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Chapter 2 30 Many people feel empty and don’t know why they feel empty. The reason is we are social animals and we must live and interact and work together in community to become fulfilled. —Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven M.Tipton, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life Clinics Serving the Poor and Homeless We all discovered that in our academic centers it’s hard to become passionate about something that you don’t see or experience personally. All of us ended up choosing careers that were very different from what we had originally intended. What made us change? Well it wasn’t our formal training. It was real life experiences in the community that transformed us. —Arthur Kaufman, interview in Education for Health Although the four clinics serving the poor and homeless shared the common theme of learning from giving service to the underserved and disadvantaged, each one had its own pattern of what these experiences meant to the RCSIP participants and the people they served. The different geographic areas, the unique history of each community, the broad sociocultural variations, and the social order of each clinic or shelter provided settings in which an understanding of the human element of giving care went far beyond simply learning medical procedures and technical skills. In what follows I try to capture the essence of what these experiences meant to all those who were involved in volunteering their service. St. Basil’s Free People’s Clinic Chicago grew at a startling pace early in the twentieth century. In 1920 the population of the Englewood community was more than 85,000; one-fifth were immigrants, mostly from Sweden, Ireland, and Germany. The neighborhood had a hospital (St. Bernard’s), a major shopping center, and the Becker-Ryan Clinics Serving the Poor and Homeless 31 building, which became the main plant for Sears, Roebuck, and Company. By 1940 there were more than 150,000 residents living in Englewood. In 1949, when a group of blacks attended a union gathering at the home of a Jewish resident , a rumor circulated that the home was being sold to a black family. More than ten thousand people staged demonstrations against “blacks and Jews, Communists, and University of Chicago meddlers.”1 In 1950 the second great migration from Mississippi to Chicago began. Cotton picking was being mechanized and there was work in the big city on Lake Michigan. As blacks moved into Englewood, white flight began. A geographical factor of major significance was the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway, which many believed was intended as a physical barrier to keep blacks in southwest communities such as Englewood. In 1960 the population was almost 70 percent black; by 1970, it was 96 percent. In 1991, the year that RCSIP started at St. Basil’s, the total population was around 48,500, of which more than 99 percent was black. Median income was $13,243. More than half the population under sixty-five was on welfare. More than 88 percent of the births in 1994 were by mothers who were not married; 55 percent of those mothers were under twenty-four years of age. Lead screening showed an elevated rate of 57.6 percent. The third-leading cause of death, after heart disease and stroke, was homicide.2 The drive to St. Basil’s from Rush is south down Ashland to Garfield, a divided boulevard, with parkland and large trees in its broad center, that runs from Washington Park west. In its heyday, large handsome gray-stone townhouses lined the street; now most of them have been subdivided into many small apartments and need major repair. Although they still looked good on the outside because of their stylish quarry-stone, early 1900s facades, the typical interior revealed peeling lead paint, poor plumbing, faulty wiring, and a shortage of bathrooms. The side streets contained vacant lots and six-flat apartment buildings that were falling apart; 43 percent of the residents lived below the poverty line. During the decade of the 1990s, seven hundred murders occurred. St. Basil’s Free People’s Clinic was started in 1981 by Dr. Eric Kast, an internist at Michael Reese Hospital. It is the oldest free clinic in Chicago and has remained one of the few providers of health care in the Englewood community since its inception. Dr. Kast was a devout Catholic convert who believed that true Christian charity...

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