Practical, Healthy Outcomes for Our Neighbors. . .

The following post comes from one of our Case Managers at the Cottages (CitySquare's "tiny homes" community):  

 

There is a neighbor at The Cottages who for the last several months, if not years, has been struggling with medication and mental health management. One day, I was trying to brainstorm ways to assist her with taking her medications so that she could get back to baseline, when I noticed that the majority of her psych medications had instructions on the bottle to “take at night.”

Because there are no staff on property at night, it made it difficult to help this neighbor with taking her medications at night.

During one of this neighbor’s phone visits with her psychiatrist, I asked her permission to sit on the phone call and speak with her doctor. She granted me permission and I asked the psychiatrist if this neighbor absolutely had to take certain medications at night or if there was a possibility she could take them in the morning. As it turns out, she can actually take all but one of the medications in the morning. 

After this conversation, I was connected with the neighbor’s Metrocare case manager who was able to provide me with a med minder. With the neighbor’s permission, we can assist her with organizing and managing her medications and can bring her the medications in the morning. And, if we are not able to, her home health aide can assist her in reminding her to take her medications.

After a month and a half of this, the neighbor has now ceased to sporadically cry; she has less and less episodes of anger and she is able to have a competent conversation about her own wellbeing.

We really are better together. We cannot do things alone. When we work together, we elevate the situations of our neighbors and even ourselves sometimes. Together, we rise!

The Divide

For almost 40 years I've witnessed the expanding, deepening equity divide in this nation.  Much like a canyon dividing people on either side, this gaping crevice separates people and communities from one another. 

Life on either side presents drastic differences for the people involved.  Whats-more, the divide keeps us from knowing one another.  Consider for a moment the fundamental institutions that exist wherever people are free and working on the realization of better lives for themselves and their families.

• Education
• Employment/Career/Earnings
• Housing
• Health Care
• Nutrition 
• Transportation
• Recreation
• Public Safety
• Civic Live/Culure
• Entertainment
• Spiritual Life
• Family

In every case how people experience these basic, necessary institutions for productive life turns out to be quite different, depending on which side of the equity divide you occupy.  

Every day I see "the poor" just trying their best to make it through to something better.  Surprisingly, there is real joy to behold where I move about.  

But, a deep, deep sadness and recognition lives here as well. 

Over the years, steady sadness creases faces.  

It dims eyes.  

Such sadness presses people into the resignation of humility, but a humble spirit overdone.   

I know about the equity canyon.  It is very real.  

I see it every day.  

Those without love

Getting What We Deserve

It is always a terrible thing to come back to Mott Street [where she lived]. To come back in a driving rain to men crouched on the stairs, huddled in doorways, without overcoats because they sold their overcoats—perhaps the week before when it was warm, to satisfy their hunger or thirst, who knows. Those without love would say, ‘It serves them right, drinking up their clothes, selling their clothes to buy booze, it serves them right.’ But God help us if we got what we deserve!

Dorothy Day
Source: The Catholic Worker (1985)

The Growing Gap

"Asset Poverty" on KERA

You can watch last night's "One Crisis Away" program on KERA TV-13 right here!

I don't care! Really?

2014 and disciplined thought

Again in 2014, I'll attempt to post something sensible on an almost daily basis. 

Confession:  I do this mainly for my own benefit.

I try to read as widely as I have the time on a daily basis.  Admittedly, much of what I read connects to my work and concerns related to poverty, economics, neighborhood revitalization and life in hard, inner city neighborhoods and communities here in Dallas and across the nation. 

There is something about the plan, the need, the compulsion to write daily that keeps me focused and as "on track" as I can remain.  I find that when I fail to write, I feel scattered, dislocated and without clarity or discipline. 

So, I write to work and to stay at thoughts having to do with life and poverty and faith and labor and children and homeless friends and family. 

Those who stop here often know a good deal about my grandchildren.  They are pure treasure to me--each in his or her own way.  Getting to watch these four amazing people is the most satisfying, thrilling experience.  Again and again, I'm made to stop and laugh, wonder, cry, rejoice and celebrate their lives.  Somehow, Gracie, Wyatt, Owen and Henry point me clearly toward my purpose.  Somehow, they provide balance, strength and courage for my life.  So, expect to learn more about them in 2014!

Now, enough of the personal stuff.

Bring on 2014!  And, agree or disagree, please know that your comments make this page much more helpful than it could ever be without them.

I'll look for you here.
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R.I.P. and Happy Birthday, Mom.  You'll never be forgotten.

Public morality--rich and poor

For years, actually decades, and in rural, urban and suburban settings I've noticed that the background assumptions of our culture, our economy, our policy, our leaders and, yes, even our churches would lead one to believe that the poor are bad, evil or flawed.  At the same time, the rich we consider basically good, moral and favored largely because of their superior moral decisions.  This uniquely American brand of economic morality feels very Calvinistic in its interpretations of life and the human struggle.

These assumptions have led us to a national battle over the proper response to poverty and those captured by it.  Food stamps and unemployment benefits set over against corporate subsidies and tax loopholes:  these are the particulars of our current national debate. On Thursday, (12-19-13), The New York Times published an op-ed piece by Timothy Egan titled "Good Poor, Bad Poor."

It will be worth your time to read it right here.

Reactions invited.

Stupid ideas. . .

Hunger Makes People Work Harder, and Other Stupid Things We Used to Believe About Poverty

Read the article here. 

Ain't got no home. . .

Over the past two decades, I've met so many men who could sing this song!

The Line

If you are concerned about poverty in the U. S. and/or if you work to overcome the devastating consequences of poverty on men, women and children, this is a video resource that you need to see and be able to use.  Available on October 2, 2012!

Jon Bon Jovi rocks with Soul Kitchen!

Check this out from Jon Bon Jovi and his foundation.  Bon Jovi visited CitySquare earlier this year to discuss housing for the homeless with our team.  Watch to the end, there are actually several cuts of videos here.

Poverty

Poverty is a strange and elusive thing.  I have tried to write about it, its joys and its sorrows, for thirty years now; and now I could probably write about it for another thirty years without conveying what I feel about it as well as I would like.  I condemn poverty and I advocate it; poverty is simple and complex at once; it is a social phenomenon and a personal matter.  Poverty is an elusive thing, and a paradoxical one. 

We need always to be thinking and writing about it, for if we are not among its victims its reality fades from us.  We must talk about poverty because people insulated by their own comfort lose sight of it.  So many good souls who visit us tell us how they were brought up in poverty, but how, through hard work and cooperation, their parents managed to educate all the children--even raise up priests and nuns for the Church.  They contend that healthful habits and a stable family situation enable people to escape from the poverty class, no matter how mean the slum they may once have been forced to live in.  The argument runs, so why can't everybody do it?  No, these people don't know about the poor.  Their concept of poverty is of something as neat and well-ordered as a nun's cell.

Dorothy Day

from "The Faces of Poverty," in Loaves and Fishes (1963)

reprinted in The Catholic Worker (May 2010)

Overcoming poverty with data

Esther Duflo uses her knowledge of economics to find solutions, real solutions to troubling issues emerging from poverty.

Give her a listen. I think you'll be glad you did.

Justice for the poor discovered in relationships

The Hebrew prophets seem especially hard on those who deliberately exploit and abuse the poor and vulnerable through selfish greed or corruption of the law. The God of the Bible is not merely a God of charity but a God of justice who holds kings, rulers, judges, and employers accountable for how they treat widows, orphans, and workers over matters of land, labor, and capital. All this is rooted in the call to right relationships, which is at the heart of the biblical notion of justice itself. So reestablishing a right relationship to the poor is the beginning of ending poverty. (p. 105).

Jim Wallis

The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America

David Shipler--a seminar on American poverty

For those who want to dive deeper into the reality of poverty in America today, here's a "seminar" that you'll find extremely helpful.

David Shipler spoke at Central Dallas Ministries not long after he wrote, The Working Poor: Invisible in America. His insights were profound, helpful and challenging. His well-researched work is a must read for anyone really concerned about poverty today.

In regard to the video below, I'm not sure I've seen anything that better justifies the investment of your time.

I'd appreciate your opinions after you hear Shipler's comments.

"The Gospel of Getting Rich"

A few days ago over in Fort Worth, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland hosted a conference for "prosperity gospel" devotees.

The New York Times reported on the event and the mindset back of it. Here's a taste of the article (photo from same source):

Believers Invest in the Gospel of Getting Rich
by LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: August 15, 2009

FORT WORTH — Onstage before thousands of believers weighed down by debt and economic insecurity, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted the crowd with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by following the Word of God.

Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds.

“God knows where the money is, and he knows how to get the money to you,” preached Mrs. Copeland, dressed in a crisp pants ensemble like those worn by C.E.O.’s.

Even in an economic downturn, preachers in the “prosperity gospel” movement are drawing sizable, adoring audiences. Their message — that if you have sufficient faith in God and the Bible and donate generously, God will multiply your offerings a hundredfold — is reassuring to many in hard times.

The preachers barely acknowledged the recession, though they did say it was no excuse to curtail giving. “Fear will make you stingy,” Mr. Copeland said.

But the offering buckets came up emptier than in some previous years, said those who have attended before.

Many in this flock do not trust banks, the news media or Washington, where the Senate Finance Committee is investigating whether the Copelands and other prosperity evangelists used donations to enrich themselves and abused their tax-exempt status. But they trust the Copelands, the movement’s current patriarch and matriarch, who seem to embody prosperity with their robust health and abundance of children and grandchildren who have followed them into the ministry.

“If God did it for them, he will do it for us,” said Edwige Ndoudi, who traveled with her husband and three children from Canada for the Southwest Believers’ Convention this month, where the Copelands and three of their friends took turns preaching for five days, 10 hours a day at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

You can read the entire report here, if you like.

Frankly, it was a hard read for me.

So, Jesus once told his followers that he had no where to lay his head.

He owned nothing.

He lived as a very, very poor man.

He counseled his followers and would-be followers to sell all that they owned and give the income to the poor.

He invited people to follow him in a radical life of self-denial for the sake of the marginalized, the hungry, the rejected and the untouchable.

He spoke often of "laying up treasure in heaven," one of his favorite phrases. Whenever he used that intriguing phrase, he always connected the earthly "deposit branch" to some clear benefit for the poor in the here and now.

He blasted greedy preachers and self-serving religious leaders as oppressors, not a category to which one should seek inclusion by God's standards!

No wonder we have problems today with poverty.

Is anyone listening to this weird guy named Jesus?

Religious expression like that which the Copelands hawk serves only to turn completely upside down all of the values by which people of faith should be formed and challenged.

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Texas, Our Texas. . .

Found the chart above on Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish (August 3, 2009).

No surprises at all.

We see the reality back of the data.

Texas is really a great place to live and work. . .for some of us.

For others, well, it's definitely a tale of "two states," worked out, at least 1from our perspective, in the cities.

We must find ways to change the trajectory of our public policy with a clear view to the sufferings of our low-income neighbors.
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Poor folks as criminals?

The longer I work and live in the inner city and the more I observe what low-income people face on a daily basis and how the "non-poor" react to them and their plight, the more convinced I become that most Americans just don't understand poverty.

Poverty results from and is sustained by ill-informed public policy. The criminalization of poverty being a case in point. The move of cities to outlaw many of the unavoidable actions of the poor only serves to deepen the poverty the poor experience. Systemic, "legal" forces serve to institutionalize poverty in urban America.

By now many readers here are rolling their eyes, thinking, "Here he goes again!"

My apologies for coming across like a broken record, but I find it necessary.

If you want to gain a better grasp of what ordinary poor people face in Dallas and the other major cities of the nation, please take the time to read insightful essay that follows.

Some will be surprised to learn how the legal system attacks the poor of all ages and life situations.

This article is worth your time, I promise.

Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?

By BARBARA EHRENREICH
Published: August 8, 2009

IT’S too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it’s almost illegal to be poor. You won’t be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you’re well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life — like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the ’80s and ’90s. “If you’re lying on a sidewalk, whether you’re homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France’s immortal observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.”

In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with ticketing and arrests for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking, littering or carrying an open container of alcohol.

If poverty tends to criminalize people, it is also true that criminalization inexorably impoverishes them. Scott Lovell, another homeless man I interviewed in Washington, earned his record by committing a significant crime — by participating in the armed robbery of a steakhouse when he was 15. Although Mr. Lovell dresses and speaks more like a summer tourist from Ohio than a felon, his criminal record has made it extremely difficult for him to find a job.

Ehrenreich's article (read more here) is the third so far in a series that helps people like us come to grips with what it means to live in poverty. A Home Spun Safety Net (July 11, 2009) and Too Poor to Make the News (June 11, 2009), the first two installments of her extremely insightful series, should be read carefully by anyone who cares enough about poverty in the world's wealthiest nation to at least make the effort to understand the facts of the matter.

Reactions welcome here, as usual.
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Nothing to fear but our own fear. . .

For some reason people find it very easy to fear "the poor."

I suppose my experiences with poor folks over the past 30 years contribute to my lack of patience and my weariness with such ignorance. And, just about every day I gather some bit of new evidence that confirms and deepens my perspective on this matter.

There is no reason to fear "the poor."

Recently, I received a note written by Judy Lawrence, the Properties Manager for the Central Dallas CDC. She is in charge of leasing up our various housing properties, including the big project at 511 N. Akard, CityWalk @Akard that includes 150 affordable housing units and 50 set aside for homeless persons.

As we move closer to opening date, Judy spends much of her day interviewing prospective tenants.

Her reflections provide the latest evidence that our fears are very misplaced:

I've had 3 interviews for CityWalk already this morning. Each interviewee impressed me in so many ways....two young women with awful experiences in their lives - just trying to turn their lives around and one older man, currently living in his truck who, when I mentioned the one community room that was set up as a rehearsal room, eyes lit up and excitement filled his face and resonated in his voice. He was a song and dance man. He still loves to sing and dance - sang at festivals throughout Texas and the prospect of being able to do that again brought tears to his eyes. His voice cracked as he talked about how much he'd love to do that again and he ended by saying...I don't know what to say to which I responded...it is what Rev. King said...keep hope alive. He just left the office and he thanked me for giving him hope. My response, no sir, it is you who give us hope and we need to translate that hope into a reality.

All three people had lost hope - that is what CityWalk is all about. Take the politics out of it. Take the rhetoric out of it. Simply listen to the heart and it says it all.

Thanks, Judy, I needed that!

We just don't need to waste another moment on fearing one another.
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