It's Labor Day Weekend, which in American society has become primarily a time for one last burst of summer ease before the onset of fall busyness. Yet at one time, Labor Day Weekend was for American pastors something more than that. It was a season for emulating from our pulpits the prophets of ancient Israel, who spoke out so forcefully to their people on issues of land, labor, capital, wages, and social equity. This weekend used to be a season when our sermons shared moral and theological reflections on issues of class in our society and on dilemmas faced by our nation's working poor. What a fine Labor Day tradition that was—one worthy of being revived!
Today is also, of course, the first Sunday following one of the worst natural disasters in American history—the winds, rain, and storm surge of Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed.
And poignantly, among those things that this hurricane has exposed, for all the world to see, are the continuing class divisions that exist in American society and new dimensions of the suffering that comes with the territory of being poor. These class divisions and dimensions of suffering have been made ever so clear to us through the television images and newspaper articles presented to us this week by such bastions of the American establishment as NBC, CNN, and The New York Times—hardly the radical press, and yet, for this week at least, a radicalized press.
Whose distressed faces and figures have we been viewing throughout this week—holding up the fragments and debris of their ruined homes, or pointing to the remains of where they used to work, or wandering through the streets knee-deep in water clutching in a garbage bag the only possessions that remain to them, or holding on for days without food or water in the oven-like Superdome amidst the filth of overflowing toilets, or slumped over already dead in a wheelchair outside the convention center, or being terrorized by marauders, or struggling to get to the front of the line for a seat on one of the buses finally sent to evacuate some refugees, or being hauled up in a rescue chair from their roof of refuge to a hovering helicopter, or crying out to a distant TV crew, "Help! We're dying, we're dying, we're dying"?
Of whose faces and figures was NBC's Martin Savidge speaking when he exclaimed, "This is not Iraq, this is not Somalia, this is home," or when CNN's Wolf Blitzer proclaimed in irritated frustration, "So much is not being done for these people"? Whose faces and figures have we been viewing as the cameras sent to record the awesome forces of nature shifted their focus to the story of people's immense suffering, to the story of a government, tax-starved and war-drained, struggling to cope with such an immense domestic crisis?
Whose faces and figures have we been viewing? Well, to a radically disproportionate extent, we have been viewing the faces and figures of those citizens of coastal Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama who are poor—both the working poor and the unemployed and disemployed poor, both black and white—people without the wherewithal, especially at the end of a month, to hop into a car that has a full tank of gas or onto a bus for which you have to have a ticket—people unable to comply with the government's unfunded mandate to evacuate the city.
Yes, we have been viewing the faces and figures of persons very much like the "Burger King Mom" who is described for us by one of our leading Protestant advocates for economic justice, the Reverend Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners Magazine. It was in his recent best-selling book God's Politics (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005, p. 221), that Wallis described for us the face and figure of America's working poor—at least the way they looked before the great flood. He says:
"She was working the drive-through window at 4:00 in the afternoon. But whenever there was a lull between orders, the young woman kept returning to a table in the corner of the restaurant. Three kids were sitting there, with schoolbooks, papers, and pencils all spread out, doing their homework. And Mom was helping as best she could while keeping straight the orders for Whoppers, fries, and chicken nuggets. Given her low wages, this single mother was no doubt balancing more than fast food and homework—but also deciding between paying the rent, going to the doctor and affording prescriptions when somebody gets sick, or buying winter boots for her kids."
Well, that was her situation before the hurricane and the flood. Now all along the Gulf Coast these Burger King moms and their children have no job, no home, no school, no doctor's office and pharmacy, no store—they have nothing to go to, or to choose between.
If you haven't already done so, please read the front-page article in Friday's New York Times entitled "From Margins of Society to Center of the Tragedy," by David Gonzalez (pp. A1, A21). And if you don't still have your copy of Friday's paper, you'll find much the same in two articles beginning on the first page of today's "Week in Review" section.
Gonzalez writes: "...there is a growing outrage that many of those still stuck at the center of this tragedy were people who for generations had been pushed to the margins of society. The victims ... were largely black and poor, those who toiled in the background of the tourist havens, living in tumbledown neighborhoods that were long known to be vulnerable to disaster if the levees failed. Without so much as a car or bus fare to escape ahead of time, they found themselves left behind by a failure to plan for their rescue should the dreaded day ever arrive." For you see, the evacuation plan in place had made no provision at all for the poor!
In President Bush's public statement on Thursday, he opined that nobody had expected the breach of the levees—intimating that we should therefore excuse the governments' lack of preparedness. But the president's statement was simply false. As outlined in Friday's Times, both in an op-ed column by Paul Krugman (p. A23) and in a news column by Andrew C. Revkin (p. A15), there had been a number of warnings about this very danger.
The fact is that it was precisely because of the potential for massive flooding following a Category 4 or 5 hurricane that for at least the past four years New Orleans has been listed by FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) as one of the two American cities most at risk of suffering a devastating natural disaster—the other being San Francisco, with its potential for a titanic earthquake. The fact is that beginning in the aftermath of Hurricane Betsy in 1965, the Army Corps of Engineers had felt it necessary to develop detailed plans for strengthening the infrastructure of New Orleans' levees and other defense structures. The fact is that the current White House has in recent years consistently under-financed that plan. The fact is that, as a result, significant elements of the plan had not yet been carried out prior to Hurricane Katrina. The fact is that because of this under-financing the Army Corps of Engineers was forced in the year 2004 to stop work altogether on these New Orleans levees, the first time in 37 years that work on these levees had been brought to a complete halt.
But back to the article by Gonzalez, who continues: "In the days since neighborhoods and towns along the Gulf Coast were wiped out by the winds and water, there has been a growing sense that race and class are the unspoken markers of who got out and who got stuck." Says Dr. Spencer Crew, of the Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, "'Most cities have a hidden or not always talked about poor population, black and white, and most of the time we look past them. This is a moment in time when we can't look past them. Their plight is coming to the forefront now.'" And says Congressman Charles Rangel of New York City, "'I think that wherever you see poverty, whether it's in the white rural community or the black urban community, you see that the resources have been sucked up into the war [in Iraq] and tax cuts for the rich.'"
So where's some good news amidst all the bad news of this past week?
Well, I believe we can take heart, first, that there has been such an outpouring of national shame and outrage at this manifest evidence of our country's neglect of the poor. And, along with conservative columnist David Brooks (The New York Times, September 1, 2005, p. A23), I feel that policy changes will inevitably follow in response to people's shame and outrage.
And we can take heart, second, that there has been such an outpouring of national support for all of the hurricane victims, regardless of their class. In less than a week, contributions approaching $200 million have been made by corporations or received from individuals by the approved non-profit agencies listed in the New York Times, which include our own denomination's relief organization: Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. And church groups like the Salvation Army and, yes, the Southern Baptist Convention have been johnny-on-the-spot with volunteers and hundreds of thousands of meals. And then also, WR2, a company in Indianapolis, has set an example for other businesses by volunteering to adopt a refugee family—providing a job, an apartment, new clothes, groceries, and a car.
And still another piece of good news amidst the bad is the announcement made by the ambassador from Sri Lanka that the nations of Asia to whom we sent aid during last winter's tsunami are now raising money to help the hurricane victims in the USA and are ready, willing, and able to share with us their experience and expertise in responding to such crises. Although I heard a BBC commentator this morning saying that he doubted that the American government would accept offer of "expertise" from "Third World Countries."
So these are some first pieces of good news.
And now what can we ourselves go on to do to add to this good news? What can we ourselves go on to do to help alleviate the terrible effects of this tragedy on our neighbors-in-need?
Well, we can show that we have taken to heart the words of Paul in today's Second Lesson, when he says that all of God's commandments can be summed up in these few words from the Old Testament: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Romans 13:9, quoting Leviticus 19:18). And by that Paul does not just mean, "Feel good about your neighbors." Paul means, "Do something for them."
And we can also show that we have taken to heart the message spoken long before Paul by the Old Testament prophets, whose writings remind us continually that God judges a society's righteousness not by the wealth or power that it has but by how it treats its Burger King moms. (Wallis, p. 236)
So what are some of the concrete ways by which we can show that we've written the words of Paul and the prophets on our hearts?
Well, we can go to some of the internet sites that are seeking to connect residents of the Gulf Coast with housing and jobs available elsewhere in the country. For example, job offers can be posted on the website of the New Orleans newspaper The Times-Picayune. That site is www.nola.com. And offers of other kinds of help can be made on the site www.craigslist.com.
Second, we can become more active politically, letting our government know that we consider the national budget to be a moral document, that we believe the budget must provide for the needs of the poor, that we believe the tax-cut mentality that's infected government simply must come to an end!
Third, this very morning or sometime this next week we can support the hurricane relief effort by contributing our money—our largest bills or a big check. Just put your cash or check in an envelope from the pew rack, write "Katrina" on that envelope, and then put it in the offering plate. Make out your check, to Rutgers Presbyterian Church and write "Katrina" on the note line. That way, you'll get a receipt from us for Income Tax purposes. You can also mail us your check anytime this week c/o the address on the back cover of today's order of service.
Fourth, Phyllis Hill, one of our members, is working to line up shipments of personal hygiene supplies, baby items, and things to occupy children to shelters for refugees and evacuees—shelters not nearly so well-known as the Houston Astrodome. She and we will be working to collect things here at the church beginning on Wednesday. The church will be happy to furnish you with a letter vouching that you are really collecting things for refugees, so that when you go into stores asking for toothbrushes, toothpaste, diapers, Power Bars, baby wipes, they may give you those things free. And please visit nearby hotels to request the mini bathroom items they stock—soap, shampoo, etc.
Fifth, when our offices reopen this Wednesday, I'll be asking our staff first to research other ways that people can provide help and then to let us all know about such opportunities. If you're not currently on our e-mail or snail-mail lists and you want to be, speak to me at the door as you leave.
So, in conclusion, on this Labor Day Sunday, don't be a Pharaoh! Don't be a Scrooge! In this time of desperate need, do act in love toward your neighbor.
Let us pray:
O God, grant strength, courage, and resilience to all those who have been displaced by the hurricane and flood. Comfort all those who mourn the loss of family or of livelihood. Bestow new measures of wisdom and effectiveness on all those seeking to provide relief. And lead us as a nation to remedy our class divisions and to elect leaders who are truly for the people. Amen.