Why I Am Not Volunteering On MLK Day of Service
I recently had a partial amputation of my foot. In 2009, I had a devestating fall that damaged my nerves, and led to frequent bouts of sepsis, and the need for constant surgeries, in which more and more of my body was removed. An already devastating experience was made all the more traumatic because I was underinsured and lacked the means to pay for my surgery. Just like the majority of United States university professors, I work as a low-wage adjunct professor, and I don’t have access to health insurance through my workplace. Prior to my amputation, an insurance agent sold me a health plan that he deceivingly passed off as full coverage when it was anything but. I was hit with the full weight of this knowledge when I was minutes from surgery, and the office administrator told me my insurance would only cover $100 of this multi-thousand-dollar life-saving amputation. I needed to quickly secure the funds in order for the surgeon to proceed. Luckily my family came to my aid. But the medical bills from my hospital stay keep coming. An article about my situation was featured in the local newspaper, and as a result I was lucky to have received an outpouring of support from a generous community.
But for every one story that makes the front page of the newspaper, there are millions that are hidden from public view. All the viral stories and go fund me campaigns serve to mask the true depths of a dystopian nightmare that is affecting more and more of us today in the US. What happens when your story doesn’t go viral, or when your particular community doesn’t have the resources to assist you?
This battle for accessible healthcare is a fight many people in the united states face today, and it is leading to unprecedented levels of poverty and homelessness. If someone is already on the edge, and their network is ill equipped to support them, illness coupled with our defunct healthcare system are often what push them over the edge.
Community support can curb the worst abuses of the neglect inherent in this system. But it needs to be more intentional, abundant, and part of a healthy public sector. It needs to catch the people who- through human error or lottery of birth- easily slip through the fraying safety net and struggle to survive.
I wanted to help those who struggle, so in 2011 I founded a student-run homeless shelter. This shelter served both to prevent our neighbors from dying on the streets, and also expose college students to people and experiences that would change their point of view.
The lessons we learned and the people we met taught us more about the unjust and unequal system, the challenges of homelessness, but also the beauty of community and a path forward so that fewer among us will suffer needlessly on the cold hard streets.
Jay is one of the people from our shelter who taught us so much, and highlighted for me the divergent trajectory two lives can take, despite their shared humanity and common potential at birth, when race and class are factored into the equation.
Jay and I were born in the same hospital and on the same day.
In many ways, I won the lottery of birth. I was born to a family who had adequate means to support me. And on a late August day in 1979, in a hospital room in Philadelphia, I made my grand entrance into the world. But I was born into a complicated world, in which some babies like me have massive head starts, while others, like Jay, have to fight daily to survive.
While I was delivered into a life of privilege, Jay’s mother delivered him into world of homelessness. From birth to age 4, Jay and his mother fluctuated between sleeping on the streets and couch surfing.
Jay’s entire childhood was a cry for help. And like many poor black and brown boys and girls throughout the US, his cry went unheeded.
His adulthood was spent trying to gain stable footing.
I met Jay when he entered my homeless shelter. He had been on the streets for six months, but had recently gained employment as a chef, and was working to save money to claw his way back into housing security.
We took him in and loved him. He played board games with us. He challenged us with intellectual conversations. He played hopscotch with us.
But then tragedy struck.
Jay developed life threatening blood clots in his leg, and needed an emergency leg amputation. I spent hours advocating for him with his medical team, but nonetheless he was discharged from the hospital a few days post-op without rehab or a safe housing plan. When the hospital discharged Jay, there were no shelters that could take him. All shelters were either at full capacity, or not wheelchair accessible.
I was constantly comparing Jay’s experience of amputation with my own. Even with inadequate health insurance plan, I still had attentive doctors and nurses, rehab and home care.
Still I struggled to survive. Without the community care I received, care that was afforded to me by my own privileges and luck, there is no doubt I would have died.
Jay had significantly fewer resources than I did. And he was fearful for his life.
Jay and I had been living parallel lives- we were born on the same day, and then in our late 30s developed life threatening illnesses that required amputation. The dramatically different experiences in between our birth and our amputations are a result of an unjust and unequal system.
Our lives intersected when in scrambling to find him solutions, I tapped into the same network that had kept me afloat. Families close to me offered to take Jay in until he could find a permanent solution. Another friend of mine offered him physical rehab, and linked Jay to a prosthetist who custom made a prosthetic limb so that Jay could walk. Eventually Jay was housed and on stable ground.
All the people who lent a hand to save both me and Jay did so out of the kindness. But what we learn from this process, is that the gifts we gain when we help people who are homeless or vulnerable are far more abundant than any we hoped to give. We are social beings, and we want to feel connected, useful, and truly seen. When we know another’s story and suffering, we practice compassion for each other, and for ourselves. And we have so much to learn from each other.
Jay taught me so much: he taught me how to lean in to our community, his vulnerability taught me how to be vulnerable. He taught me the strength that is required to ask for help. and The bravery with which he handled his amputation taught me that this mangled body of mine was a war wound- and not something to hide. And I learned that we are all a little freer, a little more whole- by helping each other and bearing witness to each other’s struggles.
But now a piece of me is broken. Irrevocably broken.
Last week Jay was found dead in his new home.
I don’t know how he died.
And I’m scared to find out.
My theory is that it was a blood clot that caused either a brain aneurism or a heart attack. I’m scared to have this theory confirmed, because it is a reminder that I could suffer the same fate. Both Jay and I had been prone to clots because of our health complications, and an occurance of blood clots increases your risk of getting them again. His clots were the cause of his amputation. Mine led to pulmonary ambulism, which made it difficult to breathe.
I’m scared to learn that the clots were not the cause of his death. I’m scared to learn that it was depression. I’m scared because I feel responsible. I know that once a person achieves housing, as Jay recently did, a person is at heightened risk of depression. The networks that had sustained that individual during their experience of homelessness sometimes vanish, just when the person needs their network most. When someone achieves housing, they expect to be relieved- they have worked so hard to this, and suffered so much while waiting for it. And yet, they are often more isolated and still living on the edge and in poverty, once housing is achieved. When we use rapid rehousing as the solution to homelessness, without making any concessions for the social integration of people who are receiving the housing, we take a knife and cut through the social ties that had kept people afloat. We substitute a roof for a culture. Studies on social integration in rapid rehousing found that once housed, people experienced decreased support from clergy, friends, and neighbors, and a decrease in volunteerism. Many housing voucher recipients are thrown back into the social isolation they experienced on the streets- returning to the time in which their names were not spoken. I know this. I feel I could have and should have done more to make sure Jay was well in his new home. I should have checked on him more, visited him more. I should not have canceled on him days before he died. If I had kept my plans with him, I might have seen that something was wrong, and I might have been able to get him help. But I didn’t. And that will haunt me.
But the reality is, no matter how Jay died, we are all responsible. We live in a city where the life expectancy for black men is the lowest of any racial or ethnic demographic. Black men can expect to live five years less than non black men. In this city, I have been invited several times to speak to medical students about the SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH- how issues of race and class effect health outcomes. These students often express to me that they are not getting this information from their classes and professors. They seek me out to explain it to them. This is a problem. All Medical Schools should be offering this as a requirement for their students. Our doctors need to be studying this often. We all need to be studying this. The responsibility falls on all of us to speak up against racist policies that are actually killing black men and women in this city of brotherly love.
When we start to talk about these racial disparities in health care, in housing, in every facet of society, we can start to actively work for antiracist policies, to ensure the safety and health of Jay, and all our black brothers and sisters. Until we address this, all the service activities that are done today in Martin Luther King Jr’s memory are worthless. We need to commit to fulfilling his work and dreams 365 days of the year- not just on a day when we have off from work. Not just when it is convient for us. But every day.
Today, you can find me in deep reflection. But you won’t find me volunteering. Justice is different from service. Service can lead to justice. But the two should not be confused. And what we need more than anything is justice, and a loud indictment of a system that allows people to die years before their time.
When I try to locate the origin of Jay’s struggle, I consider all the traumas and crisis leading up to it. Shelters that are overcrowded, housing vouchers with a ten year wait list. And prior to that- an unfair and unequal system of housing, labor, wages, incarceration, and education. The outrageous cost of health care.
This is a story with multiple origins, but only one possible ending. In the end, we must do better than this.
If we are to hack the problem of homelessness, and revamp a broken system, we must do so with the support of an entire community.
On this Martin Luther King Jr Day, let us recommit to antiracist work, and community building all year long. Participation in this type of inclusive diverse community on the micro level has the power to propel us into work on the macro level- changing policies to end our human-made levels of poverty and homelessness. It is policy change that will create a more just system -one in which you and I have access to the healthcare we need. And one black men and women are not dying prematurely. The change will occur when we start to think constellationally- and connect the dots, between systems of oppression, and between ourselves and our neighbors.
We all are truly connected.
And any time, any one of us could experience life altering accident or even amputation. Who is the village you would turn to in a crisis? The intentional bread-breaking, antiracist-advocating community MLK faught for, calls on us to weave a tighter safety net-to catch more of our neighbors like Jay, before they fall. That same net might just catch you one day. And when we tighten our nets, and widen them too, we will ensure that justice is also shielded from the fall. Let us remember that it is justice, and not service that is the true MLK legacy.
In solidarity, and very much heartbroken.
Click here to watch the TEDx Talk about Jay’s survival story.
