This morning, while getting ready for work, I heard NPR’s
story about Cities Sweeping Homeless Into Less Prominent Areas. (Oh Biscuitgate!) They interviewed councilman Cameron Runyan of
Columbia, South Carolina – a city that recently tried to criminalize
homelessness, whose statement struck me:
“Businesses have a real issue with panhandling, there’s an
issue with defecating. We just arrested
a woman for using the bathroom on the sidewalk right in the heart of the main
street business district area.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but using the bathroom is a
private matter, particularly if it’s number 2.
Even in my 7 year committed relationship – we still shut the door for
such private matters. Even as an avid
hiker, I try to find some privacy behind a tree or bush! Hell, my dogs don’t want me to watch them has
they do their business each morning and evening! The last thing I would ever desire is for my only option to be to defecate in public. What an incredible loss of dignity.
Does councilman Runyan believe it is the desire for the
visibly poor to defecate on the streets? What has happened to our society that his would be a line of thought? I raise this question, because I heard a similar statement last week at
Raleigh’s council meeting and it breaks open my heart.
It breaks open my heart because it is a sign that we have
really lost perspective. It breaks open
my heart because it means we have a bad case of Hobophobia. It breaks open my heart because it means we
have stopped seeing our most vulnerable as human beings – as children of
God. It means we believe we can herd the
poor like cattle, pushing them into less prominent areas, arresting them
because we don’t like to look them - as they are a reminder of our failure –
our failure as human beings, as a city, as a nation and as people of God. It is our failure that we have not found
plausible and creative solutions to affordable housing, transit, employment
opportunities and social services. It is
our failure that all we are willing to do is to keep the poor in their
residential tent cities and feed them there.
As I have learned from Rev. Hugh Hollowell, homelessness is
about loss – loss of your job, loss of your house, loss of your most sacred
possessions, in some cases – loss of your children, loss of your pets, loss of
your safety, until finally you lose your dignity because you can’t afford to
buy a .99 cent soda from the local pharmacy just so you can use the bathroom
and so you are left with your only option: to defecate in a public.
It is my prayer that we will remember the poor and most
vulnerable of our cities the next time we have to go - really, really bad;
and we are praying that the light turns green, and that the jackass in front
of us would step on it, and we hope to God we can make it home --- that
next time- when we do have the option to run screaming into the comforts of our
home, into the privacy of our bathroom, to sit on the reliefs of our throne
---in that moment when we know you’ve held it too long and it's going to hurt
when we start. I pray that we can remember the least of these and consider what it means to still have our dignity.
