Roomin' House Blues

Today in the Seattle Times, a guest op-ed titled "The Politics of Envy" in print, and prosaically  "We have a Fixation on Income Inequality" missed entirely what is really happening in today's economy. .  It's author, Richard Davis essentially claims income inequality does not matter.  He gives the misleading example that if the four richest men in King County moved to Boises income inequality would fall, but we would be not better off. This is utterly misleading for several reasons. We don't measure income using a median figure. The essential problem that some had benefited extensively from the relative poverty of others would remain and the poverty would remain.  And lastly, it would only be a matter of time when another handful of individuals would amass the same wealth as the first few. Davis says it is better to concentrate on generating employment and income opportunity for the lower income without a recognition of what has made them lower inc...

Equal Voice for America's Families ( https://www.facebook.com/EqualVoiceNews ) points out that the federal poverty level, for 2011, for a family of four is now  $22,350.  They ask us to tell them how would you budget that.  I wrote:  Gas for the van your family of four is living in, stamps to send in your application for food stamps, a map to find the nearest food bank, etc. I believe that all Congress people should be required by Constitutional Amendment to live on such a budget for at least a week before voting on our national budget.  They should also be required to eat a food stamp diet in the Congressional cafeteria for a month before voting. (It might qualify as a Lenten fast.)  The standards by which the federal poverty guidelines are set have not been re-evaluated in years.  Budgeting for government programs for the poor is being done in a fantasy world.  It's time to give the poor a voice. 

If you woke up homeless, on the ground, under the blanket of stars and without enough money to have a home, next to me, what four words would you say to me.  Tens of thousands of Americans are waking up homeless.  People live under ground in New York City.  They live in park and freeway brush in Seattle, They live in the giant storm drains in Las Vegas. People live in rolling homes of beat up old cars.  May are mental ill, sometime criminals, drug users, alcoholics for home housing and treatment has been cut out of the social safety net.  But increasing it's the unemployed, the under employed and those losing their home due to foreclosures. Me, if I woke up homeless, I'd like to think I was their to be one with the other homeless and provide them a little help.  I'd just say, "Here I Am Lord".  But what 4 words would you say.  

I was growing up right in the time from the height of the civil rights movement to the beginnings of the anti-Vietnam war movement.  As an adolescent I watched civil rights demonstrators, including Dr. King and John L. Lewis beaten and attacked by dogs, and wept over the murders of civil rights organizers.  I learned the connection between race and poverty in America from the media, from books and from first hand exposure.  My sisters Mexican friends who lived a block away were poor.  But I also discovered that my white friends up the block and her white friends around the corner were also poor.  I also discovered that prejudice was not limited to race.  My class mates said horrible things about the mentally ill, which stung me, because my mother was mentally ill. So the civil rights movement and Dr. King began to represent a lot of things to me. He was about a fight against prejudice and intolerance.  But he w...

Teach for America is an organization founded because of a startling statistic--that only 10% of children living in poverty will graduate from college.  It's the real no child get's left behind program, because committed teaching is the only way that children will have an equalization of their opportunity to go to college --not rote memorization of test answers. Teach for America sends people to teach in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States. Right now there are over 7,000 teach for America teachers, most of them recent college graduates who are still finishing teacher course work, but took a crash course on basics.  Others are already professional  teachers who choose to dedicate two years to teaching in poor areas. Right now my niece, Sarah is one of the Teach for America student in New Orleans.  Here students are from nearby housing projects. She reports that not only are they poor, but universally they experience violence in the...

I have no finished solution, no absolutes for fixing societies problems, because I believe that man cannot do anything good without dependency on God.  But I do have views are similar to what Dorothy Day actually believed and experiences like her's. Dorothy, before she converted to the Catholic faith,  wrote for leftist and communist publications and thought that Marx had the answer.  While she was closer to an agnostic than an atheist, she definitely did not look to God for guidance.  After her conversion she stated categorically to a communist friend that she believed in all the church taught. She believed, as Aquinas taught, that there was a role for property in protecting people, a role for the State and a role for non-state actors.  She followed in her own fashion, G.K. Chesterton.   Chesterton sought a economic system of greater equality through the distribution to economic power.  More Capitalist not less he said, whe...

It is November outside among the trees, and the trees have pushed off their leaves like young expected to fly.  And though they flutter and twist in the wind, they fall into huge, dead piles.  Unfortunate children! I have a chunk of dark rye leftover from the last food bank visit. I put it outside for the squirrel.  Monday when I turned my back the squirrel was opening the package of tortillas.  I waged my finger at him and he moved back 3 feet and stood up. I looked at him and gave him two tortillas.  I have been feeding him since.  Fortunate child! I went to the food bank, waiting in a line for it to open.  It was a diverse line, black white, Asian, Hispanic.  Immigrant and non-immigrant. My thoughts drift back to my first encounter with hunger in America.  I was almost 13.  I had been watching TV news and reading the newspaper, paying attention to the civil rights movement.  When I saw the civil rights demonstrators m...

I live in an America outside the box of success. I am not uncontaminated by the contents of the box.  It spills over on us who are poor.  For 13 years I have worked as a parking attendant, outside the accepted definition of success in America. I harbored my faith in good, my love of books and arts, my dreams for the future, my past as a community organizer in my heart. My dreams, my past, my faith, the things I loved conflicted--stormy conflict sometimes.  And yet I remained of good cheer and equanimity.  My standard of living began to erode as the costs of my needs grew and when my hours were cut.  And then I lost my job. For over a month I have been unemployed.  I am in greater fear now than before.  I am in a country that has forgotten her poor, her unemployed, those losing their houses, but has not forgotten those too big to fail. When I first lost my job, after 13 years, I entered a dark hole.  In the da...