Right. You don't like people congregating, legally, on sidewalks and open PUBLIC spaces that YOU DO NOT OWN. We get that, Roland. We also get the Business Improvement Districts, or "B.I.D.s," they're known as all over this nation of conformist Corporate Whores. Half the people who hang out on Shattuck Avenue are not even "homeless." There is nothing illegal with being poor and existing in the public space. Nothing. You may not like it, but the action is not illegal. You can focus on "drinking" and... oh my God, cigarette smoking all you like, but you're only waving the stick (in a dark, cold, damp room) at the symptom... the problem will always persist if you never actually address it honestly and correctly.
The scapegoating continues...
"Apparent in the discussions of homelessness is still the argument over whether there is a 'culture' and if a significant portion of the homeless are homeless by choice."
Number one... "whether there is a 'culture'"??? What?! Of course there is a "culture"! People being part of that demographic dictate as much!
http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/choudhury/culture.html
"Culture: The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively."
And...
"portion of the homeless are homeless by 'choice'"???
Yeah, as in "choice" if you mean "not-have-one." The choice has been made, and we are out here. Now it just becomes about trying to fix (or manage, rather) that portion of it. I have been asked by Europeans and Australians alike, "Why does your country not take care of its people?" And I don't have an easy answer for them, other than people in this nation are brainwashed into putting value on stuff that has no intrinsic value. The second you buy something in this culture, the produce depreciates, exponentially. The only value something has is something that can be used to help the human race, not hinder it. The other day, I watched as a father stood behind his seven-year-old daughter as she tried selling raffle tickets to "win a brand new I-Pad!" Again, the value system is the key component to this "problem," everyone.
The problem is the thinking... and it's not the homeless with whom the thinking is wrong.
There is this Ayn Rand-type thinking going on lately... a lot of scapegoating and blaming the wrong source.
There is a Zen idiom that says, "When the Master points to the moon, the idiot stares at the finger."
In conclusion, until we stop blaming the victims of all this stuff and start giving them real solutions and services that actually help them, downtown Berkeley will continue to see more and more people they do not like. But that still does not address the philosophy that poor people should not be allowed to congregate in the public space any time of day they like. This sort of mentality is the problem. You wanted people to pinpoint the problem... there it is. Like someone uttered to me in Arcata not long ago, "We have a 'homeless problem' in Arcata." I disagreed with them. I told them, "You have a Denali problem in Arcata. You have an Escalade problem... the mindset has to change. Until that happens, this 'problem' will persist," apparently.
-James Richard Armstrong II
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