2004-11-02
CONDUITS TO SOCIAL CHANGE
I have no intention of being one of those who neither says nor does nothing ¶ 13:54
Moyra wrote me recently with this: "What is your interest in homelessness...? It is not a subject that a great many people gravitate towards" | It got me thinking | Basically, I don't know as I've been asked what motivates me to do the work I do, or even ~ how do I frame my point of view about societal problems | Given the time and context of the question, my response seemed to speak to broader concerns than that which she asked | This is what I wrote back
I have a long standing, very strong, and abiding interest in social justice | With that comes a real awareness of disenfranchised souls, and how society regards and treats them |
In the work I do, I meet many who are far beyond the mainstream, including people with no discernable domicile | My "day job" is, essentially, advocating for people with psychiatric disabilities; listening to, investigatingand working to resolve, grievances from clients who are housed at a maximum security inpatient psychiatric facility | At times, my work takes me beyond the confines of place | No surprise for everyone's lives are intertwined, and thus related |
In this work I've gotten close to people who later went lost | Some who died frozen in empty buildings, or under bushes in a pool of their own body fluids | This summer a man was found drowned | With each one of them, their
loss was great, for, psychically, each of them were rather like family | Not everyone dies | Some remain at the edge of the world, yet trapped with not apparent ability to be released and to once again [or sometimes ~ for the first time in their life] grow |
I don't know as I can say, specificially, what "gravitates me towards" what I do, or even how I think and reflect upon the state of the world right now; homelessness being but one manifestation of gross and cruel injustices heaped upon all of us, not only those with no specific place to live | It is the homeless, however, who perhaps not only bear the brunt of, but live daily with, the manifestations of those injustices |
Aside from that, I really do not fathom or understand why it is that so many people veer away from interacting with people who are clearly not mainstream |
So I write about this, and at times, do photography and painting | The objective being that each of us with even a glimmer of awareness, are thence obligated to try to awaken the rest of society's citizens so that social wrongs might one day be righted | we are, essentially, conduits to social change, and I pray humanity hears whay has to be said, pays heed, and does something about injustice | The failure so to do, not only speaks poorly of society, but of those who know that probelms exist that need be addressed, yet do little or nothing about them |
I have a long standing, very strong, and abiding interest in social justice | With that comes a real awareness of disenfranchised souls, and how society regards and treats them |
In the work I do, I meet many who are far beyond the mainstream, including people with no discernable domicile | My "day job" is, essentially, advocating for people with psychiatric disabilities; listening to, investigatingand working to resolve, grievances from clients who are housed at a maximum security inpatient psychiatric facility | At times, my work takes me beyond the confines of place | No surprise for everyone's lives are intertwined, and thus related |
In this work I've gotten close to people who later went lost | Some who died frozen in empty buildings, or under bushes in a pool of their own body fluids | This summer a man was found drowned | With each one of them, their
loss was great, for, psychically, each of them were rather like family | Not everyone dies | Some remain at the edge of the world, yet trapped with not apparent ability to be released and to once again [or sometimes ~ for the first time in their life] grow |
I don't know as I can say, specificially, what "gravitates me towards" what I do, or even how I think and reflect upon the state of the world right now; homelessness being but one manifestation of gross and cruel injustices heaped upon all of us, not only those with no specific place to live | It is the homeless, however, who perhaps not only bear the brunt of, but live daily with, the manifestations of those injustices |
Aside from that, I really do not fathom or understand why it is that so many people veer away from interacting with people who are clearly not mainstream |
So I write about this, and at times, do photography and painting | The objective being that each of us with even a glimmer of awareness, are thence obligated to try to awaken the rest of society's citizens so that social wrongs might one day be righted | we are, essentially, conduits to social change, and I pray humanity hears whay has to be said, pays heed, and does something about injustice | The failure so to do, not only speaks poorly of society, but of those who know that probelms exist that need be addressed, yet do little or nothing about them |I have no intention of being one of those who neither says nor does nothing ¶ 13:54
