Came home just literally shaking with rage from a quick trip to pick up a pizza in the neighborhood last night. Wanted to share why.
On a major throughway near my neighborhood in West LA, there’s a wide cement median between the lanes going either way. It’s big enough to fit tents + entirely out of the way of pedestrians (you have to run through traffic to get there), so unhoused people often make it home.
This small tent community of maybe unhoused 10 people, lives, of course, in one of the richest nations, states + cities In the world, under a highway overpass, in the shadow of a skyscraper emblazoned with a neon ‘Wonderful’ logo. (It's a luxury brand for juices + bottle water.)
Anyway, last night as I was walking on that street to pick up a pizza, + I thought I heard someone angrily yell something from a passing car at one of the residents who looked like he was setting up a new tent (it’s getting cold). Couldn’t tell what it was, but it sounded cruel.
So I came back on my way home + over pizza and root beer, the residents told me that yes, getting yelled at by random drivers was really common. Happened all the time.
Even though they’re living on this small ugly concrete island that has no other use + is totally out of the way, they said drivers scream insults, yell things like, ‘This isn’t your home’, ‘Get a job’, or just, ‘Fuck you.’ Sometimes they throw things: trash, soda cans, food waste
‘I’m like, look. I’m not happy about this, either,’ one man told me. His case worker had just told him he’d been approved for housing (the other guys cheered at this) + he's been trying hard to turn things around. Meanwhile, people are driving by and throwing trash on him.
Another man, who salvages, repairs, + sells bicycles—which look fantastic, btw, he showed me a beach cruiser in progress—and is an avid cyclist, said it varies neighborhood to neighborhood how cruel people will be. Some places, they throw glass bottles, he says.
As I was leaving, the men said thanks and told me to let them know if I needed anything.
Like I said, I got home quite actually shaking with anger, and with sorrow too I guess.
Like I said, I got home quite actually shaking with anger, and with sorrow too I guess.
Yes, everything is broken. Yes, it’s a cosmic joke that we cannot muster the resources + improve our systems enough to care for our own, in a time of historic plenty. But on top of all that, to throw fucking trash and insult your fellow human beings for their misfortune.
I don’t know if this will reach anyone who could possibly benefit from hearing this but: Have some fucking compassion.
We should all know by now how easy it is, in *this system*, to get crushed, to suffer loss. So many of us are a bad twist of fate or two away from the worst too
We should all know by now how easy it is, in *this system*, to get crushed, to suffer loss. So many of us are a bad twist of fate or two away from the worst too
No doubt it is anger + anxiety around their own precarity that motivates some haves, even, *especially* the barely-haves to turn on the have-nots. + we need to locate how + when that anger curdles into cruelty towards the vulnerable instead of rage at the powerful.
It's hard, in the Age of Demagoguery™ + calculated rage at the other, to bend instinctively towards sympathy. But we have to; we’re in this together, 99% of us. The demagogues *want* us throwing trash + yelling at each other, not them. So let’s have some fucking compassion.
