Sometimes there are obvious ways in which one can measure that times have changed. A very sad one reared its ugly head the other day.
When I was on the NEA Board of Directors, some twenty years ago, we usually had dinner at a restaurant nearby the NEA building, which was in Washington, DC. In all likelihood, there were some leftovers. Those who had ordered too much asked for a bag to take back with them.
But some of them didn't bring the bags back to their rooms. Instead, they would take the food to the small park at McArthur Square, either directly in the path of, or fairly close to, the route back to our hotel. They would give the food away to the homeless, most of the time just leaving the bag next to the park bench on which they would be laying. Whether they were actually trying to sleep wasn't always clear.
Whether they accepted the food and actually ate it wasn't always evident, either. Maybe they waited for us to leave before digging in. Maybe they had too much pride to partake and quietly resisted the handouts. I honestly never knew.
But I thought it was a nice gesture. It sought not to humiliate, but to help, if only for a moment. Who knew where they would get their next meal, if indeed you could call it that at all? If you're homeless, there's no way to know where your next square would be coming from.
And it certainly wasn't the only place homeless people would hang out on a Friday night. On other streets, there were gratings from which warm air streamed. The ones who hustled best were the ones sleeping on those grates, right there on the sidewalk, making you walk around them. Some of the other places were churches, especially those with overhangs to guard against the rain. Remember when ex- displayed his upside down bible during the George Floyd protests in 2020? That church, right behind him, was (and may still be) one of the prime places where sleeping bags would be seen on most any night.
That was bad enough, and an ongoing eyesore on the capital city. Now, though, a new disgust has taken hold.
In both Washington, DC and New York City, apparently, someone didn't stop by the homeless strewn every which way on park benches and gratings to deliver food or even just a word of hope. He took a handgun and shot them.
Same guy. Two different cities, hours apart by car or train. He's killed two and wounded three others.
They found him this morning. They took him alive. Great. I want to hear him try to explain himself. I want him to tell all of us why he--he--designated himself to be the deliverer of vengeance to those he has never met, wouldn't otherwise care about, and otherwise wouldn't disturb the functioning of his everyday life.
I want him to explain to all of us why those people were better off dead to the rest of us. Were they too big a display of poverty? Was he too uncomfortable in their presence? Did he assume that they never worked a day in their lives and were thus wasting his tax dollars?
The mayors of both cities urged the homeless to find city-supported shelters while authorities conducted their manhunt (Because DC is federal property, it now includes ATF and FBI agents, so it didn't take long to catch him.). I suppose they can keep right on sleeping on the air ducts now. Why they don't find shelters has always been an oddity to me.
Based on what I saw in many large cities while I was on both the NEA Board and the Executive Committee, I would be amazed if there were fewer homeless people than 15 years ago. It may sound ridiculous, but I'm glad just one person's out there trying to kill the homeless. The general, overall lack of caring about the destitute needs only to drop one level to justify an effort to get rid of them altogether.
We are perilously close to an abandonment of humanity. The homeless need not be in the parks and sleeping under church hangings forever. As income inequality widens, though, this problem will become more and more noticeable. As that happens, it will become less and less someone else's problem, after-dinner food bags notwithstanding.
Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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