Poverty and Shame

In the tarot deck there is a particular card, the five of pentacles. It depicts a couple in the snow outside a church. One is on crutches and has a bandaged foot, the other is huddling in rags against the cold. They move forward, beside the church, outside of the institution that could help them, impoverished and ashamed.

The card's meaning is easy to read. A situation or alliance made that creates poverty, alienation from the social network and shame. It is a situation most of us fear and one, I believe, that is largely the imagination brought to life in its worst possible incarnation.

Last week I went on a job interview to work as a community organizer for ACORN. I had some hopes that the job might be rewarding because after all, Obama did it once. When I arrived at the office, the smell was almost more than I could bear. (as cliched as that sounds it is the truth) It was in a ramshackle building, at the back, across from a strip club in the worst possible area of town. I got a second interview.

On this second interview it was my task to accompany one of the community organizers on his rounds. He had a scooter so I took a bus and met him in a neighborhood where I had never been before.

The neighborhood consisted of a few apartment blocks and several sets of townhouses with a road running through it. We went to the first apartment block and he studied the intercom, checking his clipboard frequently. When a small group of residents went in, we followed. He did not press any of the intercom buttons. We snuck in.

He knocked on doors. In nearly every case, there was no response. We finally found a woman and her children at home. He asked her if she was planning to be at the environmental meeting that night and asked if we could come in to talk.

She said yes and once inside he launched into a kind of pitch about the problems in the building and what she thought they could do about it. I smiled at the children and tried to be as responsive as I could be. She related more and more to me and it was interesting enough.

Soon her husband came home and this is what got me thinking.

First of all, I was concerned for her safety. Marriage can be a volatile place at the best of times and there we were, dinnertime drawing near, taking his wife's time and energy away from his household.

Then there was his response. When asked what should be done about the conditions of the building he drew himself up to his full height and gave the answer I expected.

He said he was a paying customer, that the building was a business and like any other business it would succeed or fail on its own merits. He said his solution was to pull himself up and get his family out of there. He was ashamed of being poor - that much was obvious and he wanted us to know that unlike others who may be stupid enough to be trapped there, he was different. He would be leaving very soon.

I wanted to protect his sense of self but more than that I could see quite clearly through the lens of his self-respect that there was no way ACORN could make headway while people are ashamed of being poor. And this is how the Conservative government gets away with their shocking behavior toward the poor. In this society we believe that being poor is shameful, preventable and it puts you outside of the concern of society. Just like that card.

If we are ever to make strides toward eradicating poverty in this world, shame will have to go first.

We left the building and I asked the organizer about the woman, I asked him if he ever weighed her safety or his ego against what he was trying to accomplish.

He responded by saying; "we treat everyone equally, we are not counsellors" and I thought, that's the problem, isn't it? We treat everyone alike. We do not care about their personal lives. We make these places and then we pretend we can do so little to fix them, we set up boundaries, we think change can only happen in one way.

I am not going to be fooled by that kind of thinking anymore.

I told him the job would not suit me but that I would think about it. And I have.