Posted on 09/14/2005 3:32:33 PM PDT by HairOfTheDog
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
Yesterday as I sat and waited for an appointment with the director of a local agency for the homeless, I saw this quote on a poster on the wall. It's a great quote. I stared at it as I continued to think about the situation in New Orleans and the surrounding areas devastated by hurricane Katrina.
I've found the debate on Free Republic and elsewhere nearly intolerable in the wake of Katrina. As a political conservative with a long job history of helping the homeless and the poor, I have a much more complex view of people and poverty than some here. I am not one of those 'lucky' people who see only one small aspect of it and could therefore post quickly and sharply about what they saw. Those lucky people see losers who are receiving the deserved outcome for their poor decisions. They see lesser human beings and incompetent democrats as the simple and definable cause. It's not ~our~ problem, it's ~their~ problem.
When I looked at the faces of those people at the convention center, they were not foreign to me. I know them. I've spent years working with people who are poor and/or unemployed; some temporarily, some permanently…. Some good, and some very bad, and some still walking the line who could go one way or the other. They'll choose the path that looks like it will pay off. I've had impact at that moment of choice, in my work, and have helped some of my clients go the right way. Not all, but enough that I felt my desk and my job were not a waste of space and money. I learned a lot there.
I've learned from their stories that I had some things in common with them. I too, had spent some time being unemployed with a negative bank balance. I'd never sought help for it from some agency or charity, but that was because I had something they did not: A successful family and successful friends, who not only were there to help me when my life took a downturn, but also were there to expect more from me. These people, by and large, didn't have that. Many do not know anyone who ~is~ successful enough to help them. They may have seen successful people on TV, they may see them drive by in nice cars, but to the chronically poor those people look as foreign and hard to understand as street people do to the occupants of the nice cars. Neither sees the other as someone they could be. IMHO, they're both wrong.
But lets go back to the people in the nice cars for a minute, because they're the once I'm talking to now. The people posting on this forum who think they see the whole problem as the fault of the refugees. The ones that say it's not ~our~ problem, it's ~their~ problem. With that solved in their mind, they set out to post simple rants that make clear their view that they are superior to this problem, that they would never have been trapped the way the people at the convention center were. Those posters have seen all the conflicting images I have, but can file it neatly into their world view. They see only losers and looters, they see only people who they can't imagine being. And many punctuate their posts with simple racism that speaks more accurately than I would wish, of views that are still alive and well inside the republican voter base. To those whose only input is to classify this as a race issue I say you are not only outdated and shallow in your worldview, but unhelpful to those who will lead this country. You offer nothing we need.
I reject their views as not only wrong and uninformed, but as emotional and impractical as the world views often expressed by Jessie Jackson. To those who say these people are responsible for their own helplessness, or undeserving of help, I say "OK – close your eyes and think that. Now open them. Oops. They're still here. We still have to deal with the poor refugees of this storm. So now what?"
What do we do when we have to condemn an entire city and move them, willingly or not, somewhere else? It's easy to loathe the welfare programs these people have been living on when they were invisibly in the bad part of town…. Now the barrier that kept them from view is gone. The city that hid them from us has been condemned…. And man there's a lot of them.
I know well the people who will move in to help these people. They're good people, for the most part. I've worked with them and learned from them. When I was very new and conservatively naïve about charity and welfare and poor people, they told me the truth. The only difference between a social worker's outlook and the average suburban conservative's outlook is their assigned role in actually dealing with it. What the rest of us just opine about, they have in their inbox. They know who they're dealing with, they know which people can be helped, and they know which ones will not be helped. They help the ones they can, and they work their butts off and have a lot of good impact. I'm not talking about the leadership at these agencies, the ones who have to write grant proposals and talk in flowery language about helping the poor… And I'm certainly not talking about the pompous blaming bafflecrap we get from politicians. I'm talking about the front line workers… the ones who I've spent hours with, in break-rooms and in bars after hours, talking about our days.
Those who are very new to dealing with the poor often fit into one of two perspectives. They either(1) think that by classifying people as losers they have completed their participation in the subject, or they (2) think they want to help, and they think their acts of charity will be universally appreciated and accepted with the enthusiasm a stranded golden retriever would have toward their rescuer. These people aren't golden retrievers. They are people who bring with them such baggage as they could carry, often times the only baggage they have left is that they carry in their own minds. Some of them think life has been very unfair to them. And you know what? Some of them are right. These people have had a crappy thing happen to them with this storm.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
These people have been tested, and are still being tested, by this challenge. Some have indeed reacted to the situation with utter incivility. The media loves to focus on them, and so we saw lots of looters. It's tempting in a crisis to focus on the one thing that is the most obvious, to the exclusion of everything else. As a pilot, I learned to avoid fixation and keep working the problem in emergency procedure drills, that fixation on one aspect of the problem can lead you to fail to deal with the rest of the emergency. Those lessons apply to this situation as well. Yes, we know there was a criminal element to this crisis. But also happening are other crises that don't stop happening just because we aren't looking at them. Real people who's real ability to get over this crisis is being tested. They need our help, and they are worthy of it. They aren't foreign to most of us, if we sat down and listened to what they have been through. I could be them. If I had been caught by this hurricane, this 'evacuation order' at many points in my life, I'd have been unable to consider, at a moment's notice, to pack up what I could carry and leave my home, perhaps indefinitely, without help from anyone. I am a republican, I am white, I am female, and I could be one of them.
What do we do now? As republicans, what do we offer these refugees? See, they are not the only ones being measured by this crisis, we are too. We want to lead this country, we ~are~ leading this country, and it's in our inbox.
I can tell you what I ~don't~ think we should do. I don't think we should talk down to these people or talk down about hurricane refugees as some class of people who all fit in the same box. Simply writing them off as the undesirables is not an option. That's WAY too easy to say, and solves nothing.
While the rest of the shallowly political on both sides argue and blame and say ugly things, I want conservatives to be measured as being better than that. The democrats in this country haven't had a good idea in years. Now is our chance to look at this enormous crisis with the practical, compassionate, Christian ideals that I know we possess. We need to pitch in and help, with both our effort, and our good example, and we should not tolerate those on either side who would put these refugees in a box, whether it's out of low expectations, or out of fear.
This has been a long rambling post, I know, for those who have stuck with me, but that's what I was thinking about as I stared at the Martin Luther King poster at the shelter.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
~Martin Luther King Jr.
We also have lost some good Hisipanic Freepers, for the same sorts of reasons.
I absolutely am disgusted by the juvenile and racist comments by some here. I wish I had had the chance to ask them to stay.
Do a forum search for them. They didn't post a long winded goodbye vanity. They simply became disheartened and stopped posting.
I know they're watching what goes on here... and I don't think it's too late for them to come back.
WHAT?????
"This can be a wonderful opportunity or just a side trip through the world of poverty. New schools, new places - the cycle was broken and it remains to be seen if folks will get off their treadmills and help themselves. If not, they can stay in the box that others have defined for them, demonstrating how right those critics were about their morales and initiatives as Americans."
I so agree with what you have said. Each one of them has their future in their hands. And each one of us has a role to play in it too
My sister went to the shelter here in our city to work with FEMA on apartment rental (she works for a large property firm herre who had offered apartments the hurricane survivors). Mostly, they were afraid. They asked if the apartments were in "black areas" (which of course, they weren't, since our state enforces housing rights very strictly). They were afraid of our city...most had never been out of Louisiana. There were 3 sisters in their 80's, a couple with several children, a white nurse who had driven out after the hurricane in an old car and had nothing but his wallet and 3 sets of scrubs, on and on and on. Every one different, many distrustful of white people, bewildered, without cars, still unsure where relatives were.
My hope is that this disaster will turn out to be a blessing for many of them. Louisiana didn't do well by them, and perhaps in different states they will come to understand the promise of America.
Of course, the media is not helping; all they are interested in showing are accustations of racism and people who are complaiing. I think we all should remember that the media is NOT reliable, whether covering the Iraq War or the Katrina disaster.
They had one ugly thread too many.
I hope they come back to fight it.
Well Hair,
All I can tell you is what I see here in Tennessee. A nearby county, one of the richest counties in the state and maybe in the nation, has taken the evacuees into numerous very well organized shelters, complete with medical care, beds, showers,clothing, food, etc. and volunteers are busy coordinating jobs and applicants. These rich folks all over that county, and relatively rich folks all over the state have replicated that same effort at least all over our state, and I assume other states as well. Rich, poor and middle class across the board have opened their arms and their homes in many cases to these folks who have lost everything. Just about everyone knows deep down that they themselves could be walking in the same shoes in the blink of an eye. Quite possibly fear is what you hear coming from some people, fear that they, too, are one paycheck away from trouble with a capital "T" or one storm away from losing everything of any real value to them. None of us know how we would be if we had lived another's life, really.
Of course, the media is not helping; all they are interested in showing are accustations of racism and people who are complaiing. I think we all should remember that the media is NOT reliable, whether covering the Iraq War or the Katrina disaster.
You can say all that again.
Sounds hopeful, thanks :~D
Well done.
I've hated a lot about the fallout from Katrina. Some of it was about the local authorities, and some of it was about the locals. But a lot of it was about what happens to FR in major events of this type.
I enjoyed reading your post. I was driven away from FR for a very long time by the venomous ranting of so many people who obviously have never walked in the shoes of the individuals they judge so harshly. If I read the phrase "welfare queen" one more time, I thought I would hurl, so I stopped checking in.
However, the people here at FR are hands-down excellent detectives when it comes to major news stories, so when I'm really curious about a current event, I come here first. The bitter FReepers with knee-jerk reactions are still in full force and effect, I notice, yet now I uncover more and more people like yourself who take a more objective view of these issues. It makes me want to stick around and share my opinions without feeling the need to don asbestos gloves before typing.
As far the aftermath of Katrina goes, I have firsthand knowledge of the problems in Louisiana because I was persuaded to join my family here two years ago. I don't entirely regret the move because, on a daily basis, I encounter all sorts of surreal things that I never would have imagined up North. I spend a lot of time scratching my head and saying "No way, this can't possibly be true!" It's been a very mind-expanding experience, to say the least.
The one thing I have personally witnessed that is most astonishing about Louisiana is the fact that once you get on welfare, it is NOT cost-effective to work your way off of it. It boils down to the fact that wages are simply too low here to justify abandoning welfare benefits for them.
When I lived in the Northeast, I always thought that the minimum wage was something used to exploit illegal aliens and migrant workers. I couldn't even imagine a teenager rolling out of bed to work part-time at Burger King for less than $8.00 per hour. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that real native-born American citizens worked for $5.15 per hour -- but they do in Louisiana!
If someone gets off of welfare to accept a "good" job at, let's say the "princely sum" of $7.00 per hour, all their support systems are immediately yanked out from underneath them. How many people do you know who can afford to pay for their entire family's groceries, child care, transportation, rent, utilities and insurance out of a monthly net take home pay of only $1,000? Sounds good in theory, but it doesn't work in practice, and that's why so many welfare recipients return to the fold.
People can resent the impoverished New Orleans residents all they want, but at the same time, the government of Louisiana also needs to be held accountable for creating this vicious cycle in the first place. Aside from housing costs, the so-called "lower cost of living" in Louisiana is a deplorable myth and is no justification whatsoever for the miniscule wages here. Do the finger-pointers know there's a 9% sales tax, for example? What about insurance premiums?
I'll get off my soapbox about this now, but I just wanted to reiterate that FR needs more balanced reporting and not just vicious tirades about people whose circumstances they aren't well-informed enough to comprehend.
Thanks again for your comments.
Yeah - there's a frenzied hysteria around really big events. And I have a feeling many wake up the next morning and say "Did I really say ~that~?"
Some in our midst are just jerks. Sometimes I want to fight with them, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes it's fun and sometimes it isn't. This issue isn't fun.
Most times it's great spectacle. Grab your popcorn and watch. I still think this is the best forum on the net.
And here is another thing; I am well-read and watch a lot of news channels. I knew that Louisiana was apoor state, but I had no idea how those people were living. I am petty sure a lot of Americans were as stunned as I was.
Now, had those been folks living in Texas, we would have heard about it from the media non-stop. But since Louisiana is a democrat state, we never heard a word about this.
I have some serious questions for Mary Landrieu, let me tell you.
However, the people here at FR are hands-down excellent detectives when it comes to major news stories, so when I'm really curious about a current event, I come here first.
I often mock the FReeper Junior Detective League for taking themselves too seriously.... but you're right. :~D
That says something.
Just damn!
I am half-tempted to join them. Speechless
OK - Thanks for readin' my rambling thoughts and not kicking :~D
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.