"The reality tour really helped me open my eyes"

I attended the reality tour in November of 2008. This tour was an eye opening experience. It is sponsored by grants and volunteers from the community and was run by the Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA). It was a lens into the poverty the people face in the Rochester community and encourages people to “Learn about the daily problems faced by the poor, and the true impact of welfare reform and county budget cuts on the poor as well as the entire community.”(SWAA, 2008) It pointed out the fact that we can drive around Rochester and go all these places and never acknowledge the problems that surround us. When you stop and look at the way some people have to live it is hard to ignore afterwards.

One of the first things we did on the tour was to practice filling out an application for the welfare assistance program. The first thing we noticed was that this application was that it was 12 pages long. Bob Ingram explained to us that in order to even be considered for welfare help you have to be broke. When calling the welfare office it can be difficult to talk to someone. There are a number of other obstacles that one may encounter when applying whether it be not having enough documents to prove identification or having scheduling conflicts and being unable to reschedule. I think that learning about this application process is a very important activity. One of the biggest political debates revolves around helping the poor. Whenever I hear people arguing about welfare one of the things they say is that welfare is to easy to get and that people want to be on it. If they really understood how difficult it is to obtain welfare they might change their minds.

Another thing that we discussed on the tour was that no body wants to be on welfare. Dr. Larkin from the Martin Luther King School in the city talked about kids and how they get caught up in this system of poverty. A lot of the time people are socialized to believe that they can’t do better. They aren’t given the resources in school to have an alternative. He says that getting good teachers in the schools is what will help these kids move up in life.

Going to St Joes was really great. I think that people always want to help but they either don’t know how or they feel that they don’t have the time. I sometimes hear that people are afraid to help because they think it might make them feel upset. St. Joes is a great place because they tell you exactly how you can help. They have an ongoing wish list and they have a variety of different things you can do whether it be answering phones, donating medicine samples, or even shoveling snow. I think whatever some ones comfort level is there is something for them to do.

The House of Mercy was the last stop we made and I think it was one of the most powerful. It is run by Sister Grace, Charles Earsly, and Vince Shelton. We learned that the house of mercy is the only homeless shelter that does not turn any body away. It is open 24 hours and it does much more than provide shelter for people in need. Sister Grace explained that she often works with the people who come to stay at the house and helps them sign up for government assistance and other services that they might qualify for but don’t know how to go about getting it.

Going on the reality tour really helped me open my eyes to the hardships that people who live very close to me endure. One thing I noticed was that the two main groups struggling with making ends meat consisted of minorities, women and children. The speakers on the tour helped us understand that these oppressed groups are going to be stuck in an endless cycle until changes are made. The sticky floor concept best describes why these people can’t move forward. Going to places like The MLK school and the subsidized apartments by the river helped me imagine a life very different from my own.