Recently, a member of our staff heard several people talking on the bus about the "bums." This bum did this, and then the bum did that. No one seemed to think there was anything wrong with degrading their subjects' worth to the verge of trash.
Maybe it was an isolated incident, one limited to a few insensitive people with no failings or problems of their own. But there's evidence that that's not the case.
The attitudes among people toward other people are getting as desperate and divisive as the times. It extends from the semi-sanctioned torture applied by our armed forces on their captives, to the current land rush in New Orleans where the rich are handed keys and the poor are handed obstacles. It goes as high as the White House, where policies treat the less fortunate as problems, not constituents. And it extends all the way down to our city streets, where teenagers are beating, and in some cases killing, the homeless for fun.
The trends don't point to an overt epidemic, but they do indicate disturbing cracks in our civilization. Civility, at least as a hallmark of our society, is under attack.
Each year, the National Coalition for the Homeless documents the number of attacks on people experiencing homeless. Last year, there were 73 reported, non-lethal attacks on people on the streets, the majority of the attackers being teenagers. We know that many other attacks don't get reported. And the perpetrators are getting organized, in gangs, to attack and kill as a pack. We can all agree that the thrill-beatings of people experiencing homelessness are reprehensible, and for most of us, completely unfathomable. After all, where were these young adults being taught that the homeless were somehow less than human?
That lesson comes in the silence and the voids.
The solution is engagement.
Featured on our front page today is Potluck in the Park, a grassroots organization that fights stereotypes, discrimination and prejudice with a warm meal. It has put together a picnic, served free for people in need, every Sunday for 12 years now, and brought together countless new friends from all walks of life. It is among several organizations in this city that break down the social and economic barriers to creating a whole, civilized community.
It seems like an obvious lesson to most of us. Yet our culture, at such an experienced age, should be beyond fostering hatred and violence against the poor. Of course, we should be beyond torturing people, too, and KGB-style spying on our own citizens, for that matter, and economic policies that punish the poor for being poor. Who, now, is setting the example of scapegoating the most vulnerable among us?
The longer we remain silent, the larger the void grows and the lessons become entrenched. Get engaged, at the local level, one-on-one, and at the national level in the chorus and movement for civil liberty and social justice. Call it like you see it, and the next time some people prattle on about the "bums," let them know who the real problem is.