So many people dehumanize people who are homeless without stopping to actually think about the situation these people are in or most importanty, WHY? Too many people are way too quick to spout out things like 'get a job, you're just a lazy bum', etc, without contemplating why these people are where they are. I volunteered at a homeless shelter because I was interested in how these people go into the situation they were in and because I wanted to help- I was sure it was not because they are just all lazy and don't want to get a job. A lot of them are mentally retarded and their care-takers have passed away and they were kicked out on the street - I hear that a lot. I talked to one man who was homeless and he used to be a normal guy with an apartment, a job, etc and he had an accident, did not have insurance and the bills literally wiped him out. He lost everything and now he is living in a shelter trying to get his life together = all because his workplace did not provide him with insurance, I talked to a woman with her two daughters who were living in Harlem in rent-subsidized housing and Donald Trump bought their building (this is a major problem here) and is turning it into luxury apts so come lease time she finds her rent has gone up $500 a month and now she has no place to live. For people in NYC who are living paycheck to paycheck it is impossible to get into an apt on short notice. You basically have to use a broker+first/last rent+deposit - It cost me over $5000 just to get into my apt so people hold onto their apt's for dear life. This woman WAS working but it was going to be awhile until she saved enough money to get into a place. In the meantime she lived in a shelter (When they could get a bed; Bloomberg drastically cut funding to homeless shelters and halved the amout of beds available) and she pan-handled to get x-tra money for food and daily thing while she saved her paychecks to go towards rent/deposit, etc. And then some of the people there were just plain crazy and there was no way they could work and take care of themselves. Women in their eighties with alztheimers with no where to go, no one to take care of them so they wander around the streets in a state of dementia.
Personally I think people react to homeless with such contempt because being faced with this brutal reality that people in America who need help are not being helped; they are living in subway stations and starving and it makes people uncomfortable and feel guilty so they react with anger. I understand the inclination to look down on someone who when they get on the train they smell so bad that everyone moves and they have urine and feces stains all over their clothes but then I have to stop and think about it. I highly doubt this person if they were in their right mind and capable of caring for themselves would ever choose to live in this condition - of course not. No one wants to walk around smelling like a sewer and lving in clothes covered with your own bodily fluids. There people do not need our contempt and our fists to beat them down further - they need our help.
May the people who sat there are video-taped this event and the people who perpetrated it be cursed with consciousness, insight and the thinking skills to understand, contemplate and absorb what type of people it takes to prey on the needy, the weak, the young, the defenseless and the abandoned.
