The Morality of the RV

I just looked at the photos of the tent cities that are popping up around the US. The Modern Day Hoovervilles. The New Jack Cities.

And what are we doing? We are about ready to have an adventure year and I feel as if I am rubbing our good fortune in the faces of the have not’s. There are people living in garden sheds in Sacramento for God’s sake! Who are we to go traipsing around looking for our own self absorbed spiritual enlightenment? Alright, maybe it is not as self indulgent as that but I can see the self-absorbed aspects pretty clearly.

The other question staring me in the face when I saw those photos was: Why are we considering a community service opportunity in India when there are people who need our help in the US? Is it too hard to volunteer at home? To see others in need in our own backyard? What are we running from?

When I worked for the Fund for Democratic Elections in South Africa - a US fundraising campaign based in Boston to raise money for Nelson Mandela’s election in 1994 - I worked with members of the anti-apartheid movement all over the US as well as with exiled ANC members who were living in the US. One guy, Rider, was in his late 20’s. He was an ANC youth fighter who was exiled to Zimbabwe. While in Zimbabwe he received a scholarship to study at MIT. One day we were talking about doing a literature drop to build a crowd for a rally we were having and he suggested we go to the top the tallest building in Boston, put all the leaflets in a metal trash can and explode it to send the leaflets falling all over the city. Instead we leafleted the student union, Massachusetts Avenue that runs through the MIT campus, and dorm rooms.

Rider asked me why so many white people wanted to help South African blacks when they weren’t interested in helping out the blacks in the US.

I love it when people question your motives and help you to reshape the way you look at things. Rider did, and continues to do this to me, with that one question.

My answer then still seems to hold true for me today – because it is easier. It is easier to clean other people’s houses then to clear out your own closets. You don’t have the life long memories attached to each article of clothing, each photos, and each single earring.

But our adventure in the RV can’t just be about seeing the scrubbed up, made for public consumption, gift shop and café version of the US. We need to see the truth and not just do the easy thing.

Will New Jack City and the garden sheds be on our list of things we want to see on our travels across the US? How can they not? It is the least we can do – to open our eyes, to hear the stories of the people who live there.

We need to see the reality to underscore and be aware of our good fortune and to see how we can help to be part of the movement to rebuild the US when we finally park the RV.