Making Fun of the Homeless

I sat at Thanksgiving table as the disrespected (somewhat shamed, even) Elder of a group of Gen-X Thirty-Something's who, it seems, (I exclude the hosts who struck me as a sweet and kind couple with their first child) have perfected the cynical, sarcastic, edgy phony self-deprecatory manner many 30-somethings I meet seem to possess as the personnae and face they wish to present to the world. Many of them make more money in a year than I have ever made in my entire life--in fact, when I looked at my latest social security benefits mailing I realized that the most I have ever made working 40 hours a week since 1976 was $12,000 a year--that was slogging away at Borders in Tucson, doing the Retail Shuffle. This particular group, which included my two daughters and several of their long-time friends, are all hip and plugged in, the winners of their generation it seems. My own two daughters are in this club--the Club of Winners--one is going to be a Neurosurgeon and the other is starting her own salon here in Logan Square at age 36. As a mother I want to be proud of them--after all, they are doing what any mother would want for her kids--self actualizing, acheiving and being successful! On the other hand, as a spiritualized human on the planet earth, I was ashamed of them. As a dedicated lifetime Reject From the Club I found them to possess the very characteristics that made me reject the Club in the first place. They, along with the other sibling society, hip and cool and RICH gen-X'ers at the table, spent a good twenty minutes ridiculing, rapping and raging about the homeless. My youngest daughter even told a story about how homelessness has now become a "profession" and there is one woman near her apartment that gets her nails done and makes $30,000 a year begging on the street! If this is true, I doubt it, but even if it were true, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Of course, the elephant in the room was that here sat their mother and the oldest member at the table, someone who had just got out of a shelter and was mind numbingly homeless for nearly a year and half! Here sat their mother whose rent is being subsidized by the generous if resentful older daughter--the same daughter who had warned her mother on the walk to the Thanksgiving dinner: "just stop asking me for things, all right! I'm starting a business! I don't have time for your problems! I can't tell you where to go to find things or what to get and I am already helping you out with rent--I can't help you any more!" As this lecture went on I flashed on my grandmother from Russia, the always miserable and complaining white-haired Clara Ostrovsky from Russia ( a distant cousin of the playwright Alexandr Ostrovsky) who was totally co-dependent upon my father and his money and his noblesse oblige. In addition, before he died, my grandfather, who was a cockney Jewish baker from Stepney Green in London, was essentially in and out of work his whole life, and when the depression hit, my father, who was a young, brilliant man in his 20's, became the major breadwinner for the family and stayed that way his entire life. The fact that he encouraged me to become toally dependent on his money for his own purposes is what I am working on in therapy today. But here we are in the present--the failed Jewish American Princess (me) has been relegated to the position of the shamed idiot who knows nothing. But then again, in Zen we say that knowing nothing is the beginning of consciousness! However....there I sat listening to these young people laugh and make sarcastic comments about the homeless--knowing full well I was one of them! I finally broke in and informed them of an NPR story I had heard last week about a medical doctor whose entire practice is dedicated to solving and healing the medical problems of the homeless on the streets of our cities in this so-called great country of ours. It is estimated that there may be 10 million homeless people in America--(that could be a low estimate)--enough to fill a city--more people than we have in Chicago! There are many reasons for homelessness but many of the most dire cases, the ones we see on the street, are riddled with mental and physical illness, filled with shame, humiliation, hopelessness and grief, not to mention sorrow, regret, misfortune, wretchedness--doesn't the Stature of Liberty say something about this? Isn't this supposed to be the country where the poor, the meek and the humble can find safe haven? Where did we ever get that life is "of the money, by the money for the money?" Is it in "God we trust" or is it in "money we trust" because if so, we're FUCKED! As recent events in the financial world are telling us, if we put our faith in money as a source of power, we will lose every time. Every civilization has fallen because of a faulty value- structure--we are no exception. At any event, I told this story, hoping my daughter the soon-to-be-doctor and a Pisces, might activate the dormant compassion inside of her, but there was no compassionate reply. The doctor, I told them, literally takes up residence on the street in order to gain the trust of the homeless so he can treat them. Many of the street people have multiple physical and mental problems and these problems deteriorate exponentially the longer they are sleeping out in total exposure. In order to unravel the causes of homelessness, we have to unravel our own consciences. And this will take a miracle it seems.

This doctor, not a young man, literally sleeps on the street and has learned the detailed ins and outs of street culture and etiquette, which, as he describes it, is complex. The people on the street are rightfully paranoid about strangers and have certainly been abused, hurt and attacked in the course of their years on the street, and therefore are wary of people claiming to "help" them. A lot of help is condescending and humiliating--this doctor has none of this. His only sincere desire is to address first of all, their physical ailments which are numerous and multi-tiered owing to non treatment for many years, and then their mental and emotional deficits, which are also numerous and complex. He has no drive or campaign to "rehabilitate" these people in the traditional sense of social work--his one desire is to give them a sense of self esteem and perhaps a small sense of empowerment and primarily to address the physical problems that plague them. Many of these people suffer from diagnosable mental illnesses which can be treated with psychotropic medication to some success. In addition they have heart disease, diabetes, cancer, AIDS, TB, Hepatitus and other ailments that make their lives miserable and dangerous. Before any of these people can be taken off the street their most glaring physical problems need to be addressed. In some cases he said, maybe 30%, he and his crew have succeeded in medicating someone for all their illnesses, both physical and mental, and have found them subsidized housing. Once a homeless person experiences a place to live that is warm and clean, is surrounded with concerned therapists and social services that meet his/her most basic needs, it is actually possible for this person to begin to address the basic issues of existence and move forward in life. The road to homelessness is long and the road back is certainly not short or easy, but it can be done. The crushing grief and loss of self esteem can be debilitating, but with the right resources and time, a homeless person can become a person once again. I know this road because I am traveling on it.

No one could have predicted that moi, Allison Fine, the daughter of a successful contractor, from a "good family" would end up here, but I did. I was not and am not an alcoholic or a drug user--my biggest sin was going back to school in my 50's and sinking all my money and savings into an education that proved to be a practical bust. True enough, I became a much better writer, I learned how to be a director and theatrical dramaturge, I can teach and read and write like nobody's business! I just didn't count on meeting up with the wall of opposition concerning my age and stage in life. I've passed 50. I am expected to fade away with grace. I didn't, I won't. I can't. That makes me different from the people I see and often feed on the street. They've given up. They've lost hope. I look at the Barack Obama poster on my wall everyday--the one with the fabulous portrait of his face looking up with HOPE written in bug letters on the bottom--I look at this poster and allow the feeling of hope to wash over me. We will not always be a cynical, nasty, judgmental, mean-spirited culture. This kind of mentality cannot last--it eats at the fabric of our humanness and feeds on itself. Eventually it will destroy itself and the only thing that will be available to rebuild things will be pragmatic, realists with ideals, hope, and dare I say it, LOVE. Earth will never be Heaven--I think it's Hell down here, but while we are in this school room, let's try some new lessons!