Advocates often face the tough challenge of making their issue important enough to demand attention, difficult enough to require policymaker intervention, but not so difficult that it cannot be solved. High school and college debaters may recognize this as the demands for solvency and inherency – the problem must merit action, it must have a solution, and the solution must not be possible without us.
This dilemma was recently driven home by Steve Liss and his work with Catholic Charities USA on Poverty in America. Steve is a gifted photo journalist who is profoundly committed to addressing the problem of children in poverty. His photo essays on teen runaways in Los Angeles (for which he lived on the streets with runaway teens) and youth behind bars in Laredo, Texas are gripping looks at an America most of us try very, very hard not to see.
Several years ago, Steve started a project called In Our Own Backyard, which drew together some of America’s leading photo journalists to show that poverty in America isn’t a problem over there, in urban centers or rural outposts in which most of us don’t live, but rather it is a problem over here, in our own communities. The photographs, which are on the Poverty in America website, attempt to balance the despair – the need for action – with the hope that is necessary for us to want to take action. There has to be enough pain for us to feel empathy – but not so much that we want to turn away. And there has to be enough hope for us to feel as if our actions will make a difference – but not so much hope that our intervention is not needed.
Steve and his colleagues do a remarkable job of striking that balance. The problem is one of a solution. The photographs convince me that poverty deserves my attention (at the expense of other worthy problems, time is after all a zero-sum commodity). I am driven to feel connections of pain and hope. The problem is one of action. Now that I know that poverty is widespread and bad, and that even in the despair that accompanies poverty there is hope, what do I do about it? Awareness is not action, and empathy isn’t a solution.
Steve is not alone of course. Those who work on genocide, global environmental issues, the budget (see for example my posts about the budget documentary I.O.U.S.A. here and here) and other issues face this problem as well. Unfortunately too many rely on selling the doom without offering the hope or solution. The best campaigns balance the importance of the issue, the possibility of a solution, and the target audience as the only ones who can implement that solution.
