Voluntary and Involuntary Change ft. Choices

Just yesterday in a class discussion someone said that the Native American adaptation to the European colonial system in the Americas was voluntary. According to this person there is no involuntary adaptation because every native had a choice between dying and accepting the system. If anyone really didn’t want to adapt they could choose to die, and thus those who choose to survive are adapting voluntarily. In the second chapter of Sidewalk, Duneier discusses choice, and tries to define when change can actually be considered voluntary. Rather than trying to analyze the European colonies and the acceptance process of Native Americans however, Duneier focuses on the magazine vendors of Sixth Avenue and how they came to live in the sidewalk.

Marvin is the leader of all magazine vendors in Greenwich Village. He is a Vietnam Veteran and came back home to pay time in prison for an armed robbery he didn’t actually take part in. When he failed to find a job in the automobile business he moved to New York with his cousin and eventually began drinking. He had a wife, and even though he loved her alcoholism took him slowly away from her. After seven years of street dwelling he managed to sober up by asking for help from the VA (Veteran’s Administration) Medical Center and joining Alcoholics Anonymous.  His reason for living on the sidewalk: couldn’t find a job.

Ron is one of the best magazine vendors in NYC and he is also Marvin’s partner. When he was eleven he was summoned to America by a mother he had never met. He was kicked out of high school in tenth grade because of excessive absences. It turns out the reason he skipped school was because he was scared of the older kids who carried guns around campus. Both his parents were alcoholics and he followed the family trend perfectly. He’s been in Greenwich for seven years and he still abuses crack and alcohol often. When he was in the first stages of his drug addiction he called one day to quit his job and left his apartment to live on the sidewalk.  His main reason for street dwelling: he spent all his money on drugs and stopped caring about anything else.

It looks as if both these men had a choice in their move to the New York City sidewalk, but was the move voluntary? To put this question into context Duneier compares their move to the streets to Hakim’s move to the streets. When Hakim decided to move he was renouncing to the corporate lifestyle. He was renouncing the system even though he was perfectly capable of holding his own within it. When it comes to someone like Ron however, “the use of the term ‘choice’ means accepting something that seems inevitable” (page 43).  Are both of these changes voluntary?

My answer would be no.

The cases of these three street vendors reflect the difference between a choice and a voluntary decision. Sure, everyone can seem to have a choice, but that doesn’t mean that his or her change is voluntary.

I can very well give you the “choice” of whether I should stab you or shoot you. That doesn’t mean you died a voluntary death. Ron was given the choice to either abandon his house or wait to be evicted from it because he couldn’t pay rent. He chose, but his movement to the streets wasn’t voluntary). Ron and Marvin are the Native Americans. Hakim is more like the converts to Islam in the fifteenth century.

Regardless of whether their move was involuntary or not, these men have managed to survive in the streets only because of each other. The rest of chapter two discusses the complex moral support system that has developed in the sidewalk. Such mutual respect and comradeship between these men in the years they have spent together is more of an incentive to carry on than any consequence of the law or frown by the upper class passerby.

“I am thinking about the sidewalk. Thank goodness fro the sidewalk” (page 80).