Cooper Institute - L'institut Cooper

Opinion Piece
December 30, 2008

Christmas Turkeys: Well Done!

Once again, Island residents surpassed our record in generosity toward the people in the community who cannot afford an ordinary Christmas dinner. Each year the CBC Turkey Drive inspires more and more people to make a charitable donation of food. This year the good will of people in every walk of life provided over 3000 meals for low income Island families. There is no doubt that this outpouring of concern and caring goes a long way to make all of us in the community a little less self-absorbed and self-serving - and that’s a good thing. Also we all hope that the families, recipients of the Christmas food, were able to receive from others without any loss of dignity. Each year we expect that many more people in PEI will ask with a united voice why there are so many people around us who do not have enough income to meet their own basic needs. Why do so many people have to depend on charity?

The PEI Working Group for a Livable Income, and its ten community organization members, insist that to be whole and a balanced people we have to walk on two feet: the foot of charity AND the foot of social justice. We move forward using the strength and tenderness of our charitable foot. At the same time we walk using the searching and the political challenges of our social justice foot. Charity without social justice is demeaning because it over-simplifies poverty, dealing only with immediate symptoms. Social justice without charity can become de-personalized and arrogant. In our societies, people get high marks for giving to charity. It is not so, however, for groups which ask WHY charity is needed in such large quantities and what must we do to change the situation.

Social justice people are sometimes dismissed as “too political”. Dom Helder Cámara, while Roman Catholic archbishop in Brazil, said this the clearest: When I gave food to the hungry, they called me “saint”. When I asked why are they hungry, they called me “communist”. Poverty cannot be solved by charity. Charity is a mere band aid, which may be needed on occasion as a temporary measure. Charity is not a long-term solution because it does not get at the root causes. Poverty results from the way we allow our society to be set up to protect and coddle the well-off people, leaving large numbers without basic human necessities. Poverty will be reduced and eventually eliminated when we help to design new public policies in support of livable income as a right for all people. Poverty will be reduced and eventually eliminated when we demand that governments exercise their primary role as protectors of the most at-risk residents. (This goes beyond politicians showing up at CBC with a turkey for Christmas: it means, instead, politicians developing anti-poverty legislation based on secure adequate income). Poverty will be reduced and eventually eliminated when we change many of our community attitudes, such as blaming those who live in poverty.

We challenge policy makers to continue in dialogue with groups which are working from a charity-social justice viewpoint. We remind ourselves that in these tough economic times, investors are not the biggest losers, but those who never have had anything to invest and who are daily living on an ever-more-dangerous edge. We challenge ourselves in the community to continue our search for root causes of poverty and for real solutions.

We dare to use the trademark phrase of a now-famous current politician: Yes, we can.

Marie Burge
on behalf of the PEI Working Group for a Livable Income
Tel 569-3504

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