A new study reveales that the employees that make the least amount of money are often cheated even out of that.

The study found that 26 percent of the workers had been paid less than the minimum wage the week before being surveyed and that one in seven had worked off the clock the previous week. In addition, 76 percent of those who had worked overtime the week before were not paid their proper overtime, the researchers found.

It is apparently not enough that you get a job – then you have to watch the people who are paying you. Of course, the thing is, these people are people who need the job the most, and are thus least likely to raise too much stink with their boss, who might just decide he needs someone who will complain less. n other words, they have no choice but to accept being cheated.

* * * * *

Why did I grow up in a house with parents who loved me, who passed on a work ethic and taught me how to dream, how to set goals, how to love? I had nothing to do with it – it just happened. I was in the right place at the right time.

Why did my friend Jimmy* grow up in a house where his mamma’s boyfriend beat him with a fan belt, where mom had to sell her body to survive after Daddy went to jail and where the only male role model in his life was the local pimp? He did not pick that life. He was in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

If you are going to work with broken people, the first thing you have to realize is that you are not better than the people you will be working with- you are not smarter, you are not more in God’s favor, you are not morally superior. You are not better, you are just better off.

How would your life have turned out if you had to steal food in order for your little sister to eat? If you had to go to school three days in a row in the same clothes? If you had to sit on the porch in the cold while your momma is ‘entertaining’ men for money so you can eat tonight? How would you have turned out if your momma had a crack addiction, or if the only time you saw your daddy was on visiting day at the prison, or if you were raped regularly from the ages of 7 to 16?

If you are going to work with broken people, you have to understand that there are all kind of reasons that people are broken, and it often has nothing to do with their salvation, or their walk with God, or their eternal destiny after their death or whether they said some prayer.

Some of you are resisting… Hugh,  Do you mean that the relative wealth I enjoy (and if you live on  more than $2.50 a day, you are wealthier than half of the planet) is not God’s gift to me, but luck, or circumstance or the result of my race and culture inheriting the wealth produced by enslaved people on stolen land? Yup. That is what I mean. You were born into the right place, at the right time.

You are not better – just better off.

* I often change my friend’s names in order to protect their privacy.

No one has ever captured it as well for me as John Scalzi, a writer of some note.  Scalzi wrote this in the immediate aftermath of Huricane Katrina, when there was a lot of folks dissing the poor for not leaving New Orleans in advance of the storm.

Being Poor

Being poor is knowing exactly how much everything costs.

Being poor is getting angry at your kids for asking for all the crap they see on TV.

Being poor is having to keep buying $800 cars because they’re what you can afford, and then having the cars break down on you, because there’s not an $800 car in America that’s worth a damn.

Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away.

Being poor is knowing your kid goes to friends’ houses but never has friends over to yours.

Being poor is going to the restroom before you get in the school lunch line so your friends will be ahead of you and won’t hear you say “I get free lunch” when you get to the cashier.

Being poor is living next to the freeway.

Being poor is coming back to the car with your children in the back seat, clutching that box of Raisin Bran you just bought and trying to think of a way to make the kids understand that the box has to last.

Being poor is wondering if your well-off sibling is lying when he says he doesn’t mind when you ask for help.

Being poor is off-brand toys.

Being poor is a heater in only one room of the house.

Being poor is knowing you can’t leave $5 on the coffee table when your friends are around.

Being poor is hoping your kids don’t have a growth spurt.

Being poor is stealing meat from the store, frying it up before your mom gets home and then telling her she doesn’t have make dinner tonight because you’re not hungry anyway.

Being poor is Goodwill underwear.

Being poor is not enough space for everyone who lives with you.

Being poor is feeling the glued soles tear off your supermarket shoes when you run around the playground.

Being poor is your kid’s school being the one with the 15-year-old textbooks and no air conditioning.

Being poor is thinking $8 an hour is a really good deal.

Being poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you.

Being poor is an overnight shift under florescent lights.

Being poor is finding the letter your mom wrote to your dad, begging him for the child support.

Being poor is a bathtub you have to empty into the toilet.

Being poor is stopping the car to take a lamp from a stranger’s trash.

Being poor is making lunch for your kid when a cockroach skitters over the bread, and you looking over to see if your kid saw.

Being poor is believing a GED actually makes a goddamned difference.

Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.

Being poor is not taking the job because you can’t find someone you trust to watch your kids.

Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.

Being poor is not talking to that girl because she’ll probably just laugh at your clothes.

Being poor is hoping you’ll be invited for dinner.

Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.

Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.

Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.

Being poor is your kid’s teacher assuming you don’t have any books in your home.

Being poor is six dollars short on the utility bill and no way to close the gap.

Being poor is crying when you drop the mac and cheese on the floor.

Being poor is knowing you work as hard as anyone, anywhere.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually stupid.

Being poor is people surprised to discover you’re not actually lazy.

Being poor is a six-hour wait in an emergency room with a sick child asleep on your lap.

Being poor is never buying anything someone else hasn’t bought first.

Being poor is picking the 10 cent ramen instead of the 12 cent ramen because that’s two extra packages for every dollar.

Being poor is having to live with choices you didn’t know you made when you were 14 years old.

Being poor is getting tired of people wanting you to be grateful.

Being poor is knowing you’re being judged.

Being poor is a box of crayons and a $1 coloring book from a community center Santa.

Being poor is checking the coin return slot of every soda machine you go by.

Being poor is deciding that it’s all right to base a relationship on shelter.

Being poor is knowing you really shouldn’t spend that buck on a Lotto ticket.

Being poor is hoping the register lady will spot you the dime.

Being poor is feeling helpless when your child makes the same mistakes you did, and won’t listen to you beg them against doing so.

Being poor is a cough that doesn’t go away.

Being poor is making sure you don’t spill on the couch, just in case you have to give it back before the lease is up.

Being poor is a $200 paycheck advance from a company that takes $250 when the paycheck comes in.

Being poor is four years of night classes for an Associates of Art degree.

Being poor is a lumpy futon bed.

Being poor is knowing where the shelter is.

Being poor is people who have never been poor wondering why you choose to be so.

Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

Being poor is seeing how few options you have.

Being poor is running in place.

Being poor is people wondering why you didn’t leave.

Go read the original, especially the comments. It is eye opening.

I am not Jamie Spears. I am not a millionaire fake celeb. I am not Bristol Palin. Do you think either of these girls will walk into their local welfare office and wait hours, just for that extra $100 a month in foodstamps? Will they ever spend week after week on the phone with operators hired by a privatized Medicaid system, trying to find a doctor who will actually see their asthmatic child? Will they spend years fighting the Attorney General’s office for child support, waiting a year just to get to court? Will they ever try to pay for their generic can of beans with WIC coupons and be treated like a leper? Have someone roll their eyes as they buy food with food stamps after they just got off an eight-hour shift standing on thier feet, cutting nasty hair?

Have you ever heard your child scream for you as you left for work–the seventh day in a row? Have you ever had someone look at you like you were a piece of shit simply because you had a child as a teenager, stuck around, raised them alone–not because of your religion, not because of your stance as a Dem or a Republican, not because of your education, not because of your beliefs about abortion, not because of anything the media or a pastor or a rabbi or your parents or your teachers or your friends or your baby’s father told you to do, not because of what they think the right “choice” is.

I did not have my kids because of any of these reasons. I had them because they were wanted, and they are loved.

You ought to read the whole thing.

Everything is OK, I am just behind.

Thanks for understanding.

I relayed this to some friends the other day, and they doubted both pieces of information. So, I thought I would investigate.

While I do not intend to tackle all 2000 verses (was that a sigh of relief I heard out there?), I am planning to take many of the major, plain teachings of scripture on the issues that today we would call Social Justice and blog about them, one passage at a time.

The Social Justice Bible Study will go up twice a week, on Tuesdays and on Thursdays, so we can study and digest them together.  This way we (myself included) can consider them together and discuss it, calmly, in the comment box following each post.

NOTE: If you want to be sure you get to see each post in this Bible Study, you may want to sign up to read our blog posts in your email inbox. When we update the blog, you will receive the text of the post in your inbox automatically!

Photo Credit: Josh Self

- St. Teresa of Avila

Recently I was looking at Eugene Peterson‘s translation of the Bible (The Message) and seeing those familiar words in a completely unusual way really shook me up… in a good way. I was captured by the awe, the beauty and the simplicity of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples.

Our Father in heaven,
Reveal who you are.
Set the world right;
Do what’s best— as above, so below.
Keep us alive with three square meals.
Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others.
Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.
You’re in charge!
You can do anything you want!
You’re ablaze in beauty!
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Has something similar ever happened to you, where seeing something in a new setting changed the way you viewed it?

That being said, it does not get a lot of ‘air time’ in most pulpits, so many would be Kingdom Builders are at a loss on practical steps to make this happen. (Of course, they could start by reading the Sermon on the Mount, and then do it…)

Last Thanksgiving I found myself in Memphis, visiting some friends for the holidays. They live in a marginalized section of the city and work for social justice and fight for those who get left behind. In fact, they were a primary influence in my decision to do the sort of work I do.

I saw this on their wall and thought I would share it.  The poster was about how to build global community, but if we followers of Jesus would take the following steps, it would go a long way toward ushering in a Kingdom where no one was left behind.

How To Build Global Community

• Think of no one as “them”
• Don’t confuse your comfort with your safety
• Talk to strangers
• Imagine other cultures through their poetry and novels
• Listen to music you don’t understand
• Dance to it
• Act locally
• Notice the workings of power and privilege in your culture
• Question consumption
• Know how your lettuce and coffee are grown: Wake up and smell the exploitation
• Look for fair trade and union labels
• Help build economies from the bottom up
• Acquire few needs
• Learn a second (or third) language
• Visit people, places and cultures-not tourist attractions
• Learn people’s history
• Redefine progress
• Know physical and political geography
• Play games from other cultures
• Watch films with subtitles
• Know your heritage
• Honor everyone’s holidays
• Look at the moon and imagine some else, somewhere else, looking at it too
• Read the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights
• Understand the global economy in terms of people, land, and water
• Know where your bank banks
• Never believe you have a right to anyone else’s resources
• Refuse to wear corporate logos: Defy corporate domination
• Question military/corporate connections
• Don’t confuse money with wealth, or time with money
• Have a pen/e-mail pal
• Honor indigenous cultures
• Judge governance by how well it meets all people’s needs
• Be skeptical about what you read
• Eat adventurously
• Enjoy vegetables, beans and grains in your diet
• Choose curiousity over certainty
• Know where your water comes from and where your wastes go
• Pledge allegiance to the Earth: Question nationalism
• Think South, Central, North- There are many Americans
• Assume that many others share your dreams
• Know that no one is silent though many are not heard- work to change this

We got here at 8:30, waiting in line until the courtroom was opened at 9am. We filed in, with stern admonitions being delivered about cell phone use, proper attire for facing the Judge and how to answer when they call our name. They file down the list of names, the new assistant District Attorney butchering Hispanic, French and, amazingly, some very Anglo sounding names. She calls my man’s name.

“Open, ” he replies, meaning he wants to speak to the DA.

The business of the court proceeds at a snail’s pace. Those admitting to having wronged the city of Raleigh have sentences meted out – community service, 60 days jail time, un-supervised probation. Meanwhile, my man’s name goes unheard.

We now (about 10:30) get to those who plead not guilty. Those with attorneys get swift service as winks and nods are exchanged between Judge and attorney – those with no representation get their say, but no laughter is heard, no jokes are passed. The fear is evident on their faces. Some are vindicated, others pay fines; one goes to jail for 60 days.

My man is impatient. He gave up working at the Day Labor place so he could come to court. Twice since we have arrived I have had to convince him to stay put. He wants to go outside, smoke a cigarette, try to find some work – pretty much anything than sit on the back pew, awaiting his day in court in an overheated room on the fifth floor of a downtown court house. He is concerned that it is now 11:15, they have not called his name and the Soup Kitchen closes at Noon and he has not eaten today.

I pull the bailiff aside and ask him if he could check on my man’s case. He gets the Assistant DA, who asks me what I want. I explain the situation, he tells me to sit down while he goes to check on it.

It is now 11:30. I am told yet again by my man what time the Soup Kitchen closes.

At 11:40, they call my man’s name and we go up together. I am nervous, knowing that my words will determine if he goes free or if he spends three days in jail. He shuffles, hat in hand. The DA tells us the case is dismissed and he is free to go – apparently the officer who wrote the ticket did not show.

We run down the stairs, burst out the door and sprint two blocks, hoping to make the soup kitchen before it closes. We are the last ones in before they shut the door at 11:55.