What is the best way to "help?"
Most people I meet who aren't in destitute situations are compassionate (so are those in destitute situations, but that isn't the focus of this blog). Compassionate people want to help. Non-profits want and need their help. I have often been told that I need to look for people who are willing to offer services for free because we don't have the money to pay someone to come in and offer those services. These services can be wonderful! Because of compassionate people and the services they offer, we have chess, golf, art, photography, and many other non-traditional after school classes that allow kids to learn and develop.
But when my friend, Peaches, called the other day, it made me recall something I've thought about before...Is "free" always good?
My friend, Peaches, used to own a restaurant in South Dallas. She couldn't make it in that business (despite the good food!) so she closed and now does anything from cleaning house to cooking at one of the city buildings. She has a dream to market and sell her hot water cornbread. (Personally, I would love for her to get that on the market! :) ). She still caters, but she just doesn't get enough events so she has to work other jobs.
She asked me if we had anything available.
I explained to her that our food was all donated so there was little opportunity for us to use her catering business.
In other words, because people, funders, foundations, give free food...and because we try to spend as little as possible to keep our overall costs down, we are unable to support people/businesses in the South Dallas community where we live and work.
Could that be part of the reason the economy is worse in South Dallas than in other parts of the city?
If everything from your meals to your clothes to your children's school supplies are given to you, what is left to buy? If a person doesn't need to buy anything (or needs to buy very little), what is the reason to have businesses in your community? (...because those businesses won't be able to sustain themselves anyway!) If there are no businesses in the community, where do people go to get a job or buy the things they do need? And who do the children see around them working (besides those of us who are in the community to "help")? If people choose to take the 2-3 hour trek on the bus to the suburbs to work, how are they able to spend time with their family or supervise their kids? If people aren't able to supervise their kids in those crucial after-school hours, what do we expect to happen?
With all of this break down, non-profits, churches, and individuals come in and offer free services to their children, offer free food, clothes, and supplies to the parents (instead of working with the community toward long-term solutions of creating a viable economy), and the cycle continues.
Free services more than likely come from outside the community. People outside of the community are the ones more likely to have enough time and money to give extra.
It seems to me that if we tapped into the talents of people who are in the community and helped them develop those talents and use them within the community and then invested in people and businesses owned and run by people in the community, the community and its residents would 1) have more time to focus on giving back to their own community because they wouldn't be spending their time running all over the city from job to job outside of the community, and 2) their money would, in turn, be spent in their own community, building the economy and structure of our urban communities.
So is "free" really the best way to help our low-income communities?
Showing posts with label compassion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label compassion. Show all posts
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Lessons from the Amish
I received this on my email this morning and thought the message was powerful enough to share:
Published on Friday, October 6, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
What the Amish are Teaching America
by Sally Kohn
On October 2, Charles Carl Roberts entered a one-room schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He lined up eleven young girls from the class and shot them each at point blank range. The gruesome depths of this crime are hard for any community to grasp, but certainly for the Amish who live such a secluded and peaceful life, removed even from the everyday depictions of violence on TV. When the Amish were suddenly pierced by violence, how did they respond?
The evening of the shooting, Amish neighbors from the Nickel Mines community gathered to process their grief with each other and mental health counselors. As of that evening, three little girls were dead. Eight were hospitalized in critical condition. (One more girl has died since.) According to reports by counselors who attended the grief session, the Amish family members grappled with a number of questions: Do we send our kids to school tomorrow? What if they want to sleep in our beds tonight, is that okay? But one question they asked might surprise us outsiders. What, they wondered, can we do to help the family of the shooter? Plans were already underway for a horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts' family with offers of food and condolences. The Amish, it seems, don't automatically translate their grieving into revenge. Rather, they believe in redemption.
Meanwhile, the United States culture from which the Amish are isolated is moving in the other direction, increasingly exacting revenge for crimes and punishing violence with more violence. In 26 states and at the federal level, there are "three strikes" laws in place. Conviction for three felonies in a row now warrants a life sentence, even for the most minor crimes. For instance, Leandro Andrade is serving a life sentence, his final crime involving the theft of nine children's videos, including Cinderella and Free Willy from a Kmart. Similarly, in many states and at the federal level, possession of even small amounts of drugs trigger mandatory minimum sentences of extreme duration. In New York, Elaine Bartlett was just released from prison, serving a 20-year sentence for possessing only four ounces of cocaine. This is in addition to the 60 people who were executed in the United States in 2005, among the more than a thousand killed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. And the President of the United States is still actively seeking authority to torture and abuse alleged terrorists, whom he consistently dehumanizes as rats to be "smoked from their holes," even without evidence of their guilt.
Our patterns of punishment and revenge are fundamentally at odds with the deeper values of common humanity that the tragic experience of the Amish are helping to reveal. Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done in life. Someone who cheats is not only a cheater. Someone who steals something is not only a thief. And someone who commits a murder is not only a murderer. The same is true of Charles Carl Roberts. We don't yet know the details of the episode in his past for which, in his suicide note, he said he was seeking revenge. It may be a sad and sympathetic tale. It may not. Either way, there's no excusing his actions. Whatever happened to Roberts in the past, taking the lives of others is never justified. But nothing Roberts has done changes the fact that he was a human being, like all of us. We all make mistakes.
Roberts' were considerably and egregiously larger than most. But the Amish in Nickel Mines seem to have been able to see past Roberts' actions and recognize his humanity, sympathize with his family for their loss, and move forward with compassion not vengeful hate.
We've come to think that "an eye for an eye" is a natural, human reaction to violence. The Amish, who live a truly natural life apart from the influences of our violence-infused culture, are proving otherwise. If, as Gandhi said, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," then the Amish are providing the rest of us with an eye-opening lesson.
Sally Kohn is Director of the Movement Vision Project at the Center for Community Change and author of a forthcoming book on the progressive vision for the future of the United States.
Published on Friday, October 6, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
What the Amish are Teaching America
by Sally Kohn
On October 2, Charles Carl Roberts entered a one-room schoolhouse in the Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. He lined up eleven young girls from the class and shot them each at point blank range. The gruesome depths of this crime are hard for any community to grasp, but certainly for the Amish who live such a secluded and peaceful life, removed even from the everyday depictions of violence on TV. When the Amish were suddenly pierced by violence, how did they respond?
The evening of the shooting, Amish neighbors from the Nickel Mines community gathered to process their grief with each other and mental health counselors. As of that evening, three little girls were dead. Eight were hospitalized in critical condition. (One more girl has died since.) According to reports by counselors who attended the grief session, the Amish family members grappled with a number of questions: Do we send our kids to school tomorrow? What if they want to sleep in our beds tonight, is that okay? But one question they asked might surprise us outsiders. What, they wondered, can we do to help the family of the shooter? Plans were already underway for a horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts' family with offers of food and condolences. The Amish, it seems, don't automatically translate their grieving into revenge. Rather, they believe in redemption.
Meanwhile, the United States culture from which the Amish are isolated is moving in the other direction, increasingly exacting revenge for crimes and punishing violence with more violence. In 26 states and at the federal level, there are "three strikes" laws in place. Conviction for three felonies in a row now warrants a life sentence, even for the most minor crimes. For instance, Leandro Andrade is serving a life sentence, his final crime involving the theft of nine children's videos, including Cinderella and Free Willy from a Kmart. Similarly, in many states and at the federal level, possession of even small amounts of drugs trigger mandatory minimum sentences of extreme duration. In New York, Elaine Bartlett was just released from prison, serving a 20-year sentence for possessing only four ounces of cocaine. This is in addition to the 60 people who were executed in the United States in 2005, among the more than a thousand killed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. And the President of the United States is still actively seeking authority to torture and abuse alleged terrorists, whom he consistently dehumanizes as rats to be "smoked from their holes," even without evidence of their guilt.
Our patterns of punishment and revenge are fundamentally at odds with the deeper values of common humanity that the tragic experience of the Amish are helping to reveal. Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done in life. Someone who cheats is not only a cheater. Someone who steals something is not only a thief. And someone who commits a murder is not only a murderer. The same is true of Charles Carl Roberts. We don't yet know the details of the episode in his past for which, in his suicide note, he said he was seeking revenge. It may be a sad and sympathetic tale. It may not. Either way, there's no excusing his actions. Whatever happened to Roberts in the past, taking the lives of others is never justified. But nothing Roberts has done changes the fact that he was a human being, like all of us. We all make mistakes.
Roberts' were considerably and egregiously larger than most. But the Amish in Nickel Mines seem to have been able to see past Roberts' actions and recognize his humanity, sympathize with his family for their loss, and move forward with compassion not vengeful hate.
We've come to think that "an eye for an eye" is a natural, human reaction to violence. The Amish, who live a truly natural life apart from the influences of our violence-infused culture, are proving otherwise. If, as Gandhi said, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," then the Amish are providing the rest of us with an eye-opening lesson.
Sally Kohn is Director of the Movement Vision Project at the Center for Community Change and author of a forthcoming book on the progressive vision for the future of the United States.
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