As I read the Chris and Karleena Perry letter, I believe I am not alone when I say that I am disgusted with what confirms the reality that narrow-mindedness is not yet extinct from our populace.
This Habitat project is revealing the truths of our hearts, St. Albert (whether the project ends up in Akinsdale or not) and the Perrys have unveiled theirs to a national backlash that equally abhors such ignorance. But fortunately as I read through many of the outraged and well-articulated replies to this monstrosity, I felt that finally St. Albert as a community is likewise revealing theirs alongside the greater national community. We are bonding together to raise our voices collectively to oppose ignorance when it surfaces — we will no longer tolerate blasphemy of the suffering.
We are no longer willing to tolerate attitudes that housing is an earned privilege reserved for the wealthy who alone ‘work hard.’ This argument is senseless. People in the Third World ‘work hard’ and they may be forced to live in inadequate shelter regardless. We, as human beings, have an inalienable right to food, clothing and shelter. This is not a conditional right dependent on our ‘hard work;’ the poor exhaust themselves to ‘work hard’ to no quantifiable avail. Some people cannot work at all even if they will to with all their might. The ‘privilege’ of access to these rights is based on an account of one’s humanity. ‘Working hard’ will never be deemed the standard to gain access to an inalienable human right to shelter and nor should it be proclaimed the reason why the rich ‘deserve’ to live in St. Albert.
There is no mandate that states one has an ‘inalienable right’ to be set apart from his ‘lowly’ fellow man by creating an impenetrable city inaccessible to those outside his own comfortable economic range. Doesn’t the recession remind us that we are not gods and that money will never be able to keep us from the fact that, no matter how great our savings account, it cannot shield us from the reality of our own mortality, our susceptibility to illness and to unpredictable and uncontrollable economic forces? Tomorrow, a mansion in St. Albert could drop to the price of a ‘normal’ house in Edmonton, stock investments could be obliterated and then what would serve to separate the St. Albert resident from his contemptuous lowly fellow? Money does not separate us from the reality that we are all fundamentally the same: an ‘ordinary’ man, fellow citizen of humankind, never above the humility of our humanity. But that also implies that, in acknowledging our humble and mortal origins we have the opportunity to embrace the true dignity of being a part of the human community. We do have immense worth and there is nothing we can extrinsically achieve that will amplify that.
This is the truth that we should be teaching our children from where their worth stems; they should not grow up learning that their worth is conditional upon their bank accounts. A “senseless” [to quote the word the Perrys’ used] hug that conveys unconditional love is the only kind of instilling that will enable children to withstand the lies that society perpetuates — your money is who you are. If parents are not instilling the truth of unconditional love into their children then how do they even stand a chance of embodying their innate dignity as human beings amidst a world that profits and damages by telling them their acceptance is conditional? Classmates will learn to respect the children that have been taught by their parents to respect themselves based on the truth of this indisputable criterion.
The reality that low-income people are not hard working is a lie that people like the Perrys tell themselves to justify their ‘deserving’ a mansion and another fellow brother ‘deserving’ his fate of a night out on the streets, or bad luck in the recession or being born in a different country. Wealth is circumstantial. Character is chosen. We may not all start out with a ‘green’ [money loaded] slate and have the ‘opportunity’ to publicize our wealth, but we all have the opportunity to see to it that our ‘status’ is not accomplished by a “house” and “possessions,” mere objects that dissolve like quicksand in the face of the reality of an eternal soul of inalienable worth.
Genevieve McNab, St. Albert
