la gente

I am beginning to realize that there are two separate forces influencing my actions here at work. The first is completely destructive, rebellious, and angry. It visualizes the extremes of the polemic domestic policy that has been honed through years of corruption and manipulation. This system that makes it impossible (through a series of complex mental and physical inferiority complexes and stigmas) for the poor to rise up out of their shame, their devastating poverty. Debilitating because we live in a society which values wealth over morality, material status over spiritual progression. The American Dream is a lie and an insult to everyone breaking their backs everyday to put food on their tables. The American Dream is such a myth that when it actually happens, it receives national news coverage. It serves only as a means to further polarize the gap between have and have-not; what the reporters don’t report, but what is implied, is that the reason the poor are poor is because they are lazy. It is their fault, they are somehow (perhaps even morally) inferior to people who have money, who are contributing to this society.

Like grease in the gears we’re making the cogs turn.

The other influence is the complete opposite of the above, and it is making my brain hemorrhage. I grew up in this society; I am a part of it. I have so much mental stigma, programmed-in thought habit-patterns. So every time that I see a new client, or an old client, there is part of me that goes along with the system and puts 100% of the burden of their situation back on them. What have you done wrong, how have you screwed it up for yourself? Why can’t you just get a job and buck up? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps? I sometimes hate myself for having these thoughts. (Granted, I think it’s also likely that I have these angry thoughts because I am really unable to give the clients any type of meaningful assistance. So my limitations make me mad and I throw it back out on those around me.)

Can you imagine growing up poor? Living on government surplus food, always feeling like a criminal, like you had done something utterly horrible by taking birth. Can you imagine outgrowing a stigma as societally incapacitating as that?

Con liberdad y justicia por todos…