I lost my membership card to the human race

I was in New Orleans last week, but it wasn't anything like you might imagine it would have been like. No, instead of laying on a beach somewhere in Florida or getting hammered off drinks I can't name in Cancun I went to New Orleans. The Crescent City is the home of Bourbon street, for sure, but 16 of my friends and I went down to work in one of the worst housing projects in America.

As a white boy from the South I had little common ground from which to relate to the residents of the Desire neighborhood, and I am sure that the little bit of work I was able to do was fairly insignificant. The point isn't what I was able to accomplish or the way in which I spent my spring break even, but instead the lessons I took away from the Big Easy.

You see, locals have called the Desire projects a neighborhood that was always designed to fail - cut off from the rest of the city by highways and train tracks. Carver High School, located just a few blocks away, usually ranks among the 10 worst schools in the nation in terms of the academic achievements of its students. Everything about the area underlines the dysfunctional approach to poverty taken by our nation since it became a public issue after World War II.

Watching television these days, it would be easy to assume that poverty isn't an issue in America. While I am sure that one or two of the Democratic contenders mentioned the issue of poverty in passing like their party is inclined to do, the majority of rhetoric concerned terrorism and jobs. John Edward's stump speech about 'Two Americas' referred to the ultra-rich and the middle class who are bearing the brunt of job losses in the country. Poverty politics don't play well anymore with the people who vote, even if politicians claim to care about the people we marginalize in segregated neighborhoods like Desire.

I'm afraid I can't do much better in pointing out an easy solution to the predicament that millions of Americans find themselves lost in. What I do know is that people are inherently relational, and that no governmental solution will ever be able to bring an end to the cycle that seems to be perpetuated in the housing projects.

Mo Leveritt, the director of Desire Street Ministries, has seen success in turning the neighborhood around because he had the courage to move in and integrate the neighborhood, showing with his very life that he cares about the people he surrounded himself with. There is no amount of money that we as a nation we can pay people to care about others, hence why Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamp programs have done little to alleviate poverty.

Sure, I got to partake of the culture of New Orleans while I was there, and there's little better than beignets and etouffee. The real impression I will take away from my spring break, though, is that life matters little unless we devote ourselves to a life centered on caring for others. No job, regardless of the financial rewards it offers, can provide the intrinsic rewards we get from deep and lasting relationships with people. If we want a better America, where people are free from want and discrimination, we must begin by acknowledging the existence of poverty as a problem that is still very real