One of the first things I wanted to work on out here in Portland is how I thought of myself as an activist. I had a great conversation about social justice, in which we talked about the importance of agency, and actually helping the people we want to help, rather than helping ourselves.
I was reminded of this conversation in a book I just finished reading called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. At one point he asks, “Do we want to be social activists, or be seen as social activists?” Damn. Of course, it’s a little bit of both. Do I want to help people? Sure. But do I avoid the attention when people talk about what a good person I am? Of course not. And did you know that social work is dominated by women? Don’t think I didn’t notice that.
Anyways, I wanted to change this about myself while in Portland. I wanted to start by actually learning about the poor and the people I supposedly wanted to help. I wanted to learn to relate to them and understand their problems at a deeper level than, you are poor and I am not, I will help you. The playwrite Bertolt Brecht wrote, “The compassion of the oppressed for the oppressed is indispensible. It is the world’s one hope.” Brecht was definitely onto something. There are tons of rich people who survive cancer and decide, I want to raise money for cancer! Everyone always has a soft spot for people who struggle with the same thing they do.
As a way to work on my lack of solidarity with the poor. I decided to join a church that is way different than one I expected to be joining. The church is called Agape Church of Christ, and about 20% of the attendees are homeless. There are prostitutes, recovering alcoholics, hoping to be recovering drug addicts, etc. On July 4th, I went to a church BBQ hosted by one of my homeless brothers at the church. I later found out that he had paid for the BBQ with his food stamps. I was floored. Here I was hoarding my OHSU paycheck that I get for eating snacks, messing up experiments, and thinking about what to write here, and here was this guy giving literally everything he had for his friends. If I could ever learn to care with a portion of the heart of his, I would probably be on to something about being “an activist”.
from ken
Are you working on changing in your life? Tell me about it! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com
Wow - interesting congregation to join and that man and his food stamps, I'm always so impressed with the depth of humanity on rare occasion.
ReplyDelete