I don’t know why, but I feel as if this story needs to be told, even though it may not be mine to tell. Nevertheless, it needs to be told. For the sake of those who are being worked over by a system bent on keeping them over a barrel, and for the sake of those morons in other countries who seem to see the USA as the land of promise and dreams. Here is a small bit of the reality of this place where those with no one to defend them end up being taught to go after each other, instead of turning their rightful rage on the actual perpetrators.
I was finally working in a place where I believed I might be able to do some actual good. Working for no salary, of course, as a volunteer, but still, maybe in a place where I could help make just a little bit of a difference for somebody who had even less than I did. Here in Albuquerque, that was easy to find. First Nations people, misplaced Native Americans trapped in this city with no resources, treated like vermin, along side destitute Americans, desperate immigrants, and bewildered refugees, all thrown together like so much trash. And one little center for Human Rights trying to help them, with no resources but donated pastries. The protein was kept by the bougies. So of course people were homeless, and of course they fought over the safest places to sleep, out on the streets. And so, of course, she carried a knife. A pretty big one, too. When she confided this to me, she knew I ought to have had her banned from the center, but she also knew that I would do no such thing. The same way she knew I would know how to braid her hair as I tried to get her to wait her turn in a very overly crowded and horrifically underfunded medicaid center. In vain. She stormed out after waiting less than an hour, unable to keep her 19 year old impulse to flee the stench of tiredness, despair, and anger wafting over from all of the other hopeless waiters in line. We’d managed to get a spot just a little bit isolated, two chairs in each row cleared almost as if by magic when they saw us stomp in together, a bundle of fury and myself trying to keep her in check long enough to get the help she was legally entitled to have. Also in vain. And the lone social worker clearly knew it, as I shot an apologetic glance at her, through a window backed by protective material separating her from all of us, the rif-raf waiting for her help. I chased my charge, whom I called my adoptive niece in order to remind her not to try flirting with me, out of the building, hoping that she would be able to keep her temper long enough to eat something at the center, and maybe try to go back to get that medicaid card. Agian, in vain. At the center, sitting in the volunteer office working on deep breathing, another hopeless person walked in, sat down at the small table directly across from her, and things went rapidly down-hill from there. Looks were fired off, resulting in hurt feelings, but with none of the words that might have explained and smoothed over the situation. Insults were traded, and then, of course, both of them were standing up, as one walked out of the office, and I began to hope that things would be ok. Yet again, in vain. My young ‘niece’ charged out into the hall after the person she felt had so gravely insulted her, with myself and the office manager, a paid employee, in hot pursuit, following the shouts emanating from both of them. I saw what I was afraid I might see, just as the two hopeless people turned to face each other again, this time with no table in between them, as one arm began to reach behind a back which I knew to have a large knife strapped to it, and I ran, conscious thought escaping me, to stop her from pulling out that knife and carving up the other person who had also lost hope in life, longer ago than she had. Unfortunately for me, both of them were bigger than I was. I moved into a lung, trapping her knife hand in mine while using the other arm to push her back, using every ounce of my strength and weight, holding her as I would have held a block in a breaking dam, praying that that dam would not break and gush forth the torrents of rage I was trying to hold back, sweeping us all away. I heard a voice behind me, and felt a back hit mine. I recognized the voice of my Volunteer manager, and felt her supporting me, solid, and far heavier than I was, helping me push our angry young woman back down the hall and toward the door. Finally, the door opened, and our young fury left, knife undrawn, and I was able to breath. I heard compliments on my ability to hold back someone larger than myself, but what I was wondering was why no one asked the real question, hanging heavy in the air. Why did that even have to have taken place, at all? Why were the resources unavailable to furnish the help that both of those poor miserable souls, so lacking in hope, needed? Why does our society not care enough to really solve the problems that are so clearly able to be solved, if we really wanted to solve them? Why does our system make it so damnably difficult to access housing and health care, when those two things almost single-handedly would solve the problems of so many people that are written off by the larger American society? Why do we not Do Better?
–Nia, fka Shira, Shira D. Anto. Jones of ShiraDest publications…
Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better 