Black Friday

This is a man and he has a name and it’s Jdimytai Damour, OK? He is a man and he is dead now because of us, do you understand?

If we are to draw any conclusion from Black Friday it is this: the lives of people who work low income jobs on this continent are granted precisely the same value as the lives of people in the two-thirds world who labour and die in poverty and slavery in order to make the products we purchase. That is to say, their lives have no value to us whatsoever. Before we cast any stones, we should remember that our consumer choices make us no less violent than those who trampled Jdimytai Damour in order to score a bargain.

A Call to Abundant Life: A Manifesto Against Death

[What follows is the transcript of a paper I presented at the theology pub night hosted by Nexus, a church of sorts, in Kitchener. The conversation that followed was gracious, thoughtful, and enjoyable, so many thanks to those who were willing to engage in this subject matter with me. Truth be told, although much is abbreviated here, I feel that what I express here summarizes a lot of what I have come to believe based upon my education and experiences over the last twelve or so years. I also believe that it points the way forward in terms of the avenues that I believe are most worth pursuing if (a) one is committed to the pursuit of life-giving change or (b) one somehow identifies with the Jesus movement.]
A Call to Abundant Life: A Manifesto Against Death
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it (MK 8.34-35).
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being give up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you (2 Cor 4.8-12).
Continue reading →

When I Grow Up

So, I’ve been exploring working with a different medium as a means of communication. I’ll be posting a few things up here over the next little while. Below the cut is a series I made called “When I Grow Up”.
Continue reading →

London Shelter Residents Advocacy Group

Well, much of my time during the last three or four months has been dedicated to engaging in community organization and mobilization amongst marginalized people where I now live — London, Ontario. The outcome of that, so far, is the “London Shelter Residents Advocacy Group” (LSRAG). We have started a blog and, if you want to follow along or engage in the conversation (and everybody is invited and welcome to participate) you can join the conversation there. To learn more about the LSRAG you can click here.
Currently, we are asking for public feedback on a Shelter Residents Bill of Rights that we are intending to bring forward to the City. At this stage, however, we are asking for feedback, suggestions, or criticisms regarding the proposed Bill. Any interested parties are welcome to contribute although we are particularly interested in hearing from those who have lived experiences with homelessness and as shelter residents, and from those who are rooted within anti-colonial and anti-oppression models.
Finally, we also have a Facebook page. If you have a Facebook account and take the time to click that link and then “like” our page, you can follow along that way as well (and we would appreciate the support).
All power to the people.

The Big Fix

And when the night is clear, and the advisory is lowered, we’ll force the door at the top of the stairwell and for a moment — with the alarms ringing in our ears — we’ll see the satellites. We’ll put our children on our shoulders, we’ll point off into the night sky and say, “Look: the stars were like that.”
(The stars we watched from hillsides, where we held hands and kissed and laughed and spun.)
Our children will smile politely and take pictures with their augmented reality HMDs. They’ll update their Instagram feeds.
(Their avatars will hold hands with other avatars and kiss and laugh and spin.)
Before the Environmental Health Police arrive to close the door and give us a citation, we’ll hide our disappointment. You’ll put your head on my shoulder and I’ll make a remark about “kids these days.” We’ll try to remember what it was like to play in the rain. How it felt to kiss, sheltered in a doorway, our shirts pressed against our bodies, our bodies pressed against one another, water dripping off the ends of our noses.
We’ll try to imagine what it is like to be a child and never jump in a puddle.
Our children will try to imagine how anybody got by before augmented reality and will desperately hope that we don’t want to play another video of sparrows, or polar bears, or dolphins, or trees, or any other dead thing, when we go back home.

In Praise of iDollatry: An Interview with Davecat and Sidore

Photo by Claire Dossin

Over the last half dozen years, I’ve found myself increasingly fascinated by the countless ways in which people find meaning in life and in themselves. I suppose a number of things contributed to this: I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries about the various subcultures that people inhabit and which end up providing people with the identity they are seeking to possess, I’ve also been struck by how bizarre my own beliefs are in comparison to pretty much any other belief system — indeed, by how bizarre any belief system is to those who do not inhabit it — and I guess I’m increasingly fascinated by the whole meaning of meaning (i.e. why we feel the need to have some sort of “identity” that we identify with, why we feel the urge to bemeaningful at all, and so on). I’m also struck by the ways in which all of us are actively participating in constructing the worlds in which we live and the people who live in those worlds. It’s all ideology, right?
I think one of the things that prompted me to think about these things in new ways was a documentary I watched years ago called Guys and Dolls (you can watch it online here). This documentary follows some men who end having intimate relationships with “Real Girl” dolls. All the people in that film are pretty fascinating, but one fellow, Davecat, stood out to me — in part, because he seemed like a pretty intelligent, grounded, and content fellow. Consequently, when I saw Davecat again making an appearance on another show, I decided to contact him to ask if he would be willing to be interviewed on my blog. Happily, Davecat agreed and we have been able to exchange some emails.
Posted below are the questions I asked and the answers he provided. I want to thank him for being open to this exchange and for permitting me to ask some personal questions. He has been a fantastic dialogue partner. Thanks, Davecat!
For those who are itnerested, Davecat blogs at Shouting to Hear the Echoes. He maintains a Twitter feed (see here) and his wife, Sidore, also has a Twitter feed (see here).
(PS — If anybody has any questions or remarks, feel free to comment. Davecat and I will both be following along .)
Continue reading →

Calling Violence Love: Again on Evangelicals and Sexuality

What follows contains some references to sexual violence and may trigger some readers, who may not want to read any further because of that. I understand. That said, this is gonna be a bit long and a bit of a rant so buckle up.]
~
I spend very little time engaging with Conservative Evangelical voices or blogs these days. Mostly, I find the folks in that community are closed to open conversation and self-reflection and all too often seem to actually enjoy reveling in stupidity (sadly, this is just as true of many of their “intellectuals” as it is of the lay people, as evidenced by skimming through the material presented here or here). Frequently, they remind me of the blind dwarfs that C.S. Lewis writes about in The Last Battle — no matter what you do or say, they will remain convinced that the mud they are eating is the most wonderful food they have ever devoured. When that’s the case, it’s best to just leave them be.
The problem is that a good many of the things that they believe actually end up causing harm to other people. It’s one thing when they choose to sit in the dark eating mud by themselves — it’s another thing when they try to imprison another person in the dark with them and force feed mud to that person. All too often, it is the children of Evangelicals who experience the brunt of this violence firsthand.
Over the years, one of the ways in which I have seen that violence enacted by Evangelicals towards their own children is the way in which Evangelicals have responded to children who identified with a form of sexuality that falls outside of the boundaries established by heteronormativity (for ease of reference, I will use the umbrella term “queer” to refer to this group, as that seems to be more of a norm within scholarship and is less unwieldy than acronyms like LGBTTIQQ2S). All too often, in my work with homeless and street-involved young adults and teens, I have discovered that the primary reason why the individual before me was homeless was because he or she was kicked out by his or her good Christian parents because he or she identified as queer. Often this “kicking out” was also accompanied with physical violence (and sometimes sexual violence).
Anyway, all that to say that one of the few Evangelical blogs that I do read on a semi-regular basis recently posted a link to a post by somebody named Stephen Altrogge. This post is called: “What I Would Do If My Daughter Told Me She Was Gay” [NB: since I first began working on this draft, my computer now tells me that Altrogge’s blog is a virus risk so you may not want to follow the link — I quote the entire post in what follows below].
I think Stephen is trying to distance himself from the gay-bashing violence that we’ve all seen Evangelicals practice, so he does not say that he would beat or rape or disown his daughter and throw her into the gutter if she came out to him. That’s good. Instead, he takes time to try and appear sensitive and loving. Unfortunately for Stephen, this is also the way in which fathers who beat or rape or disown their queer children like to appear in public — and when you’re dealing with kids all too often it’s the parents who are able to manipulate and control the ways in which other view and understand the situation. Be that as it may, I’m willing to give Stephen the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume he is more loving than a lot of Evangelicals and let’s assume he won’t beat or rape or disown his daughter… that doesn’t discount the possibility that he is a terrible father. As C. S. Lewis wrote in God in the Dock:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Let’s keep that in mind as we turn to a more detailed analysis of what Altrogge wrote.
Continue reading →

Tips for Those Wanting to Work with People Experiencing Homelessness (Part Two)

Continuing on with further tips for those who want to work with people who are experiencing homelessness. In my last post I talked about topics related to personal transformation (faking it versus working on changing) and ways in which a person can learn when they are new on the job. Here, I’m going to offer a few points that may seem obvious but, sadly, are lacking all too often. I’ll probably have one more post after this one and that’ll wrap up this series.
(4) If you say you’re going to do something, do it promptly and do it well.
People who are clients of social services regularly deal with staff members who say one thing but do another. This occurs for a lot of reasons: social services are underfunded, workers end up with “case loads” that are absurdly large and so, all to often, workers end up simply prioritizing what they take to be the most “life-and-death” matters and end up in perpetual crisis management (which means the chance of the worker looking up what your rights are with welfare, or helping you work on your resume and train for job interviews, are pretty slim… even though these things can, at times, be “life-and-death” for people). Other workers are simply burned out. They avoid clients. All they want to do is get through the shift and go home. Other workers didn’t take the time to do the learning I mentioned in the last post, so they don’t know how to help you and — since they didn’t bother learning how to do this in the first place — they probably won’t learn it now. Instead, they’re going to try and avoid you or say things like “Yeah, I haven’t been able to find out anything about that yet but I’ve been looking around and will get back to you when I do”. Or they’ll claim that there is no help for your situation, even though they haven’t determined if that is or is not the case.
As for those who are overwhelmed, when they finally do remember that they had committed to doing something, they are probably remembering because you are sitting in front of them or are scheduled to meet with them in the next ten minutes… so they’ll rush through something, do a half-assed job, just to get it done so that they can move on to the next 10,000 items on their to-do lists.
All the clients are very aware of this treatment. In many ways, it is actually the norm. That doesn’t mean people are happy about this. It’s part of the reason why clients conclude that workers are useless fucks who don’t actually care about the people whom they are claiming to serve. In my opinion, this is actually a pretty valid conclusion. “Care” isn’t an emotion somebody feels or a story people tell themselves about themselves. Care is what people do. If you do nothing, it doesn’t matter what you feel — you don’t actually care.
This means a few things. First, don’t say you are going to do something and then not do it. And don’t do a half-assed job when you do it. You’re supposed to be a professional, right? Second, if you follow through on what you say you are going to do — if you promptly and professionally follow through and your commitments, you will quickly gain the respect and trust of the clients. It’s kinda sad that something so basic — that should be taken for granted — ends up being one of the things that sets the really good workers apart from the others but that’s the fact of the matter.
Of course, if you commit to helping with something, doing something, or looking into something and you are not sure how to progress it’s okay to ask for help. That’s part of the reason why you work on a team. Maybe you’ve got one team member who knows welfare legislation really well, another team member who knows tenancy rights really well, and so on. That means that you don’t have to become an expert in all areas (although you should have a working knowledge of all relevant areas and, more importantly, know where you need to go to learn more about specific situations). This leads to my next point:
(5) Be a team player.
Okay, so this is something of another truism in any work environment but it doesn’t actually translate into practice in a lot of places and when you’re working in an agency where emotions will run high and, at times, crises occur, I need to spell out a bit of what I mean by this.
In my last post, I already talked about the importance of being open to criticism. This is an important part of being able to work as a team. Beyond that, you need to be able to disagree with others and have others disagree with you — sometimes passionately, even — without that causing you to lose respect for others and without that causing people to hold back and withdraw from conversations. For me, vocal passionate disagreement is one of the things I look for in a healthy team. Some teams are dominated by one or two people. Some teams are scared to go against management or speak in a way that challenges them. Both of these scenarios produce an artificial peace and the illusion of cohesion. True team work is being able to disagree with one another and, even if disagreements still persist after a discussion, being able to respect one another regardless of the final outcome or the positions taken by various members.
Here’s something I needed to realize along the way: the agency actually runs far better because there is a diversity of opinions here. If everybody thought exactly the same way as me, this place would probably go down in flames.
I think that’s true of any one perspective. Nobody has this shit figured out perfectly — maybe one person knows how to run a smooth operation but the cost of that is not meeting the identified needs of the clients, maybe another person is actually client-centred (a rare thing to find despite all the contemporary rhetoric being pumped out about this!) but doesn’t know how to make that work in a community setting, and so on and so forth. We need one another and we need to disagree with one another. We need to know when we’re wrong and, at times, we need to bow to the opinion of others even when we think we are right (notably, to those older, more experienced, well-respected workers I mentioned earlier — and, for the record, the generally excludes management, so I’m not talking about bowing down to them simply because they’re the bosses).
Essentially, being a team player means treating your team members with the same respect you claim to have for clients. It means caring for one another. If somebody is having a hard time, it means taking some of their work on. If somebody is breaking down, it means pooling together to buy him or her a spa day or a massage or something special. It means having one another’s backs. And trusting that others have your back as well.
It also means resolving conflicts amongst yourselves as much as possible. It means thinking about which team members are best for the clients and prioritizing that, rather than thinking about which team members do or do not follow all the rules (more on that later).
(6) Show weakness, be vulnerable, admit mistakes. Be human.
Okay, I know that I’ve stressed a need for “professionalism” in some of my earlier points. You need to know your job and you need to do it well. However, that doesn’t mean you won’t make mistakes along the way. You will. Everybody does. When you do make a mistake, admit it to the client. Don’t make excuses and don’t avoid the conversation. You may think this will cause you to lose respect (and, hey, if it happens EVERY time you try to do something, it will produce that result, but maybe you should be looking at another job if that’s the case), but it will actually cause people to respect you more. It will turn you from a flawless robotic professional (which we all know is an illusion anyway) into a human being. It will show people you respect them enough to be human with them — and when you show that kind of respect to people it tends to be returned. Show vulnerability. Be honest. For some reason, everybody thinks being a “professional” means lying to clients (“it’s in their own best interest,” blah, blah, blah). Don’t do that.
That said — if a person responds to your admission of error with anger, don’t lash back and don’t try to take back what you said. You screwed up. Own it. Giving a person a space to be angry (with you in this case), can also be a really wonderful bridge to a better relationship (this was one of the things that surprised me the most when I started in this field — see here for more about that… wow, can’t believe that link is seven years old already…).

On Che

Lately I’ve found myself thinking a fair bit about Che Guevara and, for the first time in years, went back and revisited some of his writings (there were a few quotes that had come to my mind and I was thinking about them a lot, so I wanted to read them in context).
He is a pretty fascinating character…. yet I’ve noticed that many of those currently involved in “activism” or “counter-cultural activities” desire to avoid any mention of Che. This isn’t simply because Che espoused violence, whereas all the poseur radicals are some of the most morally righteous and thoughtful pacifists you’ll ever meet. No, this is because of the way in which the image and memory of Che has been successfully branded and marketed so that, while Che came to be a symbol of genuine revolution back in the day, the image of Che today represents those who pretend to be revolutionary but, in fact, are nothing more than poseurs whose pseudo-activism actually contributes to the smooth functioning and expansion of global capitalism (the sort of thing explored in Heath and Potter’s great little book, The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can’t be Jammed — appropriately, the cover of that back, in the edition I have, features a picture of a mug bearing the image of Che).
So, in a way I suppose that it’s appropriate that most of the “activists” avoid Che’s image. They don’t want to appear to be poseurs and so, instead of acting in genuinely revolutionary ways (as Che did), they simply pose like non-poseurs by avoiding the images associated with poseurs. This is as it should be — such people should not be associated with Che (and maybe they know that, and hate being confronted with their own hypocrisy, so that may be another reason why they avoid the t-shirts… altogether too uncomfortable).
The solution, however, is not to allow those who brand and market the image of Che to control his legacy. The solution is not to bear the image of Che but to act like Che (and thereby end up bearing the brandmarks of Che upon one’s body, as Paul says about another state-executed terrorist in Galatians 6:17). Here are the two quotes I have been meditating upon. Both are from his message to the tricontinental:

[Solidarity] is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory.

And this:

Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.

Che, again like Paul, was an apostle of love (remember the motorcycle diaries?). This hatred is a symptom of his love and his solidarity with “the victim of aggression.” Let us meditate upon these things.

Tips for Those Wanting to Work with People Experiencing Homelessness (Part One)

Bit of a digression from the usual mix of topics I write about but some recent happenings have made me want to jot this down. What follows are a few tips for those wanting to work with people experiencing homelessness in some sort of charitable institution or social service agency. This will be the first in a short series of post.
(1) Don’t pretend to be somebody you are not.
Maybe you haven’t been street-involved, maybe you’re just a kind person, a religious do-gooder, a social work student just coming out of school, or a person who got tired of the rat race and wanted to switch to a job that felt more “meaningful.” That’s okay. Don’t feel intimidated by co-workers that have way more professional experience, relevant knowledge, or who have had life experiences that are similar to those of the people whom you desire to serve. You may feel like you need to put on a front and pretend that you’re “harder” or have more “street smarts” than you actually have. Maybe you’ll even start talking all the street or prison argot like you know what you’re talking about. Don’t do that.
Faking who you are is one of the worst things you can do. A lot of the folks you are wanting to serve have learned to read people really well — when you’re on the street, in and out of jail, have spent a lot of time interacting with various social services and their staff members, or coming from various experiences of violence, marginality, and vulnerability, you can develop a good instinct about who is sincere and who is not. If you’re a faker, you’re going to lose the respect of the people whom you are trying to serve and they’ll put up with you but they won’t want to be around you (and your co-workers might feel the same way, depending on their patience level).
(2) Don’t remain who you are or have been.
Change. This is different than faking things. This is learning to be a different kind of person. Learn to be in relationships with people who are different than you and who (previously) may have made you feel awkward, annoyed, or scared. In fact, seek out the people who scare you and prioritize getting to know them. Doing that, you’ll learn about stereotypes that are embedded within you, even though you think you’re a wonderfully open-minded person. For example, I remember when I first started working with street-involved young people in Toronto — I realized that I was “naturally” gravitating towards the white gutter punk kids, and was more standoffish with the Jamaican soldiers or the aboriginal gang-bangers. I realized that I felt intimidated by them… and I realized that there were some race-related fears I carried within me even though I always thought I had no prejudices or anything like that related to race.
[A bit off topic but here’s a thought experiment for you: if you’re walking down a lonely street late at night and you see two white boys dressed in preppy clothing walking down the sidewalk towards you would you have a different internal reaction than if you saw two black fellas dressed in hip-hop clothing walking down the sidewalk towards you? What about two aboriginal guys covered in tattoos? Notice that the only basis for having a different reaction would be the appearance of the guys — their skin and clothing — and nothing else. Hmmmm…]
Also, there’s every chance that you don’t really know how to care about people and serve them in the ways in which they truly want to be served and in the ways that would really help them to attain the goals they have set for themselves. A lot of people will tell you what’s wrong with “the poor” or “addicts” or “juvenile delinquents” — from social service schools, to charitable organizations, to churches — and a lot of people will think they have “the answers” or “the solutions”… and a lot of those people will be wrong. This means that even if you don’t hold a lot of negative stereotypes about people who experience homelessness, you still might adhere to a model of service or of care that does a lot of harm. So, you may think you’re helping people but you’re actually hurting them.
This means that, if you get into this work, you’re going to have to be open to asking hard questions of yourself about yourself. You’ll have to be open to the criticisms of others. If somebody you are trying to serve flips out on you ask yourself: am I doing what is best? How can I do this different? Don’t just retreat to excuses like “Oh, he’s in psychosis” or “Oh, she’s mad but I’m just doing things by the book.” Step back and examine yourself. Same goes from criticisms you receive from co-workers — and you really need to invite those criticisms (I know I still need to do that… it’s probably a life-long thing). Don’t just think: “Oh, he’s burnt out” or “Oh, she just had a bad day.” Step back and think.
(3) Learn everything you can from everybody you can and apply it in your own way.
Listen, first and foremost, to the people whom you are claiming to serve. Listen to them as people. Like you would listen to your friends. Or family. Or teachers. Or anybody else. If you’re listening to somebody like she is a problem you are going to help solve, you’re not listening very well. If you’re listening to somebody like he is a charity case and you are doing him a favour, you’re not listening very well. Learn to be a good listener. Don’t just think about the next thing you’re going to say or how you’re going to fix everything up. Think about if things were reversed and you were doing the talking.
One of the most helpful initial things you can learn from the folks whom you claim to serve is who the good workers are (learn this from observation more than anything). What staff members are respected by the clients? Who do people go to when they really need to talk? Who do people go to for help with solving a problem? Why do they go to these people? Watch these workers. Learn from them. Ask them lots of questions. Questions are good and there is nothing wrong with asking them. Don’t feel shy — it’s massively refreshing to meet new workers who ask good questions (and if you are listening and watching like this, you will be asking good questions). Ask if you can join them in some of their conversations or in some of their tasks, projects or groups. Don’t feel offended if they say no. As they get to know you more, and as you demonstrate your caliber and character, you’ll receive more and more invitations to join various things.
Also watch and see what staff members are not respected by the clients? Who do they “put up with”? Who do they dislike? Why? Don’t be like them. By saying these things — I’m not saying that this is some sort of popularity contest. Respect is a deeper thing than popularity. Some people will say “Oh, the residents/clients/whomever don’t like me because I enforce the rules” or “because I tell it like it is.” Bullshit. I know people who enforce rules but whom are well respected (because of how they go about doing that) and people who enforce rules that are despised (because of how they go about doing that). And there are plenty of different ways to “tell it like it is.”
Same goes, by the way, for the staff members who are respected by the people whom we claim to serve. Some people will say: “Oh, they just like that worker because she’s hot.” Bullshit. I’ve known plenty of hot workers and some were loved and some were hated.
One point of clarification: when I say that you should learn to be like certain co-workers and not like others, I’m not saying you should try to be somebody else or somebody you are not (i.e. I’m not saying you need to be a faker). What I am saying is that you can learn basic characteristics or skills to apply or avoid and then find your own way to apply those things and your own niche.
So learn from the folks you want to serve and learn from your-coworkers. But you also learn about where you work. Learn what you can and cannot do there. Learn what other people do there. Know what is expected of you. Learn what other services are available in town and learn how to network with them. Learn the relevant legislation and learn about the broader socioeconomic, political, and cultural dynamics that are relevant to your work. In other words, learn to do your job and learn to do it well. You are getting paid because people are homeless — so everything you buy is bought with money you gained from being in a situation wherein homelessness exists. This means that, out of everybody in society, you’ve got a massive debt to people who are homeless (this is why some folks refer to social services as poverty pimps — people and agencies who have learned to exploit the context of homelessness for their own advantage and comfort… but more on that later).
Of course, all this learning takes time. And that’s okay. Just dive right in. The water is warm, and you will very quickly gain respect from your co-workers and from the people whom you desire to serve if they see you learning everything you can.