Bitter Lake Presents Soundwaves Ep 26: The End Result of Austerity Politics and Neoliberalism

Man, this one was a bit tough for me, not gonna lie.  We had a fire at the emergency shelter I work at, and it caused us to have to open up another facility to house people that had to evacuate due to damages from the fire.  We're a bit understaffed, so I've been working 3 17 hours days in a row, and I'm over a week straight, so I had to muster a litter something extra for this one.  I'm really proud of this episode.  We have Kelvin Martinez, psychotherapist and homeless advocate in Southern California.  Also, fun fact, he went to seminary school! We had, a great talk about not just the unhoused community, but working in the world, the obstacles we face, bureaucratic, sometimes even our own hubris. How do you help and have it be paternalistic hand wringing.  Take a listen, and PLEASE follow Kelvin on Twitter here:

 

Kelvin on Twitter

https://twitter.com/AlmostKelvin

 

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Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

― Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Without concrete signs of divine presence in the lives of the poor, the gospel becomes simply an opiate; rather than liberating the powerless from humiliation and suffering, the gospel becomes a drug that helps them adjust to this world by looking for “pie in the sky.”
― James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

 

The authoritarian character worships the past. What has been, will eternally be. To wish or to work for something that has not yet been before is crime or madness. The miracle of creation—and creation is always a miracle—is outside of his range of emotional experience.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom