I am a longtime Waterville resident active with our Poverty Action Coalition. Since February 2022, KVCAP’s Andrea Pasco and I have hosted a weekly Giveaway Table of “essential goods for daily living” for members of our community in greatest need.
Initially, we set up our table outside the Goodwill; that fall, when it got cold and foot traffic at the Concourse slowed, the Waterville-area soup kitchen (The Lighthouse) welcomed us. We have been there ever since, on Fridays at lunchtime.
Having now spent hundreds of hours engaging with Lighthouse guests, it’s disheartening to hear people who have never been there speak of “those people” versus “us,” when we are really one community with complex, interacting needs, hopes, and desires. Such language pits an imagined “us” against a vaguely defined “them” in dangerous, alienating, dehumanizing ways.
I am likewise discouraged by assertions that “those people” are making “us” feel scared and unsafe, while the safety and comfort of “those people” (access to healthy food, decent housing, mental health and addiction care) go unmentioned. It’s heartbreaking that some individuals unhesitatingly dismiss the challenges others are facing, often involving profound traumas I cannot imagine surviving myself. Some say, “that person needs to make a choice,” as if all choices are available to all people. Others say, “just go get a job,” without considering how hard that is when one is hungry, coping with massive trauma, and enduring regular scolding by others as unworthy, dirty, frightening — as someone who doesn’t belong here.
The deep compassion and love The Lighthouse staff display amazes me. So do all the wonderful people who gather there daily, to eat and build community together, especially given the hostility they encounter outside those doors. I wish everyone would visit The Lighthouse and get to know the guests there. “Those people” are actually “us.”
Elizabeth Leonard
Waterville
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