Nothing better to do??

As I was listening to the radio this morning, I heard the report about the flag burning amendment not passing. As I listened to the report, I was amazed. Does our Congress really have that little to do that it needs to focus on flag burning??

John Kerry did speak up and suggest that there were more important issues at hand. However, Oran Hatch refuted him saying that banning flag burning is *the* most important thing we could be doing right now. He wants to send a message people that says, "You cannot usurp the power of the Congress of the United States."

Let me think about that a minute. There's nothing more important than making sure people don't burn the flag and show disrespect for this country? Maybe he's right. What could possibly be more important than that?? Let me ponder on that...

...teenagers who can't read who are expected to pass a test to graduate in a school that is given the No Child Left Behind law but no resources to implement what it will take to get them there?

...adults who have little job skills but are expected to get into productive jobs to contribute to our economy?

...schools that are drilling the kids with tests instead of teaching higher order thinking for fear they will lose their jobs as a result of "No Child Left Behind"?

...seniors who can't afford their medication and are confused by the new Medicare stuff?

...kids who are being recruited for the military to fight in a war that has no end in sight and no set plan for an eventual pull out?

...children without health care?

...large numbers of kids who aren't graduating from high school?

...CEO's who are getting rich while their workers are struggling in poverty?

Maybe Oran Hatch lives in a different world than I do. Maybe a lot of people in Congress live in a different world than I do. I'm guessing that their socioeconomic status--where they live, where they work, the people they hang around--isolates them from all of the other more pressing issues that are happening to the people that they "serve." I suppose the issues I've mentioned don't affect their world much so worrying about that handful of people who might burn a flag is a perfectly legitimate issue...right?

From Misery to Hope

Below is a poem that the teens and adults in our Civil Rights night created last year. The statements were made by Black and Hispanic teenagers, as well as a few of them made by a couple of adults. The words seem very fitting and poignant these days considering what has happened in the last week.


MISERY…

Misery is when black people don’t trust my motives and white people misunderstand them.

Misery is having to ask an African-American not to use the “n-word.”

Misery is when white people torture a black person.

Misery is when white people think all black people are ghetto.

Misery is when smart minorities choose to throw away their future.

Misery is when you go to South or West Dallas.

Misery is when you have to be in a class where your teacher is racist.

Misery is when people say I’m going to be nothing in life.

Misery is when you have to wait for someone to go get a “Spanish speaker” to assist you when you don’t need one.

Misery is when black people do black on black crime.

Misery is when a white person is scared to go to the black neighborhoods.

Misery is when black people hate their color so much they want to be white.

Misery is when people say, “Immigrants are invading the country.”

BUT…I have hope!

I have hope when my neighbors and I eat bar-b-que together and they show me how to make greens.

I have hope when I can go to church and get a hug from African-American, Hispanic and White friends.

I have hope when I see young black people who are serious about their education.

I have hope when the church not only cares but brings programs to help the community.

I have hope when I see people making a change for the better.

I have hope when immigrants aren’t ashamed of saying, “I am an immigrant.”

I have hope when other teachers tell me I have big opportunities ahead of me.

I have hope when I see a black person succeed.

I have hope when I hear of someone who started at the bottom reaches the top.

I have hope when I see someone in an abusive relationship make it.

I have hope when I see different cultures and backgrounds bonding together.

I have hope when I see younger people trying to be role models for their younger brothers and sisters.

We are from…fast food…fast kids…traffic on the highways…drug traffic in the streets…Texas heat…glazed doughnuts to chocolate doughnuts…sandboxes to mudpies…hard times…people doing hard time…bluegrass…hip-hop…sinners…repenters…no respect…respect.

We are from different backgrounds but we are all trying to make a change.

We are from Misery to Hope.

Inequity

I read an article in the New York Times about schools that are attempting to use race and socioeconomic level as a factor in student assignments to schools in order to ensure their schools maintain socioeconomic and ethnic diversity. Their goals are admirable. I would love to know that every school has an economically and ethnically diverse population.

However, because of this intentional practice, the Supreme Court is now looking into the legality of using race as a criteria in school assignments. For some reason, people think that the days of needing desegregation orders are over. I don't know if they noticed, but our schools are more segregated now than they have been since the 1970's! For more factual information on that, look up Jonathan Kozol's latest book, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America or check out Gary Orfield, Professor of Education and Social Policy at Harvard and co-founder of the Civil Rights Project.

We no longer see desegregation as a priority, yet each time a law is passed saying desegregation is no longer needed, we segregate a little bit more. You can see it in the decrease in minority enrollments in colleges.

I have read that the Civil Rights Movement strove to be about equality, but ended up being about integration. There is a difference. Integration allowed middle class Blacks to move out. Equality would have produced schools and neighborhoods that made people wanted to move in.

We need equality, not integration! Schools still suffer from inequality. Though the schools mentioned above that are striving for a ethnic and economic balance should be praised for their intentionality, it is almost always the Black and Hispanic children who are bussed out. Why doesn't the effort go both ways? Why aren't White children bussed in?

For one, I know that White (and other ethnicities, for that matter) parents in the suburbs would fight that tooth and nail. I have read about it happening. They don't think it's fair that their children have to be bussed. Besides, they don't want their children going to inadequate schools.

Why do we think it is any different for kids and parents in the inner cities? Do we think that parents in the inner city want their kids to take a long bus ride every day to school? Do the kids or the parents want to attend schools outside of their neighborhood? Do they want their children attending inadquate schools? I would guess I could survey 100 parents in the inner city and all of them would say NO! So why do we make the rules different for them?

The Rights of a Child

Right to Protection

Right to an Education

Right to Life

Right to a Homeland

Right to Play

Right to Friendship

Right to Freedom

Right to Grow Up

Right to Protection on Teasing

Right to Self-Expression

We are All Equal

~Paintings outside of the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

Since the shooting/killing of my 22 year old friend the other day, I have had several people ask me, "Well, what do we need to do to keep stuff like this from happening?" Since people ask, I am willing to respond.

Focus on the children!!!

Of course, we hear the rhetoric. Even the President has declared that education is a necessity. He believes in this so much that he passed a law (No Child Left Behind) that requires children to succeed. Of course, he doesn't provide any funding for the kids to reach these standards and play catch up like they need in order to meet the standards he's set. But talking more than acting on our beliefs is not just the president. It's our society. What real effort do we put into our children? What do we have available for them? Where are our priorities?

What if we doubled our effort on the front end instead of trying to put out fires on the back end? What if we dedicated ourselves and held our society accountable to putting twice as much time, money, and effort into every program that involved children? Maybe then we wouldn't have to worry as much about finding drug treatment centers, dealing with shootings, or finding low-level jobs for uneducated adults.

The priorities of our society are apparent. The fact that we are willing to be in massive debt for a war and building a wall between us and Mexico, but not willing to go into debt for public schools, education, and children's enrichment programs tells me where our priorities lie. Why do we sit and muse over why our society has become so bad?

Do people not understand that adults who are addicted to drugs, poor, violent, and/or hungry were once children
...who attended poorly resourced schools.
...who had teachers who had low expectations of them
...who had parents who couldn't afford to get them involved in outside activities.
...who had absentee parents
...who had to "hustle" in order to provide food for themselves and their siblings.
...who don't have a context of rich educational experiences to draw from.
...who lived in rough neighborhoods where survival was the norm

Once again, it's not just the government. Look at other organizations as well. After-school programs...How many are willing to offer the funds that would allow them to hire high quality teachers for struggling children? Middle school programs...we know that middle schoolers are when kids fall off, yet how many middle school programs are you aware of? College readiness programs...many of the kids I know don't have parents who are able or willing to figure out the complicated college entrance process. Where are the college/career prep programs?

I want to offer all of these programs...but we don't have the funding. Anybody willing?

I truly believe that the more connected we (individually as well as our entire society) are to the kids, the less need for food pantries, job readiness programs, drug treatment centers, and anger management programs we will need.

How about we save money by investing on the front end?! Anybody with me???

Tyree Sims

October 27, 1983 - June 21, 2006

Staying alive is a struggle

I've always read articles and looked at research that talks about about how a child living in the inner city has less chance of living to their 18th birthday. Yet, even though I had read that, I think I had convinced myself it wasn't quite true. Though the kids and adults I knew might talk about losing people who they knew well, it was only people I knew of and not people I really knew and had interacted with on a personal level. I guess because I've been here 11 years and it hadn't touched me personally, I assumed it wasn't quite as dramatic as it was presented in the literature. Unfortunately, these days, I'm learning that those statistics I always thought must be explaining other cities are actually statistics that hold true for my Dallas neighborhood as well.

I have lost several people over the past few months. I can split those into two categories--both equally discouraging. 1) Lack of health care and care in general and 2) urban violence.

Just yesterday I found out that B.J., a young girl I know, drowned in her own bathtub. B.J. was mentally challenged. She was 17 years old. Her mother is in jail. Her 19 year old brother was trying to keep watch over his three siblings as they all crowded into his aunt's small apartment along with her family. I am not sure of the details of her death, but I have heard that B.J. wandered around quite often. I would guess that the lack of ability by the family to meet her needs as a mentally challenged adult ultimately led to her unintentional death. I am afraid of the guilt her brother is probably taking on himself.

Just two weeks ago Pat, another mentally challenged adult in his 30's or 40's, died of suffocation and dehydration after he crawled in to sleep in a car on a too-hot night in Dallas. Pat also had a home where he could stay and an aunt and cousins who cared for him. However, he, too, wandered all the time. He had been beaten up several times by people who simply took advantage of him, but he had always managed to survive. I think of how Pat could maybe have lived longer if the family could have afforded to get him into a home that worked with mentally challenged adults...if there were even one available anywhere close to our neighborhood.

In March, my friend Priscilla, a lady in her early 60's died after a fight with cancer. I don't know if she could've hung on longer if she had better care, but I do know that the statistics show that higher poverty areas have alarmingly high rates of heart disease, diabetes, and death due to lack of health care and other poverty issues that create more health problems.

Just six months ago, I also lost Sam, a 22 year old who was also shot and killed in broad daylight because of a case of stolen drugs they assumed he had a role in.

Then, last night I was awakened by a phone call at 2:30 a.m. saying that Tyree, a 20 year old friend of mine, had been shot in the back of the head. I got a phone call about an hour later telling me he had died. Evidently he was sitting at the bus stop and some guys were driving around mad at another guy who had challenged them. Shots rang out. Everyone ran. Tyree didn't have enough time. He's gone.

I have listened to B.J. as she told me with such pride that her teacher at school loved her because she told her so and how her brother loved her because he bought her some tennis shoes.

I have given Pat rides home at 2:00 in the morning after he had finally gotten tired of wandering around so he had decided he would throw rocks at my bedroom window to wake me up so that I would give him a ride. (Pat was very resourceful and had created his own survival strategies).

I have watched Priscilla give people her last dime...to the point of not being able to pay her own rent...when she used to volunteer for the food pantry when I was there.

I have watched Sam grow up and went out of my way to speak to him when he was a kid. As a still shy adult, he would always walk by my house and nod his head to say hi.

I have taken Tyree to church, dealt with he and his brother as belligerant kids, helped him with resumes as an adult. Whenever I would see Tyree, he would harass me about something. Despite him making fun of my strictness with kids and teens and my high expectations of him and his friends, I always felt there was a respect there.

Judge these situations and their circumstances any way you would like, but they were all friends of mine. No matter what the circumstance, losing my friends is extremely difficult. It doesn't get any easier--especially when they are so young.

Please pray for me today. Please pray for his friends.

Shifting our thinking

I went home for a family reunion this weekend. It's always great to hang out with friends and family who unconditionally love you. I happen to have a really great family. I know not everyone is that blessed.

Most people in my family, whether or not we see each other in between the 5 year reunions, know that I work for an inner-city ministry and know that I work with kids. This is always difficult for me. I am always troubled by the way people approach me and tell me, "I hear you are doing such great work!"

I know that sounds odd and I probably should just take their comments at face value and move on. But let me explain my delimma. When people say that, I always have to wonder what they mean by their comment. I always wonder if they would make the same comment if I were working with a suburban, predominantly White ministry.

I think I have so much trouble responding because I know what we do at our ministry is not "typical" for most ministries I've seen. We are so much more than a charity stop. How do you explain to someone that our ministry is about handshakes, not handouts? It's about justice, not just crises management? It's about fighting for quality schools for children, not just providing them a "safe place" for an hour or two after school? It's about educating suburban, rural, and middle class people in order to help them understand that relationships are reciprocal, racism is real, and poverty affects a person's life more than people with money will ever understand? It's about building relationships and friendships with people. It's more than just handing out food. It's more than just a mission trip.

People have such good intentions. I know they mean well. I know when people ask if they can 'help' and volunteer for a day that they are trying in the only way they know how. I know when people ask about the kids I work with and want to know how much impact I have had on their lives that they really just want to know that good things are being done. I know when they say they are proud of me, they really are.

But what I want people to realize is that what I do is not 'helping underprivileged kids.' The 'underprivileged kids' and people I 'work with' are my friends. We are all in this together.

Do I encourage some of my friends here in the inner-city to make different choices and think differently about things? Of course I do! I do that the same as I do with my close friends outside of inner-city Dallas when I don't agree with a decision or choice they have made. But in addition to me handing out advice and accountability, my friends here in the inner city do the same for me. It's a two-way street. And in order for both of us to grow, we have to be willing to learn from each other. That's what I don't think people understand.

Ministry isn't one-way charity. Jesus built relationships with people...often with the most unlikely people for a man of his stature. Through his relationships, he held people accountable. He was critical of the upper-class religious person just as much as he was of the prostitute...no more, no less. He thought religious piety was just as bad as a woman who had slept with many men.

Jesus hung out with the people others (especially religious folk) condemned. He went to their homes and hung out. He did not go to their house to judge them. He went to eat dinner and enjoy their company. Through those relationships, ministry often came to him. He didn't have to seek it out.

We need a paradigm shift in ministry. Maybe we should approach life the same way Jesus did. Maybe if we lived our lives in a way that built relationships with all people, opportunities for ministry would seek us out instead of us having to contrive ways for us to "minister to" people.

Is separation and segregation really the way to go?

I was reading through a newsletter I received from another non-profit this morning. It made me think back several years ago when I had first come in contact with them. This particular non-profit was attempting to involve more inner-city groups in their camp at the time. After agreeing to take a group of kids, I remember a lady calling and explaining to me that since our group was small, they would make sure that they found another inner city group to go with us. I can still remember my irritation at that comment. Why could our inner-city kids not be in a group with any random group who signed up to go? Of course, I posed that question to her, to which she replied, "They just don't have the Bible knowledge that the other kids have." Once again, I was shocked and appalled! How did she know that?! She had never even met the kids I would be taking! I encouraged her at that point to make sure we were signed up with a NON inner-city group. I then discussed the issue with one of their board members. They listened. Over the years it has gotten much better. We still attend the camp. And if our group isn't big enough, we are often combined with other suburban churches.

Why is that so important? It's not the reason some people might think. I think some people figure that the reason combining groups must be good is so that the inner-city kids can see a "different way of life." (I've heard that many times before). I look at it differently. Of course I want our group to be with different groups so that they can get to know other people. But I also think it's important for us to be with other groups so they can get to know us!

Contrary to popular belief, inner-city kids and teens often know a whole lot about suburban children. They are faced with them all the time. Our society focuses on middle class, primarily white, lifestyles. However, those middle class, primarily white children don't often know about our low-income, predominantly Black and Hispanic children. The images they receive of children in those situations are of criminals, impoverished people, victims, who are uneducated. I would argue that it is the suburban children who need our children, not the other way around.

Don't get me wrong. I think that we can all learn from each other. But I think most of the time people with good hearts are trying to put poor, inner-city children in situations to help them learn something instead of thinking about what the poor, inner-city child has to teach someone else--perhaps their own child.

We separate and segregate a lot. We say it's for the good of the child. I would argue that it's probably more to allow us to remain in our comfort zone. We say separating children in blind schools, special ed schools, gay/lesbian schools, etc. allows that school to provide specific and specialized resources more efficiently to a group of children. But what happens later in life? What does segregating children teach all of us about approaching each other in life after school? And what does it say about our willingness to share our resources with others who may not have as much? Because we've been separating and segregating for so long, it's extremely challenging to think of restructuring. But I have no doubt it can be done. It starts with us. It starts with our choices for ourselves and our children.

Just for Fun

No big profound thoughts today. I've been told every once in a while that I can be too serious because I think about things too much. Knowing the things I know, I don't think people think about reality near enough...but that's another blog. :) Today's blog is just for fun.

Have you heard about the story of the adult-proof ringtone? You may have by now. I've seen it in about three different news sources. The tone is a high-pitched frequency that most people over 30 can't hear. The sound was originally developed as a repellant to keep teens from hanging out at certain places. Realizing that, the teenagers somehow figured out how to turn the annoying noise adults had come up with to keep them away into something they could use for their benefit. Somehow they made it into a downloadable ringtone so that they could send undetectable text messages to each other in their school classes.

Kids really are way more intelligent than we give them credit for. If only we adults were as intelligent and could figure out how to tap into their creativity in a way that benefits us all!

I was really curious as to how this ringtone worked. On the link below, there is a place to "download ringtone." Try it out. I have a 20-year old in my house right now. When I pushed play, the Windows Media player looked like it was playing, but I could hear nothing. (How in the world does that work!) Tiffany immediately looked up and asked, "What are you doing?" I must say, after that I had a good laugh while driving her crazy the rest of the evening randomly playing the buzz tone over and over. I have no idea what it sounds like. I can't hear it. Evidently it can get pretty annoying. :)

Try it with your own kids or some kids you know. It's actually pretty funny to watch.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5434687