How Much

by Ben Sanders

Last night, after finishing a long day, we met a Presbyterian church in Athens, Ohio for dinner. Many of us were exhausted. We had not slept much the night before, we had been in cars all morning and much of the day, and we spent the day traveling around different locations in southern Ohio. We were hungry, sleepy and irritable. I had spent my afternoon, with a group of others from the trip, reflecting on the passage of my ancestors through the Underground Railroad. I had also reflected on the delicacy of life and the tragic pain of death while standing in a Quaker cemetery. I wanted to turn my mind off, eat my lasagna and sleep. Just as I began to turn my brain off for the evening we were challenged even further by a dynamic presentation from Dr. Rich Greenlee of Ohio University. Dr. Greenlee challenged us to challenge the perpetuation of ignorant, stereotypical viewpoints of poor people in rural areas. His presentation was a brilliant display of personal testimony and academic research.

But I was tired.

After Dr. Greenlee’s presentation we loaded up our caravan of vehicles and headed to Parkersburg, West Virginia where we would sleep for the night. As I drove I thought about how tired I was and how much work there was to be done. Poverty is an enormous complex issue, I was exhausted, and I thought to myself, “Can I really do anything to change the injustice that exists?”

The answer came to me through my exhaustion. Dr. Greenlee had made me think of things that I did not want to think of. One memory in particular stands out. I remembered being in first or second grade and having had my fingers frost-bitten during a long, cold walk to school. Public bus after public bus passed my mother and I, but we just walked. This was the middle of a Chicago winter, the temperature was about 15 degrees, this is before the freezing cold wind blows and sends the temperature easily below zero. We were both wearing very thin gloves that did little more than cover our hands. I told my mom my hands were cold, then I told her they hurt, she told me to keep walking. By the time I got to school my hands were so cold they felt like they were burning (strange I know, but I’ll never forget this feeling). At the school my mom and I went into a bathroom and I put my hands under some warm water and this only made my hands hurt more. As I cried from the pain my mom told me to keep quiet, she didn’t want anyone to hear me and find out about our long walk. Dr. Greenlee had been right when he talked about often not wanting to ask for help in the midst of poverty.

The answer to my question (Can I do anything to eliminate the injustice that exists?) was clear: I must do something! If only because this kind of poverty baffles me to the point of personal anger, I must do something! If only because I know that there are millions of people living in poverty that are, like my mother was, too proud speak up about their situations because they mistakenly feel they are in poverty alone, I must do something! If only because I know that there are still children in Chicago, and all over the world, that walk to school with frost-bitten hands as warm buses and cars drive by them, I must do something! If only because I was once left out in the cold and continue to live a school loan away from being back outside again, I must fight, with my whole life, to do something.