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Our Will to End Poverty

by Poverty Scholar Laura Rodgers
Poor Voices United
Toms River Congregational Church
January 30, 2011

“The poor will always be with us.” This often quoted phrase taken from John is what my friend the Rev. Liz Theoharis calls the biggest roadblock she faces in a effort to end poverty in her work at the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary.  Many have a false sense of this passage and hold it up to keep harmful structures in place. The goal of the Poverty Initiative is to help develop religious leaders with a foundation based on justice and ending poverty that will turn these structures upside down.

I know you all are the choir today because our little church does so much to address poverty through our charity mission projects and we fight injustice justice! I think of why so many of us sought out and joined this little church- we became Open and Affirming in such a strong way!

Individuals and our societal structures claim “The Poor Will Always Be With Us” to mean we must accept that poverty is an ongoing reality and we should do our best to alleviate it with charity.

I feel this phrase is not a proclamation for us to create charity and human services for the poor, nor is it telling us to resign ourselves to the fact that there will always be poverty.

The gap between the rich and the poor is now so wide and growing every year that many say the middle class is gone and that we should really look at who we think of as poor. Families are no longer a couple of paychecks away from insecurity but cannot get by with their current income because of increased costs of living or a healthcare crisis. Many have become the long term unemployed and are the forgotten in our current Jobless Economic Recovery!  I think all of us can relate to moving toward the poverty end of the gap.

This is happening to us in the richest country in the world!

I’ve thought a lot about this during the week as communities across the state Wednesday completed a one-day count of individuals and families experiencing homelessness. This Point in Time count focuses on those living outdoors and in shelters. In Atlantic County where I work and surveyed I interviewed so many who responded they have been homeless for over 1 year and can’t find work.  I met several people who are stuck because they can’t afford to purchase a $30 birth certificate that will then enable them to obtain proper identification and then will bring possible welfare or employment.  It seems unbelievable that $30 is so out of reach. It has been a sad and heavy week. I’m part of the committee that is now data entering the surveys and I can’t help but think how each piece of paper represents a person, a family, suffering, dreams on hold, strength, despair, talents, love and injustice.

Jesus was charitable to the poor and suffering but he was also political and sought justice. He declared that the often invisible and abused should be seen and heard and valued!

He teaches us that we need Charity and Justice.

I’ve worked in human services as a social worker for nearly 20 years. I’ve helped individuals and families one on one with what I hope to be helpful services and charity but often I feel that maybe the very fact I’m there is what keeps injustice going.  Perhaps the agency I work for and I keep the status quo in place too well.  Sometimes I think if we could just use half our budget to give families the funds they need the resource may be better spent.

When human service providers are so busy with charity and services and the ever- growing accountability that comes with providing them we can’t organize and call for justice. For example when the banks were bailed out they didn’t have to account for what they would do with the funds. But…When social services agencies were awarded stimulus funds to help families recently, they were threatened with prosecution if their accounting wasn’t precise and timely.  The agencies even had to adopt a specialized computer management information system that the government can pull reports from.

Some economists and social scientists have talked about ending Extreme Poverty in the world. I believe in this and don’t want to see any people suffer in ways that we can end. The trouble I have is that this defines poverty in a way that negates the experiences of millions who also suffer. Poverty is Poverty.

This analysis can lead us to think that we need to focus on so called Extreme Poverty because this is where the world’s resources can be successful.

I’ve seen first hand how harmful this thinking can be. In doing street outreach in Atlantic City looking for people living outdoors I met a woman who refused help because she had read about the poverty in Africa and thought they needed more help than she. This while she had frostbite and talked about being a victim of violence on the street!  She had internalized the Extreme Poverty and scarcity analysis.

I’d like to say that today we can feed the masses of poor in the US and across the world and we don’t need the miracles of bread and fishes (although there are plenty of miracles we do need!). We don’t have the scarcity of resources as in the times of Jesus. There is no lack of food, clothing, shelter or healthcare today, only a scarcity of will.

Let’s leave the adjective Extreme for exciting sports events and home makeovers!

I feel…

Suffering is Suffering!

Hunger is Hunger!

Homelessness is Homelessness!

Poverty for all who experience it can be ended!

Perhaps up to thirty years ago or more ending poverty would have been difficult, but not today. We produce and waste food, housing and healthcare. We can move things around the world so quickly. I’m still amazed by Amazon and how things just show up on my doorstep and how the container boxes I see at ports get things across seas.

Some figures say in the US we waste about 27% of food produced.

There are an abundance of vacant housing units in our country; especially luxury units and most upsetting to me are the vacant low-income units.

This along with unknown wasted government resources illustrates to us that we do not have a scarcity problem as we are so often made to think.

We heard from Jim a couple of weeks ago in honor of MLK Jr. In his last days Dr. King and his movement were beginning to call for an end to poverty and a new freedom church of the poor.
In Dr. King’s words…

The dispossessed of this nation–the poor, both white and Negro live in a cruelly unjust society. They must organize a revolution against injustice … against the structures through which the society is refusing to take means which have been called for, and which are at hand, to lift the load of poverty … The only real revolutionary, people say, is a man who has nothing to lose. There are millions of poor people in this country who have very little, or even nothing, to lose. If they can be helped to take action together, they will do so with a freedom and a power that will be a new and unsettling force in our complacent national life … Those who choose to join … this nonviolent army, this “freedom church” of the poor, will … develop nonviolent action skills.

Let us pray…

Dear Jesus,
When we see poverty and suffering we see you. Help us to become that unsettling force and speak not for those experiencing poverty but give them the pen and microphone to tell their own stories. Help us to call out when scarcity is named as the reason for poverty or when we hear “The Poor Will Always Be With Us” Guide Health & Human Service systems to provide Charity and Justice by ending poverty in your name. Amen