Hunger in the Permian Basin

I recently revisited journal entries I made over a decade and a half ago. I was more conservative then; I can see now the mechanics of what was occurring. I'd consume a gross amount of right-wing punditry by those with some genuine insight into the news: e.g. how exactly Democrats kept their caucus in line or why tariffs were counterproductive for the unions advocating for them. And if you get a bunch of insights into an issue defined narrowly, sure, you do have something to say and it is credible given what you engage. It makes you an ideologue unknowingly. You have facts which can win an argument and shine light on an issue. But this means you don't see the possibility of certain things. For example, that the U.S. leads the democratic world in mass incarceration or that the people dictating the fiscal policy of the United States look to Jeffrey Epstein for insight. Without realizing what I was doing, I traded priority for being correct on my little hill. The mountains of truth were out of mind, if not out of sight.

I bring this up now because the way we frame hunger and homelessness is killing us. We're narrowing the issue, predominantly using a frame of "need." There are those in need; many of them are deserving, as they work hard for what little they get; we can give and benefit them. The "need" framing assumes poverty and risk in this country are exceptional. A quick reminder: 1/7 of the population has SNAP benefits, the elderly are being priced out of food and property, there are somewhere around 5 million homeless (many who are working), and a lack of proper health insurance can bankrupt you. "Need" is not the exception. It is the rule. Worse–it's almost impossible to believe it can get worse, but it does–the "need" framing lends itself to fervent belief in the carceral state. You're poor because you made bad choices; bad choices should be punished with state violence. We want to pay for cops because of this magical belief that the system works. The system must work because we must hold that we're doing okay. Let me just ignore the fact that one big emergency could ruin my family.

For those of us in the Permian Basin, "need" is a fatal framing. Two statistics about Texas make this abundantly clear. If Texas is considered an independent country, it would be the 8th largest economy on the planet. It has a larger economy than Russia or South Korea. What is Texas doing with all the money in the world? Currently, it leads the nation in hunger.

You see this all around you. At one school I know well, nearly 50% of all students suffer from food insecurity. Signs that others struggle are everywhere. Homelessness is visible and omnipresent; dollar stores and cheap supermarkets abound. Over the summer I was at an event giving out free food. It wasn't really for entire families, but families packed the line with their young children. The event ran out of food fairly quickly. It was clear how necessary a meal people didn't have to pay for was. People waited for a while in the desert heat for a chance to eat something.

Still, I live in a city incapable of fixing the pipes and providing its citizens with clean water. It doesn't matter that the problems of poverty, problems which would deem any other state to be "failed," not only persist but refuse to leave your field of vision. What matters is that we have said there are the "needy" and then there is everyone else. Only the "needy" complain about clean water and reliable access to their next meal. The rest of us, with a little more money, can embrace the insecurity. We can pretend we have found stability, that we are not a degree away from desperation.

What's missing is any sense of crisis. Thing is, if you put yourselves in the shoes of a serious public official, you should be able to sense the crisis immediately. The Permian Basin, despite how many successful people it has, is in crisis. With only 15% of the population having a Bachelor's or higher, there is an education crisis. There is obviously an environmental crisis, extending to land, air, and water quality. And poverty here is absolutely a crisis. The census numbers don't tell how many people actually live in the area. If you add up Odessa and Midland, according the census, you'll get 250,000. But add in the unincorporated areas and track cell usage. Count vehicles in front of houses. That number will start looking more like 400,000, if not more.

The key to understanding poverty in America is that it is tied to invisibility, and that relation works both ways. Very few poor people want to be seen, as it is a mark of shame for them. And if you're hiding, more than likely something you need is lacking. We should not understand the numbers of uncounted people as hiding wealth. How many people are trying to make it here–either getting started or trying to recover–and simply cannot? We need to reflect that often, the poor die out of our sight. Not only did we fail to look, but we forced them to never show themselves.

In order to love your neighbor, you have to know you have neighbors. The more we pretend people can take care of themselves, the more we push the idea of society itself away. And that is pure craziness in an area heavily dependent on wealth from oil. Oil companies always want to cut costs, and now they have to because transportation is slowing. In the face of this, we're insisting... that more of us can go it alone? That we can just address needs individually as companies fail to hire, families lack food and housing, and resources become more scarce?

The transformation of news into entertainment has destroyed our sense of what a crisis is. We think it is when someone on our "team"–maybe the President of a particular party, maybe a radio show host–is humiliated. Or if another party wins some seats, somewhere. News functions as sports entertainment for those of us who are not ultra-rich. We have people and factions to cheer for and against. It blinds us to the scope of actual needs. We don't really know how to process the fact entire communities in the wealthiest nation to ever exist do not have clean water. We just keep moving to the next segment or post.

To fix the Permian Basin, you have to declare a crisis, then address it soberly. What you're up against no one can fight alone, and winning may take decades. I remember a very wealthy petroleum engineer arguing to my face that all old oil wells should not be plugged. No one knows how much oil the old wells have, so why worry about radionuclides and such polluting the earth for generations? I said that the region could see the ancient ocean that was here once come back, except this time as a giant toxic lake from the water and salt underneath several layers.

And that's where I stand now. In order to fix things, we have to recognize the condition of Noah. No, we can't build an ark and just save ourselves. Nor can we rant at the sinfulness of everyone else. But we must note the violence done in the name of saying everyone else can fend for themselves. That we have declared an abuse of trust before any trust has been given. We've divided the human family for no other reasons than fear and control. And this is all happening because we treat severe mistrust as rational. It isn't. It is only an invitation to a flood, a reasserting of the natural order against human hubris. If we neglect each other, we will find far greater powers can neglect us too. The crisis–the inevitable disaster–is all too visible.