Fight the Plight

 

 

Fight the plight

 

Come to the catechism of the poor.

 

The age of conviction may as well be now.

We were former persons. Veterans, we work, were former union members. We got degrees in college. You call us homeless, forget we are persons, a misnomer that goes about solving nothing. Who we are matters because you are dealing with a person. A broken down reality, who all the time must wipe your tears, who must wait on you. Patience, come quick, one paycheck away, one health care crisis away and another joins us on the front lines.

“Every major ill in this country is embedded in the person that is homeless,” as Willie Baptist says. The antibodies are right here—we are survivors who just couldn’t afford a place to stay.

 

Should you be in doubt, rest not. Should you want to shed a tear, go not to your sister or your brother. For we are a family denying the cry of the poor. Like wolves “shedding blood and destroying lives to get unjust gain” says the prophet Ezekiel. The priests, says the Lord “have profaned me in their midst” (Ez 22:27).  It need a malevolent extortion and robbery, but the beast, lying divinations, spoke of war.

 -C.R. Spicer

 

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: “I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America, who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.”

 

 

 Eleven weeks of Freedom Church of the Poor, beginning 6pm Sunday.

Min. Savina Martin has invited me to read during the "School of Struggle" at Freedom Church of the Poor. Dr. Wendsler Noisee from the Apache Stronghold and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis will be delivering the word. There will be another service dedicated solely to the Massachusetts folks mid December...