Back in January 2003, when our city council here in Charlottesville, VA, was debating whether to declare the city a “City of Peace”, I went to the council chamber to speak, along with many other citizens. The main points I tried to make– in response to the argument that “issues of war and peace really aren’t the business of the city, but of the federal government”– were that this war is not going to be a cake-walk; that it’s going to be much, much more lengthy and expensive than anyone in the administration is telling us; that the cost of the war will be met in good part by the Washington enacting heavy cuts on basic social-service funding; and that the effects of that would be felt in every single city and county in the country…
Yes, I confidently (and corrently) predicted all those things.
We “won” our argument in city hall that evening. C’ville proudly became one of a couple of hundred cities across the US to declare itself a “City of peace.” At the national level, however, we lost. The antiwar movement was quite unable to prevent the Bushites’ invasion of Iraq…
Here we are, three years later.
I spent 16 of the past 18 hours working with a fabulous project we have here in town that provides very basic services to homeless people. This is run completely by a group of local churches– and our one Jewish temple, and perhaps some other non-Christian congregations as well. Basically, throughout the months October-April, the congregations take turns opening up their premises or classrooms for two weeks at a time to provide a hot dinner and overnight accomodation to up to 40 homeless men. PACEM, the coordinating group (Peole and Congregations Engaged in Ministry) does the registration process, provides the cots, and also a (very) little counseling and supplementary help to the guys, like job referrals etc.
This program runs in parallel with the larger one run in town by the Salvation Army in town. The Salllies have very strict rules. They don’t let in people with substance-abuse problems, and they subject their guests to heavy-duty proselytizing. (Oh, and they have an employment policy that explicitly prohibits the hiring of gay people.) PACEM has lower barriers for registration (though absolutely no illegal substances are allowed on-site), and it imposes no religious requirements on the guests.
Last night I cooked up a bunch of chicken pieces for the guests, helped with food-service, and then stayed as an overnight volunteer in the place the guys were staying. Our Quaker Meeting is doing this project as a team with a great Black Baptist church in town– First Baptist on West Main. They are well-organized, and bigger than we are. They have a lovely mid-19th century brick church. We serve the food in their basement Fellowship Hall. Then the guys sleep in two apartments that the church owns in a nearby building.
I only got a little time last night to spend talking with the guests. Many– perhaps most– of them are working men. Yet the amount they earn is quite insufficient to allow them to find rentals in our overheated real-estate market– even though quite a number of the men work punishing shifts that mean they can’t even get into their beds till past midnight, or else they have to start work at 3 a.m. or whatever…
One I talked with last night was a few months out of prison, and still hadn’t found a job because of the prejudice against ex-convicts. Another was working on tape-recording some stories, anecdotes, and reflections from his life, with the plan that a friend would transcribe and perhaps even publish these stories. He had a great, gravelly voice, a lively wit, and a natural story-teller’s talent.
I would say most of the men were older than 40. Many seemed to have chronic ailments, including a couple of cases of bad tremors, stiff joints, balance problems, etc. At least one that I talked to was a Vietnam-era veteran…
I said above that PACEM was a “fabulous program”. At one level I certainly think that. Far better that these basic services are available to the men, than that they not be. (Women and families who approach the PACEM intake office get given a voucher at a local motel, since there are not enough of them to organize a whole shelter for them. Also, during the summer months when PACEM doesn’t operate, many of these men sleep on the streets or in cars; and at least a few of them set up campsites in the woods around. I tell you, John Steinbeck, George Orwell, or other chroniclers of the 1930s would find it all very familiar.) I also really enjoy working on almost any joint project with my fellow-Quakers– and this one, working under the leadership of our African-American neighbors at First Baptist, is a particularly rewarding one.
I enjoy, too, the chance to get to know some of these men, even if it’s only a little, and even if it’s under the slightly disquieting circumstances of them needing some basic charity services.
But then a whole further side of me is outraged, outraged , at two levels. Firstly, that our society is organized in such dysfunctional and hard-hearted way that these men, most of whom are gentle and talented people (and nearly all of whom would be such, if society hadn’t given them so many hard kicks along the way) are essentially tossed out on the trash-heap of the market economy and left to fend for themselves. And secondly, that even though everyone runs the risk of going through hard times in life, this society here in the US is organized in such a mean-spirited way that the government takes no responsibility for providing even the most basic kind of a safety net that would ensure that no-one has to sleep on the streets or go without at least one hot meal a day.
This, in a time of unprecedented consumerism and greed for those that “have”.
American society is so backward!!!! I grew up in the UK. And though I’m sure that the social safety-net there is not as robust as it used to be, still, compared with the situation here in the US things there are organized in a considerably more compassionate, rights-respecting (and let me say also efficient) way.
I would be entirely happy to have the taxes my family pays doubled, or more, if I knew that in return for that we could have a functioning National Health Service (instead of 45 million citizens here quite lacking medical insurance, as at present), a strong nationwide program to improve the schools in low-income areas, and social-service departments in every state that were routinely expected to bring the state into compliance with basic international requirements regarding economic and social rights….
So clearly, what we really need to strive for– and most especially, here inside the US– is longterm structural change. That’s why, though I wrote a smallish check to donate to PACEM this year, I wrote a much bigger one for the Virginia Organizing Project, which describes itself as,
- a statewide grassroots organization dedicated to challenging injustice by empowering people in local communities to address issues that affect the quality of their lives. VOP especially encourages the participation of those who have traditionally had little or no voice in our society. By building relationships with individuals and groups throughout the state, VOP strives to get them to work together, democratically and non-violently, for change.
So yes, here in Virginia, nationwide, and globally, I am strong advocate of deep structural change to build a society of human equality. I have wrestled, internally, over the years with the question of whether to work on that, or whether to respond to the many appeals that come my way for some form of “band-aid” (Elastoplast?) relief.
But the way I see it now, it’s not either/or. I can do both. And certainly, having experiences like the one I had last night helps me to understand at a more human, intuitive level the urgency of working for deep structural change. So really, the two kinds of activity are synergistic. Human Equality Now!!!