To me, equal rights for all is political. Everyone is legally equal, or should be. As a historian, one can look back to view the progression of equality–votes for women, etc. As a political activist, I’m also keenly aware that not everyone is equal. Racism and economic hardships plague our country. I feel like, no matter how much I would like all to be equal in every sense of the word, there are others who wish to bring people down for their own benefits.
No one should have to go hungry. No one should have to live on the streets. No one in what we call the freest, most democratic country in the world, should have to go without health care or without efficient health care coverage. And, most of all, no one should have to go to other countries and kill others in the name of imperialism. And when I am president, we will all hold hands and sing Kumbayaa around the campfire, which will be simulated as a courtesy to asthmatics. The end.
Describe a particular organization, person, or moment in history that helped to mobilize a meaningful change in equal rights for all.
Seriously? You want me to choose one? You’re killing me, here. All right, then. I’m not sure why, but when I first read this, I immediately thought of Helen Keller. Helen Keller is billed as a disability hero, but she should really be recognized in schools as a Socialist or reform hero. And it’s not fair. We’re all taught about the “miracle” of a deaf and blind child learning how to communicate with the outside world in public school, but we’re not taught what Helen Keller went on to do with her abilities.
Helen Keller’s disability story is taught to children with the meaning that anything is possible if they try hard enough, but Keller herself recognized how lucky she was thanks to her wealthy parents. She famously said that “the power to rise is not within the reach of everyone.” This is why she became an advocate of the disenfranchised. Keller spent most of her life trying to make a positive change in the world around her. She partnered with the NAACP to fight against racism. She supported the IWW and labor unions, saying that “I became an IWW member because I found out that the Socialist Party was too slow. It is sinking into the political bog. The true task is to unite and organise all workers on an economic basis. It is the workers themselves who must secure freedom for themselves.”
“I was appointed on a commission to investigate the conditions of the blind. For the first time I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human control, found that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed of employers. And the social evil contributed its share. I found that poverty drove women to a life of shame that ended in blindness.”
This weekend, I attended the National Equality March in Washington, DC. On the way there, we drove through New York City’s Bronx. On the George Washington Bridge, I looked out and saw the Manhattan skyline in the distance and recognized immediately the Empire State Building. Growing up in Arkansas, New York City is so far away, it might as well be another planet. I’ve seen photos of New York City my entire life, but here I was, looking at the Empire State Building with my own eyes. And I stared. Meanwhile, Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” came on the radio, and it seemed like the most perfect moment ever. I actually started dancing in the backseat to Miley Cyrus.
Just the night before, I had been discussing regional differences with Sister Susan after watching a movie called The End of the Line, which was supposed to take place in Arkansas, but I felt reflected nothing about the Arkansas I knew. As it would turn out, a lot of what I experienced the weekend would be a lesson in regional differences.
As I told Sister Susan, that movie’s Arkansas is not my Arkansas. Their Arkansas has no morals: they curse, drink, and generally Act Trashy. There was no reference to the baby Jesus or church or anything. Not even the old people act the way I was taught to act, the way any Dignified person acted in Arkansas.
I often find myself pondering regional differences since coming to CT. See, there’s this girl I know from Ohio. I’m not going to lie–she aggravates me to no end. Why does she aggravate me? Because she likes to say she’s from the South (SHE IS NOT SHE IS NOT SHE IS NOT *throws things*), but then she doesn’t act like anyone from the South (she grew up in a family of atheists! GASP. She didn’t even know who Abraham was in our religion class last fall! Can I just say I rest my case that HELL NO is she from the South? I rest my case). She grew up on a farm, so I feel like we should have a lot in common (I was in 4-H my entire childhood), but I was taught that people that act like her are pieces of trash. She thinks you can’t have a good time without drinking. She talks about all these beer games I’d never heard of before meeting her. When she was telling me how she was going back for Thanksgiving and Christmas last year, she said her family would be drunk the whole time anyway, so it was all good. My family? My family has lead the anti-alcohol campaign in my home county twice now, winning both times. You have to drive 34 miles on mountain roads to get alcohol because my county is dry, as are all the counties around it.
But it’s not just alcohol that made me feel like this movie isn’t like my Arkansas, or why I have a problem judging my classmate as a drunkard piece of trash. It’s the way the women are dressed. I remember mom once throwing something at CMT when I was about nine and some woman came on the screen. She threw something at the screen and yelled that she was a slut–but she didn’t say slut, because slut is a Bad Word in mom’s vocabulary. Skank? I don’t really remember. I think it started with an s, though, and I was told when I quickly repeated my new word to my friends at school that it wasn’t a curse word. At any rate, this lady had interrupted mom’s Grand Old Opry or gospel singing or whatnot with her commercial, and I still have no idea who that woman was, but mom wasn’t happy with that blonde woman dressed in the teal business suit laying in a suggestive come-hither pose on our screen.
Because, you see, it’s about morals. My mom always talked about how there’s different kinds of poor. My mom and the cousins that lived next door to her growing up (etc) were poor, but they weren’t trashy. Both families were very religious (Baptist). My granddaddy lead singing in church a lot. Once, mom told me when she was a toddler, she threw the Bible on the floor in church in a tantrum, and granddaddy took her outside and spanked her and told her not to ever throw a Bible on the floor again, and she didn’t. (In fact, ever since hearing this story, I feel oddly guilty if I drop a Bible, as if I were the one spanked for it.) Both families had a high emphasis on education. When my granny was in school, she went all twelve grades, which was unusual for a girl at the time. Not only that, she graduated top of her class with only one B her entire life. Unfortunately, this was during the Depression, so she couldn’t afford college, even though she desperately wanted to be a nurse. My mom fulfilled my granny’s dreams for her, though, by graduating college and becoming a teacher and a librarian. One of my cousins also became a teacher–one of the best in the district, everyone said, until the day she died within a month of being diagnosed with brain cancer two years ago. It was her death that really inspired me to reevaluate my life and apply to grad schools.
This is the world I know, of Jesus and overachieving, and it not mattering that you have any money because the library’s free and pinto beans are cheap and every summer, we only eat what we grow and what we find at the farmer’s market anyway. I know a world of being taught to be morally pure for Jesus, and overachieving and not desecrating one’s body because your mind and your soul are all you have for sure in this life. I was told over and over by my granny that “they” can take away everything you own, but they can’t take your mind or your soul, so you need to learn all you can and make the best life for yourself that you can through the powers of education–education achieved by not destroying your body or your mind through sins like drugs and alcohol.
This is the world I know, and I was taught that poor people who acted the way my classmate does (though, she is obviously rich)–drinking, partying, being lazy, etc–are trash that I should not associate with.
So, I’m from the whole entire world that my classmate doesn’t even know exists, and she wants to say she’s from the South? No. Just no. Likewise, another guy in a class this year told me he’s from the Midwest (dunno where) and said it’s pretty much the same thing as the South. No. It’s not.
This trip to DC taught me that no matter where I go, I will always be a Southerner, for better or worse. As a Southerner, I was taught to be polite and care about the welfare of total strangers and to give in to a certain extent to keep the peace. At the same time, I also bear witness to generations of hate and disparity, and I say no more. I was raised by Celtic tempers in a historically militaristic society. I grew up in a society that wants to oppress others just because they can, and I grew up putting up with it because that’s the way life was, while watching the adults in my family not tolerate oppression directed towards themselves. (This is a fancy way of saying my mother is a bulldog and can be slightly terrifying and regularly humiliated me throughout childhood by being quite willing to verbally maul anyone that pissed her off in the least. On an upscale, when my seventh grade advanced English teacher wanted me to write my SS# on my spelling test and I, instead, wrote that it was “none of her bees wax,” and when I was, consequently, called to her desk and asked if my mother would approve of my talking to her that way, I quite confidently said “yes,” and took my seat.)
I write all this having had quite a tiff with some of the campus GLBT group that were my travel companions. It’s a long, dramatic, stupid story that ends with me telling the president to go fuck herself over the phone and hanging up on her, then ditching the entire group and taking off on the DC metro by myself. At one point, no one would answer their phones, so I took the metro to the airport and was standing in the Delta line waiting to buy a ticket to Hartford when I got a voicemail from one of them. By the time I had reconnected that night with the group, those riding in the same car as me had apparently forgiven the others for what they did, but I was still ready to throw the Quaker peace testimony out the window and punch someone in the face, I was so mad. I remembered then, of course, that when people in New England get mad, they don’t really mean it, or it doesn’t mean they hate you and want you to die. I, as a Southerner, am quite capable of remaining mad as hell for 150 years, thank you very much. I’ve been taught to be polite and keep the peace–up to a point. After that point, I become like a cat and never, ever forget what you did to piss me off so much, and may or may not regularly seek vengeance upon you. I’ve learned that I can tell I am nearing this point when I start speaking with more and more of a Southern accent. When I reach this point, I try to reevaluate the situation and calm down. This time, however, I passed the point of reevaluation and went into full-out rage and listened as my accent became thicker and thicker. Now, it seems all other parties involved are completely blind to the entire thing, while I continue with the memory of how angry they made me and my own disinterest in taking their shit, because, as a Southerner, I’ve already taken so much shit. As I walked around DC, I recognized the ordinary oppression I’m so used to in Arkansas, that I hardly ever experience in New England. None of my travel mates mentioned any of this, and looked at me strangely when I griped about a jerk of a Capitol policeman who ordered me around just because he could. As I was crossing the street at the mall going towards the WWII Memorial, a crazy guy in an ice cream truck playing creepy ice cream slasher tunes yelled at me that equal rights was horseshit and something about “Communist.”
The idea with all of it is to cause fear, to cause me to yield and be afraid of them and respect them through my fear, to obey. What they don’t understand, though, is that my brother is a Klannist, so anything they do seems like child’s play to me. I will not yield or be made to be afraid, and anyone that thinks otherwise is greatly mistaken. As a Southerner, I have a history different from anyone from any other region of the country, a history of being known for slavery, civil rights, hatred, and hospitality. No matter what other regions might have in common, like agriculture and a love of country music, it is not the same and it will never be, and I will not be made to be afraid because I have seen true hatred in my own home that they cannot even imagine.
I find I’m having trouble truly caring about my studies this semester. I find myself weighted down by suddenly irreverent studies. “Why should I read about British furniture fanaticism in the 19th century? Don’t you know there are people dying in Iraq?!” I want to yell at my professors.
My classmates discuss things I suddenly find to be pointless drivel before class: fast food restaurants, shopping, sports, apartment adventures, homework whines. I find myself distanced from them, unable to understand the point of discussing such things. Do you know how many uninsured Americans there are? Do you ponder why Connecticut is the richest state in the country, while Hartford is one of the poorest cities?
I find myself thinking not-so-nice thoughts about classmates who talk about calling the police on neighbors. I find a distance between our realities. In my reality, I walk through the ghettos by myself with schizophrenic old men yelling at me and dirty homeless men following me until I cross the street, and I am unfazed. In my reality, I sometimes have conversations with complete strangers of all different races and economic statuses waiting on the bus or on the bus. In my reality, I buy huge bags of apples for the homeless when I, myself, don’t have a job right now. In my reality, a homeless man with a buggy full of ramen noodles boards my bus and I want to cry because that’s all he can afford to eat. In my reality, I once walked across our campus with a rainbow flag draped about my back like a cape. In my reality, I start conversations about feminism, peace, racism, tolerance, GLBT rights, religion, and politics with just about everyone I know (including the campus nurse, who told me she found one of my soldiers and it now stays on her desk) and find out what their beliefs are. In my reality, every day is a protest and every day is a chance to learn more about the world around me and to inspire others to do so as well.
In the reality of my classmates, they see homeless people as Others to be feared and, most definitely, not someone to sit down next to at the bus stop. They see poor people and minority poor, in general, as Others, and don’t consider that the police may treat minorities very badly for no reason, because they can. Though some of my peers are not from New England, either, and have been in New England longer than me, they do not see what I see. When I helpfully told a classmate last semester which buses to take to get to the airport, she gave me a look like there was no way she was ever getting on a city bus, thank you very much, even though the bus would take her straight to the terminal door and it would only cost her $1.25, as opposed to about $50 in a taxi she had been telling me she willingly paid. When I listen to my peers talk, they describe other people with my level of enthusiasm as “crazy.” They ignore me when I offer to take care of a problem with a creepy stalker at our apartment complex. I, too, have become an Other to many of my more mainstream peers. “Crazy” people question the status quo. “Crazy” people don’t care about fashion. “Crazy” people don’t care what other people think of them.
I love it when class discussions turn to something I feel is actually important. I love discussing inequality in history and reflecting it back to our present-day world. I feel energized when I try to make a difference in the world around me and try to educate others about the injustices I see. I feel like a lot of people don’t even notice. I feel like a lot of people stay in their comfy, insulated worlds–or, they’ll see an injustice or something will bother them, but they won’t do anything about it. At some point, I crossed the line between silence and speaking up and found it to be an amazingly transformative experience for me, but the rest of the world didn’t come with me. At some point, I stopped being afraid of going back home for Christmas and, instead, became energized for the epic battle of the millennia between my hate-mongering brother and myself. Looking back over my life, I feel like becoming an activist was a natural progression for me.
This story comes from a reader. As tolerance is a frequent point of discussion on this blog, I felt it important to reprint his words. As you read it, ask yourself: what do you do when you pass by beggars? Do you look them in the face as equal human beings, or shyly drop coins into the fedora without stopping?
I don’t know why people hate. I see more and more of it every day. I used to think it was just me, but there is a prevalence about it that cannot be denied.
A few weeks ago, on a sojourn from a captivity enforced by infirmity, and completely jonesed for nicotine and caffeine, I took to panhandling the CBD. I was dressed for the part, in all the fine troll regalia one would acquire from UnderTheBridge.com, and the disheveled look of three nights in the missions. I scribbled “Change we can believe???” on a piece of cardboard, selected a high traffic corner, squatted, displayed my sign and upturned fedora, hanging my head in the manner preferred by the less assertive of the disenfranchised, and waited.
Traffic passed with coins and the occasional bill dropping into the hat. Diligently keeping the hat’s bounty moving into the courier bag between my legs, I was careful not to make eye contact. Until Herself arrived. She took a position directly in front of me and forced my gaze by repeating in ever more stringent tones, “You there! You there!”
As my eye met hers, I saw the hate. She matched my stare, briefly, then began a tirade while shifting her focus from side to side, like she was seeking support from other passersby who were still dropping coinage in my hat.
“Who do you think you are? You have no right to be here. Decent people have to walk these streets. Decent people shouldn’t have to put up with drunks and drug addicts living on the sidewalk.” (I am neither, by the way. Not anymore. Promise.)
One passerby, who appeared genuinely incensed by her display, dropped a twenty into the fedora. At that point, realizing the commotion was drawing unwanted attention, I rose to repair to the nearest smoke shop. She screamed. I am imposing, once fully extended, and I may have betrayed my feeling of revulsion with a grimace. But I intended no threat. My only desire, escape.
Within a heartbeat, she was joined by three other pedestrians concerned for her safety. Having still not spoken a word, I was allowed to move along, to the end of the block, anyway, when the police arrived. Herself was quick to come to the aid of the constables, who had more difficulty in controlling and subduing her now obscene remarks than they did handling me. I was searched. My bag was searched, money counted, ($53.35!), and I presented my papers. During all this, Herself was quick to point out not only was I a public health hazard, (poverty is contagious), but a significant risk to national security. The longer I remained silent, the more vehement she became. Pedestrians began to take an interest, again. By this time my ID had come back from the computer check as valid. To mollify Herself and the gathered group of pedestrians, for my own safety they said, the constables took me to their headquarters. They sat me in a hallway and said, “Wait here.”
As soon as they were around a corner, I gathered my truck and calmly exited the courthouse. I made my way to a convenience store, purchased myself some custom rolled store-bought beauties and a machine-made latte. Fresh from a repast of Kool Filter Kings and a Folger’s latte, I boarded the transit and rode to the south end of the valley, outside the jurisdiction of the constables. I made my way to a favorite coffeehouse for a much needed hand built coffee, a bagel, and some free internet on their computer. A check of email revealed a need to get back to my current abode in order to calm the worries of concerned housemates. Having become accustomed to my peripatetic ways, they were nevertheless concerned when the constables called to verify my identity and residency.
Less than a week later, I was back in the CBD for a visit to my VocRehab counselor. The meeting was set at a coffeehouse bookstore, a favorite of downtown professionals. I agreed. It was four doors from where I panhandled the $53.35 not quite a week earlier. This time, of course, my appearance was slightly different. Gone were the troll clothes and tattered Borsalino, replaced by Carhart, JCrew, and a redneck approved Harley-Davidson baseball cap. I was cleaner, more shaven, and freshly scented. I chose a comfortable chair and perused a copy of the local newspaper while enjoying a rather good, but expensive, latte.
I heard, “Is anyone using this chair?” And I looked up from the paper. It was Herself.
I was dumbstruck. She gave me quizzical look and a smile and I stuttered out a negative. She sat down across the coffee table from me and began to strike up a conversation about a story in the paper.
“The City Council is going to meet tonight and THEN we’ll be rid of these beggars.”
Our City Council is trying to make begging in the CBD illegal. It’s a perennial issue for them. Every summer transients and the poor from around the area will use our city as a stopping point, a crossroads, in search of where they belong. And just as perennial is the outcry from business owners and pedestrians, decent people, who are offended by the presence of the disenfranchised, the forgotten. It never results in anything substantive, but it always returns, like a noxious weed.
For twenty minutes she regaled how she and a dozen or so people had chased this filthy beggar off the street after he assaulted her for not giving up her change. I was surprised she didn’t recognize me as I’m rather, shall we say, unforgettable in a physical sense. (Think an oversized mutant cross between Charlie Manson and Osama Bin Laden.) Then I realized something.
During our previous encounter, she had never really looked at my face. No one had. Not Herself, the pedestrian supporters or the constables. All had conveniently avoided looking directly at my face. But yet she looked at me now, as she spouted in subtle tones, the territorial imperative held sacred by decent people. She seemed proud of the hate she unleashed against the beggar. And she seemed to be eliciting approval from me.
“Don’t you agree?” she said.
“No, I do not,” I began but was interrupted by the arrival of my counselor. She looked at me as I rose to greet the arrival, and when I looked back at her, she screamed. It may have been another grimace of revulsion, because she recognized me now. At this point, it was she who was dumbstruck. But not for long.
“How dare you,” she began, the hate in her voice rising on cue.
“To dress yourself up and come in here like normal people. Who did you beg those clothes from? And the money? Did you beg that, too?” At this point she was on her feet and drawing attention.
The counselor moved between Herself and myself, shocked by the display. The barista came over to ask her to be quiet. The entire compliment of consumers shot progressively disapproving looks. She became self-conscious, gathered her belongings and stormed through the doors. I was treated to apologies and a free latte.
“She’s in here every day,” said the barista, “I just don’t know what her problem is.” Others joined in the apology and were equally dismayed by her behavior. The common sentiment was, “I just don’t know what got into her.”
Hate got into her. It showed her, for a brief moment, what it was turning her into, before it lashed out in self-defense.
My counselor and I finished our meeting without incident. As we rose to leave, a customer approached us. It was the man who earlier in the week, dropped the twenty in my fedora.
“I recognize you,” he said. “Looks like things are getting better. At least for some folks.” He smiled.
“Don’t tell anybody,” I said. “It’s bad for business.”
Those people didn’t hate who I was, they hated what I was. It may have been fear, fear from knowing only a tenuous strand of material worth separated them, the decent people, from me, the beggar. It may have been bigotry or prejudice born of environment or even suffering. I don’t know. But it was hate, and it was disturbing. Especially when, at the coffeehouse, when she recognized me, I could see in her eyes the realization of what she had become and the guilt over her behavior. But it quickly disappeared and hate returned. She could not accept her actions as anything other than completely righteous, and faced with confrontation, fled, lest she damage her self-image as decent people.
I have received notice from The City I have been issued a citation for Public Begging and Aggressive Panhandling. I can either pay the twenty dollar fine, or go before the Bar of Justice and plead. I’m not sure how I’ll respond. But it will get me into town next week, and I think I’ll be stopping somewhere for coffee.
According to this . . . articulate . . . blogger, it can. (I wonder if disabilist language means anything to this person?) Let us respond to this in Red Skelton Pledge-of-Allegiance form.
It’s insanity.
First of all, congratulations on causing me to disregard you at the very second word in your entry. This is truly impressive. That said, insanity is a legal word, meaning such unsoundness of mind as affects legal responsibility or capacity. Thus, you’re saying that the US cannot govern itself or be held responsible for its actions and requires a legal guardian to make all decisions for it. That’s not insulting at all. I overlooked the antiquated term “nervous breakdown” in the title, giving you, perhaps, poetic license for such melodrama. Now, you see, at word number two, it becomes clear to me that you have no concept of modern psychology or the meaning of your own words. Further, at word number one, you have no concept of proper conjugation. “It is insanity?” The United States, itself, is the epitome of legal insanity? Do tell. Now, see, I must continue reading this drivel just for my own giggles at what such a brilliant mind could create.
It’s insanity, war, homelessness, job loss, food shortages at pantries, request for food stamps at a record high, crime is rising, people fear for their health, robber barons bankers sucking us dry.
It would just be mean to point out that this isn’t a complete sentence, wouldn’t it? In fact, it’s just a jumble of thoughts with no connections or point. Despite the improper conjugation at word number one, this sentence lacks a verb; thus, it has no action. That said, I pray tell what you, dear blogger, are doing to change any of these things. Are you protesting the war? Are you helping the homeless? Donating food?
robber barons bankers sucking us dry
Robber baron bankers? While I could write a dissertation, I, instead, will leave you with this and the sound of me giggling.
The country is having a nervous breakdown
Can a country have a “nervous breakdown?” Can a country have any mental affliction? If so, where is the mind of the country located? I want to guess Montana, buried deep beneath that big sky country; or, perhaps, in the Appalachians of Kentucky or West Virginia, among those purple mountain majesties. If someone were blowing me up on a regular basis for coal, I’d have issues too. If a country has a mind, where is its liver? I can only be corny and guess the wine country of California.
and surrounding this malady
malady, n. any disorder or disease of the body, esp. one that is chronic or deepseated.
If this “insanity” of which you speak is not a one-time “breakdown,” but is, instead, a chronic malady, this means it’s not going to go away. Alas, our poor country is going to have to live with its issues for the rest of its life. How do you talk to a country about its problems? How do you tell a hunk of earth that you’re there for it if it needs a shoulder to lean upon? How do you force a country to take its medication and smile again? Perhaps this has been going on so long, it can no longer remember what it was to truly be happy. Perhaps it can only think of the inequalities in its life, instead of those spacious skies and amber waves of grain. Perhaps while its citizens killed each other and poisoned it and neglected one another, it saw everything, while the rest of us turn our heads. Maybe when we don’t see that beggar, the country wishes it has hands so that it could spare a dime, brother. What if we are what sickens the country? What if we need the help and the country is only responding in the way anyone who witnessed such abuse and was unable to do anything to stop it would?
are the vultures ready to scavenge the vulnerable – the tattered signs of an uncivilized, barbaric and criminal nation. We’re loosing justice and tossing the rule of law out the window and when that happens we also lose mercy.
True, it is only now in recent history that we have lost “mercy.” When the first explorers raped and pillaged the Native population, there was mercy. When innocent colonists were hanged as witches, there was mercy. When human beings were used as slaves and considered 3/5 people, there was mercy. When Native children were separated from their families to be “civilized” at boarding schools, there was mercy. When 146 people died at the Triangle Shirt Factory fire because the doors were all locked and there were no fire escapes because the bosses didn’t want the workers to take breaks, there was mercy. When the Japanese-Americans were rounded up and placed in internment camps during WWII, there was mercy. When those perceived to be gays or Communists were tried by the House Unamerican Activities Committee in front of the entire country, there was mercy. Never before in the history of our country have we acted as “vultures”–uncivilized, barbaric, criminal, or merciless.
Next to the Civil War this is a very low point in US history, simply because we’ve lost the most important thing any great nations could acquire, trust.
Again, your perceptiveness baffles me. How wise of you to think that our current problems even begin to compare to the Civil War, when half the country seceded from the Union and the issues of slavery and freedom for all turned brother against brother; American against American. Let us go have a picnic and watch our countrymen die in battle before our eyes. Oh, what’s that? The current war isn’t shown on television the way Vietnam was, so we easily place it out of our minds unless we get our news from independent media?
Also, I’m so glad you mentioned that every country in the world trusted us before this war. Could you remind Venezuela and the majority of the rest of Latin America about this? ‘Cause, see, they’ve seemed to think we were imperialists ever since we invaded them back around WWI for their oil and such. Wait, where have I heard this story before? Don’t tell me . . .
While searching for information about the Church of Christ and abuse last night, I somehow came across the website of a congregation in Nebraska. The homepage of this congregation was so truly special, that I felt it warranted its very own entry.
First, there is the introduction: Why, hello, this is our congregation’s name and this is our town and state! Then, straight to business, you heathens: The church has no bowling league, no softball team, nor does it sponsor a Boy Scout troop. We have an air-conditioned building with several rooms for Bible classes, but there is no kitchen, no banquet hall, no gymnasium, or party room. There’s no phone, no lights, no motorcar, not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, we’re as primitive as can be.
Well, that’s peachy. Your utter depravity is priority numero uno. World, we shove our peculiarities (Ex 19:5) upon you. Now persecute (Matt 5:11) us, please.
Perhaps you are wondering what kind of church is this, or what the church offers the community. Quite simply, we are a church that follows after the pattern of the New Testament. We are not a social club, nor a civic organization, nor a political forum, nor a welfare institution. While the influence of the church and its members are felt in all these areas, the church, itself, is none of these things. The church is a spiritual institution, which administers to the spiritual needs of its members and the community.
The part of this that originally stood out to me was this: “nor a welfare institution.” Oh, well I know the lack of compassion from my own home congregation towards fellow human beings. While sometimes poor/homeless people would stop and ask for assistance, they had to prove that they were members of The church before any help would be rendered. This, we were taught in Bible school, was to keep the loafers away, the people who couldn’t possibly really need help. These people, we were taught, liked to go from church to church living off other people’s money so they could continue to not work since other people felt sorry for them. What these people really needed was, perhaps, some Biblical literature and a promise of prayer before being escorted back to the door and locked out. Depart from me, I know you not (Luke 13:27), you bloody effing heathens. Now, excuse me, I must go scrub my skin with pumice.
When an F4 tornado destroyed my town when I was eleven, I told my Bible school teacher that we should do something to help. The only way she would agree to do this, however, was if I could think of someone from The church who had been affected, which I did. We loaded up tons and tons of stuff for a family that used to go to our church, the son of which was in my grade in school. The daughter acquired many of my old clothes and books and toys. My mother really went all out going through our stuff to donate after the tornado. My Bible school teacher’s tiny car was packed with stuff. And that boy never spoke to me again, which continues to baffle me to this day.
We deplore the fact that so many religious organizations have smothered the true purpose of the Lord’s church beneath civic, social, and domestic affairs. They feed hungry souls with hamburgers, but we feed the soul with the teachings of Christ.
The thing is, you can feel that soul all you want, but if someone is hungry, all s/he is going to fixate upon is the churning pangs in his/her stomach. As for the earlier paragraph’s bit about following the example of the New Testament, I present to you Matthew 15:32.
Then Jesus called his disciples unto him, and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days, and have nothing to eat: and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.
Then Jesus fed 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread and some fish.
People learn from examples. As the saying goes, “You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?” The church of my childhood likes to say that it’s the only one going to heaven. It likes to say it’s the one true church founded by Jesus Christ. Then, it turns around and acts nothing like Jesus.
Where Jesus went around chillin’ with his peeps, the hookers and the lepers (Mark 1:40-42), telling them there was a fountain open for all (none of this whites only nonsense), the church of my childhood can only tell people they’re going to hell. Instead of effecting a positive change upon the world in the spirit of Jesus, they turn others against Christianity. All women go to hell. Women can’t pray–oh, they can, but god won’t hear them. My brother that died when he was six months old went to hell. My Baptist grandparents went to hell. So, when are you going to get baptized?
They use rules and restrictions to cripple the souls of others. Funny, Jesus wasn’t accepted in his lifetime, either. He was an outsider that dared preach that everyone was equal and to practice civil disobedience. He put other people before himself–and he was killed for it, killed for questioning authority because he loved other people so much, he didn’t care what the government or anyone else thought. While the church of my childhood is so certain that they were created in the image of Christ, they even put it in the name, just so everyone passing by would know that they were the one and only church of Christ. Yet, it seems to me that they are more Roman than Christian.
This question was asked on the Arkansas Times’s blog recently in regards to how vehemently Mike Ross is against Obama’s healthcare reform. In fact, he’s so against it, other Democrats in the US House of Representatives created a document to show how badly people in his own district–my home district, the 4th District of Arkansas, where I still vote (but not for him, thank you very much)–need help.
First of all, let us review the statistics about my home district. The 2000 census listed its population at 666,266. The median income in this district is $29,675. This is lower than not only the national average of $49,133, but also the average Arkansas income of $37,653, provided by the Little Rock metropolitan area and northwest Arkansas, one of the fastest growing areas in the country which has yet to feel the results of the recession, home to Wal-Mart, Tyson Foods, and J. B. Hunt trucking. Arkansas’s 4th, however, is home to the timber industry, farmland, Hot Springs National Park, Mike Huckabee (we’re sorry), and part of the Mississippi Delta, one of the poorest areas of the country. John McCain swept the district with 58% of the vote last year, and George Bush before him received 51% in 2004. In summary: poor, religious-right Republicans, farms, trees–and my family. The very sort of people who cannot afford healthcare.
One mustn’t look over a very important detail in this story, however: Mike Ross is a pharmacist from teensy, tiny Prescott [that's prez-kit] (median income $21,612, thank you very much). In fact, until May 2007, he owned his own pharmacy, making him a small business owner, just like so many others in his district, and just like my own father. Yet, as he’s done time and time again in the past, Mike Ross has gone against the better interests of people in his own district–people who voted for him, and will continue to vote for him because he presents himself as a good-old-boy, rated A+ from the NRA for his opposition to gun control (a major issue in rural, red Arkansas). Thus, despite being a Democrat, Republicans–such as my brother–love him. In fact, no Republican bothered to run against him last year. One lone Green party member did, whom I voted for, knowing full-well he would be thoroughly walked upon with Ross’s 87% of the vote.
I think “hate” is too strong a word. I think “disregard” is a better one. Mike Ross, why don’t you care about the people in your own district? When are you going to stop looking out for number one, and start remembering whose votes elected you in the first place: the poor, uninsured, hardworking people of your district. The photos above and below are photos of my hometown and other parts of the 4th District of Arkansas.
This question was asked by a speaker at the National Assembly to End the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She asked four questions, and asked the audience to stand and remain standing if the answer was yes to any of the questions for us or anyone we knew. While I don’t remember all the questions, the first was “Have you or someone you know lost their job as a result of the recession?” and the last was “Have you or someone you know suffered from increased mass transit fares?” I, along with almost the entire audience, was standing from question one. By the end, I don’t think anyone was sitting.
For some reason, my mother has the tendency to think I am always one step away from starvation or the street, despite my assurances that I really do comprehend the concept of saving my money. (She told me once it was her job to worry. Sigh.) When I was growing up, my parents had four kids and a tiny three bedroom house. When my younger-older brother died, my parents had to scrape for the cash to bury him, and they never, ever forgot the lesson that sometimes, bad things happen, and bad things are very expensive. So Dad worked from dawn ’til dark, six days a week most weeks, and Mom saved as much as she could through not taking me to the doctor or the dentist, and often not having food in the kitchen. When I turned sixteen, my parents saved still more money by not teaching me how to drive, thus keeping me off their auto insurance.
When I got my first job–a horrid, sweatshop-esque minimum wage job in a candy factory–I felt rich. My parents had only ever given me $5/week allowance, and now I made more than that in an hour. So I saved almost every last penny I earned burning and cutting my hands on brittle that was a boiling blob in its gel form and sharp as glass in its brittle form. Later, I would use this money to pay for taking the GRE repeatedly and for a plane ticket to Providence. I moved to Connecticut with $500 to my name.
The difference between my mother and I is that I don’t worry. I know I will be okay and things will work out. I know I need very little to survive. I don’t think about the things I do without–tv, furniture (that didn’t come from the dumpster . . .), etc. I’m happy. I have my computer and wifi and an amazing apartment and my pets and tons of friends and a bus pass that can take me almost anywhere I want to go in the area, and I feel rich for this. I have no money, but I love my life right now. When I first moved into my apartment, I just laid down on the carpet and smiled. Interestingly, it was my mother who said countless times throughout my childhood, If you pray, why worry? If you worry, why pray? Why, indeed, Mother?
I grew up hearing stories from my granny and my Uncle George about the Depression. To quote my Uncle George, “Times was hard, but we didn’ know it. We’s all in the same boat, and we was happy.”
The Somali Civil War began in 1991. Last month, the Somali government declared a state of emergency and begged international help. It’s estimated that hundreds of thousands have died in years of war–400,000, according to this website.
Rapper K’naan was among the last able to immigrate with his family to the United States in 1991. While his father was an intellectual in Somali, he was a cab driver in New York City. K’naan uses his experiences to create a mixture of hip hop and protest poetry. He has rejected the gangsta rap cliche, saying:
All Somalis know that gangsterism isn’t to brag about. The kids that I was growing up with [in Rexdale] would wear baggy [track] suit pants, and a little jacket from Zellers or something, and they’d walk into school, and all the cool kids would be like, ‘Ah, man, look at these Somalis. Yo, you’re a punk!’ And the other kid won’t say nothing, but that kid, probably, has killed fifteen people.
One out of every 100 people in America is homeless. While those at or under the US poverty line is officially 1/8, a more realistic figure is 1/3 families barely making ends meet. Coming from one of the poorest states in the country, poverty seemed completely normal to me because just about everyone was poor. The popular idea of people in Connecticut is that everyone is rich. When I moved here, I learned that, while Connecticut may be the richest state in the country, there are still an amazing number of poor people working factory jobs to make that other percentage of people rich. It’s been said that if Hartford had a high enough population to be counted, it would be the second-poorest metro area in the country. How is it that the second-poorest city in the country is in the richest state?
Glenn Austin spent time getting to know the homeless of Madison, Wisconsin photographing their daily lives. The greatest points he wishes to show the rest of the world is that homeless people are just people too and, while the rest of the country tries to forget them, they take care of one another like a family. You can see his photos here.
Gender Across Borders asks, “What does “equal rights for all” mean to you?”
I find I’m having trouble truly caring about my studies this semester. I find myself weighted down by suddenly irreverent studies. “Why should I read about British furniture fanaticism in the 19th century? Don’t you know there are people dying in Iraq?!” I want to yell at my professors.
While searching for information about the Church of Christ and abuse last night, I somehow came across the 
This question was asked on the 
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