Blessed are they who hunger
and thirst for righteousness,for they
will be satisfied. (Matthew 5:6)

Today a friend and I canvassed an area in North Central Milwaukee where we will have our meeting next week to reform the Milwaukee Society of St. Vincent de Paul (SVDP). The people we talked to seemed to instinctively know that many organizations that collect money in name of poor, as well as city, do not use the money for people in need. For them a million dollar investment in a store in suburbs makes no sense in helping the poor in their neighborhood with the basics, of food, shelter, clothing, beds and appliances. We did not need any “facts” to prove this, they just knew it. The white suburbanites that run the Milwaukee council of SVDP can be given all the “facts” in the world of how unjust what they are doing is, but it does not matter. They still believe that someday money invested in white middle class suburb will ‘trickle down’ to poor and nothing we can say or do will matter. They reject our message and marginalize us just like they do for the poor. A few times my friend, who is poor and African American herself got in such passionate conversations with people who just ‘got it’ that I had to go get her so we could move on.
Gandhi says we need to appeal to persons through heart talking. However, when a person cannot hear or see the message it does not matter how you will appeal to that person, by stories, facts or parables. They just do not want to hear the message and thus do not. The only way to appeal to persons “hard of heart”, I believe, is by some dramatic action. If we could organize a large group of the poor to cry out to members of St. Vincent de Paul about what they are doing, perhaps a few would hear or see what is happening. However, doing that is hard since the poor and people like me are skeptical if we can do anything.

My friend, however, was not skeptical. She had faith that something could happen if we kept on trying. Her faith kept me going, since I do not like going to door to door.

One woman we met, a religious minister, say we were ‘righteous people’. She did not mean that in a negative way but in the way of Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Righteousness is an attribute that implies that a person’s actions are justified, and can have the connotation that the person has been “judged” or “reckoned” as leading a life that is pleasing to God. The poor cannot easily be deceived. The poor know righteousness.

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