What ails that Good Samaritan moment

Certainly it’s touching, and sincere, and absolutely wonderful, that Good Samaritan moment captured on video by Lyndon Santos as he was passing through EDSA on some random day. I imagine I would’ve taken a video of something like that too, had I chanced upon it. But therein lies its sadness, yes? Where we are at this point when kindness is extraordinary enough to put on record? Where we have to see kindness on camera, to know that it’s real.   There are many things that are sad about this nation, including the notion that this random act of kindness is about what we might emulate, that this is what we must take from this video.   Because I don’t know that I care for the reflection that is premised on guilt: wow, I wouldn’t have done the same thing, so the one with a conscience says. But anyone with a conscience would be hard put to ignore poverty every day; they would be the ones who might also take off their jackets for a naked kid on the street, if not over-compensate for not doing so by giving the next poor person a far larger amount than usual.   Meanwhile, the matapobre among us will always be such, she who will raise her eyebrows at poverty, or who will maltreat the “help” just because they are such. There’s no talking to the hordes of Pinoys who think ill of the poor, who imagine that they are all criminals, or that they are being controlled by syndicates, or that they are just lazy. These are people who think all it takes is hard work and nothing else, and you will get rich and successful without knowing it.   I’d hear this from freshmen students when I was a teacher at Ateneo de Manila. Teaching 17-year-olds how to write a reflection paper to me meant teaching them to first acknowledge the disparity between their existence and their less fortunate equivalent outside. This wasn’t about doing charity, as it was about highlighting how injustice and violence are what we live with every day, what we’ve been made to imagine is fine. This wasn’t just about social class, as it was also about gender, and race, and religion. Of course in impoverished Philippines, social class is all-encompassing, and the notion that the poor are such of their own doing is something handed down from one wealthy generation to the next. Know it parents, that your children take from your good as well as your bad.    The better students were the ones who would ask – be it because they were offended by what I say, or are surprised at the truths we were discussing – about how the poor just don’t work hard enough. The answer is a question too: are you telling me that a waiter, if he worked hard enough at being such would become manager, and the manager would become owner of that restaurant? Very few of us can afford to be capitalists, and the service sector is practically one that’s a dead end. The question is not whether the poor and working class and those on the streets are not working hard enough; the question is whether or not this nation has equipped them with the tools to even begin working at all. The question is whether or not at any point the poor might become like us, in this classroom, me as teacher, you as students – all privileged positions in nation.   Privilege is one many of us, middle to upper classes, are born into. This position can only exist relative to, and because of, the majority that are born into the space that can only be called poor. Us and the poor is a symptom of what ails this nation.   It is also what ails that good samaritan moment, as it has become about reminding us all to do good, as it has become about our own guilt and conscience. It has become this grand idea of doing something for nation, no matter how little. It has become about celebrating this one act of kindness, as I guess we should, but therein lies our own crisis.   These acts of kindness happen every day between the ones that can spare some change and those that beg for it. These happen without anyone capturing it on camera, these happen rain or shine, and if you don’t do it yourself, this is not me telling you to feel guilty. Instead I’m saying we should ask: how can these small acts of kindness even mean real change? How will this in the end mean a shift from having to give the clothes on our backs, to giving kids on the street a real future in a home and in school, and not out on a sidewalk?   We demand it of government. We demand change that is fundamental, one that will provide for those we want to help, but whose lives we cannot even begin to affect as we give them food, money, clothes. We demand basic services for those who don’t have it, we demand education for kids who are begging, we demand livelihood that will keep people from living off the streets. We demand it for that butt-naked kid, wearing our jacket, because he deserves it as much as our own children do.   This is why I cringe at the celebration of this one act of kindness, and the insistence that we must all do the same – a little goes a long way. I cringe because it gives us the false impression that all it takes is for all of us to do charity and things will change. I cringe because I know, I can hear, PNoy already using this in a speech to say that this is the “new” Filipino, the Filipino who knows she is part of the bigger change that’s happening in the nation.   But she isn’t. And no one, least of all this government, has a right to claim that act of kindness. That was hers, full stop. That we celebrate it for it was, a kindness, is enough. To imagine that all of us doing exactly what she did, that it will mean the poor not being poor, that it will mean kids off the streets, is just wrong. All it will mean is more kids with jackets, living on the streets still, poor and uneducated and at a dead-end.   This is what that good samaritan moment should remind us about. It isn’t about us, as it is about them; not about the privileged doing good, but about the poor stuck where they are and growing by the day. It’s a reminder that there are so many others that are doing this, every day, beyond the lens of a camera, and that has meant nil in alleviating poverty.   It’s a reminder that while we’d like to wax romantic and speak about this highway’s historical importance, for the majority of the poor in this country, kalye lang ang EDSA. That we imagine it otherwise is nothing but our own privilege at work, too. – GMA News