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As I was walking down Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley yesterday, I passed a homeless man huddled against the cold at a bus stop bench near the corner of Shattuck and Channing — and the man was talking to himself. “I just can’t do this any more,” he was saying. “I just can’t.”
I felt so bad for this poor guy that I gave him a few dollars — yeah, like a measly two bucks might even begin to help stop his hunger, chill, weariness and desperation.
A week from now — or perhaps a month from now or, hopefully, maybe even a year — that man will most probably be dead.
Living out in the cold, having very little food to eat, having no healthcare or dental care options, having no warm place to stay, lacking even a toilet or a shower, having nothing but rags to wear, and having no place to feel safe? That level of deprivation can actually kill people. Under these bleak circumstances, I myself would probably be dead within days. And what about you? How long could you survive that kind of merciless gauntlet, that kind of ordeal?
“I can’t do this any more.”
And recently the mayor of Oakland has actually had the chutzpah to accuse OWS of committing “economic violence”. That really takes some nerve — when you consider that, for the past 30 years, 99% of America has had to suffer endless and brutal economic violence under the jackboot of Wall Street and banksters and their lapdogs in Congress, on the Supreme Court and in the White House. “Economic violence”? Us? You gotta be kidding, Mayor Quan!
And also here’s a belated Christmas carol video, coming to us from the deep and dreamless streets of Bethlehem — where people still optimistically celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, even after having suffered over 60 years of occupation under corporatist Israel’s brutal and merciless jackboots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtSTLWLpSD0&feature=share
I wonder if Americans will be holding up even half as well as the Palestinians have done after we too have spent 60-plus years under corporatist domination.
Probably, if American corporatists have their way by then, most of the rest of America will be homeless too — and, like the man on the corner of Shattuck and Channing, muttering desperately to ourselves, “I can’t do this any more.”
7 Comments
Jane, let me assure you — that “few dollars” mattered more than I suppose you are willing to give yourself credit for. Thank you for acting on your sense of compassion.
Folks, when you enter this world, you arrive with the flesh that contains you;
and when you exit, you leave even that behind.
Meaning all of this and none of this belongs to everyone and no one.
IMO our genuine advancement as a species, as “sentient entities”, even, relies on our ability to “awaken” as human(e) beings before it’s truly too late.
Thank you Jane. I talked to a street guy recently whose friend had given up. He asked me if I’d read about it in the papers, and I had to confess that I hadn’t seen it. 9 years.
As timestickingaway said what you did mattered more than you think. When someone has no hope anything we do matters. Thanks for showing us how to be compassionate.
Believe me, Jane, it mattered a lot. Even more important than the “few dollars,” which meant he could get something to eat, is the fact that you didn’t ignore that poor man. You might enjoy these poems, which are two of my favorites:
INDIFFERENCE
by G. A. Studdert-Kennedy
When Jesus came to Golgatha,
They hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet,
And made a Calvary.
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns,
Red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days,
And human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham
They simply passed Him by,
They never hurt a hair of Him,
They only let Him die;
For men have grown more tender,
And they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street,
And left Him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried, ‘Forgive them,
For they know not what they do!
And still it rained the winter rain
That drenched Him through and through;
The crowd went home and left the streets
Without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall
And cried for Calvary.
COMRADE JESUS
by Sarah N. Cleghorn
Thanks to St. Mathew who had been
At mass-meetings in Palestine,
We know whose side was spoken for
When Comrade Jesus had the floor.
“Where sore they toil and hard they lie,
Among the great unwashed dwell I;–
The tramp, the convict, I am he;
Cold-shoulder him; cold-shoulder me.”
By Dives’door with thoughtful eye,
He did to-morrow prophesy;–
“The Kingdom’s gate is low and small;
the rich can scarce wedge through at all.”
“A dangerous man,”said Caiaphas;
“an ignorant demagogue, alas!
Friend of low women, it is he
Slanders the upright Pharisee.”
For law and order, it was plain,
For holy church, he must be slain.
The troops were there to awe the crowd;
Mob violence was not allowed.
Their clumsy force with force to foil
His strong, clean hands He would not soil,
He saw their childishness quite plain
Between the lightnings of His pain.
Between the twilights of His end,
He made His fellow-felon friend;
With swollen tongue and blinding eyes
Invited him to Paradise.
Ah, let no local Him refuse!
Comrade Jesus hath paid His dues,
Whatever other be debarred
Comrade Jesus hath His red card.
Those poems are very nice, Kris. Thank you.
Thanks for this post.
They say “don’t give money to bums, give it to shelters so you know it won’t be spent on ….(drugs, alcohol, bla bla).”
But if you give money directly to a person without conditions, it’s a form of human contact and trust that there’s something really cool about. If you need that money for a little bit of booze to keep warm, that’s OK. Whatever helps you most at the moment, no judgement, no guilt trips, just here, from me to you, a token of faith that whatever I give you will be used to ease your mind in the best way you see fit, for right now.
Whatever you need, maybe this will help, this little bit, but you know what always ends up happening, is that I am the one who feels gratified, I am the one who ends up getting smiled at, I am the one who feels better.
Not ignoring the person is the main thing, like another person commenting said. By the interaction we make each other human.
Jane, thank you for your compassion and for bearing witness. My husband and I used to live in Berkeley and we knew a homeless man named Bill who was a heroine addict and lived on the streets around Shattuck. We used to see him in front of the movie theater all the time and we would give him money, even though we knew what he was going to do with it. He usually seemed relatively healthy in spite of all that. We moved away for a couple of years and then came back and saw Bill again; we barely recognized him this time and he didn’t recognize us. I will never forget his face; we had intended to go to a movie but we were so shocked and so sad that we just went home. We never saw him again. I hated the fact that there was so little we could do for him, that people weren’t more outraged. Maybe the outrage is finally surfacing.