2009/05/03

sustainable aid versus? until? kingdom come

I was telling some friends at Out of the Cold that I hoped the program
would starting running year-round some day soon, but that some day soon
after that, it wouldn't need to run at all.

I finally got around to reading a handout from Street Level today, in
which Dave Diewert seems to be saying that targetting the former, even
on the way to the latter, can be dangerous in how it reinforces the
power inequality that prompts it in the first place.

"Well-stocked and smoothly operating foodbanks or safe and secure
overnight shelter programs are usually touted as signs of a caring
society rather than as clear signifiers of our failure to establish
true justice."

What if a mere two hundred of the thousands of our region's rich or
even middle-class households had a highways-and-biways banquet
experience like in Luke 14, but instead of many people for a one-time
party, welcomed one or two people into their families for a whole
season?