Before we enter the New Year, I wanted to introduce myself
as Thelonius Jane. I am a social worker with experience in working with urban
and rural homeless populations and non-profit health care. In my work, I often
become frustrated by the way most of our society dismisses the struggles and
challenges of our nation’s poorest and the way we often infantilize people who
are in need of help. Alexis de Tocqueville, French politician and writer, put
it well when he stated “For people to have the opportunity to live full and
rewarding lives, they have to be in control of what they do, even if that
happens to be economically insufficient.” Most of our methods in reducing
poverty reduce the incentives to create change and to make personal choices. To
put it simply, individuals must have the freedom to make their own choices and
it will not happen if the federal government is making decisions for them.
There is an array of federal programs that provide
assistance to people in need. I think it’s safe to say that most people carry
some compassion for the poor and have a general understanding that there are
various factors that cause or prolong poverty. There are camps that believe
federal programs are 1) valuable and essential, 2) unfair and an incentive to
be poor and unemployed, and 3) are doing a really poor job of managing issues
that would be better handled by local communities. I fall in the third. I agree
that all people have a human right to quality food, shelter, and healthcare.
Programs like food stamps, temporary assistance for needy families (TANF),
Section 8, Housing Choice, Women Infant and Children (WIC), and Medicaid are
the government’s way of providing these rights to US Citizens. But you better
be able to wait a considerable amount of time to access these resources (so
wait when you’re in crisis) and have enough wherewithal to navigate complicated
benefit systems. Furthermore, these programs often promote living in poverty
and force people to make choices influenced by scarcity. There is a psychology of
poverty and it really does change the way you look at the world and how you
make decisions. The way our current system works gives people little control
over their own lives and environment and guides some of the choices they
make.
Social change will not happen if communities are reliant on
erratic government funding and decision-making. Allowing communities to decide
where to place resources and how to find reciprocal relationships within their
communities to meet individual needs will promote creative problem solving and
will likely improve the conditions of social issues. Empathy, solidarity, and
creativity are key principles in creating change and are much easier to
cultivate when a relationship already exists within a community. I say we take
the decision making out of the hands of the people on Capitol Hill and place it
in the hands of community members. BUT, we are not there yet. It’s most helpful
at this point to find the places where authentic, genuine, respectful change is
being made and attempt to build off of that momentum. I hope this gives you an
idea of where I come from. See you next year!
-Thelonius Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment