Many of you will have heard this news story by now, but the article posted at change.org:Michelle Obama Serves Soup, Nation Misses the Point, got at many of the issues we’ve discussed in class.
So yes, this guy has a cell phone. If this means he has an important job-searching tool, a way for him to keep in touch with loved ones, or a way to call for help if he becomes the next victim of a hate crime, then we should be grateful that programs exist to provide these invaluable services to folks who are struggling.
There’s more in the article, and even more in the blog’s comments. One person writes:
Excellent post. I’ve worked in homeless services for a while and cell-phones are critical survival tools. For a family faced with constant locational uncertainty a cell-phone provides a stable point of contact.
Funny how our collective philanthropic consciousness simultaneously promotes the use of cell-phones amongst the poor in third-world countries as a poverty fighting tool and decries the use of cell-phones amongst our own poor.
I feel like as individulas who live in an equality-based society, our measure of self-justice is much higher than that of other cultures. This article shows a glimpse of this. ITs easy for some people to make the claim that because the man is getting food from a soup kitchen he shoukdn’t have a cellphone. According to our measure fjustice, he should be wiser in how he spends his money and not have a cellphone, especially if he has no food. Of course this is something many of us can easily judge when we look at things with respect to ourselves. For us we might see food as more important than a phone because for many of us phones aside from ways to communicate are a helpful gadgets that provide entertainment and for some as far as a fashion statement. What we fail to realize is that the main reason for owning a cell phone is communication not fashion. A cellphone for low-income or no-income families and individuals means having the ability to get a job, it means having an identity others can connect to. this may sound a bit extreme but in its simplest way its true: if you can’t be reached, you don’t exist. If you can’t communicate, you don’t count, and as much as we might say otherwise that is the way our culture and society has created a synonym for identity and communication, technology and basic needs. if a person has to make a choice between losing their cell-phone and thus their ability to communicate. to get a job to call their boss, to speak to relatives, etc and eating at the soup kitchen for two weeks, i’m pretty sure they would pick eating at the soup kitchen.
I don’t know if it this makes any sense but i this concept was one i didn’t understand until i found myself making similar choices when things were not too easy. And i can say that before when i would see how people wasted their money (and i say wasted because at the time i considered what they were doing a waste) i would say: “why are they buying that they don’t need it, why don’t they use their money differently, but the truth of the matter is we aren’t all equal, we are supposed to have equal opportunities but each individual is surrounded by different circumstances and different choices that regardless of how much equality we preach, in the end we aren’t equal and shouldn’t hold others to our expectations, standards or ideas of fairness and need.
What is most important id to be able to use the sources that we have as agents of growth and help of one another. If we focus too much on ourselves or on how everything has to be fair, we won’t be able to be effective in the help we can give others or end up just not helping at all.