Bread and Fish

So there was a fundraising event to help the displaced in my community, employing a volunteer workforce mainly composed of the displaced in my community with the promise of a free meal. I trust that those leading the whole endeavor had good intentions, and honestly, having something meaningful to do that day felt kinda fulfilling. Sure, it was hot and we had to get up early, but we set up the tents and the stage and the lights and carried heavy machinery in mostly good spirits. We got to meet folks in the music business, mostly the organizers and the members of the bands and crew that were performing.

Everyone was really nice and gracious, but something was bugging me.

Something usually is, but I swear I wasn't looking for it this time.

Beneath all the well-wishing and help and free lunch...well, yknow what they say about free lunch...

I couldn't help but feeling that there were those among the leaders who felt it necessary to teach us a lesson. Between the talk and the posturing, more than one person seemed to be insinuating that we needed this (or rather, I suppose, "they" needed this, for none of the folks there knew I was in my car at the time). They needed it to teach them that you have to work hard for your lunch, that to get what you need to survive, you gotta struggle and strive and push yourself.

"It's good for them to learn this," they propose. We all say so with such self-righteous condescension.

Except these weren't little kids. The volunteer workers that came in the shelter van were full grown men, some a little older than myself, some almost my grandfather's age. They had struggled and strived and pushed themselves to surive their whole lives, and it was somehow good for them to learn about that necessity? This was somehow all part of the program to help them?

I can understand and do support the idea of offering opportunities to help folks find purpose and do something meaningful. Teach a man to fish and all that jazz.

What I find reprehensible, however, is the idea of folks who are struggling daily just to get by being treated like they need to learn about the value of earning your bread by those who have had a baseline of support and guidance their whole lives (or at least in this moment had no reason to worry about where the next meal was going to come from).

It's those who grew up going to the finest schools where money was no issue when it came to the quality of education refusing to allow help to go to those who aren't able to even get the bare minimum of public education and then blaming them for their lack.

As I listen to the Republican congress defending the upper class with the guise it'll help the middle class and the Democratic congress defending the middle class with the guise it'll help everyone, I can't help but think that the majority of congress have spent most of their lives far from the bottom.

I don't care about the fiscal cliff, or any more of this indoctrination that banks must be bailed out while children go hungry. If you're so caught up with the idea that capitalist competition is the way to care for people, you've lost sight of what it is to be a caring human being.

That is, of course, if you were ever allowed the honor of being poor enough to know how to care.