On homelessness and power—drawing from/reflecting on my work on ASH.
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It’s August 2016 and we’re arguing about it for the first time.
Mom: Every homeless person chooses it.
Me: Nobody chooses homelessness—it’s forced on them.
I was born into privilege, complete with grand piano and personal computers, king’s feasts and state-of-the-art education. And I’ve been lucky to have the means and permission to pursue some answers—speaking with dozens of the poorest in my community.
It’s uncomfortable. I’ve been pushed to realize that I will, actually, be an adult someday, and will have to make choices to shape my future for good—and part of life is choosing incessantly how to live. As Michael, salt-bearded sinewy black man, said: “From the time we wake up, to the time we go to sleep—[life is] a series of choices. Some will be the right choices; some will be wrong.” He made the choices that landed him in prison. “And when it [doesn’t] turn out to be the right choice, try to learn from it.” He made the choices that brought him out in half-time with a Commercial Driving License, veterinary training, and all the education he could squeeze. One thing we all generally share with the homeless is the ability to choose—to make small, specific decisions. The difference for me is the breadth of my options: white or wheat, ballet or dinner with friends, AP Physics or AP Chem, in-state or out-of-state college, journalism or law? Power is the ability to make increasingly complicated choices.
My mistake in the first place, then, was ascribing to the homeless such clear-cut power. Do you choose homelessness? It’s like asking if you choose wealth. There’s an element of luck. There’s the fact that any situation is made up of a plurality of choices, not all by the person living it. For me: did I choose innate privilege? No: I’m lucky for my born-into advantage. But my born-into advantage was actually created by both the choices and the luck of my parents. So when Allen—scabbed-chin stick-figure black man—claimed complete control, I wondered. He owns a home but rents it out to fund his drug habit: “I’m homeless by choice,” he said. And maybe that’s true, and maybe it’s a function of his drug addiction, a function of the prison time that left his eyes dead, a function of his environment and upbringing, a function of where and how he was born.
So it’s true that calling the homeless ‘underprivileged’ is an oversimplification—sometimes it is their own specific choices that help render them helpless. But study the background. Because otherwise—or at the same time—it really is due to bad luck and lack of silver-platter privilege. Then, it’s on the powerless to want to make the choices to better themselves. And many do want. They want so hard it hurts. And so little power does not imply little responsibility. Instead, the least powerful bear both their responsibilities to others and increased responsibilities for themselves.
For example: Alex. When I approach him on November 13, 2016, it’s to ask if I can help plate lunch at the food tent. He looks ‘ordinary’—no overstuffed backpack, cleaner and better-dressed than I am. He’s extremely friendly, his voice emphatic and slightly Spanish-tinged. We talk on the roadside—I find out he’s actually homeless. “Hygiene is very important out here,” he says. “There’s one thing about being homeless, and there’s another thing about taking care of yourself while you’re homeless.” Basic necessities first. Small and specific. “You can do it, but you gotta want it. Nothing’s coming to you hands-free,” he says. Every morning, he hikes to a sports center to take a shower, then hunts for the quarters to wash his set of clothes. Every Sunday, he stashes free waters and sandwiches for the week. And after every hospital visit, he ignores their directives and works anyway. For the homeless who want out—it takes twice the sweat simply to live.
And so it takes an even bigger chest to do good unto each other. Among the homeless, the responsibilities are gorgeous. Alex brushes his girlfriend’s hair. Ken, cheeky middle-aged black man, laughs more than he speaks anyway—he left a plate of hard-won food on a chair at the ARCH, came back to find another man eating, but: “I knew that he was hungry. So I let him have it.” Ramero sends money constantly to his mother in Houston, better off than he is; Joe afforded a motel room one night, let a stranger homeless man sleep in, and squeezed forgiveness when he stole his IDs; Deborah took in a couple at her new duplex, and conversed calmly when they stole her metal tools. When temporarily granted with a little power, they help each other when they can.
Or, they steal licenses and hammers—they take, they hurt each other. It’s October 30, 2016, and I’m leaning against a heart-scrawled concrete pillar, breaking for Dana—beaten thrice about the head by her alcoholic husband—when a soft tap on my shoulder. Nawin grips me. When he pulls away, I see the blood-red bruises on his cheekbones, crescents under his eye bags. His lip trembles with his eyes. He mumbles that he was beaten up a few nights ago by two black men. Someone had taken power over him. He asks me where it’s safe to sleep in Austin, and now of all times, I don’t know what to say.
But I see this: at its most primal, power is physical. Homeless people, desperate or apathetic, can take power through violence. It’s immediate. And since we naturally want nothing more than to rise to the top by some same mystical force that brings all others down—it’s effective. For a moment, anyway. Power gained through physical force is somewhat of a quick-fix, and between people of very little power, it represents a desperate breakdown of responsibility.
But between people of different statuses—what then? It’s October 2, 2016, and I’m visiting Church Under the Bridge again: and I feel powerful. I stand in the back of the parking lot, surveying the clatter of yellowed round tables and rusting chairs—the heads craning downward to eat, twisting in conversation, or fixing forward at the speaker—my arms crossed. The power ascribed to me isn’t physical. It’s socioeconomic. Soon I meet Nawin, a Nepali, probably in his forties. Lanky, in sagging jeans and a dark blue sweater, sparse dark hair cramped by a dusty blue cap. His skin’s an ashen chestnut hue, hard, sheened over with oil. Staring far-off, he says his bank card and green card have been stolen, and with them, his roof and his ability to work. Midway through our conversation, he asks me for bus-fare money, eyes scrunched with shame. And I realize that I handle a very real power over him. I have the means to pay his entire green card re-application fee. I have the car, or fare, to drive him to and from Salvation Army to see his caseworker. Yet here I am, sixteen years old, sitting next to a forty-year-old man on a curb. Though he may wield the physical power, I hold the financial. Though he has immediate strength in the present, I have this potent power for the future. Because I could effectively solve his homelessness issue—he craves security again, but he all he lacks is the money and thus the power to choose security again. My status makes me dangerous to hurt and advantageous to befriend. And so he chooses instinctively not to use violence, in a responsibility to himself and his own overall future, and in a basic human responsibility to me.
So in the case of homelessness, it’s valid to say that money is an elementary part of power. Money represents the means by which independence can be sought, the basic needs of living fulfilled, and dignity, to a certain extent, achieved. Money represents the tangible ability to make decisions—to buy a house, to drink, to choose the color of one’s clothing. And so it also represents the easiest avenue for the loss or inherent lack of privilege. I know this: when I begin working, I’ll be choosing to build from a base of privilege. The homeless have little, and, choose as hard as they might, build from little—and that lack of a buffer makes living so volatile. You can choose to work for money but you can’t control it when you lose your ID and your job, or when your mother falls sick in Houston under your financial responsibility, or when your husband buys himself more whiskey with your coin—or even, to an extent, when drugs drench your mantra. It’s choice and it’s luck. So beyond anything, it’s striking when the homeless take more generous risks, shoulder heavier responsibilities, than those with so much more room for error.
It’s 2017, and I’m looking around at many of us, the more-lucky. We confine ourselves to our levels of power, gazing forward or up, never glancing down—recognizing our luck and relishing the fruits of our choices. Or even, we remember wrong: we give ourselves credit for our privilege, believing somewhere that our pure luck was created by our own sheer will. And then we’re smug. If you want money, you work for it—literally. If you want power, you put on your big-boy pants and seize it. Get a job, you bum. We nurse ambition as a sorry substitute for empathy. Or—we feel so uncertain or apathetic that we say, and do, nothing. We prefer not to think about it. That’s easy, safe, and fair to ourselves. And these make the grossest neglect of the powerless without choice.
Ultimately, we owe the less-powerful the ability to choose up. When we have the power of choice, we have the responsibility to do what we can to establish it for others. So we foster a healthy empathy and look for ways to exercise choice toward a fairer hierarchy of power. We recognize our own luck in flux, humble. We look down regularly to remind ourselves, but also we reach down to grasp hands—talking frankly, exposing roots, and using what power we have for good.
And when it’s outside anyone’s control, when it’s more-or-less up to luck, we use our chests. The least we can do is love—guilt-free, mindful. The least we can do is listen.
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Comment below with thoughts/objections/reflections!
Chao,
Isabella – 4/19/17