Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Homelessness

Today’s blog is a bit off-topic from my normal ones. I’ve written several stories, none published although I have posted them to my group, that revolve around or feature characters who live on the streets, especially teens. When my son was growing up he met, became friends with and sometimes brought home several homeless teens. They would stay with us on and off when they needed a place to crash for a day or three. Most of them respected the chance to have a warm place, safe place for a brief time. One didn’t and…well that’s neither here nor there.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. In Denver there’s a newspaper called the Denver Voice which is sold on the street by homeless vendors. I pick up a copy as often as possible. This month’s issue has to do with hatred, hatred primarily aimed at LGBT people. If you are interested in reading some of the articles they can be found at - http://www.denvervoice.org/featuresnews/ One article in particular, ‘Respect My Pronouns’, talks about being bullied in school. (http://www.denvervoice.org/featuresnews/2011/4/1/respect-my-pronouns.html)

The video (below) tells a bit about the newspaper itself and the people who are vendors as well as those responsible for its being published

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"Denver Voice mission: to facilitate a dialogue addressing the roots of homelessness by telling stories of people whose lives are impacted by poverty and homelessness and to offer economic, educational and empowerment opportunities for the impoverished community."

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this.

    My brother went through a lot of bullying at school. It seemed like everyone but him (and my mom) knew he was gay from the time he was about two years old; and the bullying seemed to make things worse for him. He struggled not only with his feelings but with the bullying itself, and him being at a private school made it all that much worse. For them, being gay was an abomination and even the teachers and administration jumped on the bullying bandwagon.

    He almost flunked out of school too and stayed home a lot. My mom always did coddle him a lot more than she should (and still does), but I know that a lot of times when he stayed home it was because of the treatement he'd gotten the day before or he was trying to avoid something he knew would cause the bullying and name-calling to be worse.

    I can't see why people are filled with such hate. I'm kind of persona non grata at our church (not that I go often) because of the arguments I make. How can people claim they have a religion of love and peace and how can they condemn the hate and bullying of some groups and not afford that unconditional love and acceptance to all.

    Again, thanks for sharing.

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  2. People hate, some of them anyways, because it makes them feel superior, the 'I'm better than you are' syndrome even when deep down they know that they aren't, or more that they themselves are low man on the totem pole and want to be certain there's someone even lower than they are.

    Ergo they find someone who's 'different' and pour out their hate and frustration on them, be they a different race, religion, social class (i.e. the homeless) or sexual persuasion from what they view as 'right'. Then, if they're adults, they drum this into their kids as well. It's a vicious circle that's hard to break I'm afraid.

    It's been the cause of innumerable wars, suicides and more. I just hope that there will be a day in the future when people begin to see that hatred harms not only others but themselves as well and learn to embrace love instead. Until that happens I'm afraid there may be no cure.

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