I Need You to be Wicked

I'm in the middle of writing a grant that stresses structural change. It is helping me to outline and synthesize my work as a VISTA at my project site.

As I look at what we do on the side of human development, I now find myself looking at what our job is on the structural side. Sure, working with individuals and training groups is fine and dandy and one way to effect change. But when we call ourselves an "employment initiative" I think I am missing an opportunity to be the social change agent I hold back on. I need to be wicked; I need to be rebellious.

One of the parts of our work is to be the voice of poverty on the development corporation committee. But we don't always take the opportunity to be the real voice. I know they are making mistakes, but I'm afraid to point them out. I need to not shake in the face of power like I do sometimes. But to be that radical, the voice from the distance at times, I fear I will be "unprofessional." I think I need to re-frame this as being "non-traditional" or "unconventional" because that is what we need. Nothing annoys me more than yes-men who shake their heads without pushing for understanding. Communication is a burden and takes so much time. But time is much more valuable than money when you are solving a problem.

I shouldn't be afraid to dominate a conversation when I have something valuable to say. But I am. I'm a woman, I'm young, I'm not informed in "their way" [business] which is the blessing and the curse.

What if I did rant against the machine when I am at the machine. I am not in the machine, I am meeting the machine. Do I have the confidence to throw a wrench in the machine because I'm the only one who understands it is a monster?

I don't know, but I appreciate the opportunity to synthesize my projects in this grant and ask these questions. Not bad for something to do on a Monday.

the perfect table

In Reply to Gustavo Gutierrez:

"The poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and is not ethnically innocent. [It is not independent of geography.] The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order." Gustavo Gutierrez in, "The Power of the Poor in History"

I totally internalize this quote. Some days I think it is dangerous that I think about an entirely different social order. It is the most radical to be able to imagine something which has never been seen or doesn't exist. 

What if Wal-Mart didn’t sell cat toys because they thought it was wrong that children in the same town were going hungry while people bought toys for animals. Or, what if instead of not selling them, items were ranked by their necessity. If you want to buy a stupid cat toy, instead of 100% profit made on it by the company was %10 back to the retailer and 90% to charity. Items wouldn’t all be need v. wants, but how much need v. want would determine their profitability.  Shoes, clothes, tools, all are necessities, but cat toys, and $400 toys for individual backyard playgrounds? We have plenty of playgrounds and people need to learn to share. If you really want that ridiculous personal backyard playground or metal John Deere collection, you should have to be responsible for the social inequality that is the consequence of your wealth. It isn’t that things shouldn’t be created, made or sold, but they should have a much more transparent consequence. In my new social order, in my head, that is where I am going.  

I can imagine  a world where that gatekeeper who answers the phone at a “service” agency actually wants to help me live in a house and keep my job. And they would know how to do it. There isn’t a “no” in this world where people care. Our conversation wouldn’t be “I can’t help you” but “this is really horrible, can I help you think of some alternatives together.” Even on the phone. With a stranger, at 10am on a Friday. I can imagine that when bad days happen for individuals, there is a business plan that doesn’t penalize individuals, but rather is organized to fill that gap and be sympathetic to it. 

This would mean business has to maintain “fat” but not at the top in the bank account, but be over-staffed on the line. It does mean more time on teaching diversity of positions to employees, which is not a “well oiled machine” because it isn’t specialization. It is the opposite of industrial organization, in ways. I do think people want to do this, but they don’t know how, or maybe the person in charge of this change is busy with the crisis of what wedding dress her daughter is going to wear, but for whatever reason, it isn't happening when people want it to happen.


Is to think outside the box dangerous? It makes it hard for me to be "professional" some times because I really want to be angry at inequality. I am angry with comments like "the poor will always be with us" because they concede there is no solution and don't think about solutions, just continuing with out asking questions about why. I am angry. Anger can be a positive motivator to get me out of bed some days. I have to get up and fight a war on the poor. But some days I also have to ride around with those who maintain the problem and try not to make them do less, but show get them to do more of the good they are doing.


*sigh*

Democracy Suspended- The return of Absolute Bullshit

Democracy Suspended at ISU

In case nobody has heard yet, the ISU faculty senate, which is the faculty's democratic decision maker on campus, has been suspended. Welcome to facism.

"facism - def.a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism."


Mr. Valias has lobbied the Idaho State Board of Education for this power. This is after a more than 75% overwhelming vote from the faculty senate of no confidence in his leadership. This means they don't trust him. So what do you do if you don't like a group that doesn't like you - expel their rights. And that is exactly what happened this afternoon in Moscow, ID.

Fascism - It isn't just for Moscow, Russia anymore.

But this isn't just about those two warring groups. This is about the right to democracy for all Idaho citizens.

"The extent to which a people of a nation can democratically decide what goods and services they are going to produce and consume [in this case education,] under what conditions these goods and services are to be produced and consumed [contracts with teachers], with what entities they will engage with trade and under what conditions this trade will take place [bargaining], how the resulting wealth will be distributed [wages], and what effect all of these actions will have on the nations  natural resources  and environment, is the extent to which it is a nation. Only the organized working class can maintain the existence of America." This is democracy.

But how Mr. Vailas works, when you do organize and work democratically, and he doesn't like the result, he can just suspend your right, like he suggested and lobbied for, AND succeeded doing at the state board of education meeting today in Moscow.

Don't think this action is an independent on the larger context of the right of democracy a free society. The faculty senate is just a type of organization. For their rights to be denied to the people who work day-in and day-out to help a generation of leaders, is a tragedy.

Students need to stand up for the rights of democracy. People died for the right to vote in a democracy. They were beaten for the right. They went to jail for the right.

YOU won't be killed, you won't be harmed, and you won't go to jail. But if you won't stand up, who will?

Stand in solidarity with the ISU Faculty senate. You don't even have to stand. Print some stickers on mailing labels and pass them out in class. Make some fliers to get a group together and go to the student senate meeting next Monday night. Tell your student leaders you want a statement to show that students support democracy at home, not just abroad in places like Bahrain, Tunisa, and Egypt. Get some safety pins and some color of ribbon and start a campaign. Wear hats made out of newspaper and write your message for the faculty members on it. You never have to say a word.

But you do have to take a risk. America is just an experiment, and it has always demanded risks. Now is your time to do something, before you don't have the right to do anything.

More on Watson V. Watson

"It has become increasingly possible to design computing systems that enhance the human experience, or now — in a growing number of cases — completely dispense with it." from the NYTimes article. 

 That's what I was trying to say.

WATSON vs Dr. Watson

Isn't it ironic that the machine that is now being built to replace people, shares a name with Dr. Watson, from the Sherlock Holmes series?

Dr. Watson was the storyteller, and was the human piece of the story. Detective Holmes was logical, like Data or Spock from the Star Trek series. Watson balanced him out.

Now we have a computer that is built to behave in the human sciences. The goal is to make a computer that can understand natural language. Its goal is to be a quick and correct as the ultimate machine, homo sapien sapeins.  Do we really want machines to be equal with humans? Do we want them to be better than humans? I understand the whole idea WATSON started was "can this be done" but wasn't that the same question Frankenstein started with? Will we be better off as animals, if machines can do that which makes us unique.

Robots...RoBOTS!

Creepy robots. What is next, taking on several people at once while sword fighting. Eeeek!

It is a Vicious Cycle

Health, employment, and food are a vicous cycle. If you don't eat healthy, you get sick, if you get sick, you can't work, if you can't work, you can't eat, if you don't eat, you get sick, and so on, and so on. 

But really, THIS IS A VICIOUS CYCLE. LOL!

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BDSM and Social Justice

At first BDSM and social justice are not complementary ideas. For those who don't know BDSM is actually 6 ideas. BD is Bondage and Discipline. D/s is Domination and submission. S&M is Sadism and Masochism. Social justice is the idea that all people deserve dignity by society. It is my BDSM experience that leads to my deepest thoughts about social justice.

BDSM is often viewed through a sexual lens. People think that people who are into BDSM are into kinky sex. While kinky sex may be part of BDSM for some people, to me it is about a conscious relationship that clearly identifies power roles and where both partners are working together to "master" the roles. This means that both partners are required to communicate about their experience. BDSM, if well practiced, is 90% communication, and about 10% actions. It is consciousness raising.

To be a "Master" or "Mistress" the goal is to master techniques of power. But you can't master something without knowing a lot about it. We see people working on being a master at power everyday. It is often the same as leadership. It means setting the best example, striving to improve Ones self, and using small details in ones life to control it. Being a Master/Mistress or Dom/Domme (Dominatrix) to another means that as they lead, they also are teaching self control to the submissive partner. This means that there must be correction. Correction is discipline.

Discipline has a long history of use and its place in society. The most thorough explanation of the history of punishment and society is in the book "Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison" by the philosopher, Michael Foucault. He also wrote "The History of Sexuality" because power and sexuality cannot be disconnected. Power is, in this descriptions a political technology. It is also the tool that social justice must use to bring about equality. Social justice can't pretend power doesn't exist, but it needs to be used responsibly. Discipline is one way of wielding power and can also be a tool of good. This is how it should also be viewed by those practicing BDSM.

Being a good Domme, in BDSM, means knowing how and being able to perform as a good submissive in the correct context. At work in the business world, not all Dommes are in positions of power. They must know when and how to be submissive to give power to others. That is what leads to true mastery of the skills of power.

Dommes must also be very conscious of lower participants power. I learned a lot about this from the paper "Sources of Power of Lower Participants in Complex Organizations" by David Mechanic. In the social justice world, power use doesn't happen just in the board rooms, it happen in a very real way and the most often at the doors of organizations. Dommes recognize that it also happens in personal relationships and is called "topping from the bottom." Submissives who engage in this behavior (especially sexually) are sometimes referred to as "power bottoms." Real masters have to recognize this, not just as a flaw, but as a power disruption that has to be addressed by communication. This is also how it works in organizations. The secretary is the gatekeeper to people, and influences access and information flow. Their sort of power should be respected. A Mistress knows how to use this external power in a positive way. So does a good manager and a good leader. In the end, this person is sometimes the best ally for change.

In organizations striving for social justice, we have to understand and use
coercion and persuasion
influence (overt and subvert)
Power and communication
Marketing and image control
Submission and social powerlessness as an exercise of power dissection
Affective best practices for change
Ritualized expression of pain as a group and as an individual


In BDSM the successful Mistress or Master is also responsible to be very conscious of these things. I know my BDSM experience is what influenced and continues to influence my work in social justice. Anybody else?

Shopping from a Poverty Perspective

I read the COOLEST article the other day. It is called "Behavioral Economics and Marketing in Aid of Decision Making Among the Poor." You should read it. It explains the logic in decision making, especially about financial products, for people in poverty. I knew what it was saying, intuitively, but until I read the article, I couldn't explain the logic to others. Now I can, and I want to share my experience using the logic it provided when I went shopping last night.

First, I think you need a little background. My car broke down two weeks ago and it cost 50% of my months pay to fix it. A whole paycheck went just to fixing the car. So I have been broke beyond broke. I didn't overdraft any money, but I was tempted to. I was running dangerously low on food. When most people think "low on food" they think they mean good to eat food. I mean I was literally low on food. I had 4 cans of corn, 2 cans of peas, 4 eggs, some coffee creamer (no coffee), 3 frozen bananas, and spices. That is literally all the food I had at home. It isn't because I haven't gone shopping, it is that I don't have money to spend on food. Not having enough leads to the habit of not shopping for food.

I am also in the habit of filling my cars  gas tank anytime I have to buy gas. My dad taught me that the top half of the tank costs just as much as the bottom. It would make sense to fill it up and save time later. The bad habits come when you know you don't have enough. If I know I only have $20 dollars to live and eat on for 2 weeks, even if the empty light comes on (like it did last week) I can't fill the tank. I want to do it, I know in the long run that $20 dollars to fill the tank and I save time later, but that isn't my primary goal. My goal is to get just enough to keep as much of the $20 in my pocket for the next emergency.

I was thinking about this last night as I was shopping for groceries for the first time in about a month. I was looking at the things I needed, like soap, shampoo, tampons, deodorant, ect. I was looking at them in terms of price, not value. I knew I couldn't spend more than $200 on everything (food and personal products, and still planned on $40 for gas) I need for the next entire month. The long-term benefits of buying in bulk are clear. I know that each unit is cheaper. But when I was looking at buying the extra large box of tampons, not the smaller cheaper box, I realized that I needed the extra $3 sooner than I needed the product. Contact solution was the same way. I needed some, and it cost about $9. I know I should have bought the duel pack for $18 but I needed to keep $9 in my pocket more because it was the only $9 I had. Really, I couldn't even bring myself to spend $18 on any one product on my trip. It would have been the most expensive item, and been worth, say, 10 cans of soup. If I bought the single bottle of solution, I could have what I needed (the solution) AND 5 cans of soup, which I also needed. It isn't economical as dollars per unit, but it is economical for fluidity of use.

 When most people teach financial literacy, they go about teaching the unit value and how to calculate it. It is what people learn in school. Education is taught at the middle-class level, and unit calculation is practical if you have enough money, and want to save more of it. It is the logic of what to do when you don't have enough that we aren't teaching. Maybe that is why education as we teach it now only works for some people, and not anyone. We are teaching a logic with no real application. My hope for BankOn is that we do something different. We move beyond the logic, and come up with a good reason why I should go ahead and fill my gas tank when I know it means I won't be able to eat tomorrow.

Two Project Hopes

I've been watching a lot of Law and Order: SVU lately. Its on netflix and there are nearly a dozen years worth. I used to watch it, back in the 90s, but I had to give it up for awhile because it hurt me to watch. My first job in college was at the Janet C. Anderson Gender Resource Center as the Project Hope Assistant. That Project Hope was sexual assault and domestic violence prevention program for campus. When I was working there, I also volunteered as a victim's advocate for Family Services Alliance. This job meant answering their crisis line (cell phone) mostly during the night, sometimes of suicidal individuals, but also it meant that I would go out with officers when they had a domestic violence call and do some on-site crisis intervention.


I was thinking about this Power and Control Wheel. This particular wheel isn't my favorite because it uses sexist language. It treats power and control as the male's fault. I think plenty of women use these tools on their partners in negative ways too. It is just that biologically women generally smaller than their partners. Their size makes them less likely to successfully use physical violence to terrorize their partners.

People in poverty also are stuck in an unequal and unhealthy relationship with society. But while my old Project Hope was about crisis intervention, my new Project HOPE is about transition out of the wheel.

I want to know which is more successful. Is crisis intervention or teaching transition more successful at ending oppression?

I heard this story at church on Sunday and think it relates. It was about how instead of doing things right, and having your fingers all alight like candles, be consumed by the flames and become completely transformed. I like the idea of being transformed. Being completely transformed is very different from transitioning to a new style,Transition is used in social services now.

I think that the Bridges Initiative program is the best I've seen yet at trying to do both intervention and what I see as batterer's treatment. Batterer's treatment is directed at those who are wielding the power. It is to teach them to communicate better and teaches collaboration between partners. The Bridges style is directed at "classes" rather than individuals.


I am trying to see how we can be successful using the same intervention techniques with poverty as we do with personal violence. I think if we see that people in the social services as victims we might do our jobs differently, and might be more successful. But it does take the primary aggressors to make the change work. That is the systems change we are looking for. Our systems must learn to not use power to continue to the cycle of power and control if we want people from poverty to heal from their abuse.

For examples, from the wheel, using privilege is a form of control. People in the middle class can treat the unemployed as servants. They are expected to take the entry level positions, clean their offices, cook their food, and are the ones who define the others roles. Some models, when trying to help others, also use the idea of threats (which are the converse of rewards [rewards are shown to be successful forms of behavior modification]). There is the threat of taking things away, like unemployment or food and housing assistance, if a person doesn't fit their role. Models of social services also can at times use intimidation, in the form of threats, or like having to make a person feel bad and scared if they don't do what the powerful (often governments) say is necessary to be successful. People in poverty often believe the emotionally abusive things that those in power have said about them, like that they are just lazy, crazy, or stupid. We treat them like that by demanding they take depression medication, or see a councilor. Isolation can be from things like access to transportation or health care or child care. It also comes from housing availability that keeps those in poverty separate in a concentrated area, or just limiting their options for location because of their budgets. We often blame the victims, especially in cases of situational poverty, for losing their job, not planning in advance for emergencies that lead to poverty, or we even blame people's families like in generational poverty. Children are often used as a form of power and control, and for parents to help their children, or not help their children, we use guilt or the threat of taking children away from their parents if they don't perform. We also do have real structural barriers to getting and keeping a job and having access to their own money.

Social services, while trying to help, often rely upon the same power and control ideas that we are trying to end in personal violence. This is what we call structural violence, and this is why we don't just need to do something better and to the letter of the laws, but rather be transformed in our systems. I hope I can remember what I learned from my first experience at Project Hope to help my second experience with Project HOPE to be more successful and transformative.

Repost of a first post

I found this in 2008 and I believe it is still true.It refers to the chart above.

You Americans Aren't Selfish Enough

You pay all these taxes but you don't want anything in return for it.  You don't want free health care.  You don't want time off of work.  You don't want anything.  You're not selfish enough.

You get mad when someone is taking welfare and sitting on their ass.  What have you got against sitting on your ass?  The whole point behind having a government and paying taxes is to have more time to sit on your ass.  That's what technology is for.  You Americans work longer than anyone, pay all these taxes, make all these robots, and then you not only don't you sit on your ass, but you get mad when anyone else does.  You're fucking crazy. 

 

Antropology of poverty, EITC and the mall

I just got back from doing EITC outreach at the mall. It wasn't very affective for several reasons that are based in anthropological observations that I want to comment on for the future. My thoughts are about audience culture. At the mall we have several difference audiences. I believe our marketing style should reflect a consciousness of it. The people we need to reach at the mall are not a homogeneous group.

Our first, and earliest to arrive, audience is the mall employees. Here are the mid-level management, younger clerks, sales representatives, part-time workers, and especially the young workers. They arrive at the mall before the shops are even open. They spend their time in each kiosk. They will not be reached from a booth. I observed that at the earliest time of the morning, many of them were playing on their smart phones, or doing upkeep and organization of the shops. This is a good time for interventions because they haven’t been disturbed by customers yet.

To reach them, they do need to be lobbied by visiting them at their place of business and talked to more. They are the working people who the EITC is for. They are best approached first thing in the morning as they arrive for their shifts, but before their customers come. In the future, we should prepare a 2-sided quarter sheet flier that we can hand to mall employees, but also target break areas and restrooms, and food establishments that the employees use. These are also good for shops near the mall, but who may not be in the building because they are the same audience.

The only caveat is that under the contract with the mall, this direct interaction may have to be clandestine, but best is if it were worked out in advance with the contract of the booth. I couldn’t, from my observation standpoint or previous experience, determine if the part-time workers, who are our biggest audience, are most likely to be at the mall on Saturday mornings, or Friday evenings. Mid-day shift changes are the hardest to contact employees at because customers are already present.
Our second audience is the mall shoppers there to purchase goods. The mall is the essential middle-class experience. The mall is about quantity, not quality of objects. For those who make enough money to go shopping at a mall setting, they are attracted to options. They are attracted by desire. If you look around the mall, every store is set up to display options and attracts attention from the people looking for that "something" unique to them. Upper class people don't use the mall, because they are about quality; they find their needs met in boutiques that sell their image. In the lower class, you go to a big-box store to buy a pair of pants to fit your needs. The middle class goes to the mall to “discover” pants that fit their desires. They want choices, and even to be overwhelmed by choices. We do that by using enticing collateral. Affective boothing needs to recognize this. This topic I will also address under the issue of collateral attraction to social services, and rant about class inequality, in a future blog.

Next year, we should set up the booth in such a way to mimic and meet the expectations the (lower) middle class people we are trying to reach. They want an experience usually reserved for the upper class. We can use the same booth, similar literature, and but tailor our marketing supplies and boothing techniques. I would suggest the use of technology as a way to be innovative in our approach. Also popular are “free” and “collectable/valuable” objects. I think that there are products that can help us maintain our integrity in this outreach. Besides pens, clever objects with resource referral logos/phone numbers, could be affective tools. I will continue to explore options in this category.
There is a sub-segment of “mall shoppers” we are trying to reach, who not there for “shopping” at all. There is an audience who are shopping addicts, they may even be shopping for entertainment. These people are not just intended EITC participants, but those in need of financial literacy. We should keep in mind that we have something valuable to the improvement of their life, in cases where the addiction may be leading to financial problems. While the EITC’s direct purpose may not apply to them getting money so they can spend more, it is a great place for some mild intervention, and/or consciousness raising. These are the folks who asset building with the EITC is the most valuable. They may have plenty of money, but are they asset poor because of their shopping addiction. We can have materials available to cater to this audience while enticing them to the EITC.
The third audience is seniors who are mall-walkers. We should also keep in mind the times we are there will have these audiences. Saturday mornings will be the mall walkers, especially seniors. Having marketing on the booth (temporary as it may be) that continues to draw their eye, and may even change over the course of the morning as they circle the mall, would be more effective and engaging to outreach. They may not need the service, but they may have children or friends who need a referral to the service. We can’t get recognition by ignoring them.
A fourth audience is the young families and children are at the mall in the morning, especially near the Humane Society. They are another target that needs to be spoken too, and attracted. Having children-eye-level activities or materials will bring the parents, especially those who use the mall as child entertainment. It is also fascinating how this is enculturating children into the middle class, but I digress. Parents will go to a kiost and become engaged where their children are engaged too. This is very different from the seniors or mall employees style of marketing. If we were to incorporate the child educational experience in this target, would also be of benefit.

There is another group that I am less clear about from my experience, but I saw pieces of today. They are the mallrats. They are teenagers, mostly, who are partially there for shopping as entertainment, but also use the mall as a community center. They are there for social reasons. I expect to find them at the mall on our Friday evening outreach, but would not see them on a Saturday morning. They are not a target audience, but they may be a future audience, and another place for mild financial education, if we desired to reach them.
This is a class and culture based approach to outreach. There are not many minority folks who spend lots of time at the mall as shoppers, so some things we do to be inclusive, may not be the most effective. If we keep in mind our audience and intended goals of engaging people on their level to communicate about the EITC.

While many of these audiences may overlap, we should keep them in mind when expanding our outreach. I would like to, in the future, see some of the money available in the marketing budget (which this year was $5k) be spent on campaign materials that help with this form of outreach. This is also a place where money being spent can be on supplies that can be used yearly, making it a better investment than door hangers. It will also be useful at the yearly awareness day, and pay off will be longer than radio or print advertising.

How My Faith Informs My Work

There are 7 UU principals that we as a faith tradition embrace. You can find them here.

They are important parts of my being that I take with me to work every day.

I am an AmeriCorps Volunteer In Service To America (VISTA). The VISTA mission is to build community and fight poverty. It was started in 1964 as the domestic equivalent to the Peace Corps. I am not paid, I receive a living stipend. I am not a citizen of Dubuque, I do not pay taxes. I am stationed as a soldier against poverty in Dubuque, Iowa because it is where I thought my skills and experience would benefit people the most.

I took this position because I am often thoughtful of our fourth principal, “a free and responsible search for meaning.” Sometimes I think I find it, like I currently do with this quote.

"The poor person does not exist as an inescapable fact of destiny. His or her existence is not politically neutral, and is not ethnically innocent. [It is not independent of geography.] The poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order." Gustavo Gutierrez in, "The Power of the Poor in History"

I fight this war because of the first and second principles. Every person has inherent worth and dignity. The existence of poverty often ignores that fact. Our second principle is offended by poverty. Poverty is an injustice, inequity, and lacks compassion in human relations.

My position was created to “encourage and facilitate collaboration, and communication” between organizations with a goal of working to end poverty and create opportunity. Faithfulness demands me to use, and encourage other to use “the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.”

My duty is systems change. It is a slow and often painful process for those in it. I cannot go about changing a system without first a reverence and “respect for the interdependent web of all existence.” But respect is not a call for inaction; it is my call to make the world a better place.

In this position, I swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the US against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without mental reservation or purpose of evasion; And that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter." My duty is to fight poverty. If it were not for my faith, I could not have made this oath. We share “the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all,” and some days, that is all I need to get back to work.