Costa Editorial Sunday September 20th 2009 – Bend Bulletin- Who’s Really Harming The Homeless?
Sunday September 20th 2009
Mr. Scott Cooper – Director of Public Policy
Partnership To End Poverty
521 SW 6th Street – Suite 101
P.O. Box 147
Redmond, Oregon 97756
Scott:
I would like to share with you the dismay I felt in terms of John Costa’s unfortunate editorial on page F-1 of the Bend Bulletin today (Sunday September 20th 2009) entitled “Who’s Really Harming The Homeless?”
We typically don’t have any problem counting money. Yet, when the equation involves people, that’s when the math gets murky. Unfortunately, we have developed a tendency to forget/argue how to count people accurately when it comes to socio-political issues…particularly one’s like homelessness, where the persons being counted do not have an Editorial page platform to expound from. It really boils down to counterfeit counting or, counting only the folks that somebody defines as worth counting, the ones that truly matter, or disparaging the number of those (particularly the needy) identified as counted. The figures we throw around depend upon the position we are attempting to support (Costa’s carefully crafted defense of his newspaper came off just that way — defending his count). This is what I refer to as arbitrary arithmetic or arbithmetic: the rules for counting change depending upon the reason underlying your count. Whether people count or not is dependent upon some pre-defined subjective definition that somebody makes up and translates into a quantifiable form.
We have arrived at a critical juncture in our region that demands that we revisit the madness of our arbithmetic, as characterized by the following author: “The first step is to measure whatever can be easily counted. This is OK as far as it goes. The second step is to disregard that which can’t be easily measured or to give it an arbitrary quantitative value. This is artificial and misleading. The third step is to presume that which can’t be measured easily really isn’t important. This is blindness. The fourth step is to say that which can’t be easily measured really doesn’t exist. This is suicide.”[i]
Counting can be considered, cold, cruel and calculated. When we immerse ourselves in this routine activity, we can become desensitized to the essential compassion and character required of one who embraces a citizen’s responsibility for ridding our region of the scourge of homelessness. As one author points out, “At the end of the twentieth century, many millions of refugees and displaced persons are victims of “compassion fatigue.”[ii] We human beings have a history replete with centuries of evidence documenting our tiring about the care of the less fortunate. Yes, we continue to suffer from this insidious malady today.
Total assets minus total liabilities equals net worth. Is diminishing human beings to arguments over counting them vs. addressing the fundamental deficiencies that feed the burgeoning divide between the haves and the poor, the needy, the marginalized, the displaced and the homeless something that detracts from the net worth of this region? Is it possible that, “In the process of being against something worth being against, one often becomes for something not worth being for.”[iii] When the outsiders view of central Oregon appears to be at an all-time low, is it time to examine whether or not Mr. Costa’s editorial is evidence of the possibility that The Bulletin has succumbed to becoming for something not worth being for? I hope not. I think that is taking things too far.
My wife came home exhausted and heartbroken after volunteering (with hundreds of others) serving the thousands of the less fortunate at the Deschutes County Fairgrounds on Saturday September 19th. I wish Mr. Costa could have been here when my wife returned. He would have garnered a vastly deeper appreciation of what truly counts in central Oregon. He could have experienced a woman with a broken heart. Broken hearts are difficult to count.
Mr. Costa’s editorial broke my heart. He could have chosen a vastly more constructive expenditure of his energy and his platform. I forgive him. I’ve made the same mistake myself.
Then again, who’s counting?
NOTES
[i] Handy, Charles The Age of Paradox Harvard Business School Press © 1994 p. 221
[ii] Power, Samantha & Allison, Graham Realizing Human Rights – Moving From Inspiration to Impact, (c) 2000 by Samantha Power and Graham Allison, St. Martin’s Press, New York, NY. p. 30.
[iii] Campolo, Tony and McLaren, Brian Adventures in Missing the Point – How the Culture Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel, Emergent YS Books – Zondervan Publishers, Inc. Grand Rapids, MI., Copyright © 2003 by Youth Specialties p. 242.
