Craig DenUyl
The Heart of La Puente
On August 28 of 1963, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. boldly declared:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
That day, just over 100 years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, the struggle for freedom and the battle against social prejudice moved the nation. The injustices of the era captured the hearts and minds of young activists across the country and forged the resolve for a united movement towards equality.
Today, nearly 50 years after Dr. King’s speech, the civil rights movement is considered by many to be a thing of the past. As a community educator working with an organization for social justice, I am forced on a daily basis to wonder why this movement seems to have ended while so much work remains undone. I have witnessed far too many times the dignity of man insulted as human beings are cursed and spat upon simply for having no money and no place to stay. I hear all too frequently the sorrow of our homeless guests at our shelter: “I feel invisible, forgotten, inferior. Outside of La Puente, they treat me as though I am not equal, not even human.” I hear this, I see the sorrow in their very human eyes, and I wonder, what has happened to our nation’s aspirations for justice? Where have our heroes gone?
And then sometimes, in great flashes of hope, I find them.
On the 17 of January 2011 the Nation celebrated its twenty-third annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Often considered to be one of the most important volunteer days of the year, La Puente asked me to coordinate its social justice efforts for the event. We hosted several underprivileged middle-school children along with a college student or two for a full day of service and learning.
One half of the younger students scurried around the shelter busily cleaning and organizing while their counterparts prepared a meal in the kitchen that they could later serve to and enjoy with our homeless guests. At the same time I worked with our special MLK day college volunteer to paint and beautify the shelter. Toward the end of the day, the entire group sat down to a presentation La Puente had planned in order to help the volunteers better understand homelessness as an issue of social justice.
The presentation took the format of a panel discussion in which several shelter guests shared their background and experiences with homelessness. It began with a reading of the letter from a homeless woman who could not attend the presentation because she would be hard at work at her job, despite the federal holiday. She wrote to us how her experience with domestic violence had led her to take her child and flee the relationship to the only other place she could go: the local homeless shelter.
Our next speaker related to the audience how he and his wife had once been a middle-class family, but had lost it all in the recession. Another man shared the stories of his being abused as a child, and then his reactionary abuse of drugs as an adult that paved the path to his current situation. Finally, I translated for our last guest, an immigrant teenager who had come to our great country in search of a better life. Fleeing violence and economic hardship in his home country, this boy struck out in search of the American dream of reward for hard work, and found himself instead in La Puente’s homeless shelter.
Each guest bravely shared deeply personal stories and answered all of the volunteers’ questions honestly. The volunteers saw a new face of homelessness and the student who had helped to paint, among others, showed serious enthusiasm for doing much more after learning all he did that day. I gave him my contact information and truly hoped that I would see him again, though I couldn’t help but doubt his commitment. Everybody says they want to get involved, everyone thinks it’s a great idea to help, but how many people have the initiative to follow up and really take meaningful action, I wondered.
Two weeks later, I was proven wrong when the very same hardworking, college volunteer walked back into my office.
“How’s it going?” he asked with a smile.
“Great to see you again!” I responded earnestly. “How can I help you?”
“Nothing really, I just wondered how the boy from the homeless presentation is doing, the young guy who’s away from all of his family?” he replied with genuine concern in his voice.
I was touched and impressed. “I saw him at the shelter earlier today,” I said “But we didn’t talk for long; I haven’t heard word yet if his situation has improved. Would you like for me to call over and see if he is in?”
“Yeah, I would really appreciate that,” he said. “I’d really like it just to chat with him again. I moved out of my house when I was only 17 and did some bouncing around too. I know how lonely it can be, so I just hoped that if I came back here that maybe there was some way that I could personally give some support.”
And with those words I saw that La Puente had inspired this volunteer to do something very special. Despite differences in language, race, country of origin, socio-economic status, and life experiences, I saw him truly care. In that moment I knew that Dr. King’s simple dream of equality was still very much alive and I realized that, within La Puente, it was active all around me.
It showed me that people will still stand up in the interests of humanity, housed and un-housed alike. It reminded me of just how easy and how important that action and compassion for the marginalized is. For as Dr. King himself said, “[We must] come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.”
What’s Been Said…