“I don’t speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I don’t have the power to remain silent.”
-Rabbi A.Y. Kook
In her hit song, “What About Us?” Pink sings of a generation that feels abandoned and ignored.
“What about us” she says. “What about trust?”
I think it’s a fair bet that Pink didn’t mean for her lyrics to be used in the context of what I have to say, but I’m calling literary license on her.
This past week, Friend Without Benefits went transcon. I wanted to revisit Los Angeles, my city of refuge in the nineties, when NYC was a hellhole…funny how history repeats itself.
What I found was very disturbing.
Take a look at these pictures. It’s a common site. Virtual small towns on the streets, under the underpasses. Tents, tarps, trucks. Drugs, dirt, defecation. Menacing crazies on street corners.
After my initial shock I got angry and that’s when Pink’s lyrics popped into my head.
Let me just say this up front. I have absolutely no idea how to solve the street people problem. Notice I’m not calling it the homeless problem because what I saw were women and men who’ve made a conscious decision to create a society on the streets. They’ve bought tents, they’ve built structures. They’ve moved in.
These aren’t people who are down on their luck, who’ve been kicked to the curb, who, if just given a chance, could be productive members of society.
They don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone or anything.
Do you have to be mentally ill per se to live the way they do? OK, I’ll grant you that. I want to be understanding toward them but I can’t.
Who’s given them the right to take over entire neighborhoods? Does the belief that everyone should get a trophy now mean everyone can live wherever they want?
Have we totally become a society of enablers where anything and everything goes?
What about the hardworking women and men who pay their taxes, who want and deserve a clean and a safe neighborhood for themselves and for their families? Now, when they walk out their front doors, they’re confronted with people who’ve been allowed by our elected officials and by our judges to pitch their tents and to destroy a community.
They’ve been permitted by the people in power who have put the rights of the renegades ahead of the rights of the righteous.
How the hell we ever going to fix this?
It’s a pandemic that won’t be cured with a vaccine.
Our cities’ citizens have been abandoned and ignored. Their trust has been betrayed. They’re compassionate and caring but they’ve been diminished and demeaned.
“We are billions of beautiful hearts and you sold us down the river too far. What about us?”
Damn you, Pink!
4 thoughts on “What About Us?”
As the colorless Joe Lhota said when he ran against DeBlasio for mayor, people have no idea how easily things can go back to the way they were before. He meant before Giuliani and Bratton saved NYC. Of course, not only is that completely forgotten but RG’s recent unfortunate behavior has permanently erased what should be his legacy as the savior of New York.
David , you hit the nail on the head . We the taxes get shafted In society by calling us the entitled. Rule and morals that were the norms of a community are no more .
Hopefully this will change if we get a new government.
All the best
Gary
So saddened by what you saw in Los Angeles and totally agree with your assessment of this dire situation. Please check out a book called The Ungovernable City by Vincent Cannato.
Some prominent “thinkers” state the street people are exercising their rights.
At best, this delusion is really an indifference. They say “my” property is not be defaced or disrupted, so it is someone else’s problem, or not a problem at all. Note here the parallel to the “thinking” of not stopping “minor” crimes inflicted on someone else; if such are not a crime, or a problem, then you’ve reduced the crime rate! Laziness does not care about, or promote, civics, civility, or a better world.
For our advanced society, to allow such conditions to be common, simply means that people really don’t care. Popular progressive slogans aside, those who are amenable to a derelict “right” to live in such demeaning, unhealthy, squalor are really saying street people’s lives don’t matter. A corollary is that those same “thinkers” really don’t believe that “Black Lives Matter,” be they street people or those segments predominated by a dysfunctional existence. If they did matter, no sane person would allow any of this to be perpetuated.
Sorry, I didn’t solve the problem either. Although, you first have to acknowledge there is a problem before you can expect an approach to its resolution.