Saving Ourselves From Apathy: Building Community With the Homeless in Dinkytown
By Ashley Harris-Houdek WITH ART BY BROOKE LAMBRECHT
With the snow billowing during these last few weeks of February 2023, I cannot help but consider the frozen toes and fingers of our neighbors with no home. They watch us on the corners as we are able to go home at the end of work or class, get cozy with blankets, have a nice warm meal (even if it's just ramen) and watch the newest Netflix documentary.
Meanwhile, they are standing outside, with absolutely no one giving them a reason for hope. When your entire society treats you as a ghost, it is hard to desire to continue living. As a previously homeless individual, what I have found most bright in the greatest darkness was the ability that the poor have for sharing, even if they have nothing left to give. Those who have grown up in poverty know that sharing is a true means of survival, but also makes everyone more happy and puts much more value on items purchased. The entitlement to possession and the belief that we have a right to material goods is a part of what is rotting our society from the inside out. To rid ourselves from this attachment to "mine" is true freedom, as it puts value more on each other than a commodity.
I talked to a man named Picho on the metro as I was riding back to Dinkytown. He asked if anyone knew of a shelter nearby. The bus was quiet, everyone looked ahead, as if he was not real. I told him I could look up a place on maps.
Our actions determine who we are as people. It is often the hardest to do good when it is not the popular thing to do. I gave him all the snacks in my backpack, and while handing them to him, I felt his hands. They were stone cold. He told me last time he was eating at McDonald's, he was kicked out, despite buying a meal, because his friends were loitering. Even when the homeless do the right thing, they are still punished for their poverty. This is textbook discrimination.
Respect is the most important thing you can give to the homeless. To look a man in the eye and ask him what his name is, is to acknowledge that he matters as a person in society. I know I simply cannot live with myself buying a meal when I know the man outside is starving. Nevertheless, why would I want to eat alone? The fruits of our labor are meant to be shared.
We are social creatures, and I truly believe we share the one unifying consciousness, the same emotions. When we see suffering in our society, there is suffering within ourselves. Delusion is very dangerous, and to ignore the starving man on the street is to ignore our own starving hearts that beg for love and community. My whole childhood I have been shy, but when you understand the social anxiety within you is within everyone, it begins to dissolve. When we forget how similar we are, there is a blockage in communication.
Where are the "compassionate capitalists" , the "christians" and "socialists", black square “activists", or "philosophers?" I know my fellow students are likely identifying with one or more of these labels, yet turn a blind eye, every time. I feel sometimes as if I am going insane with the socialized acceptance of injustice. There is a reason your heart burns with uncomfort at the site of extreme poverty.
It is so easy to blame the powerful, yet what maintains inequality is public opinion. Imagine if every homeless man and woman on the corner were a young child, would you still allow them to go cold and hungry passing by? Are we not all originally children?
I will leave you to consider this, my friends of the Wake audience, a quote from philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti:
"All great things start on a small scale, all great movements begin with individuals; and if we wait for collective action, such action, if it takes place at all, is destructive and conducive to further misery. So revolution must begin with you and me."