BEYOND ANGER AND PITY A compassionate look at hunger, poverty and desperate need in America. b y LESTER SUMRALL CONTENTS 1 Shattered Dreams, Wounded Families. Children with No Future ...and Hunger 2 What Would Your Children or Grandchildren Want? 3 The Desperation of a Mother's Love 4 The Prayers of the Hungry and Needy 5 Welfare Mothers Do Not Run Laps or Do Aerobics to Keep Trim 6 Two Million Homeless 7 America's Living Nightmare 8 Beyond Anger and Pity Endnotes Chapter One Shattered Dreams, Wounded Families, Children with No Future ...and Hunger Y es, I was angry! I was ministering in the wild southwestern hinterland near Tibet in a prison. It was primitive and most of the inmates were murderers. I witnessed what happened at a slave market. I watched as a pretty little Chinese girl was sold for 75 cents American money. The buyer was a horse innkeeper. That little girl would live with and care for horses as long as she lived. She would eat scraps and wear rags. I have never forgotten the scene. These slave girls were never allowed on the streets. I often saw the girl because I slept in the hay loft. While I had a folding cot and covers, these little slave girls only had rags to cover their shivering bodies. Yes, I was angry. I never dreamt that similar conditions could exist in our great country so blessed with good things and good people. We sing "America, America..." We speak of this nation as the home of the free and land of the brave. Yes, but it is also the home of the hungry and those in desperate need. It is the home of those without hope, living in despair, unutterable frustration, and fear. "Fear is the constant companion of the resident of the ghetto," writes Bill Wilson, New York inner city pastor. Bill Wilson should know. He has a God-blessed ministry in the heart of the Bushwick-Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, appropriately dubbed "the Sodom and Gomorrah of the Big Apple, a neighborhood not sung about in the Chamber of Commerce TV commercials." I visited Bill in the ghetto. Feed the Hungry brought a semitrailer load of food to Bill and his workers for distribution in the ghettos. As we walked the streets with him, I was reminded of time spent ministering in Manchuria. There I watched the police pick up the dead off the streets in the early morning hours and throw them on a flatbed truck to be hauled away to unmarked graves. They had died of starvation during the night. Such scenes remain vivid in my memory. Perhaps you are thinking, "Surely, Dr. Sumrall, that's not what you saw in the New York ghettos?" Not quite. Not yet. But I saw humanity treated as nothings. I saw pretty little girls whom I know will one day be pulled off the streets into some back alley or vacant building, their bodies will be violated, they will be introduced to drugs, sex, alcohol. I saw poverty. I saw the graffiti on the buildings, fences and cars. And I saw hunger. There are hungry people walking the streets of our great cities, their stomachs growling. Yes, the ghetto. The ghetto, breeder of crime. The ghetto noted for poverty — high-rise project housing and decrepit welfare hotels, grim substitutes for homes, buildings full of shattered dreams, wounded families and children with no future. The ghetto with its streets and vacant lots littered with garbage and broken bottles where pathetic little children are forced to play. The ghetto, that blight on the American scene that we'd rather not discuss, rather not acknowledge that it exists. Why? Because the moment that we recognize its existence, that moment we are called to accountability. "For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not look after me" (Matthew 25:42-43 NIV). America's Shame In the heart of the New York City ghettos a tall, thin man with straight, dark hair makes his way through the crowded street with its refuse and stench. This is Bill Wilson's parish. "When you walk into one of these tenement houses, the sickening odor of unwashed human flesh, marijuana and urine assaults your senses," he explained to us. "When it's raining or too cold outdoors, the children play in the dark hallways and stairwells of the tenement houses or high-rise project housing. These hallways and stairwells are often littered with garbage and are hangouts for the drug pushers and pimps. "As a result of the high unemployment rate a good percentage of the working age people spend their days and a good share of the night hanging out on the street corners. Just hanging out drinking beer, wine, doing dope, shooting dice. When the welfare check runs out, if they receive one, they will turn to stealing, mugging, extortion, prostitution, dealing drugs or whatever they can do to get the money to buy drugs and booze. These people provide the role model for the children. "This creates many other problems such as lack of motivation for the young people. The young people see no hope for a better tomorrow, so why try." "This attitude leads to a very high dropout rate from school... Many of the children cannot read or write. This situation creates an atmosphere of violence stemming from boredom and low value for life." Ask Bill Wilson if it's so bad why don't people leave, and he'll provide the answer. "Brooklyn sits in the shadow of the world's center of power, wealth and fame in Manhattan. Wall Street, with all of its money, and the theatre district where fame beckons, lay just across the river. Yet, for these people, it might as well be ten thousand miles away. They're locked in. Locked in by fear, despair and lack of role models." Besides, where would they go? Where would they get the money to take them away, and once they got there, what would they do? "There is little if any hope for a better tomorrow," Bill says. "It's hard to explain when you live in a place like this all your life and have never really had three square meals a day. The main diet for many is potato chips and soda pop. It is difficult to find hope when you share your bed with two, or sometimes three people; or perhaps sleep in shifts because there are not enough beds to go around in an apartment that is unfit for human habitation." Can you imagine living in that kind of a situation? What does that do to you when you think about it? I know what it does to me. It makes me hurt. It makes me very sad. The spirit in me grieves about this. And if it grieves us, think how it grieves the Father-heart of God. Jesus spoke of this when He walked here upon the earth. When He saw the hungry and needy, He did something about it. His heart was moved to compassion. He told His followers, "I tell you the truth, whatever you do for one of the least of these..., you do for me" (paraphrased from Matthew 25:40). Pits of Hell in Our Cities It is not just a New York City problem. All the sprawling urban centers of our land have devolved, degenerated and died morally and spiritually. All hell has broken loose in America's cities. Our great and affluent nation, because of transgression of God's laws, has created these pits of hell in the ghettos. They are not too far removed from the "holes of Calcutta" I've seen on my world travels. As I walked the streets of New York City, I saw disease, the ravages of alcohol, the effects of drugs, and festering hatred. I knew that many of the faces of the little children I spoke to were registering pain, that they came from broken homes, their little hearts were broken. The greatest tragedy is the hundreds of thousands of little children born in these asphalt jungles. They learn to survive like rodents in a tropical jungle. These are immortal souls. This is reality. It is not the stuff of fiction. At birth these little people have beautiful, innocent faces. They learn to smile, but the smile fades all too soon as they become toddlers who experience hunger, sickness, and the effects of having been born into such degradation. As they become older, they find out they are considered the rejects of society. What an awful awakening! The media has exploited the gang wars of Los Angeles. We've watched on our television screens as the drama unfolded. Most of the citizens of this country found the situation unbelievable. We gasped in awe. What we fail to understand is why this happened. It has its roots in the pitiful plight into which children are born, children without hope who grow up to become desperate, angry young men and women. Many of them have known too long and too often what it means to be hungry and to go without. These inner city children, citizens of the dark ghetto, create mob groups and carry on their private wars. It is a protest that begs to be heard. Their wars create devastation and bring death. It took the military in Los Angeles to subdue the young warriors with their automatic rifles and flashing knives of death. It could have happened in New York on the very streets where I walked with Bill Wilson and some of my people. It could happen in your city or neighborhood. In one New England town—not a large city — it is estimated that one in fifty children will die before reaching the age of one. Perhaps you are thinking, "Surely you are mistaken, Dr. Sumrall. That can't be true in America." Yes, it is true. One man said, "We see a country where the quality of each child's life is not really cherished." So the people become angry. With many it is a subdued kind of anger. With others it erupts in time. I, with righteous anger, declare that we are ready to do something to help bring about change. Chapter Two What Would Your Children or Grandchildren Want? O ne of Bill Wilson's workers in the New York ghetto tells of asking students in his Saturday Sunday School if they could have anything in the world, what would they want. He had a boy and girl come up to the platform. The girl said she wanted some food; the boy said he wanted a house. "I didn't expect those answers," he said. "I expected toys, games, things of that sort." Because the tenement housing is so old and obsolete, fires are a frequent occurrence. Another of Bill Wilson's workers tells of a fire that took the lives of seven children, from eight months old to thirteen years of age, all but one belonging to the same mother. This was a family who had ridden the church bus every week to the Saturday Sunday School, it was the highlight of their week. Gang fights, muggings, rape, prostitution in the halls in plain sight of children. Is it any wonder that fear characterizes the lives of those who live in the ghetto? Fear and violence are their daily diet. Is it any wonder the little boy asked for a house? Jonathan Kozol, award-winning author, in his heartrending book Rachel and Her Children, says some of the ghetto children are so poorly nourished, their confidence so damaged, or their muscle tissue so deteriorated, that they have a hard time even standing up. "Pigpen Living" He terms their lifestyle as "pigpen living". He tells of visitors to one of the welfare hotels, the Martinique Hotel in New York, who said that it reminded them of a penal institution. Kozol asks: "What crime did the children in the 'pigpen' commit? The truth is, they offend us only in one manner: by existing...They take some of our taxes for their food and concentrated formula, their clothing, and their hurried clinic visits and their miserable shelter. When they sicken as a consequence of the unwholesome housing we provide, they cost a little more; and, if they fail utterly to thrive, they take some money from the 1 public treasury for burial." He observes that we pity them by putting them in a warehouse, but then we don't mark the buildings so that they attract attention. The plight of the hungry and homeless in this nation is a national disgrace. We have people in this nation who die daily from the effects of malnutrition. On the Trash Heap in America Hunger in a bountiful land. It seems utterly impossible. One man may typify a large segment of people in this country who do not understand the why behind this condition of hunger. He said, "There are always jobs to be had. These people are too lazy to work." That statement aroused my Irish ire. In describing the problem in some of America's towns, one writer told of the hurt encountered among the former breadwinners and their families. Many Americans, including Washington officials, feel that everybody in need is a cheat. To read the report of the Harvard Physician's Task Force on Hunger in America, is to read something that sounds like it's coming from a poor African nation. They tell of watching people at emergency food centers. "It looks like the lines of people you see trying to get food in Poland," observed one staff worker. "On most distribution days at least two hundred people stand in line, old people 2 and parents with young children, to get bread that is one or two days old." Workers at food distribution centers tell of seeing hungry people line up at three-thirty in the afternoon on winter days for a meal that won't be served until five. They walk two or three miles to get there. "Blacks, whites, adults, 3 children...It's ecumenical suffering we see here." The woman named Rachel, whom Jonathan Kozol interviewed at length, cried out, "My children, they be treated like chess pieces. Send all of that money off to Africa?...They're not thinking about people starvin' here in the United States. I was thinkin': Get my kids and all the other children here to sing. 'We are the world. We live here too.' How come do you care so much for people you can't see? Ain't we the world? Ain't we a piece of it? We are so close they be afraid to see. Give us a shot at something. We are something! Ain't we 4 something ... But we are something! People in America don't want to see." These children with their dark and hollowed eyes have the washed-out look of refugees in Third World countries or the victims of Hitler's holocaust. And this is affluent America. Many of the fathers of these suffering children have lost their jobs as a result of industry taking their work overseas. The problem in America is not resources but our priorities. The disparity between rich and poor in America has never been greater. The plight of these people is becoming too common to be dismissed. And how can we, as Christians, ignore the pain of these people? These American victims of injustice describe their living conditions. They talk about the rats that crawl over their children's legs while they fitfully sleep on filthy mattresses stained with excrement. They speak of summer's intolerable heat and winter's merciless cold. Broken windows, plumbing that doesn't work, stopped-up toilets. Garbage in the halls and on the stairs. No fire escapes. Elevators that don't work, having to walk up fourteen or more flights of stairs. Children falling to their death out of windows without screens. Children dying from lead poisoning (the paint chips in the old hotels). Pregnant women giving birth to deformed babies, babies with low birth weight. The infant mortality rate, for instance, in the Martinique Hotel in New York City is twenty-five per thousand, over twice the national rate and higher even than the rate in New 5 York's housing projects. Jesus loved the little children. Then they also brought infants to Him that He might touch them; but when His disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to Him and said, 'Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God' (Luke 18:15-16). Think how the Father-heart of God must grieve over these precious, innocent children who live with their mothers in such pathetic surroundings, children who don't receive the nourishment their little growing bodies and their minds need. These appalling conditions hurt me. What does that do to you? This is the darker side of America. These are preventable tragedies. There are people in this country who are suffering alone. Many of the men, the breadwinners for their families, had worked all their lives, owned and cared for homes, generally played by the rules. When companies decided to go elsewhere, many lost their livelihood. With the jobs went medical coverage, life insurance, a way of life. Unemployment benefits ran out. Families once middle-class are now destitute. These men describe themselves as "proud people...We helped build America... suddenly we are out on the trash heap...Why are we being treated like this?" "The New Poor" Too many are like the man I talked to — they think people in emergency