Don't Be a Haiter

(Photo courtesy ESPN.com)

Maybe you heard that a sometime (now former) ESPN.com blogger was let go as a freelancer earlier this week after he blogged somem pretty, insensitive things about the earthquake disaster in Haiti on another web site, FlipCollective.

Paul Shirley is a pro basketball player (most recently in Spain) and writer. The controversial blog, titled "If you rebuild it, they will come," remarked that he had not donated to the Haiti relief effort and is not planning to.

"I haven’t donated to the Haitian relief effort for the same reason that I don’t give money to homeless men on the street. Based on past experiences, I don’t think the guy with the sign that reads “Need You’re Help” is going to do anything constructive with the dollar I might give him. If I use history as my guide, I don’t think the people of Haiti will do much with my money either..."

"My wariness has much to do with the fact that the sympathy deployed to Haiti has been done so unconditionally. Very few have said, written, or even intimated the slightest admonishment of Haiti, the country, for putting itself into a position where so many would be killed by an earthquake."

Shirley raises a point and a position that often comes up when discussions of poverty arise. Namely, "Shouldn’t much of the responsibility for the disaster lie with the victims of that disaster?"

Or, restated, if people are homeless (or hungry, poor, on welfare, on food stamps, etc), it's their own fault (because they are lazy, didn't work hard enough, think they are entitled to something for nothing, etc).

I don't begrudge Shirley his opinion or the blog that allowed him the forum to state them. I wholeheartedly believe in the worldview (stated here by Voltaire) that "I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

In fact, Shirley raises some valid points about the ineptitude of the Haitian governemnt -- albeit buried amongst a bunch of insensitive statements (such as a proposed letter to Haiti from the rest of the world reading, in part: "...Could you not resort to the creation of flimsy shanty- and shack-towns? And could some of you maybe use a condom once in a while?")

(Photo courtesy www.welt.de)

Yes, there is such a thing as personal responsibility, but most often, people living in awful circumstances are doing so not out of choice but out of necessity. They live in flimsy shacks because their only housing options are flimsy shacks.

If you are constantly concerned where your next meal, your next bill payment, your next ride to an appointment is coming from, you are trapped in what sociology textbooks like to term "the tyranny of the moment." Meaning you are not concerned with getting ahead, but just getting by. And getting by probably means making do with living in a flimsy shack and just being happy your family is living through the day, the week, the month, the year -- and hoping that a disasterous setback -- whether natural disaster or losing your job -- doesn't happen.

Not to mention that Haitians are not suffering because they lived in flimsy shacks. They are suffering because a natural disaster -- the great equalizer -- struck. Doesn't matter how nice of house they were living in. Case in point: Among the collapsed buildings were hotels, mansions, even the presidential palace. (One could possibly argue that living in shacks might have saved people -- less weight/structure to collapse on top of them??)

When first reading this blog, I was tempted to assume that Shirley led a charmed, upperclass American life -- born into wealth, perhaps an east-coast upbringing with an Ivy League education, untouched by any true knowledge of or experience of poverty conditions. But he was born in a midsize California town, grew up in smalltown Kansas and went to Iowa State. It's still possible he had no contact with poverty; I don't know his experiences.

But regardless of the underlying governmental issues in Haiti that Shirley rightly criticizes and the poor choices that some poor people do make, aid is needed NOW to cover basic needs, like food, water...survival. Before the controversy of funneling donated relief aid to rebuild the country right back into its old mistakes even comes into play, the people of said country have to survive long enough to get to that point.

(Shirley has since responded to the criticism here.)


(Photo courtesy of byfaithalone.org)

EITC Awareness Day: First Tax Clinic

(Photo by Towson Families United)

The tax clinic on Friday actually went really well. I thought I overheard that we ended up helping about 30 people file their taxes!

The event was allll day (8am to 730 pm) at the Caldwell Center in north Toledo on Jan. 29 (National Earned Income Tax Credit Awareness Day). (I DID remember to bring my camera -- BUT then I forgot and then was too busy to take any pictures.)

The morning started off rough because fellow VISTA Maureen and I were there at 8 am to set up for the 9 am opening time. There were supposed to be about 7 other counselors coming, but it got to be 10 minutes to start time -- and we were still the only two there.

When the first client walked in the door and still it was only Maureen and I....yikes!

Thankfully, the rest showed up shortly after 9. Good thing, because foot traffic was steady all day. I don't think anyone walking in had to wait long for a counselor, so that was nice.

At one point, a TV news crew showed up and was filming, although I didn't ever get a chance to watch the news, so I don't know if I got on TV. From talking to clients throughout the day, it sounded like a lot of them came after hearing coverage on TV rather than seeing the flyers Maureen and I hung. Oh well.

I have to admit, I was pretty nervous about actually doing a live person's taxes because, hey, taxes are complicated, man! Who knows what crazy situations people will walk in with? And of course, I can't admit to the person that this is the very first tax return I've ever done (besides my own, sort of)...My dad kind of chuckles whenever he thinks of me acting as a tax counselor.

I ended up doing 4.5 people's taxes as well as a couple benefits applications.

(The half is because my very first client ended up getting an hour in before we discovered that she had a situation the OBB doesn't support. After phone calls to the IRS, she decided to stop and just take her taxes to her accountant friend. I felt bad for her wasted time. But now I know. And will be more careful about talking things over first. Lesson learned.)

The easiest return was a teenager who worked at a fast food joint. She came in with one W-2 and a friend and they just giggled and texted half the time. But whatevs.

One guy had a disabled child living at home, but had never gotten a credit for the EITC. I thought he should have, and the software agreed! So instead of a couple hundred dollar refund he got almost $4,000! Needless to say, he was pretty happy.

I got some congratulatory emails from some Americorps higher-ups for catching that, BUT I'm too paranoid yet to feel good about it because I'm worried the IRS will redflag that sudden change and audit him and for some reason not accept the disability claim and take back the credit. And then the guy will hate me and owe the goverment money back and be disbarred from claiming that credit ever again, etc etc. Stressful!

Each person is going to hear back within a few days whether their return was accepted or rejected. The software is the "expert," but I'm still positive I did something wrong and every single one of those returns will be rejected. I'm dreading one of those phone calls, both because I'll have to deal with it and also because I'll feel bad.

Man, for being a generally optimistic person, I can be pretty negative.

But maybe it will all work out?

Fingers crossed.

Overwhelmed II

Back in September, I wrote about the first time as a VISTA that I felt completely overwhelmed.

It hit me again (to a somewhat lesser extent) this past week.

I'm not sure why. I don't feel like I overwork myself. But I guess I was feeling unprepared for the tax clinic coming up and pressure to make sure it came off successful.

We were supposed to be taking appointments but, a week before, we had only a grand total of ONE appointment -- aaaand I didn't even have a name or number because I forgot to ask. I know, it seems obvious, right? But I did. Duh.

One problem might have been that we had no flyers to hang to get the word out because they were still getting printed.

I had planned to take Friday off to make it a three-day weekend, but I ended up coming into work for a little bit because I messed up my scan of the flyer and was getting emails from people who couldn't open it.

As long as I was there, I planned to grab some flyers and put some up on the way home so at least some would be there for the weekend. But they were neither at the office or at the clinic location. Each place told me the other had them. Turned out they got locked in an office over the weekend so we had no access to them until Monday anyway.

At that point I decided it was necessary for me just to take the weekend off as planned and come back fresh on Monday.

HOWEVER, I did still have one more thing for work: a site visit at a new site in Maumee on Saturday morning.

At least I thought it was in Maumee.

Maumee was the only address I had on file for this new site, located within a church. I was happy when I GPS'ed it because it was less than 10 minutes from my house. I thought, cool, I have to do this thing on Saturday, but I'll be home within the hour.

But when I got to the address, right on time, it was an apartment building. That's when I started thinking, Uh oh.

Turns out that was the pastor's HOME address. I met his kid and her baby. Good times.

And found out the church is actually on the OTHER SIDE OF TOWN. 25 minutes away. Awesome.

When I got there, 25 minutes late, in a pretty seedy area, everything went fine. He and his wife were really nice, gracious, etc, etc. All was well.

Just one of those weeks.

But just to prolong my frustration, the GPS kept trying to make me turn down streets that were blocked off and under construction. The "avoid construction" feature just sent me down a different blocked off street.

Good times. But I made it.

Flyers, Flyers

Yesterday was the first tax clinic of the season.

In preparation, fellow VISTA Maureen and I spent a large chunk of last week driving all over town looking for laudromats, libraries, barber shops, mobile home and apartment building offices and convenience/grocery/liquor store -- pretty much anyplace with a bulletin board or a counter.





Let me tell you, there are a LOT of these places. I had no idea there was a laudromat right across the street from my apartment building. Or that there were so many mobile home communities in this city. Guess I should pay better attention!

We also enjoyed coming across H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt offices and hanging our FREE tax service flyers at the surronding businesses.

Assistance Fair

Last week, we area VISTAs staffed an Ohio Benefit Bank table at the Erie Street Market in Toledo. The day was productive: I learned more about some area programs from other agencies, met a lady whose church might become an OBB site, and witnessed a beautiful collaboration that inspired my submitted article for the National Service Newsletter that I'd agreed to write before I had anything to write about.

One of the best things about my work as an Ohio Benefit Bank community trainer is the frequent opportunity to witness people coming together to help someone in need solve a problem.

I was recently sitting at the Ohio Benefit Bank table at a community resource fair in Toledo when a man approached a nearby table asking for help finding affordable eyewear.

Overhearing the conversation, a VISTA leader sitting next to me jumped in and offered a few low-cost options she had recently heard about. As the three continued to talk, other questions and issues arose, each of which could be addressed by other nearby VISTAs, who were able to explain a program offered by their site or point the man to another possible resource at the fair or in the community.

By the end of the conversation, the man had a handful of pamphlets, web sites to check out, phone numbers to call, answers to all his questions – and a grateful, relieved smile stretched across his face.

To me, this was a great illustration of how Americorps members are uniquely positioned on the ground as repositories of community resource information and willing and eager to put their heads together toward solving a need in the community.

MLK Jr Service Day

MLK Jr Day is one of Americorps' recognized holidays, so I was supposed to have it off, but it also happens to be one of Americorps' mandatory days of service, so I had to work anyway.

Our last service day was Sept. 11. We went to a church in the Linden neighborhood of Columbus and painted rooms in a convent being turned into a transitional housing facility.




Painting was fun - a nice change from indirect service to direct service, getting dirty and doing something with my hands for the day.

But I digress.

MLK Jr. Day was spent at an event at the University of Toledo. There were speakers and local high school choirs, H1N1 shots and a community service fair, which is where we VISTAs spent the day behind a table.

I got an H1N1 shot. Up the nose, which I wasn't thrilled about but it was actually genius. It was like nothing happened. Barely felt it and no stiff shot arm for the rest of the day.

The picture at the top was taken with my cell phone. First time I've tried to upload a cell phone pic.

For missing out on our holiday, we got to sub out another day of the week, so fellow VISTA Maureen and I took Friday to create another three-day weekend of our own. Yay!

Recent happenings

I have been forgetting to take my camera ANYwhere this past month so these next few "catch-up" posts are going to be sadly devoid of art.

Recent happenings:

-Fellow VISTA Maureen and I have joined the Hunger Task Force! Don't you love it? A task force. I feel like a superhero.

-Lately, I feel like I've gotten some good leads from a couple of sites following Ohio Benefit Bank presentations: Maumee Valley Habitat for Humanity, a substance abuse treatment center called Fresh Attitudes, and Washington Local School District.

I'm especially excited about the possibility of Washington Local becoming an OBB site because that could have especially far-reaching consequences for the community. I met one of their high school social workers at a community resource fair. We met with her and a school administrator and they plan to start with the one social worker at the high school and see how it works within the system. If it works, it could go into all the junior highs and elementaries as well. yay!

- I had a somewhat stressful training a couple weeks ago. Something came up and the place it was originally set to be held had to retract the room space after I'd already had people sign up for the class. So I had to find a new location to train.

Luckily I found a place easy enough, but that had its own problems. The morning of the class, I had trouble with the computer passwords. The lab they wanted me to use wouldn't let me on the Internet no matter which password I tried to enter.

So we moved to another computer lab.

Which was good because more people showed up than had registered, so they wouldn't have all fit in the other lab anyway, which would have been cramped enough with just the number who were supposed to be there.

However, once we started up the class, we ran into some technical difficulties. Basically, the OBB software wouldn't let us past one of the first screen. I called the help desk but it's apparently some kind of glitch they encounter occassionally that they can't do anything about.

He said the only thing we could try was to log out and log back in again, but that didn't work. Or we could try creating a whole new client and starting over. I was loathe to try that solution, because as any community trainer can attest to, logging in is the most timeconsuming and confusing part of the training for new counselors. And some of the people in the class were slow with computers. It had taken them long enough the first time, so I was groaning inside.

But we tried it anyway and it didn't work. One guy, who seemed to be easily annoyed, was getting kind of annoyed and wanting to come back to a different training day.

I don't know if it was something about those computers or what (I'd never trained there before) or just an occasional glitch that could have happened anywhere, but I'd never had that happen before.

Finally I just had them all double up with another person because a few of them had gotten through for some reason. So instead of one scenario by themselves and one with a partner, we did both scenarios with partners.

It all ended up OK and most people were patient, but it wasn't the most fun training ever.

Myth of the Welfare Queen

The New York Times recently published this story about the spike in the number of families applying for food stamps who have no income at all.

(I pilfered this from the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Food Banks blog. Thanks!)

I'd say that is true for many of the people I come across. Not many are making more than $400/mo. Most have a couple of kids and something like $100 in the bank. I don't know how some of them do it.

Along those same lines, I just started reading a book called "Myth of the Welfare Queen," kindly loaned to me by fellow VISTA Maureen.



It's written by a journalist who followed a couple of welfare families in North Philadelphia for six months in 1995 just prior to the inaction of Clinton's 1996 welfare reform.

I'm probably biased, but I usually enjoy books written by journalists. They know how to research thoroughly, write concisely and hook readers fast.

So far so good. I'll keep you posted.

Catch-up

It's been a long time since I posted. Residual holiday laziness I guess.

Here's a quick rundown of what I've been up to:




Got a sweet jacket from work.




Worked a community resource fair at Whitmer High School with fellow VISTA Andrea. The school's first, but one of the best planned and successful I've been to yet. Kudos Whitmer!

Went to the Monthly Reentry Resource Meeting, talking to ex-offenders and their families about services available in the community. It might be our last one for a while as tax clinics will soon wreak havoc with that schedule...boo...

Attened a monthly Citizen Circle, a support/discussion group for ex-offenders and their families. Unfortunately the weather was crappy, so not many people showed up. However, fellow VISTA Maureen and I did get free pizza and work-paid chat time.



Went to the Rose Bowl!




FINALLY got business cards -- but an important word was spelled wrong (Toledo)...

Back to square one.

Green Christmas, Somber Story

I spent my first Christmas in Ohio with my family in three years, yay! Unlike the previous years in South Dakota, this one was green and rainy. Which doesn't really feel like Christmas. But, I have to say, no blizzards, wind, drifts, subzero temps and unplowed roads did reduce the headache factor a great deal.

A sad story though.

I worked a half day on Christmas Eve and heard that someone had called in looking for a leftover food basket. I guess someone had told them we sometimes had extras if they waited until right before Christmas to call.

But we don't give out food baskets at all, so we had to tell her that. And she started crying on the phone.

Heartbreaking.