Is it that time of year? Again? Already? Now that it’s December, Adrienne is spoiling for me to rent the 1951 British version of “A Christmas Carol,” with Alastair Sim. It’s a good movie, I’ll admit, but “A Christmas Carol” was written in 1843. Of what relevance could anything Charles Dickens wrote be to us 156 years later?
Early in the book, when a couple of 19th-century canvassers ask Scrooge for a donation to Christmas charity, Scrooge asks: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” In those days, if you couldn’t pay your bills, instead of getting pre-approved for yet another credit card, you were sent to debtors’ prison; if you were poor you were packed off to a workhouse. All of that was long ago and far away. All that is just some Ghost of Christmas Past that should have disappeared years ago.
Or is it? In New York City, Rudy Giuliani, the mayor and Senate candidate, has said, “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says you can sleep on the street.” Mr. Giuliani must be a strict constructionist, aside from his obvious incomprehension of the First Amendment.
New York is the City That Never Sleeps, and if you’re homeless in New York, neither do you. Mayor Rudy has sent the NYPD out into the streets to round up the homeless and put them in shelters. If you refuse to go to a shelter, you go to jail. If you do go to a shelter, you’re forced to work to earn your keep.
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Yes, there are prisons, and now it seems, workhouses too. I don’t know why I should be surprised by, or angry with, Rudy G. After all, “getting tough with the poor” has been a political fashion since Ronald Reagan slashed social services in the early 1980s. Bill Clinton had to top that so he “ended welfare as we know it.” Rudy, by bringing back the prison and workhouse is just pushing the trend one step further. He’s just a product of his times, an incarnation of the bigoted side of all of our personalities. The next politician will call for walls around poor neighborhoods – we’ve already got them around rich neighborhoods – and concentration camps.
Ten or twelve years ago, defense of the homeless was a fashionable cause and it was not uncommon to see movie stars and other celebrities sleeping on the streets for a night to call attention to the plight of the homeless. It was a kind gesture, but it didn’t solve the problem and insoluble problems have a way of making us feel powerless and so we move onto other issues, because we can. If a celebrity tried to sleep on the streets of New York tonight, I wonder, would he or she be arrested?
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Despite the surging stock market, the number of working homeless Americans is at an all-time high. Millions of low-income housing units have been lost to condos, to demolition, to arson. Forty-five percent of the homeless population is made up of families with children. Every year one thousand Americans die on the streets of this country. They are beaten to death, they freeze, they commit suicide, they are asphyxiated by carbon monoxide in their cars as they try to stay warm.
In the book, when the Ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge Tiny Tim has less than a year to live, the spirit asks Scrooge, “Will you decide what men shall live? What men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this man’s child.”
Are There No Prisons?
“God bless us, every one.”
Is it that time of year? Again? Already? Now that it’s December, Adrienne is spoiling for me to rent the 1951 British version of “A Christmas Carol,” with Alastair Sim. It’s a good movie, I’ll admit, but “A Christmas Carol” was written in 1843. Of what relevance could anything Charles Dickens wrote be to us 156 years later?
Early in the book, when a couple of 19th-century canvassers ask Scrooge for a donation to Christmas charity, Scrooge asks: “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” In those days, if you couldn’t pay your bills, instead of getting pre-approved for yet another credit card, you were sent to debtors’ prison; if you were poor you were packed off to a workhouse. All of that was long ago and far away. All that is just some Ghost of Christmas Past that should have disappeared years ago.
Or is it? In New York City, Rudy Giuliani, the mayor and Senate candidate, has said, “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says you can sleep on the street.” Mr. Giuliani must be a strict constructionist, aside from his obvious incomprehension of the First Amendment.
New York is the City That Never Sleeps, and if you’re homeless in New York, neither do you. Mayor Rudy has sent the NYPD out into the streets to round up the homeless and put them in shelters. If you refuse to go to a shelter, you go to jail. If you do go to a shelter, you’re forced to work to earn your keep.
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Yes, there are prisons, and now it seems, workhouses too. I don’t know why I should be surprised by, or angry with, Rudy G. After all, “getting tough with the poor” has been a political fashion since Ronald Reagan slashed social services in the early 1980s. Bill Clinton had to top that so he “ended welfare as we know it.” Rudy, by bringing back the prison and workhouse is just pushing the trend one step further. He’s just a product of his times, an incarnation of the bigoted side of all of our personalities. The next politician will call for walls around poor neighborhoods – we’ve already got them around rich neighborhoods – and concentration camps.
Ten or twelve years ago, defense of the homeless was a fashionable cause and it was not uncommon to see movie stars and other celebrities sleeping on the streets for a night to call attention to the plight of the homeless. It was a kind gesture, but it didn’t solve the problem and insoluble problems have a way of making us feel powerless and so we move onto other issues, because we can. If a celebrity tried to sleep on the streets of New York tonight, I wonder, would he or she be arrested?
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Despite the surging stock market, the number of working homeless Americans is at an all-time high. Millions of low-income housing units have been lost to condos, to demolition, to arson. Forty-five percent of the homeless population is made up of families with children. Every year one thousand Americans die on the streets of this country. They are beaten to death, they freeze, they commit suicide, they are asphyxiated by carbon monoxide in their cars as they try to stay warm.
In the book, when the Ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge Tiny Tim has less than a year to live, the spirit asks Scrooge, “Will you decide what men shall live? What men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this man’s child.”
Indeed, God bless us, every one.