"Eviction Notice" by Jimmy Cornfoot

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Binghampton. The sun shone brightly, sending its warm rays to bless the earth with a pleasant afternoon. Summer’s first waves of high humidity and searing temperatures have already attacked us, so yesterday was a welcome relief from the already uncomfortable stickiness that characterizes the summers of the Mid-South. Unfortunately, we all know that these days will not last much longer before the mercury rises and the air thickens. Yes, yesterday was a beautiful day to be outside to play and exercise, to eat lunch on a patio and drive with the windows down.

For some, yesterday was an ugly day of reckoning. Though you wait for it with dreadful anticipation, nothing can prepare you to find an eviction notice on your door. This happened to my friend Robert, a young man in the neighborhood struggling to make ends meet. He had no choice but to leave his house immediately; within a few hours, all of his belongs found themselves by the street. Can you imagine the shock? You spend every day struggling to make ends meet, but then finally all that you have worked for finds itself in a massive pile on the corner. I know this man, too! This tragedy did not happen to a random man in my neighborhood; my friend Robert, a good man with a heart of gold, suffered this immediate destruction of his life. Is this his reward for fighting to stay sober and keep a steady job after several years in prison?

Many of his neighbors came to visit his house but without the intention to offer their condolences. Within hours of the eviction, a crowd of crackheads, children, elderly, even former SOS homeowners soon swarmed this pile of new goods. What once belonged to Robert suddenly became items in a free market. You could see the vultures circling around the belongings, diving in to pick their kill from among the assorted articles. One little girl grabbed a purse from the pile. An elderly woman in a motor-scooter took a lamp for herself. Men loaded up trucks with furniture and clothing to deliver to houses down the street. I think of Robert as I write this. He has no house for rest or fellowship, and his possessions now lie in the hands of many other people who seemed to express no remorse for his troubles.

It was sickening enough to see grown men and women rip away Robert’s life from him, but to see the children crowd in this chaotic scene particularly saddened me. What do our neighborhood children learn by doing this? I saw the wheel of poverty begin a new revolution in the lives of the little kids I saw this afternoon at the corner. Why work for a living when you can take from the slim pickings made available to you? The desperation of parents bled itself into the hearts of their children, yet they do not even know the insidious cycle of poverty that has already gripped their lives.

Onie, a fellow partner in community development, stared at this spectacle with me for what seemed like hours. She demanded answers from me. “Jimmy, how do we fix this neighborhood? Answers, Jimmy!” I could not give her the answers she wanted to hear. This scene was new to my eyes. I thought images like this occurred only in the movies dramatizing urban life. Instantly I realized that Satan’s claws grip deeper into the heart of this neighborhood than I had ever realized. My own inability to rescue this neighborhood made itself very clear to me this afternoon as well. I cannot break this cycle of poverty, but for that matter, I do not even know where to begin to address this issue.

Standing on the perimeter of this scene is me, a privileged, middle-class white boy who finds himself in an awkward bind. On the one hand I enjoy a certain amount of detachment from the entire thing because I still don’t feel intimately connected to the neighborhood and its residents. Yet on the other hand, I do feel the pangs of Robert’s suffering. He is my friend, and I want to help him. For that matter, I do want to solve this neighborhood’s problems, a concept that I haven’t begun to understand in my naiveté.

Lord, forgive me for my inaction and give me wisdom to seek the Kingdom of God in this neighborhood.

May, 2008