Why

 

Nightmare-provoking scenes from television shows of my childhood include the protagonist trapped in a telephone booth that is filling with water, and another where they are locked in a room where the walls are closing in, moving closer and closer. 

Nightmare-provoking realities in Howard County: housing and childcare unavailable or far too expensive, wages too low, a pandemic that has left an ongoing trail of damage both to community members and businesses.All of the things that low-wage earners need to survive are moving farther and farther away and they are stretched to the breaking point. 

So here’s the “Why” from yesterday’s post:

Why are members of Columbia Community Care organizing a toy drive again this year? It’s simple. For our neighbors, who are living daily in crisis mode to cover just the basics of food and housing, a gift for a child is an impossibility. 

I’ve written before about how housing insecurity in Howard County actually creates poverty. So does a minimum wage that has remained stagnant as everything else around it has gone up. Howard County Council members Christiana Rigby and Opel Jones have introduced legislation that will gradually raise minimum wage and will set in place a process for ongoing review. 

Strangely enough, some folks want to look at this as an attack on small businesses rather than a correction which allows people in Howard County to be able to earn closer to a real bare minimum than the poverty wages they are earning today.

The other day I wrote that the testimony in opposition presented by local business owners was truly disheartening. Low wages have become so much a part of many business models that employers have come to feel entitled to them and use them as a means of keeping their businesses afloat. 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt would like a word with them.

It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. (Statement on the National Industry Recovery Act, 1933)

So, it goes like this: employers skimp on the most crucial and valuable part of their business: human capital. Then both Howard County Government and area non-profits scramble to fill in the gaps. Since the pandemic the needs are greater and, not surprisingly, we have seen the creation of more non-profits to address the need. 

Make no mistake: exployers who will not invest in their own workers are essentially relying on others to pay what they won’t. 

That’s not good business. You can paint it with all sorts of businessy language but at its heart it is just ugly.

I read this quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu last night in a book I’m reading for a class:

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.

Responding to this statement, the author, Glennon Doyle, says something very interesting about philanthropy.

Every philanthropist, if she is paying attention, eventually becomes an activist. If we do not, we run the risk of being co-dependent with power - - saving the system’s victims while the system collects the profits, then pats us on the head for our service. We become injustice’s foot soldiers.

Wow. 

That’s it in a nutshell. 

Our neighbors in Columbia and Howard County most likely do not wish to depend on charity for their very survival. Imagine having to plan your entire life around lining up for food, diapers and feminine hygiene products, school supplies, warm winter clothing, a toy for your child. What a difference it would make to simply pay our neighbors a living wage.

Should we continue to give to those initiatives that provide what is so desperately needed? Absolutely.

But we also need to go upstream and address what’s causing people to fall in.