January 12, 2009
by Robert W. Barker
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She stood pleadingly, clutching a sign in her hands, it read: "Hungry."
Standing on the edge of the grocery store parking lot, rain falling in drenching waves, she appeared undaunted by the conditions. I stopped and handed her a three bucks, her eyes held the look of a weary soul, a fellow human being caught up in calamitous circumstances. Ragged clothes, dirty hands, rain dripping from her chin yet a certain depth to her gaze; she nodded and said, "God Bless."
Her eyes told a story of desperation and suffering, no more than thirty-five she was a victim of circumstances brought on by bad habits or perhaps unavoidable crisis; far more likely a mix of these variables. Once a handsome woman, now the drugs, alcohol, and pain of life imparted a worn out toothless appearance, she could pass for fifty up close.
As I pulled away one started to wonder if she was really hungry or just in need of a fix; yet should it matter?
My cynical reaction borne of experience, as a student I worked with drug addicts and down and out humans, each group provided a myriad of excuses for behaviors deemed outside of their control. One cannot travel the USA without encountering homeless at some point, and the majority of the destitute hold some form of substance abuse problems.
My uncle Barney was one of these people, not by circumstance, but by choice. He could go home anytim e, but he chooses to drink all day and ride the rails.
I tend to give a bit from time to time to outstretched hands; I see ole Barney in their eyes or a fellow human being, other circumstances irrelevant.
Yet just as often I avoid them and ease away without commitment.
Panhandlers, beggars and indigents leave me in a quandary; I want to help one day and the next I may think, "Get a job."
Meth users or Tweekers form a percentage of the street beggars, and they are the most desperate and hard core of the druggies. Meth drains the soul and ruins the human corpus; it is the scourge of the American streets today. My wife's a nurse, she has worked at rehab clinics and hospitals, and daily observes the waste and devastation meth causes on our fellow human beings.
Those experiences teach us to appreciate the various possibilities and hidden plight this poor woman faced, but was it hunger or desperate substance abuse, psychological problems or poverty?
Most likely all the above could b e applied to the majority of homeless.
Drugs, alcohol, psychological problems, social adjustments, poverty, lack of education, economics; all contribute to the emergent homeless toll. Many veterans suffer this burgeoning social malady old Viet Nam or Desert storm veterans have spoken to me here. Most suffer from PTS post traumatic stress syndrome and treatment depends on how close to a vet center they happen to be; here in this area we have none.
In Humboldt County California we have more than our share of the homeless.
Liberal social attitudes prevail in North California; we tend to be more tolerant to the homeless, consequently we are rewarded with an abundance of indigents. They live by the railroad tracks, fill our shelters, and strain our local social system. Sleeping on street corners, begging in alleys, many push grocery carts through the streets with their entire lives in a basket. Some have dogs as company, they sleep in cardboard boxes and nylon tents along the rivers or near abandoned beaches, and a few commit minor crimes. Generally harmless and only interested in the next meal or fix, yet desperate people leave a community vulnerable in more ways than one.
Homelessness often creates areas of dense dispossessed populations and this leads to environmental hazards filth and garbage, until police are called in to run them off. And the cleanup is a community project, financed by taxes and the group moves to another spot and it starts again.
Other communities are less tolerant.
The local authorities harassed and drove out indigents in many upwardly mobile communities and even paid to send many vagrants to more tolerant places. Subsequently the more forbearing communities are inundated, and the dilemma is mounting.
Hate Crimes
Another baleful variable of this quandary is the emerging disrespect and animosity towards these forlorn people. Recently escalating brutality aimed at the homeless has emerged, teen aged culprits performing acts of violence on the homeless for thrills. The incidence of documented crimes upon the homeless has amplified 30% from 1999 to 2005 according to the National Coalition for the Homeless {NCH} and 75% of the perpetrators are under the age of twenty-five.
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NCH further reported 386 acts carried out in that same time period and 156 were fatal.
These actions are deemed hate crimes and allegedly agitated and exacerbated by the distribution of bum-fight videos. Films of the homeless being beaten or encouraged to fight each other over a cash offering are shown in homes and then some go out and duplicate the scene, a sick and sadistic art to say the least.
The Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism (CSHE) at California State University, San Bernardino in conjunction with the NCH found that 155 homeless people were killed by domiciled people in "hate killings." Nonetheless, only 76 people were killed in all the other traditional hate crime categories, such as race and religion combined.
The CSHE assert that negative and demeaning depiction of the homel ess add to a climate where violence is accepted.
Various studies and surveys designate a growing trend; that homeless people have a great deal higher criminal persecution than domiciled people. However most incidents never get reported to authorities, therefore our alarming crime statistics are not the entire picture. Accordingly we can see this is the exposed surface or tip of the preverbal iceberg the problem is far deeper and pervasive.
Homelessness with children involved is increasing and that may be the most alarming statistic.
Here in the land of plenty to have innocent children on the streets and no provisions is a poor reflection on our values and abilities to assist those in need. There are numerous outreach programs available to people but many refuse to connect and therefore are outside the realm of the philanthropic means. And the ones that do reach out are often driven back out into the streets by the authorities and social workers overbearing rules and attitudes.
This is a national problem we must face it or lose our higher selves and elevated ideals of human value. Cynical is the easy way out, ignoring them the ostrich solution, not caring the wrong path and no action increases the numbers of our fellow humans in plight.
As our economic woes grow our indigent population increases in proportion.
Houses being foreclosed create deprivation, jobs sent overseas add to homelessness, clo sing factories and commercial enterprise exacerbates the problem and we are losing control.
The average household lost three thousand a year in income over the last eight years, previous to those years Americans enjoyed a higher standard of living increase almost continuously.
The Bush years have shoved the gap between the middle class and wealthy wider. The vast separation in wealth is one cause of the falling economic picture, the last time the fissure was this large between the rich and poor was the great depression.
Our un-sheltered masses are estimated to range between 600,000 to 2.1 million depending on whose research you quote. So the medium number between those two is over a million people and increasing in the Bush economy.
The Clinton administration created a superior job training program for welfare recipients, they trained people for bona fide occupations like welder's, computer programmers, plumbers, electricians, and it dropped the roles of generational welfare by huge numbers. The Bush administration disregarded that program and instead of offering decent wage job training they limited the federally backed training to the fast food jobs like McDonalds and Burger King.
People require pride and self esteem to work out of a deep rut and the fast food places paid little more than a welfare check, so the incentive that drives capitalism forward for the majority was squashed in more ways than one.20
President elect Obama's plan to reverse this trend was met with cries of socialism, yet truth be known we need a strong middle class or risk being a Third World nation. Creating jobs to supplement for those sent overseas and bringing back the stronger middle class is tantamount to continuation of our culture, and few priorities trump this one.
My Libertarian friends tell me there will always be poverty, hunger and homelessness, and they are no doubt correct. Yet I would like to think we can work to eliminate or reduce this plight on mankind's soul. Humanistic, idealist and even unrealistic perhaps, but we are obligated to strive and find the better spark in our fellow human beings.
Christ instructed that the ultimate good was love and I believe in that.
Sartre the existentialist philosopher told us we're responsible for our own happiness, and this makes sense as well.
So the dichotomy goes on, and we seek a balance that sways like a pendulum in the wind, yet here in the land of plenty poverty should be everyone's problem. As the situation worsens we may augment this problem to a quicker pace then we can handle.
The lady at the market disappeared and her personal plight unknown, yet she is an example of the economic and substances abuse reality that creates this situation. Solutions are not forth coming but the need is great and our own plig ht reflected in their collective eyes.
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Robert W. Barker [send him email] is a writer, professional photographer and travel aficionado from Eureka Ca. His work is carried on many web sites around the globe, a first novel recently copyrighted in the library of Congress, is soon to be published.
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