BRATTLEBORO — Terry Ziter describes her experience volunteering at the Brattleboro Overflow Shelter [“A night at the Overflow Shelter,” Voices, Nov. 16]. As she rousts herself from her comfortable bed before her a.m. shift, she muses, “I was never good at night with sick children or nighttime feedings. Why would I choose to do this now?”
After reading Ziter's commentary several times, I have not been able to find her answer.
Given the mainstream discussion sparked by the Occupy Wall Street movement of the incredible disparity of resources between a wealthy few and everyone else the world over (symptoms include increased unemployment, underemployment, and debt for folks in the U.S.), it strikes me as bizarre to see such a monolithic - and inaccurate - portrait of who is homeless in our community.
To read Ziter's article, you might think that all homeless folks are smelly, mentally ill, disgusting addicts with no social connections or meaning in their lives.
To clear things up, many people who do not have homes are working a job (or jobs), have many friends, are clean and sober... the list goes on.
We really need to check ourselves when we think of or share the stereotypes often heaped upon homeless people such as “zombies,” “nasty,” and “ugly” (all words Ziter uses to describe the actions of people in the Overflow Shelter). These words are dehumanizing, reducing people to macabre characters in someone's nightmare or a simplistic TV special.
What was the point of the article? To arouse pity so that more well-meaning people with resources are inspired to volunteer in order to bear witness to the supposed cesspool that is the Overflow Shelter?
Don't get me wrong: I am not denying the realities that come with not having a consistent place to live - for example, yes, if you don't have access to a shower or washing machine, you might smell bad.
However, many of us who have worked alongside people who don't have access to things like food, clothing, and shelter see the dignity in all people and their experiences.
When we work alongside homeless people, for instance, or people struggling to find consistent housing, we are not driven by pity but by the belief that all people have an inherent right to housing and other life-sustaining things. We believe people have a right to dignity.
Furthermore, we try to understand people's stories and lives as linked to bigger structural problems that we wish to change.
For those of us drawn to helping to provide services for folks, we choose to go beyond service to question the political and economic conditions that have led people to be where they are. We can work, with people most affected by these conditions, to change the way society is set up so that everyone can get their needs met.
As activist Ricardo Levins Morales said, “If you give me a fish, you have fed me for a day. If you teach me to fish, you have fed me until the river is contaminated or the shoreline seized for development. But if you teach me how to organize, then whatever the challenge I can join together with my peers and we will fashion our own solution.”