The boy, barely 13, huddles in the night, backpack and bedroll behind, sign in front, looking for anything - cash, a job, shelter, a friendly face. I reach in my pocket for a bill I've placed there for just such an encounter.
I'm outside Portland's Lloyd Center, mega-crossroads and site of far too many pre-teen girl entrapments by cunning pimps. This boy, he's no safer. Though fewer boys are trafficked for sex, there are plenty other forms of bondage laying in waiting.
Any kid sitting out on this night in this cold with a little bit of gear is not doing this for fun. It's no Boy Scout outing, this. Why does he sit there huddled against the pillars out of the rain and not in some nice, warm home surrounded by loving parents and siblings? Kids don't just up and run away from secure love. They tell me there are 1,500 street kids in this modern, prosperous city. Countless more are stuck in hellholes of "homes" wishing they could be anywhere but.
These most vulnerable among us have a snowball's chance in Tucson of making it to a prosperous and healthy old age, captured for posterity in one of those multigenerational family photos. The odds are extremely high their lives will be hell-filled with selling their own or others' bodies, selling drugs, numbing the pain with drugs or drink, living day-by-day on crime and the halfwits of their minds left over from all this abuse. Having escaped one hell, they will enter another. They've been lied to, beaten up by, cheated on by, and kicked out by all sorts of big people from parents to pimps to pushers to preachers to politicians. And they know they can trust only Number One.
We, who will sit in our comfortable homes and watch remakings of Dicken's tales this Christmas, are tempted to think such a dismal underworld is a thing of the distant past. But the ghost of Christmas Present comes to show us that countless little Oliver Twists and Orphan Annies remain among us -- only for them there are no Daddy Warbucks or Roses or Mr. Browlows to save them.
Or are there? A growing chorus of carolers rehearses, bent on doing something concrete to rescue, better yet preserve, these kids. Some work the nights serving them on the streets. Others plot complicated rescues of sex trafficking victims. Still others plod on bravely to heal broken families, provide foster and respite and rescue homes, and find ways to break the multigenerational cycles of poverty and abuse that feed these ravenous streets.
Education and advocacy of our citizens and public servants to stir them all to action are key. This past Monday the Oregon Center for Christian Values, dedicated to just such education and advocacy, invited me to join its board. I felt as if I had found "home" wrestling tough matters of systemic suffering and public policy with them. As co-chair of OCCV's Human Trafficking Advisory Committee the past few months, I've been helping a small team forge a plan of action, complete with well-crafted statement viewing the HT nightmare through the lens of biblical justice. No one I've met is FOR human trafficking, but it will take more than mere intentions to end it.
Last week, Stephanie Ahn Mathis, OCCV's Executive Director, was invited to an important press conference. Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon's senior U.S. Senator, announced plans to introduce a bill authorizing federal funds to set up rescue shelters for sex trafficking victims. Local organizations, raising funds for just such a shelter in our city, have been hampered by a dismally weak economy and high unemployment. Federal funds are woefully short as well. But we sell these kids over and over again whenever we refuse to act. And so Stephanie represented OCCV at that press conference because we believe that the time to act is now, not after some future recovery.
Meanwhile that boy huddles somewhere in our city tonight waiting for more than a handout. No kid picks that life as the life of choice. Sin has gotten him to that place - sins of family, of society, of those who do nothing. Repentance is in order, a repentance that includes serious changes in the agendas of this state's Communities of Faith and of "we the people" ourselves.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Veterans Day PDX-Style
My pacifist son, Stephen, warmly greets his older brother, Robert, on Facebook, "This is the last Veterans Day you won't be a veteran." In January, Robert joins the United States Army.
As people across the nation salute those who have served in the Armed Forces, my mind goes to a stat I heard on the radio. One out of three veterans is homeless. I tend to be skeptical of statistics, especially in a country such as ours where statistical abuse is one of the leading forms of rantings. Apparently, the problem of homeless vets was getting better until five years ago, with the situation worsening since. But one out of three?
There are lots of factors in such grim reports. A leading concern of struggling veterans is PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the bane of combatants and sexual abuse victims. While we didn't hear much about PTSD until Vietnam, even the "Greatest Generation", as they call those who fought in the Big One, had its full share of veterans who came back with their insides torn up, even if their outward, physical selves looked whole and robust.
We stereotype people, not the least those we identify as homeless. The number of people without their own homes -- rented or owned -- has skyrocketed the past couple of years, as much the fault of catastrophic medical bills as of the preferred suspect -- financial mismanagement. But not all the homeless are on the streets or in shelters. Many hole up with family, friends and strangers or make do otherwise. Here in Portland, there is a division of labor with the city serving the single population and the county working with homeless families. Kids, through no fault of their own, account for a high percentage of those homeless stats. 1,500 alone are street kids, without guardian as well as homeless.
I wonder how many of the non-vet homeless are also victims of PTSD and other trauma-induced disorders -- poverty and abuse often, but not always, go hand in hand. And as much as we want to blame our current social breakdown on more recent culprits, a perhaps surprising fact is that multigeneratonal abuse and poverty go a long ways back. If we didn't heal the wounds in 1900, we probably were dealing with the effects of those unhealed wounds in 2000.
I was early for my appointment with Naomi Lambertson, co-chair of the Oregon Center for Christian Values. Veterans Day closings were creating an extended morning boom at Peets' Coffee Shop in the Lloyd Center district, the holiday encouraging a more leisurely attitude among coffee drinkers.
A woman was peddling a local paper. The rag -- "Street Roots" -- is published by an organization with the same name, an organization by the homeless promoting the concerns of the homeless. "Jan" graciously answered my questions, explaining how out of every dollar, she was able to keep 75 cents. Jan was aggressive in a very charming sort of way and she answered that 9 out of 10 people she approached responded warmly, even if they didn't buy a paper. Occasionally a heavy tipper more than made up for the other 10%.
Prompted by what I hoped were my nonintrusive questions, Jan shared about her son, apparently quite a scholar, studying political science at a college in California. He was obviously the star in her otherwise dark world. I have no idea the causes of her homelessness. She did venture that sometimes she slept outside and sometimes found a welcome in someone else's digs. Jan is not a war veteran, at least not a foreign war. But she's obviously fought some battles of her own and keeps on fighting through some unnamed inner resolve, perhaps because of her son.
We chatted amiably until Naomi showed up. As Naomi and I walked away in search of a shop with vacant seats, I thought of Jan, reminding myself that in this cashless age, it is still good to carry some pocket change. I also thought of all the war-ravaged "veterans of foreign wars" as we called them when I was a kid -- and of all the veterans, young and old, victims of other wars closer to home, the wars on poverty, abuse, indifference and hatred. And I thought of my sons -- and daughters -- and prayed that, whatever might come their lot in life, they would follow Jesus by never growing calloused toward the poor, the so-called "worthy" or otherwise.
As people across the nation salute those who have served in the Armed Forces, my mind goes to a stat I heard on the radio. One out of three veterans is homeless. I tend to be skeptical of statistics, especially in a country such as ours where statistical abuse is one of the leading forms of rantings. Apparently, the problem of homeless vets was getting better until five years ago, with the situation worsening since. But one out of three?
There are lots of factors in such grim reports. A leading concern of struggling veterans is PTSD or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the bane of combatants and sexual abuse victims. While we didn't hear much about PTSD until Vietnam, even the "Greatest Generation", as they call those who fought in the Big One, had its full share of veterans who came back with their insides torn up, even if their outward, physical selves looked whole and robust.
We stereotype people, not the least those we identify as homeless. The number of people without their own homes -- rented or owned -- has skyrocketed the past couple of years, as much the fault of catastrophic medical bills as of the preferred suspect -- financial mismanagement. But not all the homeless are on the streets or in shelters. Many hole up with family, friends and strangers or make do otherwise. Here in Portland, there is a division of labor with the city serving the single population and the county working with homeless families. Kids, through no fault of their own, account for a high percentage of those homeless stats. 1,500 alone are street kids, without guardian as well as homeless.
I wonder how many of the non-vet homeless are also victims of PTSD and other trauma-induced disorders -- poverty and abuse often, but not always, go hand in hand. And as much as we want to blame our current social breakdown on more recent culprits, a perhaps surprising fact is that multigeneratonal abuse and poverty go a long ways back. If we didn't heal the wounds in 1900, we probably were dealing with the effects of those unhealed wounds in 2000.
I was early for my appointment with Naomi Lambertson, co-chair of the Oregon Center for Christian Values. Veterans Day closings were creating an extended morning boom at Peets' Coffee Shop in the Lloyd Center district, the holiday encouraging a more leisurely attitude among coffee drinkers.
A woman was peddling a local paper. The rag -- "Street Roots" -- is published by an organization with the same name, an organization by the homeless promoting the concerns of the homeless. "Jan" graciously answered my questions, explaining how out of every dollar, she was able to keep 75 cents. Jan was aggressive in a very charming sort of way and she answered that 9 out of 10 people she approached responded warmly, even if they didn't buy a paper. Occasionally a heavy tipper more than made up for the other 10%.
Prompted by what I hoped were my nonintrusive questions, Jan shared about her son, apparently quite a scholar, studying political science at a college in California. He was obviously the star in her otherwise dark world. I have no idea the causes of her homelessness. She did venture that sometimes she slept outside and sometimes found a welcome in someone else's digs. Jan is not a war veteran, at least not a foreign war. But she's obviously fought some battles of her own and keeps on fighting through some unnamed inner resolve, perhaps because of her son.
We chatted amiably until Naomi showed up. As Naomi and I walked away in search of a shop with vacant seats, I thought of Jan, reminding myself that in this cashless age, it is still good to carry some pocket change. I also thought of all the war-ravaged "veterans of foreign wars" as we called them when I was a kid -- and of all the veterans, young and old, victims of other wars closer to home, the wars on poverty, abuse, indifference and hatred. And I thought of my sons -- and daughters -- and prayed that, whatever might come their lot in life, they would follow Jesus by never growing calloused toward the poor, the so-called "worthy" or otherwise.
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