The American Homeless: Invisible in the Land of Milk and Honey
This article about American homelessness was featured in the UK paper The Guardian. (If you’ve never heard of The Guardian before, check it out: it’s a great source of international and American news. Yes, I know, it’s odd that we need to check out British newspapers to learn about America. CNN, with its visibly partisan slant and endless flow of articles about water skiing dogs and love-affairs-turned-deadly, can only inform an educated person for so long.) The article outlines the criticisms recently hurled at the US government by UN housing investigator Raquel Rolnik. “The housing crisis is invisible for many in the US,” Rolnik said. How, she asks, is the US government able to spend billions of dollars bailing out banks and big business while its own citizens are living home-less, smothered by feelings of hopelessness and despair?
Good question.
Through learning about under represented groups of people around the world, people who are invisible in the eyes of the governments charged with protecting them, we can begin to make sense of power’s ability to blind those in power. Before we affect change, we must first absorb the scope of the problems we seek to solve.
Who’s being ignored and why?
Who’s doing the ignoring?
Who benefits when people are left behind?
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To learn more about homelessness in the US, visit the National Alliance to End Homelessness. To begin digging into the site, check out the ‘About Us’ section, and then go to Homelessness 101 and FAQs.
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Note: This post is the first of a series of posts we hope to send out from Invisible Children Uganda (ICU). As expats living in the east African development community, our international staff at ICU work to frame their lives in a global context. They value travel, are insatiably curious about the facets of culture, and know how to adapt to potholes and dust. When they see an article that catches their eye, or when they can’t shake an idea they’ve discussed over dinner, they will post info to the main IC blog through this series.
* Homeless man. Image from Julieharissphotography.com
We watched the video after church today. No, I should say, the video was shown after church today, but unfortunately only a handful of people came to see it. We have recently begun a mission to fix breakfast for some of the homeless in our city. It is difficult to even get someone to go out with me, let alone help prepare the meals. It saddens me that our church has so little interest in the problem of homelessness, especially since people are always talking about how many of “them” there are! I found this article about homelessness in America while clicking around the IC site. Thanks for the work you are doing. I’m joining forces to spread the word, both about Invisible Children in Uganda, as well as Invisible Homeless in America!
Kinda odd to see this posted so close to a fundraiser that was organized by myself and my students for Schools for Schools (San Jacinto Valley Academy for Keyo Secondary). We were working closely with a restaurant to raise money for IC, we had to sell 100 tickets for a pancake breakfast at 10 dollars a piece (5 goes to the restaurant and 5 goes to IC) but we didn’t sell 100, we only sold about 60 ($600 total)…meaning we raised the $500 to have the breakfast but didn’t have the mouths to feed. So another teacher and myself invited a local homeless shelter to the breakfast and we fed about 8 families/40 individuals who are currently homeless…it was a very powerful experience for myself, my students, and helped raise awareness for both causes through some meaningful dialogues…there’s nothing better than good food, good conversations, and good company.