Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire

 

 

February 22, 2004

 

 

“The Undeserving and the Forgotten”

 

 

Rev. Kathy Duhon

  

 

               About a year and a half ago, a group of us in this congregation studied the present welfare system with a curriculum from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.  We began by exploring the stereotype and myth of the “undeserving poor”.  We have long based U.S. poverty policies on the idea that some people in need deserve help and some do not.  An able-bodied adult without dependents may live in dire poverty in this country, but will probably receive no assistance.  Those considered to be deserving are children, elderly, and the disabled. 

               In a model of scarcity, this triaging of needs might make some sense, but we have never been a nation that did not have enough resources to take care of everyone’s needs, except perhaps during the Great Depression.  Why are the undeserving so designated?  Because society believes they could make it if they tried – this is a character judgment – they are lazy or conniving or would just take advantage of folks if allowed.  This character judgment is based on the myth that the undeserving poor don’t work – they actually do.  An Urban Institute study found that 80 % of the so-called “undeserving poor” had jobs, many full-time, yet they earn less than $20,000 a year, not a sustainable, living wage.  

               We have a growing population of the working poor, who are just not making it, singles and families.  Here is one woman’s description of the way the current system affects people, “It is incomprehensible to me that a ‘successful’ welfare story is someone who is earning $6 an hour and can’t earn enough to support her children, doesn’t have medical/dental insurance, can’t afford quality and nutritious food for her children, and will not be moving up the economic ladder of poverty.  She still qualifies for food stamps and for child care assistance but somehow is a ‘success’ story because she is off the dole.”   

               At a recent minister’s meeting, we were greeted with this statistic:  2 million Americans this past year filed for bankruptcy, which is more than graduated from college and more than filed for divorce in the same time period.  The presenting minister from the UUA explained that these aren’t reckless over-spenders, another version we have in our mind of the “undeserving”, but good people, middle class folks, who just got in over their heads.  To emphasize his point, he identified 2 ministers in that room of about 20 of us who had declared bankruptcy, largely because of a debt overload that came from their theological school days.  We have more unemployed folks as our jobs leave the country; we have working poor and a growing lower middle class taking on record amounts of catastrophic debt to make ends meet, and all of these people are deserving of a better life.

               Unfortunately, the results of this grounding myth of an undeserving poor is that our policies are often punitive and judgmental, and not based on real need.  Our current system of welfare has specific limitations on benefits, and the expectation of employment within 2 years, which means that many people are working at jobs that do not support their needs, but get no help to bridge the gap.  We have placed parents in the category of the undeserving poor when they run out their time limit on benefits, and we therefore put their children at risk.  Did you realize that parents who have another child beyond the “family cap” are not given assistance for that child?  That and many other current policies hurt the child and hurt the whole family.  

               Doesn’t everyone deserve to have certain basic needs met?  We can still have healthy, accountable, policies that offer a hand up, not a hand out.  We don’t have to encourage people to be lazy, conniving, or take advantage – we can have accountability and programs that give “a hand up”.  Instead of working to reduce welfare caseloads, we should work to reduce poverty through all kinds of positive solutions.  Job training and education, guaranteed health care and high quality child care, earned income tax credits and a livable minimum wage are all positive ways of helping reduce poverty without judging who deserves and who does not.  How can you help positively reduce poverty?  Vote, write letters, call your representatives – these ideas and more are all do-able in our country.  Or help directly, here in our community.

               When we helped organize the People’s Pantry in Great Barrington a few years ago, we decided to assume that everyone who came through our doors deserved to be helped, a radical idea.  There were the nay-sayers:  I was told that some folks would drive up in Cadillacs to pick up their free groceries, (seriously).  I haven’t seen that.  We ask the shoppers to fill out a very brief form that does not ask them to prove anything, not their citizenship, not their need, not what they deserve.  We ask for their income level only to provide information which grants require, and we ask for family size for the same reason, and in order to know how many groceries they need.  We know that sometimes the income can look adequate, but the family has other issues – often health-related.  Maybe this is the month that they need all the available cash for prescriptions, or to fix the car, or to save for a month’s security deposit on a more adequate apartment, or whatever, and our little food pantry stretches those dollars.  There are no undeserving poor.  Everyone deserves help.     

               Today we begin our “Guest At Your Table” collection drive for the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.  They are an important group for education, advocacy and action when it comes to peace and justice issues here in the United States and around the world.  I relied upon UUSC materials for some of what I have presented so far.  They have monitored the real changes for people since the ‘96 reform in welfare assistance programs, giving important feedback to legislators for policy making.  UUSC is in coalition with many advocacy groups and has made it their business to seek justice and support for those in need.  So please take home a box and fill it up with your pocket change over the next 6 weeks and think of those whose lives will be better off because they have been a guest at your table, and are the deserving recipients of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s advocacy and help.

               Well, it’s bad enough that we treat folks in this country who are in need as “the undeserving”, but what’s worse is that we do not even notice the greater needs of those suffering in the rest of the world.  They are the largely “the forgotten”.

               I received this e-mail in January from my 18 year old niece Julie, who is studying in India.  “I just want to tell everyone to stop drinking coke.  I'm so disgusted by their actions in this area.  Currently, there is one case against them in the courts, and there was a ruling against them not long ago.  The one in the courts now has to do with their stealing ground water from villages in northern Kerala (the state where I'm living). Thousands of families have dry wells because of Coca-Cola.  The other case which ended recently had to do with "unacceptable levels of weed killer" in the coca-cola being sold to India.  While the courts ruled against Coca-Cola, there is no effective way of enforcing the ruling, so the coke around here continues to be toxic.  I find such actions by huge companies absolutely repulsive and I thought you might agree... so I thought I'd spread the word.  Right now, two of my friends (who I met here) are up in Mumbai at the World Social Forum, it will be really interesting to hear what they have to say when they get 

back next week.”

               (Of course, it’s not just Coca Cola.)  But did you realize there was a “World Social Forum” last month?  Probably not.  How about the Kyoto World Water Forum held last year?  Our news media has barely noticed the huge conferences and activists who are deeply concerned with the most basic issues of life, like drinkable water.  You probably heard about the Johannesburg Earth Summit in 2002, which had UU representatives.  Did you know that the governments who attended in Johannesburg set goals to cut by half the billion people in the world who lack clean water and cut by half the 2.4 billion who are without adequate sanitation?  Maybe you didn’t realize that a billion people don’t have drinkable water, but a group of us do notice that problem each year when we take our Habitat for Humanity trips to Central America.  The water varies in how sick it can make the North Americans, and even the locals, but there is no running water that is clean enough to drink anywhere we have gone.

               I can imagine what W.E.B. DuBois, a champion of the so-called ‘undeserving’ and the globally forgotten, would have said about the dire current situation and the strong predictions of water shortages around the world in the coming decades.  We celebrate W.E.B. DuBois this weekend, because this is Black History month and because our native son was born here on Feb. 23rd in 1868.  “The problem of the twentieth century is the color line,” W.E.B. DuBois said a little more than 100 years ago.  I’ll update that:  “The problem of the twenty-first century is the water line.” 

            Last century we worked on the problems that divide us down the line in terms of color and other surface characteristics.  We have been overcoming the inequalities and injustices and prejudices that issues like race and gender and religion and sexuality and age and ability have posed.  We haven’t finished erasing all those lines that divide us by characteristics, but we have made some progress.  Now we face the lines that divide us by class, by income, by the most basic issues of survival.  The water line is the symbol of our new century.  Those who have drinkable water face those who do not, who are sick and dying for lack of water.  Those who must pay for what was formerly a right will be on the other side of the line from those who have free safe drinking water and still pay $7 a gallon for those little bottles of water extracted from someone else’s groundwater.

            I picked up a wonderful book at our General Assembly in Quebec, written by a couple of Canadians, Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, called Blue Gold:  The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World’s Water.  They write, “The hard news is this:  humanity is depleting, diverting, and polluting the planet’s fresh water resources so quickly and relentlessly that every species on earth – including our own – is in mortal danger.”  Our fresh water supply is in trouble for many reasons, including pollution, and a growing global population, but also because of the privatization of water.  It used to be one of the commons – no one owned it, like the air – but now it is commodified.  The World Bank claims that water is not a human right, only a human need, and so it is up for sale.

            Fresh water is renewable only by rainwater, and we rely upon only 34,000 cubic kilometers of rain annually.  The fresh water is stored as groundwater, which is being extracted at a rate greater than it can replenish itself, all around the world.  And rain water has a hard time getting into the ground because of all the concrete, so much more flows into the ocean, being lost as fresh water.  Industry uses 20 to 25 % of the world’s fresh water supplies.  It takes 105,000 gallons of water to produce a car.  The U.S. computer industry uses 396 billion gallons of water to make computers every year, leaving 79 billion gallons of wastewater.  Extracting oil to make gasoline takes water, as much as 9 barrels of water to one barrel of oil produced, in the worst situation, and the water that is used is mostly unusable after the oil drilling process.  Crop irrigation uses 65 to 70 % of the water, often wasted and polluted. 

            According to the United Nations, 31 countries in the world are facing water stress and scarcity.  It is estimated that by 2025 water demand will exceed availability by 56%.  Since the billion folks already without fresh water are forgotten, we are breathlessly unprepared for this crisis.  I am including a short piece from the book I referred to that has ideas for what can be done to promote water security.  I encourage you to pick this up and consider what ways we can help, from our vantage point upstream, where we are not suffering the lack of water, where we are not forgotten, where we know we are deserving, as is everyone.  The whole world deserves water.  Everyone deserves to have their basic needs met.  This is our religious task – not to forget anyone, to advocate for everyone’s needs, to truly believe that all deserve to live and to live well in this world.  Amen.