What i pray will happen from this blog is that many of you non-Homeless people will be able to put aside prejudice and see that the Homeless are your brothers and sisters, nieces, nephews, aunts and uncles and neighbors down the street. And hopefully, for the Homeless that will read this, you will put away your stigma and shame at being in this Homeless Condition...a condition that no more defines who you are and what you are capable of than does a sudden rain shower on a sunny day. To everyone, Homelessness is something that a person, or persons or families go through...it is not a character trait.
Oh, and why the Lazarus Community? In the Bible, Christ raises Lazarus from the dead. This is my ambition with the Homeless...to bring us all back from the 'living death' that is the situation of Homelessness and to reclaim our rightful places as citizens, and brothers and sisters in today's society. Prayerfully, I hope to edify you and move you beyond pity to the point that real and effective change can happen to those who have been disenfranchised by the situation of Homelessness.
Here is my voice...part of The Vox Patria, the Voice of the Homeless;
Murdering Hope – The Life of the Homeless in America
“The Question Mark of Cain”
I’m not exactly sure how this works
Grieving I Grieve You
Last time I looked it was me that lost
But it seems my loss
Has inconvenienced you
I am bewildered by how this is
Hating myself you hate me
My face, my body, my breath is abhorrent
You detest my stink
My being & the thought of me
I’m unsure of how again to be sure
And in my confusion you are certain
That I and everything that has to do with me
Isn’t worth a moment
An inkling
The fleck of paint on the caboose
Of the thought train in your mind
And victimized
I feel I should apologize
S.Ladon Ware 2010
S.Ladon Ware 2010
Who in their right mind asks to be homeless.
The plight of the homeless in America is not just the problem of lodging or a living wage to afford affordable housing. The main problem of the homeless is the stigma of homelessness. You see the perception of the homeless isn’t tender like poverty stricken children or heartbreaking like women suffering with cancer, or devastating like the victims of war (not taking anything away from these very worthy causes in saying this).
But the homeless suffer under the dark cloud of being ugly and in the way. The impression many have is of the homeless standing on street corners in tatters, selling papers and trinkets with scruffy beards, uncombed hair and dirty disgusting fingernails and OMG THE STINK! If you are lucky they will only smell of B.O. and maybe faintly of urine. Scabby, dirty, vile beggars that intrude on your clean life! It’s all you can do to force down the bile in your throat at the sight of them. The homeless are the modern version of the lepers, soup lines & donations the Bethesda pool and shelters are the colonies, the Lo Debar that they need to be confined to.
So when some of you see them on the corners you don’t feel too bad if you can’t wrestle the change from the ashtray in time before the light turns green. Or when charities ask for your money and time...well... there are soccer games or sewing circles and other somethings to do. So when legislation is proposed that can help curtail the relentless advance of unemployment, one of the leading causes of homelessness, (by giving substantial stimulus monies to help foster retraining programs and desperately needed infrastructure jobs) it is all too easy to vote no and turn thumbs down. As the job market collapses & the housing market collapses and the ranks of the homeless swell like a blood-engorged tick you can kick your feet up on your desk, glad that you didn’t add another dime to the national debt (though if our kids starve to death today tomorrow’s debt seems like a moot point). OK, I’ll take a breath now.
Dirty, unsexy lepers. Question, if you don’t do what you can to help the poor & middle class build a solid foundation for this country’s future, what will happen to America’s future? Let’s look back in history – How many societies have survived without major upheaval if the middle class evaporates and the poor get trampled into the mud?
The Great Depression's galvanizing factors looked a whole lot like the factors we are dealing with today. We didn’t learn from that, our most recent past , obviously given our present situation. A house without a firm foundation (the underclass) and good sound walls (the middle class) just is not a house in any definition. People, if we kick out the rest of the house and expect the roof to ‘magic’ itself upright somehow we are fooling ourselves and courting disaster (again).
As a country in 2001 President George W Bush commissioned a report on how to end chronic homelessness in America from several of our country’s major cities. Great information was gathered and it would have been an amazing aid in helping to bring down the ranks of the homeless had this program been able to proceed (unfortunately the events of Sept 11, 2001 halted most of the progress in this area).
But the past is the past. Now we have the opportunity to infuse our job market with a work force that is ready, willing & able (and statistically, the homeless & disenfranchised desire is to work instead of relying on unemployment benefits or welfare) to work. But obstructionists have fought tooth & nail to defer any change in the status quo no matter what the lingering effects of homelessness does to those in its ranks.
The loss of self-esteem has seen a sharp increase in the rise of depression in the homeless. The homeless have a higher stress level, just living in their situation, not counting the daily grind of looking for work, housing and suitable meals especially if you have children to care for as well.
The homeless are susceptible to higher incidences of staff infection, tooth decay, respiratory & viral infections due to their situations.
Homelessness is draining emotionally, physically, mentally & spiritually.
And when you need to seek help, the number of hoops one has to jump through to find that help is daunting. The red tape, both necessary & extraneous, only aid in making a human being feel as inconsequential as ...the designated number on the top of the mountain of forms required to be filled out to get any aid.
The homeless feel helpless, hopeless, unwanted & unloved. A feeling only reinforced by the way they are treated, the vicious and thoughtless way they are talked about (and over and around) and sadly, the way some people look at the homeless with a mix of disgust folded in with a type of pity that doesn’t ever lend a hand out or a hand up.
The homeless only ask to be treated one way – as living, loving, loved, blessed brothers & sisters – as fellow human beings. Some of you know this and treat us fairly, other's of you seem to be on that old bandwagon with Ebenezer Scrooge...when confronted with the plight of the poor tenaciously hanging on to some pride and hope, not willing to go to the jails and workhouses, preferring to die instead "If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, `they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
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