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When you are traveling poor, homeless people cross your path often. Once there, in your memory, they do not leave.
On the streets of San Diego, they sleep on the sidewalks, just outside the coffee shops selling over-priced lattes and stale scones.
In the Amtrak station in Los Angeles, they sleep in the large stuffed chairs, clutching their minimum fare tickets, which allows them a few hours sleep. Nearby, the Birds of Paradise are in bloom.
But it is back home in Tucson where I hear their voices, riding the city buses.
Waiting at the bus stop in the rain, a young boy runs up to his mother.
"They said we can sleep there tonight!" Mom, the boy and his teenage brother are excited. They can sleep on the cold concrete slab of the windowless self-storage unit tonight. They pile their wet blankets into black plastic bags.
This is the story of the myth that all is well in the United States.
On the city bus, another day, a weary middle aged man is thankful for the half sandwich he received at a shelter.
"It doesn't do much for my family though."
Outside, a teenage girl comes out from the shrubs where she sleeps, peering out into the world that has betrayed her.
This is all one way the US has failed its people with the great lie.
Another is with the killer drones, the targeted assassinations that murder women and children at weddings, in their homes, and even a US teenager in a cafe.
Obama has blood on his hands for this.
We all do.
If we do not speak out, share our voices and our outrage, then we too become the system sending wet children to sleep on concrete slabs; we too become the trigger man seated behind a computer in Tucson or Nevada, sipping coffee and chatting about the weather, while assassinating a group of women and children celebrating the wedding of a loved one, with flowers in their hands, in another desert town.
1 comment:
I grew up in a small town. When I first ventured out into the city in the 70s and became aware of the presence of homeless people,I was shocked. How could this be happening in the richest country, the foremost democracy in the world? Now, more than 40 years later, homelessness is ubiquitous and I'm no longer shocked--I'm disgusted with a so-called civilization that treats people this way. Is there an alternative? Indigenous people did not have a concept of "homelessness"--whatever food and shelter was available was shared equally. When Sitting Bull visited NYC for the first time with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, he too was shocked at the poverty he saw. He ended up giving away his salary to boys begging in the streets. I realize now that when we acquiesce to "civilization," we renounce our connection to other humans, to animals, and to the Earth itself.
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