
          You Gotta Serve Somebody
          By Davis, MurphyMurphy Davis
          Vol. 12, No. 4, 1990, pp. 1-5
          
          I want to begin by saying a word about my life in the Open Door
Community since this so deeply affects anything else I would say.
          We are a residential Christian Community of 32 folks. We are
African-American, white, Hispanic, young and old, women and men,
formerly homeless, formerly prisoners and those of us who have always
been housed, Ph.D.'s and illiterates, from backgrounds of the middle
class, obscene wealth, and utter poverty.
          As a family we live together, eat together, worship, work, and sing
together, share our money and other resources, and try to understand,
learn from, and love each other.
          Out of our family life and shared faith we live a life of
servanthood and advocacy among and on behalf of the homeless poor of
Atlanta: many more than 10,000 men, women, children and families who
have nowhere to go; and servanthood and advocacy among and on behalf
of prisoners in our state: the many and increasing thousands of women,
men and children who live in cages. We particularly work among the 111
people who are on death row in Georgia.
          As a way of beginning to discuss the challenge of service, let me
introduce you to three friends.
          First there's Charlie. When I left home yesterday morning Charlie
was lying in the sunshine in our front yard waiting for the soup
kitchen to open. He is, like hundreds of thousands of men and women
and children across this land, homeless.
          Charlie has been a working man since he was 17 years old. The last
job he held was one he had for five years. He 

had worked his way up to
four dollars an hour. But at age 45, Charlie was slowing down a little
and the employer realized there were any number of 22-year-olds to be
had for the minimum wage.
          So Charlie was fired. He had no savings and no benefits. The weeks
and months of job hunting were fruitless: "Sorry," they all
said, "but you know we're really looking for somebody a little
younger." The strain on Charlie's marriage grew to the breaking
point. By the time he found himself with no job and no family and no
home, he began to wonder what kind of a sorry excuse for a man he was
anyway.
          He gets an occasional job out of a labor pool. He crawls out of his
cat hole at 4:30 a.m. and goes to sit in a dingy room full of hopeless
humanity and prays for eight hours of work. Usually there's nothing
for Charlie. But if he does go to work, he goes out hungry, and the
soup kitchens will be long closed by the time he gets back. The best
he can expect, though his employer for the day might pay the labor
pool seven dollars an hour for his work, is the minimum wage minus a
few bucks for transportation, hard-hat rental, and all-maybe he'll
have $19 or $21 at the end of a day.
          The only place that will cash his labor pool check is a liquor
store across the street-with a purchase, that is. So by nightfall the
best he's looking at is a bottle, a pack of cigarettes, and sixteen
bucks. Try to live on it.
          Charlie gets locked up a lot. From time to time he does twenty to
forty days in the City Prison farm for the terrible crime of public
urination. We jail those who relieve themselves in public even though
Atlanta has not one single public toilet. In other words, there is not
a legal alternative. The money we spend in one year of punishing this

heinous crime we could build and maintain public toilets all over the
city. But for doing what every human body must do Charlie goes to
jail.
          Charlie also did ten months on a one-year sentence for criminal
trespass. That was from the time he was caught sleeping in an
abandoned warehouse. He has another court charge pending because he
went into Underground Atlanta and walked down the street. The police
told him he didn't belong because he stank. So he was arrested.
          When the pain gets to be too much for him, Charlie drinks. As he
lay in the sunshine in our front yard yesterday a car drove by. A
young man stuck his head out the window and screamed, "Get a job, you
bums!" Charlie raised his head for a minute and dropped it on his arm
again.
          Next I'd like for you to meet Jerome. Jerome was young,
African-American, poor and retarded. He was executed by the state of
Georgia in June 1986. He was convicted of being involved with another
man who killed a woman in Columbus, Ga.
          When Jerome got his death warrant, the Georgia Association for
Retarded Citizens got involved in his case. GARC examined him
extensively, confirmed that he was clinically retarded, and made a
passionate appeal on his behalf.
          But our society had long ago given up on Jerome. I read one school
record from the time he was about eleven. A counselor wrote this
advice to Jerome's teachers and guides: "Jerome is slow and
probably unfit for anything other than simple factory work. He's not
worth your time."
          The admonition was apparently heeded. Nobody wasted any time on
Jerome. His mama loved him, but her life was hard. She was a maid for
the county sheriff end though she worked more than full time, she was
paid so little that her family had to depend on government surplus
powdered eggs and milk to keep from going hungry.
          His life was one of degradation and neglect but Jerome, in his own
simple way, tried to do right. When the state set his execution date
they sent their own psychiatrist to examine him. Jerome tried his best
on the intelligence test and he was very proud. The shrink said that
he wasn't quite retarded enough to be spared from the electric
chair.
          The doctor was paid and Jerome died with 2,300 volts of electricity
through his body once, twice, three times.
          Before he died Jerome said to me one of the wisest things I've ever
heard. We had been talking about prison life and Jerome looked at me
and said: "You know-peoples was not made to dog around. Peoples was
made to be respected."
          Third, I'd like for you to meet Nancy. If you had met Nancy a few
years back you would not have expected her to end up with a ruined
life.
          She was a school teacher and her second marriage was to a prominent
lawyer in a small Georgia town. He had once worked for the state
attorney general's office and had friends in high places.
          For all his prominence Nancy's husband was a violent man. Soon
after they were married he began to have outbursts that would leave
Nancy bruised or with an occasional broken tooth or bone. Didn't
Nancy's coworkers and friends and family wonder that she was
"falling down the stairs" so often?
          But we learn from Nancy that the problem of male violence against
women and children cuts across every class line and every racial
line. Our leaders like to talk about Willie Horton and stranger
violence against women on the streets, and it's a problem. But we most
often avoid the most obvious truth. And that truth is that the very
most dangerous place for a woman to be in the United_States of America
is in a relationship with a man.
          The most dangerous place for a child to be in the United_States of
America is in a family.
          Hear it! Most women and children who are victims of

violence are victimized at home. That's how deep our sickness is.
          For Nancy the sickness was eventually fatal. One night her husband 
came across the room toward her with a 2x4 in his hand. She turned, 
picked up his gun and shot him dead.
          She was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life 
in prison.
          She really and truly tried to make the best of her life in prison. 
She taught other prisoners to read. She wrote letters for the 
illiterate. She helped to set up a special program for mothers 
and solicited transportation for their children to be able to visit.
          The prison doctor told her that the lump that developed in her 
breast was benign. When it grew he insisted that it was "nothing to 
worry about" and accused her of malingering.
          When she finally got another biopsy, itwas too late. This "dangerous 
criminal" was sent home in a wheelchair to spend the two remaining 
months of her life with her teenage son and her elderly parents.
          Now that you have met my three friends I can discuss the challenge of service. The title of this article should actually have been, "You Gonna Have to Serve Somebody." Bob Dylan sings that song:
          
            You might like to wear cotton
            Might like to wear silk
            Might like to drink whiskey
            Might like to drink milk
            Might like to eat caviar
            Might like to eat bread
            May be sleepin' on the floor
            or sleepin' on a kingsize bed
            But you gonna have to serve somebody...
            It may be the Devil or it may be the Lord
            But you gonna have to serve somebody.
          
          The point is: Everybody is serving somebody or 
something.
          Not having made a decision does not mean we are 
not serving. I really believe that anyone, especially 
of the middle or upper class, who is not serving her 
oppressed neighbor is serving the status quo.
          In other words, as long as our neighbors are being 
oppressed among us--and they are--and we are not 
serving them, then we are serving those who benefit 
because of our neighbor's oppression.
          We would not have homeless people if it did not benefit 
someone. We would not be spending millions, billions 
of dollars a year at every federal, state, county and 
municipal level to build prisons and jails if it didn't 
benefit somebody. Don't tell me we've got all these 
billions and we can't build housing for people. Where 
do you think crime comes from? Despair! But prison 
construction is big business. Beware when you raise a 
question.
          The oppression of some benefits others. Our government 
speaks, for example, of "acceptable levels of unemployment." 
Meaning, of course, that a certain level of unemployment 
is actually good for the economy.
          Tell that to the unemployed!
          You gonna have to serve somebody. 
The question is who?
          In traditional terms, when we talk about serving our 
neighbors, we really have in mind charity.
          That's a great word: caritas. Love; passionate caring; 
compassion; advocating love; stand-up love.
          But charity is often taken to be serving somebody a bowl of 
soup and thinking that's it.
          The bowl of soup is critical. A hungry person has to cat 
and the sooner the better.
          But let a love for justice walk hand in hand so that at 
the very same time we serve the food we ask, "Why is my 
neighbor hungry?" What's going on in our system that creates 
so much hunger in a land where we throw away more food than 
any people in human history ever dreamed of!
          Charity and justice together provide a night's shelter 
while asking why? Why? Why are all these thousands of people 
homeless? Women and men and boys and girls and families?
          We have huge quantities of construction materials--and 
buildings every where--church buildings, college buildings, 
government buildings, so many of them standing empty most 
of the time.
          Why? Why are so many of our neighbors homeless?
          At many points in history women have taken important roles 
in the struggle for justice for the oppressed. One group of 
our foremothers who are a resource for us today is the 
ASWPL--the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention 
of Lynching.
          After the Civil_War, African -American people were freed from 
chattel slavery. But Southern whites were determined to 
maintain a tight social control. In three decades after the 
war it is estimated that more than 10,000 African-Americans 
were lynched.
          Gradually the myth of the black rapist became the excuse 
for lynchings well into the twentieth century. And it was 
done in the name of Southern white_women.
          Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Mary Tolbert: bold, 
courageous, outspoken African women, stood up, protested, 
pleaded with their white sisters to take up the cause. "Because 
it is done in your name," they argued, "you are the very 
ones who can stop it."

          It took about 35 years to get some real action. But in 1930, 
Jessie Daniel Ames joined with white church women from around 
the South to form the ASWPL.
          Their motto as they picked up the crusade against lynching 
was "Not in our Names."
          They were tireless in their petition drives, meetings, letter 
writing, and demonstrations and in taking on their own men. 
Their effectiveness in bringing to an end the public acceptance 
of lynching is a reminder to us of the power of women working 
together to end oppression.
          The crusade against lynching had its problems, but it was 
genuinely an interracial womens' movement: the sort we need so 
desperately today.
          Do you know? Do you have any idea how much the poor and 
your oppressed neighbor need you? Do you have any idea how much 
your life, your service, your compassion and love is needed by 
the many who suffer because of injustice?
          Oppression in the form of racism, sexism, war and poverty 
is causing death and destruction around the world and right 
under our noses. The flagrant destruction of the earth and 
its precious resources and the destruction of human hope and 
human dignity are a part of the same death-dealing spirit that 
says: Serve yourself. Take what's yours and then get yourself 
a gun and an insurance policy to protect it. Use up whatever 
you want right now and let somebody else worry about it tomorrow.
          Our earth and the earth's people (most of whom are in this very 
moment poor and hungry ) need us to give our lives to service of 
our neighbors toward the goals of justice and social transformation.
          It is so easy to be blinded by our class, our privilege, and yes, 
even blinded by our educations and educational institutions.
          But in these days our ignorance of our neighbors' plight--whether 
willful or unwitting ignorance--our silence and our inaction mean, 
literally and powerfully, service to a public policy that is 
killing our neighbors at home and around the world.
          You gonna have to serve somebody.
          
            Murphy Davis is the Open Door Community's Southern Prison
Ministry Director. This article is adapted from a symposium talk in
May 1990 at Converse College. (Open Door Community, 910 Ponce de Leon
Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30306-4212; (404)-874-9652.)
          
        
