“You say they’re people, they’re not people. They don’t have the same rights as we do.”
You might expect to hear something like that in some oppressed third world country, but the truth is, those statements were made at a recent meeting of residents and business owners in the affluent Rosemary District of Sarasota, Florida, where residents and business owners are frustrated with the homeless population in their community. Another attendee said, “We need a legal way to arrest these people for overtaking our neighborhood.”
Thomas Rebman of Homeless and Hungry lived homeless on the streets of Sarasota last year, as well as in nine other Florida cities, and in cities across the United States early this year. Rebman says that these attitudes are not unique to just the Sarasota community: “The dehumanizing attitude represented at this meeting can be seen in the actions of not just residents, but also local governments. We criminalize the homeless every chance we get. Until empathy is fostered and cities take on a housing first approach, this mentality will continue.”
Rebman is right. We used to wage war against poverty; now we wage it against the poor, as if they are to blame for their plight. Blaming the poor for their poverty is like lauding the rich for hiding their money overseas so they don’t have to pay taxes—shake their hand and clap them on their back for their ingenuity. The homeless man caught stealing food to feed his family must serve jail time; but those on Wall Street and in the banking industry responsible for the collapse of a nation’s economy not only were never held accountable, they kept their jobs and today continue to reap obscene bonuses.
Bernie Sanders: “There is something profoundly wrong when we have a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires at the same time as we have the highest childhood poverty rate of any developed country on earth.”
More Sanders: “Let me be as clear as I can be: There is something profoundly wrong when today, the top one-tenth of one percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom ninety percent.”
Corporate America continues to off-shore jobs to cut expenses, and the wealthy label the poor as lazy. The average American today earns nearly five thousand dollars less annually than they did five years ago, and they’re working harder for their dollar.
Donald Trump: “The American Dream is dead.”
Say what you will about Trump, he, like Sanders, has tapped into one of the real issues facing this country.
There is nothing wrong with capitalism; but heed 1 Timothy 6:10: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
“They’re not people. They don’t have the same rights as we do.”
Really? Those comments, that attitude, can only inflame the animosity between the classes, widen the gap between the haves and the have nots.
A line has been drawn in the sand. What happens next might determine the future of this nation.
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