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Losing our Humanity
By Shannon Clark
Photo
by Franco Folini
I have lived in big cities for roughly the past two decades, since I left the comfort
of the Village of Oak Park to go to college at the University of Chicago in 1991. In Oak Park there is great economic diversity,
families on welfare and families who buy every child a Rolls Royce as a 16th birthday present, but while there is some homelessness
it is relatively speaking quite limited and for the most part unseen.
Since moving to San Francisco, however, every
single day of my life since I have been solicited for a handout at least once, usually many more times than that. Sure, the
occasional day I never venture forth is an exception, but it all averages out, other days I’ll be asked for change a
dozen times in a few blocks.
Here in San Francisco there is a vastly larger, more visible homeless population than
in Chicago. Chicago has many homeless, however, the sheer brutality of Chicago’s winters as well as the stifling heat
of the worst of Chicago’s summers combine to limit the numbers of year round homeless in Chicago, though there are many
and they find ways to survive. In San Francisco, however, it seems that most doorways in the relatively flatter parts of the
city are claimed by a homeless person, plus there are encampments (I’ve been told) in many of the parks and water reclamation
districts. In part this is probably due to the relatively better weather in San Francisco, sleeping outside here while certainly
not pleasant is less life threatening than in Chicago.
Observing myself the constant presence of homeless has made
me colder, less open to engaging with a stranger in conversation, my eyes and body try to avoid contact. I seek to minimize
confrontation in countless small ways as I walk down the street and when I am confronted, when I am approached, I turn cynical,
cold and being brutally honest with myself, rude. I make gestures, look away, walk away, try to disengage.
This
does not make me proud, in my better moments. I try to check myself. To make eye contact. To see my fellow humans. To at a
minimum... smile, nod and acknowledge their presence and existence. To show regret that I can’t give money. To give
what I can when I can (leftovers, food, money if I can spare it). But with often dozens of encounters in just a few short
minutes of walking through San Francisco, these are exceptions.
Shannon Clark blogs at the following sites: http://shannonclark.wordpress.com
http://slowbrand.com
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