A seemingly banal conversation between neighbors soon brought to the surface many differences in terms of values and worldviews, and almost turned into a fight. Talking about the renovation of the nearby corner with benches in the mini park, I said that during the period of the works, the team of neighborhood drunkards who regularly gather there will suffer the most, and that I have some sympathy for that population.
"Yeah, well, not until they start gathering under your window in increasing numbers and pitching tents there," was the answer I got, with the addition: "Have you seen how it looks in America, in Los Angeles and San Francisco? And it's all the fault of the radical leftists who give them free tents, blankets, sleeping bags and everything else... It's dangerous," my interlocutor lamented endlessly and confidently.
Really? Now even such a common form of humanitarian activism is labeled as "radical leftism" and denounced as the biggest problem? And my attempts at only basic contextual reminders and explanations, delivered carefully, with the necessary measure of caution, did not help. If I didn't want to avoid being sewn on that typical stereotypical label that often threatens, the well-known local pejorative about "professors who are smart and know everything".
So I briefly reminded that the problem of homelessness in the USA is an age-old socio-economic and class problem, garnished with a racial component, which escalated in the more recent historical period with the last great crisis of financial-banking capitalism, the bursting of the credit-debt bubble on the real estate market. about fifteen years ago.
At that time, even on the outskirts of the American cities he mentions, entire small settlements were created consisting of caravans and tents, with "residents" – entire families! - to yesterday's middle-class American citizens who experienced personal financial bankruptcy. I saw them directly. These are unsettling scenes that you can easily identify with as a threat that looms over many, as much as tomorrow and here.
I followed that with a sentence or two about the problem of alcoholism, which is multifaceted, but in addition to the symptoms of personal psychopathology and addiction, in a large number of cases it also articulates social problems, social and family deprivation, poverty, lack of education and the like. But all that didn't help me much.
Every attempt to argue was rejected as if from a wall, mostly marked by the familiar, "I know, but...". As with the version of the famous catchphrase Not in my backyard, or NIMB, which, among other things, is used to indicate the limits, the limits of tolerance in the American mainstream population when it comes to racial, religious, ethnic, social-class, sexual and other "others". "I have nothing against them, but as long as they are at a safe distance from my building," repeated my neighbor on that trail.
Bonus video:
