Our big chance. . . .today!

Any way you cut it, as a nation, we now face a huge opportunity to strengthen our country, to include more neighbors, to prepare our grandchildren for what lies ahead.  President Biden's plan presents a very practical response to national issues.  His vision seeks to make America better and more prepared for competition in our shrinking world.  

The first half of the current opportunity has to do with physical infrastructure improvement and literal rebuilding--bridges, highways, lead-lined water pipes, climate change curtailment, railways, internet accessibility, etc. 

To build our national, social infrastructure by really investing in our people, consider these real, tangible, very doable strategies to share the opportunity of America to a wider segment of our people:

• Lower child care costs to no more than 7% of a household's income
• Expand parental leave benefits
• Two years of post high school community college costs
• Fully fund early childhood education
• Increase maximum allowed for Pell Grants
• Lower prescription costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate costs with big pharma
• Add vouchers for Medicare participants that cover vision, hearing and dental costs
• Expand Medicaid for the extremly impoverished
• Use tax credits and government financing to bolster affordable and resilient housing, supporting the construction or rehabilitation of more than two million homes
• Extend the Child Tax Credit expansion in the American Rescue Plan, providing 39 million households and nearly 90 percent of American children a major tax cut and cutting child poverty nearly in half
• Increase the Earned-Income Tax Credit from $543 to $1,502. This will benefit roughly 17 million low-wage workers, including cashiers, cooks, delivery drivers, food preparation workers, and child care providers
• Aggressive jobs training program, including green jobs and education careers
• Invest in nutrition improvement by expanding SNAP benefits 
• Pay for it all with equitable tax reform that asks the very rich and U. S. corporations pay their fair share.  

An often overlooked fact of public investment in our people is that every dollar spent on our people moves quickly and completely back into the economy.  Nothing is lost, nor wasted as relates to economic stimulation and continuing growth.  

If adopted, this plan will assure the promise of America for generations.  It will cut poverty significantly. This plan will unite us as the benefits become obvious.  We can do better.  We can change for the better.  

Since 1970, I've been working on a daily basis with men, women and children caught up in the cruel reality of poverty and economic disadvantage.  Poor folks have been my very best teachers.  

One conclusion seems undeniable:  progress in our work to overcome the cruel,  negative impact of poverty on our neighbors will depend on a comprehensive, public, community strategy that bundles numerous assets and transfers them to the people closest to the problem, "the poor."

It is time to act and act boldly.  

John Perkins to speak in our area!

While living in Dallas, Dr. and Mrs. John Perkins attended the Central Dallas Church, associated with CitySquare, then Central Dallas Ministries.

It will be so good to welcome John back to the Metroplex!

Beyond Charity

Last Sunday, I really enjoyed my time speaking in three morning services at Highland Park United Methodist Church.

 What I posted below is the Cornerstone service at 11:00 a.m.


Beyond 100: Beyond Charity (Cornerstone) from HPUMC on Vimeo.

Charity won't do

POVERTY, INC. | Official Trailer from POVERTY, INC. | The Movie on Vimeo.

The importance of "Why?"

Perspective

We've learned this lesson at CitySquare.

Words and their selection really matter a lot!

For example,

. . .neighbor is better than client.

. . .concierge is better than case worker.

. . .investment is better than gift.

. . .return on investment is better than outcome.

. . .community development is better than charity.

. . .opportunity is better than delivering services.

. . .friendship is better than programming.

Enjoy this example of perspective. . . .

Love defined by action

Truly Growing

If we truly are growing in love with our neighbors who are suffering at the hands of unjust systems—if that love is deep enough and authentic enough—then finding ourselves opposing those unjust systems will follow as naturally as the morning follows the night…. I don’t think we go out looking for oppressive systems to confront, like Don Quixote went out looking for windmills to attack. Our doing must flow naturally out of our being. Our doing for justice must flow naturally out of our being in love with those for whom there is no justice.

K. Killian Noe
Source: Finding Our Way Home

Add your thoughts at inward/outward

Moving beyond charity. . .

Showing a Lack of Faith

To feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the harborless without also trying to change the social order so that people can feed, clothe and shelter themselves is just to apply palliatives. It is to show a lack of faith in one’s fellows, their responsibilities as children of God, heirs of heaven.

Dorothy Day
Source: The Catholic Worker (February 1945)

Add your thoughts at inward/outward

Poverty mounts. . .

Development vs compassion: Is it either/or?

Anyone who works with and among low-income persons knows the tension. 

Some simply dismiss it by deciding to go one way or the other. 

And, I suppose that is fine.

I mean, seriously, we recognize that charity or relief does little to reduce demand.  In fact, responding to mounting human need with compassion often turns up the volume and the intensity of the need, and thus, of the demand for help. 

Clearly, the better choice is working on the development side.  Here we discover breakthroughs that shift the needs people have from charitable solutions to systemic, just, more final solutions that they can more easily control or influence.

It's the old give a fish versus teach to fish analogy. 

But, what are we to do in the challenging "between space"?  You know, that time before justice arrives or skills enhancement or new, sustainable work and opportunity show up. 

People have to eat.

Kids have to go to school with clothing and supplies.  Cars have to be fixed, doctor's bills paid and landlords kept happy. 

I realized a long time ago, that as limited in its enduring affect as it is, charity and compassion remain vital to community progress and development.  In meeting immediate needs we encounter the necessary opportunities to build relationships that will pay off later as we strive for community development goals.

Compassionate action can be stewarded into a sort of community renewal  that will put charity along way down the road to being unnecessary, or almost so.

For me, it is not an either/or, but a both/and proposition. 

We all deserve and need justice and opportunity to thrive; but, at the same time, we all need compassion along the way as well. 

So, our community organizing and our jobs training efforts continue alongside our food pantry and our emergency intervention efforts.

It's just life, hopefully together, all of us.

409

Place is important.

History and memory lead us back toward significant places where things occurred, were planned and executed.

Such a place is 409 N. Haskell Avenue (409) here in Dallas, Texas.

In 1994, thanks to the commitment of Jim and Betsy Sowell, along with the support of many of their friends at the Preston Road Church of Christ and from other churches, Central Dallas Food Pantry purchased the property at 409 to accommodate the expansion and growth of the organization. The property had been purchased from the Resolution Trust Corporation at a very good price.

I arrived at Central Dallas Food Pantry just as the remodel began on this new facility. Previously, the organization ran everything from the much smaller building located at 801 N. Peak Street in the same neighborhood (and that is another story to be told at another time!). The new property signaled a new beginning for what soon would be tagged "Central Dallas Ministries."

With the current development of CitySquare's Opportunity Center, the 409 property is now for sale.

As we move on to the next chapter in our history, it seems appropriate to reflect on all that transpired in this special, unique corner here in inner city, Old East Dallas. So, over the next several months (most likely it will take that long!), I'll be telling stories on this page about the events at 409 that have shaped us all and that have led to the transformation of so many lives.

Thinking about this little memory project brings to mind so many key words and tags. Here are a few just for starters. . .

• Church and Food Pantry
• Seasoned, burned out volunteers from outside the community
• Changes in staff leadership and choice
• Learning the ropes of day-to-day food distribution
• Memorable trips to the North Texas Food Pantry
• A truck without brakes
• Josefina Ortiz
• Conflict and change
• Janet Morrison and contemporaries
• Volunteers who got it
• Theology of urban renewal
• Cocaine campground
• Crack house at the corner
• Pay phone at Crutcher and Haskell
• Getting out a newsletter. . .seriously?
• Jeffie Massey
• Beyond charity
• The Christmas Store
• Dallas Morning News Charities
• Project Access Dallas
• The first Kids Kamp

And, the list goes on and on! 

Stay tuned for short stories and vignettes from our past at this very sacred place where community has been breaking out for years now!

"Poor folk" don't mind paying

A standard operating procedure and possibly a little known fact:  CitySquare asks "customers," those who come to us seeking relief and assistance, to make a financial investment in the services and processes that contribute to their own life-improvement. 

For example, our health services division requires a modest co-pay/application fee to receive medical and pharmacy services.  Our public interest law firm asks for an application fee and a modest client fee when cases are accepted.  In our resource center, social work services asks for a very small application fee as well, in this case just $5.  The same policy is now extending across the organization. 

Our neighbors have been making significant contributions to our overall work for years.  And, it is important to note just here, our low-income friends are almost universally eager to do their part to support our work because of its proven benefit in the community.

For us, it is a matter of principle. 

We believe that charity limits people. 

Community involvement and investment is the beginning of liberation and an important aspect in the realization of personal empowerment.  Expectations that lead us to shared resources can transform communities. 

Here's an interesting statistic:  for several years now low-income neighbors have contributed twice as much to our work as have churches from their operating budgets!  Don't look down on "the poor," as if they are doing nothing to change their circumstances!  Poor folks don't mind paying for value added to life. 

People who bad mouth the poor, claiming they live life with a sense of selfish entitlement, don't have an accurate understanding of just how much those at the bottom of our national economy actually do in an effort to improve their own lives. 

So, why do we charge these fees? 

We do it because we need help from those closest to us to continue our mission.

We ask for an investment because the "buy in" from the poor makes all of our efforts and services more effective.  It is a fact:  "skin in the game" produces much better outcomes.  Investors feel free to comment, critique and lend a helping hand to us to see our performance improve. 
We engage our neighbors by asking them to contribute something to support our work because we know that such investments transforms them from "charity cases" into customers with all the rights and duties inherent in such a reciprocal relationship.  I often tell our staff that if folks don't feel as if they can complain about our services and performance, then something is wrong. 

We are in the city for good.  And we are asking our neighbors to invest in their own future and that of the entire community.  Change costs us all.  We make no apologies for believing that the poorest among us have something to offer and invest, including their money.

Proliferation of non-profit organizations!

This is very interesting to me. . .

As of 2010, National Center for Charitable Statistics reports:

Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs) in Texas--73,670

NPOs in North Texas--20,868

Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) registered NPOs--20,868

Revenues < $100K--17,343

Revenues $100K and < $1 Million--2,503

Revenues $1 million and <$5 Million--641

Revenues over $5 Million--381

DFW adjusted for hospitals, churches and large educational institutions--12,509

Revenues <$100K--10,019 (80.1%)

Revenues $100K and <$1 Million--1,782 (14.2%)

Revenues $1 million and <$5 Million = 454 (3.6%)

Revenues over $5 Million--254 (2.0%)

Reactions?

Conclusions? 

Observations? 

Charity and justice

When it comes to responding to poverty, most of us opt for individual acts of charity and compassion. 

We think of "the poor" as one person after another needing our help today. 

We aren't really put off by the realization that, unless many factors change, these same people will need our help again tomorrow.  By the time we get to day or incident 5 or 6, our charitable impulses begin to wear thin.  We begin to create narratives in our heads that justify our decisions to terminate our charitable instincts, reasoning that if the object of my recent charity would do his or her part, my resources wouldn't be needed. 

We all know the drill, don't we?

Charity is about individuals.  Individuals in need.  Individuals with resources and the freedom to decide as individuals to help or not to help.  Charity maintains the existing power differentials and relationships insuring that those with the wherewithal to "help" decide when to help and when to walk past folks suffering in need.

Charity settles for "poster children" results.  Anecdotal stories and one-off success reports of individuals who, against great odds, manage to work their way out and up from the cruel clutches of poverty. 

Charity concerns itself with the presenting symptoms and results of the presence of poverty.  So, it works best in soup kitchens, food pantries, street feeding and giveaway programs of various sorts. 

On the other hand, justice seeks equity resulting from a systemic response to poverty and the forces that support its existence. 

Justice brings individuals together to work on collective solutions. 

Justice wants to change rules and offer up sustainable, public responses to problems so large that they call for scalable solutions beyond the reach of uncoordinated, individual acts of kindness. 

Justice wants to hit the reset button on a number of institutions. 

Justice calls for new default positions and options. 

If charity puts the spotlight on a few individuals who excel and escape, justice provides a tour through a renewed neighborhood or a high-functioning school system or an open health care benefit plan or a new company that employs hundreds of workers and pays a living wage. 

Charity asks its questions about the  individual.

Justice demands answers concerning scalable solutions to community-wide problems and challenges. 

To be sure, charity and compassion are wonderful.

But, when compassionate people come together--rich and poor--to set in motion big, comprehensive changes that will open doors to new opportunity and pave highways out of poverty, justice and equity can be realized. 

To adequately address the large problems associated with poverty we must move beyond individual acts of charity to work on collective efforts resulting in justice.

Avoid "Social Justice Churches"

So, I suppose Moses, David, Amos, Micah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jesus and James would not be welcome at Glenn Beck's church, wherever that is, if it exists. 


Amazing commentary.  No wonder we have stalemate on so many policies in this nation.

Clearly, the words of scripture, read in every church including Beck's, deal with social and economic justice, the concerns of laboring people and a very real commitment to equity and to standing with the poor.  Possibly, a branch of American Christianity now has decided to abandon this central part of the tradition and message of our faith.  Such a heretical decision does not remove the truth from the Bible, but only from exposure to congregants who aren't allowed to hear the whole story for themselves. This one is really hard for me to understand.

Glenn Beck Urges Listeners to Leave Churches That Preach Social Justice

On his daily radio and television shows last week, Fox News personality Glenn Beck set out to convince his audience that "social justice," the term many Christian churches use to describe their efforts to address poverty and human rights, is a "code word" for communism and Nazism. Beck urged Christians to discuss the term with their priests and to leave their churches if leaders would not reconsider their emphasis on social justice.

"I'm begging you, your right to religion and freedom to exercise religion and read all of the passages of the Bible as you want to read them and as your church wants to preach them . . . are going to come under the ropes in the next year. If it lasts that long it will be the next year. I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

To read more and listen to the audio click here.

Mclaren on Justice and Power

Charity is dead

Julia Moulden put up an interesting post on The Huffington Post a few weeks ago.

Moulden's new book, We Are The New Radicals: A Manifesto for Reinventing Yourself and Saving the World (McGraw-Hill, New York (2008)., keeps her busy on the speaker's circuit these days.

Here's a taste of her work:

The notion that "charity is dead" has been brewing for some time. On Earth Day (April 22), I remembered something an uber-green friend once said when we were talking about garbage, "There is no 'away'." That is, when we say of things we no longer want, "Oh, I'll just throw it away," we aren't really thinking about what happens to the stuff. It's now abundantly clear that that attitude created a huge problem - from overflowing landfills to the floating plastic island in the south Pacific.

Here's another piece of the puzzle that I'm struggling to put into place. In recent weeks, I've worked with and interviewed some remarkable people who have chosen careers in the non-profit sector. And from each of them I heard - perhaps for the first time, really heard - how they spend much of their time. Not, as we might imagine, helping people in need. Instead, they constantly do a desperate dance designed to attract the attention of people like you and me. So that they can raise awareness of their work. And the money they need to keep going.

Something is wrong with this picture.

Read the entire post here.

Reactions?

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Doonesbury on the homeless and charity. . .

A friend sent me clipped copy of the June 7, 2009 Doonesbury comic strip.

Take a look at it here.

Let me know what the takeaways are in your opinion.

An important distinction often missed

"Charity will never be true charity unless it takes justice into account ... Let no one attempt with small gifts of charity to exempt themselves from the great duties imposed by justice."

Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris , #49

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The distinction is important.

Unfortunately, the difference between works of charity and struggles for justice is usually lost on people, especially people of faith.

There is a fundamental difference that must be understood and embraced if we are to make any sustainable progress.

For a clear delineation of this important distinction in very clear terms, take a look here.

Reactions, as always, welcome.

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“Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.”
Proverbs 31:9

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Our interconnected world. . .thinking about consequences. . .valuing the intelligence of the poor

Jacqueline Novogratz works on global poverty.

What she says about our basic interconnectedness as humans needs to be heard.

How she views the capacity and the strength of poor people is extremely instructive.

The struggle against poverty is the same all over the world. The economics differ in terms of scale and net value, but the essential principles Novogratz delineates relative to consequences and how to approach the challenges sound and feel familiar.

Engagement and self-sufficiency are inviolate values in the battle we all share. . .way beyond charity.

Worth your time to listen.

Reactions will be useful.