The Great Divide

I recently attended a talk in the fanciest-looking building in our city.

The speaker was someone I've recently been helping out with a project, and so she had me come up to share a bit. The audience consisted of a few dozen powerful businessmen. (Luckily, I had changed into the best clothes I own right before I came.) A videographer and three photographers rolled film while I spoke. The next day articles about the talk would appear in a dozen newspapers in three languages, with two or three of them mentioning “Mister John”.

After the talk I was pulled aside by half-a-dozen wealthy men in turn, all of whom wanted to ask me questions and exchange contact information. I finally got out of there almost three hours after the meeting began.

While others got into their chauffeured cars, I walked out of the building, crossed one street, ducked under the railroad tracks, and entered my slum, not 5 minutes from where I'd just hobnobbed with the rich and powerful. As I strolled through the alleys I felt like my clothes didn't attach to my body. There was a tangible electricity on my skin, as I thought, “Where was I? And now where am I? And what could all those who I was just talking to know about the lives that are lived right here?”  It felt like I had just escaped back into real life from something less than that.  Later that week I told my friends that it was the moment in the week that I felt the most alive.

America has used multinational corporations, the military, and remarkably unjust trade and aid laws in order to outsource its poverty to other countries where it doesn't have to look at it. But here, the incredibly rich and incredibly poor still live within sight of each other. And yet they feel almost as far apart.