FROM THE STREET
By Charles Springer
What is understanding? Is it simply a word we use to console someone who has troubles in their life? Is it a word we throw around during conversations to identify with the speaker? When someone tells me they understand, I usually think that this person is showing compassion.
In fact I truly believe that when one understands another’s problems and the causes for these problems, it breeds compassion. When people say they understand homelessness and its causes I know that that person is compassionate to some degree. I know that person has or at least can put themselves in my or any homeless person’s shoes and see the struggle that is there. It also has more to do with knowledge of the situation either through education or personal experience.
I feel very strongly that people should really look at the causes of homelessness before they try to label a homeless person as being not worth anything in life. You are seeing it right now in what the government and big business is doing here in Santa Monica, as well as the state and the nation. They really don't want you to see the causes of this national dilemma.
They want you to focus on the bad parts of the homeless population — the urinating in doorways, the drug and alcohol abuse and the wild bunch who aggressively panhandle. Yet, more than a few of us would not be homeless if it were not for the downsizings, the government opening the doors of the mental institutions, the huge cuts in the funding of the V.A. system and the lack of watch dogs for the homeless shelters, where your money is spent to “help” us move into housing.
You seem to feel that all the politicians tell the whole truth and the homeless agencies function perfectly and none of these agencies make mistakes. And if they do make mistakes, do you think they are going to let you know when they rely on your naiveté for votes and donations?
Look around you at what is happening now with the education system. Our own children are being pushed aside so the national government can fund a war, the state can sleep with special interests and the local government can keep developing and raising rent. The funny thing is, it all started at THE BOTTOM. With the homeless and the poor. And it is now working its way up to affect ANYONE who is seeking an education.
The prevailing attitude is this: Education, along with food, shelter, clothing, power and basically ALL that is needed to sustain LIFE. It is being sold to you at higher and higher and higher prices, while the economy is blatantly being ignored and keeps degenerating. Now this “attack” is coming right into your very middle class lives. Now you will understand what it is like to be divided and conquered. With Proposition A and Proposition Z and Proposition H and who is right and who is wrong for your neighborhood’s welfare.
Meanwhile the out of towners who helped to create this development BOOM in Santa Monica, force the REAL locals out so they can gobble up the property for their own selfish interests. I have watched this happen for the past six going on seven years. I have no television to keep me occupied so I watch REAL “reality based” television. I watch the signs that I see and not just the “For Rent” signs. (Charles Springer is homeless in Santa Monica.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 10, 2003. Read the original PDF.