A war that counts homelessness and poverty in the United States
For some time now, a good friend of mine in Seattle has been sending me photographic portraits of homeless men and women that he finds in his small office in the Ballard area of the city. While the images cannot hide the dreaminess of their situation, what my friend tries to convey in the portraits is a sense of community, a shared humanity. Most of us will cross the street to avoid facing a homeless person. Indeed, we hardly ever want to make eye contact with such a person, whose life circumstances, for whatever reason, terrify us. But my friend is an unusual individual, selfless and sensitive to the difficulties of others. He is not afraid to engage with the homeless, to inquire about their lives, where they come from, and what might have been the circumstances that brought them so much desolation, hunger, and abject sense of being. Because surely when looking deep into the eyes of any of us we find a little of all of us. We cannot escape from ourselves.
Like my friend, there are many who are well aware that such a prevalence of deprivation in our country represents a social disease that is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. In a way, the great ‘State of the Homeless’ represents an entirely separate state; Think of it as the fifty-first state, whose boundaries extend west past the state of California, east past the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, north to the Arctic Circle, and south to Earth’s equator. It is a landless state, seamlessly woven into all states; one of despair, poverty and hunger with an estimated population roughly equal to the 3.5 million inhabitants of the state of Connecticut. At any given time, just over ten percent of our population is homeless. And It’s Growing Of course, it’s hard to know exactly what the real numbers are or how many children go to bed hungry every night in this country.
Funds for programs specifically designed to help America’s poor and hungry are being cut at a time when we are simultaneously pouring money into a country with a population almost identical to our ‘Homeless State.’ Since the start of the Libyan conflict, we have spent over $500 million with an expected follow-up of $40 million a month with no guarantee of an outcome other than hugely fueling the military-industrial complex and global corporate interests. This number pales in comparison to the money we have spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, billions of which have gone unaccounted for. It has been estimated that the money spent on these uncertain wars could have eradicated poverty and homelessness in the United States over the next century.
We would all do well to read President Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address over and over again. Just as important as his warning about the danger of allowing the military-industrial complex (corporatism) to grow too large are the words found in your final paragraph. “We pray that people of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs met; that those now denied opportunity will come to enjoy it fully; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will also understand their heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear of the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love”.
He also wrote: “In this final relationship, Congress and the Administration have, on most vital matters, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and have thus ensured that the affairs of the Nation should continue So, my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.” Today we can hardly imagine such cooperation for the greater good of the American people.
We would be fools to refuse to believe that there is no direct correlation between our wars and our homelessness. Nor should we ignore the huge percentage of American veterans who find themselves homeless and discarded, living in poverty on the streets.
There was a time, not long ago, in this country and in others, those afflicted with poverty and hunger could come to a house for charity: a barn or a back porch to sleep in, a hot meal, kind words, and maybe a day or two of work. Today, most of us believe that the homeless are nothing more than drifters, alcoholics, mentally unstable, human debris.
The truth is something different; the leading cause of homelessness is unaffordable housing. The absence of jobs and low wages are other factors that contribute to homelessness. Within the ‘State of the Homeless’, there is also a high rate of mental illness and alcoholism. However, with better education, social services, and the availability of decent and affordable health care, many of these contributing factors are treatable, and the consequences of homelessness and antisocial behavior could be better prevented. In a way, it’s an ongoing social conundrum. For thousands of families living on the edge, stress is a paralyzing factor that disintegrates the ties that are necessary for healthy family cohesion; Studies have shown that stress alone can trigger the onset of devastating psychoses in children. Many men and women living on the streets today, diagnosed with mental illness, could have been treated at a young age and may still be.
We blame each other to such an extent that the concept of ‘government’ has become a separate, alien and negative entity. But ultimately, is there anyone to blame besides us? A man who falls asleep at the wheel and crashes into a tree should not blame the car or the tree.
If government is less or more than the common rule book agreed upon by the majority, the pages bound by democratic principles to protect the community of all, we have failed. When millions of our children suffer from hunger and poverty in a country as rich as the United States, we have failed.
Instead of fighting foreign wars, which ultimately serve the already full coffers of the rich, our focus should be on the wars against homelessness, poverty, and hunger at home. Our most effective weapon is our voice and our vote and we must fight for those who cannot.
