Poverty in America:
"Listening To Those Closest To The Problem"
I am honored to have been asked to write the third essay in the Poverty in America series, in honor of January as Poverty month. This series is produced by the
Can You Hear the People Sing? project, founded and managed by Democratic Underground's own Bobbolink. Her tireless advocacy for those who have been left behind and forgotten, those who are paying the price for all of us, the price that is an inevitable and inescapable consequence of a society that has gone mad, and turned the reins over to the most rapacious and predatory few among us, is a constant source of inspiration for all of us.
The subject of this essay is listening, specifically asking whom we are listening to and whom we are not listening to in our activism and advocacy, and what the implications of that are.
Here is Jim Wallis on that subject:
Why listen to the poor? Well, there are good biblical and ethical reasons But there are also just plain practical reasons. Many youth- and community-serving programs have found what ten Point discovered: they couldn't get off the ground until they began to truly trust and engage and involve the people they were trying to serve. Many good and decent programs didn't become highly successful until the poor themselves were given a real hearing and became involved in their leadership. The presence of the poor in the discussion makes all the difference. I can testify to this fact. When young people are at the table for a discussion of youth violence and what to do about it, the conversation is very different from what is would be otherwise Too often, the discussions we have about poverty involve only the people who are working to overcome it.
Jim Wallis
Faith WorksJim Wallis is a bestselling author, public theologian, speaker, preacher, and international commentator on religion and public life, faith and politics. His latest book is The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post–Religious Right America (HarperOne, 2008). His previous book, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (Harper Collins, 2005), was on the New York Times bestseller list for 4 months. He is President and Chief Executive Officer of Sojourners; where he is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, whose combined print and electronic media have a readership of more than 250,000 people. He has written eight books, including: Faith Works, The Soul of Politics, Who Speaks for God?, and The Call to Conversion.
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=about_us.display_staff&staff=WallisWe can see that from a moral standpoint, as well as from a practical standpoint, it is important to listen to those who are closest to the problem. But is there more to it than that? Is there something we all lose when we do not listen? Rather than look at what "they" need, perhaps we should look at what we need.
If we all took vows of poverty...A DUer recently wrote a very interesting thing. "If we all took vows of poverty, no one would be poor." That says in a few words, what I am trying to say with this essay. Those suffering from poverty and in desperate want and need are merely a manifestation of a much bigger problem, one that none of us are immune from, that all of us wrestle with every day.
We all do pay a price, do we not, for this ongoing human tragedy - people homeless and hungry, sick and cold, struggling and dying in a proud and wealthy nation, a nation drunk with greed and arrogance? One way or another, we all do pay a price. We are lulled into complacency and indifference. It does not take much to buy us off, to purchase our silence and complicity: a few trinkets, a little status, and we stay one step ahead of being homeless and destitute ourselves and earn a conditional and tenuous "stay of execution." We are weak, we are cowardly, and for every person without a meal tonight, or without a warm and safe place to sleep, there is a price that the rest of us pay by way of compensation, by way of a great balancing on a moral scale, a balancing of spiritual forces. The rough and inadequate physical reality faced by the few is mirrored in the spiritual impoverishment of the many, who are trapped in lives that are coarsened and so made rough, that are starved for love and compassion, that are empty of meaning and purpose - other than material success and status and the pursuit of entertainment - with no safe and warm place for their spirit to rest tonight and no hope of being truly at peace.
Beyond that, can we know ourselves if we do not know history and can we know history if we do not know the history of the poor? The history of the human race IS the history of the poor. It is not so much that it is hidden - it can be found everywhere, and the traces are right out in plain view - it is that we are led to look in the wrong places. We are being distracted and deceived. We are led to think that it is only the story of the big people, the somebodies, the wealthy and powerful that matters.
Just as we look to the stories of the wealthy and powerful to understand history, so too, we look to the important people today, the wealthy and powerful, to define and describe our own reality. We let others tell us who we are, what we are doing, and what is and what is not important. We discount and dismiss the stories of the common people, and when we do that we are dismissing and discounting ourselves, our own reality.
When we don't hear the voices of the poor, when we don't know their history, we do not know our own history. We have no foundation, not meaningful context for our lives. We become merely extras, temporary and poorly paid employees, filling small and constrained roles in a grand story that someone else controls and profits from. We are cut off from our own history, and so from our own experience. Denying the poor their voice denies them self-determination and when we do that we are surrendering our own vice and our own self-determination. On some profound level, we are our stories, and without a community that accepts and welcomes our story, we may as well not exist.
What is it that people are asking for?I think that often the only thing poor people have ever truly asked for - what all people who are suffering ask for, as we saw recently regarding the Warren issue and the reaction from people in the GLBTQ community and their allies - is to be heard and not to be dismissed or ignored. That is the only way that we can overcome the gap - to understand the reality other people are living with. The resistance is not what some claim it to be - "don't get me wrong, I am on your side but I don't like the way you are going about this" - the resistance has been to listening, to hearing people. When people are not heard, are not listened to, naturally enough that is very frustrating and demeaning, and the inclination is to ramp up the rhetoric and to express resentment and anger. When those expressions of anger and resentment are then portrayed as the cause of the problem, and the original provocation is ignored, people justifiably feel even more marginalized, more dismissed and more mistreated. They ARE being dismissed and ignored and mistreated.
Being heard, being acknowledged and recognized and respected, is the very foundation of being seen as an equal, as a human being with full membership in the human community. All oppression and bigotry starts with not listening to people, not granting them that very basic human need. It is the first step in making people disappear, and the last step - the actual murdering of human beings - is a reality.
Bobbolink passed along this quote to me from Larry James, a community organizer in Dallas, and I think this describes some of the ways that we fail to listen, some of the barriers we put up, and also suggests that the point of listening to those less fortunate is not because they need something that we in our arrogance flatter ourselves that we have and can give, but rather that the less fortunate have things that we all desperately need.
If your mission is to grow community then. . .
. . .People cannot be treated as projects.
. . .People cannot be treated as problems.
. . .People cannot be treated as "opportunities for ministry."
. . .People cannot be treated as if they should be disconnected or disengaged from the primary process at work.
. . .People must not be seen as clients.
. . .People must be trusted and valued as they are, for who they are.
You see, transforming truth is quite different.
The truth is, people are my neighbors and I am their neighbor.
The truth is, people, all people are powerful.
The truth is, people are beautiful, promising, full of wonder and great, great potential.
People power--it is the only place to start, to live, to conclude.
Larry James is the President and CEO for Central Dallas Ministries, a human and community development corporation with a focus on economic and social justice at work in inner city Dallas, Texas.
http://larryjamesurbandaily.blogspot.com/2006/04/community-development-101-part-one.htmlWhat is it that we trade away, what do we lose when others are poor and suffering, what is the cost to all of us? It is easy for us to see what others are missing - meals, a home, heat - but what are we missing? What do we lack? What price do we pay in order to not be poor, what compromises do we make? How much of our lives is consumed by the fear of poverty, and how might our lives look were we not so consumed by that fear? Is it that fear that makes it difficult for us to listen to others? Are we not crippled ourselves by that, more so than those who have been forced to face the hardships we fear? What price o we pay, how our our lives diminished when we harden our hearts and close out ears to the cries of the suffering?d
Power and strength can separate people; whereas weakness and recognition of weakness and the cry for help brings people together. When you are weak, you need people. It's very easy. When you are strong you don't need people, you can do everything on your own. So, somewhere the weak person calls people together. And when the weak call forth the strong, what happens is they awaken what is most beautiful in a human person--compassion, goodness, openness to another and so on. Our weakness brings people together.
- Jean Vanier
http://www.larche.org/jean-vanier-founder-of-l-arche.en-gb.23.13.content.htmI think that what happens for many people when discussions about poverty and the homeless begin is that they immediately start thinking about themselves, rather than about the issue, let alone about the people who are closest to the problem. "Am I compassionate? Am I not? No, no, no I am nothing at all like those callous Republicans. Am I a good person? Am I not? How dare people imply I don't care? I don't think I am a bad person. Why should I have to defend myself? I probably can't say anything without someone jumping on me. That isn't fair, is it? Why should I be abused? I don't hate poor people. I am opposed to poverty."
It is impossible to listen to others when we are so obsessed with ourselves, when we can only see the issue in terms of what is going in for us internally. I think people start experiencing fear, confusion, shame, guilt and doubt in their minds about the issue of poverty, and then project that out onto others and blame people for causing those feelings they had. This can quickly become blame heaped onto those who are poor.
People want to be heard, need to be heard. It is a fundamental human need, and it is everyone's right to be heard. People who are poor are often saying nothing more than "why can't we be heard? Why is our reality being denied? Why do we have to jump through hoops when others do not? Why are we permitted no mistakes? Why can't we be full partners, equal members of the community? Why are we always put into a separate category, held to different standards?"
Let's start listeningLet's stop trying to solve poverty by "fixing" those who have fallen into poverty - seeing them as the problem. Let's start listening.
When we confront the national travesty of poverty and homelessness, we immediately have the urge to start applying solutions, immediately think that we have the answers and that those who are poor do not. We assume, often without realizing that we are, that if people knew what they were doing or had anything to offer they would not be poor. So we lecture them about self-esteem, we try to "help" people to become more like us, we give out advice as to how an individual can "get back on their feet." We quickly move away from any deeper discussion, we are resistant to hearing what poor people are saying.
I think that the "self-esteem" idea, as well as the advice as to how one can take steps as an individual to get "back into the system" are part of the pervasive right wing agenda of rugged individualism and "look out for number one." That is the cause of poverty, and can never be part of the solution. Yet too many of us embrace that agenda. If we listened to poor people, we would know that.
Poverty is an issue for all of usPoverty is a social issue, not a personal issue. Politics is about social issues, changing conditions so that they are more humane, not about individual self-improvement strategies. We need to listen to individuals, those actually facing the challenge on behalf of all of us, and then seek political solutions, public programs that will change the conditions. Instead, we are tempted to deny people their reality, their story, and then offer recommendations for personal strategies they can - or should - take.
Poverty is not the result of there being something wrong with the poor that we need to fix or improve, it is the result of something wrong with the system, a system for which we are all responsible and from which we all suffer. Those who have fallen into poverty, or have been driven into it, know better than any of us what is wrong with the system.
The problem is that we do not esteem other human beings, not that people lack self-esteem, and lecturing the poor about their "self-esteem" and advising them how to adjust to a brutal and inhumane system just adds to the cruelty. We treat our pets better than we do each other. We don't blame and judge our pets. Too often, an abandoned or abused dog story here gets far more attention and sympathy than an abandoned or abused human story does. In the case of the person, we ask what they might have "done wrong" or what might be wrong with them. We place no such burden on our pets, no such conditions on our love and compassion toward them.
People are not telling themselves that they are not worthy, it is being relentlessly pounded into them from all directions. We all battle against this - as we frantically and obsessively seek status and wealth and power, whether we want those things or not, so that we can then hope to "break even" - so that we can be seen as worthy of breathing and eating and having a roof over our heads. We live in constant fear of suddenly becoming unworthy and being thrown to the pavement and crushed under the juggernaut of "success" - otherwise known as greed, callous indifference to others, and selfishness.
Let's look at the perpetrators, not the victims. Let's look at those who apologize for the bullies, for the predators, for the selfish and greedy who are driving this abomination, who profit from it. Let's look at those who speak of "survival of the fittest" and "poverty will always be with us" and "the free market" and "competition" and "social Darwinism." Let's look at the conditions, not the individuals. Let's look into our own hearts, and not at what "they" should be doing to "get better." We should look at those who are profiting from these conditions in order to see what is wrong, and listen to those suffering from the conditions to find solutions. Yet we do the opposite.
Where do we stand?Let's start with this, shall we? - all human beings have a right to housing, heat, clothing, and food, without qualifications or conditions. Let us remain steadfast to that program, without compromise. That should be our public, political stance. But then let us be flexible, forgiving, non-judgmental, and open-hearted with those among us who are suffering. They are suffering on all of our behalf. They know. We do not. They have more to give us than we have to give them.
Let's stop saying to people "here is how to improve yourself, here are the hoops and hurdles to negotiate, here is how to live your life, here is how to meet expectations, and then - THEN - and only then, you MIGHT, if everything goes right, if you make no mistakes, if no accidents happen, if you are very, very lucky - THEN you might be able to eat and to have a home." Those are the conditions to which we are all submitting now. Our job is to change those conditions. That must start with listening to those who are closest to the problem.
We must overcome the fear of poor people, the anxiety that we may somehow catch the disease of we get too close, or are too open to what they have to say. We must overcome the arrogant notion that the more fortunate know more than the less fortunate. We must overcome the idea that poverty and homelessness are merely problems involving material well being, and that the problem is only with those who are less fortunate rather than a problem that we all share.
We have much to learn, and until we do our lives will continue to be spiritually impoverished, our spirits will be homeless. We can only learn by listening.
In solidarity,
Two Americas
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Previous essays in the Poverty in America series -
Poverty in America: Remember EVERYTHING MLK Stood For - dajoki
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4855586Poverty in America: the Old and the New - maryf
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4844491Poverty in America: Taxes - Hannah Bell
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4800489Poverty in America: Truth Hurts, Ignorance Kills - JeffR
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4754889Fifteen Minutes a Week: An Appeal for Help - JeffR
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4697093copyright: peoplesing.org