Moving from They to We: Being Allies With Those Who Are Oppressed

"If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together."

I recently attended my 40^th high school reunion. I saw and talked with people I literally had not seen in 40 years. It was a rich and wonderful experience that I will cherish for a long time.  As is generally the case at reunions, most of the conversation consisted in catching up on the details of people’s lives: Where do you live? What kind of work do you do? Married? Kids? However, in a few cases the conversations became more personal and substantive.

I grew up in a wealthy suburb of Minneapolis, and so not surprisingly many of my former classmates had gone into business or professional work and had become quite wealthy themselves in the process. Yet, I was struck by the number of people who spoke of using their position and wealth to benefit the “less fortunate.” One friend had retired in his early 50’s after a lucrative legal career and now is supporting a number of non-profits. Others left their careers to actually work for non-profits. Another left business to go into ministry. One person had started a non-profit even as she continued her work. I heard of others who had turned their business surplus into foundations giving money or things such as clothing or furniture to needy people. These were sincere, good-hearted faith-driven people who were trying to live out their convictions amidst their significant financial success.

As I listened there was a question that kept stirring within me as folks talked about their efforts to help “the poor.” There was something in the language that troubled me; it was all about what we are doing for them. There was an inherent divide between we who have and they who do not. I left those conversations pondering how to move from talking about they to we? In other words how do we breakdown the dichotomy that creates givers and receivers, haves and have-nots.

An unidentified Australian aboriginal activist was once quoted as saying: “If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us work together.” What the poor and oppressed of the world need is not charity, but justice. They don’t need missionaries and do-gooders, they need allies.

Recently at the Pedagogy and Theater of the Oppressed Conference, I heard Dr. Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, director of the Center for African American Studies at the University of Texas speak about “Seven Rules for Allies of the Oppressed”. I paraphrase them here for our consideration with my comments in brackets.

1.      Allies know it is not enough to be liberal; we must be radical enough to want to work to change the system. [As long as we seek to “help” others while maintaining our power and privilege, we perpetuate a capitalist system that has historically marginalized women, people of color, immigrants, and gays/lesbians. Charity is not enough, we need systemic change.]

2.      Be loud and crazy. [When women, people of color, or poor people speak out they are considered “hysterical,” ”threatening”, and “out of control.” Our position and privilege allows us the freedom to be loud and possibly heard.]

3.      Do not tell an oppressed person to be patient. [The poor and oppressed are always told to “wait,” but as Frederick Douglas said over 150 years ago, the powerful do not give up power willingly, it must be taken from them.]

4.      Recognize that racism, sexism and homophobia are structural. [The disparities that exist along racial, gender and orientation lines are built into the system, that’s why the system must be radically changed.]

5.       When called out about your racism, sexism, homophobia or other –isms, don’t cower in embarrassment, cry, try to cover, or accuse the other person of being unfair. Instead be grateful they took the time and had the courage to expose you. [This is a hard one for folks of privilege, but so true; I speak from experience as one who has been called out more than once.]

6.      Support alternative possibilities. [The rationale and strategies that created oppression will not resolve it; we need new paradigms.]

7.      Don’t work to make the world better for the oppressed. Instead work to create a world that we would want to live in with all others - a world that provides equality, dignity, humanity and justice for all people.

This week we saw the Congress and President pass legislation that further requires the poor of our country  to go without so the wealthy and corporations  can bear no burden. As  people of faith and conscience, we should be considering whose side are we on.

Will we continue to perpetuate a system that benefits the few at the expense of the many? 

Will we continue to perpetuate the myth that our system is fair and just, or will we choose to be allies with those that suffer?

Will we perpetuate the we-they divide, or will we see that our liberation is inextricably bound up with those who suffer poverty, discrimination, and oppression in our world?

The Option for the Poor and the Long Defeat

The term “preferential option for the poor” is a term bandied about by theologians and educators alike, especially those who have an interest and commitment to bettering the life conditions and opportunities of those who benefit least and suffer the most in our society and world at large. I have often used that term, and see myself as one committed to the addressing the issues of poverty, injustice and oppression in our world. However, when I read about Dr. Paul Farmer, the subject of Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains, I gained a deeper understanding of just what saying I am committed to helping the poor really is committing me to.

As Kidder portrays him, Dr. Paul Farmer is an infectious disease specialist with both an MD and PhD in anthropology, who has committed his life to serving the health needs of poorest of the world’s poor. His home base is rural Haiti, where he has served as a clinician for decades while sharing his experience and expertise regarding AIDS, TB and other infectious diseases at the highest levels and some of the most desperate localities in the world. The organization he founded with a few other like-minded individuals, Partners in Health (PIH), has a record of addressing some of those most pernicious diseases in some of the world’s poorest and oppressed places.

Farmer’s accomplishments alone cause him to stand out, but his radical commitment to the poor has translated into an approach to life and work that puts all of us who consider ourselves to be progressives and social justice activists on notice. For Farmer poverty is not an “issue,” but real individual people to whom he has made himself a servant. Even after gaining international renown for his breakthrough work on medical diseases, Kidder describes how Farmer walked 11 hours through the rough Haitian terrain to check up on one patient and his family from his clinic in Cange, Haiti. When asked if that was time well spent when he could be consulting around the world, Farmer replied “I am a doctor, he is my patient, that’s all that matters.”

More than that Farmer has not gathered to himself the material advantages of being a doctor and of being a globally-renowned figure. He often travels to meetings around the world with one rumpled suit bought for him at a thrift store. Wherever he goes he seeks out patients who may be in need of his services. Moreover, he judges the effectiveness of his program and of any national or international health policy, on how well it benefits the poorest of the poor. For that reason Farmer regards the Cuban health care system, with lower infectious disease rates than the United States to be one of the best in the world despite it supposedly Communist leanings. Poor people are served as well others – that system works. One can only wonder what he must think of the current debate in the US around universal health care, and whether or not we can “afford” to make sure 50 million uninsured Americans are covered. My guess is that Farmer would be extremely critical of the capitalistic assumptions underlying the debate and suggest that the health care system itself is bloated at the top by insurance companies, drug companies, physicians, and lawyers all fighting for their big piece of the pie, while the poor go untreated.

While Farmer has been successful at one level in providing insights into ways countries can address the infectious disease problems in their countries, serves on the faculty Harvard Medical School, and regularly consults with international health organizations, he recognizes that taking the option for the poor or the “O for P” as he calls it, is a long and frustrating struggle. Near the end of the book, Kidder quotes Farmer saying:

“I have fought my whole life a long defeat…I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don’t dislike victory…You know, people from our background ….we’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re really trying to in PIH is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our back on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat” (p. 288).

To work on behalf of the poor requires personal sacrifice and a commitment to the long defeat with a few victories scattered in. Fighting the long defeat is not just volunteering or doing “pro bono” work every once and a while. Rather, it is to see one’s well being and destiny tied directly to real people with real needs who have been beaten down and neglected by the very systems that purport to help them. I thank Dr. Paul Farmer for helping me see that the option for the poor is a meaningless idea without putting my life behind it, and taking time to consider ways in which we may have allowed our lives to undermine our own rhetoric.