An Old Woman Sitting on the Sidewalk

Structural violence and lessons in humanity

Jul 21, 2024

An Old Woman

I saw an old woman sitting on the sidewalk in front of the Helping Hands food pantry in Knoxville. She had beautiful white hair neatly brushed. She was wearing a threadbare floral print blouse and a long denim skirt. Scattered around her in a neat circle were folded pieces of clothing and odds and ends. She was staring into space. I had never seen her before.

I slowly walked up to her and asked, “Are you OK? Would you like me to get you some help?”

With great difficulty, she pulled herself out of her stare and turned to look at me. She looked me up and down.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m OK. Are you OK?” she asked with kindness and concern.“You look sad.”

I was sad because I saw her sitting on the sidewalk in front of Helping Hands, but I said. “I’m OK.”

“Me too,” she replied. “I’m OK. I just went shopping,” she said, smiling. “See all my pretty things?”

One by one, she showed me the items she had thrifted from Helping Hands before she detached from our conversation to stare off into space again. Not knowing what else to do, I thought maybe some cash would help, and I handed her a $20 bill.

She looked puzzled when she saw it, then looked me in the eye and said, “Are you sure you’re OK?”

An Orphan

Maybe four years ago we went to Denver to meet a family member who lived there, along with other family members from Santa Fe that we don’t see often enough. My then 11-year-old granddaughter and I were walking by ourselves through an area downtown with many shops and we were having great fun going into any shop we wanted to check out. It was just us. A young woman and her grandpa wandering.

As we were walking down the sidewalk a nice young woman with a clipboard came up to us and asked us if we would be interested in supporting a child in an orphanage. We learned that to support one child, it would cost $25 a month.

Both the young woman and my granddaughter looked up at me expectantly while I briefly thought about the proposition. I looked back and forth between them and knew there was only one answer. I had to set an example for my granddaughter.

“Of course,” I said. “We’re happy to help!” Both young women beamed at me, and my granddaughter took my bank card from me and filled out the paperwork. I’m not very good at that for a couple of reasons so I need the help. Every family member, friend, and stranger helps me, especially my daughter Johanna. Ask my friend and fellow Iowa Writers’ Collaborative member Suzanna DeBaca about it. In Iowa City the other day a young man walking down the sidewalk helped me with the parking meter.

A Burrito

Over the years when our kids were young, we always tried to provide a lesson that it’s important to help people who need it. We would pull out whatever money we had and donate when asked. If we are stopped at a stoplight, and someone is there asking for help, we give them some money. One time we were driving through Omaha early one morning and there was a man with a sign asking for help. We gave him a few bucks. Whatever little cash we had on us. He said he was hungry. Annie had made some burritos with her homemade tortillas for the road. “Want a burrito?” I asked. The look on his face was priceless. He looked surprised at the offer but nodded yes. “Homemade tortillas,” I said, and the look on his face was as if he had died and gone to heaven.

Annie’s homemade tortillas are to die for.

Red Buckets

I have mixed feelings about the Salvation Army and their red buckets during the holidays. I think it’s because they once or still hold positions that I don’t think are good about LGBTQ+ people, but my brain is too leaky to remember.

Regardless, when we would approach the bell ringers, I would hand money to the kids to let them put it in the bucket and receive thanks from the bell ringers, who were often friends or acquaintances. I’m not sure why, but I thought it important that the kids make the donation themselves, with the hope that they would continue giving as they grew older. Them making the donations themselves made it personal, I hoped.

A Comfort

One time many years ago when we lived in Albuquerque before the kids were born I was walking through a graveyard because they are always interesting, and there is always something to read as you walk, and a homeless man approached me. “Do you have ten dollars to spare?” he asked.

“What do you need ten dollars for?” I replied.

“Beer,” he said.

I handed him ten dollars. “Salud!” I said, and he smiled at me. Far be it from me to deny the man his comfort.

So judge me. I don’t care.

An Extra Sack Lunch

Our daughter Johanna was working in Des Moines last summer and forgot her packed lunch. I was going to go to the city for a meeting and told her I would bring her lunch from the refrigerator, but I forgot. So I went to a sandwich shop to buy her lunch and then went to deliver it to her. Turns out she couldn’t come out and meet me, and I had this nice sack lunch with me, that I knew I couldn’t leave in the truck on a hot day and texted her so. She texted me back and told me to find some homeless person and give it to them, so I went looking for one.

I was driving down Fleur Drive and spotted a small, wiry man, naked to the waist, with a large black garbage bag stuffed like an old bean-bag chair slung over his shoulder. So I pulled over into a driveway, got out, and showed the man what was in the sack lunch because he couldn’t speak English, and handed it to him. He nodded thank you and gave me a big grin that was beautiful even though he was missing some teeth. Right then and there he sat down on the sidewalk and started eating like he was hungry which he was.

I turned to walk back to my truck and saw that when I had pulled over, I had blocked the driveway to a mansion, and there was a lineup of Mercedes, Bentleys, and Jags patiently waiting for me to finish my interaction and drive away. I waved at them and they waved back.

The Construction Worker

The street’s all torn up in front of the Mexican restaurant and we are all doing our part to still go there to eat even with the inconvenience because we want the restaurant to still be open when the construction is over. The last couple of times I’ve been there I noticed that whenever he gets a chance, one waiter, who I’ll call Alberto, will stare out of the window to watch the construction. Alberto is young and strong with broad shoulders like a swimmer.

One time a couple of years ago when it was slow at the restaurant, he sat down with me and we talked, for real. I asked him if he enjoyed working at the restaurant. He told me he did, but he said he really wanted to be doing construction work of any kind. He told me that in Mexico he had been a carpenter and that he would like to do that, but he would do any kind of construction work because he liked to build things. I asked him if he had the tools he needed and he said no. I said I’m an old carpenter and that I had all the tools he needed, and he could have mine as I’m probably not going to use them all anymore.

He told me thanks, but he didn’t have the right paperwork to do anything but work at the restaurant.

I asked him what it would take to get the right paperwork so he could do carpentry jobs, and that we really need more carpenters in town. He told me $1,500 and a Des Moines lawyer. Since he didn’t have the $1,500 and neither did I, we changed the subject.

Mexican Ladies

The daycare center in town was holding a fundraiser to try to pay off some debt so they could give the people who worked there a raise and to attract more staff. One of the board members told me she knew some Mexican ladies who wanted to work there, but they didn’t have the right paperwork.

“They are so wonderful,” she said. “I wish we could hire them because I know that they would do a great job, but we can’t. And just think, if we could hire them, all of our kids would be bilingual, and wouldn’t that be nice?”

I nodded.

A Romanian Man

I was driving down the road that serves as the entrance to Knoxville Walmart the other day, near a small office building that hosts a cellular phone company, an Edward Jones office, and a bank kitty corner from the Dollar Store.

I saw a man standing there with a sign in his hands that said something like “please help.” His very dark eyes caught mine as I drove by, and he had a nice smile, so of course I parked and walked over to talk with him. He was about 30, had a dark complexion, and because I’m stupid I started talking to him in Spanish, figuring he was from points south.

Turns out he was from Romania, and he had papers that allowed him to visit, but not work, and he needed to work. He wanted to make enough money to bring his family here. “Romania is fucked,” he told me.

He said he would take any job. I told him there was a manufacturing plant across the highway that really needed workers and paid $30 an hour, and it was sad that though there were jobs available and he needed a job he couldn’t work there.

“I hear it’s easier to get work in Arizona without papers,” he told me. “That's where I’m going if I get enough gas money.”

We talked about his family and mine. A couple of times while we talked women with children stopped, and the women had their children give the man a few dollars. He pleasantly thanked the kids and they smiled at him as the women drove away.

“Has everyone been nice to you?” I asked.

“Mostly,” he replied.

Before the word was completely out of his mouth a man in a beat-up old sedan drove by behind him.

“Get a job!” a man yelled.

The Romanian man shrugged. “But sometimes not,” he said.

I gave him the $10 I had, wished him luck, and thought about him and his family as I drove home to Annie. I miss my kids so much now that they are grown, and I can only imagine how much he missed his family, and the struggles he was enduring to try to provide a home in a new land for them. He’s a hero.

Of course, 15 minutes later I forgot all about him, and the millions of people in the world who are in similar or worse conditions than him, because that’s what we in comfortable positions tend to do.

So I forgot about him, until now.

Turning Away the Hungry

I spoke with my friend Katie as she handed out meals to feed the hungry in the prosperous town of Pella. I was there and saw the disappointment in the eyes of the people, including children, who were turned away with nothing after they had given away 250 meals.

Verlin, who runs the program, said, “Next week, we better bring 350 meals.”

Iowa Food Banks are facing record demand, and have called on Congress to expand SNAP support. Earlier this year, Governor Kim Reynolds rejected $29 million in federal assistance to feed Iowa kids via the Summer SNAP program this summer.

Just think about how much $29 million could help Iowa families, perhaps especially in flood-torn western Iowa. But Kim says no. You are on your own.

Structural Violence

The scenarios I have lived and described are all examples of structural violence, a form of violence wherein some social structure or social institution may harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs or rights.

Food, shelter, safety, and the opportunity to work are among our basic needs and rights, and preventing people from meeting them is structural violence.

Kim Reynolds not using available resources to feed hungry children is state-sponsored structural violence against children.

Not having mental health or elderly care for the old woman on the sidewalk is state-sponsored structural violence against the elderly.

It’s corporate structural violence with government acquiescence when a full-time Walmart worker can’t feed their family.

Borders are imaginary lines imposed by the powerful to protect their interests. The imposition of every historic border was an act of structural violence that persists for generations.

That most of the people who are reading this are only one costly medical bill from poverty is also structural violence; the product of the healthcare and insurance industries seeking profit over healing, with a complicit government.

Certainly, many of us rise above our situations and do well, and others are not committed to doing so and struggle. The fact that our unemployment rate is currently only 4.1% lets us know that most of us are busting our asses and social forces that are prohibiting us from meeting the needs of our families constitute structural violence against many. It doesn’t have to be this way, but we accept it as if inevitable.

What can we do?

What can we do to stop structural violence?

Recognize what it is, and try to mitigate it whenever we can. Put our hands and deeds to work in any large or small way.

Recognize that our Republican legislatures continue to legislate structural violence against minorities, the marginalized, and the poor.

And don’t bring Donald Trump and CD Vance into power. I watched much of the Republican National Convention, and should they be elected, the horrors of the structural violence they will bring are unimaginable.

The old woman on the sidewalk and others like her will suffer even more, as will hungry children, minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, and immigrants who just want a better life will be deported in mass, demonized, and discarded despite their great value.

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