Homelessness

Berkeley Eighth-Grader's Eye-Opening Street Seminar with the Catholic Worker 

CELSIANA WARWICK / Street Spirit* v.10, n.4, 1apr04

"Capitalism may be good for the people on top of the corporate ladder, but it's harsh on those at the bottom. This country definitely needs to stop thinking that if you ignore homeless people, they'll go away. It won't work, and it's darn close to murder, because in this case, `go away' means die." — Celsiana Warwick

Editor: Celsiana Warwick is an exceptional student in a Berkeley public school. All students in her eighth-grade class were required to perform community service as part of their curriculum. Following is an essay she wrote describing her work feeding those in need and the homeless.

My guess is that when some people heard that they had to do community service, they got all stressed out and ran around tearing out chunks of their hair and yelling, "What am I going to do?! Where in, the bloody heck am I going to do my community service?!!" And generally freaking out and annoying all their friends and relations to no end.

This was not so with me. My dad is really involved with this Catholic Worker organization at my church called Night on the Streets. It's run by this old Berkeley eccentric named J.C. Orton. They serve breakfast for homeless and low-income people at People's Park and the men's shelter on Sunday morning, and serve soup three nights a week in the winter. They also distribute sleeping bags, ponchos, etc.

So, anyway, when I got wind of the community service assignment, I just went to my dad. He got me a job cooking and serving breakfast on Sunday morning. Unfortunately, this meant getting up at 5:00 a.m. I know, it's horrible, but I told myself it was just for seven weeks, so I bit the bullet and did it.

When my dad and I got to J.C.'s house, it was still dark, but J.C. and his friend Zig were up, hardboiling the eggs. Did you know that hardboiling a hundred-odd eggs makes the entire house smell like sulfur? Anyway, they made me start off by slicing the English muffins that morning. (On future mornings I would be forced to slice bagels, cinnamon buns, toast, and even separate pieces of ice cold — and very sticky — apple strudel with my bare hands, which, by the way, is one of the most exceedingly unpleasant things I have ever done.)

Then I had to drain the eggs (I nearly suffocated from the fumes), and stir the grits. Do you know how hard it is to stir grits? You have to do it in this fiendishly difficult way, or else they stick to the bottom and get lumpy. It is so embarrassing to be trying to stir grits while there are three old guys chuckling smugly at you.

Finally, J.C. took pity on me and finished the job. I thought he was being nice, but he said that, to compensate, I would have to stir the oatmeal. All I can say is, stirring oatmeal causes way more lactic acid buildup than anything I have been forced to do in P.E. The only good thing about it is that it takes absolutely no skill.

When I was finished, I flopped down on the couch, but my dad dragged me outside to scrub down the plastic tables and the cooler. This was no mean feat, since we had to haul the tables out of the garage, and some ants seemed to have taken up residence in the cooler. Fortunately for me, J.C. had this really cool hose with a high-power spray nozzle. Perfect for knocking ants off of red plastic coolers.

When we finished that, we had to carry the food out to J.C.'s huge van. Believe me, you have not lived until you have carried a 15-pound box of fruit cups down some-one's front steps at six in the morning.

When we got to the park, there was along line of homeless people there already, and some other Night on the Streets people. After we had set up the tables and food and stuff, J.C. told everyone that I was doing community service because I had robbed a Wells Fargo in Kensington. Then he did the normal announcements, like how the Church of Christ was serving sandwiches at 1:00 and that there would be a sit-down dinner at Mary Magdalene's the following Friday, blah blah blah — I kind of tuned out the rest of it.

I looked at the stuff we could serve — fruit cups, cold cereal, English muffins, milk, eggs, brown sugar and raisins, peaches, butter — and decided on the eggs because they would keep my hands warm. Serving stuff is actually really easy. As people walk by, you just say "egg?" and if they want it, you hand it to them. It gets kind of tricky though, if people try to get more than one egg without going through the line again. You have to be really firm or you get yelled at by J.C.

NICE, BUT KIND OF WACKO

The other people who were serving were nice, but kind of wacko. Like Modesto, this guy who kept trying to gross me out by saying how Filipino people like him eat dog, and rattlesnakes, and fertilized duck eggs. Another guy, Mike, told me it was a lot of hooey. I really didn't have any problems working with those people, even if facing stories of the different weird foods my fellow servers have eaten (along with occasional anecdotes from the people we're serving) on an empty stomach and seven hours of sleep can be a little aggravating.

I don't think I would recommend this job to other people, because it involves getting up really early, and I know my fellow teenagers have very low tolerance for that. I can only do it myself because I have to get up for band at 6:00 a.m. three days a week, and I've got practice doing this kind of thing.

I got a lot out of my community service assignment. For one thing, it always feels good to help people, and I got to know a whole new culture: that of old, leftist, Berkeley Catholic Workers. Also, when you live in modern America, you have to help people less fortunate than you to make up for how many people die each year because of our government's screwy foreign policy.

Also, it was very educational. J.C. and his friends like to talk politics while they cook, so I learned a lot about the state of the economy, our president's latest excuses for the lack of "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, and missionaries in Africa. I haven't been getting a lot of news since my parents got disgusted with NPR in 2001 during the Afghanistan thing and decided only to listen to KPFA, which has news at six in the morning.

POLICE BRUTALITY

Working with homeless people also really brought home to me the reality of people living on the streets. There's a lot of police brutality too. I remember one time, this guy was mad at another guy, and he called the cops and told them the other guy had a gun. Well, the cops came right up and pulled the guy out of the breakfast line, jumped on him, and hand-cuffed him. They didn't even tell him what he had supposedly done. Even though he turned out to be innocent, the police still watched us for the next few weeks, which put everyone on edge except Mike, who had fun annoying them by offering them food.

We probably fed a hundred people every Sunday, and this is just one city in America. There are thousands and thou-sands of people living on the street because they lost their jobs, or are too mentally ill to get one in the first place. Contrary to what politicians seem to believe, street people aren't "just too lazy to get a job." They can't "stop being homeless any time they want."

Capitalism may be good for the people on top of the corporate ladder, but it's harsh on those at the bottom. This country definitely needs to stop thinking that if you ignore homeless people, they'll go away. It won't work, and it's dam close to murder, because in this case, "go away" means die.

I think this service project assignment is good, and should be continued; but I don't think the kids who are reshelving books, or doing housework for their moms, are getting much out of it. You don't learn any-thing from drudgery. I think more students should work in places where they can help people and connect with people who lead different lifestyles. More people need to be woken up to the general sorry state of life at this point in time.

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