By Charles Springer
Santa, this is what I want for Christmas. To bring light to the homeless epidemic and educate you, who seem to have all this “insight” into homelessness, as to the real goings on “From the Street,” as my column is aptly named.
I took this daunting challenge because I care about my fellow human beings on the streets, and to be the protagonist to the antagonistic anti-homeless sentiment, which seems to prevail in all parts of this city.
Many of you have seen and talked to me at Starbuck’s as I paint or draw between shifts from my job on the Promenade. You think I am not the stereotypical homeless person. I keep as clean as possible and really act like any of you who think and speak this anti-homeless dribble, as if you have ever been anywhere near living on the streets.
The funny thing is you who are so “educated” on homeless issues think I am some type of aberration on the streets. Well, to my knowledge, there are many people like myself on the streets. I am just more vocal about my homelessness than those who you might never consider are homeless unless they tell you they are. And outside of the severely mentally ill and chronically addicted, which some of you “gurus” who have so much knowledge on homelessness attribute to being the homeless norm, to my knowledge, homeless like me ARE the norm.
We who landed on the streets, for various reasons, most of which were circumstances beyond our control, are the ones you see everyday, yet are beyond your prying eyes because we look and act as normal as you do. Some of us like myself and others work, serve you your coffee, help you with your clothes shopping, even clean the streets and work for the city.
We might sit next to you in the movie theaters and drink with you at the local pubs and bars, eat next to you at the restaurants or God forbid have a meaningful conversation with you on a street corner. You might have asked one of us for a cigarette or a light, or had one of us buy you a coffee or a drink or dinner and a movie and never suspect you were talking to a homeless man or woman.
You, who are so high and mightily educated on homelessness, are the same ones who would deny any of us food or clothing. You would deny us showers and housing. You would have us all sent to Santa Catilina Island and have it nuked.
You think of us with such narrow minds and even narrower hearts, you put the worse face on the homeless so you do not have to think of us as human beings, because if you did, you would have to look at homelessness in a different light and your little “social clubs” would not accept you. You would have to “eat crow” and be wrong when you have convinced everyone you know you are right about homelessness. You would have to admit that you have no idea of how it really feels to not be able to sleep in a warm bed or not have enough to eat or not have a job that pays enough for you to live inside. You would have to admit you do not know what it is like to carry everything you own with you everywhere you went. To stand and wait for an hour to take a shower or bird bath in the local public bathrooms. You would have to be embarrassed in front of your friends and look like fools before the world, as Mr. Bauer did when Mr. Maceri told him last week the real truth about the Ocean Park Community Center and what they do for us and why. Or the way Ms. Emerson looked to the general population of Santa Monica in her response to my column about my divorce and how it affects being stood up on the streets.
Well, you who are such “multi-dimensional thinkers” have much to learn. You see, until I landed on the streets I used to think just like you about homelessness. When I became homeless I had a change of heart. What will it take to change yours? (Charles Springer is a homeless free-lance columnist and artist and is a RESI- DENT of Santa Monica. He can be reached at Chaz_59@yahoo.com).
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 22, 2003. Read the original PDF.