#dense text

These are familiar figures, not only because they have been maligned in leftist movements and liberal politics, but also because features of these abstract categorizations have been increasingly celebrated within queer studies: subjects described as outside, abject, unproductive, and with no future; with a backward orientation and against normative conventions; yet status conscious and (way too) aspirational. Queer studies is far from alone in casting the highly stigmatized as a kind of vanguard. Frantz Fanon invoked the lumpen proletariat to describe the risky opportunities promised by those left with the least under colonial rule; his ideas were taken up by the Black Panthers, among others, in part to elaborate an internal colonization thesis. These identifications were also replicated by some gay liberation activists of that same era. And Mikhail Bakunin’s anarchist visions of the lumpen proletariat as a revolutionary class still find expression in present-day activist mobilizations, queer and otherwise. But this suggests that as queer studies continues to turn away from identity as primary for understanding normativity so as to examine the regulatory categories of health, ability, rationality, and responsibility (key terms of neoliberalism), there is much still to learn about how a range of social movements—including antipoverty politics, prison abolitionism, and harm reduction, to name but a few —have engaged those whose choices refuse or fail at such imperatives, as well as how these debates have been featured within a long history of activism dedicated to challenging capitalism.

‘Heathers’ serves as a potentially interesting modernizatation of Shakespeare’s tragedy Romeo and Juliet, not in any dialogue or even characterization or plot, but in the theme of two children falling fast and hard in love with each other and how that end disastrously, and lethally for many, because of the larger societal surrounding them. In Romeo and Juliet, their families were in a long-standing feud against each other. This would not work in any modern tellings because modern teenagers simply don’t have the same concerns for upholding their family’s legacy or carrying on feuds over generations. Instead, Veronica and JD are caught in both more personal and more broad barriers; their mental and familial troubles, and the social structure around them (the school system in particular) that prevents them from breaking the cycle. Veronica and JD’s relationship becomes what they hope to be a reprieve from their awful world, just as Romeo and Juliet see each other in secret in spite of their families’ feud, but in doing so they cause the precarious status quo to fall apart. However, even though the characters could be seen at fault for others’ (and their own) deaths, they are not presented as the villains ((though this point is definitely more dubious in JD’s case)). It is understood that, whatever actions these characters took, these children took, it was as a result of situations built from others. The characters made decisions in a given environment that didn’t fit, and because of that, the underlying problems of the environment escalated their situation (Romeo and Juliet in defying their parents and all they stood for, and Veronica and JD defying their school’s will to make outcasts miserable). 

I was raised a right-wing conservative evangelical Christian. When I finished college, I moved to Seattle. I was all by myself there and my closest family was about 1600 miles away. I had a church that I went to every Sunday and Bible study on Thursday nights. 

I believed that governments shouldn’t be “doing the church’s job” by helping the poor and that if people had problems they should just rely on their church community. They preached about Jesus helping the poor every week, so they must know what they’re doing.

Then I got an ovarian tumor. It was diagnosed when I had already been unemployed for about 6 months. My parents had given me all the help they could. I had cashed in my life insurance to pay my rent. And a couple weeks before my surgery I got a notice that my health insurance would be cut off if I didn’t pay $600 in back payments from when I first lost my job. 

The coverage would end 2 days before my surgery.

I told my Bible study group about my problem. They all promised to pray about it. Without talking to me, one of the members of the group went behind my back and told the pastor about my problem to see if the church could help.

Note: I did not ask the church for help. I didn’t ask them for money. Someone else asked on my behalf. So if I was making it up and trying to con them, that would be a really ass-backwards way to do it.

At church the next week, the pastor and a few elders pulled me aside and dragged me into a back room. They sat in a circle staring at me, and started interrogating me. “How did you lose your job?” “Have you registered with any temp agencies?” “How many jobs have you applied for?” “Are you applying for low-paying jobs?” “Isn’t McDonald’s hiring?” “Do you think you’re too good for a temp job or something?” “We can’t just give you money because you’re not willing to carry your own weight. There has to be some kind of exceptional burden.”

How about my ovarian tumor? Possible cancer not burden-y enough for you?

In the end, they agreed to help. They would pay my back payments to my health insurance, and not a single cent more. And they wouldn’t give me the money. I had to bring the bill into the church office and they’d write the check directly to the insurance company.

There’s a lot of talk in the UK about how bad and uncaring the DWP is. And it is. People get their benefits cut off all the time for no reason. Most claims are rejected just for fun. But here’s the thing: in my experience, the DWP - even the DWP under the Tories - has treated me with more kindness and dignity than my church did when I needed help.

They’ve helped me fill in the forms. They’ve been polite and professional. I’ve never felt like I was being interrogated, even when I was out of work and had to go for meetings to sign on for benefits every week. They never told me to just work at McDonald’s. They tried to match me to suitable jobs that fit my job history, and when there were no jobs, they understood and sympathized.

And they treated me like an adult human. They gave me the (admittedly tiny) payments, and let me decide how to spend it. 

So what I learned is that churches are absolutely not as good at helping the poor as the government. More poor people would be helped if there was a proper welfare system in the US, and the churches helped by paying taxes into it. Because when it comes to helping people in need directly the churches are doing a piss poor job of it.