In the Midst

Hey everyone,

Just your friendly united methodist missionary here.

I am doing well in Philadelphia, working from home when I can and trying to be as socially distant as I can. I am still organizing Grace Cafe, but with severe restrictions. We have lost all of our student volunteers and meal hosts for the next months. We are now having to spend more money than anticipated to sustain our food operations, typically 120 lbs of chicken, 50 lbs of vegetables, and 40 lbs of starch to try and feed 250 people now each Sunday. We have closed our indoor operations, medical clinic, legal clinic, and HIV/Hep.C testing.

We now have shifted to serving food in takeout containers and giving them out until we run out of food on Sundays. Philadelphia has shut down all non essential services and limited public transit, forcing some meal serves to close, and increasing the number of people on remaining food providers. If we and other meal serves are forced to close, our community will die. We have little to none bottled water to give out, as people have unnecessarily bought it all out as they sit in their McMansions in the suburbs. We have a limited glove supply as people have panic ordered it all.

I want everyone reading this to realize that you have such incredible privilege, including myself. The system we live in has been designed for us, and oppressive to all others. Our government is catered to the wealthy and large corporations, our hospital system was created for profit, not to care for people, and we are actively destroying our planet.

We knew our systems were built for the selective few before the COVID-19 pandemic, but these past few weeks have shown a light on how inhumane we are to our supposed sisters and brothers, those we are told to love unconditionally, but we incarcerate and kill because of the color of their skin or their socioeconomic status.

I expect someone will email me about how I am so wrong and this is terrible and I am maligning their character. The fact that they are emailing or contacting me to refute what I say only further proves my point. I know the policies I always talk about won't fix all the ills of our society.

Obviously, what we have done up to this point isn't working. Or should I say, only working for those in power whose skin color, gender, and income fit the criteria. When is it that we shall say enough is enough and create a new system of governance and empathy instead of merely putting a bandaid on a bullet hole per usual.

I hope this enrages you, I hope you feel guilty about what we as a society have engineered. I hope that when I have children I can tell them this was the breaking point, when we changed our ways and changed how we view each other and valued each other.

I hope we learn from our egregious mistakes.