One thing I'll never get over is how much street folk desperately need to be seen as human. Today a recently beaten fellow asked me for a coffee, but what happened next was the heartbreaker. As I was making eye contact, his eyes welled up & he apologized. For what? He said for burdening me, because it was his fault he'd been beaten, because he'd said bad words. Just meeting him human to human was enough to spark his shame. He limped off then like so many: in need of therapy that will never come.
that's so heavy. poor guy. street life is brutal and getting more so.
Agreed. It's honestly not surprising how much people have been talking about wiping out whole ethnic groups as of late... because that's exactly the same rhetoric applied to rising unhoused populations in places like LA. One day you're in a house, the next day you're evicted and lumped in with a whole group of "dangerous" people who need to be removed ASAP so that there's no risk to everyone else's property values.
We lose our humanity so easily under duress. Lots of work to be done.
yes, it's building up to be a bloodshed situation. i'm concerned by what's happening in Sweden, as a sign of the times.
I'm annoyingly pragmatic about situations like this, so I keep pointing out that if people *really* want to reduce the immigration rate (& with it, the struggle over cultural collisions), their best bet would be aggressively pushing for climate change reform ASAP. Refugeeism and other mass migrations aren't going to stop until resource wars exacerbated by climate crisis diminish. But anti-immigrant activists don't want their taxes going to international relief, so... ethnic war it is!
Again, ever more succinctly said. :) Thank you, holon.
@MLClark
yes, i agree. we are producing the problems those people are having to flee. economically and environmentally, not to mention politically. wtf does one expect?