Urban Ministries of Durham is getting some national pub for its video game SPENT, which is designed ostensibly to show the player what it’s like to live on a $9/hour wage. As you play it, however, you realize the deck has been stacked to make you fail and to engender shame in the player that makes more than $9/hour.
False assumptions and false choices abound. Just look at this one:
With the governor and Durham’s mayor out campaigning to get more people on the free-lunch dole, does anyone think that getting a free lunch in a school in Durham makes one an object of ridicule. It’s actually the opposite.
My wife, a teacher, went through the lunch line at her school a while back and, when she got to the cashier, actually took out money and paid. The child behind her in line asked, “Why are you paying for your lunch? It’s free.”
Like the imagined ostracism of kids taking free lunches, much of SPENT is imaginary. It also seems designed to discourage anyone who actually thinks they can work hard and get ahead. Way to go, Urban Ministries.
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26
2011 At 7:08 pm, Eric M. Weaver, Sr. Said:
Urban Ministries is an enabler for the bums that hang around and make Durham life just that much more squalid. They do not do anything that makes the vagrants want to not be vagrants. My ex-church that I was a member of in Durham supported them, but I would not. I dealt with them a lot as a policeman, and none of it was flattering.
Contrast that with the Durham Rescue Mission, and it is like day and night. They are strict, they make the bums work, and turn many of the people in need who come to them into good, productive, non-mooching citizens. If one of their residents want to thumb their nose at DRM and engage in drinking, drug use, or fighting, they do NOT tolerate it. It is a GREAT institution, and worthy of support.
Urban Ministries? They will never get a dime from me.
26
2011 At 7:19 pm, Jon Ham Said:
I agree. I spent some time with Ernie Mills just today. Carolina Journal is going a story on the Durham Rescue Mission for its October issue and I needed a picture. He gave me a tour of the former motel and the beautiful garden that is in back. Durham Boy Scout Troop 440 and the DRM are on the top of my giving list.