Dumping Patients on the Street

The city of Los Angeles has filed charges against Kaiser Permanente for how its Bellflower hospital turned a 63-year-old homeless woman out of the hospital. The hospital put her in a cab that drove her to Skid Row and simply dropped her off there. She was wearing a hospital gown and slippers. A security camera caught the drop-off on videotape.

The woman is Carol Anne Reyes. After getting out of the cab, Ms. Reyes wanders down the street a little ways and then steps onto the sidewalk and wanders back. She appears confused.

City officials claim this is not an isolated or unusual incident. Ten other hospitals are under investigation for dumping patients onto the streets.

At the Open Door and Next Door Shelters we get calls from hospitals and treatment centers that are very anxious to discharge patients who have no place to live. We are often full. Some of these patients need care that we are not trained to give.

Why are hospitals having such a hard time finding a place for patients like Carol Anne Reyes? Because these patients have nowhere to go. The hospitals are facing the grim reality that Ms. Reyes was facing before she went into the hospital. There is no place for her to live.

Instead of dropping patients off on the street in a poor part of town, hospitals need to find adequate housing for their patients. When the lack of affordable and appropriate housing for poor patients generates enough pressure inside the hospitals, maybe the hospitals will join with homeless people and others who are demanding that our communities do better when it comes to housing for the poor.

I think the people at Bellflower hospital who are now charged with the crime of dependent-care abuse, could turn to city officials, "affordable" housing non-profits, and other community leaders and say "You ought to be tried for this crime with us. We have all abandoned Carol Anne Reyes to the streets."

A Solemn Anniversary for Kalamazoo

On October 10, 1840, Potawatomi people in the Kalamazoo area were forced out of this area by decree of the US government. The adminstration of Andrew Jackson ordered that all the native people who lived in the eastern half of the United States be removed to some place west of the Mississippi River.

Europeans, along with an African-American family, began to settle in Kalamazoo County around 1830. It appears that the native people who already lived here were helpful to the new settlers.

The Americans had agreed many times that this land was the land of the native people and promised in treaties not to encroach upon it. But the US government pressed the local people in treaty after treaty to reduce the land reserved for their use.

Finally the government agreed that an area 3 miles on each side, in what is now the City of Kalamazoo, would be reserved for the use of the native people already living here. The village on the banks of the Kalamazoo River where Portage Creek and the river come together(where Veterans Memorial bridge is now, at the intersection of E. Michigan and King Highway)was called the village of Match-e-be-nash-e-wish, the village leader.

By 1840 it must have been clear to everyone that many elements of the old way of life for the native people in this area was over. There were still about 7,000 Potawatomi people living here, but they were learning to accommodate the settlers and adjust to their new circumstances. Disease, and war after war, had already weakened the people and changed the conditions of their lives.

They didn't have to be sent away. But they were. According to Tom Dietz of the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, about 700 to 2,000 native residents were forced to leave the area on foot under the supervision of the US army. They were gathered together in a field just north of where our train station is now and began their forced march down Burdick Street.

One-third of the local people hid from the cavalry and avoided the forced march. Another third fled to Ontario.

On October 10, we may recognize a solemn anniversary. Our city was founded on an act of ethnic cleansing. It was harsh and inhuman.

It was also unnecessary. It could have been otherwise.

What if the Black Infant Mortality Rate Really Does Show the Well-being of Kalamazoo County's Black Community?

Yesterday the banner headline on the front page of the Kalamazoo Gazette was BLACK INFANT-MORTALITY RATE RISING.

(http://www.mlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-19/1158765764155540.xml?kzgazette?NEKP&coll=7)

Dr. Arthur James, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Borgess Women's Health, presented the most recent statistics on infant mortality in Kalamazoo County to the Kalamazoo Academy of Medicine in a meeting at the Family Health Center on Kalamazoo's northside.

The infant mortality rate for black children in Kalamazoo was 20.8 deaths per 1,000 live births in the most recent study (2004). The rate for white children in Kalamazoo was similar to the national rate for white infants -- 5.65 deaths per thousand. What a difference your race makes.

The national rate for black infants, 13.65 deaths per thousand, is more than double the rate for white infants nationally. But Kalamazoo County's black infant mortality rate is much worse -- more than three times the national rate for white infants.

There's more. The State of Michigan was the second worst in the nation and Kalamazoo County was the second worst in the state (only Flint's Genesee County was worse). That puts us way down deep in the bottom of the barrel.

I wondered how these infant mortality rates compare to other countries around the world.
It turns out the CIA's World Factbook (https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html)
publishes a list of nations ranked by their infant mortality rates. I was shocked to learn that the mortality rate for black infants in Kalamazoo County just beats out the Gaza Strip where poverty is so intense that the GDP per person there is only $600. The US has a lot more money to work with. The GDP per person in the U.S. is over $41,000.

Black infants in Kalamazoo County would have a better chance of surviving if they were born in Albania, Columbia, Mexico, the West Bank, Malaysia, Jordan, Jamaica, Russia, Sri Lanka, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Hungary, Estonia, Poland or Croatia -- to name a few.

In fact, the black infant mortality rate here is double the rates in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica.

The overall infant mortality rate in the U.S. is higher than the rate in Cuba. Again, its not because the United States is poorer than Cuba. Per capita GDP in Cuba is $3,500 according to the CIA, while US per capita GDP is almost 12 times that ($41,800)!

Cuba is not the only country where children have a better chance of surviving than in the United States. The CIA lists 38 countries with better rates, including South Korea, Italy, Ireland, the European Union, Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain, France, and the Czech Republic.

According to the CIA, the infant mortality rate in the Czech Republic (3.89 deaths per thousand live births) is more than 5 times better than the rate for Kalamazoo County's African American infants.

But all this is not just about babies and mothers and pregnancy. Dr James said "The infant-mortality rate is a quality-of-life indicator. Our poor folks in this community are struggling, and struggling more than we recognize."

These infant mortality statistics provide one more window onto ugly realities in our community. While we live in one of the richest nations in the world, the black infant mortality rate in Kalamazoo County ranks with some of the poorest nations of the world. More wealth won't change that. We are plenty wealthy enough as a society. What is required is a change in how we use our wealth.

With a black infant mortality rate worse than the West Bank and just a fraction better than the Gaza Strip, our community leaders have one more reason to finally make real, genuine, concrete changes to improve the lives of the poor people in our community. That ought to be their top priority.

Pentecost

This morning I participated in the reading of the Pentecost story from the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 2, in my parish's celebration. As the reader for the day began reading the story in English a number of people stood up where ever they were in the congregation and read the same story aloud in other languages. All over the church multiple readers were reading the same story out loud at the same time in multiple languages -- the effect was a kind of jubilant overflowing.

In the Pentecost story a great wind blows in and flames of fire skip from person to person and the disciples of Jesus speak. People from all over the world are in Jerusalem that day. A crowd gathers around the disciples -- a crowd of people from many different countries. They speak many different languages, but amazingly, on this day, everyone hears and understands -- in his or her own language. Or, to put it in another way, no matter what language a person uses, when the message comes to each one it comes in the language he or she understands.

This is a great story of inclusion.

I found myself thinking about my partners at the Open Door and Next Door -- homeless young women and men between the ages of 17 and 35. They work hard at difficult jobs. They struggle with a variety of issues. They have had experiences I have not had. Some have had experiences beyond my capacity to even imagine.

As I participated in my community's remembering of Pentecost today I experienced the story as good news.

First, we are all valuable -- regardless of what language we understand.

Second, God speaks in a language that works for us. You don't have to hear God in the language I do. You get to hear from God in your own inner and outer language.

Third, instead of calling us all to be the same, the Pentecost story portrays the good news more like fireworks -- many colors, many sounds, many forms.

I came home happy in this joyful multiplicity of things. And I felt reminded to let people listen and hear and speak in their own languages.

Pentecost is a day with good news for people in homeless shelters.

I didn't think about how this connects with our country's immigration debate until this afternoon as I wrote this post. It is interesting to think about all the "English only" legislation being introduced around the country, including a proposal introduced into the Michigan House of Representatives by Jack Hoogendyk, who represents this area.

How does the spirit of "English only" fit with the spirit of Pentecost?

Pentecost is a story of God's embrace of the wild diversity of humanity -- and it isn't a gloomy, begrudging, lame embrace. Its a lively joyful spirited embrace. I love that.

Open Conflict

Kalamazoo’s Historic Leadership Club vs. Community Organizing

Intensive community organizing efforts have been taking place in Kalamazoo for the past three or four years. The Michigan Organizing Project and the Kalamazoo Homeless Action Network have been formed by the poorest people in our city: undocumented immigrants and people who are homeless.

Local government officials, leaders of well-connected and well-financed non-profit organizations, community policy wonks, and the local newspaper’s editorial staff have not appreciated the involvement of these new groups.

The new groups don’t use the model that dominates decision-making in Kalamazoo. The community organizing model does not seek change by cultivating friendships and social relationships with the elite group of citizens who make most, if not all, of the public policy decisions in our community.

Kalamazoo’s leadership model requires anyone interested in community change to try to get included in the network of social policy decision-makers in Kalamazoo. But this is not the route taken by community organizing.

The community organizing approach directs people who see the need for community change to work to get to know – not the elite decision makers – but rather, more and more people who are suffering from the injustices in the community. Then, as people suffering from the social problems directly develop a network with each other, the next step is analyzing who has the power that keeps the inequities and social problems in place – and who has the power to begin to change this equilibrium of inequity.

Finally, the organizing approach means that the people suffering from the problem go directly to those who have the power and challenge them to make changes. This challenge for change is not based on friendship or insider trust. It is based on experience of the problem, the system of democratic government, and a theological and philosophical commitment to justice for all.

One tremendous contribution the community organizing model makes to our community conversation is that it can inject an element of reality into the discussion. Government officials and leaders of non-profit organizations are powerfully drawn to self-congratulation. Obviously, government officials and non-profit leaders who live in comfortable middle-class homes may lack some of the urgency of those who are homeless.

The community organizing approach has none of the suave ambiance of Kalamazoo’s dominant insider-based model. Community organizing doesn’t take place in the venerable plantation atmosphere of the Park Club or some conspicuously well-appointed office downtown. Community organizing meetings don’t begin with banter about fancy new cars or interesting vacations. The atmosphere is never elegant.

Local leaders who vet potential members of the clique through rituals of mutual appreciation and cultivation often find the community organizing efforts to be shocking, discordant, and outrageous. “Who are these ungrateful poor people? How dare they complain about inequities and injustices after all that we, the well-meaning elite, have tried to do for them?”

Local reactions to the efforts of MOP and KHAN have been intense. The intensity itself illustrates the need for these efforts. The anger and contempt of local responses remind me of factory owners’ responses to union organizing efforts and the responses of white elites in communities all across the country to the efforts of black civil rights organizers, and especially toward those who spoke of “black power.”

These two community organizing efforts and their many spokespeople have not done
everything perfectly, but there is no question in my mind that if we are to see a more just Kalamazoo in the future, extremely-low income people need to keep working, keep organizing. And we need MOP and KHAN to grow and gain strength, and to keep claiming the right to hold government officials and non-profit leaders accountable for changing the great injustices among us.

Thinking locally about justice

I have been working with homeless young men and women for the past 7 years at the Open Door and Next Door Shelters in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Over this seven-year partnership I have been learning about poverty and power in our community. There have been some real surprises.

We need more public dialogue on local suffering and injustice and on local decisions and practices. It is important to look at our life together as a community in terms of basic human need and equity.

I hope to contribute to this dialogue by sharing my observations and working out my thoughts on some of these subjects in this blog.

I believe there are people in local faith communities, in non-profit organizations that serve the poor, in local businesses and government offices who feel questions about justice and injustice are some of the most important questions in any time and in any community. I hope to encourage and contribute to our community conversation about these things.

We don't wrestle with these issues in a vacuum. The framework in which we wrestle with these issues is important. That framework involves several things for me. First, I was born seven years after the end of World War II. Photos and stories of the Holocaust on TV and in newspapers, magazines, and encyclopedias had a powerful influence on my thinking.

Another major influence during my childhood and youth was the emergence of the Civil Rights movement in our country. The Civil Rights movement turned a spotlight on injustice that was woven throughout the fabric of American life. This ferment also pushed into the forefront our country's practice of slavery.

These two elements of history -- the injustice toward the Jews and toward Americans with dark skin -- and how these injustices were accepted, affirmed, and promoted in society -- have shaped my sense of the importance of thinking about issues of justice and injustice in the life of one's community.

It is critical not to turn a blind eye to such things. It is essential and obligatory to listen to our neighbors.

Looking back at the powerful forces that first isolated the Jews, then led to systematic denigration, and finally to the murder of millions -- while life went on as usual for the bulk of German society -- we see that taking a careful look at our society's issues of justice is very important.

Seeing the lynching photos of small-town American citizens laughing in a mob beneath the body of an African American man hanging from a tree branch reminds me that we must not assume that common mores in a community are just.

Finally, I have been shaped by my experience in the Christian church, where I learned what still surprises me. The God described in the Bible is shown again and again to have a powerful concern for those who are a society's scapegoats, a deep alliance with the ones who do not have what human beings need to survive, a strong association with the cast out and rejected.

All these things have led me to believe that it is important to be alert and attentive to injustice in one's own time and place.