Chapter 3: Tough Love

(This is Chapter 3 of "Up and Out," a book condensing my long experience about how to best help poor people.  I pledged earlier to get it up online as soon as possible, so it would be available for free to everyone trying to cope with helping the Katrina evacuees.)

(These are not the things that need to be done during the first part of this emergency.  Rather, this is for the time after that, when Katrina evacuees will be moving from getting emergency assistance to trying to normalize their lives.  That is when good programs to help them "up and out" of their situation need to kick in.  The following is for that time.)

(For other chapters, look under "Categories" on the left, and click on the chapter you want.)

"UP AND OUT: A GUIDE TO TRUE COMPASSION FOR THE POOR"

PART 1: THE AMERICAN POVERTY TRAP

Chapter 3:  Tough Love

The only thing that will lead us to help the poor, and keep us doing it, is love.  It may appear as other things.  But at base, it is still love.

It may be shallow.  It may not be well thought out.  It may pass quickly.  But it is still love.  It includes empathy, sympathy and pity.  We may "feel their pain."  We may want to see them do as well as middle-class people.

Or we may want to help because it seems only fair.  We have so much in comparison to them.  That may not seem right.  But if there were no love there, we would not care.

Or we may want to help the poor because the rich have so much and the poor have so little.  We may be outraged, offended.  We want to move that money away from the rich and give it to the poor, by force or by law, if they will not give it up voluntarily.  Well-mixed with anger and perhaps self-righteousness (very gratifying feelings all by themselves,) that is still love.  But it is a weaker form of love, since someone else is being called upon to do most of the sacrificing.

Love for the poor is often romantic.   That is, to love them, many of us must "romanticize" or idealize them, thinking of them as better than they are.  We may make an effort to think of them as poor through no fault of their own, victims of circumstances beyond their control.

Why would we do this?  For fear that we might not want to help them if they have some responsibility for their own poverty.  That kind of fear leads to romanticizing the poor.  But love built on a foundation of such romanticism will not last long in the trenches.

The kind of love that leads to true help for the poor, help that is more lasting, more beneficial and less harmful, is "tough love."

Tough love means, I think, "tender heart, tough mind."  Liberals seem to get the tender heart part.  But that alone can lead to mush and not much real help.  Conservatives seem to get the tough mind part.  But that alone can simply lead to meaness. 

Tough love takes both together.  It means being tender-hearted enough to care at all, and tough minded enough to do it right.  It even means helpers using tough love on themselves.  How does that work?

It means helpers being willing to hold poor people accountable.  It means having high expectations for them, not letting them slide by.  It means leading them to self-sufficiency as soon as possible.  It means, in spite of the fact that many are truly victims, insisting that they must make it on their own anyhow.  It means letting them do things for themselves, even if the helper could do it better and is just itching to jump in and do it.

Does that sound easy?  The next chapter will describe today's poor people. The size of the task will become clearer.

What will "tough love" mean when used on ourselves as we try to help the poor?  It means changing some things that will be hard to change.  It means not letting ourselves be conned by them (because conning is bad for them!)  It means learning to confront people.   It means insisting when you would rather just give up and cave in.  It means persisting when they disappoint you, even when they try to punish you in various ways for not doing it the way they want.  (It helps to have been a parent.)

It often amounts to simply hanging in there.  To just not quitting.  After dealing with being lied to, stood up, evaded and avoided, deceived, ripped-off (despite all your "tough-mindedness,") after being tired, even exhausted, doing all this after a full day at your own job and being ready to quit over and over, it still means not giving up.

And that is just if you are a volunteer!  If you also try to start or run a charity that helps the poor, you can look forward to months and years of 70-80 hour weeks as normal.  You will spend most of your time fund-raising, and will wish you were a dentist because it is so much like pulling teeth.  Even though you are out there "doing good" with the best possible intentions, your charity will still get sued and still have labor problems.  Count on it.  It will happen.

You will not be well-paid, especially at first.  Not if you want your charity to survive.  Good pay is for other kinds of charities.  In fact, there will be one financial crisis after another.  During these, pay cuts and lay-offs are routine.

The political powers that be will often oppose you.  Your colleagues in similar charities may try to cut you out, to keep from having to share the pool of funds out there with one more charity.  A high success rate on your part may be seen as threatening by them.  Their friendship may be a guarded truce at best.

You will be more misunderstood than understood.  But you will also receive more applause than you deserve, and credit that belongs to others.  But never mind: you will get enough abuse and be under attack enough to more than make up for all of that!

Burn-out rates are high.  The toll on your family is high.  The toll on your body is high.  Exhaustion will arrive earlier and earlier in the day.  Sickness follows.  Even so, you will awake and start to write memos at 2:30 in the morning, about whatever the current crisis is.  Your job is to worry, and you will find you are the one in charge of worrying.  If you do not, no one else will, and the whole operation can just disappear.

So why do it?  How much love does it take?  And who can love that much?

Once in a Board meeting, when we were searching for someone to replace me, a Board member said to me, "We have to find someone who loves the poor as much as you do.  Or else they will never make it."

Sighing, I replied, "Look, it isn't love for the poor that keeps me going.  Some days I don't love them at all.  Some days I'm sick of them.  Who I do love is God.  And he wants us to help the poor.  That's what keeps me going."

Actually, I do love poor people.  (Most of the time!)  Most of us do, in one way or another.  Maybe some of you can keep going on just that.  If so, I admire you.  You are a better person than I am.  For me, it takes something more.  But it does take love.  Tough love.