Debating Richard Aleman and two others on food line ups for the poor

Richard Aleman:

Next article for Gilbert Magazine: The Banishment of Agapē

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry: “Feeding people on the street is not hygienic, it's not sanitary, it's not good for their health.”
Starving isn't good for their health, Ms. Perry.

Have you considered one possibility: one can feed them/us otherwise than "on the street"?

BD:

No, but you see, if they starve, they go away and people like Ms Perry don't have to look at them

Richard Aleman:

Hans, organizations do offer indoor food sharing but it does not reach many urban poor who are often in other parts of the city. Outreach programs help access the poor and also establish rapport with them. This is a tool local governments could use to decrease homelessness and poverty. Working with these groups has been beneficial in places like Fort Myers, where gov't works with local food banks (instead of working against them).
That's exactly right, Brian.

France is like Fort Myers. It has its ups, it has its downs.

AA:

Since when is street food too dangerous for the public? It's okay for a man to sell hotdogs out of a cart, shouldn't a soup line be okay?

Richard Aleman:

I'm wrapping up my article - but briefly, I've researched restrictions popping up all over the U.S.A. Miami, Orlando, Denver, Cleveland, Atlanta, Myrtle Beach, Vegas, Nashville, and many others.

In Winter, Soupe de St Eustache is usually an option for good food. Even so, once I saw a fist-fight, once I got insulted by a Slav I did not know. Several times I see drunk men and each time a lot of waste plastic is not being thrown away in bins by us ourselves.

AA, hotdog sellers usually do not deal with 400 people during 1 h, and most of their customers do not know each other, do not fight each other, are not drunk when trying to buy a hot dog, or if so, at least have style for being drunk.

Richard Aleman:

Hans, I read complaints about trash. The solution: the city could provide more trash bins.

No, no, no.

The "customers" may have ten trash bins before them, some won't use them.

BD:

Or just have an incentive program for each bowl, whatever you turn in you get $0.10 or something. That will get picked up quick.

It is for some a question of fatigue, for others a question of drunkenness ... and not all will even get to the 10 c either. Besides if in plastic that would be just another expense of it all.

I use trash bins, but only about nine times out of ten. And i am one of the sober ones.

AA:

I was surprised to find out that a county down the coast also has made it illegal to 'panhandle'. Their ordinance does say that standing/sitting still and holding a sign doesn't count, but they still crackdown on people for it. We get calls as well, which the deputies normally handle by checking warrants, cautioning them about getting in dangerous traffic, and offering a ride to our Rescue Mission.

Hans-Georg - we've got different expectations here about hospitality and the poor. There are reasons that people fight. Customers 'have style'? I've done charity, and I've done food service - paying customers definitely aren't 'better people' - some of the worst I've met were ordering and paying.

Sitting/standing still with sign doesn't count? God Bless them for that law! Better than France!

Here that is two months prison (in theory) "agressive" - with dog or walking after - three months.

And when two people start pushing each other on that trottoir - sidewalk - some passers by are shoved as well.

Some paying customers may stink, but in a hotdog business there are often not five of them at eight o clock each evening.

"stink" as far as behaviour is concerned, I am not talking about smell.


AA:

Never been to an American city, eh? ;-)

Not since age nine.

My favourite hospitality is the one given me by a particular.

BD:

if begging gets you 2-3 months in prison, why can't France deal with the Gypsies? On top of what ever punishments lying and conning and stealing get you.

BD, notice the "in theory". Application is sporadic. Police and guards prefer just telling you to go.

Still - AA: I would be surprised if 5 people at eight o'clock returned evening after evening and behaved badly. At three o' clock weekend mornings, that is another matter.

Or even eleven o'clock, some evenings.

I repeat: my favourite charity is the one given by particulars.

And of course, the punishments for begging, and the punishments for ordering others to beg, DO increase the lies and cons. Selling homeless papers over price, collecting for a center for the handicapped ... two cons gipsies do here in Paris.

‎"organizations do offer indoor food sharing but it does not reach many urban poor who are often in other parts of the city."

Same goes for food distributions

BD:

Yep, they are vile. And the stupid American tourists think they are for real and support their lifestyle. Which only makes sure they will teach the immoral way of life to their kids.

AA:

Hans-Georg - I managed an upscale espresso bar for a few years in a major American city. We had dozens of the most obnoxious people I've ever met who returned multiple times a day to demand, berate, belittle, scream, whine, throw tantrums and threaten. Baby wants candy, and they want it now.

I grew up in a ministry family as well (who worked in the US, Senegal, Nigeria, Togo, Benin, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Cameroun, UK, and else.) Our experience is that most of the poor are quite grateful for help *if* they are treated with dignity. Yes, we ran across some 'stinkers' - but that sort of behavior often comes from previous trauma, substance abuse, or even demonic oppression. If the men are fighting on the street because they are homeless, hungry, and drunk - odds are that the *drunk* part is related to the violence, and not the other two conditions. There are 'helps' for all of those conditions as well - and we should have those resources available to those who have abuse, trauma, mental/emotional illness, or spiritual oppression. And, of course, we have Christ's commands to us regardless of the condition of the fields, or what we think of the work.

@ BD: Vile? No.

I do give money when gipsies beg honestly, when I have some coins left I have no use for.

@ AA: "dozens of the most obnoxious people I've ever met who returned multiple times a day to demand, berate, belittle, scream, whine, throw tantrums and threaten"

- you have seen them, then, each time. The other customers have not. Except that one time.

In a food queue the stinkers turn up at same time.

"Our experience is that most of the poor are quite grateful for help *if* they are treated with dignity."

Yes. MOST. And one question of dignity with me is trying to avoid those other few as often as possible.

"Yes, we ran across some 'stinkers' - but that sort of behavior often comes from previous trauma, substance abuse, or even demonic oppression."

No doubt. But the explanations do not make their company pleasant for the other ones who eat while getting ulcers from listening.

‎"There are 'helps' for all of those conditions as well - and we should have those resources available to those who have abuse, trauma, mental/emotional illness, or spiritual oppression."

Even if not wanted?

That will get the distribution feared and avoided by some.

‎"And, of course, we have Christ's commands to us regardless of the condition of the fields, or what we think of the work."

The command is to feed the poor. Not necessarily to do so on the street at a fixed hour.

Indeed, that may have been part of Pharisaic hypocrisy.

AA:

Yes, the other customers do that in front of, and to each other. Sometimes the police have to be called. Nothing like watching two wealthy women fight over a 'rice krispy treat'. I suppose it changes one's views. (Though, I was always taught 'poor folks have poor ways, and rich folks damn mean ones' - so I was never surprised.)

As for mental illness on the street - I cannot speak for your jurisdiction, but that used to not be the case here in the USA. As part of the cultural shift of the 60s-70s along with the Sexual Revolution there also came the dismantling of the traditional helps for those who were disturbed. That was seen as 'limiting their rights', however, and the solution was that the mentally ill (and demonic possessed) were simply dumped on our streets. I don't know if France came to it the same way, or if it goes further back to the Revolution. But here - that is part of the larger problem. However, especially in our present economy, the great bulk of the homeless are *not* dealing with anything more than the trauma of loosing their livelihood and property, being sick, and the stresses related to keeping themselves and their families together.

But a line up is not a question of how the majority behave or how the mean behaviour is: it is a question of how the worst behave.

And how about not just testing the food next time, by eating same before or after, but taking turns eating during the line up to feel what it is like to eat when that happens. Not one evening, when you may be lucky, but evenings of one week on a row.

Mornings, the personnel of one breakfast do eat with us. But that is one breakfast a week. And breakfasts are always (or nearly so) better than evening line ups.

And it is not a question of understanding either. There are conditions of fatigue and hunger under which one man may understand oh so well what is going on with the other one, but will still not be anything but traumatised BY THAT BEHAVIOUR, and UNDER THAT LINE UP.

I did actually walk away from a sermon held by a priest who took the feeding of the four thousand or the five thousand as an example of how to give alms. Because obviously it was not. Christ did not make these people come there to feed them, they came to hear. And he fed them while they were together, because they were together anyway.

I do consider the bishop of Paris a heretic in moral theology even for the fact of - at least back then - preaching not to give directly to poor but only or foremost to organisms.

It was one at Église St Laurent, a lady at reception, who told me that.