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The only way anyone seemed to leave the streets was being sentenced to an upstate prison, or thrown in Rikers, or mandated to rehab, or killed.
Our country is split into two worlds. In one, the downtowns are filled with nightlife, restaurants, well-maintained bike paths, and pedestrian crosswalks. You can tell you’re in this world by the kinds of grocery stores there are and by how many and what kind of vegetables they stock. You can tell by whether the convenience stores carry diet drinks. In this world the residents told me of challenges overcome and plans for the future. There were fears and frustrations, but they were mostly about compromised dreams or juggling too much. Should I move to the West Coast to be an intern or go to
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The economy grew, but gone were the local community, the labor union, and lifetime jobs for those without a college degree.
It was the other losses, the ones that followed the job losses—the crumbling town centers, the broken families, the isolation, the pain, the desperation, the drugs, the humiliation and anger—that we in the front row didn’t fully see or understand. The devastating impact of the breakdown of community didn’t show up in our spreadsheets.
Back in my day you needed a strong back and a weak mind to get a job. Now you need a weak back and a strong mind.”
Drugs really are a refuge for many in the back row (and the front, for that matter, though for different reasons). All across America I found similar neighborhoods, where people who felt rejected and stigmatized, either by the world at large or by their neighbors in particular, found relief in drugs. Some used them to numb the pain, others as a possible way to the more permanent relief of death and others as a way to bond, since drug users have their own tight-knit communities.
Their belief that life isn’t worth living has turned into recklessness, their addiction into a form of suicide.
She always carried a rosary, no matter how difficult her position was. She had once given it to me to keep before she was arrested for lifting from the dollar store. “It is my symbol of peace and tranquility. Safety and protection. Reminds me that there is something greater out there, greater than this earth and its people. Something better than this.”
In their mind the only places on the streets that regularly treat them like humans, that offer them a seat to sit in, an ear to listen, and really understand their past are churches.
The tragedy of the streets means few can delude themselves into thinking they have it under control. You cannot ignore death there, and you cannot ignore human fallibility. It is easier to see that everyone is a sinner, everyone is fallible, and everyone is mortal. It is easier to see that there are things just too deep, too important, or too great for us to know. It is far easier to recognize that one must come to peace with the idea that “we don’t and never will have this under control.” It is far easier to see religion not just as useful but as true.
Jim sees I don’t fully get it and adds, “I didn’t want to leave. I wanted this.” He gestures toward the surrounding area. “Being able to see people I was born with every day and staying close to my family. I live on land where my two grown boys and their families live just nine hundred feet from me. My grandkids are only nine hundred feet away. I can see them every day, and do. What more could you ask for?”
Viewed from a distance, Crystal’s and Andrew’s decisions to stay and attend a small community college don’t make much sense. Everyone is supposed to want the best education to make the best career. That is the message everyone hears, and it is how we reward people. We repeat over and over, “Get the best education you can, go to the best school you can.” Yet do we really want to be a society that stigmatizes a daughter or son who stays to help their parents?
ME: You like it here? HIM: I am the happiest man alive. I have three boys and four grandchildren. Just tickled to death. Rural living is a different lifestyle. Who is happier? You have a family and a belly full and you are all set, that and Jesus in your life. Everything else is complications.
Selma may be emblematic of civil rights victories, but if you look closer, it is a reminder of the destructive power of racism and the failure of the current status quo to deliver tangible results to most black Americans.
Everyone wants to feel like a valued member of something larger than themselves. The current status quo doesn’t do that for most of America, because it only understands value in economic forms of meaning. In that world it is all about getting credentials, primarily those gained by education.
It is a system that applauds itself for being a meritocracy, allowing anyone to succeed. Implying that those who don’t choose this path, who can’t or don’t pick up and move constantly, who can’t overcome the long odds, are failures and it is their own fault. They are not smart enough. You didn’t make it out because you suck. That is humiliating.
People respond to humiliation in different ways, but the most common response is to find a source of pride wherever possible, even if that means in places the status quo doesn’t approve of. It means trying to find a community or activity that values them. For those in the back row, that means a place that doesn’t demand credentials. Drugs are one of them. Bars, drug traps, and crack houses offer communities that don’t care about your past, your failures, or the color of your skin. As long as you join in, shooting up or taking a hit or swallowing the pills, it is all OK. They also offer a
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We have removed ourselves physically and in spirit, and when we do look back, it is through papers and books filled with data. We study poverty and those we left behind with spreadsheets and statistics, believing we are well intentioned, believing we are really valuing them. Instead, we are diminishing them by seeing them as simply numbers to be manipulated.
We have implemented policies that focus narrowly on one value of meaning: the material. We emphasize GDP and efficiency, those things that we can measure, leaving behind the value of those that are harder to quantify—like community, happiness, friendships, pride, and integration.
