Dear Editor,
As a community we are facing—and it will get worse before it gets better—perhaps the greatest recalibration of our lifestyles since the Great Depression.  Property values continue to erode.  Unemployment stubbornly refuses to decrease.  Tax revenues to run the government and provide public services we need (or have become accustomed to expect) continue to plummet.  New construction—residential and commercial—is stagnant.  In our own community, just note the number of “for sale” signs, evidence of lay-off’s, foreclosures, business failures, depressed industry.  Revenue shortfalls at the state and federal levels reduce aid to education and other local budget categories.  Demands for services—not only of local government, but from charitable and church organizations—”explode” as more people are forced by unemployment and family stresses to ask, many for the first time in their lives (I’m struck by their embarassment at having to ask) for rent money, food, shelter, medical help, funds to keep the electricity on or to get transportation to work.  This is real, here in our community.

People can be crushed by hopelessness.  I saw this on the streets of Boston this past week, with the number of families begging on the street.  (One father held a sign:  “I never thought it would happen to me.”  Another man’s sign:  “Gulf War vet:  where do I go now?”).  Those of us who are more fortunate sometimes don’t want to know about the sadnesses hidden away in our very community—it makes us uncomfortable; it frightens us; it makes us squirm because we don’t know what to do.  There is here, as in any community, spousal abuse, elder abuse, child abuse, hunger, people struggling with disease and pain without insurance, older residents living alone on a monthly Social Security check of $683 , young people tempted by gangs or drugs, good people losing their homes, pets being abandoned because owners can’t feed them.  The list goes on.  The costs escalate at the very time that government services are being curtailed because incoming revenues are going down.  The safety nets that society has created are fraying and are beginning to unravel.

People—anyone of us—can be crushed by hopelessness.  We can turn on each other and harshly turn away from our neighbors-in-need.  We can focus self-centeredly on getting all we can for ourselves.  We can ignore broken hearts, hungry  bellies, those in despair.

Government cannot “fix” the situation.  It can, of course, step in for egregious situations, and it does.  But shrinking revenues and simultaneous increases in needs out-strip government’s ability to “make it right.”  This coming budget cycle will test to the limit, in my opinion, Powhatan’s ability to respond adequately to the bind we are in between decreasing revenues and increasing needs.

This is where you as individuals and we as a community must step up.  Individuals, churches, civic groups, charitable organizations, neighborhoods…all of us have to step into the breach and do those things that are necessary.  We must not turn our backs on what is happening to the family down the street.  We must not pretend that everything is hunky-dory.  It matters how we treat one another.  People are not just things, not just problems, not just inconveniences.  Yes, we must bandage, feed, cloth those in dire straits.  We must give them hope.  We must prove the suicide note—”I finally realized that no one really cared”—wrong.  Our job is to get them back on their feet, send them back into the world of work, if possible.  We must be humane.

Do you volunteer at or donate to the Free Clinic of Powhatan?  Or Habitat?  Or Hope Supper Table?  Can you work with the Domestic Violence Task Force?  Can you take a child from a broken or troubled home temporarily?  Can you contribute more to your church’s good works?  Man the Food Pantry or the Clother Closet?  Can you support the magnificent and unheralded work of the Coalition of Powhatan Churches?  Do you belong to and support the outreach  of Ruritans, Lion s, VFW?  Do you want to give young people alternatives to road-running and mischief and drugs?  Then join Positive People of Powhatan in its on-the-ground efforts.  Volunteer with Parks and Recreation’s programs for our elderly.  Can you increase your tithe to your church or a local charity focused on alleviating hunger, pain, fear, despair.  Can you help Mrs. Bize at Senior Connections’ Friendship Cafe?  Can you drive for Meals-on-Wheels?  Cut firewood for our elders who heat with wood?

Do something for this community.  Do it because the need is large.  Do it because the government can’t do it all.  If you choose, you can make a difference.  We need community.  Not by your stated values or by your political affiliation or your religion, but rather by your works shall you be known.

People need you.  Community needs you.

Respectfully,
Carson Tucker
Powhatan

Note:  I am indebted to Rev. Dr. James  E. Burke, guest minister at Greenbrier Baptist Church, who spoke to this issue at Greenbrier on August 21, 2011, for many of the ideas I’ve tried to capture in this essay.