Alexandra Pelosi's HBO documentary "Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County," masterfully and artfully reminds us of the long misery and human tragedy of homelessness.  When a child has no response or understanding of the word "home," or compares their current living situation with "hell," or searches a dumpster for discarded toys, we get a glimpse into the depths of that misery, even for its youngest victims.   

We owe a debt of gratitude to Ms. Pelosi for creating a work of art that provokes our sensibilities, without public policy proclamations or guilt inducing rhetoric.  She allows the images to speak.  And this is reality TV that's hard to watch. 

She upsets the stereotypes of family homelessness through her choice of working parents.  And furthers that refocus in choosing protagonists living in motels, rather than the added drama of living in cars or on the street.  Even in this less dramatic setting, she is able to enhance our understanding of the tragedy and stimulate our anger to remedy the injustice. 

The viewer comes to understand through these resilient and uncomplaining lives that you can work 40 hours a week in America, even at a wage well above the minimum, and still not be able to afford a place to live.  A sobering reality.  These families are the living examples; here is the empirical evidence.  40 years ago all of these families would have been able to afford a place to live even if their earnings were minimum wage. 

With housing costs now out of reach, the best they can do is the inadequate lodging of an out-of-the-way motel.  Hot plates, fast food, and overcrowding as a way of life in America.

 

We already know intellectually most of what Ms. Pelosi portrays.  But her art allows the images to slip behind our intellect, our knowledge, our defenses, to pierce our often adumbrated sense of injustice. 

Ms. Pelosi's visuals burn images into our consciences. They are dissonant with our stored values - children diving into dumpsters; motel parking lots as their playgrounds. The families aspire for more and better for their kids and we the viewer contemplate our role. 

In her masterful poem, Mary Oliver, the Pulitzer Prize winner and a poet laureate of our consciences, helps us understand what our response should be.  She writes:  "Can one be passionate about the just, the ideal, and the holy, and yet commit to no labor in its cause?  I don't think so," she writes.  "Be ignited, or be gone," she tells us. 
 
Ms. Pelosi's film will ignite some of us.  Others will continue to take refuge in their indifference or insulation.  For those ignited, our instinct to "labor" will be to rescue these kids.  Those victims of whatever circumstance has resulted in their sad-eyed commentaries on motel living. 

Ms. Pelosi has used the media of her time to do a service to our cause of abolition just as Harriet Beecher Stowe in Uncle Tom's Cabin exposed to equivocating northerners the inhumane conditions and moral blindness of her day.  In retrospect, we know the power of Ms. Stowe's art in arousing moral indignation and furthering the abolitionist cause. 

Let's hope that Ms. Pelosi's documentary has a similar effect.  First that it will be seen widely and awaken slumbering consciences.  And, second, that our cause of abolishing homelessness will be furthered.  Shining the light of her camera with that same eye and art on behalf of those single homeless people touched by disability - our homeless mentally ill and addicted neighbors - would be an apt sequel. 

Finally, the sensitivity of her insights and the power of her images offer us a realistic portrait of lives exiled to the periphery of our communities and to the edge of our consciences.  In that cinema veritas, she admonishes us to take responsibility without lecturing or preaching.  She trusts her art. In doing so she echoes St. Francis who urged us: "Preach the gospel.  Use words, if necessary." She might say "Encourage the love.  Use images, wisely." 

Philip F. Mangano

President