When we see the homeless on the streets of our city, failing and vulnerable, we see our own failure and our own vulnerability, our own guilt for failing to care for them.
These are things we don't want to see. These are things that frighten and shame us. So what do we do?
We strike out at the victims.
We call them names.
We decry them for defecating in the streets and leaving needles in the park, without bothering to ask ourselves what public policies brought them to such a degraded position.
And having properly demonized them in this way, we try desperately to get rid of them, to get them out of sight.
I am not entirely unsympathetic to the broad-brush plight of the homeless, though this sort of burbling piffle certainly taxes my patience. It's the language of victimology, spun through a funhouse mirror. How the hell does someone who deals drugs, shoots up in the park, and takes a fucking dump on the sidewalk count as a "victim"?
How about the taxpayers, hm? What about the person who owns a small business, has their hands full just running that and dealing with customers, inventory, taxes, employees, slow sales cycles and such, and the drunk asshole harassing potential customers for money right outside the door? How about the person who gets up every morning, goes to a job they hate so that they can keep a roof over their head and support a family, and has to step around people fighting or sleeping near their doorstep? How about a family that wants to take their kids to a park to barbecue some burgers and play frisbee, and not watch people sleep and shoot up and have sex? Aren't those people victims?
Human rights and dignity are obviously important, indeed vital to every individual's functional stability, and thus to the people whom we affect. A variety of programs have been attempted in San Francisco, for years, with very little to show for it. I feel somewhat unencumbered by not having to belabor this "we are all perfect images of God" stuff. Some people, I'm sorry to say, are just no damned good, as the prophet John Mellencamp pointed out eons ago.
Strolling over to a 7-Eleven in her Outer Sunset neighborhood to buy a candy bar in the wee hours of the morning of Nov. 21, the 26-year-old German exchange student noticed Robert Hancock, a 23-year-old drifter from Iowa. Hancock - who "has no permanent local address," according to the police - looked pretty bedraggled. Rucker felt sorry for him and, on an impulse, decided to buy him something to eat.
Hancock reportedly accepted the food, but began to follow Rucker. He tried to talk to her, but Rucker, who is more comfortable speaking German, says she had trouble understanding him.
Unprovoked, Hancock allegedly grabbed her and tried to pull her toward Ocean Beach. Police say she screamed and fought him, which is when he allegedly pulled a knife and stabbed her in the wrist, neck, thigh, abdomen and chin - wounds that would send her to the hospital for a week.
Luckily, her screams attracted neighbors who called the police. Sgt. Fitz Wong and Officer Jarome Winesberry responded, located Hancock, and after what Taraval police Capt. Paul Chignell calls "a violent struggle," he was subdued. The officers found a bloody knife in Hancock's pocket, police say.
Now, this woman gets no points for common sense by trudging alone to an urban 7-11 "to buy a candy bar in the wee hours of the morning". That's not terribly bright. But what sort of a person bums food from someone and then tries to forcibly rape them? I suppose he now has plenty of time to think about that, but what brings this character all the way out from Iowa? The knowledge that in Frisco, they'll give you three squares and make the taxpayers feel bad about it? That there are people whose sole raisin detree is to "advocate" for your right to free shit?
We know very well what will work: more housing, more public mental health and substance abuse centers, more job training programs.
Well hell, while they're at it, they can come on over and raid my refrigerator, drink my beer, and fuck my sister. And come on, "job training" basically means teaching people how to dress and be punctual; we're not talking about enhancing skill sets for that tech career you always wanted to bounce into if the crack-head thing don't pan out.
I don't have a problem with spending tax dollars to offer these people an opportunity to get their shit together. But there are already plenty of those sorts of programs for people who really want it, and if those programs are going to be ramped up, it should come out of somewhere else in the budget. I have my own family to support, and it's hard enough as it is.
At some point, we are going to have to choose between our oil-guzzling empire and a more comprehensive social safety net; we cannot have both guns and butter. And this would be a fine use of the peace dividend, to push the homeless into something better than a life in the gutter, and returning quality of life to the people who actually live and play by the rules.
In the meantime, trying to guilt-trip people for being tired of syringes in sandboxes and doo-doo in doorways is just insulting and tiresome, and is not going to change the minds of people who work just so they can share in the bien pensant squalor. It is not "irrational" or "misdirected" for people to just be sick and goddamned tired of this sort of behavior. Perhaps the good rabbi can grant these sacred children of God sanctuary in his synagogue. Problem solved.
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