“The rich cannot accumulate
wealth without the co-operation
the poor in society.” (Gandhi)
“Pick two of the three, beds, refrigerator or stove?” That was the question I had to pose by phone today to a woman who just left a homeless shelter but had nothing but an apartment. My question was what do you most need? Her answer was beds, refrigerator or stove. As a member of the St. Vincent De Paul conference of St. Catherine I was calling her to schedule a home visit. Our conference is one of two that serve a wide area of the north side of Milwaukee that is home to poorest and most segregated area of the city. With the dramatic increase of poverty, one of two persons living in poverty or near poverty, doing out task of visiting those in need and offering them vouchers for the essentials of life, food and beds, is becoming hard to fulfill. Some members of our conference suggested last night that we give them only one appliance, a voucher up to $125 and limit the beds we supply to a few, each one costing our conference about $100 to $125. I understand their concern about money but as part of the 50 percent who do not live in poverty or near poverty cannot accept it.
I have suggested to St.Vincent De Paul members, in the past and will do so in the future, a more aggressive recruitment of members and money. I content there are plenty of conference members out there to make home visits to people in need and plenty of money out there for the poor in the 50%. I believe all we need to do is ask for membership and money and it will be given to us. If you read the Gospel, “ask and you shall receive”, or try to live in the spirit of the Catholic Worker Catholic Worker movement this is not a very hard stretch to believe in. When I have prayed and asked for participation in activities, when I was a youth minister or a St. Vincent De Paul member, it has worked if the others around me believe.
I believe all people are basically by nature good and selfish and greed has to be learned. Sadly we live in a society where selfishness and greed run rampart. Last night at the St. Vincent De Paul meeting we talked about poor people 19 or over that do not have insurance. Some said there was a state insurance plan. I found out today that was true but there are 188,000 persons on the waiting list for this insurance plan and today in the newspaper it says the Governor rejected 38 billion in federal money because he does not like the Federal Health Care law.
Also the headlines of today’s newspaper was the fact that state jobs declined for 6th month in a role while the national level has gone up. Yet the governor still claims to be a ‘job creator’ and my wife just got a mailing from him today with that claim.
Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, used to say that if everyone took in one homeless person there would no more homelessness in the USA. Yes problems are that simple to eliminate if we work together to do our part. Yet we remained divided and apart fighting each other rather than the “powers that be” that control our economy and political system. Gandhi said “The rich cannot accumulate wealth without the co-operation of the poor in society.” This is true but the 50% of the poor or near poor are voiceless and the other 50% keep our silence.
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