Reply #33: Good! I said that many different ways, but I am finding that people get very defensive about this.

[bobbolink]

In everyway I can, I am trying to create some understanding here. Just like whites finally understood what it was to be black when they saw peaceful black protestors attacked with hoses and dogs, *I* am trying to paint a picture of what it is like to be destitute and IGNORED.

And that right there, is just how diabolical this whole thing has become. Middleclass people can SEE physical abuse, and most will be moved by it, but being IGNORED *cannot* be seen! THAT is what I am trying to get all of you to grasp.

I have suggested this before, and I am going to beg you.. please listen to or read Elie Wiesel's speech, The Perils Of Indifference, which he delivered in the Clinton White House. I think he does a good job of describing the violence of ignoring people.

He posits that the opposite of love is NOT hate; the opposite of love is indifference....separation.

I ask you to listen to the first part of his speech. In this opening, he talks about the anger of the US soldiers when they saw and freed the Jews at Buchenwald. As he describes it, the prisoners were so beaten down that they felt nothing. The anger of the soldiers was important... it told them they were PEOPLE... it told them they had value and worth. The ANGER of the soldiers freed the people to once again feel like human beings!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_RwGmYHyJ0&NR=1

That is what WE need from all of you now... we need to hear your anger, your rage, that we are homeless refugees in our own country... that we are left hungry and malnourished in our own country.

Listen as he describes what Indifference does... because that is the harm that we are experiencing right now, and all the explanations, all the rationalizations don't change that harm one bit. It only exacerbates it!

Then, I ask you to read what I quoted earlier in this thread... this is the value that we have, the gift we bring to the middleclass, if only you would recognize it and value it. Don't include us because we are desperate..... include us because we bring something important to this battle!

The Gift of the Poor
The people with the best sense of what is essential to a community, of what gives and maintains its spirit, are often doing very humble, manual tasks. It is often the poorest person - the one who has a handicap or who is ill or old - who is the most prophetic. People who carry responsibility must be close to them and know what they think, because it is often they who are free enough to see with the greatest clarity the needs, beauty and pain of the community.
- Jean Vanier, Community and Growth, p. 262