A Winter's Tale
'The measure of a civilized society is the way it treats it’s most vulnerable citizens.’
It’s a bitterly cold night. Sidewalks glitter with frost and the wind cuts like a knife. Winter is a cruel time for the poor and homeless. Although you and I may be warm tonight there are people out on the streets without shelter who won’t make it through to morning. In the midst of our affluent cities they will die from cold and neglect. It’s a familiar tale. One told every winter.
Have you noticed there are more beggars on the streets these days ? Beggars and worn-out people with their few possessions clutched in plastic bags, huddled in shop doorways at night. Its gut-wrenchingly sad but people walk straight past them without even noticing. As if they’re invisible. Just pale, inconsiderate ghosts that haunt our wealthy cities.
Many of them are chronically homeless (although of course not all of the homeless beg). Many of the homeless are veterans. Many are young. Many are young and LGBTQ. Many are over 50 and face the additional health and safety risks harsh living conditions impose on the aging. A third of American workers in one survey said they were just one paycheck away from being homeless. The descent from ‘just-about-getting-by’ to the streets can be fast and brutal.
It’s often said that ‘the measure of a civilized society is the way it treats it’s most vulnerable citizens’. Charities work miracles with limited resources and some people give generously of their time and money but charity is not the answer. We may do what we can to help individually but it’s not enough. Not nearly enough. A proper, coherent, collective response as a society is required.
I certainly don’t pretend to have all of the answers but surely anyone with a heart who sees people reduced to begging and sleeping rough on the freezing winter streets of our incredibly rich and prosperous western cities must struggle to understand how it can possibly be allowed to happen and feel anger that it is.
No-one can seriously argue that the country is poor, although they could legitimately question how it’s great wealth is distributed and used. Vast sums of money have been squandered on lavish tax cuts for the super-rich and wealthy corporations and on dubious wars of choice.
There is always money for war but, as UK politician Tony Benn once pointed out, “If we can find the money to kill people, we can find the money to help people.” He was right. Those who run the country certainly could, but they choose not to. Their priorities have been insanely and harmfully wrong.
For a privileged elite there are mansions like palaces, limousines, designer clothes, and obscene displays of opulence while, at the same time, poor people are living on the streets with not enough food to eat. And not just living on the streets but dying there too on these bitterly cold winter nights.
The problem is getting worse instead of better. It seems to be worse now than it was in our parent’s time. That’s not progress. Something is badly wrong.
Wolf Hour