Requiem for Justice

by Mona Shaw

In the late 1980s, I was standing in a line at the checkout counter at Hy-Vee grocery store on Waterfront Drive in Iowa City.  A woman ahead of me put a beautiful birthday cake from the cold food section on the counter. She paid for it with Food Stamps.

A woman, in between me and the woman buying the cake, decided it was her job to critique the cake woman’s spending decision.

“You know a lot of people who work for a living can’t afford a cake like that. My tax dollars are paying for that cake. You could have made the cake yourself.”

A sting of tears welled in the cake woman’s eyes. She grabbed the cake and started to walk away, but then she stopped.

“My little girl turns seven today.  She has late stage leukemia. She won’t see her eighth birthday. The only thing she wanted for her birthday was one of these cakes. I’m sorry if that’s not okay with you.”

She, then, raced from the store in that hunched, closed posture people have when they’ve been humiliated and shamed. No one said anything. 

There is some twisted and perverse notion in the minds of the privileged that poor people should never have anything they don’t absolutely need. They should never go to the movies or the Dairy Queen. Their children should never climb on a ride at the County Fair. They should certainly never know what a bite of steak tastes like or enjoy a pizza made at a local pizza joint. Of course, they’re should never have things like dancing lessons or learning to play a musical instrument.  And, God forbid they spend money on something like a package of firecrackers on the fourth of July.

To be poor in our culture means you are not allowed to have any pleasure in life that their critics take for granted.  Every penny is scrutinized for the frugality of how it’s spent.

I recall vividly giving a gay man who lived on SSI a ride to Des Moines. (He was disabled from injuries incurred when he was gay bashed. A woman railed an entire afternoon because when we picked him up, he was eating a Dove bar. It was somehow unforgiveable he could expect others to pay for his transportation when he indulged in such extravagance.

People with money squander money on ridiculous things all the time. But, they’re more apt to be admired than criticized for their profligate ways. Whether it’s a yacht or designer shoes, those people are held in consummate deference and fawned over in the most disgusting and cloying ways.  The richest person in a room will always have the most people circling them with obsequious grins.

“But it’s their money,” is said to anyone who questions the spending of the rich. Except, it isn’t their money. From the wealth they glean from paying substandard wages to their many tax breaks, they live more on the dole than any of the poor.

We’re expected to believe this is more indicative of their intelligence than their greed. It may be my poor trash roots, but I’ve never seen letting people die as brilliant.

The poor are abstract to the privileged. They are not precious individual human beings with names and faces and hopes and dreams and unique stories to tell.  They may, in this abstraction, be merit badges the privileged love to wear and earn societal awards for donations to soup kitchens or having liberal opinions. They are not their beloveds. They are bargaining chips in political wars, literally and figuratively.

It’s March 9, 2020, and I’m in deep mourning.  It’s my own fault. I had allowed myself to believe, to hope, that there might be a chance that an advocate for universal healthcare might get to the oval office.  It was so foolish on my part.  I knew better. I knew the Single Payer bills that have been filed still had a slim to no possibility of becoming law. But I hoped for a fighting chance.

Still, I knew the health insurance industry had a strangle-hold on Congress and both major parties.  There is nothing that evil enterprise won’t do to protect their profits. Killing people is quotidian procedure. There is no one in a seat of institutional power who loses sleep because dozens will die today or suffer unnecessary pain because they can’t afford the medical care they need. People are paid high salaries to manufacture rationalizations for this crime against humanity.

I’m in the last chapter of my life now. I must face that economic justice will not have a win in my lifetime. In review, I also must acknowledge my consummate failure at convincing enough people to care.  This morning I’m flailing in a bottomless reservoir of shame.

Loving your neighbor as yourself has never been and will never be, the American way.