January 20, 2013
“The curse of poverty has no justification in our age.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
This past week, Julie Parker Amery and I attended a “poverty awareness day” at the NewburyportCity Hall. In response to a project of students at the River Valley Charter School, Poverty Awareness Day was proclaimed by Mayor Holladay as a way to annually bring awareness to the poverty that exists right here in our midst. Speakers representing several local social service agencies and churches, including the Salvation Army, Best Foot Forward, Pennies for Poverty (now chaired by our own Michael Sandberg), Central Congregational Church, and the Pettengill House provided firsthand information about the extent of poverty here in the greater Newburyport area.
The work of these groups and many others in our area attests to the fact that while Newburyport may look like a pretty affluent community—and considering that a majority of folks here make more than $100,000 a year, it obviously is—nonetheless, at least a thousand folks among us find themselves in severe poverty, defined as having an income less than $18,000. These individuals and families constitute an almost invisible component of our community. But it’s even worse than that: more than 200 kids in our local schools are living in severe poverty, and many of those kids are homeless.
The statistics statewide are pretty shocking. There are around 50,000 homeless students in Massachusetts. Shelters around the state take in around 3200 individuals per night. At the same time, around 2100 families also are seeking shelter. On a recent Monday, 1600 families were being housed in motels around the state, including some right here in our own community. Of the Pettengill House’s 2700 clients, 540 are homeless.
Poverty, according to a definition offered at the Poverty Awareness Day program, is defined as “the inability to participate in the activities of normal living.” I’m going to guess that that definition even includes more than a few of us, either past or present. It could include quite a few of us in the future if we become ill, go through a divorce, or encounter any number of other crisis situations.
City Councilor Ed Cameron, who works in the field of homelessness, used the metaphor of flying to describe the situation of many in our community. Most Newburyport residents, he said, are “flying closer to 30,000 feet” and can afford a bit of turbulence in their lives, such as an illness or other crisis, because of the nature of their jobs and livelihoods. But there are many who can’t afford to get sick or stay home with a sick child for even a day because they run the risk of not being able to pay their bills or of losing their jobs. “When you’re cruising at low altitude,” Cameron said, “any turbulence can make you hit the ground.”
The causes of poverty in our area are various. They include a lack of education, which is a key to getting out of poverty; the high cost of housing here and in surrounding communities; substance abuse and mental health issues; and domestic violence, which accounts for around 40% of homeless families. For many folks right here in Newburyport, there is not enough money, no place to go, and no safety net of family or friends to help them over the rough patches that inevitably, unless we are incredibly fortunate, come to us all in this life.
Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we are celebrating today, was not only interested in combatting racism and achieving civil rights for people of color in our country. Perhaps more radical than that was his vocal opposition to the Vietnam War and his work to alleviate poverty. We shouldn’t forget that his Great March on Washington in 1963 was not only about freedom, but also about jobs. As I reminded us in my sermon on King last year, King’s assignation in Memphis, Tennessee took place not in the context of a civil rights demonstration, but of King’s support for striking sanitation workers. King wrote,
The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization. . . . The time has come to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.
Early in the year in which he died, King wrote presciently that,
Most people who are poor in this country are working every day and that is not said enough. They are working here in Washington and in all our cities. Working in our hotels, they clean up our rooms. . . . They work in our hospitals, they work in our homes. . . . Most of them are working every day, working sometimes sixty hours a week, working full-time jobs and getting part-time incomes. These are problems that are very real.
Unfortunately, very little has changed since then, and things may even be worse now than in 1968.
As someone who has worked on the front lines, so to speak, of this dilemma for thirty years, I can tell you that King spoke the truth. Here at the First Religious Society, we are fortunate to have the use of invested funds in our endowment to aid people in need. Of course, the kind of aid I am able to distribute on your behalf is only a bandaid, but sometimes even a bandaid is helpful. I don’t think we should ever underestimate the value of a few dollars to someone who is completely broke. Typical needs that I try to respond to using funds from our Swasey Fund include food, diapers, transportation, automobile expenses, insurance, prescriptions, Christmas gifts, holiday assistance, rent, utilities, medical expenses, and clothing. I also work with many local agencies to provide assistance to persons in need, and sometimes make larger donations to local social service agencies to assist them in their work.
While a few of the people I see are merely passing through our community, most live here. Some I see on a regular basis, and so have been able to learn a little about their lives. There are retired grandparents who find themselves bringing up a grandchild, people caught in between social security benefits, folks who have lost their food stamps or are in the process of trying to get them, people who can’t get to work because their cars are broken down and they can’t afford to fix them, people whose health insurance, if they have any, doesn’t cover a certain kind of prescription. There are people with obvious mental health issues, people with physical disabilities, victims of domestic abuse, folks who have lost their jobs, people who have missed paying a month’s rent and face eviction if they can’t come up with it.
Yes, there are a few people who are just taking advantage of us and an occasional congenital liar, but I have come to see that even those people really need help, even if they are mostly to blame for their own situations because of substance abuse or inability to hold a job. A few I have had to say no to, but I always try to err on the side of goodness and mercy.
And while it may turn out to be true that “the poor you have always with you,” I try, on behalf of our religious community and our religious values, to be as helpful as I can to as many people as I can. For as King also wrote, “Any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and women and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that can scar the soul, is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried.” Occasionally, someone that we have helped actually manages to get back on his or her feet, and that is pretty darned gratifying. It doesn’t happen as often as I wish, but the fact that it happens at all is a very hopeful sign.
On your behalf, I try to live up to the biblical injunction to welcome the stranger, to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner–even if the form of imprisonment is one that is only self-imposed by poor judgment or poor habits. With some people, I do confess, it is difficult, because not everyone is likeable, and a few are even a little scary.
But if this isn’t the work of the church, then what is?
We are very fortunate to live in a community with so many wonderful social service agencies. I try to work closely with as many of them as possible, because one of the unfortunate realities of my involvement in this work is that I really don’t have time to do the kind of case management that can be most helpful to the people I see in getting them back on their feet. Most churches are simply not equipped to do that kind of work. Working with other agencies that do, I can be more assured that our resources are being used in the best possible manner, and that my bandaids are more likely to have a long-term impact on the lives of those I meet and serve.
Those of you who help out with the Friendship Table at the Salvation Army or other meals programs know, from first hand observation, that there are many in our beautiful community who are living on the edge. We should never underestimate the importance of activities like that, nor should we underestimate the importance of our collections for cause. Giving money may not be as hands-on a way to help as some of us would like to see, but I can tell you that in an economic environment where every agency is struggling for every single penny in order to survive and continue its work, money is not insignificant, and may even make the difference between a source of help existing or not, and thus a person being saved or not. Ninety percent of the assistance that the Salvation Army is able to give in our community comes from the donations of individuals like us and churches like ours.
King came to understand that the only solution to the economic inequalities that exist in our country would be what he called “a radical reconstruction of society itself.” That reconstruction has still to be accomplished. He wrote that,
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast between poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the west investing large sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say: “This is not just. . . .” A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling things is not just. . . .” A nation that continues to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
As I noted in my sermon last year, the great challenge of our time is whether the current political stalemate can be overcome and progress finally made toward building a more just and equitable nation and world. Personally, I would like to hear a lot less about the cost of our “entitlements,” and more about the need for generosity on the part of those of us who can afford it.
In this important work, the life and thought of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. still have an important role to play in speaking to the moral conscience of this brave new world in which we live, and reminding all of us, as he once said, that “An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
May we always remember that, and may we always maintain a hopeful vision for the promised land of our dreams, not only for ourselves, but for all people, everywhere, and especially for those who need our help who are close at hand right here in our own community. So may it be. Amen.
– The Rev. Harold E. Babcock
Reading: From “The King We Ignore,” by Jonathan K. Cooper Wiele