Voices

Fresno has the highest concentration of poverty in the U.S. 

There are 22 neighborhoods in which 40% or more of the population is living below the Federal Poverty Line.

When a group of Christians got together to discuss this issue and how to address it, they realized that almost none of them lived in any of the 22.

And so The Voices of the Brookings' 22 Project was born.

For the last three months a housemate and I have been driving around to some of the 22 neighborhoods. Armed with a video camera, we ask people two questions: what are three great things about your neighborhood and what are three things you think could be changed immediately to improve it? Their answers will be compiled and shown in an hour long video to 490 churches, the city council and the mayor.

It's hard to get people to interview with us. Sometimes they have been reluctant to be filmed in their pajamas. Sometimes they have been resentful of terms like "impoverished." Sometimes they have even been hostile about the direction in which we point our camera.

While the reactions can get discouraging, they have made real something we talk about in the Pink House a lot: I am not the savior of the inner city.

This project is meant to bring about change. It is meant to help. It is meant to be a megaphone for the people whose voices are not often heard. 

And yes, some of those voices are saying, leave me alone.

Tour Bus

Today I went on a tour of homelessness in Fresno. It was put on by Love I.N.C. (In the Name of Christ).
A couple of things were ironic on this tour. One was a giant archway sign we passed under as we were driving from one homeless encampment to another. It said, "Fesno, the Best Little City in the U.S.A." As we drove through the archway, we saw run down factory buildings and trash littered about. It was not a kind part of town.

Another irony was the big, white, highly conspicuous bus in which the forty of us rode around. My housemate commented that it seemed like we were on safari.
All in all, it was a good, an emotional experience for me. It raised questions of responsibility, justice and helping those who don't want to be helped.
Let me work backwards in explaining my position on each of those things. I do not see homelessness as the greatest of all evils. If a person wants to be homeless, I have no problem with that. I do not see the good in yanking someone out of a choice they have made. I know many Christians would disagree with me, but I see the yanking desire as arrogance. But when homelessness becomes bondage - sometimes because it is paired with addiction or mental illness - then of course it is an evil. And as I saw today, there is some help in Fresno for people in those situations.
Justice. Even when we, the Church, are able to pull someone off the streets, what are they facing? What led them to the streets to begin with? What slum lords? What unemployment? Alan Doswald (president, ESA/Love INC) said today, "We see people drowning and we want to save them. But we have to ask, who's upstream throwing them in?"
It's questions like this that I have been asking myself for a couple of years now. But it's also questions like this that have blocked out the factor of an individual's responsibility. In reality, both are at play: the systems of oppression and a person's choices affect his or her position in life. (Everpresent, too, is the grace of God.) But where I struggle is in not wanting to let personal accountablity become blame and blame become judgement and judgement become hardness of heart. I pose the question, how do you promote individual responsibility in love?

Friday at the Bus Stop

Bus stops are notorious for the questionable characters that frequent them. I am one such person. 
What I mean is, why would I, a clean-cut white girl, be talking to two men who had just been released from the county jail on a Friday morning? 
Highly questionable. 
Why wouldn't I sit, staring at my fingernails, while I waited for the number 22 bus?
I don't know.
Maybe it is because homeless men and gang members are sometimes personable. Maybe it is because they, too, were created in the image of God. They, too, have an inherent dignity.
Maybe it is because when a gang member tells you, with sadness glinting in his eyes, that if he tried to leave the gang he joined when he was 13 years old they would kill him and his family, you want to be able to offer him some way out. Or maybe you even just want to offer him a listening ear. 
And maybe it is because you have discovered from previous experiences that stereotypes are not often true. In fact, you have never discovered that they are.

Unprecedented Election

It seems that everyone is writing about the election, but in an attempt to be original, let me share what election night looked like in my house.

Last night five of us stood in our room talking about the president elect. While my  roommate cried you could tell the deepness of her emotion came from her stomach because she would hunch her shoulders over, as though in pain. But as she did this she was thanking God over and over again. My other white housemates and I could not fully understand my roommate's experience although we celebrated with her. She told us she had pictures of Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harriet Tubman in her head -- those who had come before.

Obama made a comparable comment in a March 2008 speech:

"What's remarkable is not how many failed in the face of discrimination, but rather how many men and women overcame the odds; how many were able to make a way out of no way for those like me who would come after them."

The struggle is not over. Racism and discrimination are not merely history. But I praise God, who is reconciling all things to himself through Jesus, for how far we've come.

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. -Romans 13:1

To start off, here are some excerpts from my journal the first month I was here:

8/15/08
"I feel so at home! The apartment is great - all painted. And there's a balcony! Sitting out there just now is when I felt the at homeness."

8/17/08
"I know, Lord, you are at work here. One life at a time you are changing people forever. Those stories of redemption are so beautiful to me.
"But I also know I could be in hard, gritty, heartbreaking ministry all year without witnessing healing like that. There is a lot of despair [here] and I'm not even sure what hope looks like. The second coming? One life, one family at a time? What about the city? I suppose Fresno has seen change. But we will always have the poor, oppression, sin.
"I suppose why I'm here is to discover hope through much pain. And compassion. It's what I've asked for and I'm not taking it back.
"My Redeemer lives."