A parable of relief vs. advocacy
“Relief” refers to providing for needy people’s immediate survival needs — food, shelter and clothing, direct material gifts. “Advocacy” refers to political activism, meant to change policies and laws. People and organizations who presume to serve the poor, face choices as to which one to emphasize.
The parable of the babies in the river addresses that choice. Activists love it. Desmond Tutu and others have endorsed it.
Again, there is no truth without love.
I am very excited about this.
This is, as far as I know, the first study to attempt to measure the degree of chaos in the home.
The researchers in an earlier-mentioned study (Related: Poor children have smaller brains) speculated that “poor families tend to live more chaotic lives, and that stress could inhibit healthy brain development.” The current study seems to indicate that it is directly so.
As of this writing, my hypothesis has become as follows: the chaos of a growing child’s environment causes comparatively more resources to be devoted to the limbic system and less to the cerebral cortex, resulting in a body with reduced capacity to learn.
Related: A MUST-READ CONCERNING JUSTICE AND POVERTY
Related: Chaos overwhelms the poor
Related: Wisdom teaching in poor black homes
(Originally posted 2015-07-08; reblogged 10/13/16.)
From my diary for Friday 2015-05-01:
Ta-Nehisi Coates has had two “provocative” HuffPost columns in two days. Wednesday she decried calls for calm in Baltimore. Yesterday she used the incident of Toya Graham’s confrontation of her son, to blame white people for every incident of violence among blacks. [P.S. 12:00. Correction: The latter was by Stacey Patton.] I may yet respond to the latter, but it’s best I not do so today. I need to direct my thoughts and choose my feelings, and I feel immeasurably better when I focus on my own affairs than when I allow myself to get engaged with her turmoil. Today’s task is to prepare materials for the prayer course; and it will be no excuse if I tell my students I came unprepared because she distracted me.
Originally posted 2015-05-02.
“[T]he uprising in Ferguson was an inevitable reaction to the institutional racism coursing through the area for decades.” — Jack Kirkland
I’m homeless. At this writing, I’ve been homeless for exactly 3½ years.
When you meet a homeless man for the first time, you won’t notice his skin color. Not first. You’ll notice the condition he’s in. You’ll notice his clothes, his grooming, his conduct. Skin color is so far down the list, it might as well be left off completely.
Some disagree. They seem to think race is the only factor in poverty.
Continue reading “How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty”
(Originally posted June 22, 2013 at Trojan Horse Productions. Reblogged 2014-09-10.)
My normal day runs as follows. After breakfast at the mission, at 5:45 I head for McDonald’s, where I drink coffee ($1.06) and do my prayer routines. Around 9:15, I head for the library, stopping at a convenience store en route to buy smokes ($2.75) and a soda ($1.69). From 10:00 to 2:00 I’m online at the library. When my time’s up, I go to the Wi-Fi café, write in my diary and have another cup of coffee ($1.00). Then it’s back to the mission, where I have to pay admission ($3.00).
Sunday mornings, I am normally left with bus fare to church ($1.60) and pennies. I meet my patrons at church and obtain an allowance for the next week.
The problem isn’t that the system’s white.
The problem is that it’s a system at all.
I first meant to title this, “Choosing disorder,” but settled on using a word that’s a bit more edgy, and consistent with my past vocabulary.
There are interesting relationships among some words. Continue reading Choosing chaos
The Homeless Blogger 