From Deseret News archives:
Utah's poor are often invisible, ignored
The advocates for the poor, such as the Crossroads Urban Center, Utahns Against Hunger and others are also to be commended for being the conscience of our community.
The poor will always be with us. That's what I learned as a kid listening to Sister Sophia in my catechism classes at the Guadalupe Mission. I suspect it's something many of us learned from our religious teachings. As I grew up, poor people were all around me and included some of us. It was just assumed that we would look after one another.
And though the poor are still with us, Utah's urban cities follow the trend of those around the country of flight to the suburbs, leaving the poor to struggle to survive in our deteriorating inner cities. They are often the elderly, the physically and emotionally disabled and single-parent families. Unlike the past, many Utahns now have limited contact with poor people and thus find little opportunity to have empathy for their plight.
It should be no surprise then that the problems of the poor are often dismissed with the belief that "If I made it, anyone can," "It's the choice they have made" or "They don't want to help themselves." For many people, it is not callousness, rather simply that they have not had the experience of wanting.
Poverty has been described as that situation where one has to depend on others for the things we take for granted for our daily subsistence. In our complex and impersonal society, we often don't take the time to reach out to help those in need; rather, we have created bureaucracies, both public and nonprofit, to show our charitable side. It is those organizations the poor must negotiate with for services.
Our elected officials can show the public the challenges the poor face in living on food stamps for a week, and when it's over they will be able to move on with their lives; for them, there is a future. What may be most difficult for the public to understand is that for many of the poor, there is no hope, and that is demoralizing.
"It is exceedingly difficult to have dignity without food ... But it by no means follows that the provision and supplying material wants will yield a sense of self respect ... And this is perhaps the most serious cost of a service orientation: It neglects the poverty of the spirit in ministering the needs of the flesh," (Cahn & Cahn, "The War on Poverty," Yale Law Journal, 1964).
Unlike past generations that had to endure our nation's difficult economic times, we — that is, many of us — now enjoy an unprecedented quality of life. Our political leaders will give the public a glimpse of the visible challenges of what it is like to have to depend on food stamps for daily existence. In America, however, being independent is highly valued, and what will not be visible is the pain of having to ask for help, often seen as a sign of weakness. Each of us might ask ourselves when was the last time we had to ask for help and how did it make us feel.
Utah native John Florez has founded several Hispanic civil rights organizations, served on the staff of Sen. Orrin Hatch and on more than 45 state, local and volunteer boards. He also has been deputy assistant secretary of labor. E-mail: jdflorez@comcast.net
