Passion and Compassion are the keys for the optimistic future!

“‘Which commandment is the most important of all?’ Jesus answered, ‘The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’” (Mark 12:28–31) is the verses from the Bible that many Christian familiar with it; we use the verses to teach our offsprings and to preach on other non-believers of how great is our religion. However, we forgot the true meaning of the verses; we can see it through our current administration and the administration’s followers. The president who banned Muslims to travel to US, who raised tax on the poor, who teared gas children and women of the caravan migrants, who spoke against our value of immigration, and who publicly disrespect women. Instead of following the love, and the righteous teaching in the Bible, we are following the hatred of our futile and unscrupulous leaders. Our actions, and behaviors are negatively affecting people around the world and especially the poor community like Health Hub. Therefore, we need to change our attitude toward politic, instead of not talking about it at all, why don’t we teach the later generation how to be civilize, compassion and understanding when they talk about politic.

I mentioned the story about one of my far relatives that he went to Mexico to help build houses:

“ He said Mexico was poor and underdeveloped. His thoughts of Mexico was poor and underdeveloped is the ideology of volunteerism-middle class, a high school student went to an underdeveloped country to fix the problem with a temporary solution. For me, that is selfish and ignorance because the volunteers was there to make his or herself to feel special, and entitled, and they were not there to “help” anyone. In his story of “volunteering”, he never mentions about the beauty of Mexico such as the culture, the people, and the way of living; maybe for the people of Mexico, family, music, and self-happiness is more critical than a fancy house or a luxury car.”

His story is the story of many Americans, who went off to a poor community around the world or within the US to “volunteer”. The stories they brought home to their families, friends, and communities are representing the selfishness and the lack of compassion for the undeveloped community which they “helped”. In contrast, Health Hub is not a place for volunteerism; it is a place for serving the community. Health Hub brought services that community need such as food pantry, healthy food education, health screening, and legal services for the community. One of the touching moment for me, I got to know that the long term recipients actually came back and serve the community. The recipients/ community servers are passionate because they are in the better place right now compare to the current recipients, and they still come to serve the community. From what I observed, they don’t look down at the current recipients, instead I saw a spark in them that they want to change the perpetuate system that we have. The spark, the passion, and the love they are giving to the community is service learning.

For the past fews years, I see people getting comfortable with neutrality because “ I don't want to pick side because our politic is to complicated.” The aftermath of neutrality is our current administration! Freire and Horton believe neutrality is an act of evil: “Neutrality is just following the crowd. Neutrality is just being what the system asks us to be. Neutrality, in other words was an immoral act.” I agree with Freire and Horton; you are just favoring the majority. Also, it tells me that you are a hypocrite , you apparently believe in something and have a side so why not speak it out loud? Being a human, you cannot be neutral. The last election we had, many people did not vote because “I don’t believe in politic” or “They both are evil” or “none of them is qualified for the position.” It is true; you have your opinion, and they are probably right but you should of not vote because you are neutral and a hypocrite. You being neutral hurt many people! As we can see the past two years since Trump became president, he created polices that aimed at a certain religion, ethic group, economic class. The policies he created toward those group are not helping them but in-fact hurting them, separate them from families. A direct impact of your neutrality, I can see are fear, pain and struggle of the recipients at Health Hub. The recipients at Health Hub are in the federal poverty level, they only make around 25,000 to 35,000 dollars a year but they are living in the most expensive county in the nation. A family of 4 in Marin county need to make at least 99,000 dollars a year according to the Marin Independent Journal; imagine how can the recipients at Health Hub afford to live and feeding their children. I can also see the fear in their eyes about immigration policies that Trump enforced. It hurt me to see pain and fear in the people eyes because I got to know them, I go to experience their stories, and I got to serve them. In other word, the next time you choose to be neutrality, think about your action and how it will hurt others, especially the poor community. We need to stop being neutral!

The example of “Who am I?”; is the question, I asked myself for the past several years. I identified myself as a Vietnamese- American who was born in Vietnam. However, my self identified persona is different from what people have in their mind. The Americans think I am more Vietnamese than American, the Vietnamese people think I am more American than Vietnamese; in their definition of me I am a lost soul, I do not have my own self identity, my own culture. I feel lost all along trying to identify myself with either American or Vietnamese, I don't have enough American or Vietnamese culture knowledge because I wasn't growing up in America and I left Vietnam to early to understand any Vietnamese culture. In particular, the children of recipients at Health Hub, the children have to see their parent struggle in life, and struggle to put foods on the table. They also suffering from identity crisis, the children are feeling lost. They are lost in the sea of structural issues, the discrimination, the prison system and political oppression. How would they identify themselves in this world?

Consequently, Tatum identified the dominant identities as the one who hold the power over the subordinates. “The dominant group holds the power and authority in society relative to the subordinates and determines how that power and authority may be acceptably used. Whether it is reflected in determining who gets the best jobs, whose history will be taught in school, or whose relationships will be validated by society, the dominant group has the greatest influence in determining the structure of the society.” Tatum also gave example of dominant and subordinates as men vas women and Caucasian people vs people of color. I agreed with Tatum about his definition of dominant and subordinates identities, if you were born as a white, straight, christian, muscular, smart and rich male, you are automatically became the dominant identity in the US. You are most likely to be a person hold the authority and power in government, jobs, and organization. However, a person of color, gay, poor female would have more tough time to find a place in this society. Many recipients from Health Hub are people of color, immigrants, and less educated because most of them are subordinates identity. If we look at other aspect of our culture such as prison, bad neighborhood, homeless, and poverty, we will see that majority of the people are people with subordinates identities. However, if you look at the “good” aspect of our culture, the rich neighborhood, the educated, the politicians, majority of them are with the dominant identities. Our culture is only design for the people with dominant identity if you are not dominant identity, you will have to work so much harder than the one with it.

According to US Census Bureau, Marin county has:

White alone 85.6%, Black or African American alone, percent 2.8%, American Indian and Alaska Native alone, percent 1.0%, Asian alone, percent 6.4%, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone, percent 0.3%, Two or More Races, percent 3.9%, Hispanic or Latino, percent 16.1%. However, through my observation I rarely see any caucasian at Health Hub. Though they are 85.6% of Marin population. As we can see there is a perpetuate structural issue in Marin county. We live in such a wealth county but there are people who are hungry because they do not make enough money to provide food for their children. We can change that by not being neutral, if we believe everyone deserve to eat then go out and vote for politicians who want to make a different. Or better, go run for office, go and change the structural issues.

Young identifies the new definition oppression not as a tyranny abused but as a democratic and systematic society “oppression designates the disadvantage and injustice some people suffer not because a tyrannical power coerces them, but because of the everyday practices of a well intentioned liberal society.” For example, with Health Hub, it is systematic and structural dilemma, the recipients are oppressed by food dessert, low income, job equality and education equity. The recipients are the people being oppressed by the democratic and liberal society we are living. What are the different of our “liberal and equality” society we are living and the tyranny society North Korean living in? Fundamentally, we can vote and elect our leaders. However, the leader we elect do not want to resolve the grassroots problems, instead they just start to put bandage on the problem and called it a day. In my opinion, we got the right to elect futile leaders, so does it count as a right? Or even the politicians want to change the structural issue but they feel hopeless because they feel alone. As Americans, we can help the “good” politician by peacefully protest, and vote the “close-minded” politicians out of the office.

Majority is not refer to the number or power but it is the influence “ the word ‘majority’ does not refer to number, and it does not refer to power. It refers to influence.” We can see the reality through our prison system, the “majority” of the prisoners are black, latino, asian and people of color, it does not mean any of the prisoners have any influences, power over our prison system. In fact, they are the one, who is being oppressed and racially profiled by the perpetuate problematic, and racist system.

The fear Balwin brought up in his writing is terrified to all of immigrants, and people of color. Why? A lot of use worked hard to climbed up the imagination “social-status ladder” that Americans have toward for us, the one who is not belong in this country. The fear of falling down this “peculiar ladder” is humiliating to all of us, immigrants, people of color! In fact, this sounds outrage and cruel “the Negro tells us where the bottom is: because he is there, and where he is, beneath us, we know the limits are and how far we must not fall.” But it is fact, that is where the concept of model minority (Asian) come from, we are as Asian wanted to fit in this “perfection” system. We created the say, Asian are the model minority that every minorities should look up to us. In a way that model work for the older generation, but it put many pressure on the younger generation, we have to be “perfect” in every aspects, if not we do not belong in the “model minority” standard and we will be shun away from our culture and family. It is effect Health Hub and the Mexican community because they are the one who being blame for the down fall of our economy, they are the one being blame for our shortage of jobs, and funds. The fear from the recipients I mentioned earlier is being well described here; Florencia told me that they are afraid that ICE will come arrest them and their family if they go to get the services that they deserve. I cannot imagine the worries and struggle they have to go through everyday.

Through out my research, you need to make at least 99 thousands dollars a year for a family of four to meets ends need! That is a lot of money for many families in Marin county because many of them are under the poverty line which only make around 27 thousand dollars a year. With that little of money, how can the families live in Marin? A lot of them will go to non-profit assistance like Health Hub to substitute their food for the week. However, Health Hub does not give out enough food for a family of four for an entire week. Majority of the familes will go hungry and missing meals. In one of my article, it said to live comfortably in Matin you need to make at least 155 thousand dollars a year, for the families in poverty, they would never able to make that much momey. They could not because a lot of them do not speak the language nor have the education to have a career that make 155k a year. Marin county also have a higher rate of proverty than the US alone (17% to 19% compare to 14.1%), which is deceptive because if we think about this, we are in the richest county in the US, people who work and live here own tech companies, people who are CEO of a company, etc. However, the gap is so huge, either you are the millionaire or peasant. There is 10.5% of Marin is food insercurity that translate roughly to 27000 people. The numbers is to high for a county this rich.

Health Hub is fighting food insecurity by handing out foods to families without asking and provide minimal health service for the recipients. However, it is not enough, Health Hub get a roughly 130k dollars budget every year but they have to use that money to pay for salries of 3 people equipments, maintenance and everything else come up. With that little of budget, they can’t do much. I asked Florencia, is it hard to live with such a small salary? She said “ I only get a small share of that 130k budget for my salary, but my love for the community is greater than that.” It touched my heart that people who work at Health Hub are sacrificing so much for the community.

Everyone has a gift, everyone has something to contribute, and everyone has motivation and compassion to act is a key to ABCD model. Alison Mathie and Gord Cunningham in Development in Practice, Volume 13, Number 5 state “In fact, the key to ABCD is the power of local associations to drive the community development process and to leverage additional support and entitlements. These associations are the vehicles through which all the community’s assets can be identified and then connected to one another in ways that multiply their power and effectiveness.” (467) I can see the effectiveness of ABCD model at Health Hub, Florencia is a passionate, motivate enough to contribute her gift and asset to the community. She told me that her love to the community is greater than her asset “transporting the extra foods and equipments is destroying my truck but my love for the community is greater.” Her devotion for the community moved many people’s hearts from recipients to students and volunteers. CED model corrupt our politicians because politicians will run their campaign by saying I will fight for our community by getting as much resource from our federal government but when they won the election, they tense to forget about their promises.We can see a great example from Mariah’s life story, politician like Jared Huffman promised that he is for the people when he were running for congress. However, after he won, he forgot about his promises to his people (at least to the Marin city, the people in poverty) instead of rebuild Marin City, he and his follow politicians bring in developers to plan the demolition of the apartments. That is not what Marin City need, they don’t need to be push out of their home or to be relocated; they need the apartments to be fix and remodel.

Passion and Compassion are the keys for the optimistic future. Yes, it look gloomy right now because of the current administration and their attitude toward “different” and diversity. However, we can change our politic by voting, protest, speak out, and love our neighbors. I believe we can do it if we use love and compassion.