Radical Learning: Deconstructing Saviorism in Non-Traditional Service
Service is a spectrum. On the “traditional” side, it is common for people to just passively volunteer their time to a project or organization without investing much of their efforts to solving the structural issues facing the community they’re serving. On the “radical” side, we have advocates, policy makers, and community leaders doing what the government couldn’t: actually enacting structural changes through legislation and ensuring follow through. While many argue that the only meaningful form of service comes from fundamentally changing the fabric of society, I argue that these intentions, though coming from a good place, are often underlaced with idealist saviorism. As service providers, our more “radical” forms of service must be motivated by intellectual curiosity towards our community partners and the spaces we go into; to become radical advocates, we must first learn to be radical learners.
Throughout my time in high school, I avidly participated in the more “traditional side” of volunteerism. Sorting through donations at food banks, creating a penpal system with a local nursing home, organizing beach cleanups are, as Keith Morton would describe in “Irony of Service,” “limited in time and make limited claims about the impact on the people involved.” While I found moderate fulfillment working directly with members within my community, I still felt like I could’ve done more. I lacked the sense of intellectual curiosity to think about why the beaches weren’t maintained by the city government instead of volunteer groups and the sense of agency to help members within my low-income community struggling to bring food to the table. The opportunity to shift my traditional form of service to be more radical and “meaningful” came to me in the form of WaterDrop LA. The organization itself provided both the “traditional service” of distributing thousands of gallons of clean drinkable water to the unhoused community on Skid Row and the “radical service” of creating legislation to create more clean accessible water stations within it.
The first step in my plan to “solve homelessness” was to first educate myself upon the historical context of Skid Row and homelessness in LA. The stigmatization of homelessness has led many to believe that it is a result of mental illness, addiction, or even laziness; however, the rising homelessness rates within Los Angeles can be actually attributed to rising cost of living and lack of affordable housing. According to a paper done by researchers Clayton Page Aldern and Gregg Colburn, the common factor between the houseless populations within LA, King, and Santa Clara, Multnomah County was indeed the lack of affordable housing (Warth). With average rent prices in LA being $2,700, which accounts for about 50% of residents’ incomes, any slight changes to one’s monthly income like medical bills or a sudden demotion could easily cause someone to fall behind on rent and be evicted. Furthermore, the growth of gentrification and subsequent exacerbation of redlining in Los Angeles have contributed to the cycle of physical displacement, resource deprivation, and ultimately homelessness within predominantly BIPOC communities. My background research behind the creation of Skid Row only further cemented my desire to approach WaterDrop from a radical side.
Unbeknownst to me, my privilege of never having to experience being homeless had caused me to subject all the members within Skid Row to the single story of a victim of structural oppression. I had dangerously engrossed myself so much in fixing the structural issues that I believed my “own will and intellect [were] sufficient foundations for effective social change interventions’’ (Donahue 40). With most of my knowledge coming from co-opted research articles and few from the actual individuals of Skid Row, I went into WaterDrop with an idealist’s saviorism. When it came down to passing out the waters, It even affected the way I interacted with the community members. For instance, as we worked on distributing waters down section L, we passed by the local public park where a large group of houseless individuals were hanging out. As I went down the row giving out water, I noticed a man sitting on one of the benches addressing a sizable wound on his leg. I was so focused on my role as being a water distributor that I completely looked past his injury and assumed he already had all the materials like bandaids and water to clean his wound. Luckily, one of the leaders within my section noticed that he didn’t have enough cleaning materials and called the safety person to get him the proper medical supplies. In that moment, my privilege of not having to worry about a sizable cut on my leg being detrimental to my health because I have access to alcohols, bandages, gauze, and ointments caused me to overlook a large issue within the homeless community: the lack of access to medical supplies to treat their wounds on their own. At that moment, I failed to be analytical and intellectually curious.
While my initial view of radical service did come from a place of good intentions, I had failed to address the inherent “provider-receiver” hierarchy embedded within my perspective. Even though striving to create structural change through policymaking creates tangible social programs, reliable funding, and long-term change, it still runs the possibility of service providers neglecting the community if it’s created from a bubble of theorists. As Morton describes in “Irony of Service,” “Helping politics are flawed because power remains solely in the hands of the servants” (Morton 124). As volunteers, we often overlook our privilege. As someone who has never experienced homelessness before, how could I possibly understand the niche issues and problems they face? Regardless of how many theories or literatures you read, it will never be as useful and insightful as the stories and feedback you get directly from the community themselves. To be better service providers, we must learn to be better listeners and more radical learners. We must expand the way we view “intellectual curiosity” from theories and structural forces to include the stories from homeless people, the power and cultural dynamics within the community already, and the ways the community empowers itself. To implement this, I had to first change the way I viewed the community of Skid Row.
To move beyond the “victim of the system” mentality, I began to shift my attention from what the community lacked and instead to the “collections of assets that are specifically fostered in, and deployed by, communities of color as they engage in collective and individual struggles to thrive within oppressive systems’’ (Yosso). These assets of community cultural wealth are often characterized as “aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistance” (Yosso). In shifting the way I saw houseless folk on Skid Row, I began to appreciate the sense of community, the way they supported each other, and the individualities of each member. For instance, I met this man in section A that took on and carried about 10 water jugs down the street by himself to deliver to his friends down the street. Even though we offered to help him drive the waters down the street, he was determined to do it by himself. His determination and borderline stubbornness reminded me of my own dad’s and his desire to always take charge of his own autonomy regardless of the fact he has a limp. Being able to connect my experiences on Skid Row to my own family and background helped me break down the “provider-receiver” biases I had going into this project and see these members of a community as individuals rather than victims. Engaging with this new way of thinking will encourage us, as service providers, to be more intellectually curious about the culture of mutual camaraderie, the established community leaders, and individualities found within Skid Row.
Positioning myself as a learner and not merely just a “provider” allowed me to be a better listener and become more receptive to the true needs of the community. Instead of acting based on my assumptions, I began to look towards leaders within Skid Row to direct who we should give the water to and where to leave them. Listening to leaders like the man I met in Section A who have extensive knowledge of the localized resources, like free food and bureaucratic agencies to apply for affordable housing, and social dynamics within each section helped me learn so much about the lack of resources around the area. Upon hearing how many of them preferred to get something to eat more than water, I voiced their need to one of the leaders and co-owners of the organization to save some of the protein bars and apple sauces we had left to serve a larger number of people. I also began to listen and respect their boundaries more, aka respecting when they decline taking water and not pushing them to take it. Learning from the community leaders themselves also taught me to appreciate the asset of camaraderie more and how it is effectively used within the Skid Row community to address food insecurity or lack of affordable housing since the leaders serve as knowledgeable resources themselves. Using this skill of being a better listener will help guide us, as service providers, to become more receptive to their prospective community partners. It will also facilitate our shift from being an idealist savior to becoming a radical learner.
Service is what you make of it. The menial act of passing out water could transform into an opportunity for cultural exchange, learning stories, or unlearning implicit biases. Shifting one’s perspective of radical service being the only meaningful form of service to being present and of service to the houseless community allows one to be more perceptive of the community’s needs and culture. It is only by becoming a radical learner that we can begin to become radical advocates. As I continue to further engage with the more radical side of WaterDrop by attending more of their public policy meetings, I am guided with the intentions of community empowerment and a better understanding of my privilege at the forefront of my service.
Cited Sources:
Yosso, Tara J., and Rebeca Burciaga. “Reclaiming Our Histories, Recovering Community Cultural Wealth.” Center for Critical Race Studies at UCLA Research Brief, vol. 5, 2016, pp. 1–4.
Donahue, D. M., et al. The Student Companion to Community-Engaged Learning: What You Need to Know for Transformative Learning and Real Social Change. Stylus Publishing
Warth, Gary. “Cause of Homelessness? It’s Not Drugs or Mental Illness, Researchers Say.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 11 July 2022, www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-07-11/new-book-links-homelessness-city-prosperity.
“Los Angeles, CA Rental Market Trends.” Rent Cafe, Rent Cafe, July 2023, https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-trends/us/ca/los-angeles/
