TO WHOM MUCH HAS BEEN GIVEN, MUCH WILL BE REQUIRED.The following article by Rabbi Aryeh Spero of New York is making the e-mail list rounds.
I want to add my perspective, as someone who worked with "the homeless" for many years.
To go back a step, I also worked in propery management, doing marketing and PR for apartment complexes in the depressed oil belt in the 80s. Property management is "crisis management." You might not think so, but any time you have that many people together - living in an apt. complex -- and any time you have dwellings, you're going to have crises. Food, clothing and shelter and the 3 things we really must have, and conflict is what is going to occur when you have a group of people together, particularly when united only by a parking lot (which has been said of universities). An average day on an apartment complex someone's plumbing or AC or heat goes out, there's domestic violence, or there's a fight between neighbors.
So in the apt. complex they gave us seminars all the time on "crisis management." I remember (being new to the field) the first one I went to. The facilitator asked, "What's the first thing you do in a crisis?"
Our answers were so far off base it's a lesson.
His answer? "Get help." Then he added "People."
Yes, in a crisis you need people.
Now, let me segue to the homeless shelter I worked for (again in PR, marketing, fundraising and grant writing). I got the money. The volunteer coordinator brought in the people. The shelter was a collaborative effort. The city provided the building. Moneys from state government and FEMA paid for certain things around the building, some staff salaries, etc. There was a dental clinic, a medical clinic, plenty fo food (provided by the wonderful St. Vincent de Paul Society) and a lot of volunteer labor.
And where did the volunteer labor come from? Where did the people come from? Where did "the city" and "the state" turn when things got really bad? TO THE PEOPLE, and first and foremost to the spiritual leaders in the town. "Call First Presbyterian," they said, or "Call the synangogue." People would arrive. People from all faiths and colors.
And the most important thing they gave, which all the money in the world couldn't give, was personal attention. The shelter was staffed every night, 365 nights a year by teams from religious institutions. 5-7 people came at 5 pm to check the homeless in, and then spend the night there.
I would listen to their stories. They would bring music instruments to sing with the homeless or entertain them. They brought special food, or toys they had on hand. They brought their Bibles or prayer books. They offered to pray with the homeless, if that's what the homeless person wanted; or they just listened and talked with them.
I learned the phrase, "the call went out." And "the call went out" with these hurricanes. Where I live, San Antonio, is once-removed from the Gulf Coast, bu we received tens of thousands of refugees, and "the call went out."
I talked with someone yesterday who's been going to Kelly AFB to help out. She went down there Thursday night from 5 pm to midnight, after her regular job, to help out.
This, to me, is America. The reason we needed volunteers -- people -- at the homeless shelter was because of the rehab programs. As you know, we could give a family $1000 which might pay for food, clothing and shelter for a month or two, but then where would that family be? We tried to rehabilitate them out of the poverty situation (and mentality), no small feat as you know, but someone has to attempt it -- people.
Whatever causes poverty, it's a comglomeration of variables, and teasing them out -- for someone who wants to get out of the poverty situation -- takes time, personal interest, contact, holding out a different way, taking care of physical, mental and emotional needs, and connection.
The third-generation "welfare mother" who comes to the shelter announcing that she and the father of her child won't marry "until after the baby come so we get the welfare" needs another pattern to follow. And if she's the "third-generation" who is going to suggest another way of doing things? Every family has its tradition. For one family it's education and work. For another it's welfare, living off the government (which means living off other people - never mistake where "welfare" comes from). Who will help her get the job skills (or the idea of getting some), the education (and the fortitude to stick it out, as 'getting education' is hard work), the myriad other things that might eventually make this woman self-sufficient and therefore impart to ther children another idea besides "welfare."
At the homeless shelter where I worked, it was "people" who did this. American people. Volunteers. They came in all ages, colors, creeds, religions, and socio-economic backgrounds, just as the homeless individuals did.
So here's the article from the Rabbi. It's nice to hear the other side. In every situation, hurricanes included, we see the good and the bad. Which we choose to emphasize and concentrate on is a matter of personal choice.
From what I've seen in San Antonio, people are always willing to help people in need. And when "the city" and "FEMA" ran thin, "people" came forward and did what they could.
It's an idea ...
"Katrina... I Didn't See Racism, I Saw Brotherhood,"
by Rabbi Aryeh Spero (New York)
Posted Sep 7, 2005
In New Orleans, beginning Tuesday morning, August 30, I saw men in helicopters risking their lives to save stranded flood victims from rooftops. The rescuers were White, the stranded Black. I saw Caucasians navigating their small, private boats in violent, swirling, toxic floodwaters to find fellow citizens trapped in their houses. Those they saved were Black.
I saw Brotherhood. New York Congressman Charlie Rangel saw Racism.
Yes, there are Two Americas. One is the real America, where virtually every White person I know sends money, food or clothes to those in need --now and in other crises -- regardless of color. This America is colorblind.
The other is the America fantasized and manufactured by Charlie Rangel, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, who constantly cry "racism!" even in situations where it does not exist, even when undeniable images illustrate love, compassion and concern. These three men, together with today's NAACP, want to continue the notion of Racist America. It is their Mantra, their calling card. Their power, money, and continued media appearances depend on it.
Often, people caught up in accusing others of sin neglect to undergo their own personal introspection. They begin to think they alone inhabit the moral high ground. It is high time these men peered into their own hearts at the dark chamber that causes this unceasing labeling of their fellow Americans as "racist." They may find in that chamber their own racism --against Whites.
There is only one real America. Beginning Friday morning in Houston, thousands of regular citizens poured into the Astrodome offering water, food, clean clothes, personal items, baby diapers and toys, love and even their homes to the evacuees who had been bused in from New Orleans. Most of the givers were White, most of those being helped were Black. But there was Jesse Jackson, busy on TV, accusing the country of not putting Blacks-- i.e., him -- on some type of Commission he is demanding. Where was he early in the week? Not sweating with others from around the country who had scraped their last dollar to come help. With Jesse, it's always about Jesse.
After decades of hearing accusations from Jesse, Al, Charlie, the NAACP and certain elitists about how racist America is, it would have been refreshing to hear them for once give thanks to those they for years have been maligning. These self-anointed spokesmen for the Black community lead only when it comes to foisting guilt and condemnation, and not when it comes to acknowledging the good in those they have made a career in castigating.
As a Rabbi I have a message I wish to offer to my fellow members of the cloth, Reverends Jackson and Sharpton: It is time to do some soul searching. Your continued efforts to tear this country apart, even in light of the monumental goodness shown by your White brothers, is a sin.
There are no churches in the world like the American churches. And there are no better parishioners and members of churches anywhere in the world.
These churches are saving the day. Their members -- infused by the special and singular teachings of our unique American Judeo-Christian understanding of the Bible -- are, at this moment, writing an historic chapter in giving, initiative, and selflessness. They are opening their homes to strangers. They are doing what government is incapable of doing.
America works because of its faith-based institutions. It always has. That is what makes it America.
So next time the ACLU tries to diminish and marginalize the churches, saying there is no role for religion in American public life, that an impenetrable wall must be erected separating the citizens from their faith, cry out "Katrina."
Next time the ACLU goes to court asking that U.S. soldiers not be allowed to say Grace in the Mess Hall and that communities be forbidden from setting up a nativity scene, ask yourself: without the motivation of Goodness sourced in Faith, would people offer such sacrifice? Where else does this Brotherhood come from but the Bible which teaches "Thou Shall Love Thy Neighbor as Yourself."
I saw brotherhood on Fox News, where 24/7 reporters used their perch as a clearing-house for search-and-rescue missions and communication between the stranded and those in position to save. In contrast, the Old-line networks continued with their usual foolish, brain-numbing programming.
Those who always preach "compassion" chose profit over people.
The New York Times has utterly failed America. Its columnists could have used their talents and word skills to inspire and unite a nation.
Columnists such as Frank Rich and Paul Krugman, however, revealed their true colors by evading their once-in-a-lifetime chance to help and instead chose to divide, condemn, and fuel the fires and poison the waters of Louisiana. In them, I saw no Brotherhood. The newspaper always preaching "compassion" verifies Shakespeare's "They protest too much."
Similar elitists here in the northeast and on the west coast have over the years expressed their view of the South as "unsophisticated" and Texans as "cowboys." Well, the South has come through, especially Houston and other parts of Texas, whereas, as I write this on Labor Day, the limousine moralizers are lying on east and west coast beaches thinking they're doing their part by reading Times' editorials and calling George Bush "racist."
How sanctimonious life becomes when proving you are not a racist depends not on living in a truly integrated neighborhood, but by simply calling others racist.
Like so often in history, facts trump platitudes. Reality reigns. Those who always preach brotherhood, thus far have acted devoid of it. Those who for decades have been accused by elitists of not having compassion are the ones living it. They are: the churches, the military, and the sons and daughters of the South.
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