I saw something this morning while I was out on my jog,
something that will take me some time to shake off.
You see, under a local overpass a small community of
homeless people recently sprang up. They spring up just about every few months
or so but they don’t leave voluntarily.
This morning, I saw why they leave. I saw two dump trucks
and four police cars pull up. The police moved the homeless over to one side.
And the garbage men took all of the belongings – the few belongings these
homeless people had – and threw all of their things into the garbage trucks.
The homeless weren’t arrested. They were just shoed away like dogs.
It brought to mind something from a long time ago. It brought
to mind Kristallnacht.
Now, I understand that some people might get offended by
this, by my comparing our local police to nazi thugs.
But what happened on Kristallnacht? On that night, so long
ago, police came around and destroyed the property of a group of people they
didn’t want to have around anymore.
That was exactly what happened this morning.
And it troubles me that we can do this and not feel at all
ashamed or in any way bothered by what we do. We’ve given up on finding a
solution to the problem of homelessness. We just shoe them away like dogs and
throw away their stuff.
Leaving them to start again.
Leaving them worse off than before.
Leaving us… appeased. Out of sight. Out of mind.
We should hang our heads.
I’m probably going to talk about this next month, in my
final episode of 5 Brief Minutes but, for now, I just had to say something.
Because it makes me sick.
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