“When I give food to the poor,
the call me a saint. When I
ask why the poor have no food,
they call me a communist.”
Dom Helder Camara,
Brazilian Archbishop

Ms. Obama visited a high school in Washing D.C. to kick off her initiative to increase the number of low-income students graduating from Universities and Colleges. The USA rates low right now and she wants to make us number one. She told students how she was poor on the Southside of Chicago yet went to Princeton and Harvard. She said, according to the media, that each student can do the same thing, graduate from a University if they really want it and work hard.

I am glad she did so and I believe a few children, with a few breaks can do likewise. But as poverty and racial discrimination in our central cities goes up; as unemployment soars and rates of incarceration increase; as the public schools system has less and less money as the military gets more and more; as crime rate soars; as the very rich profit more and more and the poor become poorer, the opportunity to be like Mrs. Obama decreases. The greed of the few eats away at the opportunity of the many.

So no matter how hard some youth try, how much they work and study very few low income youth will graduate from universities like Princeton and Harvard. A few will join the military and survive for an education, a few who are very smart or athletic will get grants and scholarships but most will fail to get that university degree, no matter how hard they try.

Gaining the ‘American Dream’ or pulling yourself up by the bootstraps is just a myth perpetuated by the rich and very rich to keep the poor with hope and dreams so they accept, what Dorothy Day, called the “filthy, rotten system”.

A friend from the past was on UWM public radio this morning. She and her husband are researchers at UWM who did the research paper Wisconsin’s Mass Incarceration of African American Males. She was asked what was the most shocking fact she discovered in her research. She said the fact that one-half of Milwaukee’s African American young adult population has spent some time in State prisons.

Rather than ask why this is I received an email tonight from a Catholic Peace and Justice group who is using this information to promote two conferences on the talk circuit, one about transportation and land use issues and one about creating safer and healthier communities. This is the same Catholic Peace and Justice group that censored, in its electronic newsletter, links to essays on The Catholic Church in North Central Milwaukee and the parable Thy Kingdom Come On Earth as it is Heaven. I guess it makes for a good way to promote a conference. But who will ask why and who will act on this information?

I better quit now since I am preaching rather than observing. Hopefully a few more people will see that opportunity fades when greed increases and real love, as St. Ignatius of Loyola says, is best expressed in deed not words.

I have an African American friend who has had a tough life with criminal convictions but who now has put his life together only to find out that he cannot get a job since he is black with a record. I will call him tomorrow and help him, whatever way I can. This seems to me more worthwhile than any meetings I could attend. If greed denies opportunity perhaps good deeds enhance opportunity

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