Tent City Downtown

There were tent cities before the stock market crashed. I remember visiting Baltimore with a group in graduate school and getting a tour of the historic district from one of the city officials. This particular official took us by an encampment on our way back to the city hall. He talked about how sympathetic he was to the homeless, but then talked about what a "problem" these people present to tourism. I remember looking over at the small, quiet encampment and thinking, "What problem?"

The current most talked about tent city is probably the one in Sacramento. NPR interviewed someone about it the other day who also talked about being sympathetic, but then in the next sentence said that Sacramento needed to adopt a "zero tolerance policy" against these encampments. Frankly, these city officials who can go from being sympathetic to intolerant in one breath strike me as a bit slimy. I read on a certain website recently that the tent city folks in Sacramento "are offered shelters but they are receiving SSI and DO NOT want to go to a shelter where they'd have to NOT drink and dope up. All their friends are in the homeless camps and they have the freedom to be as degenerate as they want. The shelters have rules and regulations on behavior, which is such a bummer, man." Riiiighhht. Even if that were true, I honestly can't blame a guy for preferring the freedom of living in his own tent to sharing a bunk in a shelter. I know I would probably go for the tent myself. This idea of land ownership, that this land belongs to the city and therefore the citizens have no right to live on it, is one that honestly bothers me. I understand the need for land ownership in some ways, but there is something about it that has always annoyed me. Doesn't this planet belong to all of us equally? I've always felt like there should be a way to opt out. I'm not saying these folks in Sacramento are opting out--many of them are not there by choice--but I don't see the problem with tent cities aside from the fact that it means we are not as neighbors providing viable alternatives to people on hard times. I wonder what would happen if cities made official encampment areas, installed public showers and restrooms, hired security guards, and let people who needed to camp there for free. It burns me up to no end that most people who oppose tent cities do so because they are "unsightly." Poor, poor you. It must be really hard to have to have to witness poverty from the comfort of your SUV or scotch-guarded sofa.

I was talking to our cousin recently about how we need to acknowledge the ugly and the negative in ourselves and the world. We both feel like optimism has a place, but we get frustrated when optimism crowds out realism, when it prevents us from being honest with ourselves about what we are experiencing or what is happening in the world. Bishop Robinson, in a prayer that was sadly not broadcast prior to Obama's inauguration concert, really spoke to this need for honesty. People were outraged, not so much at the fact that a gay bishop gave the prayer, but because his prayer was so "negative" at a time when people felt there was only room for the positive. But I loved the prayer, because it really touched on the things that motivate many of us to live the way we live, although we can always do better. Here is an excerpt:

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.