PROVIDENCE -- Nancy Gewirtz would like you to know she has nothing against holiday giving, charity, or kindness toward the less fortunate.
It just makes her sick to see a page full of donation requests in every Monday's newspaper, and Rhode Island charities projecting deficits.
And it makes her sick to see people assume that if we all were a bit more generous, the problem would be solved.
They don't get it.
"Why, in the richest nation in the world, should we have to have food banks and shelters?" she railed in her living room on Wednesday, surrounded by her Rhode Island College students.
She told them how visiting a daycare center in a homeless shelter had sunk the heart of the United Way's national president.
A shelter serving families during brief crises, he realized, wouldn't need to offer daycare. But these people were there for the long haul. They had jobs and obligations. They just couldn't afford a place to live.
And with or without daycare, they'd still be homeless.
"We don't like to think of ourselves as a society that lets people die on the streets, so if there isn't anything else available, at least this serves as a stopgap measure," Gewirtz said.
"But charity doesn't deal with the systemic problems that cause poverty. . . . And when charity gets done, there is less of a sense of outrage when there is injustice."
LET'S LAY it out on the table: Nancy Gewirtz is very ill. No one knows how much time she still has -- not enough, for sure, for all the life in her. But Gewirtz is a fighter, and even as she battles cancer, she continues to work for social justice.
In January, she said, "if I'm still around, I'll be at the State House." She has a new governor to educate. She has a legislature that needs to be reminded, frequently, that every dollar in tax breaks is a dollar that won't go to education, health care, or affordable housing.
And at Rhode Island College, she has another generation of social workers that she wants to make understand that it's not enough to help individuals, just like it's not enough to donate a turkey to the homeless.
"I think the concern I have with both is the same," she told her students. "So long as we focus on the individual and don't work on the systemic problems, we won't solve anything."
Gewirtz, 57, is teaching her policy seminar at home these days because, as she put it, "I'm saving my energy." Her students -- six candidates for master's degrees in social work, who are interning at the Poverty Institute, which she founded and directs -- don't seem to mind going to the East Side. On Wednesday, despite the snow and the imminent holiday, all but one of them made it, as did the staff of the institute.
Looking tiny in a big ivory loveseat, fashionably dressed and made-up as always, Gewirtz led her class as she's done for more than three decades.
She began with a confession.
"This time of year, I sort of go bananas," she said. "Because I open our newspaper . . ." -- she pulled out The Journal's "Holiday giving -- How you can help" list -- "and I'm confronted with this."
She pulled out another article, about dog-racing proceeds being donated to the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. The agency's director, Gewirtz's friend Bernie Beaudreau, was quoted thanking the dog owners.
The dog owners who kept their state subsidies even as programs for the needy were cut. Funny how this time of year, she said, "there is a huge focus on taking care of our brothers. . . . The question is why, when it comes to January, and the General Assembly goes into session, 'God helps those who help themselves?' "
For a good hour, as they ate pizza off paper plates, Gewirtz and her guests went back and forth about charity, its virtues and its flaws. She pushed them to come up with points on their own; when they didn't, she filled in the blanks -- such as the obvious advantage of charity for government, which saves money when private organizations take care of people's needs.
The trend in America, Gewirtz noted, is toward more privatization of social services. Government spending on affordable housing has dropped dramatically. Rhode Island's welfare payments haven't increased in 14 years. As welfare covers less, the food banks and the shelters pick up the slack.
But all those agencies have limited resources. And unlike government, the private sector can pick and choose whom it will serve. Charities can exclude unwed mothers, or gays, or mentally ill clients.
And unlike government, charities depend on the benevolence of their donors. A recession or a change in donor priorities -- as occurred after Sept. 11 -- can ravage their budgets. The need to keep donors happy can also discourage much-needed advocacy; if corporations keep your agency going, Gewirtz noted, how can you lobby against a corporate tax break so there will be enough money for the Department of Human Services?
TWO WEEKS AGO, after overcoming Gewirtz's resistance, a group of her former students, friends and fellow activists offered a tribute to her at Rhode Island College.
She consented because it was a fundraiser for her beloved Poverty Institute -- "her other baby," as her daughter, Rebekah, put it. Some 400 people packed the Donovan Dining Center, raising more than $15,000 to support the institute's work in policy analysis and advocacy.
Gewirtz was radiant and cheerful, and a bit overwhelmed. She heard herself called a role model, a beloved teacher, and -- by the state Senate -- "an unrelenting voice for those who otherwise might not be heard."
She laughed at the Nancy jokes, and the Nancy stories, going back to her initial job interview at RIC, when, her former boss, Eunice Shatz, related, she showed up "in Gucci shoes and designer clothes," and she announced that this was "social work's last chance."
"I said, 'What is this?' " Shatz recalled. But "I decided to take a chance on Nancy, because she was too interesting to resist."
"She colored outside the lines, in vivid colors. She never asked, 'Can we?' She asked, 'How can we?' She loves her work, and knows how to do it, and knows how to have fun while she's at it. . . ."
"It's the best hiring decision that I've ever made, anywhere I've been."
Boston Celtics star and head coach K.C. Jones, a longtime family friend, sang a song for her. Rebekah spoke of being the "daughter of a hero," and praised her passion, hard work and commitment.
And Elizabeth Burke Bryant, director of Rhode Island Kids Count and a close friend and fellow activist, expressed the pure love, respect and admiration that Gewirtz has inspired among those close to her.
She also spoke the words that Gewirtz most needed to hear.
"I assure you tonight," she told her, "this work will go on. The causes that you have worked for will endure."
IF GEWIRTZ can choose her legacy, she wants it to be a commitment to thinking critically, to questioning the status quo.
She teaches her students to read the newspapers, know what's going on, and know when what they're reading is wrong, or skewed, or one-sided. She wants them to have strong, well-informed opinions.
"I don't even care if they disagree with me," she said. "Just think."
What this country needs, she says, is more people who pay attention, who think and are active citizens. That's why it bugs her so much when people try to pay her a compliment by saying, "You're our social conscience."
"Where is their social conscience?" she said. "Why aren't they doing their part?"
"I don't ever want to be anybody's social conscience. I want people to get involved, and go to the State House, and work with groups like the Coalition for the Homeless that fight for social justice."
There's another supposed compliment she hates: "voice for the voiceless." To her ears, it suggests that "you know better; that rich people know best what poor people need, when they are the experts."
Not that she agrees with the flip side, either -- that, as an upper-middle-class East Sider, she's out of place advocating for the poor.
"Why is it so shocking that someone who isn't poor would care about poor people?" she said. "Why is it that you only care about your own self-interest?"
And a third way to peeve Nancy Gewirtz: Tell her it's hopeless, that no one person can make a difference.
"I'm old enough to know that change can happen -- whether it's the Vietnam War, or the fall of the Soviet bloc," she said. "The joy for me of teaching has been to bring up another generation of advocates who will keep hope alive until things turn around."
At the testimonial, Gewirtz recalled how one day when Rebekah was a child, a friend asked her why her mom was rushing off to the State House, and Rebekah replied, "To fight another losing battle."
These days, Gewirtz said, her daughter knows "there are no losing battles."
"It is vital that the torch remains lit, and burns bright," she said. "To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. If we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future.
"The future is an infinite succession of presents. And to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, while embracing all that is good, is in itself a marvelous victory."
