When people ask me "How was Mississippi?" I hardly know how to begin. Jim [Richman] and I were able to experience so much and I feel like we had an incredible opportunity to shape lives, not only of our current clients, but hopefully of those the shelter will serve long after we are gone. I've been trying to process all I saw and learned and did, and what I'm mostly left with is lots of questions and an overwhelming sense of how much out there our generation needs to "fix."
The shelter taught me all sorts of valuable lessons. Jim and I wrote a full book about the shelter, with detailed operating procedures, a resource guide that included everything from prices of apartments we visited to how the food stamp application proves works, with rules and forms to keep the shelter running smoothly. I worked as a caseworker on some difficult cases at many levels of government, attempting to help people with absolutely nothing start over completely. We established a system of weekly progress conferences to help residents create a plan for their lives and we met individually with every client in the evenings to talk about setting goals, staying focused, and working towards self-sufficiency. I even got to play "dad," feeding bottles, changing diapers, telling bedtime stories, and shopping and occasionally cooking for all 18 people in the shelter.
The entire summer has been a wonderful way to practice leadership. I have tried patient lectures, cheerful suggestions, and even occasionally angry yelling. Jim and I have a great good cop-bad cop routine going (I usually play bad cop, but its fun to switch it up). Really, though, we lead most effectively by example. At the same time, the experience raises all sorts of theoretical questions about how one could politically lead an area like the Delta. How do you write policy to help those who have been dealt life's roughest blows and are trying so hard to succeed while at the same time stopping freeloaders from absorbing every government benefit without lifting a finger?
Each person is a story with a whole life to live. I wish every policy maker who makes abstract generalizations about the "lazy homeless" and utters comments like "Get a job" could spend a few hours in the shelter and see just how phenomenally difficult it can be for someone with absolutely nothing to his or her name to completely start from scratch. I know I won't forget the challenges I have witnessed and as I engage in discussions of how to best direct policy or design social services, these "real" people will provide an invaluable basis for my ideas.
Its odd being home. The sounds of silence are not as quieting as I imagined at 1:30 am when the police knocked on the door with a new client or at 3:00 am when a new mother knocked on my door to ask for help in getting her baby to stop crying. I feel guilty being home -- there are all those people in Cleveland who I could help. I certainly felt Cleveland's blatant racial tension (railroad tracks divided the town into strictly black and white neighborhoods with white and black pools, restaurants, and churches), lack of education, and general attitude of Thoreauesqe "quiet desperation" that we characterized as a "sea of complacency." Together these troubles instilled a deep feeling of stagnant hopelessness, but the problems I witnessed are certainly not at all unique to Cleveland or the Delta. There are as many homeless here in La Crosse, or in Durham, or anywhere in the country or the world. Everyone should be able to live to live with a roof over their head, adequate food and health care, and a chance at a real education. I firmly believe these are universal rights. This summer has allowed me to appreciate how truly difficult it will be to reach such a goal and has infinitely inspired me to work towards such an ideal.
