THIS AND THAT… UPDATE

After a celebration with snowy egrets… bright and beautiful on the river today.

Yesterday I described my worry about a very drunk/sick man in weeds by the river… and about my decision not make a 911 call.  This morning I went back to the place where the guy lay in the weeds.  I found him today, obviously very hung over and almost certainly unaware that I had been there yesterday.  He and two companions were trying to be alive for another homeless day. With my little point-and-shoot camera held (I hoped inconspicuously) in my hand on the right handlebar, I got a picture of one of them walking just after he had climbed up from their camp under a tree.  I got a picture of an older man sitting as if meditating with his back again the trunk of the tree.  I wondered if he might be the father of the others. Holding unsteadily onto a post, the guy who had been very drunk yesterday was relieving himself down by the water. I decided I didn’t need a picture of that. I also decided there was nothing I could say or do that would change anything, so I rode on.

I went to a Police Station and asked what I should have done yesterday.  I was told that I should be very careful in that area by the river, especially early or late in the day.  The desk officer told me there have been a couple of instances of ambush… someone pretends to be hurt; a biker stops, and a couple of other people come out to join "the guy pretending to be hurt; and they rob the biker and take the bike off into the river bottom.  The guy yesterday wasn't part of that kind of scheme, obviously.  He was just very drunk.  The problem of lawlessness, perhaps to survive, coupled with homelessness creates an unsettling problem. How does one determine when to help and how to help?  

My friend Taylor is right in suggesting that the problem is systemic… that we must find ways to address it nationally… at a political level. The basic problem is poverty.  Many of these people who are homeless are mentally ill, therefore, they can't work, which throws them into poverty.  Many others are folks who grew up in dirt-poor families which means substandard everything… including deprived home environment, inadequate nutrition, and ineffective education.  I was teaching in California in 1967 when Ronald Reagan was elected Governor.  He had made a campaign promise to lower taxes; so in his first week in office he summarily closed immediately all the outpatient mental health clinics in the State. The only way a mentally ill person could get treatment was for the family to be able to afford private care or to be committed to a state residential mental hospital, and mental health programs in mental hospitals were cut dramatically. That was the beginning of the burgeoning homelessness of mentally ill people who weren’t receiving any treatment whatsoever because they couldn't afford private treatment and they refused to self-commit to inpatient state hospitals for the mentally ill. The state has never really got over Reagan.  Other states followed his example, so it became to some extent a national problem.  Reagan did nothing to address mental health issues when he was President.  As a matter of fact, he did nothing to solve the general health problems of the country.  His policies were aimed at privatizing all programs that were related to health. It was then and still is a disaster.