This piece was published in the local newspaper and also online at the Tennessee Alliance for Progress (TAP) website. The author is the TAP Coordinator.
A simple gesture of fairness is swept aside by greed
by Nell Levin
I work with a group of poor people who have started a vending company, determined to pull themselves up out of poverty. They are residents of Mercury Courts, the largest single-room occupancy facility in the state where 80 percent of the residents are formerly homeless. The company needed to purchase a van in order to expand the business.
We went to the home of a man who had 10 used vans to sell. We picked out a 1994 Dodge van and asked him if we could test drive it and take it to a mechanic to check it out. He said we could only test drive it a half mile because he had no insurance and that we could not take it to a mechanic.
Our guys drove it the half mile and said they thought it was OK. He wanted $2,500 but reluctantly agreed to take $2,100 for it. He insisted on a cashier's check despite that fact that Urban Housing Solutions, the nonprofit organization that runs Mercury Courts, owns 15 properties in Nashville. We returned with the cashier's check and drove the van onto the freeway where it immediately started shimmying and shaking and the brakes started smoking. We took it to a mechanic who told us that it needs at least $1,700 worth of work.
I called the man and told him the van was a lemon and asked him if we could return it and purchase another one from him. I explained that the vending company is an upstart business run by a group of people who are formerly homeless, that it would be very difficult to us to come up with $1,700, that we are struggling to get on our feet.
I tried to appeal to his higher angels, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. He refused to take back the van.
Is he a bad person? No. Is he heartless? Probably not. Were his actions illegal? No. Does this man claim to be a Christian? He does. Is he operating from the dominant values of our society — greed and maximizing the bottom line? Absolutely.
These values make it easy to dismiss the plight of poor people trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. They make it easy to rationalize selfish actions in the name of maximizing profits and looking out for No. 1.
After all, isn't this what we are all encouraged to do day in and day out by the media, by the overt and covert messages we receive in ads, by the slavish adoration we heap on those with money and power in this society?
Right before this incident, I spent three days in Washington at the Network of Spiritual Activists conference. No longer satisfied with a society where greed, materialism, selfishness, looking out for No. 1 and maximizing the bottom line are society's predominant values, the Network envisions a world based on caring, connection, community and ecological sanity where all people are seen as equally precious. Discussion was centered around two books, "The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right" by Michael Lerner and "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It" by Jim Wallis.
The incident with the van has convinced me that we need a major change in the direction of American society now more than ever. Many people know that America is heading down a wrong path. They yearn for a purpose-driven life that will allow them to serve something beyond personal goals and economic self-interest. They yearn for a new way to think and a new way to live. It is time for us to come together and use our energies to build the world we really want.
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