The poor need justice more than mothering

In reference to homeless people, Editor Mike Wolcott makes the following observations: “People make bad choices and there’s always one waiting around the corner. Out on the streets of our city and just about any goodsize town up and down the West Coast, we’re seeing the results of bad decisions — decisions made consciously or not — every day.”

Wolcott makes this statement in the context of a column celebrating mothers and all in the Chico community who reach out to the poor. The idea is when we offer assistance or advocacy, we are, in effect, doing a kind of mothering.

I’m all for motherhood being taken seriously, and I have some rather conservative views on that subject. But I think Wolcott has his wires crossed: The poor on our streets don’t need to be mothered. On the contrary, what they need is justice in how we distribute fundamental resources; housing being the most obvious for the houseless — along with other services so minimally available it’s a national disgrace.

The “bad decisions made every day” are those within a system that allows the brain injured, mentally ill, and those experiencing the crushing and often disabling trauma of intergenerational poverty, to fall prey in a system where increasingly wealthy landlord and developers win, while a growing number of Americans fail to secure even the most rudimentary shelter.

I don’t think there’s any “mom and apple pie” way around the ugly reality: We are a nation increasingly plagued and defined by wealth and income inequality.

— Patrick Newman, Chico