Blue Milk Wrote:
my already stated views:
if they choose to be homeless, that's fine, but the last thing they need to do is beg for the pity of the public. if you're going to be homeless then pick a spot and stay there and don't beg for a few cents everytime someone walks by. i'm positive that they are able of getting a satisfactory job, especially in richmond. i see job opportunities all the time. the only thing that homeless people are successful at is trying to make people feel bad for them.
Don't you think that there is a difference between pan-handling and being homeless?
Many homeless people, men in particular, suffer from mental disorders. Essentially, they are forgotten people. Their situation is often times perpetuated because people mindlessly just hand them some change or a couple dollars which will never get them anywhere. Someone has to take the time to help a "bum" which I assume we are talking about, and not someone who simply does not have a home.
It's not always just a choice. Thinking it's all about choice is reducing all exterior factors to nothing. Thinking in such a way is narrow in scope and a sweeping generalization. I have sympathy, just like most people do, on the people who have had and are still experiencing tough lives. Lives a lot tougher than working for my asshole boss or being 26 and living with my parents. Each decision and event in someone's life is linked to the next, generally speaking, and to dismiss a group because you think that they choose to be that way is denying that fact that they may have had experiences in life, like being a horribly cared for Vietnam vet or addictions or being born into destitute families, etc. that influence where they are now.
Sure, some homeless people may have decided that life is just easier begging for money. However, even those people deserve the chance for something better. I applaud anyone who takes the time to work with men and women in this situation. Those on this board who are social workers or who have done so in the past will tell you that life is not simply one decision but it is a culmination of decisions that sometimes land you in jail, in a nice school, dead, as the next Steven Spielberg, or as your average white hates his job but has 2.5 kids and a pickett fence male. [sorry for the predisposition toward men in this post -- obviously I do not believe that a woman can become a white male based on a culmination of decisions. Although possible, it's not what I am trying to communicate.

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Everyone deserves a chance to be heard, a chance to live better, forgiveness. Certainly they do not, at least ideally, deserve to be questioned by cops because they happen to be carrying around two trashbags with stuff in them on Christmas Eve (this happened today--in my small town), for example.
Some could say that the very thing that you think is reason to forget them and not have sympathy for them is what you are doing by claiming that it's just a choice. It's like you're saying that it's just easier to be mad at some homeless person asking you for money than to actually try and help the person or find out why they are where they are and how they got there. You've given up on them, and that's the easy thing to do. This way you can rant about how they are selfish and lazy, when ironically, your reasoning is kind of an example of how you're selfish and lazy.