Poverty, Right Before Our Eyes
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This is reprinted with permission from The News & Observer of Raleigh.
BY GENE NICHOL
In The News & Observer
Along with about 60 colleagues, I recently toured eastern North Carolina. We weren't loading up for the Outer Banks. Instead, we visited an array of the state's most economically distressed communities.
In partnership with the state NAACP, the Justice Center and others, we met with about 1,500 Tar Heels in Washington, Roper, Elizabeth City, Winton, Scotland Neck and Rocky Mount. The goal was to move past bloodless poverty statistics and dusty academic reports to, in the Rev. William Barber's words, "take the blinders off" and "put a face on poverty."
The "face" we saw humiliates North Carolina.
We heard of exploding demand at the food bank in Ahoskie - rife with employed, embarrassed, first-time users. We heard of parents so desperate to find food for their children that they camped out by the dozens, all night long, midwinter, to secure scarce canned goods. We visited a homeless shelter in Elizabeth City - learning that, citywide, 26 shelter beds were available. More than 1,000 people are homeless.
In Edgecombe County, ministers questioned our "official statistics," saying they polled their congregations and more than 40 percent are unemployed. Families described living without toilets in Gates and Hertford counties. Health care providers reported bending the rules to place oxygen in patients' homes to make it tougher, under law, for utilities to shut off service to impoverished, incapacitated customers.
I'm a dad. For 25 years I've experienced the world most viscerally as a parent. It tore, then, to see a young mother weep, explaining that, since the restaurant where she worked had closed, she'd been unable to buy Christmas presents for her daughter. Or to hear a young, unemployed college graduate, who had lost her housing, say she also feared she was losing the battle to convince her son, against peer pressure, that education was worthwhile.
Fathers tried to hide from their kids the fact that they'd been laid off. One mother, employed in commerce her whole life, now went door to door in the neighborhood, asking to do cleaning or take in laundry. Her kids were mortified.
In Winton, we learned of a 70-year-old woman who drives a school bus each morning and afternoon to ensure that she can care for and secure medication for her stroke-disabled husband. A daughter fretted for her not-yet-65 father, burdened with heart failure, who was unable to see a doctor until he can come up with $400. And, she knew, it could be worse.
A young woman from Colerain lost her husband, her aunt and her house in the April 16 tornadoes. Since she couldn't afford insurance, she now lives in financial as well as personal ruin.
The deprivation cascading daily in many of our rural communities can remind one of the Third World. I thought of schoolkids in Roper, preparing for the future, like my own, but flatly unable to secure access to broadband. Even in tiny, ramshackle houses, electric bills were astonishing - far exceeding those of much larger abodes in the Triangle.
A returned veteran, living outside Little Washington, described his exhausting, ultimately successful, 21-year fight to get sewer and clean water in his community. I sat with a representative of an international foundation as she testified. She said it wouldn't have taken that long in the Dominican Republic.
In Scotland Neck, the former mayor explained that 40 percent of the housing was substandard, out of code. But if they enforced the rules, homelessness would mushroom. Roads and social services in the black community mocked those in white neighborhoods across town. The civil rights movement seems to have bypassed Halifax County.
I could go on.
But riding home, I remembered the speech Robert Kennedy delivered at the Cleveland City Club the day after Dr. King was murdered. Famously, Kennedy decried the "mindless menace of violence in America," which once again "stains our land and every one of our lives." But Kennedy didn't stop with "shot or the bomb in the night."
For there is, he reminded, "another kind of violence, slower, but just as deadly destructive." This is "the violence of institutions, indifference, inaction and decay" - the "violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors." This is "the slow destruction of a child by hunger [and] homes without heat in the winter." This is "the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men."
And this too afflicts us all.
Gene Nichol is the Boyd Tinsley distinguished professor at UNC's Law School and director of the UNC Center on Poverty, Work & Opportunity.
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Comments
Bentpan 1 year, 3 months ago
All this after 150 years of Democrat control in NC, the ultimate condemnation of a political party whose biggest claim is empathy for the poor. Poverty creation to increase dependance on government to broaden their voting base is a more accurate plank in their platform.
The_AnonymusProfit 1 year, 3 months ago
We have known the situation of the poor for very long, what is the best solution for poor people? A combination of a social net to give them a boost while recovering and a steady job fostered by low unemployment. Our unemployment stats are an absolute lie, actual unemployment in North Carolina is close to 20% not the 10 that they want us to believe and not the 8.3% that Obama is touting. This state lives in a delusion of the worst kind.
JimHeim 1 year, 3 months ago
So, bentpan, just what did the Republicans do for the poor when they took control of the Assembly? Just wondering...
geoffcutler 1 year, 3 months ago
I thought this to be an incredibly moving and sorrowful tale. Getting beyond facts and figures tells a more powerful story. Yet by its end, I thought the same thing as Bentpan. If Liberalism and all its promises of entitlements, aid and state support are the way out of poverty, how can this possibly be? Not enough government spending, I suppose....
The_AnonymusProfit 1 year, 3 months ago
I agree with geoff, how is that we have been told for decades that entitlements will rid us of poverty, yet we still have poverty? after 80 years dont you think something should have changed?
Bentpan 1 year, 3 months ago
Unfortunately Mr. Heim, it will take time to correct and undo the failed policies and programs of your party. Fortunately Americans and North Carolinians are waking up to the democrat party and it's consistently negative views. Contrary to your assertions, conservatives are the true political optimists. We believe in America, her people and her industries. While we take pride in our country, her history, traditions and the greatness achieved, liberals come across as ashamed and anxious to show contempt for America and to disparage her values at every opportunity.
Bentpan 1 year, 3 months ago
BTW Mr. Heim I noticed you made no attempt to defend your partys' dismal record, understandable since there is no defence.
pacer 1 year, 3 months ago
Shame on the lot of you! Instead of bitching and pointing fingers, what are you going to do to help? ARE you going to help? I volunteer with a local organization that feeds the hungry. I contribute to the food drives. How to you contribte?
geoffcutler 1 year, 3 months ago
Don't want to hear it, bud. I've donated tens of thousands of dollars over the course of my life to those who need the help. And I'll continue to do it once Obama gets his foot off my neck and I can once again afford to.
skylinefirepest 1 year, 3 months ago
To put America back to work, Mr. Heim, you and your party of poverty have to go in 2012. I'm sick of Obama, his class warfare, his race warfare, his flaunting of the Constitution, his lies, and most of all...his apparent hatred of the United States. Get the foot of Obama off the American industry and we'll put people back to work. I'll say again, the best help is a hand up...not a handout!! Years of Liberal Compassion for the Poor has not worked...we now have about half the nation that doesn't pay taxes...we now have more people on the welfare rolls than at any time in history, we have people that have given up looking for a job because they know that while Obama and his crooks inhabit the White House and the Senate there will be no new industry, no new jobs, and worst of all no hope for change! This administration has put the country in the poorhouse and Heim and his liberal lefties want MORE CREDIT!! Incredible!! You should be run out of town on a rail, Mr. Heim, for spouting such stupidity....we've got to borrow more from countries that hate us so we can give more to green companies that are going broke after squandering millions and billions of OUR money. Mr Heim, you should be ashamed of yourself to be spouting such foolishness as telling us that having your unborn great grandchildren in hock for thousands of dollars the day they are born is a good thing. You are a fairly smart man, you know it's not true but your loyalty to the party of the poor is overwhelming your common sense!
JER 1 year, 3 months ago
geoffcutler: I don't want to hear it either, bud. Contributing to a PAC doesn't qualify. Besides, didn't you tell me in another thread that all your capital is wrapped up in large vehicles that are big, roomy, powerful and get poor gas milage? Some of us still contribute to charities that help the poor and disadvantaged. We don't use the current administration as an excuse.
lakeview 1 year, 3 months ago
Very well said wdd101st.
geoffcutler 1 year, 3 months ago
"Contributing to a PAC doesn't qualify." JER
That's really an asinine thing to say, JER. You have no idea what you're talking about.
JER 1 year, 3 months ago
geoffcutler: So you are saying that you have never contributed to a PAC? So you are saying that you do not currently contribute to charitable causes because of the current administrations policies? I don't know what I'm talking about? Please point out which parts are wrong.
geoffcutler 1 year, 3 months ago
Not that it's any of your business, but no, I have made no political contributions to either candidates or pacs. I was referring to charitable donations to worthwhile causes...coalitions with warm clothing, and food banks with non-perishable and canned goods. I was talking about filling Wal-Mart shopping carts full of new toys at Christmas time and delivering them personally to families whose parents can't afford them for their children. I'm talking about giving away free firewood in winter to families who can't afford to heat their homes. The kinds of things Churches and private citizens do because government fails so miserably at the job.
And you, JER, what do you do?
teufelhunden 1 year, 3 months ago
Whine and complain evidently. Such is the current state of things.
TreadLightly 1 year, 3 months ago
This column should be read in every public body in the state. Legislatures, Chambers of Commerce, Lions, Civitans, Jaycees, Masonic Lodges, Boy Scout troops, Hunting and Fishing clubs and every church in the state should hear it.
Each group should look at each case named, and ask, “Is this my calling—the justification of my existence?” “Do I have a part to play in solving the problems?”
Jesus said that the poor will be with us forever, and they will always suffer, but help and hope should be near at hand. But how to do it is the question which fifty years of “War on Poverty” has not answered.
Does anyone question why academia no longer studies real history and examines how well each type of government has worked out over the centuries? And why some turned tyrannical? Are the problems of government basically problems of human legislators and administrators acting like human beings? Many want to serve the people, but far too many grasp for power, jockey for position, enrich themselves as a side benefit and constantly campaign to keep the dream alive.
Does anyone have a rebuttal to Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” approach to government? Has human behavior changed since he addressed the issue? Is there some hidden flaw in his premise? I quote the first paragraph after the introduction:
“Some writers have so confounded society and government,
as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they
are not only different, but have different origins. Society is
produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness;
the former promotes our positively by uniting our affections,
the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one
encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions.
The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”
His explanation of the matter is worth your reading, just too lengthy to write here. But his beginning of that explanation is noteworthy in every generation.
“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even
in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an
intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the
same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a
country without government, our calamity is heightened by
reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
Government in the role of society lacks the affection which drives us to serve in our civic clubs and churches. And that affection would drive men to address poverty in a much more effective way than any government. And let those who don’t want to do their part do it their own way.
There is a reason that Jesus never asked one single government to help the poor! Besides lacking the love of God, government’s care never brings the gospel that would save an eternity of suffering that will make the locations named in this column seem like the Garden of Eden.
emb6683 1 year, 3 months ago
Matthew 26:11 John 12:8 Mark 14:7
JER 1 year, 3 months ago
geoffcutler: You are to be commended for your generosity. I don't have the "tens of thousands of dollars" you have contributed, but I have done what I could afford financially and made up the rest in giving of my time and energy. In your earlier statement you said that when Obama got his foot off your neck, you would return to contributing once again. The difference between you and me (besides the amount of wealth we each have to contribute) is that the political party in office does not dictate my charitable contributions.
geoffcutler 1 year, 3 months ago
JER, "tens of thousands of dollars over the course of my life" is not that big a deal. Giving is in your heart, not your wallet. It's engrained in you, and you do it because you know that even if govenment took 100 percent of your income in taxes in order to redistribute that wealth to the poor, they couldn't do it. Government hasn't done it and can't do it because its broke. Currrent entitlements are broke, and we're $15 trillion in debt.
When families worry that any extra dollars they're able to make at the end of the year are going to be confiscated by government, to run government, which is how families (and businesses) feel under Obama because taxes are about to go up, then they simply can't afford to do what they otherwise would when they are able to keep what they work hard for. That was my point about Obama having his foot on my neck.
All of this goes right to the heart of the difference between Conservatism and the bankruptcy of Liberalism.
The_AnonymusProfit 1 year, 3 months ago
You know if you look at the tax records of prominent democrats and prominent republicans, you will find that republicans donate by a landslide number more to charity then the save your soul democrats do.
geoffcutler 1 year, 3 months ago
There have been a number of articles which address that fact. Interesting...isn't it?
JER 1 year, 3 months ago
"Tens of thousands of dollars over the course of my life is not that big a deal." Again, the difference between you and me, Geoff. Kind of like when Romney wanted to wager a $10,000.00 bet. It was not that big a deal for him either.
DoubleHeroides 1 year, 3 months ago
@Treadlightly I feel as though you may have a misunderstanding of what Payne was saying in those quotations you provided. Payne did not say that government was satanically evil but rather that government exists to prevent the baser human desires from ruling out over anyone by “restraining our vices” by creating distinctions about what you can and can’t do. Does the Bible say not to kill? Yes. Did a government say it before the time of the Ten Commandments? Absolutely. Why else would Moses have run away from Egypt into the wilderness after killing the guard that was beating a slave?
The second quotation that you provided was a justification. It says that in a world without government we would have no protection (other than some anarchical Road Warrior kill or be killed Wild West system of street justice) from one another or the machinations of men with no scruples. But with government if we are subject to the same fears of being victimized by the machinations of men with no scruples (worse yet if those unscrupulous men are in government and cause suffering) we have to wonder why we are paying for a government in the first place.
I am not saying that I disagree with Payne in any way or am in favor of a bigger government, I’m just saying be careful how you quote authors because while those were good quotes I think you had the context wrong.
geoffcutler 1 year, 3 months ago
JER...you just don't get it, do you? You don't have to have money like Romney to make small charitable donations throughout any given year. Over time, those small donations, either in cash or in kind, add up. That's all. I guess I shouldn't expect you to get it. Especially since it seems like you just want to be contrary instead..
.
AFCHIEF 1 year, 3 months ago
JER, always want to bash Romney because he was successful and has money. Need to get over your jealousy. I wish I was as rich as Romney, never will be. BUT I DO NOT FEEL I"M ENTITLED TO GET HIS MONEY. I'll earn my own.
TreadLightly 1 year, 3 months ago
@DoubleHeroides: You have a good grasp of the purpose of government--protection. I hope that you have the same appreciation for the society side of the equation. For every desire that we may have, there is a group that will rise to fulfill that desire. Men wanting to fly will form a club and buy an airplane. Companies form to fulfull needs, and groups form to fill social needs. Churches organize to fulfill spiritual needs, and in the process, meet many other needs.
The only desire that government fulfills is to protect all of our property, companies and organizations from evil or theft. That is a "service" that you wish you did not need, and it will tax your resourses to provide it. But you need it. Paine never said it was Satanic evil, just something you wish you did not need. (In his example of men establishing a new settlement, they did not need government in the beginning, but as property accumulates and population grows, the evils of humanity will require it.
Government did not invent the law against murder. That goes back to Cain and Abel in Genesis chapter 4. Man has always had direction from God, and Cain, like Moses, knew that he needed to hide.
Governments in free countries generally follow "natural law," which is based on Biblical principles. We don't have the details of all that Adam and Eves were directed to do or not do, just a few basics. In the Ten Commandments and the other laws that went with it, great detail is given in Exodus chapter 20 on through Leviticus.
The point that I did not communicate well is that men in their affectionate associations are a better answer to fill the needs of the impoverished. When you try to elevate government into a "good" agency, and provide for the "needs" of the impoverished, you exceed its ability. It is the negative force that protects. Men in civic clubs and churches provice the positive force.
The additional benefit of local social solutions is that the men of the community will not knowingly support a drug habit. They will want to help the person out of his problems, not just furnish him three meals a day for his entire adult life. But government can't do that. They have "one size fits all" rules and they don't fit all.
We are so heavily taxed by a benevolent government that men don't have the money for great social works. And the government doesn't get the personal reform from each and every person that they serve. Rather, they foster far too many dependent clients.
Our whole aim should be to hit that balance of just enough government to meet its mission. And at present it is far to extended to survive.
geoffcutler 1 year, 3 months ago
TL....Yes! A nice way of putting it. I fear, however, it falls on deaf ears. But we'll keep on keepin' on.