Rounding Up the Nonpersons : We Won’t Tolerate Failures, So Homeless Get the Clink

Our modern society simply will not tolerate failure. Those among us who dare to fail are further doomed to removal from our midst, by whatever means necessary, lest their continual presence remind us of our common human frailties.

Until recently the homeless were generally “missing persons”--absent from our consciousness, from our deliberations, from our daily lives.

But, as of today in Los Angeles, the homeless are henceforth to be officially considered nonpersons altogether. On this historic day it becomes a crime to live on the streets of Los Angeles, and all those who have no place else to lay their heads are subject to arrest.

The police cite city laws on the books making it a crime to block passage on sidewalks as their justification for removing the homeless who have set up makeshift shelters for themselves in the Skid Row area. So it would appear that we have miraculously solved the horrible problem of destitute homelessness in our community by simply declaring it illegal.

If this be true, then indeed gratitude and congratulations are well in order to the Los Angeles Police Department and the city fathers of our nation’s homeless capital for their extraordinarily creative innovation of circumventing the Constitution by herding people into jail or other public detention shelters.

Of course, the maximum sentence for being caught without a place to live in Los Angeles has yet to be determined, since the courts are obviously unprepared to cope with such a swift onslaught of criminality. And it’s probably safe to assume that there is not enough jail space that could, I suppose, eventually hold as many as 35,000 new inmates. Then, too, we must not dismiss the possibility that, since the homeless represent such a severe threat, the courts may well invoke the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the right of the state to deny bail to anyone whom the state considers a danger to society. And perhaps the city attorney could even investigate the prospect of prosecuting anyone who serves the homeless--Ted Hayes and Mitch Snyder, as well as the entire Los Angeles Catholic Worker community, for example--for aiding and abetting criminals. Alas, the mind is boggled by the limitless possibilities that this simplistic initiative inspires.

But before rushing headlong into further absurdity, let us pause soberly and recognize it for what it truly is--an arrogant mockery of justice, a clear reflection of our own moral bankruptcy and an official celebration of ignorance.

More and more our priorities reflect an insatiable appetite for squandering our precious human resources. Our government expropriates $200 million per day in maintaining a useless nuclear arsenal while less than 1% of the federal budget is spent on low-income public housing. The whole world watches this while also seeing 46 human beings starve to death worldwide every 60 seconds. Whether or not we choose to acknowledge it as such, this distracted globe with all its millions and millions of poverty-stricken homeless is exactly the way it is because that is exactly the way we have chosen to make it. Each one of us is a sum total of many parts, and together we sum up to the human race.

If we would change the world we must begin with the courage to change ourselves individually. Our struggle, in that regard, is to unite the will of the spirit to the work of the flesh. But courage is the first virtue, with compassion the most natural. And neither was meant to fust in us unused. None of us, regardless of circumstance, are permitted to separate ourselves from our responsibility to one another and expect to remain human.

It is proclaimed, and profoundly so, that we are a God-fearing nation. Yet if we continually fail to consider the divine presence in every human life we will surely fail to acknowledge that presence in our own lives as well. Most assuredly we can best measure our love for God by those we love the least. And in the final twilight we will be judged by that love, and by that love alone.