Poverty Immersion and Living the Golden Rule
Opening their eyes is one of my big goals.
by Stephanie Smedley
One of my BIG dreams in life is to help make it a requirement for all elected officials and billionaire CEOs to do a sort of “study abroad” right here in the United States. Why? I am fed up with people in power who talk about people’s lives as if every problem they face is entirely their own fault.
The United States of today is a cruel, unforgiving place. Some of the corporate and military-industrial provisions in the latest bill sponsored by Senate Republicans highlight that fact perfectly: cut unemployment benefits during a pandemic, but request funds for “3 martini lunches” and a staggering $29 billion for the Pentagon.
And millions of families are about to be homeless.
While working on my master’s degree in social work I took an experiential course called Poverty Immersion. It was an elective, only 2 weeks in length during the summer of 2015. I was already familiar with a lot of the challenges facing people in America. However, I was not prepared for how eye-opening and how exhausting just LEARNING about life in poverty could be.
My cohorts and I were not allowed to use smartphones during the course. We were required to only use public transportation. We visited various social service offices in our city, and once to wait in line for section-8 housing paperwork. We eventually left empty-handed, as the staff was already 3 hours behind. There were dozens of people and families with children ahead of us. We’d arrived at around 10:00 a.m. This is to say nothing about the fact that there was a waiting list several months-long for section-8 housing that people had already applied for.
We volunteered for 8 hours one day, scrubbing toilets, disinfecting highchairs and toys, and baking cookies at the “day room” of an emergency family shelter.
Imagine being homeless as a child. Imagine seeing the adults in your life break down crying because of the stress.
Imagine being homeless as a parent. Your child would naturally look to you for answers. Homeless parents have to answer questions like “where are we sleeping tonight?” and “when can we eat?”
My course mates and I took part in a group discussion at a shelter for adults without children. They were mostly single men, who have been on the edge of society most of their lives. They all struggled with drugs, poverty, jail time, and general disregard for their humanity. This word is overused, but the experience was intense. We cried, we got angry, we got real. Vulnerable. Unfiltered and authentic.
For me, words are useless in the absence of authenticity. That goes double for individuals in power who are trusted to make decisions on behalf of others.
I am tired of phony talking heads playing to rural voters like they give a shit about the collapse of small town America and the death of multi-generational family farming. I hate seeing smug (mostly white male) faces jaw-jacking about regulating a woman’s uterus, but not firearms. They won’t do the sensible thing and put reasonable limits on deadly weapons, but by all means, force a woman to carry her rapist’s child to term.
No person in power should enforce policies they themselves would not abide.
I want to scream when ditzy idiots like Betsy Devos talk about the public school system when they have literally no experience with public schools. I feel such sadness and incredulity when people I know personally say things like “Trump / McConnell / Kavanaugh worked hard to get where they’re at.”
Bullshit. They don’t know what hard work is.
In short, I am sick of all the bullshit spewing from the collective gaping maw of people in positions of power. One of the main reasons for my opinion: almost none of them has any idea what actual Americans have to deal with. They don’t have any concept of reality — the kind of reality in which you forgo paying the gas bill to buy groceries. Not because you’re some “welfare queen,” but because inflation has increased at a much faster pace than wages. Not because you are lazy, but because you are a single parent working 2 part-time, low wage jobs because you couldn’t afford to get a 4-year degree. And for too many Americans with a 4-year degree, they bust their asses while being underpaid to do work once done by high school graduates.
They don’t know the reality of having to make tough choices. I’m not talking about the choice of which rehab facility to send your kid to. I mean the choice between turning your kid in for possession, just so then you know at least they’ll be off the streets, versus telling your child they are no longer welcome in your home until they kick the habit. Middle-to-low income people cannot afford rehab in the therapeutic sense. Average Americans can help get their loved ones stabilized from a medical standpoint, but that’s about it. They are medically cleared, they white-knuckle through group therapy, then are returned back into the same reality that perpetuates their addictions.
People in positions of power and/or the super rich (they are often one and the same, as we know) are able to pay their kid’s way into elite universities — even if their kid is dumb as a bag of rocks. Intelligence and critical thinking matter not in the U.S., as long as you can pay to play. These vapid, entitled trust fund babies go on to continue their family tradition of wealth-building and upward mobility. Regular Americans, if they can secure student loans and maybe some scholarships, will often still graduate with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. They will then often accrue more debt from the credit card(s) they use to help make ends meet. And the unluckiest folks fall victim to criminally high-interest payday lenders.
Again, no person in power should enforce policies they themselves would not abide.
Completion of the poverty immersion program would be mandatory, or face possible forfeiture of the position desired (President, Senator, CEO, etc.) and/or a substantial fine based on the individual’s net worth. They would do an immersion of no less than 1 month, living with a host family at or below the poverty line. Participants will have no access to a vehicle of their own. They must carpool with others, walk, bike, or take public transportation to their minimum wage job. After all, they tell millions of people every day to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They’re not living rent-free with their host families, after all. Participants will do all their own cooking and laundry. If there is no laundry on-site, they must visit a laundromat. They will not have broadband internet access at the host family’s home. If there is a good 3G/4G signal, then they can use their smartphone. With the earnings from their low-wage jobs they must help pay rent, utilities, transportation costs, and grocery bills. If they would like, they are welcome to try their hand at applying for public assistance, just to experience what that process is like.
When you use public transport, walk or carpool, you meet people who are different from you. They may have a different skin color, a different cultural background, a different ability level, or a completely different worldview. Personally, I’ve had some of the most impactful moments in my life because of my interactions waiting for or using public transportation. I’ve had conversations with people experiencing homelessness, drug addiction, and deep multi-generational poverty. I’ve talked with women who work the streets, selling sex to survive.
I’ve been witness to countless examples of how people live life in the United States. I’ve allowed myself to be uncomfortable, for the sake of understanding the discomfort of others, not as privileged as myself
I say this not to point out how *woke* I am. I say this all as an attempt to illustrate how making an effort to know people — outside your bubble — opens your eyes to the wider world.
No CEO should pay their workers less than a living wage. No President should send troops into battle if they would not send their own children. Members of Congress should not vote for legislation that they themselves would find untenable. Real leaders know who they lead. Anything else is exploitation.
