(no subject)
On my way home today I passed this guy asking for change in the BART station and brushed him off with a "sorry, man." Nothing unusual. Which I realized is a problem.
Day after day for 2 and a half years I've begun and ended my day with a walk through the Tenderloin - one of the most troubled neighborhoods this side of Detroit. Unlike Detroit, the Tenderloin is densely packed, but unless you're an impoverished immigrant, a penniless and probably homeless junkie (the largest contingent), a drug dealer, a prostitute, or a spoiled law student/professor, you have no reason to be there. I am not being hyperbolic when I say that you often have to step over someone shooting up, or passed out, or in some other state to get to the ATM. If you give out change in the 'loin, there's a good chance that it'll just end up in someone's syringe. So I don't.
This guy at the BART station was not in the 'loin, however, but in my home station in Oakland, standing at the bottom of the stairs of the most busy entrance, where Kaiser Permanente (the HMO who's slogan is "Thrive") employees stream past by the hundreds at rush hour. Nor was he obviously a junkie. He was pretty well spoken. He was shoddily dressed, but not "I'm-so-far-gone-I-can't-remember-what-pants-are." More like "hard-times-haven't-been-able-to-afford-new-clothes-for-a-while." His ~10 year old daughter was in similar shape, with a slightly dingy but full looking pink backpack, which was part of the scene I hadn't processed until more than a block later. He was begging with a girl who looked like his daughter in hand. Whether or not it was actually the case doesn't matter because it looked likely enough that it would have been unreasonable to doubt.
Except I didn't even get that far in my thinking until at least a block away. I was too jaded. Which sucks. I'm bothered even more that none of the Kaiser employees noticed. I'd rather not be in their lemming-like company.
Which makes the NY Times article linked to below all the more apropos. In a global sense, we've cycled back into the 1910's. It's images like these and honest to God economic poverty that drove unionism and charitable progressivism in the 1920's. NYC manholes are smelted in India by men with far less protection than their American counter-parts had 100 years ago. American steel workers lost their jobs in the 1980's because American corporations want their workers to live and work like this, and American workers refused. Can you blame them? So why, then, do unions get a bad rep?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/nyregion/26manhole.html?ex=1353819600&en=42cee12238603ea8&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Day after day for 2 and a half years I've begun and ended my day with a walk through the Tenderloin - one of the most troubled neighborhoods this side of Detroit. Unlike Detroit, the Tenderloin is densely packed, but unless you're an impoverished immigrant, a penniless and probably homeless junkie (the largest contingent), a drug dealer, a prostitute, or a spoiled law student/professor, you have no reason to be there. I am not being hyperbolic when I say that you often have to step over someone shooting up, or passed out, or in some other state to get to the ATM. If you give out change in the 'loin, there's a good chance that it'll just end up in someone's syringe. So I don't.
This guy at the BART station was not in the 'loin, however, but in my home station in Oakland, standing at the bottom of the stairs of the most busy entrance, where Kaiser Permanente (the HMO who's slogan is "Thrive") employees stream past by the hundreds at rush hour. Nor was he obviously a junkie. He was pretty well spoken. He was shoddily dressed, but not "I'm-so-far-gone-I-can't-remember-what-pants-are." More like "hard-times-haven't-been-able-to-afford-new-clothes-for-a-while." His ~10 year old daughter was in similar shape, with a slightly dingy but full looking pink backpack, which was part of the scene I hadn't processed until more than a block later. He was begging with a girl who looked like his daughter in hand. Whether or not it was actually the case doesn't matter because it looked likely enough that it would have been unreasonable to doubt.
Except I didn't even get that far in my thinking until at least a block away. I was too jaded. Which sucks. I'm bothered even more that none of the Kaiser employees noticed. I'd rather not be in their lemming-like company.
Which makes the NY Times article linked to below all the more apropos. In a global sense, we've cycled back into the 1910's. It's images like these and honest to God economic poverty that drove unionism and charitable progressivism in the 1920's. NYC manholes are smelted in India by men with far less protection than their American counter-parts had 100 years ago. American steel workers lost their jobs in the 1980's because American corporations want their workers to live and work like this, and American workers refused. Can you blame them? So why, then, do unions get a bad rep?
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/nyregion/26manhole.html?ex=1353819600&en=42cee12238603ea8&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink