on poverty, welfare and judgement

two main things have inspired this post, one was a training on poverty i attended last week, and the other is a conversation that happened last night with the college kids. we'll go in order. the training last week was on 'generational poverty' it was a training based on the work of dr. ruby payne
she says there are two kinds of poverty, generational and situational. in generational poverty you have at least 2 generations of living in poverty, and in situational poverty your socio-economic status is tied to an event- disabling injury, job loss, divorce, you get the picture. the training was interesting, but really tough to stomach. the woman basically says there is an us and a them, and here are the things that they have problems with. there were a lot of valid points, but a lot of stereotypes and bullshit at the same time. i was uncomfortable with the fact that it was a whole room (minus 2) of white, middle class (at least) people and the whole us vs. them mentality, thrown in to the fact that the one trainer was using examples of when she had helped out doing disaster relief for hurricaine katrina (what race where those evacuees again?) really had me feeling like it was borderline racist. so a woman asked the following question, which feeds right into the conversation from last night. she says 'i see people who i know have assistance (welfare) and they go to the store on friday night and buy a 6 pack of beer. why should they get to do that if they're on welfare?' now, jump ahead to last night. one of the people in our group had been listening to a radio show and long story short, he said (the guy in our group, not the radio guy) that anyone on welfare was just lazy. he went on to tell a story about how he was at sheetz ( 7-11, wawa type of place, has normal gas station stuff plus made to order food) and saw some guy get like $50 worth of stuff, sandwhiches, chips, candy, soda and then pay for it using his access (welfare) card. and this person was livid. why can you spend your welfare money on food like that he says. now, i didn't say too much, i finally burst out with a 'what gives you the right to judge that person' but didn't talk too much because the amount of anger he had for 'those people' was too much for me to want to engage in. oh the other topic that pissed me off, well they're poor so they should be greatfull for anything.
so here is my rant about all of this. what gives you the right to judge anyone. maybe that 6 pack was going to be used as a bartering tool to get someone to fix that guys car, maybe it was so he could have a drink with his friends after a long week of work, either way, it's his choice. and maybe that other guy was buying dinner out for his family. maybe the only way they could afford to have premade food was to get it from a place that takes their access card. and maybe the only place that takes it is sheetz. is there some rule that if you're poor you have to a- eat healthy food and b- only cook at home? we had food stamps when we were in new hampshire (amerisalary was $150 a week and we had to pay for food and rent) and i tell you what, there were times when i bought totally healthy food on my food stamps, and some times when i just needed to have some chips and french onion dip. should i have had to use my own money to buy that? what rights do people think you should have to give up when you're poor? the right to choose your own food, the right to decline a hand out, the right to demand that if someone is helping you by doing work in your house they do it right. are those things so absurd? if we deny people these rights we make them less human, and that would be the saddest thing of all. i think what frustrated me the most was that the conversation with the college kids is a christian fellowship group. these are people who give up their time to help those in need, but apparently feel totally comfortable judging them. it's christians like that who give us a bad name.