I brought the church van to her house in our neighborhood. She
and her five children needed to get out of the house in the middle of the
afternoon while her boyfriend was out looking for some drugs. The one hundred
year-old wood frame house was falling apart. The front door was only partially
on its hinges and most of the windows were either broken or missing. The house
stank. While the electricity was on, neither a single fixture nor outlet was
safe. About a year later, when another family was in the house, it burned to
the ground.
On this particular summer afternoon
we loaded the van with all the clothes worth saving, along with some personal
items. I stored them in the basement of the church, away from the sight of
church members, lest expose her to embarrassment. She found a shelter, and
eventually got herself on her feet. Her children today, are at many different
levels of health, mentally and physically. Thousands of Detroiters live this
life every day. Millions are in similar situations all across urban and rural America . What
is going to happen when these millions of Americans realize they are a growing
minority, perhaps future majority, stop working just to survive, and revolt
against a nation that does not have their interests in mind?
As the transfer of wealth from poor
and middle class to rich increases in size and scope never seen before, our
national leaders have grown incapable of speaking the word, “poverty.” If we
hear it even once at either of the national party conventions this year it will
be a shock. At the same time, right wing Christian leaders give these same national
political leaders cover by keeping them focused on issues like opposition to gay
marriage, abortion, wars against contraception, blaming women for rape,
attacking Islam and making up fake causes like battles for religious freedom. (By
the way, all of these causes raise both the politicians and the religious right
huge sums of money.) Meanwhile, they use tiny portions of vast resources to
start conscience soothing food pantries while ignoring the root causes of
poverty and the growing power of the super rich.
The Christian right may be damning
itself to hell, but the rest of the country does not need to go with it. Christian
history and theology is founded on building power for those on the outside. Jesus,
the embodiment of God on earth, went to the places of deepest division and not
only brought healing, but gave power to those who never had it before. When the
empire of Rome
took everything away from them, Jesus gave it back.
Make no mistake about it; the
number of outsiders is growing. While the major parties speak about the middle
class, shrinking from sixty three to fifty-one percent of the population over
the past two decades, they must also speak about the poor. As voter suppression
through de facto poll taxes, the purging of voter records and unconstitutional
targeting of communities of color grows, so will the anger.
When the
economic and political elites of Detroit
got together to begin to address poverty and the disempowerment of its
citizens, their most creative solution was the building of casinos. The casinos
further drain our local wealth and add to the poverty in our neighborhood. The
powers that be did not come to the citizens of our community offering expertise
on Swiss bank accounts, advice on starting a superpac nor an outline to start a
ponzi scheme. Most of us stopped believing in our economic and political
leaders years ago.
Our nation’s history says we only prosper
when we expand and not contract ourselves. Ironically, it is also the message
of Jesus. We prosper when we expand the inner circle and the number of people
connected to the resources of our economy, our political system and our
educational institutions. It is happening outside of traditional structures. In
Detroit and
elsewhere we are building our own businesses, at the beginning edge of creating
our own food supplies and at the very start of bringing together communal
interests at a large scale. Those living with low incomes have always done
this. People of color, women, the LGBT community, communities of the disabled
and many more outsiders have always been the creative centers of survival and
hope. However, as the numbers of outsiders grows, so does our willingness to
work together and form new partnerships, perhaps more than we have seen before
this generation. Micro-development, the building of local power and resources,
will be the key to the next generation’s building of wealth in communities of
low income.
The poor,
such as the woman who fled her own home that summer day, will have their power.
It may take a generation or two, but as Dr. King reminded us, the arc of the
moral universe bends, and it bends toward justice. Will justice come through
the working together of community, the leaders and the people they serve, or
will it come with non-violent or violent revolution? We have not hit rock
bottom yet. As wealth continues to be distributed from the poor to the wealthy,
people are beginning to wake up. It may take another generation or two, but if
we continue on this trajectory, revolution will come and it will change America forever.
The need for a President Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Lyndon
Baines Johnson is necessary. Their commitment to addressing poverty and
strengthening the power of those falling through the safety nets saved America in
their respective generations. Anything less than such a commitment from the
major parties and their candidates for any office will leave those on the outside
wanting. So far, the party conventions appear to be a repetitive exercise of
political masturbation, a lot of noise and excitement without touching a single
person and producing no results. The future of America is held in tension, and if
things keep heading in the direction they are, those of us preaching
nonviolence and peace in communities of poverty will soon lose all authority,
and maybe we should.
