everyday triumphs. Post stories on FB, talk about them at neighborhood meetings.  The homeless are our local citizens and their victories are our victories.  If they get a job, if they were able to get their identification that has been lost for years, if they were able to obtain housing, if they were able to get a medical problem resolved, talk about it.  Let your friends and your neighbors know that homeless people are good people.   That they are your friends.  And that they are deserving of love.

If you'd like to know more about Anawim Christian Community, a community church for the homeless in Portland and Gresham Oregon, what we do and how you could support us, go to www.NowhereToLayHisHead.org

Why are the Homeless Such Trouble to Our Society?

This week I was told that the homeless need to get a job and stop whining.  I was also told that the homeless should use the ability to get on their feet and to get a life.  I was told that the homeless were scary and that church people didn’t want to approach them.  I was told that they purposefully get in the way of good, middle class people by walking their leashed dogs on public sidewalks, by holding signs asking for help, by sitting or sleeping in public parks.  By quietly resting in their cars in a church parking lot.  Yep, those homeless are a troublesome lot.

The police do their best to get rid of them.  In the Portland area, they have been moving the homeless on every few days in the hopes that they would just move out of the city.  If a homeless person leaves their camp in public area, a garbage collector gathers their items and throws them away, letting them know that they need to move on, that public space isn’t a place for camping.

A viral video this week shows a policeman fiercely beating a homeless woman who wandered into traffic:

Why is there so much conflict between the homeless and middle class society? 

Susan Fiske, a sociologist of no little repute did a series of experiments a few years ago.  She and her colleagues put hundreds of average Americans in an MRI (not at the same time, I assume) and then displayed pictures of different kinds of people before them and measured the brain’s emotional response to these different people.  Rich people stirred envy, people in nursing homes stirred pity, middle class families stirred identification and illegal immigrants typically stirred disgust. 

 Dr. Fiske was attempting to develop a chart which laid out these instant brain reactions clearly, but, she said, there was one problem.  One group had such a severely strong reaction against the dozens that they tested for, she found that they had to be taken off the normal chart.  She said that every time the homeless were shown, the brains of the average Americans they studied instantly showed two strong reactions: that of disgust and that of objectification, of being non-persons.  Susan Fiske said, “Every time a person saw a homeless person they acted as if they were looking at a pile of garbage.”

(The description of this work and the quote is found in Susan T. Fiske’s video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f--dDx0q6so   She also describes this study in her book Envy Up, Scorn Down, http://www.amazon.com/Envy-Up-Scorn-Down-Divides/dp/087154489X  )

What we must realize is that our disgust of the homeless isn’t a result of the many reasons we have for why they are bad people.  Rather, our irrational disgust is the source for the many reasons we avoid the homeless, we fear the homeless, we don’t hire the homeless, we want them off our streets and we don’t stop the police from harassing the homeless. 

As long as we refrain to see the homeless as people, this prejudice and punishment will continue.  As long as we do not actively refute our irrational disgust of homeless people, we will fear.  As long as we do not reject our negative emotional response to the poor we do not know, then we will do nothing about their poverty.  Because no one assists a pile of garbage.  They just move them around.

Community X

There are living spaces for community X in every city.  The majority of citizens recognizes most of this community on sight, and are disgusted by them.  Almost all the members of community X are citizens, but their rights are not recognized or upheld by officials.  In fact, many officials are trying to strip the rights of these citizens from them.   Their very right to exist is questioned.

An X'er knows that at any time their home might be violated by the police and, at the discretion of the officer, they could be given twenty four hours or ten minutes to pack up as much as they can and move.  They might be given a list of places they may move to, which includes an overcrowded building full of people who will often take their possessions, or nowhere at all.  X'ers are often told by officers to leave their city and not return.  Often they are escorted by the police to city limits and dropped off on the side of the road.

Some cities have a designated place for the citizens that belong to community X and tell all the members of that community that they may not live anywhere else.  Of course, this is the most destitute part of the city, full of crime and disease.  Often the members of community X feel privileged to have a place to stay at all.  It is hard to say whether those who have a ghetto to live in are better or worse than those who are constantly told to move out of their homes.

Local officials often hire people to steal the possessions of community X.  These men go from home to home, taking the beds, blankets, sentimental possessions, identification and other necessary items out of their home.  These belongings are tossed right into a dumpster and thrown away.  In the rare community, these possessions might be placed in a yard for twenty four hours, where the owners might be able to pick them up.  After the day, they are thrown away to make room for more possessions of community X.

Some churches have mercy on members of community X.  The members of this community may spend a short amount of time on church property, safe from officials that want to ravage their possessions and themselves.  But other churches are just as likely to call the police as soon as they see an X'er trying to hide on their property.   They agree with officials that members of this community are dangerous to society and deserve to be harassed and even arrested.  If a church does help those of community X, they are punished by their neighborhood or police officials, fined or occasionally arrested for assisting those who need mercy.

Members of community X are considered so offensive, that they are not offered jobs, although they may be allowed to work without pay.  Occasionally kids will beat up a member of the community, or an officer will shoot an X'er, but these crimes are winked at.  After all, they aren’t really people.

This is no allegory.  Nor is it a description of early Nazi Germany.  Community X lives in the United States and they are the homeless.  The chronic homeless are the feared and dehumanized of our society, even worse than homosexuals or illegal immigrants.  They are segregated and hated by many in our society. 

The way we treat homeless people is the dividing line of this nation.  When people look back on the individuals, churches and governments within this nation at this time, they will divide us between those who assisted the hated citizens of this nation and those who poured derision and shame upon these citizens who did nothing wrong apart from not having the ability to rent private property. 

We need to take a stand for the homeless, or we will find the next holocaust is in our own backyard. 

Membership Is Not Cheap: Classism in the Church

The Third World is alive and well within North America.  The poor are in the apartments with black mold; they are in the food stamp offices and being run out from under bridges.   Difficulty and disease and shame mark their lives; they’re stigmatized like lepers.  Jesus is among these people; living with them, encouraging them and doing miracles among them.

But you’d never know this by looking at the churches of North America.

A few churches cater to the upper class, but the massive majority of churches throughout North America see themselves as ministering to “communities”, by which they mean communities of the middle class.  The poor are left out of the equation of the normal, everyday life of the church.  And because of this, the church itself is poorer.  Below are four areas in which the poor are marginalized in most modern churches:

1.     Cultural uniqueness

The third world of North America is unique, and has unique features.  For one thing, its inhabitants tend to use foul language, even the most religious of them.  More poor people smoke than middle class people, and they are also more likely to have obvious addiction issues.  Poor people tend to be less educated and focus more on survival.  But, paradoxically, the poor are more likely to give their last dollar to someone else in need.  Poor folks are more likely to rely on God instead of a system or even their own work.   These are unique cultural characteristics, not right or wrong, just different.  There are weaknesses and strengths in this culture, just as there are in the cultures of the middle or upper classes (or, indeed, in any culture).

The cultural uniqueness of being poor isn’t celebrated, but preached against in the everyday church.  Not that every facet of poor culture should be celebrated; but the same is true of the middle and upper class cultures.  When we praise the middle and upper class trait of making and following a reasonable budget, for example, why can we not also praise the lower class trait of sacrificial generosity?   The church cannot be a culture-free environment, but in our middle-class model of church, where can the poor worship in a manner cohesive to their culture?

2.       Stamped with otherness

This does not mean that the poor do not go to church.  They don’t go as frequently, but since many know that participation with God is participation in the church (which is, all too frequently, not really Jesus’ body, but only a form of Christendom), they will go.  But when they do, they are considered outliers.  A church made up of the poor is traditionally called a “mission” because the poor aren’t naturally considered a part of a church.  Instead, they are often considered “converts” when they regularly attend a church, because after all, if they were actually spiritual they’d be financially self-sufficient, right?  The poor aren’t fully “sanctified” until they give up the ways of the poverty class—smoking, drinking, “low” language—even though these requirements aren’t made by Jesus.  Even those things (like the aforementioned generosity) which should be considered “good” are simply considered foolish or wasteful if one is not on solid financial ground.  Until the poor can afford to dress and use educated language like the rest of the church, they aren’t considered part of the norm.  Because of these church norms being shaped by middle class norms, the poor have developed a notion of individual spirituality, without a corporate component.  Because they don’t “fit” in the average church.

Even a church that is very oriented toward the poor participates in this hierarchy.   They are told they need to “go out and serve the poor”, because the poor aren’t a part of them, but a group that is outside of them.  And rather than welcoming them and their insights, often reserved for the middle class potential member, they are told to “serve” them out of pity or even guilt.  But this service is that of the haves to the have-nots, the higher to the lower.  The poor are not asked to participate in spiritual service, let alone lead it, in an average church context.

3.      Limited participation

The social activity of even the most open churches are based around many activities that the poor cannot attend; due to their poverty.  Of course, public worship, small groups, bible studies and potlucks are free to all who wish to come.  But those contexts are only the formal meetings of a community (although some small groups are an exception).  The real social connection with other members of a community, the support network, happens at informal gatherings.  These informal gatherings often happen in restaurants after worship, and at retreats and camps.  The youth have this same structure where some activities are free, but the activities where deeper connections happen cost money.   When the middle class take retreats and after-worship paid meals for granted, the poor feel separated and shamed because of their lack of participation.

4.      The Leadership Gap

Leadership in a church is reserved for the middle or even upper middle class.  Part of this has to do with practical considerations: the upper middle class has more leisure time and so they are able to participate in meetings, while the poor must spend time working to survive.  National or regional conferences are often expensive and require travel.   This creates a class-based leadership perspective, which cannot imagine the spiritual or physical needs of the poor, because few of them have ever been in that circumstance.

We Need the Poor

 In bringing up this issue to the moderator of MCUSA, I was told by him, “For those I’ve talked to, the poor don’t even want leadership, so why is this an issue?”  Of course the poor don’t want leadership.  The culture of church leadership is so foreign to them, that the idea of speaking out in a meeting with their very different perspective and language and communication styles scares them.  But that misses the point.  The point is, our churches need the poor, we need them to be equal partners and we need them in leadership.

We need them because the poor are an essential part of our church life—not as service projects, but as fully human people we need to interact with, to love and to learn from and to minister to and to receive ministry from.  

We need poor people in leadership because we want to meet the actual needs of the poor—not the needs we have imagined for them when we try to put ourselves in their place. We need the poor to be equal because Jesus is among the poor, living with the poor and, frankly, alive among the poor, more than in many of our churches. 

 If we are going to have Jesus in our church, we must have the poor, even though that disturbs our middle class “order”.   Accepting the poor as equals feels, to the middle class, chaotic.  And it often is chaotic, like any exchange of ideas.  But marginalizing the poor, as Christendom has done for centuries, is marginalizing Jesus.

“Did not God make the poor rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he promised to those who love Him?  But you have dishonored the poor…”  James 2:5-6

Public Poverty

Public poverty is being ignored by all except those who notice the troubled—cops and bleeding hearts.  All else turn away or turn aside or patch their pity with a coin.  Public poverty is crying out for help and being told to shut up. It is a desperate plea to be normal, and the eventual surrender of this hope when normalcy is a dream of the past.  Public poverty is too much honesty, revealing one’s difficulty and  shame and others assume that you are lying; it is the heaping of scorn when you are desperate for a little kindness.

If only poverty were this cute...

Really, poverty is like sex, only not as fun.  Some revel in it and don’t care where it is displayed, but a majority of people are fine with it in private, but disgusted with it in public.  Like sex, poverty should never be mentioned in polite company, and the more details someone describes poverty in, the more offensive they become.  "Poverty should only be discussed in counselling sessions, with social workers or pastors, but please don’t publicly discuss how you can’t pay your bills, and please don’t display your poverty in a way that all of us can see it."

The homeless are the professionally poor, those who have no choice but to represent the public poor. The homeless are scorned and even hated because they represent all that is wrong with our communities.  They are the indications that our nation is not an economic success, no matter how much of a powerhouse we are on the international economic stage.  The homeless are the crazy uncle you want to keep in the closet, especially when there are guests, but that is especially when he appears, naked and saying something insane.   Just by their existence, the homeless make us uncomfortable.

Would you please cover your poverty?

The real problem with homelessness is that it doesn’t know where to keep its place.  It appears right where you don’t want it to appear—around city hall, on freeway onramps, in public parks.  The public poor appear in the places where a city wants to showcase their friendliness or family nature.  Instead, they are revealed to be a hotbed of poverty and drunkenness.

But the public poor are simply doing what everyone else is doing, except on the street:  They are drinking a beer, they are laughing too loud with friends, they are asking for help.  They are desperately trying to forget about their miserable, mundane existence for only a moment.  They are trying to forget that the silence they experience daily, the turn of the head is scorn being poured upon them.  They are trying to erase the judgments that sentenced them to this miserable life, even the judgments that they put upon themselves.

Policy makers, in seeing the public poor as a serious social problem, do one of two equal errors.  First, they might force the public poor to be silent, to be out of sight.  For this, they create laws which make it illegal to be the public poor, or for them to be seen by the populace.  They might create a skid row, or at least move them out of the downtown area, out of sight, out of mind.  They might shuffle them into jails, as a housekeeper might sweep dust under a carpet.

But this is not a solution. For the more scorn and punishment policy makers apply to the poor, the more public poor there are.  This is because public scorn, public punishment is acceptable punishment, that which can be replicated and increased by the public citizenry.  That which is done in the public parks will eventually be repeated in homes and churches and elsewhere.  And the poor of a home is no longer cared for at home, but is moved to be homeless.  The poor of a church is no longer cared for at a church, but is seen as unacceptable anywhere.  If there is no place for the poor, the only place for them is the public areas.  And if the public areas are not acceptable, then the only place for the poor is no place.  Non-existence.

#22351, come in for your Compassion Treatment

The other solution for policy makers is to end poverty or end homelessness.  This means taking millions of public dollars and putting them into institutions for the poor.  In the past, it used to be missions to religionize the poor, as if their problem were a lack of religion.  Then they shelter the poor, stacking them like firewood, and herding them into cafeterias.  Now they want to eliminate the public poor by giving apartments or single-resident occupancies, so they can be poor in private.

The problem is that these solutions are too expensive for all the public poor, and the system of scorn will not allow them to be “rewarded” with a room without a kitchen with public money.  A different government, a different mayor and compassion dries up like a puddle in a drought.

The only real solution is equality.  Give the public poor a chance to determine what the solutions should be for themselves.  Yes, they will make mistakes, but we should give them that.  The only solution is to give the public poor the respect of a human being.  To look at them, to love them enough to smile and say “no”.  The only solution is to give them what they lack: a social network so they can solve their own problems.  Help them to see what opportunities exist and let them make their own choices.

Surprisingly, some may choose a life outside, without walls, without bills, without demands (or perhaps not so surprisingly).  They should be given a place to live in poverty, or to work their way out of poverty.  Some may choose education, some may choose a steady job (if one is offered) and some may choose reuniting with their family.  But if they are given respect and an opportunity to choose, choose they will.

What the public poor lack is opportunity of choice, and the respect to be offered a choice.  They are treated as dogs, as piles of garbage that should be cleaned up, as proto-criminals that will soon need to be arrested.  Instead, they should be treated as they are—citizens.  Treated as human beings who deserve to be heard just as much as we do.

Class Warfare

The reason severe injustice exists is because everyday people will not speak out against it.  We cannot allow protesters or talking heads to be the spokespersons for society; to stand against war, bigotry, racism or classism.  We have to do it ourselves, in our everyday lives, politely but firmly to those who display their prejudice.

Perhaps we are too shy, or too afraid of confrontation.  I understand.  I have those days in which confrontation feels like a chore, instead of the joy it often is to have groups of people upset at me.  There are those rare days that I’d rather go to bed than write to the person who is wrong on the internet.   Or perhaps we just don’t know what to say.

Well, let me give you a hand, at least in the area of classism.  When you hear someone making a classist statement, there are things you can say that will gently remind them that poor people are actually human beings.  It’s a public service we should all provide. 

Below are some excellent examples of classist quotes, and I’ll provide a response.  When you hear or see these kinds of statements, perhaps you can just repost one of these responses and it will make your job of stopping classism easier.

“Try to imagine a … presidential candidate saying in front of the cameras, ‘One reason that we still have poverty in the United States is that a lot of poor people are born lazy.’ You cannot imagine it because that kind of thing cannot be said. And yet this unimaginable statement merely implies that when we know the complete genetic story, it will turn out that the population below the poverty line in the United States has a configuration of the relevant genetic makeup that is significantly different from the configuration of the population above the poverty line. This is not unimaginable. It is almost certainly true.” —Charles Murray, “Deeper Into the Brain,” National Review, 2000

As a famous intellectual and scientist, I would like to think that you know the difference between “almost” and “certainly.” And perhaps the reason you have never heard a presidential candidate say this statement is because the candidate certainly does.  (Heh. Heh.  See what I did there?)

“We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with,” -Paul Ryan, Bill Bennet’s Morning in America.

I know, Congressman Ryan, that you are a hard working man, having experience at working two jobs at a time and raising children on your own with inadequate nutrition and little support from your family… oh, you don’t?  Perhaps we have pinpointed the real cultural problem.  The one pinpointed by billionaire Warren Buffett:  “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

“The typical poor person in the United States has a far higher living standard than the public imagines. While their lives are not opulent, they are far from the images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians”.– Heritage Foundation Website, http://origin.heritage.org/issues/poverty-and-inequality/inequality

Yeah.  Sure.  The three and a half million people who are homeless every year in the United States have a pretty decent standard of living.   You cannot know the life of the poor until you live it.  If you would like to rule with justice, you should live in an mental hospital or a nursing home for six months to understand what citizens at the bottom live with.

Poverty is caused by laziness.- 27 percent of all Americans.

CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-27-of-americans-think-poor-are-lazy/

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.
Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” -Jesus

“I don’t know why you think helping someone, people who were born and dying on food stamps. I don’t know why you think that’s admirable. And yes… a lot of people are lazy and a lot of people are becoming lazier and we’re not doing people a favor, by the way. “  -Charles Payne on Sean Hannity’s show 1/7/14

Helping the poor heals one’s soul.  Speaking ill of the poor without evidence empties one’s spirit.

Prejudiced statements against the poor, both black and white are not just a recent phenomenon.  Here’s a quote from 1947. (I had a quote about poor black folks, but I didn’t put it in because it was too long.):

"Poor whites lacked ambition; they were violent, sexually promiscuous people who did not respect human life."-Wayne Flynt  http://www.demos.org/blog/1/14/14/people-have-always-thought-poor-were-lazy-degenerates

Perhaps we shouldn’t be speaking to a whole class of people as being immoral.  The same lens might be turned on ourselves.

“My humble observation is that most long-term poverty is caused by self-sabotage by individuals,” he argued. “Drug use. Drunkenness. Having children without a family structure. Gambling. Poor work habits. Disastrously unfortunate appearance. Above all, and counted in the preceding list, psychological problems (very much including basic laziness) cause people to be unemployed, have poor or no work habits, and enter and stay in poverty.” –Ben Stein

Mr. Stein, allow me to introduce you to Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunnus: “Most people distance themselves from the issue by saying that if the poor worked harder, they wouldn't be poor…The fact that the poor are alive is clear proof of their ability.” ― Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty

About poor children: “They have no habit of showing up on Monday and staying all day or the concept of  ’I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.” –Newt Gingrich

So poor children don’t go to school?  They don’t get grades?  And poor children are all criminals?  Newt, are you trying to compete with Pat Robertson in crazy talk?

“You gotta look people in the eye and tell 'em they're irresponsible and lazy. And who's gonna wanna do that? Because that's what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. Period.” –Bill O’Reilly

Bill, listen to me.  You are irresponsible with your words and lazy with your research.  Success is luck as much as work.  And classism is ugly and immoral.  Period.  Period.

Classism exists everywhere.  There is a long history of the famous and important talking down the poor.  Let’s not let anyone get away with it without being challenged. You can speak out in a much more polite manner than I, I'm sure.  But let's respond.   Let’s drive classism into the back alleys of the internet, where it belongs.

 “The Gospel takes away our right, forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.”

― Dorothy Day