Trash, Poverty, and Outrage

Trash in a Refugee Camp

 

I’ve never lived in a tent on the street or in a camp. But I have definitely spent too much time without permanent or stable housing. I couch surfed and lived out of my car off and on during my college years. Through that time, I had a trash problem. I ate at fast food joints when I had extra cash and accumulated the wrappers, I had piles of dirty clothes, and at times, pretty much all my stuff needed to fit in a small, old Hyundai.

Partly, perhaps, I am just a disorganized person. But I didn’t have a garbage can, though I did frequently bag everything up and stick it in the trunk for the next time I visited a friend where I could toss my garbage in their can. Mostly, the stress of trying to find places to stay or figure out if I could eat or any number of other problems made trash the least of my problems.

I have been hearing a lot about trash lately.

As we have come to the city in protest of the upcoming eviction of a local homeless camp, one of the issues that has become front and center is the issue of trash. There have been moments I have wished that we could be as enraged about the abysmal conditions people are forced to live as we are about trash along our shoreline.

At the same time, we all get trash is a problem.

Trash is, at least in some ways, the creation of an industrial world. And people who are poor always seem to live in the middle of trash in our globalizing world. I was just in Palestine and the mounds of trash on the edges of neighborhoods and towns was immense. The same is true of poor communities everywhere in the modern world. Poor communities in the United States.

There are many reasons and different reasons for every place. No managed landfills, not enough garbage pickup, people dumping either because they can’t afford the dump or are cutting corners. Or people not being allowed to use dumpsters, which happens frequently enough for people who live on the streets in the US. Or the stress of trying to survive.

All of us produce a huge amount of trash. People living in houses in nice neighborhoods likely produce the most trash—we just do not see it, because of a complex system of trash disposal, pickup, and dumping in huge heaps or waterways far out of public eye. And people living in houses in nice neighbors need to put very little effort into trash disposal.

In camps along the river, the folks who live there are constantly fighting a losing battle with trash, as people move in and out, as they look for places to dump it, as they constantly battle the cold and wet to stay dry and more stuff is ruined.

Even as we find better ways to deal with trash, our real outcry ought to be that people are forced to live in these conditions. No one chooses to live in muddy, wet, crappy conditions if there are better options.

Now that I have stable housing and regular garbage pick-up at my rental, I should note that I found I wasn’t such a messy person after all. I really enjoy not having trash laying around.

Unless a Corn of Wheat....

Lent always gives us the happy, cheerful readings, doesn’t it? At least it’s the last Sunday before the passion and Easter! But this Sunday, we sit with Jesus talking about death. In a few days, the church calendar will commemorate the deaths of many Salvadorans during their civil war, including the death of their archbishop. There is a Spanish artist, very popular in Latin America, named Cerrezo Barrado who draws line drawings for each of the gospel texts in the lectionary. The picture for this Sunday is deeply provocative.

It is a drawing of three bodies, lying under the ground. Above ground, the hills are covered in crosses. But over the bodies, flowers and wheat and corn are growing out of them. In typical Latin American art, it focuses on death—people die just like Jesus did every day—they die of poverty, of starvation, they die because they are killed by their governments or shot in the streets.

And yet, as Oscar Romero said before he died; “If I die, I will rise again in the Salvadoran people.”

“Unless a corn of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it brings much fruit.”

Unlike El Salvador, perhaps, we in the U.S. don’t like to talk much about death in our culture, do we?

Sometimes we don’t even like to mourn, if we can help it. We grin and bear it. We try to hide death away in sterile hospitals and pretty funeral homes and out of the way homeless camps, but we avoid the topic if we can.

I have stood at many deathbeds in my life, personally and in my ministry. Most of us have lost people we love.

And death is a terrifying, mysterious, devastating thing.

And it is made all the harder because, in our culture, we never talk about death. Because we all walk around with this hidden pain and cannot talk about it. Now, I know that this sounds morbid, and I know that I am young and perhaps least qualified to talk about death. But, after all the years that I’ve seen it, I’ve come to a realization.

We never want to believe that death is a part of life. We live in a constant denial of death so often in our culture.

This Lent, one of my practices has been to think about death as holy. This is a holy thing. Death is a holy thing. It is not just terrifying, not just mysterious, not just devastating. It is also holy.

Now, in our text today, in John, Jesus talks about his death. These stories are unique to John and in this text, Jesus compares his death to the natural processes of seeds dying. Only after a seed is dead can it be planted and bring flowers and corn and wheat.

If life is sacred, then death is sacred too.

 If we thought of death as sacred, perhaps we would allow ourselves the time to mourn, because mourning is a sign of our great love for the person who has died. It is how we honor the dead.

If we thought of death as sacred, perhaps we would feel less guilt as our loved ones leave us and we are powerless to stop it.

If we thought of death as sacred, we could allow ourselves to be angry at the dead too, especially at those who once wronged us, because God can hold the person who is gone, and we don’t have to.

If we thought of death as sacred, we could better remember that those we love who die live on in the hearts of those who loved them and in the arms of the great Creator.

If we thought of death as sacred, we could one day welcome death ourselves and ask what it means to die a good death. Maybe we would be less afraid to live.

There is more to this too.

If we thought of death as sacred in our world, we would work to insure that everyone could die a good death. That is why Jesus’ death—an unjust death, a death by execution at 33 years old, was a death that entered into judgment with the powers of the world.

John Steinbeck, in the Grapes of Wrath, tells the story of how poor and hungry migrants, fleeing the dust bowl to work in California, watched all of this food—potatoes and oranges and vegetables— food that could not be sold being destroyed. He wrote; “In the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.” God, through the poor, enters into judgment with a society that allows people to die unjustly.

A society that denies the sacredness of death does not prioritize that people live abundantly and die well.

I think about this in Grays Harbor—where, although we do not see death as close and intimately as El Salvador did during that terrible war, we are still struggling. Nearly 50% of our people in this county are poor by DSHS standards. That is quite the crisis— We do struggle far too often with unjust death—

And, yet, the people of this county still hope for and fight for a better life. Flowers bloom from the bodies of our dead and those who have died alone speak to us from beyond the grave. God counts their deaths as sacred even if the powers of the world do not. And their deaths enter into judgment with greed and power and apathy.

In the mountains of Chiapas in Southern Mexico, one of the Zapatista leaders said; “In the mountains of Chiapas, death was a part of daily life… Death becomes a daily fact. It loses its sacredness. ..Death, which is so close, so near, so possible, is less terrifying for us than for others. So, going out and fighting and perhaps meeting death is not as terrible as it seems. For us, at least. In fact, what surprises and amazes us is life itself. The hope of a better life.”

I think about this right now in Aberdeen. Last week, people who camp out by the river were given notice that they had until March 31 to leave their camps. The city has nowhere for these folks to go. It is one more step that displaces people even further. Now, for the growing number of people homeless in this county and in this country, death is very near all the time.

Displacing people like this adds one more layer of complication, one more layer of danger.

The people of the camps in Aberdeen have asked me, have asked us to stand with them. They are struggling for life and for survival in a world that does not see their bodies, their lives as sacred or as holy. This week, I am speaking to city council—and we ask for prayers and even your presence—asking them to either halt the eviction or give people somewhere to go. We are asking for people to be treated as sacred, as human, as people. We are asking that this city, and this county, prioritize the common good.

We want unjust death to end in this county. We want all lives to be valued. We want people have access to abundant life and a good death. We want our towns to come alive again, even in death, and the prophet Isaiah tells us that the only way that that happens is to care for the common good. To end injustice. To end homelessness. To care for each other and rebuild together.

This Lent, for ourselves and in our own lives, and for people struggling in this county….

we pray that all bodies and all people, in life and in death, will be honored as sacred, as holy.  

A CALL TO ACTION

Over the past week, people camping in Aberdeen have been issued eviction notices.

In Aberdeen, if you are really down and out, if you have lost everything, if you get kicked out of your parents’ or your friend’s place, if you need to save money to pay for a hotel during the winter, there is one last place to go. Along the Chehalis river running through town, in the ruins of old mills and pilings, people have semi-permanent camps. Some brave souls live year round in the camp. The rest migrate in and out as their fortunes change.

Every year or two, the camps are evicted. One year, residents say that the city moved in and burned everything. In the months following, people always come back. Because it truly is the last place for Aberdeen’s poorest. Over the summers I have been here, up to 70 people camp along this stretch of river.

This time, word on the street is that the city hopes that this is a permanent eviction. There are hopes for a waterfront park instead.

Over and over, people tell me; “In this city, the poor are of no importance. We are just a nuisance in the way of redevelopment.” People who camp are asking; “Where will we go?”

The city has no plan in place to answer that question.

It is in times like this, moments like this, when the church is called to make a stand.

We are only just beginning, listening to people on the ground, building relationships, researching next steps. And here is how you can join us:

 

1.      We will attend and voice our concerns at Aberdeen City Council, Wednesday, March 25. If you are local, please join us at 7:00 pm, as we ask city council to take our concerns about housing seriously.

 

2.      We are actively looking for ideas for places that camps can relocate and people can find temporary relief. Public land, private land, church parking lots. If you know any place that could work, please let us know.

 

3.      If there is a forcible eviction, we will do everything we can to be present in protest and witness. Stay tuned and please join us. We would love to have as many people as possible join. The more attention we can get to this dismantling of people’s homes, the better.

 

4.      A group of pastors in town are collaborating to put together a research project, assessing housing in Aberdeen. Who owns it? What condition is it in? How many houses stand empty? We are fundraising to support a few college interns to assist with this data gathering. We expect that this will be part of a long term effort to address our long term housing crisis.

 

5.      We ask you to join us in prayer for this city and most particularly for those who are most affected by this eviction. May God grant justice to his people!

Talking About Race

One black man is killed every 28 hours by the police. Another young man was just shot in Madison, WI last night. A few weeks ago, a young black women struggling with mental health issues was suffocated while praying. Reports coming out of Ferguson talk about extensive poverty, police targeting of black residents, and a complex system of fees, fines, and debtor’s prison. Nearly a million black men and women are in our prison system.

When white professionals, especially white church professionals, talk about race, we like to talk about our feelings. And we like to talk about interpersonal racism. Did I say the right thing? How do I feel about my mom dating a black man? These can be helpful conversations, but sometimes I think we like to pretend that racism would go away if we were all nicer to each other and just learned to get beyond questions of race. And, even more to the point, we all need to acknowledge that, honestly, when we talk about racism only in the context of our own feelings, we make it all about us.

But in the wider world, people are actually dying. I mean, black women and men are getting shot in the streets. Black communities, disproportionately poor, are denied access to the basic means of life. They are also targeted by a system that intentionally penalizes poverty. People die in this system.  

So I’d like to talk a little less about my feelings about race. We have more pressing questions, I think.

Like, how do we preach openly about racism—not just as how we feel about each other, but also the hard, systemic realities of how racism plays out in this country? Its not a comfortable sermon in many congregations.

I want to have hard conversations about how we as white professionals interact with the police. Many of us assume that calling the police in a mental health crisis or during an altercation on church property is the thing to do. For many of us, it is our first choice. Do we ever ask how this affects our role in the community or what side this puts us on in the long run with people actually struggling to survive in our communities?  

I work in majority white, poor contexts and many white church leaders I know work in poor or working class contexts. How do we not only acknowledge the racism and prejudice that is present in white communities, but also the role and function it plays? Poor and working whites have long bought into the myth of white supremacy, therefore keeping poor whites from uniting with poor people of color. How do we make this plain in our communities, how do we point this out in a way that brings repentance and change? How, for example, might Ferguson (majority black) and Aberdeen (majority white) see that they are both targets of the same system?

I want to talk about prisons. I want to talk about how religious language justifies our prison system, justifies our drug wars, a war and a system that overwhelmingly targets people of color. With the highest incarceration rates in the world, the church generally says nothing. The church is perhaps one of the few institutions in this country that could actually conceive of alternative ways of dealing with interpersonal violence.     

These are real, pressing questions. Questions that deserve our time and energy. I work in a context of crisis, in a community also struggling to survive. Perhaps it makes these questions all the more urgent for me. Too often, I sit with people dying as a direct result of racism and the criminalization of poverty. We desperately need to be talking about it.