Who here has been catastrophically poor? I don’t mean poor as in not being able to afford extras – I mean poor as in not being able to afford necessities. Food. Shelter. Heat. Even the most basic of medical care.

I have.

The membership of DU for the most part seems to be a pretty well educated bunch. That’s good. Education is great – I wish I had more formal education because I probably wouldn’t be working retail at the age of 46 and suffering a lot of physical problems because of the wear and tear it puts on my body. But I am for the most part self-educated. I dropped out of school when I was 17 because my mother died and my father left me to fend for myself and it was a choice between working or going to school starving. I chose work.

A good portion of my self-education comes from the School of Hard Knocks. I learned about poverty there, and desperation. I learned about just how hard it is to be poor. I learned how absurd is the notion that people “want” to collect welfare or live on the streets. I learned what it feels like to depend on the charity of others, and what it feels like when people in grocery lines turn up their noses and judge what you’re buying with your food stamps. I learned to feel guilty for buying my child a candy bar with those food stamps when he did well in school or deserved something special for being such a good kid. I learned that very few people were interested in the circumstances that led me to poverty and more interested in blaming me for it.

I learned that I had to defend myself, to explain that I’d worked and worked hard, paid my bills but still lived very close to the bone until it all fell apart when I got divorced.

Right now, DU is holding a fundraiser for Second Harvest which is terrific because its an organization that helps poor people. Even so, I see a lot of hostility to the poor on this board. There seems to be sympathy for some poor people but not others and people seem to think they can tell when a person “deserves” help and when they don’t. That disturbs me.

I see threads about “able-bodied” people who “refuse” to work. Or about bums looking for handouts just so they can get a drink or a fix. I wonder why the same people who show such compassion when a fellow DU’er mentions a friend or relative in rehab show such little compassion for someone on the street facing addictions of their own. I know when I was homeless and felt I had nowhere to turn, something to help me forget my problems for a little bit was a very tempting thing.

I think we all acknowledge that it’s damn hard to give up drinking. Or smoking. Or doing drugs. Imagine how much harder it is to kick those habits when you’re living on the street. There are plenty of people who look “able-bodied” who can’t work for various reasons. Maybe they’re mentally ill. Maybe they have untreated substance abuse issues. Maybe they’re homeless and can’t go to interviews in their dirty clothes, unshowered and unshaven, without an address and missing teeth because they’re too poor to go to a dentist. The point is, why do people feel the need to assume bad intentions on the part of these people? I’m sure there are some of them who are scam artists but there are a hell of a lot of people in this country who are living under bridges and in subway stations. People who live a life many of you can't imagine.

You may never have to experience what that’s like. I hope you never do. But the next time you give a bum a couple of bucks and he buys a 40 ounce bottle of beer or a pack of cigarettes, try to put yourself in his shoes. It may be the only pleasant thing he experiences all week.

Merry Christmas.