A ‘Fast’ from the Middle Class
The email said, “In two days you will be temporarily homeless, for about 36 hours. It is a ‘fast’ really, from the comforts of home and basically our middle-class way of living.”
The purpose of the fast was to gain awareness and compassion for people experiencing homelessness. Little did we all realize how much these 36 hours would affect how we see ourselves, our neighbors, and the city we live in.
Ten participants, adults in their twenties who live in the city, signed up for a weekend on the streets of Minneapolis organized by Urban Homeworks.
Not knowing what to expect, we met Saturday, May 15, 2005, at 7:30am. We were divided up into groups of three and were given tasks for the weekend. Some of the tasks we had to accomplish were:
- Asking strangers for money,
- Finding Sharing and Caring Hands,
- Swapping our clothes for donated ones,
- Finding places to eat, and
- Collecting 100 aluminum cans, and redeeming them for money
Each group of three was given $10 in quarters to get them through the weekend.
When we exchanged our clothes we exchanged our identities. We no longer fit in with the middle class. We carried sacks of cans with us wherever we went, from a service at the Basilica of St. Mary’s, through the downtown Marshall Fields. In many cases we prayed our bags wouldn’t break, because we were already drawing too much attention to ourselves by our appearance.
We were amazed by the kindness and generosity of the people experiencing homelessness that we met. Confronted with new situations, we weren’t sure who to trust. Women, men and couples all went out of their way to tell how we could find clothing, food, shelter, and support groups. They offered us rides, and resource guides. People who helped us told us where we could get a job, or an identification card.
Everyone who helped us was currently homeless, or had been at one point, and they shared with us whatever they had. Other more financially secure people ignored us, treated us suspiciously, or looked at us as if we were sub-human.
We heard firsthand stories of people who had come to the cities alone for a job and lost their housing, men who had fought in Vietnam, and young women who had traded sex daily for a place to sleep. And our hearts broke.
We talked as a group about the call to, “loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke. Share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood.”
The call seems so clear. We are charged to set the oppressed free, and to share our food, clothes and housing with those who are in need. But we struggle to know how to help people in an unsafe world. We want to help our own flesh and blood who are camping in the woods, or staying at one of the citie’ shelters.
Everyone deserves to be treated with respect, and dignity. In talking about how the ten of us can be involved beyond the weekend experience Tara, a participant, said that she is going to make time in her schedule to help out people who ask her. She wants to make it a priority to be willing to be late for a meeting, because someone asked her for money for food and she went with them to the grocery story or sat down and ate with them.
For as Monica Nilsson, Community Development Director at the Bridge says, “I think if you can extend your hand (to someone who’s homeless), and say, Hi, I’m Monica, you’re breaking down barriers.”
