A very important quotation about experiencing the stress of "help" systems

When Barbara Sobel, then head of the New York City Human Resources Administration, posed as a welfare applicant to experience the system firsthand, she was misdirected, mistreated and so "depersonalized," she says, "I ceased to be." She remained on welfare, with a mandatory part-time job as a clerk in a city office, despite repeated pleas for full-time work, and learned that most recipients desperately want jobs.
p. 198, Streets of Hope

This is an excellent idea for progressives all over the nation to be doing.... going "underground" and experiencing themselves, first-hand, what it's like to deal with these systems.

Many years ago, I organized an "Urban Plunge"-- setting up various clergy to go on the streets and experience homelessness. It was very limited.. only one night and one day on the streets, and was done mainly for media coverage, yet these clergy in such a short time, gained a LOT of insight, and many did their Sunday sermons on their experience.

WHY can't we do more of this? Can we begin to organize these kinds of experience by various groups across the nation?

PLUNGE on!

Most of the people who have the power to change these things SET IT UP THIS WAY.

My time at the bottom has been educational, but I have no power beyond my voice...which is frequently ignored :evilgrin:

I thought we were on the same side...but this much criticism hurts me, and doesn't make me feel like continuing to try.

I'm sorry you feel so negative about what I have to say, but please... it's really dragging me down further.

I DID get the "volunteers"... wouldn't it be nice if you could at least acknowledge that.

Otherwise, I guess we are just on opposite sides.

And it's certainly nice that some of the usual bigots got a taste of how it is.

This is a problem coming STRAIGHT from the top, however, so if you want to do something significant, it's going to have to affect them.

As your original post said, work is desired- and jobs are not being created.

I suppose it's a difference in perspective- I'd rather not fight the attitudes that demonize the poor. We could do that for 100 years and not get anywhere. I'd rather work on eliminating the state of being "poor" altogether.

If you don't want constructive criticism in favor of support, I'll hold my tongue.

Just the act of applying for welfare is so demoralizing and dehumanizing that anyone who got a taste of that should immediately wake up to the lie of "welfare queens". NO ONE wants to be put in that situation and, if there was ANY choice, most people would run screaming from the welfare office.

They should have a class in college that forces people from all walks of life to experience true poverty for just a week. It's really a huge eye-opener.

experience where they don't have their eyesight, or their hearing, or use of their limbs, etc.

IF we apply enough pressure to put a sufficient number of people through a "plunge" having to do with poverty, it truly WOULD open eyes.

There was a small instance of this in my little town. I complained to 3 clergy about how I was treated at a local "help" agency. One of the clergy took it very seriously, went to see for herself, and as she told me later, was "treated very rudely. If I was treated that way when I took in donations, how are people treated who are at their wits end and coming in for assistance?"

Because of what she saw, she used her power to make some changes in said "help" agency.

We CAN pressure, and we CAN raise awareness.

As of this point, however, we don't have the will to do so.

it's really important to get a critical mass of people to view the down-and-out as people, rather than stereotypes. That can't happen without meeting them

More and more writers are becoming aware of this.

Again, from Streets Of Hope:
Robert Reich has warned of the "secession of the successful." He wrote that the wealthy top fifth of Americans "is quietly seceding from the rest of the nation." They have withdrawn "their dollars from the support of public spaces and institutions shared by all and dedicated the savings to their own private services: --from schools to security guards to walled-off residential communities.

It will change when WE are serious about creating the awareness, and FORCING change.

The clergy should be a good place to start. We all should be wearing each others shoes and walking those long miles in them. Great ideas, Bobbie!

will soon learn.