A family day of turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes instead of boring lectures is enough to make any student happy at Thanksgiving. And after the grueling stretch of finals, we can look forward to it again around Christmas.
But there are others who look forward to the holidays for a different reason.
For homeless people, holidays are a time when everybody else suddenly feels more giving.
Charity drives are always more abundant during the holiday season. Food donations are high. Turkey dinners are donated in the hundreds by the Coyotes, Suns and other wealthy corporations. Enough people feel so giving around this time that most homeless folks get some kind of Thanksgiving meal. Many poor and homeless kids also will get some kind of present to open around Christmas.
This is all good. We can feel some kind of collective satisfaction that our society is able to treat its destitute compassionately. Whatever the reason, whether it is holiday goodwill or simply guilt, people are certainly more generous around this time of year.
But there are troubling patterns to our treatment of the homeless elsewhere.
The rest of the year, most Americans pretty much ignore the homeless or pretend they do not exist. It is a social problem that makes many uncomfortable to talk about and deal with as they try to avoid eye contact with the homeless guy on the side of the road. An article from "Mother Jones" this month points out: "Most cities tackle the problem of homelessness by effectively criminalizing it."
The National Coalition for the Homeless recently published a report titled "Illegal to be Homeless: the Criminalization of Homelessness in United the States." According to the report, there is a nationwide pattern of draconian measures being enacted against the homeless.
For example, a church in Milwaukee has been declared a public nuisance for feeding homeless people and allowing them to sleep there. And in Gainesville, Fla., police threatened to arrest college students if they did not stop serving meals to homeless people in a public park.
A separate report published by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty came to similar conclusions: "Recent years have seen a steep rise in the incidence of homelessness ... In response, some cities have adopted laws that 'criminalize' activities associated with homelessness, such as sleeping, sitting or eating in public."
Part of the problem is that society still largely views homeless individuals as lazy or as bums. These stereotypes continue even in the face of hard evidence to the contrary. Today's homeless population is made up of mostly working families with children, the mentally disabled and military veterans.
Keith Michael Barbieux, a middle-aged homeless man, is the creator of www.TheHomelessGuy.net, an Internet blog - the first of its kind - about homeless issues and his experience being homeless. Just like other homeless publications such as "Spare Change News" and "Poor Magazine," he is trying to change the image of homeless people. The message on his Web site is an important one: "There is more to homeless people than being homeless."
On his site, Barbieux discusses his encounters with police: "I've never been ticketed for trespassing, which is the police's favorite means of chastising the homeless ... What is currently happening is the police are giving out not just trespassing tickets but criminal trespassing tickets. These harsher punishments are processed at a court 15 miles away from downtown. Most homeless end up missing their court date due to this. So then, the court issues a warrant for their arrest. Now instead of paying a fine, they also have to do jail time. Lovely."
Lovely indeed.
Somewhere along the line, our societal reaction toward homelessness became cruelty and indifference, instead of compassion. What a paradoxical world we have created, that we donate to the needy with one hand and punish the homeless with the other.
It was encouraging the last few weeks to see so many food drives all around campus. The season of giving should bring out a little joy in everyone.
But oftentimes, a little bit of good news can be used to sugarcoat an otherwise grim situation.
The end of the holiday season will bring New Years' resolutions.
Perhaps it's time we as a society resolve to acknowledge the homeless during all seasons - not just during the holidays.
Ishtiaque Masud is a political science junior. Reach him at ishtiaque.masud@asu.edu.
