I’ve been wondering what could make a devout and practicing Christian, maybe even one of us who doesn’t drink, smoke, sleep around, or do drugs, vote for such a deeply slimy creature as Donald Trump. Why would that person want to forcibly deport every non-Citizen in the US? Why would they hate Black people so much?
How could they possibly believe that elementary schools are doing major surgery in the gym during the lunch period, sending little girls home as little boys, complete with new bodies, new clothes and a deep desire to play second base for the Red Sox?
I’ve come to suspect that we are not really paying attention to what hurting people are saying about their lives. I’d bet that, for many Republican voters, the incoming President’s words are something of a collective finger in the eye to the power structure of our country.
There is a whole half of our country whose lives are failing and in desperation, a forlorn hope, they have voted to the one person they hear saying something is wrong.
President Biden says the economy is great and from one angle it is indeed prospering. But from the point of the individual there is just a narrow sharp edge between survival and despair. As William Barber sharply notes, for many in our country, poverty is one full set of tires away all the time.
I’ve been really poor a couple of times in my life, poor enough that my grocery budget for the week was not more than $20, poor enough that when I needed new brakes for the car, I had to cut out every extra in order to be able to continue to pay the essentials, poor enough that it didn’t always work, and more debt, at close to 30% interest, would accumulate. In fact, I think the difference between being poor and having enough is just that – the ability to absorb an unexpected emergency expense of, say, $1000 or less, without having to adjust the payment of other bills.
For me, that situation was short-term; I knew that, all things being equal, a better day was coming, and it did. But what happens to the folks who cannot see a future? What happens when the Democrats keep insisting the economy is great, when they can’t afford to take the family to McDonalds for dinner?
They stop believing that the Democratic Party, the party of the daily laborer, is still the party that cares about them.
Walter Reuther cared about them. He knew their lives; he’d live it. His dad was an immigrant. Walter himself started working at nine and quit high school for full-time work, and from that unprepossessing beginning, finished high school and then college while working for Ford Motor, eventually becoming an enormously powerful labor leader. Reuther stood for those values and actions we still support today, but without losing touch with the working classes, the working poor, of our country.
Who are our Walter Reuthers today? Who among the Democrats knows how to sit down and listen? Who hears the pain of those who work such poorly paid jobs that a thriving economy never floats their boat?
Here’s my suggestion: let’s step back from trying to convince Republicans that their President is a bad person. Yes, he is, but it doesn’t matter to them, because they have other concerns. So, in our daily conversations, let’s spend more time listening than preaching, let’s learn what their concerns are, why they think (beyond the pizza store delusions) the world is so bad.
And let’s learn what it really takes to live in our communities. What does it cost in your town for a single person or couple to live there? What is rent for a 1 bedroom apartment, if there are any? How much does a minimum acre lot cost? Does your town allow people to live in mobile homes? What does it cost to commute from your community to the closest jobs, and what do they pay?
In Providence, RI, a hotel housekeeper, a person who works 40 hours a week, on their feet, cleaning toilets, making beds, etc etc, makes around $2400 a month gross, and after taxes, is probably going to get about $2000. In my city, the next town over, the cheapest rent I found for a 1 bedroom apartment is $1200 a month.
Budget:
$1200 rent
300 groceries @ $75 a week
50 McDonalds once a week, Dunkins 5 times a week
25 clothing, purchased at Savers (new Levis $100 a pair, new sneaks $125)
125 cellphone, internet access
125 cable tv
400 gas, maintenance, car insurance
$ 2225
That budget doesn’t include books, movies, going out with friends. It doesn’t include union dues. It assumes that public transportation is either unavailable, unreliable, or extremely slow. It assumes that having basic cell service, internet access, and cable tv are all essential services. It assumes that the landlord is paying the utilities. It does not include renter’s insurance. And it is unsustainable.
Another thing:
I know this will not be popular, but prioritizing profoundly particular issues over issues of persistent poverty does neither those issues nor people a favor. The way special issues interact with people has changed; rather than leading people along by our advocacies, we are deepening the divisions among us. These days, our advocacy is (a) perceived as an unhealthy fixation on deeply weird practices and (b) an attack on people with other kinds of needs. When, years ago, advocacy for an issue did not mean less for others, today, I suspect that’s how it’s perceived. Today, we who advocate for LGBT issues, for instance, are perceived of doing that instead of advocating for the poor, the desperate. We think it’s both/and; but our advocacy is seen as either/or.
If we advocate more loudly for things other than the economy, poverty, the dearth of opportunity, we’re perceived to be effete eastern liberals: those wacky, self-absorbed people who waste their time working on esoteric issues, living off their grandparents’ trust funds, talking/writing with the biggest words possible, and in general, acting as though their college education has made them better than even those braggarts who talk about having Mayflower ancestors.
In the meantime, the people around us are so desperate for survival, that they’ve cast their hopes on Republicans, a group of people who, save in their yeoman farmer existence, mostly could not care less if the struggling poor survive. (Yeoman farmer Republicans are more like Jeffersonian democrats.) These are people who, in their natural pre-Trump existence, think the poor are a drag on society, who have no right to a job that pays enough to cover the cost of living, much less food, clothing, housing or healthcare. Poor people, they believe, are poor because they don’t know how to manage their money, or because they are stupid, or lazy or on drugs. Republicans believe in eugenics. They think the reason Mexicans pick produce for us is that lazy white people won’t do the work. And when we deport all the illegal immigrants doing this work, those imaginary poor will finally show up and do the work.
Republicans didn’t learn that from Trump. Ronald Reagan believed it; Herbert Hoover believed it. Heck, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr believed it, right after the Civil War, even as he fought in the war.
What does it take for that loving grammy, the one with the never-empty plate of cookies, who loves her part-Dominican grandson, who thinks that David Ortiz is close to a god in her heart – what does it take for her to vote for someone who wants to throw her son-in-law and grand son back to La Romana to never re-enter the US? It takes tons of pain, tons of fear, lots and lots of failure, and a totally destroyed lack of trust.
How can we create relationships which cross the lines which fear embed in our world? What is our task today? Will the same old change our world? Or do we need to re-calibrate our way for this new world? Do we need to stop advocating for LGBT people and issues? No. But we need to also sound the alarm for the poor among us. We need to make our support for the struggling clear and obvious. We need to preach, proclaim, live the whole Gospel of Jesus Christ, now and always.
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 