Real Change News | Director’s Corner

September 9, 2009
Vol: 16 No: 40

Director's Corner

Director’s Corner - Telling the truth

by: Timothy Harris , Executive Director

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Last Friday, I gave up on sleep at about 2:30 a.m. and went to work. Belltown, in the middle of the night, is Despair Central. As I parked on Blanchard facing the Crocodile, I watched a man kick a corner news box into submission. Occasionally he’d stop to clutch the sides of his head and howl like a wounded dog. I waited until he was done to get out and cross the street. Sometimes you want to help, but it’s just not a good idea.

My phone rang at 7:15. The person calling was surprised when I picked up. “I read your editorial in this morning,” she said, “and it made me cry.”

I said thanks and told her I’d been writing fundraising editorials for 15 years, but had “dug deep for that one.”

What she said next surprised me. “I didn’t read it as a fundraising editorial at all.” I thought for a second, then said: “I guess that, after awhile, it becomes less about raising money than just telling the truth.”

That day, a check for $200 came in the mail. The sender, a new supporter, wrote a letter quoting my op-ed: “Homelessness is political, and the misery we see on our streets is a policy choice. Charity is a pathetic band-aid on the open wound of the abandonment of the poor, and homelessness is the ultimate expression of that abandonment.”

The woman who called had been homeless, and was struck by something else in that piece. She knew what it was like to be treated like you don’t exist.

“The antidote to dehumanization is love,” it had read. “Love is an exalted term for what happens when any of us takes the small risk of reaching out to someone in need…. Love is unselfish. In unselfish acts, there is hope.”

One of our most amazing supporters emailed the night our last issue went to bed and asked what it would take to meet our Summer Drive goal. A few days later, her check for $30,000 arrived.

Real Change tells the truth, lives in the light of love, and believes in miracles. We see them everyday.

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