 |
| Meanwhile, a church in Springfield was trying to answer our cry of "Where are we supposed to go?" But too many Springfield residents were not going with their proposal. The following letter I wrote on that subject, which pretty much speaks for itself, appeared in the June 24 Register-Guard: NEIGHBORS DIDN'T LEARN June 10, 1993 Dear Editor, As a homeless person and former resident of the Centennial Car Camp, I am very pleased at the extremely favorable editorials in the Register-Guard of both the Centennial camp and the Church of the Nazarene's proposed camp in Springfield. My partner and I attended the June 7 meeting of the Springfield City Council where this proposal was discussed, and we were utterly appalled at the number of NIMBY's ("Not In My Back Yard!") people who came forward and expressed the most ridiculously paranoid views of what would happen if a homeless camp were opened in THEIR neighborhood. Didn't these people learn ANYTHING from the Centennial experiment? Didn't they read any of the positive reviews of the camp that appeared in the Register-Guard and the HOPE newsletter, which showed that the campers were quite decent, civilized, cooperative people? I'm sure that none of them ever bothered to visit the camp and meet any of us, as the Church of the Nazarene people did regularly. The editorial stated that "Neighbors' concerns deserve respect". But these "concerns" are based solely on ignorance and blind prejudice! These conservative Springfield residents care about nothing but protecting their own property. They are not the least bit interested in opening their minds and learning the truth about what sort of people these homeless campers are. They haven't even begun to learn the lessons which Lane Education Service District, with its paranoid fears the "the safety of schoolchildren visiting the planetarium", learned from the Centennial camp. They still insist on believing that all we want to do is rob them blind, vandalize their precious property and assault their children, despite all the evidence to the contrary. No, Springfield has not learned one thing from Eugene about the homeless, and Springfield is the poorer for its stupid bigotry. Bridget Reilly The panhandling issue wasn't going away either; it was being batted around in the papers quite a bit. Here is one of the letters I wrote to the Register-Guard during the summer of 1993; this one wasn't printed: July 25, 1993 With all the publicity that has recently been given to the panhandling issue, I have noticed a very disturbing trend: There is a certain strain of self-righteous busybodies who have taken it upon themselves to report all the comings-and-goings of homeless beggars whom they happen to see in places other than their usual street corners. These self-appointed informants are fond of writing letters to the paper saying things like: "The other night I saw one of those Springfield panhandlers in a bar playing blackjack." Such letters are attempts to discredit beggars by catching them in situations that seem to "prove" they don't really need to beg, or that they are undeserving of the donations they receive because they spend the money on the "wrong" things. In reading them one finds a whole list of activities which beggars are apparently not allowed to engage in: 1) Playing radios with headphones while panhandling is a no-no: beggars must never display such flagrant symbols of wealth. 2) They are not allowed to buy liquor with the money they receive; unlike other people, beggars are required to have perfect morals and never drink. 3) They must never be seen in bars standing next to blackjack tables, lest they be accused of spending their ill-gotten cash playing blackjack themselves. The reports are disturbing because, besides having the character of tacky third-person gossip, they give one a creepy "Big-Brother-Is-Watching-You" feeling. It seems that homeless beggars no longer have the privacy rights enjoyed by other citizens; they must be prepared to defend their every action to the public, as one of these spies might at any time report them carrying on some activity which has been declared unseemly for people of their station, but would pass as normal behavior when done by anyone else. But these cheap tactics will ultimately fail, as more people are waking up to the truth about why begging really goes on. The true villains are not the beggars themselves, but the employers who refuse to hire them and a society that insists on scapegoating them rather than looking deeper to the true causes of their condition. Yet there will always be a large body of people who refuse to look deeper. I just wish they would find something better to do with their time than to keep taking potshots at the most vulnerable people in society, who are already targets of too much abuse. (click here to view next page) |
 |