Public poverty is being ignored by all except those who
notice the troubled—cops and bleeding hearts.
All else turn away or turn aside or patch their pity with a coin. Public poverty is crying out for help and
being told to shut up. It is a desperate plea to be normal, and the eventual
surrender of this hope when normalcy is a dream of the past. Public poverty is too much honesty, revealing
one’s difficulty and shame and others
assume that you are lying; it is the heaping of scorn when you are desperate
for a little kindness.
If only poverty were this cute... |
Really, poverty is like sex, only not as fun. Some revel in it and don’t care where it is
displayed, but a majority of people are fine with it in private, but disgusted
with it in public. Like sex, poverty
should never be mentioned in polite company, and the more details someone
describes poverty in, the more offensive they become. "Poverty should only be discussed in
counselling sessions, with social workers or pastors, but please don’t
publicly discuss how you can’t pay your bills, and please don’t display your
poverty in a way that all of us can see it."
The homeless are the professionally poor, those who have no
choice but to represent the public poor. The homeless are scorned and even
hated because they represent all that is wrong with our communities. They are the indications that our nation is
not an economic success, no matter how much of a powerhouse we are on the
international economic stage. The
homeless are the crazy uncle you want to keep in the closet, especially when
there are guests, but that is especially when he appears, naked and saying
something insane. Just by their existence, the homeless make us
uncomfortable.
Would you please cover your poverty? |
The real problem with homelessness is that it doesn’t know
where to keep its place. It appears
right where you don’t want it to appear—around city hall, on freeway onramps,
in public parks. The public poor appear
in the places where a city wants to showcase their friendliness or family
nature. Instead, they are revealed to be
a hotbed of poverty and drunkenness.
But the public poor are simply doing what everyone else is
doing, except on the street: They are
drinking a beer, they are laughing too loud with friends, they are asking for
help. They are desperately trying to
forget about their miserable, mundane existence for only a moment. They are trying to forget that the silence
they experience daily, the turn of the head is scorn being poured upon
them. They are trying to erase the
judgments that sentenced them to this miserable life, even the judgments that
they put upon themselves.
Policy makers, in seeing the public poor as a serious social
problem, do one of two equal errors.
First, they might force the public poor to be silent, to be out of
sight. For this, they create laws which
make it illegal to be the public poor, or for them to be seen by the
populace. They might create a skid row,
or at least move them out of the downtown area, out of sight, out of mind. They might shuffle them into jails, as a
housekeeper might sweep dust under a carpet.
But this is not a solution. For the more scorn and
punishment policy makers apply to the poor, the more public poor there
are. This is because public scorn,
public punishment is acceptable punishment, that which can be replicated and
increased by the public citizenry. That
which is done in the public parks will eventually be repeated in homes and
churches and elsewhere. And the poor of
a home is no longer cared for at home, but is moved to be homeless. The poor of a church is no longer cared for
at a church, but is seen as unacceptable anywhere. If there is no place for the poor, the only
place for them is the public areas. And
if the public areas are not acceptable, then the only place for the poor is no
place. Non-existence.
#22351, come in for your Compassion Treatment |
The other solution for policy makers is to end poverty or
end homelessness. This means taking
millions of public dollars and putting them into institutions for the
poor. In the past, it used to be
missions to religionize the poor, as if their problem were a lack of
religion. Then they shelter the poor,
stacking them like firewood, and herding them into cafeterias. Now they want to eliminate the public poor by
giving apartments or single-resident occupancies, so they can be poor in
private.
The problem is that these solutions are too expensive for
all the public poor, and the system of scorn will not allow them to be “rewarded”
with a room without a kitchen with public money. A different government, a different mayor and
compassion dries up like a puddle in a drought.
The only real solution is equality. Give the public poor a chance to determine what
the solutions should be for themselves.
Yes, they will make mistakes, but we should give them that. The only solution is to give the public poor
the respect of a human being. To look at
them, to love them enough to smile and say “no”. The only solution is to give them what they
lack: a social network so they can solve their own problems. Help them to see what opportunities exist and
let them make their own choices.
Surprisingly, some may choose a life outside, without walls,
without bills, without demands (or perhaps not so surprisingly). They should be given a place to live in
poverty, or to work their way out of poverty.
Some may choose education, some may choose a steady job (if one is
offered) and some may choose reuniting with their family. But if they are given respect and an
opportunity to choose, choose they will.
What the public poor lack is opportunity of choice, and the
respect to be offered a choice. They are
treated as dogs, as piles of garbage that should be cleaned up, as proto-criminals
that will soon need to be arrested.
Instead, they should be treated as they are—citizens. Treated as human beings who deserve to be
heard just as much as we do.
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