I'm especially overwhelmed today. I can't seem to get ahold of my emotions or put a finger on what's really bothering me. I think what it comes down to is a simple feeling of uselessness.
Working in homeless shelters and doing the work that I do for a career opens me up to seeing a different side of society. Not everyone who is poor is stupid, or bad, or lazy. Not everyone who has committed a crime is a horrible criminal. Many of them didn’t have a chance to begin with. I have clients who didn’t have parents, or had one parent who had to work three jobs to feed her kids. This means no supervision, no one to care. This means kids get into trouble. This means kids get involved with gangs. This means kids looking to other sources for attention and acceptance and family.
Have you ever had contact with gang members? Real life, from the street gang members? I have. I do frequently. I’ve spent hundreds of hours with clients who are sitting in jail because of crimes committed involving drugs and gang activity. These are real people, with the same emotions and needs that anyone else has. A lot of times they are kids; young guys who don’t know anything different than the life they have. And most of them probably won’t ever know anything else.
How do you "rehabilitate" someone who is involved in a gang or has a criminal record? I’m not talking about child molesters- that’s a different topic and one I don’t understand well enough to talk about. I’m talking about guys who don’t feel they have any other option- real life Jean Valjeans. I’m talking about people who have to feed their families, who have to pay their rent, and who can’t get normal jobs because of their positions. It's not always as simple as right or wrong. People have to make decisions based on where they are in life- it's not as basic as one might think.
How do you tell someone that the only family they’ve ever known is only going to screw them over time and time again? How do you help someone make a change in their life- not a feel good for a moment change, but a long-term solution to a lifelong problem kind of change? How do you get someone to stop selling drugs when they literally cannot get a job that pays well enough for them to support themselves or a family? Don't tell me that there's always another option- I see every day that there's not.
Education is huge. And at this point, education is completely out of reach for a large portion of society. College is not affordable. Not only is it not affordable, it’s not something that does anyone much good anymore. Sure, if you’re a nurse or a doctor you can get a job. But a lot of people have business, communications, or other various degrees that can’t get jobs. There’s a ton of competition in this economy. There’s not a lot of opportunity. Knowing that, how to you encourage people to continue their education, when they know as well as I do that it’s not always enough to really change their lives?
Are we stuck in this way of society forever? If you’re born poor are you destined to stay that way? It certainly seems that way to me. And it’s one of the most heartbreaking things I can honestly say I have ever witnessed.
Not a day goes by that I don’t sit and think about what I can do to change things. I know I can’t change everything. I doubt I can change much of anything. But I desperately want to. More than anything, I want to see my clients become mentors for young people getting involved with gangs. I want to see them finish school and support their families in ways that are productive and legal and safe. I want them to have options and a life that is full of happiness, instead of brutality and pain. I also know I can’t give that to them. Most of the time I can't even point them in the right direction.
It’s overwhelming how much work there is to be done. It breaks my heart to know that there’s so much to do that it will never be accomplished. It makes me want to cry when I think of all the kids who will turn out to be hurt or even killed because they’re involved in a gang, or those who will turn to crime... Because once you do it, you can't go back. There aren't many second chances for some of the people I come into contact with.
This might be a depressing post. But more than anything, I want people to feel compassion and understanding for those who are different from them. Things aren't getting better for a lot of people. Things might never change. I can't make people work at the homeless shelter with me, I can't make them donate coats or give a crap about mentoring and getting involved. But I will do something. If it's only bitching about it until everyone hears me, that's what I'll do.
