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There’s No Place Like Homeless

By Mickey Z.

08 March, 2013
Countercurrents.org

“Ladies and gentlemen, soliciting money in the subway is illegal. We ask you not to give. Please help us to maintain an orderly subway.” - NYC subway announcement

I joined the writing staff of the infamous NYC homeless publication, Street News, shortly after John "Indio" Washington became editor-in-chief. As you might imagine, his road to such a position wasn’t exactly traditional.

"In December 1989," Indio told me, "I was homeless, riding on the #3 train 'n I saw this sister selling Street News. I asked her if I could help sell the paper 'n she could hit me with whatever she wanted to give me for helping her. She instead took me downtown to SN headquarters 'n they gave me 5 or 10 free papers to sell. I never looked back."

Those were the days when homelessness was the cause de jour and thanks to Indio’s indefatigable stewardship, Street News’ circulation soon grew to nearly 100,000.

Then came Giuliani…and Bloomberg…and the demonization and the marginalization of NYC’s homeless—and an increasingly Disney-fied and gentrified Big Apple. When combined with a relentless federal/corporate assault on the social safety net, the results were as predictable as they are unforgivable.

“The real deal”

According to the Coalition for the Homeless, homelessness in NYC has, in recent years, “reached the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s.”

In January 2013, for example, there were an “all-time record 50,100 homeless people, including 12,000 homeless families with 21,000 homeless children, sleeping each night in the New York City municipal shelter system. Families comprise more than three-quarters of the homeless shelter population.”

Mic Check: The number of homeless New Yorkers sleeping each night in municipal shelters is now 61 percent higher than in January 2002, when Mayor Bloomberg took office.

Under the billionaire mayor’s despotic regime, NYC’s income distribution has become more unequal than Brazil’s, e.g.

The richest 10 percent of New Yorkers have 58 percent of total income
The richest 5 percent have 49 percent
The proverbial 1% has 34 percent of the city’s total income
The city’s median income is $28,213
The average income of the top 1% is $2,247,515
The income of the top 10 percent of New Yorkers is 582 times that of the poorest 10 percent (in Brazil, that ratio is 35 times)

Lack of affordable housing, cuts in social services, an epidemic of foreclosures, and myriad jobs shipped permanently overseas; it’s a perfect storm for an ever-increasing homeless population.

And seriously, who truly knows how many are without homes—outside and beyond the insufficient shelter system?

“You have to be on the streets to know the real deal,” was Indio’s response to ill-informed studies and solutions back in the day. I was lucky enough to learn a little from his hard-earned experience.

When cause becomes effect

Homelessness tends to disproportionately impact specific groupings of humans—starting with those living with mental illness or other severe health problems. Poverty and health issues have become so intertwined that cause often becomes effect.

According a recent Columbia University study, poverty, defined as living below 200 percent of the United Stated Federal Poverty Level (FPL), was determined to take away 8.2 years of health, meaning poor people have 8.2 fewer years in which they are healthy than someone above 200 percent of the FPL.

In 2006, researchers found: "Children in low-income families start off with higher levels of antisocial behavior than children from more advantaged households. And if the home remains poor as the children grow up, antisocial behavior becomes much worse over time compared to children living in households that are never poor or later move out of poverty."

Disabilities—whether directly linked to poverty or not—leave American children vulnerable to a lifetime of financial difficulties. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2006), "Persons with a disability are likely to have limited opportunities to earn income and often have increased medical expenses. Disabilities among children and adults may affect the socioeconomic standing of entire families. It is estimated that over 40 million people in America have some level of disability, and many of these individuals live in poverty."

In addition, there are the intrinsic ethnic and racial disparities, as approximately:

53 percent of NYC homeless shelter residents are African-American
32 percent are Latino

Meanwhile: Roughly 49 percent of NYC residents are white but whites comprise only 7 percent of NYC homeless shelter residents.

Of course, such trends carry true from sea to overfished sea. The overall U.S. poverty rate for white children is 11 percent but here’s the breakdown for other ethnic categories:

Asian children: 13 percent
Hispanic children: 31 percent
Native American children: 31 percent
Black children: 34 percent

Perception is reality

Earlier this month, a friend and fellow occupier, John Penley, invited me to cover and share his activist efforts to bring attention to both homelessness and gentrification in our hometown. The initial event outside New York University reminded me of an impromptu talk I gave on these topics in 2004.

While in Santa Cruz, California to speak at the One Dance People’s Summit with Michael Parenti, Cynthia McKinney, Stan Goff, William Blum, and others, we were invited to join a public demonstration against police tactics towards the local homeless population.

Handed a megaphone and spontaneously asked to give my thoughts, I found myself focusing on what connects us.

“Don’t think homelessness can’t happen to you,” I declared, before urging all in attendance to consider how slippery the slope can be. We all live on the proverbial edge—some more than others, of course—and the economic system/dominant culture, by design, does not offer much of a safety net.

Quite often, I told them, momentous social changes begin with revelatory changes in perception.

Thanks to corporate propaganda, we're programmed to ignore the vast and corrupt enterprise of corporate welfare and to falsely believe that the poor in America are lazy leeches, coddled by an enabling nanny state.

Contrary to such mendacious manipulation, 55 percent of children living in poor or low-income families have a parent who works full time, year around. Children make up 26 percent of the U.S. population, but are 39 percent of the people who live in poverty (the poverty rate is higher for children than any other age group).

Children and families are the fastest growing group among the homeless, making up 40 percent of the homeless population. How quickly is this group growing? Consider this:

Every day, 2,660 children are born into poverty
One in 50 U.S. children currently homeless

Studies show that nearly 5.5 million children live in families that have lost homes to foreclosures and 8 million children live in families where at least one parent has lost a job. Those children who manage to either survive or avoid such an oppressive economic plight are then left to navigate a fraudulent system in which it is increasingly difficult to earn a living wage and/or afford health insurance.

Such a bleak scenario can only leave us wondering what's left for the vast majority of humans as we contemplate the future of this country and this planet. Perhaps such a musing helps to explain why so many young people volunteer to wage illegal and immoral wars and why 7,225,800 American adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2009.

Fear or love?

We all know the “official” response to this preventable nightmare. It’s nicely summed up in the subway announcement I used to open this article: “Ladies and gentlemen, soliciting money in the subway is illegal. We ask you not to give. Please help us to maintain an orderly subway.”

But what is the revolutionary response to poverty, homeless, gentrification, and the demonization/marginalization of those impacted?

My suggestion: Choose to see the homeless. Choose to see yourself in the homeless. Choose toconnect with the homeless.

In a culture that relentlessly warns us the homeless are lazy, the homeless are crazy, the homeless are dangerous, the homeless are lurking in every dark alley or just waiting to push us in front of a subway train, I submit that it’s downright revolutionary to reject this indoctrination…and connect.

It’s a subversive act to make eye contact. It’s a form of rebellion to start a conversation. It’s a mini-revolution to make a friend.

The 1% is counting on us—depending on us—being too scared to make this happen but what sounds more frightening to you: taking a chance on a fellow human being or enabling a social order that treats most lives (human and non-human) as expendable?

The choice is ours and will always be ours: Fear or love?

“Once you see it, you can't un-see it”

So, where do you stand on all this? Do you block it out or does it keep you up at night? Do you want to live in a society where so many are left to suffer and die so 1% of humanity can accumulate vast material wealth?

You may think this is not your fight or believe you don’t have the time or energy to get involved. You may have even convinced yourself that time is not running out. You just might expect an elected official to do the fighting for you.

Well, the latest liberal savoir, Barack Obama, made his position quite clear on the day he was first sworn into office: “We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense.”

We must make our position equally as clear. We must also refuse to apologize for the changes we seek, for the justice we demand, for the lives we wish to save. We must never apologize for our way of life…nor can we ever again waver in its defense.

Arundhati Roy sez: "Once you see it, you can't un-see it. And once you've seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There's no innocence. Either way, you're accountable."

Please open our eyes and see—see yourself in every living thing that suffers most under this oppressive and inequitable system—and if you can't find a reason to fight for yourself, then do it for them.

#shifthappens

NYC Event Note: To continue conversations like this, come see Mickey Z. in person on March 19 in NYC for "Occupy for All Species: Social Justice in the Age of Climate Change."

Join us: https://www.facebook.com/events/408951385862842

 

 




 

 


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